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Theresa Greenfield

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

collapse tangential thread

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Let me throw these two things into the existing discussion. A 2019 Centralized Discussion on candidate notability was closed with No Consensus, so this is an issue that we have been contending with for years now. Additionally, a candidate not having an article is not shutting out that candidate. In the United States context, we have articles for each state's congressional and state elections. Information about the candidate can easily be added there without creating a separate article. In Parliamentary contexts (Canada more specifically), we have created list articles with basic information about a party's candidates. How many of these losing candidates pass the ten year test in terms of their long-term relevance? Bkissin (talk) 17:48, 1 October 2020 (UTC)
• This is trivial. Does the topic meet the GNG? Yes? Have article. We don't expect coverage of baseball players outside of baseball, why does anyone expect coverage of a politician outside of politics? Hobit (talk) 01:11, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
  • What he said. The existing policy to routinely reject articles on as-yet unelected politicians seems absurd to me. If a person gets coverage, I don't care who they friggin' are, or what the context is, if they get stuff like national coverage, then my God shouldn't we have an article on them? Why do politicians get assigned a different standard than other people? You pass GNG, you get an article. End of discussion. You don't pass GNG but you do pass a subject-specific guideline, boom, you get an article. That's how it works for everything else on Wikipedia. That is exactly how it should work for politicians. Anything else is following a rule because it's a rule. WP:IAR is a POLICY! A loose necktie (talk) 02:45, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
    • Just to respond to the above comment from an WP:AFC perspective (and not as a response to this particular draft), we tend to view such things like "running for a political office" as akin to WP:BLP1E; i.e. if the only coverage of a person is because they ran/are running for office, then they could have dozens of references but it's all about the same event (and is somewhat reflected in WP:NPOL). A notable example I can think of is from earlier this year, where there was a trans politician who (if they won) would have been the first trans politician from somewhere like Maine (or the USA, can't honestly remember); they didn't even make it past the primaries, so despite the relatively large body of coverage the article was deleted ("they ran for office that one time" isn't something that makes notability). You might think we hold this ridiculous standard for aspiring politicians, but we have tons of special exemptions (going in both directions) to either raise up "hidden" groups like educators or keep the veritable flood of bit-playing actors or potential-politicians who never get elected from having one-paragraph permastubs. Primefac (talk) 09:55, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
    • I would agree in the case of a candidate who runs once, but after the first time there is a point when they become a perennial candidate, maybe hoping to eventually reach Lyndon LaRouche-level. 2020 is this candidate's second campaign (as is referenced in the draft via significant coverage in reliable sources). Separately, the reference above to the WP:10Y test above is interesting, since there was a Senate election in this same state exactly 10 years ago, and guess what, we have an article on the losing candidate. UnitedStatesian (talk) 16:51, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
      • • UnitedStatesian, the two cases are not comparable. Roxanne Conlin was a U.S. Attorney confirmed by the Senate, and was also the first woman president of the American Trial Lawyers Association. She is notable for those reasons. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 18:39, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
          • Of those two reasons, neither has an inline cite to an independent source. UnitedStatesian (talk) 18:45, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
      • And how many articles do we have on football players, who all qualify for standalone permastub articles based on subject specific guidelines and whose articles will never, ever be expanded in 10 or even 100 years but also never, ever be deleted, while wringing our hands over allowing people to create articles on as-yet unelected political candidates with ample national coverage and lots of published information, whom we disqualify from having articles because "we just don't do that"? If we cared about permastubs, we'd address it in other contexts. We don't. And we could all stop caring about the politicians if we just followed our own policies regarding what makes a subject notable, and stop applying different rulers to different topics as a means to delete or remove articles on those subjects— I'm all for using them to include, since that is how they were meant to be used. Think of the headaches that wouldn't have to happen! Of the discussions we wouldn't have to waste time on! Like this one! Yay! A loose necktie (talk) 17:34, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
        • And how many articles do we have on football players Usually best not to compare the sphere of interest here to one of the known problem children of the notability guidelines. --Izno (talk) 18:11, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
  • "We don't expect coverage of baseball players outside of baseball, why does anyone expect coverage of a politician outside of politics?" Unless and until she is elected she hasn't done anything in politics. She's basically stood up and said "please, please, please let me do something in politics, I would really appreciate it, I have such great ideas", but she's done zip. Giving her an article is not the same as giving a baseball player an article for playing baseball, it's the equivalent of giving anybody who ever wanted to be a baseball player an article. --Khajidha (talk) 17:57, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

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

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

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

• For most topics, a deletion review is final. On this particular matter, we've had several successive deletion reviews and now we've got an appeal to the administrator's noticeboard. As this is purely a content decision, it's simply not open to administrators to overrule DRV here. I suggest that this is closed without result and referred back to DRV.—S Marshall T/C 01:47, 6 October 2020 (UTC)
• I'll just say it again: there can be no dispute as to if this meets the GNG. And the SNG says: "People are presumed notable if they have received significant coverage in multiple published secondary sources that are reliable, intellectually independent of each other, and independent of the subject." We have a huge number of high-quality sources that cover her in massive detail. So from a guideline viewpoint, this is open-and-shut. The problem is that people are trying to create a new SNG and even though they have failed to do so, somehow we still pretend like that SNG exists and has consensus. It's a bit maddening frankly. Hobit (talk) 13:02, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

  You missed a bit: "Presumed" means that significant coverage in reliable sources creates an assumption, not a guarantee, that a subject merits its own article. A more in-depth discussion might conclude that the topic actually should not have a stand-alone article --Khajidha (talk) 15:14, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

  Certainly. And we'd done things like not have articles on things like "Donald Trump's hands" on that basis. But a person with this much coverage? I can't think of any such case. The GNG is a bit more clear "Wikipedia articles cover notable topics—those that have gained sufficiently significant attention by the world at large and over a period of time, and are not outside the scope of Wikipedia. We consider evidence from reliable and independent sources to gauge this attention. The notability guideline does not determine the content of articles, but only whether the topic should have its own article." This is clearly way over the bar of the GNG. And yes, we can merge articles still for organizational reasons. But AfD doesn't normally address *that*. The simple fact is, this person easily meets every relevant guideline we have for inclusion. Her case is not unusual. If we don't want articles like hers, there should be consensus that can be found for the general case. But no such consensus exists. Hobit (talk) 16:24, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

  Reading that draft, I don't see anything that I would call "significant". She exists. She has a family. She has run for office. But she hasn't really DONE anything, so there's nothing to say about her. --Khajidha (talk) 16:50, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

  Erb? First of all, that's not part of our inclusion guidelines. We have articles on people who are only famous for being famous. Secondly, she's done a ton. In the last hour there is reporting on an FEC filing against her [1]. In the last 12 hours there is a story on her leading in the polls against the incumbent [2]. She's been campaigning and the news folks think that is important enough to report on [3]. She was in a debate covered and broadcast by national news [4]. I doubt that 5% of our subjects have done as much. Probably not even done as much as she has in the last 7 days. Hobit (talk) 19:02, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

  Still nothing there besides "hey, this lady's running for election". --Khajidha (talk) 18:39, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

  A) Most soccer players are just "hey, this guy plays soccer". Most academics are "Hey this guy is an academic". And she has tons more coverage, include deep bios etc., than the vast majority of either of those. B) who cares? That isn't even vaguely part of our inclusion guidelines. She meets WP:N with more coverage than 90%+ of our bios. You are far into WP:IAR territory. Hobit (talk) 12:48, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

  The difference is the soccer player actually plays and the academic has earned a degree or published a work. Giving her an article is the equivalent of giving an article to anyone who walks into team tryouts or applies to a university for admission.--Khajidha (talk) 03:08, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

  I'm guessing you don't understand US senate elections? It takes a lot of work to become a senate candidate in a competitive race. To maintain the sports analogy, it means you've made it to the playoffs, but might not win the championship. We cover even athletes that have never won a championship. Now it *is* tricky because in some non-competitive races for lesser offices it is pretty much someone just applying. But that certainly isn't the case here. Hobit (talk) 16:57, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

  Oh, I understand them and I'm not saying that running an election campaign is easy. But the entire campaign is still just the equivalent of trying out for a team or applying for admission to a university. It's still just "I wanna do something" and not "I'm doing something". --Khajidha (talk) 18:30, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

  And that's not an inclusion criteria in any policy or guideline. Perfectly reasonable WP:IAR viewpoint, but not based in any of our rules. Hobit (talk) 12:07, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

  It's the perfectly obvious reading of the policy. 1) No source establishes notability outside of the election and 2) the coverage of her campaign is simply routine coverage of an election, not enough to establish her notability. --Khajidha (talk) 14:26, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

• My apologies for what I am sure are going to be some formatting errors, but I have not extensively used my Wikipedia editing permissions over the years. I was recently shocked to discover that Theresa Greenfield does not have a Wikipedia page; and not only that, but "Theresa Greenfield (American Politician)" is an article that's been created and deleted several times, and "Theresa Greenfield" redirects to a section of the article about the Iowan Senate Race (and that section isn't particularly about Greenfield), while her opponent has a very robust article. This back-and-forth appears to have been going on since this spring, and the election is just over two weeks away. I'm honestly surprised that this discussion largely seems to be circling around notability. Nearly all of the highest level legislative change or stability in the United States comes from the governing power of the US Senate. Having been controlled by one major political party for many years; but with numerous Congressional seats up for election, and many polls showing potential political shifts, there is a chance for another political party to take control of the Senate, with the implications of immense changes in US policy, both domestic and abroad. Only a very few number of US States have the chance to alter their representative political party in the Senate, and Greenfield is the incumbent's opponent in the "swing state" of Iowa. As a Greenfield victory could alter the political makeup of the US Senate, the leading legislative body of one of the most internationally-influential countries in the world, her political career is very notable. There are very, very many news sources - on the local, state, and national levels - citing her campaign; which, as an example, just raised a record amount of money for a Iowan running for US Congress. I've always thought of Wikipedia as a place for unbiased information - the Encyclopedia of the internet - and as authors, editors, & admins - it would seem that we have the opportunity to "balance out the objectivity" with her State's incumbent's article. I realize this is adding some real-world context to a platform that should be neutral of current events, but voters in Iowa started receiving their ballots last week, and the election closes in just over two weeks. They are trying to make their most critical political decision right now, and an objective, unbiased article on this candidate is an immensely important resource. If they currently search Wikipedia, and see the incumbent's robust article and no article for Theresa Greenfield, that is a potential strong influence on their decision-making. Please reconsider unlocking ("un-salting?") this article ASAP so that we can populate it with objective, practical, widely-covered information. Charlie918 (talk) 16:30, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

  "As a Greenfield victory could alter the political makeup of the US Senate, the leading legislative body of one of the most internationally-influential countries in the world, her political career is very notable. " Nope. Her career will only be notable if she wins. "If they currently search Wikipedia, and see the incumbent's robust article and no article for Theresa Greenfield, that is a potential strong influence on their decision-making. " Why would you go to an encyclopedia for this? This is something that newspapers and voter's organizations and such are much better designed for. --Khajidha (talk) 17:34, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

  Well I'm afraid there are Wikipedia precedents that are counter to your argument of not being noteworthy until being elected to office. Tommy Tuberville is the nominated Senate seat challenger in Alabama, and has never held public office. He has in fact been the head of several organizations, as has Greenfield. John E. James is the nominated Senate seat challenger in Michigan. He has never held public office, and therefore his only notable accomplishments on his Wikipedia page are that he served in the military and worked for a company. With the nearly daily news articles between city, state, and national news outlets about Theresa Greenfield for the past month, I can't see why these two yet-to-win political candidates are cleanly permitted to have Wikipedia articles, but one of the nominees in one of the most critical "swing states" - a multi-business owner and setting a political fundraising record for the state - would not be notable. This sincerely might just be my misunderstanding of what constitutes 'notability' on Wikipedia. Charlie918 (talk) 20:32, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

  Charlie918, Tommy Tuberville is notable for his college football career. James' article may not survive an AfD. WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is not a good argument to make. – Muboshgu (talk) 20:37, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

  Muboshgu, then this is most likely simply a teachable moment for me, and there's probably a well-written explanation somewhere that I just can't seem to locate. For a Wikipedia article about a person, what constitutes "notability?" If I do a Google search for "Theresa Greenfield," there are virtually limitless articles from various print, digital, and televised news outlets about her going back months, nearly daily since her televised debate, with her name in the headline. There are even more articles significantly about her where her name isn't necessarily in the headline (e.g. "SCOTUS battle crashes into decisive Senate race in Iowa," Politico, James Arkin, September 30, 2020). Is the sheer volume of content created specifically about an individual by news outlets not a consideration in determining someone's notability? If not, what is? Honestly thank you for any insights, this is the first time I've been involved in a blocked article discussion. Charlie918 (talk) 03:15, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

  Charlie918, apologies if I assumed that you are better versed with Wiki policy than you are. The main notability guideline is WP:GNG, and the specific notability guideline for politicians is at WP:NPOL. The presence of citations alone is not enough as the context needs to be considered. – Muboshgu (talk) 17:07, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

  Muboshgu, many thanks for these links, this is precisely what I had been looking for. My next inquiry may require further source citation. Under the politician-specific guidelines you shared WP:NPOL, it reads, "Major local political figures who have received significant press coverage. Just being an elected local official, or an unelected candidate for political office, does not guarantee notability, although such people can still be notable if they meet the general notability guideline" WP:GNG. In that first page, it is my interpretation that as the final one of two candidates to represent the entire state of Iowa in the American senate, Greenfield passes the "Major local political figures," and while I've previously noted she has significant press coverage, "who have received significant press coverage." In looking at the General Guidelines you linked, there appear to be five qualifiers: (1) Significant Coverage - there are virtually countless articles, hours of taped interview footage, social media, and more that cover Greenfield's political campaign, personal life, and career. (2/3) Reliable Sources - there are many, many articles and news TV segments from city, state, and national outlets covering Theresa Greenfield, so my assumption is that these qualify as reliable sources. (4) Independent of the Subject - these news articles were not produced by Theresa Greenfield. (5) Presumed - this of course seems to imply that even if a subject meets all the criteria, a more in depth discussion may need to occur for the subject to receive an article. Reviewing most of the comments in here over the last five months, it would appear that the majority of these comments seem to support having the article. If the question remains about notability, I wonder if this context is appropriate to apply: The United States government is is one of the most internationally-influential governing bodies in modern times. Within that government, the United States Senate - made up of two representatives from each of the 50 States - is arguably the most powerful, able to enact laws, impeach a president, make treaties, and more. In America's two-party system, simple majority of the Senate means that party will be able to enact their agenda for 2-4 years, and block the agenda of the other party, and thus significantly determine the country's global and domestic policies. In America's current election, there is a chance for the Senate to change party power, with many Senate seats up for election. Based on the political affiliation of the various states' populations, most of these elections are insignificant - people will vote for their party, and their Senate representatives will remain of the same political party. However, there are just five state elections that are qualified as a "toss up," which means due to the near-balanced political affiliations of their residents, determined through a combination of the national census and polling, it cannot be confidently forecasted which political party will win the state. Theresa Greenfield is the Democratic candidate in one of those five states. If the American Democratic party does in fact take control of the Senate in this election, the international and domestic policy changes - including enacting impeachment proceedings for the current president if he remains in power - would be significant, affecting - in various ways and degrees - billions of people around the world. Given this context, and the objective criteria thresholds of Wikipedia, it is my belief that Theresa Greenfield is notable, and should be permitted to have her own Wikipedia page now, not after her potential electoral victory. Thank you for your discussion and patience. Charlie918 (talk) 17:40, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

  How much of that coverage is about her per se and how much is about the election? Consensus on Wikipedia has always been that people who are otherwise not notable do not gain notability just by running for office. That's why this article has been redirected to the election article and that outcome has been endorsed multiple times. Unless and until that consensus changes (and this is not the place to argue that, per User:Spartaz's post below), there is no point in continuing this argument here. --Khajidha (talk) 18:36, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

  Khajidha In preparing a draft article on my desktop before learning about the controversial history of this Wikipedia article, I have 21 articles saved in Word with Theresa Greenfield's name in the headline just from the last two weeks. The subject matter is a mixture of reviewing her professional career (as it relates to her qualifications for the role), her efforts and notable events of her campaign, and her personal background (education, family, organizational memberships, etc.). Several lines up, Muboshgu, who made the original redirect and lock - to my understanding - made the case that because Wikipedia articles currently exist about campaigning politicians who are otherwise non-notable is not a considerable precedent in determining if a page about Theresa Greenfield should be permitted; then your reverse argument, that "Wikipedia's consensus is that articles about political candidates who are otherwise not notable should not be published," would seem irrelevant. If a precedent is not to be considered, and only the objective notoriety rules of Wikipedia are to be weighed, then Theresa Greenfield would appear to qualify by those rules. Charlie918 (talk) 20:49, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

First of all, I have to cop to not having read all the links, so if this has been stated already, my apologies. While on the one hand it rankles that she doesn't have a page, on the other, I get the Notability issue, and I'm a believer in the policy. Still, I remember the AOC situation, and in retrospect, that was a blunder on our part. But if we obey N, where is the blunder? Well, either in the fact that "being a candidate doess not ipso facto make you notable" (for which this is not the right venue, WT:N is, so let's set that one aside right now) or else, we're not taking the right approach.

What about this? We have here, in my opinion, a WP:BIO1E event; Greenfield *is* notable (or rather, the one event is), but not before she was a candidate. Therefore, what? Same thing as for Sandra Bland ^[noredirect] ⟶ Death of Sandra Bland; so we create Senate candidacy of Theresa Greenfield. Anyone here want to declare that this is definitely not notable? I bet I could drown you in sources for that. Then, Theresa Greenfield gets pointed to that. If she loses, and never does another thing in her life, that will be her obituary. Am I missing something? Mathglot (talk) 02:46, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

2020 United States Senate election in Iowa is the article for the "one event" in question. --Khajidha (talk) 03:04, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

That's a related topic for sure, but not quite the identical topic, and not a BIO1E, but rather a recurring event whose article title could be generated by computer. If that article were entitled, 2020 Ernst-Greenfield Senate election you might have a point, but it still wouldn't be the same topic. Mathglot (talk) 04:44, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

This is an entirely pointless discussion because this is essentially a content dispute where the policy, precedent and weight of several discussions is not to have an article. This whole thread is simply extended special pleading and asking the other parent. If you think the page should exist then your quest starts at WT POLITICIAN and I wish you good luck with that. Spartaz ^Humbug! 05:14, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

I believe this is a quite productive discussion, because it points out that there is no clear and accepted community consensus or clear written guideline for the notability of prominent candidates for high-level office who receive substantial, reliable, independent coverage over time (including significant national coverage). There are a lot of experienced editors here with one interpretation of the guidelines, and a lot of experienced editors with a different interpretation. And this discussion is very diffuse, over several talk pages -- there's also more at Wikipedia talk:Notability (people)#Changing NPOL to include at least some more nominees. Dreamyshade (talk) 00:28, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

• The US election is in a couple weeks? She was deleted because she's only notable for being a candidate, right? Why can't we just keep this deleted, wait to see if she wins, and then have a new discussion after the election? This happens all the time, specifically with US elections, and then once the candidate has officially lost most or all resistance to keeping the article goes away, especially if you give it a couple years. SportingFlyer T·C 12:07, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

• If the person passes GNG and there is no WP:BIO1E issue as pointed out above (the article was deleted at AfD before she received in-depth coverage), there is no proper reason to ban this article no matter how close or far an election is. Oakshade (talk) 06:01, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

• Two points:
  1. Is there an article for every other currently running candidate in every election for US Senate/House seat that is up for grabs this election? (I am assuming we have articles on the incumbents office holders)? If we have them on nearly all of them and hers is an an exception, that's a problem that we should fix. If hers is but many that we do not have, then I fail to see where the problem is. The arguments that show her lack of notability (just running for election is not showing depth of coverage about her directly) have been well presented.
  2. If we move her article to mainspace, it cannot look like a political ad. The draft presently looks like this with the section on her platform. Her platform can be discussed but it needs to be presented far less as a political position and more neutrality along with any criticism of it. Ideally, the platform should be part of the election article, and only her key policies that she has stood being and discussed at length should be on her bio page. --Masem (t) 14:15, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Redirect

While this article is in limbo can we at least get the redirect pointed to 2020 United States Senate election in Iowa#Democratic primary so users can easily find the three paragraphs on the candidate there? There's no named section for her so at present it represents a navigational challenge. Artw (talk) 02:46, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Right now due to the confusion around this article there’s a half dozen venues I could make this request, if this isn’t the right one feel free to point me at the right one, but it seems like an easy move to make Wikipedia slightly less broken in this case rather than fully broken. Artw (talk) 18:46, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Artw, I've just made the change. – Muboshgu (talk) 21:16, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Cheers. Artw (talk) 04:31, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

IAR

Allow me to quote from black-letter written Wikipedia policy: "If a rule prevents you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore it." WP:IAR.

In this case, we have this long tortured discussion about particular paths around purely procedural matters, which is preventing the movement of a perfectly valid draft (I'm not saying a perfect article by any means - a valid draft) about someone who is clearly notable as evidenced by literally thousands of high quality third party reliable sources. If a particular set of rules which work in ordinary circumstances have brought us to this absurd state of affairs, that's ok: one of the oldest and most important rules of Wikipedia exists to save us.

If Wikipedia, due to some procedural rules, doesn't have an article on the clear frontrunner in a US Senate race, then it is the rules that are preventing people from improving or maintaining Wikipedia. IAR tells us what to do: ignore those rules. This is policy.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 07:07, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Note that User:Francis Schonken made a NAC closure of this discussion[5] and moved the draft to Theresa Greenfield (politician), while Theresa Greenfield is a fully protected redirect. Apart from other considerations (e.g. that IAR doesn't trump consensus, and a close should judge the consensus here instead of misusing IAR as a supervote), this technical issue, forcing Francis Schonken to create a disambiguated page to circumvent the full protection shows wby this shouldn't have been closed and enacted by a non-admin. Fram (talk) 08:17, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

The "A" in IAR stands for "All" – so I wasn't too selective in which rules I was ignoring and which ones I wasn't (...but there certainly was more than one I was ignoring, although I certainly must have been still very far from ignoring each and every rule this namespace holds). For the record, I was in the midst of filing a WP:RM#Uncontroversial technical requests to get the content to the right place (didn't want to leave the article in a place with an unnecessary disambiguator in its title), but stopped typing that request now. I'd like to invite Fram, or whoever reads this, to do a better proposal for triggering prompt reaction to get this sorted in the shortest delay of time possible. Tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:28, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

An "uncontroversial technical request" to get a fully protected page unprotected so you can get a declined AfC submission, the topic of a lengthy discussion at WP:AN, at your preferred result? That would me a rather severe misuse of the term "uncontroversial"... The better way would be to propose a closure here, get a consensus for it, and then let people implement the close. If there is no consensus to be found, then we are stuck with the status quo. Fram (talk) 08:42, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

The "A" in the abbreviation of the name of the IAR policy still seems to trip you over. Yes, IAR would usually mean ignoring multiple rules. Anyhow, closure request logged at WP:ANRFC#Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Theresa Greenfield. Thanks for that suggestion. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:14, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Oh, I'm not claiming that you wouldn't be ignoring all rules when you would post a highly controversial move at the "uncontroversial moves" requests. I'm just pointing out that it would be a doomed effort which would only boomerang against you, as it would be very swiftly rejected and would reflect badly on you in discussions about your actions. WP:IAR doesn't, contrary to what you seem to imply, mean "edits used with this rationale can't be criticized or lead to admin actions against me". Fram (talk) 10:25, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I understand that. Thanks for reminding. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:43, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

While I appreciate Jimbo's concerns, I feel I have to point out the last time an admin "took initiative" and IARed like this, they got desysopped. Specifically, I agree with his talk page comment "I would personally WP:IAR and move the draft into article space, but I believe doing so would simply generate unhelpful press coverage of an unfortunately disappointing failure of the slow grinding wheels of our policies." - or indeed, reams of pages on here and possibly Arbcom from everyone who disagrees. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:01, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm with Jimbo on this one. Let's not make the Donna Strickland and Clarice Phelps mistakes yet again. Lev!vich 14:34, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm with Ritchie on this one. It's all well and good for Jimbo to say "IAR!" from his high perch, but regular editors who use that as a reason to bypass a consensus discussion are going to face harsh criticism for their actions, if not winding up blocked. If Jimbo thinks this is good enough reason, let him do it & deal with the fallout. — The Hand That Feeds You:^Bite 18:11, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

There was an overwhelming community consensus at wp:AN, and an obvious conclusion. She slam-dunk met WP:GNG many times over and per wp:notability that means we need look no further regarding wp:notability. Egalitarianism aside, something that comes from Jimbo has extra weight, and even that was just to expedite (and read the community consensus from a different place wp:AN) what was inevitable, and which had strong community consensus. North8000 (talk) 19:01, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Towards closure

For reference, the previous discussions: AfD from May, DRVs June 4 (endorse), June 15 ("There is substantial and well-argued support for the idea that we should have an article rather than a redirect here; but it falls short of a consensus to overturn"), and July 11 ("I don't see a consensus to overturn here"). Draft AfC rationales here.

Both sides have been thoroughly argued here and elsewhere. I note this to make clear that even though this particular section of the discussion has been open for less than a day, closing it at this time is justified. There is clearly a time sensitivity here, due to the widespread attention that this matter is receiving.

The key argument in support is that the subject is now notable, due to the press coverage received in the last several months. The key arguments in opposition are that the subject is not notable, either directly citing WP:NPOL or stating that she is "only running for office", and that WP:AN is not the correct venue to decide this matter.

The current draft lists 67 sources, the vast majority of which relate to the present election. Reading through this discussion and the discussion on the draft, the majority view is that they are sufficient to pass WP:GNG. I don't see a need to quote specific arguments here, they have been repeated many times below.

On WP:NPOL, it is undisputed that Greenfield fails to meet either of the presumed to be notable criteria. However, many users note that the same section continues: Just being...an unelected candidate for political office does not guarantee notability, although such people can still be notable if they meet the general notability guideline.

As to forum, it isn't clear what the correct venue would be. WP:DRV could be appropriate, but so is WP:AFC. A recent AfC reviewer noted that no AfC reviewer can accept this or any future version of this draft unless [an administrator unprotects Theresa Greenfield]. Since non-admin AfC reviewers are unable to accept this draft (even if they believe it should be accepted, as at least one previous reviewer has stated in this discussion), this requires administrative attention.

Consensus is that the subject does meet the GNG. NPOL defers to the GNG in the case of unelected candidates. Consensus can change, and clearly it has changed since the AfD nearly five months ago. The move protection should be lifted, and the draft version of Theresa Greenfield should be accepted. The administrator responsible for the original protection has offered to implement this, so I'll allow them to do so.

If users believe that the current version of the article is still unsuitable, then the normal process would be to nominate it at WP:AFD.

ST47 (talk) 21:52, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

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

---

Current state of play:

• The current article is at Draft:Theresa Greenfield (in the last few hours it was moved to Theresa Greenfield (politician) and then moved back).
• The AfD was closed as redirect to 2020 United States Senate election in Iowa#Democratic primary on 31 May 2020 (with three deletion reviews).
• Theresa Greenfield is the redirect per above, and was fully protected on 15 June 2020.

It seems Draft:Theresa Greenfield should be moved to Theresa Greenfield after unprotecting the latter. Let's come to a quick decision—I don't see any reason the unprotection and move should not happen now. Johnuniq (talk) 08:42, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

• Support Johnuniq's suggestion as to how to end this without further delay. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:14, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support Given the current state of the election race, the notability concerns from earlier this year are clearly obsolete. Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:36, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support per the above and per this comment. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:39, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support per the above.--Kew Gardens 613 (talk) 10:41, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support and also encourage us to think this over afterwards to figure out how this slipped through the cracks to end in such an odd place.--Jimbo Wales (talk) 12:07, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
  • It's not slipped through the cracks. We have a number of editors who really really think that nominees for elected office, no matter how well covered, shouldn't have an article if that's the only reason they are covered. This has been a long (long) running debate. Hobit (talk) 19:30, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support per Jimbo. I always wanted to be able to write that. And per my previous contributions to this discussion. UnitedStatesian (talk) 12:35, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose The subject is non notable aside from running for office and even less notable than Kara Eastman.--MONGO (talk) 12:41, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support per the lengthy comments above. Johnbod (talk) 13:10, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose per User:MONGO. IAR would only apply if this actually improved Wikipedia. It does not. --Khajidha (talk) 13:21, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• (edit conflict) Oppose There is a process for determining the suitablility of articles. That process is not AN. That process has, multiple times, determined that Theresa Greenfield isn't notable, and should not have an article. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 13:22, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

"Theresa Greenfield isn't notable, and should not have an article\" - not exactly the most convincing argument in an AfD I've ever seen, is it? That's why I specifically quoted DGG, who is one of the more sensible admins at AfD, even if I don't always agree with him. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:28, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

That's because I'm not making an AfD argument, but instead stating the consensus of the previous AfDs and DRVs. * Pppery * _{it has begun...} 13:30, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Noting that AN is one of the places that folks have proposed for DRV outcomes to be appealed ([6]). So this would appear to be as in-process as we get when appealing a DRV result. Hobit (talk) 20:08, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

• Support per above. This has gone on long enough. --Brad Patrick (talk) 13:41, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Comment. It seems that JW himself is not really sure of the chances of the challenger to be elected at the beginning of the next month. Moreover, it seems that some contributors think that being the focus of some buzz, here at en:wp, will help her winning the race. But, four years later, the pages buzz (part 1) and buzz (part 2) are rather appearing as a pitiful (and failed) attempt to twist the fate. And that, despite their resp. 778 and 2297 references. But, yes, if she is elected, I would probably try to locate Iowa on a map, at least more precisely than "somewhere between Canada and Mexico". Pldx1 (talk) 13:47, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose Consensus has been built previously in the year using long-standing guidelines around notability. Compromises have been attempted (redirect to the election page, incubate the page in draftspace, etc.) but have been largely ignored by a group of editors who have brought this topic up in a number of fora hoping to get the answer they want. I don't see why people can't wait two weeks before moving forward. Throwing out well-established guidelines because you don't like the outcome is sad. Bkissin (talk) 13:54, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Look at the dates on most of the refs, dude. This is a moving target. "I don't see why people can't wait two weeks before moving forward" - because it will expose WP to complaints about political bias, perhaps? Possibly these will be justified. Johnbod (talk) 14:03, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

It's a moving target that will settle down on 4 Nov. Cabayi (talk) 14:27, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

LOL, Wikipedia is always facing allegations of political bias by people who don't like what they read or don't get their way. Look at the current issues surrounding the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict! To be fair (and insulate ourselves from further claims of bias, we have ruled the same thing in AfD regardless of the candidate or party. See Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sean Parnell (Pennsylvania politician), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Daniel T. Lewis, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Quinn Nystrom, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mark Ronchetti and several others from this campaign season alone! But hey, until we determine a new policy on the topic (which given the last attempt, doesn't seem to be able to reach consensus) then I look forward to discussing this with you all in 2024. Bkissin (talk) 15:48, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

People also scream political bias at the DM/Fox/NYP reliability RfC results. Didn't stop anyone then (not that I disagree with the results, but point remains). "Complaints of political bias" should never be an argument. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:31, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

• Support I think back in May and June this article was debatable in terms of notability, but in the last month has received far and above sufficient media attention, not just to the race but to the individual to warrant the article. If that somehow changes, opponents can always bring it back to AfD.-- Patrick, _oѺ^∞ 14:11, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support Yes, there were previous versions of this article that were reasonable to delete a few months ago, but Greenfield's coverage has massively increased and is sufficient to pass WP:GNG, and this draft is sufficient for mainspace. Dreamyshade (talk) 14:21, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose - I agree with Pppery that this isn't the forum for this decision. It's a decision for the community, not for admins.

That said, on the basis of WP:NPOL and WP:NOHURRY, Theresa Greenfield (& all other unelected candidates whose notability was first noted after nomination) should remain redirected to 2020 United States Senate election in Iowa (& their respective election articles) until after the election. Doing otherwise dips into WP:ADVOCACY & WP:PROMO and there's nothing in WP:POLOUTCOMES to suggest any other action. Let's see if Greenfield is still notable on 4 Nov.

As Jimbo said, we need to consider how we ended in such an odd place - a rethink of WP:NPOL in respect of candidates would resolve that, but it's probably best to wait til the Supreme Court has decided the election before getting into that. (Note:I fell down this rabbit hole with Kevin Stitt in 2018 with this AFD. It would be good to see some clear resolution to the questions this time round.) Cabayi (talk) 14:23, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I think you are touching on the right thing. In the U.S., a major party candidate for the U.S. Senate is not the same as a non-partisan local dog catcher. Sufficient reliable sources and media coverage of a party candidate (post-primary, at that) is significant. The candidacy within the context of the article on the election itself is one thing; now that WP is considered a relevant source for information about the election by millions, it should not get wrapped up in this on a repeated basis. It is a clear statement of notability, in this context, that a person is a major party candidate running for one of 100 of the most powerful elected positions in the United States. This should, by definition, satisfy notability requirements. The additional sauce in this instance is that she's _very_ competitive. [7] --Brad Patrick (talk) 14:37, 21 October 2020 (UTC)\

now that WP is considered a relevant source for information about the election by millions Just because people think they can get election information here does not make it our purpose to do that. It is absolutely the wrong place for WP to be serving as an election hub for any country. We'll happily report the results of an election as encyclopedic topic information, but we're not in any type of position to be able to talk about fair coverage of all political candidates and issues on a global basis to make it appropriate to work coverage of political candidates from that angle. It is extremely appropriate to judge any political candidate's article through the eyes of an advocacy concern and make sure that the article is more than just a soapbox for the candidate, which appears to be part of the problem with how Greenfield's article has been presented through its iterations. --Masem (t) 16:56, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

• Support - it's not throwing out any rules. The topic meets all the policies and the guideline WP:N. In my view the argument that such a candidate should not have her own page is farcical, particularly when compared to the other things we give a page to. This website, this community, has a rule that all schools are notable, all train stations are notable, we have articles about bagel shops and pro wrestlers and porn stars and pizzerias, but not a major US senate candidate? Come on. Don't forget our mission is to share knowledge. Let's not pretend this isn't a topic many people are interested in or that we can't write a policy-compliant article about it. Lev!vich 14:41, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

But we don't generally have articles about PROPOSED schools or train stations. Or PLANNED bagel shops and pizzerias. Or pro-wrestling TRAINEES. Or people who AUDITION for porn movies. Those are the counterparts to election candidates.--Khajidha (talk) 14:48, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

TG, a "proposed" Senator, is still more important/notable/worthy of a standalone page/whatever formulation we want to use, than like any high school ever built, or even the most famous porn star. More humans are interested in, and need, knowledge about TG than about any high school or porn star or Pokémon, and all but the most famous train stations. If we're not writing about topics like TG, then what the hell are we doing here? We have an article about every damn road in England. Lev!vich 14:59, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

"We have an article about every damn road in England" - No we don't, I keep finding new ones to write all the time. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:01, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, sure, and when you run out, you're going to clear new roads and write articles about them! I look forward to reading about Ritchie Boulevard and Ritchie Lane... I hope you name at least one of them Levivich Way. Lev!vich 15:09, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Things that "are" are more encyclopedic than anything that "may be". In the only sense in which TG could be encyclopedic, she is just a "may be". --Khajidha (talk) 15:30, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Thats where I disagree. Open a newspaper. She's not a maybe. She's already notable, win or lose. We have more secondary source material to summarize about TG than I dare say 90% of the pages we have on Wikipedia. It's only through contortions (here, the contortion of WP:NPOL) that one can claim she is not worth including in the encyclopedia unless she wins. There is no logic or data that leads to that conclusion. Lev!vich 15:34, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

She's a "may be" in the sense that she may be elected. --Khajidha (talk) 15:36, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm saying she is notable even if she may be elected. Her notability does not depend on her getting elected. The secondary source material won't disappear if she loses. If our job is to summarize the world's knowledge, we're not doing our job if we don't summarize the knowledge about TG. It's a hole in our coverage, regardless of the outcome of the election. Lev!vich 15:41, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I guess we have different ideas about what secondary sources about her means. Because 57 different ways of saying "this lady is running for election" don't impress me as notability. --Khajidha (talk) 15:45, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

If all the secondary sources said was that she was running, I'd agree with you. But of course they say much more than that. Lev!vich 16:35, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I've read the draft. Still looks like 57 ways of saying "she's running" to me. --Khajidha (talk) 16:45, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Well that's a mistake, judging the notability of a topic by the sources that are in the draft. WP:BEFORE and all that. Lev!vich 16:47, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Well then, what sources should I be looking at? What can you show me that is more than just either "she exists, she's been married twice, and she's a mom" and "she's running for office"? --Khajidha (talk) 17:12, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Wait, now you're moving the goalposts. Before you said 57 different ways of saying "this lady is running for election", now you're saying that and she's been married twice, and she's a mom, and that second part is more than just "this lady is running for election"; in fact, "married twice" and "mom" sound to me like the kind of biographical details that one would find in WP:SIGCOV of a WP:BLP. So I'll tell you what: you set forth the definitive criteria for a source that "counts", and I'll tell you if I have any examples that meet that criteria. Lev!vich 17:57, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Biographical details fill out articles, they do not establish notability. You can give me all the sources you want that she has been married twice and has kids, but that tells me nothing about her notability. And I don't see anything in that second section beyond "this lady is running for election". Unless there's something super outstanding about her campaign, like collusion with foreign powers, all campaign coverage is just "she's running for office". --Khajidha (talk) 18:04, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

If your definition of "notable" is "elected", then she is not notable. But my definition is the one in WP:N (at least two GNG-satisfying sources), and that criteria is met. Lev!vich 18:18, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

No, my definition of "notable" is not "elected". But my definition of notable says that people who simply want to have a job, as opposed to those who have that job, are not notable just because they want it. An applicant to a university is not notable. An academic is. A person who does a walk-on tryout for a sports team is not notable. An active member of that team is. A candidate for senate is not notable just because they are running for senate. A senator is. --Khajidha (talk) 18:24, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Now that's a red herring. Nobody is arguing that she is notable just because she is running for senate. She is notable because she meets the criteria set forth at WP:N. Lev!vich 18:36, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

How, then? How is she notable? There is no coverage of her separate from this election. She was not notable before the election and just running for office does not make her notable now, no matter how many sources say that she is running for office. --Khajidha (talk) 18:38, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

What part of, "She is notable because she meets the criteria set forth at WP:N" is unclear? Again, if you define "notable" as "subject to coverage separate from the election" or "notable before the election" (or "notable if elected"), then she is not notable. But if you define "notable" as "two GNG-satisfying sources" (which WP:N does), then she is notable. Lev!vich 18:45, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I define notability as "subject to coverage separate from the election". --Khajidha (talk) 18:53, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Which is a different definition than the one that has consensus (WP:N), and one that we don't apply anywhere else. We wouldn't, for example, say that a senator/athlete/scientist is only notable if they are subject to coverage outside of their being a senator/athlete/scientist. Lev!vich 19:07, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Did you not see my point above? Being a candidate is not parallel to being a scientist or an athlete. It is parallel to applying to a college or trying out for a team. --Khajidha (talk) 19:18, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

That's a view that does not have consensus. WP:GNG and WP:BASIC apply to everyone; there is no consensus to exclude political candidates from GNG. She might not be notable in your view, but under our general notability guideline, she is. Lev!vich 19:32, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose as too soon. As with Draft:Rishi Kumar, another candidate who isn't notable outside the context of WP:1EVENT (this election), Theresa Greenfeeld has nothing more than routine coverage for a person running for national office. Wait until after the election; if she doesn't win, she wouldn't qualify for an article here, although her campaign might. ~Anachronist (talk) 17:27, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
  • WP:1EVENT supports having this page. It says, If the event is highly significant, and the individual's role within it is a large one, a separate article is generally appropriate. Editors commonly cite 1EVENT to argue that people aren't notable for one event, but that's not what 1EVENT actually says; for significant persons in significant events, it says the very opposite. It's like making an argument based on the shortcut instead of the actual policy being linked to. We could call it argumentum ad shortcutae, perhaps? Lev!vich 17:57, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support I wanted to close this. Maybe I'm not brave enough, maybe I just thought it would help to strengthen consensus instead. This is mostly "per Jimbo". The idea that someone could be elected to the United States Senate and not have a Wikipedia article is deeply embarrassing to me, and would constitute a high-profile failure on our part. I'm certainly sympathetic to those calling for clearer guidance on notability standards in these cases—we probably don't need articles on otherwise non-notable people if they're, say, the Republican candidate in Rhode Island, or the Democrat in Idaho. Sure, there are major party candidates who everyone knows will just lose by huge margins and that's all we'll hear from them, but it's abundantly clear that that is not the case with Greenfield. The earlier AfD was fine, if a bit on the zealous side, but circumstances have very much changed since. --BDD (talk) 18:20, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

"The idea that someone could be elected to the United States Senate and not have a Wikipedia article is deeply embarrassing to me, and would constitute a high-profile failure on our part." Why? To me, that is far from a failure on our part, it is a SUCCESS on the part of democracy. --Khajidha (talk) 18:27, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

It looks reactive, like our measures of notability are off, which I suppose is the case. It's one thing if there's a freak electoral result—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was a list entry and only became a stub upon winning her primary—but a Greenfield win would not at all be a surprise. I'm not sure what you mean by such a case being a success for democracy. --BDD (talk) 18:36, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

The idea that someone who was not notable (and thus didn't have an article here) won, means that "nobodies" can win. And that's a good thing.--Khajidha (talk) 18:42, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

• Strong support per Levivich, Ritchie333, Future Perfect at Sunrise, BDD, Jimbo Wales, and others in previous discussions. We don't have a criteria that says someone must be notable outside of running for a political office, as Mongo and Khajidha are attempting to argue above. We do have WP:GNG, which supersedes WP:NPOL, and by that standard Greenfield overwhelmingly passes the bar for "significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject." (There's also been a persistent misapplication of WP:1EVENT, which Levivich insightfully demonstrates above). Greenfield and/or her campaign may not have been notable months ago; I don't have a time machine. But all of us as Wikipedia editors need to be willing to revisit our assessments and preconceived notions as new sources emerge, and unfortunately several of us have not been able to do that. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 18:39, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Strong support. The candidate meets the GNG handily. NPOL itself acknowledges that unelected candidates for political office can be notable per the GNG. While I do personally believe NPOL should be changed so that candidates running in major elections are considered inherently notable, such a change would not be needed for Greenfield's article to be created as the GNG criteria are already met. GorillaWarfare (talk) 18:42, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Strong support. Clearly way way way over the GNG. And WP:NPOL defers to the GNG. That said, the *venue* could be considered to be a problem. I'll leave notes at the DRV talk page. But yes, WP:AN has been one of the options when asking to overturn a DRV outcome (the other is DRV), so this isn't out of process per se. Hobit (talk) 19:21, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• I don't know. I guess Alvin Greene is some precedent but now that I actually read that article it feels like tabloid material and the thought occurs that we would be better off without it. Haukur (talk) 19:31, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support. It is absolutely absurd situation that byzantine procedural obfuscation prevent an article on a major party candidate in one of the most closely watched Senate contests. older ≠ wiser 19:45, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support per above. The draft certainly demonstrates significant coverage in reliable sources, exceeding WP:GNG by a mile. There has been so much poor judgment involving this article. -- Wikipedical (talk) 19:47, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support per Jimbo, who I'm glad to see has talked some sense into the discussion. Greenfield is clearly notable, and it's embarrassing that it has come this far for the error to be rectified. -- Tavix ^(talk) 19:48, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support. BIO1E: The general rule is to cover the event, not the person. However, if media coverage of both the event and the individual's role grow larger, separate articles may become justified. None of the invocations of PROMO make sense to me; it is clearly in the public interest to know about these candidates. We may need to revisit the relationship between the GNG and the SNGs after the dust has settled. Enterprisey (talk!) 20:12, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Question: What if she loses? The argument seems to be that people aren't notable for losing elections. So say we allow the article now, and she ends up losing the election. Is it then deleted all over again, orrr is it just edited to "Theresa Greenfield (born October 20, 1963) is a person who was the Democratic nominee for the 2020 United States Senate election in Iowa."? "Politician" would no longer really apply, and I don't know why the current lead says she's a businessperson at all, nevermind puts it first, she's not notable for it, and neither are the companies she serves as on the boards of, apparently. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:29, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
  • I don't see why it would matter. She meets the GNG by a mile. I think people ignore the fact that the GNG doesn't require you to be notable for anything in particular, just covered by reliable, independent, secondary sources. Hobit (talk) 21:08, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
  • If you are a political candidate, you are a politician whether you win or lose because you are "one engaged in politics"—you just aren't a "politician" by wikt:politician definition 2 (or what some would call a "career politician"). -- Tavix ^(talk) 21:26, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support and do it FAST IAR is not needed for the end result but use it if necessary just to speed up the procedures on this embarrassing situation. And it's no reflection on past actions on this article; everyone was just trying to handle it properly. North8000 (talk) 21:28, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Please do not make content decisions on the administrator's noticeboard: that's really inappropriate.—S Marshall T/C 21:43, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

---

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

• Oppose Wanted to sneak this in before closure. She can be adequately covered on the election page - if she loses, she won't have lasting notability, and content shouldn't be discussed here. SportingFlyer T·C 21:55, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

  Even if she loses the election, the notability will be lasting with GNG-passing coverage in abundance.Oakshade (talk) 16:31, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

Related AfDs and articles

I think it would be helpful to list other AfDs (current or past) that may be impacted by whatever outcome the above discussion comes to.

• Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/John E. James -- active AfD of a US senate candidate who has a meaningful chance of winning. Hobit (talk) 19:58, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks. Mr. James is running for the US Senate in the state that ranks 10th in population, representing more than 10 million people. He will forever be either a US Senator or the guy who lost that Senate race. It's not reasonable to maintain a fiction that rules are more important than ground truth - these candidates are more than a line item on another page.--Brad Patrick (talk) 20:10, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

• Draft:Kara_Eastman -- US house candidate in 2018 and 2020. Much smaller race than most US Senate races, but still closely related though the coverage isn't quite as overwhelming. Hobit (talk) 20:29, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Draft:Al Gross (politician) -- Also a US Senate candidate in a competitive race with significant coverage available (not all of which is reflected in the current sourcing). Dreamyshade (talk) 21:14, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Daniel Gade, the 2020 Republican US Senate candidate in Virginia. -- Tavix ^(talk) 21:22, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

• I would argue that all of the articles that were mentioned are notable. In particular, now that Theresa Greenfield is on the mainspace, Dr. Al Gross is one of the only major party U.S. Senate candidates this cycle without an article, and there is a draft written available about him. This article should be moved to the mainspace, as should the draft about Kara Eastman. The articles about John James and Daniel Gade should stay up at least through November 3. I say this because the voters need to have information about the candidates on their ballots. Narayansg (talk) 22:33, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

  I say this because the voters need to have information about the candidates on their ballots. This isn't an effective argument for inclusion on Wikipedia. If they pass the general notability guideline or any other notability guideline, then they are eligible to have an article (and notability isn't temporary). If they are not notable, simply being a candidate does not make them so. But it's important not to assume the inverse: Simply being a candidate doesn't make them not notable, either. WP:NPOL defers to WP:GNG in the case of candidates. ST47 (talk) 22:49, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

  It also defers to several elements of WP:NOT: WP:NOTNEWS, WP:PROMO, WP:CRYSTAL, along with WP:BIO1E. It may seem oddly political to oppose these, but I would strongly prefer to not turn Wikipedia into a partisan US-orientated website, and instead allow for articles on people only if they are notable. (We can always cover the candidates on the election page, which will likely be watched by interested parties on both sides of the aisle.) SportingFlyer T·C 22:54, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

  For these draft articles, there's a problem related to the cycle that the draft Greenfield article got stuck in (resolved only with a vote here): there's no avenue for robust community discussion of notability for an AfC draft, because a single AfC reviewer can decline a submission and keep declining it. As a relevant example, I saw that for Gross, User:Narayansg moved the draft article to mainspace a few weeks ago, and another editor moved it back to draftspace as "Doesn't meet wp:npol yet" instead of following a documented community process for mainspace articles where you want to contest notability (like PROD or AfD). So, where to go to discuss whether a candidate like Gross or Eastman reaches the threshold of WP:GNG? I expect that few candidates do, but the exceptions (like Greenfield) are important. Dreamyshade (talk) 23:19, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

  Anyone can accept an AfC submission too. If you believe it's ready, you can move it to mainspace. See WP:DRAFTIFY, It is not intended as a backdoor route to deletion. and Other editors (including the author of the page) have a right to object to moving the page. If an editor raises an objection, move the page back to mainspace and if it is not notable list at AfD. If there is a dispute over whether something should be in draftspace or mainspace, the page should be moved back to mainspace and the dispute should be brought to WP:AFD. If you can't move it to mainspace due to protection, ask an admin. ST47 (talk) 23:48, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

  @ST47:, I actually tried to move the Kara Eastman draft and couldn't for the simple reason it already has a history. Is this a common problem? And could you treat this as an "ask an admin" request for the move (even though I don't believe it is a protection problem)? Hobit (talk) 13:20, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

  It's probably not particularly common, but yes, ask an admin, or ask at WP:RM/TR. That one hasn't had an AfD since 2018 and the current version is better-sourced. However, the principal author of Draft:Kara Eastman has requested (through a comment on that page) that it not be nominated again until after the election, I would respect that request unless there's broader support for her immediate notability. ST47 (talk) 15:57, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

• One guideline that doesn't appear to have been explicitly mentioned above is WP:NOPAGE (aka WP:PAGEDECIDE). If a political candidate is only noteworthy/covered within the context of political candidacy, it is not (erm...) incumbent upon us to have a separate page for that candidacy, given that the individual for-all-time notability of that candidate is marginal, even if coverage of the election itself including coverage of candidates is significant. ^~Hydronium^~Hydroxide^~(Talk)~ 03:40, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

GorillaWarfare's Research

• After reading/participating in the discussion around Greenfield, I found myself very curious about which other non-incumbent candidates in the various Senate races have articles. I put together User:GorillaWarfare/Senate races with my results, and figured I'd share it here in case anyone was interested as I was. Many of the candidates have previously held office and met NPOL as a result of their past positions, but I found eighteen biographies of non-incumbent candidates who were not previously elected for office (including Greenfield). Out of that eighteen, four were independently notable for reasons unrelated to their runs for office. Out of the remaining fourteen, there were 9 Democrats, 3 Republicans, and 1 Independent, plus Mr. Willie Wilson in the Willie Wilson Party. They are evenly split gender-wise, with 7 articles about women and seven about men. Edits welcome if I've made any errors. GorillaWarfare (talk) 23:17, 23 October 2020 (UTC)
• Here are the 14 articles listed on GW's page of non-incumbent 2020 US Senate candidates who are not notable outside politics, and how many page views each article received in the last 30 days. Why in the world would we not provide our readers with the verified, neutral summaries of these topics that they clearly are interested in reading?
  1. Al Gross, I-Alaska ♂, 13,661 pageviews
  2. Jon Ossoff, D-Georgia ♂, 135,335 pageviews
  3. Raphael Warnock, D-Georgia ♂, 76,410 pageviews
  4. Richard Dien Winfield, D-Georgia ♂, 3,000 pageviews
  5. Willie Wilson, Willie Wilson Party-Illinois ♂, 31,311 pageviews
  6. Theresa Greenfield, D-Iowa ♀, 17,114 pageviews
  7. Amy McGrath, D-Kentucky ♀, 155,241 pageviews
  8. John James, R-Michigan ♂, 88,815 pageviews
  9. Jo Rae Perkins, R-Oregon ♀, 15,166 pageviews
  10. Marquita Bradshaw, D-Tennessee ♀, 24,992 pageviews
  11. MJ Hegar, D-Texas ♀, 197,488 pageviews
  12. Daniel Gade, R-Virginia ♂, 36,133 pageviews
  13. Paula Jean Swearengin, D-West Virginia ♀, 24,214 pageviews
  14. Merav Ben-David, D-Wyoming ♀, 11,236 pageviews Lev!vich 16:52, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  Because providing encyclopedic information is only one traditional function of encyclopedia. Another function is to select notable subjects (for which the information is provided). This is exactly why we reject, for example, purely local coverage or ONEEVENT (which both can generate a lot of interest as well). No opinion on specific individuals listed above.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:59, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  Personally I believe NPOL should be changed to deem major candidates in Senate races such as Greenfield's inherently notable. I strongly agree with Barkeep49 who said above, I think Wikipedia is grossly irresponsible in our election coverage for the role we play in promoting incumbents over challengers. We should have some level of information about candidates for people seeking information about an election. This doesn't need to be done through a full article but could happen through reasonable coverage in an election article. The incumbent will still get a full article as opposed to say a paragraph (or two, maybe three) but our readers deserve to know more about Greenfield than "Theresa Greenfield, businesswoman, candidate for Iowa's 3rd congressional district in 2018" which is what we're saying now. GorillaWarfare (talk) 17:04, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  GorillaWarfare, How is that an argument to change NPOL? Writing more about a candidate in the election article requires no change to NPOL. Alanscottwalker (talk) 17:21, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  Sorry, not super clear, those were supposed to be two separate statements. I think NPOL should be changed, and separately I agree with Barkeep's point. GorillaWarfare (talk) 18:02, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  @GorillaWarfare: US Senate only or all upper house elections in all countries? If the latter, does that mean all unicameral legislature elections as well? "Senior national legislator candidates" in all countries? Lev!vich 18:37, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  I was referring to US Senate. I admit I'm not very well-versed in other countries' political systems, but I would think any major candidates in elections that are somewhat equivalent in other countries ought to be considered notable as well. GorillaWarfare (talk) 18:46, 24 October 2020‎ (UTC)

  Any Republican/Democrat nominee for a Senate race will seemingly always meet GNG. So de facto "inherently notable" ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 18:49, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  I feel like the discussions upon discussions about Greenfield have proven that's not agreed upon, not to mention the handful of AfDs, declined AfCs, and merged/redirected pages on R/D candidates recorded in my user subpage. GorillaWarfare (talk) 19:28, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  Let's put it this way: we can argue "presumed notable" in the lead up to the election, but if the candidate loses and their only notability to that point was being the candidate, deletion or merging back to the election article would be reasonable after the election. There are some races where the incumbent has nearly no chance of losing, so the random challenger from the other party is just because they need to test the waters, and that may be a case that that person would readily meet BLP1E. --Masem (t) 19:36, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  Yeah, that's why I specified "major candidates" in my original point about NPOL. I don't think candidates like the ones you mention, or the long list of candidates pulling in single-digit percentage points of support or less in some of the Senate elections should be deemed inherently notable. GorillaWarfare (talk) 20:03, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  What we need to be careful though is that if we make these articles routinely, these cannot come off as supporting their platform, though obviously we do want to document major platform points that a candidate is notable for running for. (A full platform position would be more appropriate on the election page to compare candidates, or if the campaign election itself was notable) Greenfield's section on political positions is a bit too close to promotional but not at a point it needs to be flagged. I just feel that this will be the primary content people will add to these types of candidate articles rather than bio details. --Masem (t) 18:14, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

  This is why I support including all of the information on the election page, such as 2020 United States Senate election in Iowa. I think one of the biggest misconceptions people have about those of us who don't want to have articles-for-all-time on mere candidates is that we don't want the information to appear at all for non-incumbent candidates. For instance, we have no biographical information whatsoever on the minor party candidates for Iowa. The "after the election" really goes against WP:CRYSTAL and our "once you're notable, you're always notable" policies - why not just cover the candidates properly in the context of the election, and have that be the worldwide standard? SportingFlyer T·C 19:52, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

  This. Exactly this. One million times, this. --Khajidha (talk) 22:33, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

  Nobody has ever claimed automatic notability simply because they are a candidate, but that doesn't at all mean someone is automatically non-notable due to them being a candidate. Some people do in fact become notable due to their candidacy, like of Greenfield and Ossoff (the first special election). That was the problem with the Greenfield controversy back in June and July - In this case the person was clearly notable but some editors clung to the idea that nobody could become notable only due to a candidacy, not to mention feeling it was "too soon" since a previous discussion (I had warned back in July the Greenfield issue would come back again and again if we don't allow an article and it turned out I was correct). Oakshade (talk) 02:45, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  That assumes Greenfield IS notable, which is still a question the community disagrees on. If she loses the election there's a very good chance the article could be deleted or merged. There's really two issues here: 1) not providing enough information on candidates on the election page, which there seems to be a hunger for along with general agreement to do so; and 2) at what point someone who is running for office but not otherwise notable becomes notable enough for a standalone article given the numerous issues with having these sorts of articles. SportingFlyer T·C 10:07, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  If just being a candidate doesn't make you notable, then continuing routine coverage of your candidacy does not make you notable either. You can say "she's running for election" 1 time or 500 billion times, it doesn't change anything. --Khajidha (talk) 11:35, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  Community consensus above shows that Greenfield does meet GNG. If she loses the election, an editor might bring up yet another AfD in some kind of WP:POINT exercise, but the GNG-passing train has long left the station and the community's patience will be beyond thin at that time. Oakshade (talk) 16:22, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  So, let's look at hypotheticals. If this were an article being proposed about a candidate from the previous senate election in that state, with basically the same sources saying the same things, plus a source for their having lost the election, you would support its existence? Really? I saw lots of people above saying basically saying that we "need to serve the voters". That seems totally wrong to me. We aren't here to serve the voters of this year, we are here to cover this year's election for the people of next year. Or 5 years from now. Or 10. Or 100. If this last round had not resulted in the posting of this article, I doubt anyone would raise the issue 10 days from now if she loses the election. --Khajidha (talk) 17:01, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  That's a straw man argument as I've never said anything like "to serve the voters" since coming across this issue back in June. Others might have. And to answer your question, yes of course we should have an article about a person who is notable and easily passes GNG as consensus has confirmed even if they lost an election they became notable for just we had the article of Jon Ossoff after he lost the 2017 Georgia's 6th congressional district special election. Oakshade (talk) 19:37, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  Jon Ossoff was AfD'd in 2017, incorrectly closed as a keep (8:4 delete/redirect:keep ratio), and then a mess of a DRV which potentially identified 3 of the keep !voters as SPI but wasn't really close-able as anything other than no consensus. Ossoff is probably the worst possible example you could have given. SportingFlyer T·C 20:09, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  If it really is a bad example then show us - If you truly feel Ossoff is not notable due to becoming notable only because of his 2017 candidacy that he lost and his current candidacy and, should he lose the upcoming Senatorial election like Greenfield might or might not, continues to be non-notable in your view, then you are always free to AfD the Ossoff article. But honestly that would also come across as a WP:POINT AfD. Oakshade (talk) 20:34, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  The messy AfD and messier DRV were three years ago. I don't think an AfD would be WP:POINTy, but certainly at this point in the discussion it wouldn't help much, either. We need good guidelines for when candidates are considered all-time-notable. SportingFlyer T·C 20:56, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

• The MJ Hegar article can be summarized as: she is in the middle of a notable life, and additionally, she is a candidate. The Theresa Greenfield article can be summarized as: she is candidate and she is candidate. The only notable thing in her bio, seems to be Jimbo Wales campaigning for her article... but this is not yet covered by Reliable Sources: simply too soon. Pldx1 (talk) 15:02, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
• The bigger issue here is that arguing over Greenfield's notability (and the fact the community is split on the issue) doesn't get us any closer to actually solving this problem, which pops up every two years in the midst of US election season. We need to have this election resolve and then workshop what the actual rule is to avoid having this be a point of contention, the question being: when is a recent candidate notable? SportingFlyer T·C 17:02, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  I think that's a great idea. Avoiding doing it just before the election is probably wise, and I don't think there's harm in waiting for election dust to settle to discuss it. GorillaWarfare (talk) 21:13, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  I completely agree with waiting as it avoids any WP:CRYSTAL issues of "well they might be notable..." Considering the fact we typically lack consensus on what to do with these US candidates, maybe it would be better to frame the question as, how do we improve election coverage on Wikipedia? SportingFlyer T·C 21:23, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

  Yes, working on this after the election sounds good. I believe both of these questions are worth asking, because they both come up with deeply split answers (especially when working article-by-article): How do we decide when a candidate may have their own article under their name? And related, but broader: how do we set up our policies and guidelines so that elections can be covered in ways that fulfill the purpose of Wikipedia to the best of our capacity and ability as editors? Dreamyshade (talk) 23:03, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Mandatory IP masking incoming

Johan (WMF) has indicated that mandatory masking of the IP addresses of anonymous editors is being implemented for all Wikiprojects in the near-mid term (probably sometime in the next year or so), stating that this is an order from the WikiMedia Foundation's Legal Department. Apparently a statement from the Legal Department is forthcoming. As this is likely to hinder anti-vandalism efforts in the near-term, feedback is being requested to make this cause the least amount of disruption possible. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:40, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Could IPs be put through some cipher or something so they have a persistent identity? Just a thought. (please  mention me on reply; thanks!) -- Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:43, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

IP addresses having a persistent identity is one of the things that is being considered. However if a vandal is rapidly going between ipv6 domains on the same range it becomes much more difficult to track them if the IP is masked, even if the identity of the individual IP address is persistent. Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:47, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Could someone explain what IP masking actually means? Does that mean, in particular, that we won't be able to look up the contribution history for a particular IP editor? And to tell that two edits were made by the same IP editor? Nsk92 (talk) 22:52, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

I think what is being proposed is that the actual IP address itself is not displayed, but the history of edits associated with that IP Address is preserved (at least in the short term). Hemiauchenia (talk) 22:56, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

That is how I read it too, but it could be worth asking Johan or someone to clarify. Emir of Wikipedia (talk) 22:57, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

I asked for clarification in the Meta thread, but I am still pretty confused. If what you say above is correct, how would edits by different IPs be visually distinguished in page histories? And also in talk pages, where IP signatures are displayed? Right now we see the actual IP addresses there. What exactly would we see instead? If we see some generic phrase like "Anonymous IP editor", it will not allow to distingish which edits were made by which IP editor and I can't see how individual IP contrib histories can be preserved in this case. Or, is the system going to start assigning the IP ediors its internal identifiers, perhaps enumerating them in order of apperance, something like "Anonymous IP editor 4029", "Anonymous IP editor 4030", etc ? That would at least allow for the history of edits associated with a particular IP to be preserved and displayed. Nsk92 (talk) 23:28, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Amazing. There are security bugs (with legal implications, I would think) that have been sitting unfixed on phabricator for months or years. This is well past any normal responsible disclosure window. It's purely a courtesy that I'm keeping my mouth shut, and the next person who rediscovers the same bugs probably won't be so considerate. But legal instead prioritizes protecting the privacy of those who never asked for it. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:18, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Ah, the 'ol "But it came from Legal! We have to do it now!". There was extreme opposition to this on Meta. SQL^{Query me!} 23:19, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

How is this going to affect things like looking at all contribs in a range? Natureium (talk) 23:23, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Natureium, I would assume negatively. The only tool I've seen is the new Special:Investigate tool, and it seems to have some severe issues. They really need to spend a LOT more time and energy on tools before they force this thru. That, or maybe force registration if it's that important. SQL^{Query me!} 23:26, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

But a regular editor can't add /64 to the end of an IP and see whether there's more vandalism across the range? Natureium (talk) 23:29, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Could use something like Crypto-PAn I guess. That would preserve ranges. I don't think that's the plan, though. Suffusion of Yellow (talk) 23:35, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Hemiauchenia, then we need to implement a permanent mainspace ban on IPs. Accounts are free. Guy (help! - typo?) 23:46, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

JzG, Pretty much. Like ptwiki does. SQL^{Query me!} 23:48, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

A quick experiment at pt:A suggests that they have an edit filter set to prevent edits to articles by IPs (anyone not logged in). That's from a Google translate of the page notice while in incognito mode (not logged in). While welcoming everyone is great, keeping good editors is essential and no sane person can deal with LTAs on shifting IPs unless articles are strongly protected or wide IP ranges blocked. Johnuniq (talk) 00:08, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

I need to preface this by saying that I don't know if this is still true, but at the time that discussions on the proposal were taking place last year, I distinctly remember that the foundation intended to obscure IP's from CU's, which effectively makes the role completely useless for investigating LTA's with technical evidence. Assuming that my initial impressions of it are still true, I think that this is going to turn into a hilarious clown fiesta very soon, like anything else that the WMF thinks is a good idea. Frankly, I think that Wikimedia projects should let the WMF handle anti-vandalism and LTA issues moving forward without any volunteer assistance whatsoever and see how well that works out. They bought the ticket, so now they get to take the ride. OhKayeSierra (talk) 03:10, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

OhKayeSierra, obscuring from CUs would be the wet dream of every spammer and LTA. Guy (help! - typo?) 09:42, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

• To restate what I've said on meta. I think that this could work. 5-10 years from now, with many carefully developed, mature tools. I think that forcing this thru today, with one half-assed, rushed to production tool is a mistake. SQL^{Query me!} 03:16, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
• There are a lot of details missing (both due to the early stage of development and WP:BEANS), but I don't think this is the end of the world. In a "soft" IP-masking, where admins (and editors with an EFH-like permission) can see IPs, almost nothing will change at a substantial benefit to IP editor privacy. In a "hard" IP-masking, there will be significantly more pages semi-protected, additional need for CheckUser resources, and the potential for blocking sensitive IP addresses. However, as long as IPv6 /64s are still evident, I don't think it will make a major difference to abuse-fighting. Most of the vandals who know how to change their IP address know to register accounts for their vandalism anyhow. power~enwiki (π, ν) 03:47, 18 October 2020 (UTC)
  • That's wrong. Wikipedia works at all because users are empowered to do stuff. Most days sees someone asking at ANI for a range block because an editor with no special privilege has seen a problem and taken an effort to work out what is needed to resolve it. If an editor sees three masked IPs mucking around in an article, they would have to ask someone with appropriate privilege (if that will be possible) to investigate. That person, presumably, could not see the IPs in any easy way (like viewing article history where all the IPs could be seen and perhaps copied into a range calculator). Instead, the privileged person would need to click buttons and do who knows what. Far easier to semi-protect the affected articles for six months or whatever it takes. Johnuniq (talk) 04:37, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

This is pretty weird. There was one of those pop-up questionnaires a few weeks ago asking people to say whether they edited regularly from IP addresses. People who said yes were asked to participate in a 1-hour phone interview with WMF staff. I did one of those interviews and discussed the topic at length. Some privacy-related questions came up but that of revealing IP addresses being an issue was barely touched on, though I mentioned that showing one's IP made a bigger disclosure than editing under a made-up username. I still need to follow up by email with the person I spoke with, so I'll mention this thread in my followup. Hmm. 2602:24A:DE47:BB20:50DE:F402:42A6:A17D (talk) 06:46, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm somewhat doubtful the legal department cared about that questionnaire or the follow up. They probably haven't even heard of it. It's possible the questionnaire was intended to be used by the team working on the Privacy Enhancement and Abuse Mitigation project until legal intervened. (If legal did rely on that questionnaire, probably their main question would have been how well editors understood the privacy implication of IP editing so once it became clear you did, that would be what they wanted to know.) Nil Einne (talk) 07:43, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

For whatever it's worth, in response to my request for more info Johan (WMF) clarified at the Meta page, at least a little bit, what their plans are. He hasid that the do have in mind some sort of a system which will assign (presumably automatically) internal individualized WP aliases to IP editors. As I understood, those aliases will be displayed in page histories and in talk pages, in leiu of signatures of those IPs, and one should be able to view the contrib history for a specific IP alias. But as far as range blocks, that will certainly become much more difficult, at least for anyone who is not an admin. Similarly, if there is persistent sockpuppetry, block evasion, or similar form of disruption that isn't straightforward vandalism (e.g. IPs participating in an AfD and casting similar !votes), it'd be much harder for non-admins to tell if these edits are likely made by the same editor once the IP address is masked. Nsk92 (talk) 14:00, 18 October 2020 (UTC)

*sigh* Rushing this is a *bad* idea. We've seen what happened to Special:Investigate, and they worked months on that one. We are all familiar with first releases coming from WMF, and rushing one of them is definitely not going to have a good outcome. While we seem to have less and less tools to help us fight vandalism - see what happened to IPCheck, a WMF staffer told its developer not to develop it any further, and now it sits unmaintained - they are heading towards something that would need more of it, and not supplying us with those. At this point, even if I disagree with the reasons why ptwiki did it (it is my home wiki), making registration mandatory is the way to go.
"Oh but it's a hassle and we don't want to drive people away from the projects by doing it" You don't even need an e-mail to register an account here.
"Oh, I know! Let's use cookies to keep the masking" Really? Really? REALLY?! LTAs are a problem since forever, and IP hopping is not a problem for them. Clearing cookies takes less than a minute, which means that now you're simply wanting to give them freedom to do their thing without even letting us properly fight them.
Anyway, I do hope this is better thought out by the WMF before rushing it. —Thanks for the fish! ^{talk•contribs} 00:46, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Unfortunately, we're just going to find out the hard way. The WMF hasn't unveiled any concrete plans yet, so it's best we save our outrage capital for when this does happen. -FASTILY 04:16, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

• Or we can require they get an account in order to edit and the problem is solved. In no way does that interfere with our long standing tradition of being the encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Getting an account is fast, free and easy. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 16:48, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

  Enforcing registration for mainspace, while allowing masked IP editors to contribute to talk pages would allow people to participate without registering, while protecting article content. Extensive talkpage vandalism seems unlikely.Dialectric (talk) 19:38, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

  This solution is simply not worth the trouble. When the IP editors come here at all, it is overwhelmingly with the goal of editing articles, not talk pages. I never really understood why we don't enforce mandatory registration in order to edit on WP, and it seems to me now that the time has finally come to do that. Nsk92 (talk) 20:26, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

  and the problem is solved along with many other problems. It's past time to retire this obsolete ideology. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:22, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

"I never really understood why we don't enforce mandatory registration in order to edit on WP, and it seems to me now that the time has finally come to do that." I have long been against the idea that you should need to register an account for changing "and and" to "and" in an article. However, if a clear change in circumstances means this no longer possible, perhaps we should follow pt-wiki's lead and start the mandatory registration RfC. Can I get a show of hands to see who's interested? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 08:48, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

If the masking makes identifying ranges impossible for any user, I'm going to support mandatory registration. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 12:27, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

This is because if only admins can block / find ranges to block, then it adds a further burden to admins to find which range block is appropriate. If its not admins and is instead CUs, then there is even more of a burden. Normal users often use what range an IP address is in as evidence for SPI. I certainly don't want more things to do at SPI with the number of open cases that there usually is. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 12:36, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

Add in that there are some disruptive editors that don't register accounts, but just use IP's. Sometimes, the only way to see what articles they've edited is with range searches. Take that away, and it's nigh impossible to find when they've hit a new article. This is going to be a dream for disruptive editors, fringe conspiracy editors. For a couple of regular vandals I watch for, this will make it almost impossible for a non-admin to monitor. Good luck, admins - your workload is going up. Ravensfire (talk) 03:57, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

I asked in the Meta thread for more info about what kind of a system for assigning individualized aliases to masked IP editors they have in mind. The response from Johan (WMF) indicates that they have not yet considered this question substantively. Personally, I think it extremely unlikely that they will be able to come up with an alias system which will allow for any reasonable substitute for range-blocking and identifying ranges. It's just too difficult to devise and implement such a system in technical terms (and to make it safe from de-scrambling). It is much more likely, IMO, that the IP aliases will be either assigned randomly or numerically/consecuitively, in the order IPs make their first edits on a given wiki or across all wikis. Neither option would make identifying ranges possible. Nsk92 (talk) 12:36, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

I have previously supported IP-editing, but I definitely support a ban against masked-edits. Not only do I support an RFC, I created the page Wikipedia:Village pump (WMF) because this is one of several current Foundation disasters I was considering personally opening RFCs on. However I'd be delighted if someone else steps up to run this RFC - I am feeling extremely mentally-drained by the prospect of opening four or five RFCs that are all of comparable or greater weight as this one. For what it's worth, I suggest this proposal include a clause authorizing an immediate edit-filter against masked-edits if they are deployed without consensus. Alsee (talk) 09:09, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Just thinking out loud, how does masking IP addresses work with the GNU Free Documentation Licence? The edit window says "you irrevocably agree to release your contribution under the CC BY-SA 3.0 License and the GFDL. You agree that a hyperlink or URL is sufficient attribution under the Creative Commons license." Let's suppose in five years' time, Richard Stallman decides to sue a couple of rip-off publishers making print copies of Wikipedia articles for lack of proper attribution, violating the GFDL. "Aha", says rms, "there is no attribution - the author's identity has been censored! GNU are STRONGLY OPPOSED to CENSORSHIP!". What happens then? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:00, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

I guess the hyperlink or URL to the masked IP address would be enough? From what I understand the masked IP address would still have a contributions page and a talk page. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 13:37, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

On a side note, one key motivation for moving to dual licensing with CC BY-SA is because the GFDL proscribes very specific procedures for creating modifications, including creating a history section where authorship is listed, which were designed with printed books in mind. So providing a pointer to find a list of authors elsewhere isn't actually sufficient to meet the GFDL, for any type of author. (On the other hand, the GFDL wasn't designed to cover documents with many, many authors; it requires "at least five of the principal authors of the Document" to be listed on the title page (and accordingly in the history), so how to apply this to a crowd-sourced document is unclear.) isaacl (talk) 23:00, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't see any difference between pseudonymous attribution to an IP address versus some other identifier that is unique to the IP address. (On a side note, the license creator has no standing to sue for copyright violations: only the copyright holder or assignee has standing. So the anonymous editor would have to sue for failing to receive attribution.) isaacl (talk) 22:37, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Has the Foundation confused Covid-precautions with "how to run a website"? DuncanHill (talk) 13:46, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

• Comment- More idiocy from WMF. Now can we PLEASE require registration to edit? The "any bozo with a computer and an internet connection can edit" idea was already long in the tooth in 2002. Carrite (talk) 01:20, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Early details / ideas

• WMF rolled out an idea/proposed details today (which can be found at meta:Talk:IP_Editing:_Privacy_Enhancement_and_Abuse_Mitigation#Who_can_access_the_IP_of_an_unregistered_editor?) SQL^{Query me!} 03:50, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

An idea could be to create three tiers.

1. The vast majority of people who access our wikis would see the IPs fully masked.
2. All admins could see them partially masked (the first three parts of an IP being visible). This could be helpful to see patterns even if they don’t have the new user right. Partially masking them reduces the privacy risk for the unregistered user.
3. The new user right – in addition to checkusers and stewards – would have access to the entire IP.
   — User:Johan (WMF)

If "masked" means "replaced with a unique identifier", this seems borderline reasonable (even 4chan figured out how to do this). If "masked" simply means that every IP address would be made invisible and indistinguishable, I don't see how RC patrol would be remotely possible for non-admins. It would be like trying to keep water out of a boat where only the captain is allowed to plug the holes (although -- don't worry -- everyone is free to suck up the water with a straw and spit it overboard). I would support an RfC to put extreme restrictions on IP mainspace editing if this were the case (disallowing it entirely seems a little cruel, but if it can't be helped, it can't be helped). jp×g 00:58, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Editor with long-term POV push

I'm here at the advice of Ymblanter, concerning the edits by Kovanja. Kovanja has been making dubious and ideologically driven edits to topics regarding Rus'/Ukrainian/Russian history for years, generally to deny the existence of Ukraine or Belarus before the twentieth century.

• Most recently he's added material on the "foundation of Russian statehood" to Rurikid dynasty and edit warred about it [8], [9]. The edits were notably supported by two tourism websites and other sources that did not support his edits. In talk he explicitly says Ukraine and Belarus were founded only as Soviet Republic with no historical context [10]. A similar edit was made at Kievan Rus', including mis-transliterating Ῥωσία (Rosia) as Rossija, the transliteration of the Russian name for Russia (Россия) [11].
• In September he also edit warred over the origin of borscht, saying Ukraine didn't exist, only little Russians: [12], [13], [14], [15]. This is actually something he's been at for years, see [16], [17], [18], [19].
• If you follow his edits back in time it just goes on and on like this, such as adding completing irrelevant information about Russia and the Rurikids were the same to Ruthenians [20]. He's also tried to add questionable information to Holodomor, arguing it wasn't a genocide [21], [22], [23], saying genocide is a mere presumption and fabrication.
• He's also tried to claim that Russians invented shashlik [24].

It strikes me that this user is probably wp:NOTHERE. I'd appreciate an admin looking into it.--Ermenrich (talk) 21:30, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

He's still at it at Rurik dynasty [25]. Also personal attacks [26].--Ermenrich (talk) 23:45, 19 October 2020 (UTC)

Probably worth noting he's been repeatedly blocked from Czech Wikipedia for inserting misleading information, including edit warring on their article on Stalin on the Holomor [27], for which he is currently partially blocked there.--Ermenrich (talk) 14:32, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

He's still making similar statements, see his latest salvo [28] No one efer refered to some Belarusians as a minority it was Soviet invention.. Note also his lack of grasp of our sourcing policies: You are keep denysing Rurikid history recorded by Rurikid themselves (this to support his contention that Rus' and Russia are identical). I do not think this is going to get better.--Ermenrich (talk) 22:22, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

The user indeed does not look competent in editing at least Eastern European topics.--Ymblanter (talk) 05:47, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

I would support an indefinite block, after review. A TBAN restricted to those topics is just going to end in one anyway. --Izno (talk) 15:01, 20 October 2020 (UTC)

"The" at start of a school's name

• Recently I was asked to move page Astley Cooper School to The Astley Cooper School on the grounds that adding the "The" was official school usage. Should such requests be obeyed? Or should the "The" be treated as an advertisory stylization and be ignored? Anthony Appleyard (talk) 11:40, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

(Non-administrator comment) Taking a look at WP:THE, convention states that if it meets at least one of two requirements:

1. Definite article would change the meaning, and
2. Definite article is capitalised in running prose

then "The" should (in most cases) appear in the title. #1 definitely isn't the case, and #2 is debatable. At this point I believe we're supposed to fall on WP:COMMONNAME, as this subsection implies:

When a proper name is almost always used with "The", especially if it is included by unaffiliated sources, the article "The" should be used in the name of the corresponding Wikipedia article as well.

Emphasis mine. —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 11:54, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Note Ohio State University; they're a prominent example of insisting on the definite article and it's in the lead, but not the article title. Mackensen (talk) 12:02, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

This seems like a "case-by-case consensus" issue. Hold a discussion/RFC on whether or not "if it is included by unaffiliated sources" or not, and see where that goes. This doesn't appear like much of an admin issue; admins don't have special power to decide style issues, and this should be decided by a discussion among the interested. --Jayron32 12:05, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

(ec) This makes me think of "The" Ohio State University. I did go to the site of the school itself and the while school does formally call itself The Astley Cooper School, however local news coverage here does not do so. RickinBaltimore (talk) 12:05, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

• And see this Google search: https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=%22Astley+Cooper+School%22+-%22The+Astley+Cooper+School%22 Anthony Appleyard (talk) 12:43, 21 October 2020 (UTC)
• Goddam pretentious. EEng 20:33, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Issue with Speedy Deletion criteria G4. Recreation of a page that was deleted per a deletion discussion

Hi all

I'm sorry if this is not the correct place to post this, it includes the work of admins so it seemed a sensible place. I've recently been involved in a speedy deletion discussion as the creator of the article under criteria G4. Recreation of a page that was deleted per a deletion discussion and I've noticed an issue with the process that seems like it stops people making a decision based on evidence. The criteria states that it includes sufficiently identical copies and excludes pages that are not substantially identical to the deleted version. However people like me who do not have the rights to see deleted articles have no way of making an assessment whether a previously deleted article is identical or not. As an example, in this nomination 50%+ of the references were not available at the time of deletion so I assume that it is not identical but have no way to tell.

Thanks

John Cummings (talk) 12:51, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, there are a lot of G4 requests where the inability to see the page is an issue (though, you can sometimes find the page through mirrors, and could ask, rather than taking the liable to be hostile to new editors act of noming for speedy deletion). However, if some of the references post-date the discussion, and deletion was on notability grounds, it should be obvious G4 doesn't apply. If you think a slight rewording might make it clearer, WT:CSD is the place to suggest it. WilyD 12:55, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

(ec)@John Cummings: I have declined the G4 tag. Much of the old version of the article contained quotes criticising the ABD; this version doesn't. The usual procedure for non-admins who can't see the previous version to cross compare is to contest the speedy on the talk page, which you did. If the article is deleted per G4 regardless, and you're not satisfied with the deleting admin's response, then the matter can be raised at deletion review, at which point the old article will usually be restored for evaluation purposes. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:57, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks very much both, I wonder if something like (apologies for poor grammar) this criteria should only be used if you have access to the previously deleted version of the article and can make it available on the talk page would help make it clearer? John Cummings (talk) 13:03, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I would say that's a bad idea - only admins can see the deleted versions, and as the folks deleting the page itself that's all that is necessary; preventing someone from even nominating an article because they cannot see the text is just bad idea, because then you'd only have a few hundred active admins capable of nominating pages. Primefac (talk) 15:09, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) In addition, if you want to write an article but find that an article under that title was previously deleted (you will see a deletion log message before you can create the page), many admins will be pleased to send you a copy of the deleted article, as long as it hasn't been deleted because of copyright violations or other reasons we're not allowed to. You can ask the administrator who deleted the page, or anyone listed in Category:Wikipedia administrators willing to provide copies of deleted articles. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:06, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

@Ivanvector: thanks very much. John Cummings (talk) 13:55, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

I have to say that the deletion debate was pretty poor, with two !voters saying "Just not notable" and one saying "never heard of them". (By contrast, I have heard of them, because I know that they won't be sending George Monbiot a Christmas card any time soon.) Indeed, I'd almost treat that AfD like a PROD, since no reasonable arguments were made for the old article, which cited The Times, BBC News and the Daily Telegraph even then. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:08, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

Ritchie333, agree - they are fringe loons, but probably notable fringe loons. Guy (help! - typo?) 15:27, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

As someone who knows an editor who nominates a lot of pages for G4, I would much rather have them nominate a page and decline it for being different than have garbage in the article space (and no, I'm not referring to this article). A speedy deletion nomination isn't some scarlet letter; it just means that someone (likely who didn't participate in the previous discussion) was concerned that it might be a duplicate. Primefac (talk) 15:12, 21 October 2020 (UTC)

A speedy deletion nomination is the kind of hostile welcome that drives a lot of new good faith editors off the project. In an era when declining participation is making some stuff more burdensome, recklessly driving away people for no benefit is not a good idea. WilyD 05:18, 22 October 2020 (UTC)

• I was shocked - shocked! - to see that the article was full of self-serving bullshit drawn from their own websites, with all the criticism missing. I restored the deleted history. Guy (help! - typo?) 15:43, 22 October 2020 (UTC)
  • For the avoidance of doubt, the version of the article you describe was not how John Cummings left it. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:05, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Help wanted

Talk:Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory is a hot mess. Can a couple of uninvolved admins please come along and hat / close / archive some of the repetitive requests so that we stand some chance of focusing on the substantive (and valid) questions of exactly how to represent the developing narrative without giving undue weight to speculative claims. Guy (help! - typo?) 11:31, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

(non-admin) Fully agreed. I have been answering and removing edit requests for the last week. Asartea ^{Trick | Treat} 13:25, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

I archived a few that seemed off-topic or repetitive. — Wug·a·po·des​ 00:22, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Appeal of a copyright problem

An editor has filed a request at DRN in which User:AvThomson disagrees with User:Diannaa and wants to discuss. I assume that DRN is not the place for discussion of a copyright issue. I know most of the dispute resolution forums that are not DRN to send editors to. Where should this dispute be discussed? Robert McClenon (talk) 15:33, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

WP:MCQ? --Jayron32 15:35, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

That's for images, not text. Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk🌴Help out at CCI!} 16:59, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Copyright problems then. --Jayron32 17:04, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Robert McClenon, This is not a matter appropriate for DRN. From my understanding, DRN is for content disputes, not questioning copyright issues. This would probably best be discussed at AN/ANI/CP (where it is already listed), although AvThomson is in the wrong, as there is clear close paraphrasing on the effected article. Moneytrees🏝️^{Talk🌴Help out at CCI!} 17:05, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

User:Moneytrees - Sort of thank you. DRN is for content disputes. Conduct disputes go to WP:ANI or AE. I knew that. I knew that I should tell the filer to go somewhere else; I just wanted to know where else. To tell an editor, "I can't help you, and I don't know who can," is a way of biting a user, and the rule says not to do that. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:55, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Lolamartinez123

ST47, for erasing true facts on this article. IPBE in these circumstances can be found at China Virus/Chinese Virus

What 45th US president Donald Trump calls coronavirus to promote his own racist agenda against Asian-Americans. Because of Trump hate crime has now increased towards Asian-Americans because of how Trump supporters now think they are all carriers of a contagious virus.
Chink list of ethnic racial slurs. Link to the user’s ignorant behavior

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:MobileDiff/985088616#movedpara_1_0_rhs

 Done Lolamartinez123 (talk) 21:48, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you Lolamartinez123. ST47 (talk) 01:25, 24 October 2020 (UTC).

The above signature (purporting to be from ST47) appears to be invalid.

• Lolamartinez123 (talk · contribs)
• List of ethnic slurs (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Johnuniq (talk) 09:16, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

By way of explanation, the above comments were added in these edits:

• 08:22, 24 October 2020 by Lolamartinez123
• 08:25, 24 October 2020 by Lolamartinez123

The "Done" and "Thank you" might have been copied from the previous section. I then added the heading and text from "The above signature...". Johnuniq (talk) 09:32, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

I blocked for 31h (for edit-warring at this very page and for BLP violations), but will not object if another administrator would extend a block for a longer duration.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:41, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

In view of this, I reblocked for a week with the talk page access revoked. I currently do not see how we benefit from continued ability of this user to edit Wikipedia and suggest indefinite block or site ban.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:09, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

I dug a bit deeper, and after seeing a disturbing pattern in their edits, changed the block to indef. My best judgement is that you wouldn't mind. This person doesn't need to be here. They are on a mission of god or something, but that kind of attitude isn't going to work in a collaborative environment. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 17:43, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

Having had previous run ins with Lolamartinez123 and having come just within a hair of blocking them at the time, I endorse the decision to indef. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 19:02, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, endorse indef I don't recall what prompted me to write THIS and THIS, but it looks to me like user has been cruisin' for a bruisin'. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 12:13, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

• Good block. Massive NPOV failure in content edits, which is easily into "break glass" territory. Let's see what the user has to say about this as part of their block appeal. Guy (help! - typo?) 13:18, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Request access to create article

Hello, Please read here, I am not fluent in English but I always tried my best to be effective And I have good activities For example, please check the Kashmar article. Please give me this access because I deserve it, I'm very interested in creating a template And note that I used to only create templates And I had no problem and lost access! Thank you for helping me M.k.m2003 (talk) 15:25, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

For clarity, this appears to be an appeal of this ban. M Imtiaz (talk · contribs) 23:19, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

@M Imtiaz: Yes, thank you M.k.m2003 (talk) 07:00, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

You have successfully followed your unblock conditions for a number of months. That's good. But in order to have your topic ban lifted, you need to convince us things would go differently if your topic ban was lifted. Please explain in your own words why the topic ban was placed back in August, 2019 and what you would do differently this time. --Yamla (talk) 11:37, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

@Yamla: Hello dear brother, look, I think we should move on from the past, I was blocked due to not being fluent in English and creating a wide range of weak articles, and so on .... But now the situation is different, I can do better and I do not intend to create an article, but I can do well in creating an article as well, Please see the Kashmar article. From zero to one hundred, I worked on it and you see, I worked well and I can still be as good as I am, but I am very interested in creating templates on Wikipedia, which you took my permission from me. And I can do nothing but edit, forgive me, I did not answer completely and accurately because of my lack of mastery of English time, Please see my recent edits, You will see that I am different than before[29][30][31] M.k.m2003 (talk) 12:50, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

User Phil Bridger

For about the last month @Phil Bridger: has been on a concerted smear campaign to paint me as a racist because I have nominated some articles related to subjects in Africa for deletion. Including saying in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Escola Portuguesa de Luanda "I can't help feeling that there is an unsavory agenda here" because of the nomination and saying in this PROD removal "I hope it's not racism." There are other examples of him making similar insinuation also. He did the same thing in Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2020_October_21, where he was fine repeating himself that there was racist intent behind my behavior, but then when I attempted to explain myself and he was asked by other users users about what he said, including @Lev!vich:, it suddenly wasn't the appropriate place to discuss things. He was unwilling to discuss things in the AfD either and I had no way of defending myself against the changeset comments.

He continued the campaign today by posting a message about it on the Wikipedia_talk:Deletion_review/Log/2020_October_21 talk page. Where he included a running tally of my PRODs, AfDs, and the continents of where the subjects of them are located. Which is clearly a case of WP:HOUNDING. Since it's specifically targeting me and my changesets. More so because he has not complained about things through the normal, good faithed, channels like my talk page or ANI. Plus, he has been completely unwilling to accept the explanation I gave for my actions multiple times. While he has claimed that he is merely showing "skepticism" about my nominations, it's pretty clear how he is acting goes beyond that and is an intentional smear campaign to make me look bad and get me blocked from nominating articles and in no way was his initial stance to assume good faith like he claims it was, because he has being accusing me of racism for a while now, if not since I started nominating the articles. At this point I'd just like the WP:HARASS campaign to end. --Adamant1 (talk) 17:27, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

I agree with these points. Phil has given me a hard time from the beginning, and if what this person said is true it's hard to defend. I've had no luck persuading him of anything, not one thing. I want to say this to everyone in the world: Stop accusing people of racism. Just stop it. It helps no one. Second, Don't be Mrs. Kravitz. Do your own work, get your own house in order. Third, if you want more commentary on AFDs and related subjects, click on my name.
Vmavanti (talk) 17:31, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

I'd like to see an explanation for this comment too. If Phil is going insinuate that the OP is being racist, he needs to be prepared for some pushback. It is not acceptable to refer to another editor as a nasty piece of work and the attack on Adamant1's English skills was clearly uncalled-for. It's bizarre that the admin who closed that AfD warned the OP but said nothing about Phil's incivility. Unless Phil has strong evidence to support his accusations, he needs to stop judging motives and stick to evaluating the articles. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 19:57, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

It is precisely my posting of such evidence at Wikipedia talk:Deletion review/Log/2020 October 21 that the OP seems to be objecting to. Phil Bridger (talk) 07:31, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

I must point out that I said that DRV was not the place to discuss behaviour in my very first edit to Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2020_October_21. And the OP's response to my asking why African schools are being targeted has been that the deletion nominations have in fact been of schools in all parts of the world with no distinction being made about where they are. My evidence shows that that is extremely unlikely. Phil Bridger (talk) 07:31, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

• Just another example of keep voters being allowed to say what they like about people while everyone else has to walk on eggshells. Reyk _YO! 08:19, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Drawing battle lines between "keep voters" and "delete voters" is the bigger underlying issue. Darkknight2149 08:58, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
    • Quite. Most of us who participate in AfD's don't automatically vote "keep" or "delete" but evaluate each topic that we comment about on its merits. For example in the past week I have voted "delete" at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allyson Stewart-Allen (2nd nomination) and Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Tereza Østbø Kuldova. In the same period have made no "keep" votes. Phil Bridger (talk) 09:23, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

• Comment (sorry for the length, but it got a little off track) I don't think anyone would argue that there are certain people/groups (mainly ARS) have a preference for certain outcomes. Personally, I have no problem saying I'm more on the delete side when it comes to my actions at AfD because that's the purpose in it. Articles that are in great shape that meet the notability guideline just aren't sent there. It's not "articles for keeping the same" or "articles that no one cares about." That aside, it's just a reality that keep voters make less guideline based arguments and more ideologically based ones. For instance citing essays, personal preferences, inherent notability etc. etc. And that having such a mindset, instead of just voting based on belief systems rather then the particular guideline based merits of any one single article, will natural veer into evaluations of the nominator etc. etc. as they get more desperate to "just keep everything." Particular when it comes to people in ARS who have been open about the fact that it's they are in a sort of religious battle to "protect Wikipedia from destruction" or whatever. Personal attacks will naturally come out of such a battleground, self-righteous (not in a derogatory way), crusader mentality. If nothing else out of desperation to "save Wikipedia." Such desperation doesn't allow much for rational thinking. 99% of the attacks are made on nominators also, and it's just a fact that delete voters probably aren't going to attack a nominator. It should also be obvious that no one has a problem or is discussing the people who aren't a problem. It's kind of a deflection to act like anyone is.

More on topic, I've said a few times that I am currently doing AfDs/PRODs for secondary schools because the notability guidelines around them changed in the last few years, there's a lot of "cruft" around them that needs to be gotten rid of now, and I'm improving lists related to them. I've also made it clear that I'm specifically doing AfDs/PRODs on secondary schools in Africa right specifically because A is the first letter of the alphabet, Africa is the first place listed in Lists of schools by country, and due to my organizational and attention span shortcomings it's just easier to go down the list systematically then pick random countries/schools, loss track of what I'm doing or where I'm at, and never make any progress on anything. So, as I've said repeatedly, I could give a crap less what continent the schools are located in outside of that, but it's purely convivence/time management calculation that I'm working on African schools right now. Therefore, it has nothing to do with racism or anything related to it. I'll probably be on to South America in a few weeks and then someone else besides Phil Bridger (or maybe it will still be him) will complain that I'm being racist against South Americans. The problem wasn't the accusation in the first place anyway, it was the way you went about it and your unwillingness to accept my explanation. It's fine to be skeptical about why someone is doing something. It's not fine using said skepticism to work backwards from your own conclusions and do a smear campaign of someone based on them. While ignoring any rational reasons for what they are doing, explanations by them, and people calling you out for the slander. Which is what you did. Plus, there was the other snide, personal comments on top of it that there was really no reason to make. --Adamant1 (talk) 11:52, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

• Thank you for explaining your modus operandi. I am pleased to see that your recent nominations of almost only African schools for deletion is simply an alphabetical accident rather than anything more sinister. I do not, despite your claims to having said it a few times before, recall you previously explaining this in any discussion where I am involved, so I am glad that you have done so now. Phil Bridger (talk) 15:46, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

• @Adamant1: This is honestly the type of dividing generalisation I was referring to above. "Articles that are in great shape that meet the notability guideline just aren't sent there." As someone who has been frequenting there a bit more lately, I can tell you for a certainty that notable articles being sent there is nothing out of the ordinary if they are poorly written. I have also observed instances of people taking the nominator's word for it until someone points out the coverage. "That aside, it's just a reality that keep voters make less guideline based arguments and more ideologically based ones" I'm not sure if you have seen the number of low quality fiction-related AfDs, but it has actually been the reverse lately. Many of them are simply subjective declarations of importance, don't understand how notability works, fail to cite a legitimate policy-based rationale at all, straight up ignore certain policies/guidelines (WP:NEXIST and WP:ARTN being common ones), or have waved the word "fancruft" around without much (if any) substantiation. The only reason many of these nominations get support is because the same small handful of users has been mindlessly voting "delete" on every one with the same cookie-cutter copy/paste reasons (even on weaker nominations). This often happens faster than outside users show up. The lack of quality control at fiction-based nominations is a big enough issue that I am probably going to propose some sort of reform when my immediate work at User:Darkknight2149/Untitled Hellraiser reboot is finished. That's not to say that there haven't problems with recurring inclusionists as well, but the over-generalisations and approaching AfD with an "us vs. them" battleground mentality (as if Keep or Delete are be-all/end-all solutions) really needs to stop. Darkknight2149 19:38, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

• First, shouldn't this be at ANI instead of AN? Second, Phil Bridger isn't the problem here. Over the past couple weeks, Adamant1 has been "cleaning up" African school articles by removing all unsourced entries and red-linked schools, even if they had a verified reference next to them: [32] That page has gone from [33] to [34] in less than a day. It's not just Ethiopia - Adamant1 removed 8,000 bytes from List of schools in Botswana by only including blue-linked schools in the list, which is neither required nor necessary for lists. While I agree that list needed better referencing, I don't think anyone expected list cleanup to be "delete any school which doesn't have an article." They then PRODed a number of schools, some of which were clearly notable such as University of Bechar, some which aren't clearly notable on their face but are clearly notable with a simple and proper BEFORE search such as University of Bejaia, and a number of secondary schools from over the continent. They have nominated 13 school articles at AfD this month: [35] of which Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/University of Boumerdès closed without a single other user !voting delete. The entire conflict appears to have started with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Escola Portuguesa de Luanda, specifically here which is what Phil Bridger responded to. What we have here is a really bad attempt at school cleanup by Adamant1 (failed BEFORE searches leading to a number of notable schools being PROD-ed or listed at AfD, the school list destruction), a number of users (including myself and Phil Bridger) that a user removing large chunks of African school lists and incorrectly nominating a number of African school articles is biased in some way (I'm satisfied with the explanation that it's the start of the alphabet) and then Adamant1 displaying a general battleground mentality. I'm not sure what the solution is here, but I strongly recommend Phil Bridger not be sanctioned in any way. SportingFlyer T·C 14:55, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
  • Reviewing these, all the targetted articles seem to be those sourced with only primary sources (from the schools themselves) which per WP:NORG fail notability tests as well as general WP:V policy. They aren't doing anything wrong per se here. --Masem (t) 15:00, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
    • I agree the articles are in terrible shape, but to relate this back to the US, if I tried to prod say Hoisington High School or Ellinwood High School I would get wikitazed. Most of the subjects of the articles do appear to be notable. SportingFlyer T·C 15:16, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

What Masem said is exactly right. Other people in the AfDs agreed with me that there weren't any usable sources, including people who are usually pretty on the keep side of things. While all SportingFlyer has been able to come up with in most of the AfDs is random trash that doesn't work for notability. Like the Pope writing one of the schools a letter, a newspaper listing the scores of one schools sports team, and a website name dropping one of them in a few picture captions. None of that makes any of them notable. Let alone would it justify Phil slandering me everywhere as probably a racist anyway even if a few of the articles do turn out to be notable. Same goes for the PRODs being removed. Which BTW all of them were removed by a single user. Who wrote an article in his user space all about how secondary schools are inherently notable and should be kept even if there aren't any sources about them available. 100% it's not on me if someone who is clearly bias about secondary schools and has an agenda to keep everything related to them removes my PRODs. I swear the amount of Strawmaning, nominator blaming, and other type of deflecting keep voters when one of their own being called out is completely ridiculous. At least your willing to give me the benefit of the doubt about the alphabetical thing, but it's not helpful to put this on me just because a few articles that haven't even been closed yet might be notable. Especially when it's pretty likely they aren't and I've had plenty of other articles on secondary schools that weren't steam rolled deleted anyway. The fact is Phil should have resolved the issue through normal channels instead of slandering me everywhere, period. BTW, with my removal of entries from lists, last I checked they have to be "reliably sourced" and all of them were sourced with the websites of the schools. Which aren't considered reliable. I left plenty of blue links and even some that had independent references. So, the complaint that I'm systemically removing valid items from lists is yet another strawman. --Adamant1 (talk) 15:38, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, about that: for example, you turned a reliably sourced list (this diff into this diff.) Why was it reliably sourced? There were four references at the top of the page, and even though three of them are broken, not only was one not broken, but the broken links were easily fixed. SportingFlyer T·C 20:26, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

• Comment Just to add, there's also this diff from October 14th where Phil called me a lier and said that anything not in alignment with his opinion was "anti-intellectual dumbing-down" of Wikipedia that would lead to it becoming a popular culture compendium. So it should be obvious to anyone that he has said things about me he shouldn't have and that he has a battleground mentality about this. Accusing other users that you disagree with of being liers, anti-intellectual, and saying that they are dumbing-down Wikipedia clearly isn't appropriate. But hey, it's cool because some PRODs were contested...right... --Adamant1 (talk) 16:32, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

• Oh, come on. Which is a page from Times Higher Education with a few hundred words of prose and some statistics, primary or extremely trivial? It is obviously neither, so your statement simply was a lie. And how is deleting an article on an accredited, ranked university with over 30,000 students anything other than "anti-intellectual dumbing-down"? Start thinking about the real world, the actual topics of the articles you are trying to delete. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:51, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

How about we take a random paragraph out of it, I know, how about "As well as this the university also works to provide a series of recreational facilities in order to foster a strong student culture and identity. A range of cultural, sporting and scientific activities are held throughout the year, celebrating both domestic and international events." Seriously dude, what the hell is not extremely trivial about a school having a range of cultural and sporting activities? WAIT A MINUTE. HOLD THE PRESSES PEOPLE!!! THE SCHOOL CELEBRATES EVENTS. SAVE THE ARTICLE NOW!! @Bring back Daz Sampson: the reason I did the WP:WALLOFTEXTs above is because Phil didn't get it the four times I was clear and concise about the fact that racism had nothing to do with my edits. I swear to Christ this whole thing is just completely ridiculous Strawmaning. You have 17 (17!) instances of Phil saying rude crap down below, but this whole thing is my fault because I deleted a couple of list items that were cited to school websites and wrote a couple of long messages. Seriously. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:11, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

• Comment - I'm with Phil on this one. In Adamant1's second and third WP:WALLOFTEXTs above, they seem to be simultaneously complaining about other users' WP:BATTLEGOUND tendencies, while throwing out wild aspersions about "keep voters". Bring back Daz Sampson (talk) 19:43, 25 October 2020 (UTC)
• The suggestion that because someone deletes articles in Category:Foo or entries off a List of Foo, means that they are anti-Foo, or it's OK to suggest/insinuate/ask them if they are anti-Foo, is ridiculous. It's the very opposite of WP:AGF. Phil has been too uncivil, too often, recently, towards multiple editors:
  1. Sep 8: "You are nominating the top schools in Africa for deletion, but ignoring the many run-of-the-mill schools in Western Anglophone countries that have articles. I'm trying to stretch the assumption of good faith here, but I can't help feeling that there is an unsavoury agenda here."
  2. Sep 8 x2: "Thanks for confirming what a nasty piece of work you are ... And if you really don't have the English comprehension to know what "Western Anglophone countries" means then you are not qualified to be editing an English-language encyclopedia."
  3. Oct 14: "Just go on an anger-management course or something rather than carry on with this complete lack of self-awareness."
  4. Oct 14 again: "Just stop telling such lies ... Any statement to the contrary is simply anti-intellectual dumbing-down ..."
  5. Oct 19: "The fact that you appear to be monolingual doesn't mean that the majority of people in the world are not."
  6. Oct 19 x2: "+notable, to avoid the otherwise inevitable response from the ignoramus who started this discussion"
  7. Oct 19 x3: "... I can only conclude that this campaign against African schools and universities is based on something other than evidence - I hope it's not racism"
  8. Oct 22: "... there seem to be several editors who take delight in finding a reason to delete articles about schools outside the Anglophone West."
  9. Oct 23: Denying (sort of) that he accused Adamant1 of racism in the Sep 8 comments here (despite making the insinuation yet again in the same comment) and here (arguing purportedly in his defense that the suggestion of racism was made in a different part of the same Sep 8 comment)
  10. Oct 24: "I actually believe that User:Adamant1 is not being consciously racist, but just that the objective outcome of this work is to exacerbate institutional racism."
  11. Oct 25: "I am pleased to see that your recent nominations of almost only African schools for deletion is simply an alphabetical accident rather than anything more sinister."
  12. Oct 25 x2: "... your statement simply was a lie. And how is deleting an article on an accredited, ranked university with over 30,000 students anything other than "anti-intellectual dumbing-down"? Start thinking about the real world, the actual topics of the articles you are trying to delete."
  13. Oct 25 x3: "Please think before you write."
  14. Oct 25 x4: "Luckily (from both sides) I am not you. I am perfectly capable of multi-tasking."
  15. Oct 25 x5: "It's impossible to hold a civilised discussion about anything when you blatantly deny the obvious evidence." - this one is not so bad, but in the context of all the other stuff he's saying about Adamant (which is most, but not all, of the above), and the fact that it's continuing even today, while this ANI thread is going on, shows that things are out of control.
  16. Oct 25 x6: "... Otherwise just stop posting, or (and this would be a first) admit that you were mistaken." - same as previous
  17. And this Oct 25 comment to a just-blocked editor is gravedancing: "It seems, from your sudden change of character shown in this unblock request, that my comment at this page here was correct, in that a block is the only thing that will stop you acting disruptively." Lev!vich 21:20, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

      I don't consider that last one gravedancing, and commenting on an open block appeal not at all. That's a seriously disruptive editor who gaslights about their behavior in unblock requests, and the comment was hardly incivil. Grandpallama (talk) 00:34, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

      I don't think that "I told you so" is an OK thing to say to a blocked user, even if, and I want to make this absolutely clear, even if they deserved the block. :-) Aside from that, sixteen is still too much in six weeks. Six would be too much in six weeks. Lev!vich 01:56, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

      It's not an "I told you so," as the previous sentence made clear; you only quoted the second. It's an argument against unblocking, alongside my and another editor's arguments, which the admin took into consideration. Grandpallama (talk) 02:36, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

      In the last six weeks, Phil has accused Adamant1 of: "an unsavory agenda" (#1), being "a nasty piece of work" and lacking sufficient English comprehension to edit enwiki (#2), needing anger management and a "complete lack of self-awareness" (#3), "telling such lies" and "anti-intellectual dumbing-down" (#4), racism (#7), exacerbating institutional racism (#10) (and then denied making accusations of racism in #9), something "more sinister" (#11), lying and not thinking about the real world (#12), not thinking before writing (#13), blatantly denying obvious evidence and being impossible to hold a civilized discussion with (heh) (#15), and failing to admin mistakes (#16). Phil accused Vmavanti of being monolingual (lulz) (#5) and an ignoramus (#6). Phil accused Telsho of being unable to multitask (#14) and then after Telsho was blocked, posted "Telsho, just a few hours ago you were making edits like this, telling me that I shouldn't comment because of an unsubstantiated report at WP:AN. It seems, from your sudden change of character shown in this unblock request, that my comment at this page here was correct, in that a block is the only thing that will stop you acting disruptively." (#17), which I maintain is an "I-told-you-so". Phil also accused unspecified editors of xenophobia (#8). Altogether, this is a heap of abuse towards three editors, mostly Adamant1. Lev!vich 02:51, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

      I didn't say anything about the other diffs. I said the categorization of opposing a block appeal by citing a disruptive user's personal attacks as gravedancing is erroneous, because it's not gravedancing. And based upon the subsequent edits at that talkpage, at least one admin agrees. It does make me suspicious about whether the other diffs presented here are also missing relevant context, though. Grandpallama (talk) 04:17, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

      YMMV, but I don't think that one questionable diff negates the validity of the other sixteen. LEPRICAVARK (talk) 04:22, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Personally, I doubt there is any context where it's appropriate to insinuate other users are racists, xenophobes, Nazis, Etc. Etc. At least not as far as the guidelines are concerned. They don't have a "do on unto others" clause in them. We are all responsible for our own behavior. Personally, I take full reasonability for PRODing non-notable schools and deleting badly referenced items from lists. I think Phil should do the same and take responsibility for his bad comments. Weirdly despite him supposedly wanting to discuss this in the "proper" channels I have yet to see him address anything he's said yet. Instead he's just let you and other people defend him. While throwing in a few more backhanded comments about me in the meantime. If there was a "context" that would excuse his actions, he should be able to point it out. I don't see him doing so though. Let alone has he even acknowledged he said anything wrong in the first place. I wonder why that would be.... --Adamant1 (talk) 05:00, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

• 1. Then there's this statement that people who don't show WP:BEFORE enough worshipful reverence must think of themselves as an Übermensch. That word has a lot of nasty fascist connotations, which was likely the point. I for one am tired of !voting delete on some bit of pop culture crap being equated to Nazi book burning. Reyk _YO! 22:29, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

• WP:BEFORE is simply a reminder to understand existing policies and guidelines, and consider alternatives to deletion. Regardless of whether or not it is technically a requirement, the policies and guidelines are not as negotiable, including those that state "If editing can improve the page, this should be done rather than deleting the page", "article content does determine notability", "notability is not determined by the quality of sourcing in the article", "fixable problems don't amount to deletion", and "Wikipedia is not a final draft". With that mind, I'm struggling to see a good faith reason for someone to have a problem with BEFORE, that doesn't amount to Wiki-lawyering to sidestep scrutiny. Darkknight2149 23:50, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Wow. It's like he skipped over the whole comparing you to a Nazi thing and made this about how your just unable to handle someone asking you to do a BEFORE. The fuggg. Talk about obfuscation. --Adamant1 (talk) 00:10, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

The user in question actually has a history of bashing BEFORE, so my comment didn't come out of nowhere. More pertinently to you, what I will say is that (as uncalled for as some of Phil's statements clearly are), you yourself have demonstrated a battleground mentality throughout this thread and I'm not the only one who has observed this. Matthew 7:3 and all that. Darkknight2149 01:47, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Well, I appreciate that your at least willing to say "some" of Phil's statements are un-called for. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:55, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

The racism accusations, and a lot of the badgering, is certainly uncalled for. Several of the quotes listed by Levivich above are also too personal personal and not at all helpful/constructive. Others I need more context for before I can make a judgement. I agree with Grandpallama that the last bulletpoint doesn't look like gravedancing on the face of it, but maybe others know more about that situation than I do. Darkknight2149 02:28, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, no comment on the other examples, but weighing in against an unblock appeal by citing a blocked editor's behavior toward you is in no way gravedancing. Grandpallama (talk) 02:39, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

I didn't get a harrumph out of that guy. Lev!vich 03:06, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

• If we're going to compile a list of incivil comments from Phil Bridger, surely we should do the same to Adamant1?
  1. 21 July "It's pretty clear you don't give a crap about the guidelines or doing this the proper way. So, I'm done discussing it."
  2. 8 September "If you think I'm specifically targeting African's with my AfDs though, feel free to report me for it. Otherwise, go take a long walk off a short pier."
  3. 12 September "I'd call his 15 line AfDs screeds where he insults other users instead of talking about guidelines an unwarranted overreaction to his fear that these articles will be deleted, but to each his own I guess."
  4. 15 September "I didn't know a random page in someone's user space was authoritative as to what's notable. "eye roll.""
  5. 13 October "Hey now, where's the fake outrage about Telecart commenting 16 times? Come on man. If your going to be a shitlord about things, at least have the integrity to be consistent about it."
  6. 25 October "Everything you said is drivel. Ypu should go find other things to do instead of badgering delete voters with utter nonsense, because its not helpful."
  7. 25 October "Like I said, let the AfD play out and go find something else to do in the meantime. It will go how it goes without you mouthing off everywhere."

Now, in all fairness, I don't think Adamant1 is habitually incivil, he just gets easily offended and finds it difficult not to express his annoyance. Nevertheless, I would recommend a close re-read of WP:BLUDGEON. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:06, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Ritchie333, yup, and Adamant deserves the warning you gave for those comments. Phil's made twice as many comments like that. Surely, he deserves a warning, too? Lev!vich 13:22, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Maybe it's just me, but looking at this objectively I fail to see how 6 sarcastic comments over a 6 month period (that were directed at a bunch of different users) is even comparably to 17 clearly rude and personally attacking ones in the last month (where most of them were targeting a single user). Sure, if I had said anything even remotely along the lines of "I hope your not editing articles because your a racist" to the same user multiple times over a two month period (even after they asked me more then once to leave them alone), then I'd agree my complaint should just be dropped. I don't think this should be closed without anything happening or be a wash just because I a wrote a comment that ended in "eye role" and sarcastically asked someone to leave me alone who had insinuated multiple times that I was racist though. In no way is my behavior comparable to his. Especially since some of his rude comments, like comparing people to Nazi's, didn't even have anything to do with me.

Frankly, I find you trying to make our behavior equal so that this can be dropped (without even a warring to Phil) rather weird. Even more so though considering that you called me out for supposedly personally attacking Phil (which was questionable) in AfD, but then for some reason you had nothing to say about his obviously rude comments toward me. Even people in the deletion review agreed that they were rude and that he should have been called out for them. Just like people have agreed the same here. Clearly, for whatever reason you lack impartiality here and your not looking at this objectively. Just like you lacked it in the AfD close and didn't use any objectivity there either. BTW, I would have the same opinion if I had nothing to do with this. --Adamant1 (talk) 13:54, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Clearly, for whatever reason you lack impartiality here and your not looking at this objectively. Just like you lacked it in the AfD close and didn't use any objectivity there either. And this sort of bullshit is exactly why I'd support a boomerang proposal. Grandpallama (talk) 14:16, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

@Grandpallama: Honestly, I was just about to strike it out when you commented. I agree it was probably un-called and not necessary. That said, before the AfD he had warned me about my sarcasm on my talk page and then singled me out in the AfD close. So, I have zero problem saying that likely he was judging my behavior in the AfD, and not considering Phil's, based on the fact that he had already given me a warning. Which, while understandable, still isn't being objective. My guess is that you probably would have supported a boomerang proposal even if I hadn't of said it though (again, probably unnecessary, but likely true). BTW, the only thing I've "proposed" is that Phil stop harrassing me and insinuating people are racist. Personally, I could really care less how that's done. If the "boomerang proposal" is that I don't harress him then great, because I wasn't anyway. --Adamant1 (talk) 14:32, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

• A large number of diffs were provided by Levivich here, but as I detailed earlier in this discussion, one of them immediately stood out to me as questionable and taken out of context. So I did a little more digging into this "evidence" and found, not to my particular surprise, that the 'evidence' is mostly bullshit.
  1. Phil questions Adamant1's motivations. At best, that could (weakly) be considered casting aspersions around targeting African schools, which Phil has pointed out in this very thread Adamant1 refused to explain/justify until now
  2. Levivich condemns Phil for calling Adamant1 a "nasty piece of work", but leaves out what Phil was responding to: Otherwise, piss off and go take a long walk off a short pier or something; the Anglophone comment isn't great, but it's what I'd expect in a heated exchange in response to, well, a nasty piece of work
  3. Levivich provides an example of Phil saying Adamant1 should take an anger management course, but ignores the preceding comments, including Bishonen pointing out Are you always this aggressive in AfD discussions, Adamant1? The article (which somebody wrote, you know (namely me)) is "nonsensical" and "junk" according to you, and now other people's arguments are "transparently ridiculous". Have you noticed that most other people who give their opinion here do so quite politely? Please don't lower the tone. to which Adamant1 responded I'm sorry your offended by my feedback that aspects of "your" article don't make sense and are meaningless. Maybe learn from it and create a better article next time. Although, probably you shouldn't if you can't even handle pretty milk toast comments like mine.
  4. Phil is critiqued for telling Adamant1 to stop telling lies; since Phil then provided direct evidence of how Adamant1 was being untruthful, this is hardly problematic. And the complaint about "anti-intellectual dumbing-down" isn't presented in its entirety, and the context matters: And of course proper, real universities are suitable subjects for encyclopedia articles. Any statement to the contrary is simply anti-intellectual dumbing-down that would lead Wikipedia to become a popular culture compendium rather than an encyclopedia.
  5. The monolingual accusation isn't great. On the other hand, context is again important, since Phil is refuting the ridiculous argument that only English-language sources may be used on the English Wikipedia by a user who just said in the same discussion And if you want to read about German musicians in German, then you can read the German Wikipedia in German.
  6. Agreed, that's an uncivil edit summary. To the editor who, again, was saying articles about Germans should stay on the German wiki. Which is a pretty ignorant thing to say.
  7. Again, until this discussion, Adamant1 refused to explain why they were targeting African schools. Which should alarm us, rather than cause us to seek punitive measures against an editor expressing concern. The full edit summary, which explains Phil's ongoing concerns, wasn't shared, either (bolding mine): the very first Google Books hit for this was significant coverage in an independent reliable source, so I can only conclude that this campaign against African schools and universities is based on something other than evidence - I hope it's not racism
  8. Phil says "there seem to be several editors who take delight in finding a reason to delete articles about schools outside the Anglophone West", but it's not directed at an editor. So where's the personal, uncivil attack?
  9. These diffs of 'evidence' are a mess. First, Levivich claims Phil implied racism on Adamant1's part, but what Phil did was ask a question: Can you please explain why you consider schools in Africa to be less notable than those in Western Anglophone countries, because I still cant see a valid reason for your campaign against them.; then, Levivich claims Phil did some sort of doubling down on racism accusations based on this text: My comment above was, very clearly if you read it, a rebuttal of the nominator's explicit claim that referring to "Western Anglophone countries" is racist.. Phil was responding to Levivich's ridiculous attempt, by the way, to recast his comments in that discussion.
  10. This diff is complete bullshit. Phil says I actually believe that User:Adamant1 is not being consciously racist, but just that the objective outcome of this work is to exacerbate institutional racism., explicitly saying he's not accusing Adamant1 of racism, but that Adamant1's actions are troubling in that they help to concretize institutional racism. That's pretty far from evidence of anything but a high level of conscientiousness on Phil's part regarding the state of the encyclopedia and its inclusiveness.
  11. This diff is evidence of what, exactly? Phil's relief that there is a plausible explanation of why Adamant1 has been targeting African schools for deletion?
  12. Phil again states that an earlier claim by Adamant1 was a lie (the same subject as diff #4), for which he has already provided evidence (i.e., it's not some unsupported aspersion, but a specific accusation backed up by actual evidence) and defends the "anti-intellectual dumbing-down" comment which Adamant1 takes out of context, just like Levivich has done in his list of diffs.
  13. Phil tells Adamant1 to Please think before you write., which is being presented as evidence of incivility? Give me a break.
  14. Levivich includes Phil's response to (now-indeffed) User:Telsho at ANI, where Phil states he is perfectly capable of multitasking. This already isn't an uncivil comment, but it was in response to this hostile comment after Phil pointed out that Telsho had edit-warred over a speedy deletion tag.
  15. Levivich claims Phil is out of control because Phil objects to Adamant1's recasting of what Phil said, after removing the context for Phil's words: You very clearly said "for something to be notable it has to be unique". They were your words, not mine. It's impossible to hold a civilised discussion about anything when you blatantly deny the obvious evidence.
  16. As I've already said, Phil commenting in opposition to an unblock request is not gravedancing. Period.

If Phil has been so blatantly uncivil, then it should be easy to find actual examples instead of this nonsense, largely taken out of context in order to make him look bad. Based upon the behavior in this thread, I'd be more inclined to support a boomerang for Adamant1 and a trout for Levivich. Grandpallama (talk) 14:14, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

How is saying that someone's edits "exacerbate institutional racism" constructive or helpful? even more so in the "context" of him already saying "I hope the edits aren't racist" multiple times before that? Clearly him framing it that way was just an attempt to soften his original thesis that my edits where related to racism somehow so it was more palpable, while not actually dropping "racism" as a talking point. Since he had received pushback about his comments at that point. Just like him saying "I hope" before the word "racism" served the same purpose of connecting my actions to racism without being direct about it. Either way my actions were still being connected to racism. People weren't going to factor in the "I hope" part of it. I know that's the case because multiple people since this started have referenced his comments about me being racist as a way to invalid opinions. Which was totally the intent behind him saying what he did.

It's completely ridiculous to treat the comment like it was somehow a nuanced, substance based critique of how certain things can exacerbate institutional racism. Let alone to act like me and Levivich interpreting it any other way then that is just taking the comment out of context. Personally, I agree with the sentiment behind it. No one is going to argue that certain edits don't sometimes exacerbate institutional racism, but him saying so was nothing more then just a cover to continue slandering me. Adamant1 (talk) 15:45, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

As I said above, the problem with Adamant1 is "he just gets easily offended and finds it difficult not to express his annoyance". Personally, it seems a bit hypocritical to be offended at an accusation of racism (and which to me seems to be at worst an ill-judged remark than a specific desire to offend) while at the same time calling another editor (not Phil) a "shitlord". I don't favour any action other than just a bit of self-reflection - everybody has bad days and snaps at people. I just don't think it's fair to document one side of the argument's incivility without presenting the other side's too, in the interests of completeness. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:54, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

The problem is your cherry picking a few examples over an extremely long period of time to work backwards from your own conclusions. There's plenty of AfDs where people take digs at me and I just don't respond. There's also plenty of times I've been snarky or sarcastic, where I've apologized for it and admitted I was in the wrong. Including in this conversation. Most of the times I've been rude it was directed at a few users whom I have had continuous, repeated problems with. I know those things just don't support your conclusion that I'm easily offended though. Despite the capitulating about "context" being important, it only seems to be when it serves the purpose of a single side. As far as the "shitlord" comment goes, I've never used the term in my life. Someone else in an AfD did though and I thought id try it out. Honestly, I think it's pretty lowbrow, below me, and I regretted saying it. Feel free to ignore that and use it as an example of how I always behave though.

Nothing ever gets dealt with and no one will ever get along if the only acceptable standard for a complaint to be valid is that the person making it has to have acted perfectly themselves. I really have no problem with Phil "reflecting" on his behavior. I've done plenty of that myself. Although, I also think a stern warning that insinuating people are racists isn't acceptable should be made and he should at least acknowledge that his comments were inappropriate. That aside, I do wonder why in this instance "reflection" by all sides is the answer, but then it wasn't when you were warning me about attacking people. All I've asked for in most of these disagreements is fairness, consistency, and for everyone involved to be equally responsible for their own actions. None of those things should be that difficult and they should apply here. Period. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:18, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

It seems worth underscoring that the main point of contention in this thread was a misunderstanding about Adamant's motivations that seems to have been more or less resolved. Phil should've made more of an effort to AGF or discuss concerns of racism, so this could've been resolved sooner, and Adamant could dial down their approach to AfD a bit, but I suspect there's not much that's going to happen here in terms of admin action and I'm not sure leaving it open will be that productive. — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 17:19, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Sure, I'll dial my approach to AfDs down from making 7 sarcastic comments every six months to 3 or 4. Also, the next time someone accuses me of racism for over a month and other users of being Nazi's, I'll just chalk the whole thing up to a simple misunderstanding. It's good to know what the priorities are. In the meantime, feel free to close this. As it's pretty clear nothing is going to be done about it (not even a warning) and clearly Phil thinks he did nothing wrong. So, there's zero reason to continue the discussion at this point. All the race baiter apologists can pat themselves on the back for a job well done. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:34, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

• There are so many accusations here that I can't find the right places in the edit window in the few minutes that I have available now, so I am making my reply here separately. To Adamant1 I would say that I am not avoiding this discussion, but I have priorities in my life more important than editing Wikipedia, such as, today, caring resposibilities for my grandson and my mother, from which I have just got home, and, in a few minutes, I am going to cook dinner and do some housework. I would also point out to Levivich that nearly all of his quotes were taken out of context, most egregiously in the omission of the words "rather than" from "more sinister", reversing the meaning of what I said. Much of that has been taken care of by Grandpallama, but I will try to find time to give a more detailed response later. Sorry for not being a full-time Wikipedia editor, but you will have to wait. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:06, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

All I have to say is that it's to bad those weren't your priorities when you were making the accusations. For someone that isn't a full time Wikipedian and has better things to do, you sure spent a lot of time on it. It's not like I've a bunch of time in my life to spend combating what you said or dealing with this either. If you take anything away from this, maybe it should be that accusing people of racism for almost a month straight can be time consuming for both parties, because at this point seriously doubt that it will be that your behavior was wrong. As much as I doubt your going to do any "reflecting" about things. --Adamant1 (talk) 18:34, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

That's enough. I explained why I hadn't responded yet, and said I would respond later. A glance at my contribution history will show you that I am not a full-time Wikipedia editor. If you tell me that my grandson and my mother shouldn't take priority then I am not prepared to comment any further. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:17, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm fine with that. Really. Except an admin said they were going to close the discussion and you commenting on the discussion after it's closed isn't really helpful. That said, feel free not. I don't really care. Nothing was going to be done about it anyway. --Adamant1 (talk) 20:30, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

In the time it took you to write this and this, you could have written, "I'm sorry I accused you of bad faith motives, it won't happen again", and we'd all be on our way. Somehow, I don't think lack of time is what's holding up the reconciliation here. Lev!vich 22:37, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

• Let's set aside the general never-ending battle on AfD, with plenty of blame on all sides for abrasiveness and failure to assume good faith. But the repeated insinuations of dark motives in these African discussions is a step too far. "I can't help feeling that there is an unsavoury agenda here""I hope it's not racism" Casting aspersions is outside the bounds of acceptable behavior. I think an apology for that would be a reasonable way to conclude this. Haukur (talk) 22:24, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
• I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, but I was surprised to see that Adamant1 reverted three edits I made where I removed speedy deletion tags they had recently added in good faith, two schools at: [36]

[37] (where the revert also removed references added to the articles and added back unreferenced promotional bits of the article) and [38] (which is a poor article as it stands, and it may not be notable.) I believe I also removed the tag on Creating Our Lady of Lourdes College Mankon which was reverted and subsequently deleted. In my mind none of these articles meet the criteria for speedy deletion even though there are promotional elements to them, though as someone who has edited African articles for awhile it's par for the course, and I even cleaned up the promotional parts of the articles where I could. In the diffs you'll notice an accusation of WP:HOUNDING and a request to "use the contest button," even though it's absolutely not required as I did not create any of these articles. I've also been adding back in information Adamant1 has been deleting using references, since they've been removing a lot of content from African schools articles, but it's difficult work and has turned into a battleground as opposed to the general collegial improvement I'm used to. SportingFlyer T·C 15:52, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

• A quick check of their contribution log also shows they're continuing to speedy clearly notable articles like Diocesan College and Afrikaanse Hoër Seunskool on G11 grounds instead of removing the promotional material. This is not helpful cleanup. SportingFlyer T·C 15:56, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

From my perspective, the real core of the problem here is an editor claiming to be deeply offended at supposed incivility directed toward him, but who himself has a much clearer history of egregious, unapologetic personal attacks, including in some of the very AfD discussions he's supposedly upset about, and who has demonstrated no qualms about casually throwing around accusations and insults in this discussion (All the race baiter apologists can pat themselves on the back for a job well done) (Clearly, for whatever reason you lack impartiality here and your not looking at this objectively. Just like you lacked it in the AfD close and didn't use any objectivity there either about Ritchie) (Sure, I'll dial my approach to AfDs down from making 7 sarcastic comments every six months to 3 or 4). There's also a history here in the last year of filing long-winded grievances at AN/I about other editors that frequently included personal attacks being levied by Adamant1 in those discussions against editors and admins who disagreed with him: [39][40][41]. There are legitimate battleground and civility issues here, but they're not on Phil Bridger's part, and some of the comments in this discussion should result in a stern warning to Adamant1 (the "shitlord" comment, addressed but not made in this discussion, merits a block all on its own). Grandpallama (talk) 18:35, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

• There are legitimate battleground and civility issues here, but they're not on Phil Bridger's part Pointing out Adamant1's civility issues (which are real!) doesn't make the inappropriate insinuations by Phil Bridger go away. I would be fine with warning them both, though. Haukur (talk) 22:51, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

• Maybe. Some of the provided "insinuations" were actually just requests for an explanation as to why these articles were being targeted. Even if one argues that Phil needs a warning, the degree of incivility (and battleground editing) is far greater, and more widespread, on Adamant1's side. Phil's most significant error was not bringing his concerns to the greater community, but Adamant1's intransigence when challenged could reasonably be expected to raise suspicion. Grandpallama (talk) 09:49, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

• I finally have some time on my hands now, and in the light of Adamant1's "I'm fine with that" above have decided to respond in similar detail to what has been said above, so (mainly to avoid my doing some pointless work) I would ask that nobody closes this discussion in the next few hours. I may repeat some points that have already been made above because I have decided not to to look at Grandpallama's rebuttal above while I am replying in order to give my own perspective. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:15, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
• Adamant1's "I'm fine with that. Really." has shown that it is worth commenting further here. I've finally got a bit of time to myself, so will reply now.

Firstly a note about the general situation.

For the last couple of months I have been a little concerned that Adamant1 has been nominating many schools and universities in Africa for deletion. After some accusations of bad faith at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2020 October 21 I posted my evidence, showing that 95% of school articles nominated or proposed for deletion by that editor in the last three months were in Africa, on the talk page of that discussion, because it wasn't directly relavent to the DRV itself. I included that words "I actually believe that User:Adamant1 is not being consciously racist". That was immediately before this report was raised, and seems to have been its immediate cause. Adamant1, in this discussion, explained what he had been doing here, an explanation that I had not seen before. I thanked him for the explanation and said I was pleased that this edit pattern was not anything more sinister. Then Levivich came along and pinned his 17 theses to the door, mostly taken completely out of context, including reversing the meaning of what I clearly said in that edit.

Now to the specifics.

Firstly a response to Reyk's post above, The word "Übermensch" comes from 19th century philosophy, well before the Nazis existed, and is a description of a person who is not subject to the rules that apply to most people. There was no native English word that described what I intended so precisely. Like many other words the Nazis used it for something rather different from its original meaning, but let's not use distorted meanings given by Nazis. I thought we had progressed beyond the "don't mention the war" days when the use of a German word was automatically considered a reference to the Nazis.

Now, Levivich's 17 points.

1. I considered that Adamant1 had a case to answer, because I have seen him nominate many articles about schools in Africa for deletion but very few from anywhere else. Rather than reply to my concerns he waited for well over a month until this discussion had been started to provide an explanation, which I thanked him for and accepted.
2. Maybe I shouldn't have used those words, but this was a reply to a comment that I should piss off and drown myself. I am not not going to apologise for that.
3. This comment was made in a discussion that was very civilly progressing, but Adamant1 had disrupted by saying someone who has created some of Wikipedia's best content should "learn from it and create a better article next time" and then, in the next sentence said that it would actually be better if she didn't create any more articles. No apology due here.
4. In this discussion Adamant1 in the nomination statement said that a profile published by Times Higher Education, which includes when the university was founded, what faculties it has, that it has over 30,000 students and gives its rankings in various areas, all encyclopedic information, was "extremely trivial". I stand by my statement that this is a lie and anti-intellectual dumbing-down. No apology.
5. The word "monolingual" is not an insult, or pejorative in any way, but simply means someone who speaks only one language. And I said "you appear to be monolingual" because Vmavanti had given me that impression in this disussion and several others, where he stated that non-English sources should not be used and that the only way for an English-speaker to understand them is via machine translation. There's not even any claim of incivility here, let alone anything for which an apology is due.
6. I shouldn't have said "ignoramus" in this summary, and apologise to Vmavanti for doing so. Unfortuately we can't go back and change edit summaries.
7. See my reply to point 1. There was a case to answer, but Adamant1 answered it and I thanked him for the explanation. One again, I do not believe that any further apology is due.
8. I believe what I said is true, and the main thrust of my comment was that it was a shot across the bows based on WP:COI. This is scraping the barrel, and nothing for which an apology is due, let alone any sanction.
9. I don't understand what is being complained of here. All I was doing was, as I have done many times before and only finally got an explanation for in this discussion, asking for one and, in your second link, asking for separate issues to be discussed in separate threads. Nothing here to apologise for.
10. No incivility here whatsoever. I said that I don't belive that Adamant1 was being consciously racist. And nearly all of us are guilty of unconscious racism. I'm a white European myself, and am sure that there have been occasions where I have crossed the street to avoid a group of black teenagers in hoodies when I wouldn't have done so to avoid a similar group of white teenagers in school uniform. I'm getting a bit tired of typing this now, but there is no apology due here.
11. This one really takes the biscuit. In this edit I thanked Adamant1 for his explanation and said I was pleased that it wasn't down to anything more sinister. How could anyone possibly interpret that as saying that there was something more sinister? Nothing like an apology due here
12. See my reponse to point four.
13. I responded to Adamant1's comment that for something to be notable it has to be unique. His response was completely disconnected. This was a perfectly valid response to that. No apology.
14. This is another "nothing" accusation. I was replying to Telsho's comment "Phil, I would suggest concentrating on your own AN report if I were you". I acknowledged that Telsho probably wouldn't want to be me just as much as I wouldn't want to be him, and pointed out that I can deal with more than one issue. More barrel-scraping for which no apology is due.
15. See my reply to point 13. How can anyone hold a civilised disussion when the other party won't repond to simple statements, but goes off on a totally irrelevant tangent? No apology.
16. More of the same. No apology due.
17. Absolutely ridiculous. I commented on an open block review discussion, and linked ny previous comment on that page because it had been deleted. Certainly no apology here.

In summary, I apologise to User:Vmavanti for what I said in point 6, but no more apologies, or warnings towards me, are due. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:14, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

• While I appreciate the apology for #6, the bottom line, for me, is that Phil still believes that if an editor nominates too many Africa articles for deletion or removes unsourced content from Africa articles, the editor "has a case to answer", and so it's OK to suggest or question whether the editor is racist, biased, or otherwise has bad-faith motives (#1, #7, #8). If an editor says a source is "trivial" and Phil disagrees, it's OK to say the editor is lying (#4, #12). If an editor argues against using non-English sources, it's OK to say the editor appears to be "monolingual" (#5). It's OK to say that editors are "a nasty piece of work" (#2), should "go on an anger-management course" (#3), don't think before they write (#13), or are incapable of multitasking (#14), if Phil believes such comments are justified. I don't think any of this complies with WP:CIVIL, particularly WP:IUC and WP:AGF. Maybe Phil is right and I am wrong, and consensus is that these comments do not violate CIVIL. We'll see. For my part, I support a warning that while Phil is entitled to his opinion that these comments are not uncivil, the consensus is that they are, and so Phil should not make any more comments like this in the future. Lev!vich 19:18, 28 October 2020 (UTC) Addendum: I would have supported a warning against Adamant as well, but I believe Adamant has already been warned for the diffs presented in this thread. I see there may be some new stuff below unfortunately, and if so perhaps as SF suggests it should be handled in a separate thread. Lev!vich 19:26, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't have time to make a considered reply to everything now, but, as I have said above, "monolingual" is in no way an insult, my "a nasty piece of work" comment was made in reponse to an editor saying that I should piss off and drown myself, the "anger management course" comment was made in a civilised discussion that Adamant1 had disrupted with angry edits, "think before you write" was made in a discussion where that editor had clearly not done so, and I did not say that another editor was incapable of multitasking. And where is your apology for point 11, where you completely, 180 degrees, misrepresented what I had said? Phil Bridger (talk) 19:56, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I read #11 not as a sincere comment, but as passive-aggressive sarcasm. I figured if you sincerely believed that Adamant's decisions were "simply an alphabetical accident rather than anything more sinister", you would have apologized for, retracted, and/or struck your previous comments insinuating something more sinister (like #1 and #7); instead, you've said you have nothing to apologize for with respect to those comments. (You actually wrote, "I do not believe that any further apology is due", but I don't think you've made any apology yet, unless I missed it, nevermind a "further" apology.) Nevertheless, if you're saying #11 was a sincere statement and not passive-aggressive sarcasm, then I will WP:AGF that's true; I apologize for suggesting otherwise and I have struck those statements above. Lev!vich 22:55, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

• I for one think you are wrong considering the long-term disruption Adamant1 is currently causing (stuff like drive-by tagging of African articles like [42] is continuing unabated and we probably need another thread at this point), but I'm far too involved at this point to have a neutral take on this. SportingFlyer T·C 19:23, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

  @Levivich: I meant to add the word respectfully into my sentence and didn't. Please accept my apologies. SportingFlyer T·C 19:28, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

  No worries! Lev!vich 19:37, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

  Even if Adamant were engaged in long-term disruption, CIVIL doesn't say that we only have to be civil to non-disruptive editors. (And those diffs aren't all aimed at Adamant anyway.) Lev!vich 19:30, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

  I completely agree with that statement, but I also think the contextual reading is the correct one here - I think the civility line has been breached, yes, but I also don't think there's 17 different points of incivility here. SportingFlyer T·C 19:33, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

  I concede there are not 17. I think there are 10 unacknowledged points of incivility here from the last two months (the ones in my !vote); that is, 10 statements that Phil thinks are OK in context that I think are not OK in context, and I think 10 (or even 5 or 3) are enough to merit a warning. Lev!vich 19:37, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

• Continuing the theme of harsh accusations for AfD nominations of articles on African subjects, could someone take a look at this edit? [43] I think this is not okay but I don't want to moderate a discussion I'm involved in. Haukur (talk) 20:06, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

• @Haukurth: That's... not good, but please make that a separate discussion as no parties here are involved in that, and this is already too long. SportingFlyer T·C 20:25, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Just to comment on SportingFlyer's accusations about my edits to list articles that he supposedly thinks are problematic. After a little discussion it seems his main issue was that I removed references to New Era (Namibia) in Talk:List_of_schools_in_Namibia#Inclusion_criteria. Which he thought was legitimate and reverted me for removing despite it being a government owned news outlet that has been found by to bias by multiple people investating it. When I attempt to discuss it with him on his talk page he told me not to leave messages there, didn't respond on my talk page when I pinged him there about it, and then criticized me in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools for not trying get consensus for my edits. When again he was the one that refused to discuss it. Plus, he treated me like my opinion that a clearly biased, government owned news outlet shouldn't be used as a reference wasn't valid simply because of the tiff over the speedy deletions. Which were mainly instigated and exacerbated by him. All while using the whole thing as a way to justify Phil's behavior here and to make me look bad.

People sit here and handwave away my comments that there's aconcerted, intentional targeted measures being taken by certain users against other as me just "taking things out of context" or me not assuming good faith. The way SportingFlyer has intentionally created problems were there wasn't any, to then use them here to make me look bad and as a tool to invalidate my opinions, is exactly what I'm talking about. At the end of the day, none of the things I have done are actually problems outside of a few people making an extremely big issue out of them, Phil included, just to make me look bad. While I appreciate that Phil accepted my explanation after the fact, I agree with Levivich that the problem is me having to explain it in the first place, or face accusations of racism. Same goes for SportingFlyers divisive nonsense. --Adamant1 (talk) 21:21, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

"None of the things I have done are actually problems" is a judgment that is probably best made by other people. It's nice that you approve of your own actions, but I would like to see some secondary sources. — Toughpigs (talk) 21:45, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

At the end of the day, none of the things I have done are actually problems outside of a few people making an extremely big issue out of them, Phil included, just to make me look bad. Your recently blanked talkpage strongly suggests otherwise. Grandpallama (talk) 21:47, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

People delete messages from their talk pages all the time and the guidelines say it's acceptable. Plenty of people revert messages I leave on their talk pages. I could really care less if they do. I thought the talk page was a little long, hard to follow, and the conversations seemed done with. It's not like people can't just look at a past version of my talk page. Once again, it's another thing that perfectly fine for everyone else to do and that the guidelines are perfectly OK with, but then is somehow nefarious and wrong to do simply because I'm the one doing it. Toughpigs, I meant specifically in relation to the thing with Phil, which from what I've seen everyone including him has agreed me editing Africa related articles wasn't a problem, and the thing with SportingFlyer having to do with the government ran news sites. Last I checked my last message wasn't and this complaint isn't about anything else. Both of you are really reaching. --Adamant1 (talk) 22:43, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Blanking your talkpage itself isn't the point, as my comment made perfectly clear. The fact that it was full of uninvolved editors and admins expressing concerns about your behavior and edit warring (until you blanked it), completely contradicts your claims that nothing is wrong with your edits and that only a few people are concerned. Grandpallama (talk) 14:57, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

• I don't think anyone has agreed you editing African articles hasn't been a problem. Let's take a look:

• I first noticed this issue at Deletion review, which I frequent. Both AfDs were odd to me. The first one was the attempt to overturn a keep to a no consensus, which I've advocated for before (it does matter) but nobody in the AfD apart from Adamant1 wanted the article deleted. The other AfD and slightly more difficult DRV featured Adamant1 mischaracterising sources that were presented in the AfD. I noted the result was incorrect in my DRV participation, long before I got involved here.
• On 24 October I stumbled into Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SOS Sheikh Secondary School and ended up noticing Adamant1 had made 10-11 AfDs regarding African schools (along with one Italian school.) Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mater Spei College is still open, so this argument isn't as strong, but Adamant1 again tried to knock out the sources I had presented, even though there's significant coverage from multiple reliable Batswanan newspapers.
• I ended up voting !keep on all but one of the AfDs Adamant1 brought forward since I thought all of the subjects were notable. I didn't think this was necessarily disruptive, but African schools can be hard to research and my assumption was that not a lot of time had been spent on before searches. Not all AfDs are closed yet, but it looks as if Adamant1 responded to every single one of my keep !votes, which was very frustrating. The exchanges led to responses like this one. Keep in mind I !vote delete 60% of the time and keep less than 30% of the time.
• Adamant1 has so far responded to five out of the seven keep !voters at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Parktown Boys' High School. Frustrated, I commented that WP:BLUDGEONing was occurring. SportingFlyer T·C 00:27, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
• I discover this discussion on the 25th and look through Adamant1's contribution log and notice they have indeed been removing lots of information about African articles and been making some bad PROD/speedy nominations. I ask at WikiProject Schools to make sure I've got the process right because I don't want to have my work deleted, revert the removed schools at List of universities in Zambia and clean it up, making sure every school is sourced (there were some schools which needed to be cleaned up!) Adamant1 leaves a message on my talk page with a lecture. By this time I've been explaining myself for a couple days to Adamant1 on AfDs and I know WP:IDHT likely applies and ask they don't post to my talk page any further, but rather discuss content issues on the talk page of the article. In the next edit my request is ignored and I am accused of wikihounding.
• I clean up List of universities in Liberia without any issues.
• I notice four speedies that are incorrect, remove the tags, and add references. Adamant1 edit wars and reverts the removal of the speedy deletion tags and claims I am not removing them in good faith, even though I improved a couple articles in the same edit as the revert. After two undos, I eventually disengage and VQuakr comments that the "speedy wasn't good even before it was contested" here. GB fan unprods another which leads to a discussion on GB fan's talk page in which GB fan is very patient in explaining correct speedy deletions. I end up adding references to the articles. One was subsequently deleted after the revert, which I only noticed after the fact - it's since been restored and is currently at AfD.
• Adamant1 starts PRODding articles instead of speedying them. They prod both Herschel Girls' School and Heritage Academy (Pietermaritzburg) in a span of two minutes - Heritage Academy says "reason for proposed deletion" as the reason for its proposed deletion. I remove the PROD for Herschel and add some references. It is flagrantly clear no before search was done based on the ease of finding sources and the number of edits which preceded the PROD.
• Adamant1 tags Hilton College (South Africa) with a notability tag. It is quickly and correctly removed. They threaten to add it back before having some common sense here. Other tags were also poorly added and quickly removed. Some others remain. I haven't explored most or all of them as to not escalate things any further
• There's also some discussion over at Talk:List of schools in Namibia which really doesn't make any sense at all - I'm trying to figure out exactly which schools are being removed/aren't referenced properly so we can keep them in the list and it's starting to go around in circles.
• All of this has happened since this AN discussion was opened. I recommended that ANI (not AN, but here we are) was a better place for behavioural problems regarding Phil Bridger at DRV, since it was diluting the discussion a bit. It does not include the since-blanked discussion on Adamant1's talk page. It also doesn't include what's already been said above in one of his interactions with Phil in which he was warned by Ritchie333 at the original AfD.
• Part of the issue here is that this part of the wiki does need to be cleaned up - African pages are a little more difficult, because what might be reliable isn't, what looks unreliable might be, and sources are often a little bit harder to search for (though many of these articles aren't that bad.) Further complicating things are that not all of these edits are incorrect, but such a high number of them are deletion-orientated when they don't need to be, or cite policy incorrectly in doing so. I'm not arguing I've conducted myself perfectly throughout all of this, but many users besides myself have needed to clean up the clean-up you're doing, and it's exceptionally difficult to work within the rules when it seems as if Adamant1 makes up whatever rules they like in order to achieve the result they seem to want, which is content deletion through cleanup. I have no recommendations at this time, but I do believe sanctions are in order. SportingFlyer T·C 00:27, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

• "nobody in the AfD apart from Adamant1 wanted the article deleted." It's slightly disingenuous to characterize an AfD that only had one vote as if there was more to it or that there was a clear group of people that were against it being deleted. Like, if I had a discussion with someone on my talk page and you characterized it as "everyone disagreeing with me", the wording is just misleading to make it sound like more people where involved in the discussion then were. From what I remember Phil didn't vote. The same goes for your assertion that I was "mischaracterizing sources", just because I interpreted them different then Phil did. Last time I checked, people can disagree on the quality of sources.
• I don't see what your point is about Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SOS Sheikh Secondary School. Except that I disagreed with you about the quality of sourcing. Which, again, I'm allowed to do.
• I don't disagree with you about sourcing being hard to find for subjects related to Africa, Etc. Etc. So, I don't get what your point is. Except that I responded to something. Which again, I'm allowed to do. Could I have been a little nicer about it? Sure, but I've already said I can be overly sarcastic sometimes and that I will try to work on it. Notice though, that originally I said that a source didn't discuss the school and you responded by saying "You've nominated quite a few African schools for deletion in a short time frame." How was your response at all relevant or appropriate? Especially considering you knew the stuff with Phil was going on.
• "I discover this discussion on the 25th and look through Adamant1's contribution log and notice." You also said on your talk page that you were going to "review" my edits. there in lays the problem and why I said you where hounding me. It's not appropriate to look through other users contributions to "review" edits you think they did wrongly. Period. As far as WP:IDHT, I supposedly "refused to get the point" in an AfDs about sourcing. Which then meant that I couldn't ask why you were reverted the edits I had made to some lists? That's your big reason for not discussing things when you should have. Your justification amounts to "It's cool I reverted a bunch of his edits and wasn't willing discuss things, because he thought the sources I provided in an AfD weren't good." Seriously dude.
• No problem there.
• It was your personal opinion that the speedies were incorrect. I actually had a couple of others deleted that you didn't screw with. So, likely they weren't "incorrect" and you were using circular reasoning to work backwards from your own conclusions. "I removed the speedies. So, the speedies must have been incorrect" isn't really an arguement. I reverted you twice. That wasn't edit warring. I didn't "claim" you weren't not removing them in faith either. They were removed in bad faith because you removed them after you said you where going to review my edits and then went through my contribution history to find things to revert. Which you admit to. That's not a "good faith" thing to do. Also, I wouldn't call GB Fan being "patient" when he attacked me multiple times for not knowing how speedy deletions work, when I was making a good faithed effort to figure out what the specific problem was. Maybe that's just me though.
• "Adamant1 starts PRODding articles instead of speedying them." People can PROD articles. Even if they get removed. Like Reyk said, "People will try and tell you that getting your PRODs declined too often is felonious conduct on your part, but nobody actually believes it." There's definitely no guideline that someone can't PROD articles. I didn't "start" PRODing articles after you came along either. I've been doing it for a while now. So, it's a non-issue that your imagining is one. I guess you just didn't browse through my contribution history enough to know that I had done PRODs before.
• I don't feel the need to address this one. Except to say people add and remove things all the time. Again, there's nothing controversial about that. The person who removed it added a few sources, and I'm good with that. So, I reverted myself. I just hadn't noticed that the user had added the sources. It happens. That's not having "common sense." I don't generally side with people who freak out over a notability template being added to an article. Good job being hyperbolic though.
• Likely the discussion started to go around in circles because you kept asking me the same question over and over. When I had already answered you pretty clearly like 5 times already. Things tend to go in circles when you keep asking the same question to someone. I don't get what's clear about "I'm removing items based on the guidelines." Frankly, it's rather odd that your using your inability to understand the guidelines as way to illistrate that I'm acting inappropriately.
• I already addressed "the since-blanked discussion" thing above and it's a non-issue anyway. It's slightly bizarre and ham fisted that people are treating something that is extremely routine, OK by the guidelines, and done all the time as an issue. Mostly, it's just extremly weak fooder for the narrative that I'm a bad editor or whatever.
• I agree with this. Clearly there's work that needs to be done on articles related to Africa and there's inherently problems with sourcing Etc. Etc. Reverting people who are trying to improve things isn't the way to deal with the problems though. I don't agree with your last part though. I don't see anything in what you've outlined be sanctionanble. Your main point seems to be that I disagreed with you about some sources you added to AfDs and that I blanked my talk page. Big whoop. Neither of those are sanctionable and the whole thing is really vague and rather try hard. Feel free to be more specific and cite an actual guideline that I violated though.
• Personally, I think you HOUNDING me, which you fully admit to doing, should be sanctioned. Since the guidelines are pretty clear it's not OK to look through someone's contributions so you can "review" their edits. With my behaivor, Ultimately it seems like your argument and that of everyone else who thinks I did anything wrong, comes down to IDONTLIKEIT. Which isn't sanctionable. There's also the important point that you not liking it led to you slandering me here repeatedly. Doing so wasn't OK either. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:42, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Proposal for Adamant1

You know something, Adamant1, if every time you argued or disagreed with someone on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Parktown Boys' High School, you improved the article instead (whether adding sources, copyediting or reorganising) you'd be praised for cleaning up African schools and regarded as a great editor. Instead, you've now got a reputation for being argumentative and disruptive. So I think we're at the point where we need to think about sanctions.

• I would like to propose that Adamant1 is topic banned from all deletion discussions about schools, broadly construed. This allows him to continue improving articles (which includes removing unsourced and questionable content, which I don't think anyone has an issue with as long as there's consensus that it is questionable) while removing his disruptive influence. Your thoughts, please Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:40, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose- this strikes me as punitive and retaliatory. I wouldn't want a precedent set that coming to AN or ANI with a legitimate complaint, as this was, will get you punished. If there's an ongoing issue with Adamant1's edits, deal with it later if it continues to be a concern. What this looks like is administrators closing ranks and doling out retribution because someone's gotten too uppity. Reyk _YO! 11:52, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose I don't see any legitimate rationale provided for such a draconian reaction to what I see as a legitimate complaint against another editor. This proposal appears vindictive and petty. I am also concerned that, as an admin, you think this is OK. Especially as you appear to have had a number of run-ins together. Not the standard I expect from a good admin. HighKing⁺⁺ 13:11, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I think it's perfectly okay for admins to have an opinion, and for editors to disagree with it. Chill. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:22, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I don't disagree that its perfectly OK for admins to have an opinion. But the basis of adminship is that those editors are held to higher standards and trusted to make good decisions and use good judgement. This isn't a good example for you. It looks petty. It looks vindictive. More importantly it demonstrates poor judgement, personal bias and is below the expected standard for an admin. Also, tagging on the passive-aggressive "chill" with a similar edit summary doesn't look good either. You should withdraw this proposal and take a step back. HighKing⁺⁺ 13:34, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

• Comment I remain persuaded that Adamant1 is the problem editor here (or, at the very least, the more problematic editor, by a significant degree) and that most of the diffs provided by editors concerned about Phil Bridger were either taken ridiculously out of context or fail to demonstrate the problem they purport to. However, it's not clear to me that a TBAN on school AFDs is what is needed here, because Adamant1's behavior isn't particularly confined to school AFD discussions. Grandpallama (talk) 15:00, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

• Indeed. There's a table of their recent activity at another discussion. This shows that, before schools, they were trying to delete colleges and universities and, before that, it was hospitals. And then there are topics like Matriculation in South Africa which would generate tiresome arguments about "broadly construed". I reckon it would be better to start with all proposed and speedy deletion activity because it doesn't appear that they are doing them right and such activity is less visible than AfD. Andrew🐉(talk) 15:18, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

@Andrew Davidson: in last two weeks before this recent tiff I had 12 articles speedy deleted for promotion, of which five where done in the couple of days leading up to the problems, and 99% of the PRODs that were removed in the last few days where done so by the same two users that I have problems with. Necrothesp, who has an article on his talk page all about how school articles should never be deleted under any circumstance, removed ten of them. I also had two articles speedy deleted during this whole thing. So, clearly your analysis that this is on me for not doing them right is wrong. My PROD record was perfectly fine before I was target by a few users with personal biases. Also, my success rate at participating in AfDs is generally high. Higher then yours in-fact. So, your clearly wrong about this. --Adamant1 (talk) 16:10, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

• Oof. Another discussion, ongoing, where again there are insults and casual casting of aspersions by Adamant1. Grandpallama (talk) 15:53, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

• I think that what's needed here is a throttle, rather than a topic ban. This editor is zealous and keen to clean up the encyclopaedia, which I admire, but he's removing so much content, so quickly, that it's threatening to overwhelm our capacity to scrutinise and, where appropriate, challenge his decisions. This whiffs a little of a blitz and the outcome could be a fait accompli. Can we cap the bytes of content removed, and the number of AfDs started, in any one week? And can we please do it without all the ABF and name-calling?—S Marshall T/C 15:48, 29 October 2020 (UTC)
• Oppose any sanction(s) whatsoever since both parties both have their own share of responsibility in how events have degenerated to this. I believe editors, both old & new, experienced & inexperienced should be able to very much freely report incidents they aren’t pleased with without the subconscious fear of a boomerang. Celestina007 (talk) 15:51, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

• I believe editors, both old & new, experienced & inexperienced should be able to very much freely report incidents they aren’t pleased with without the subconscious fear of a boomerang. If one raises a report at a noticeboard, their behavior is also open to scrutiny. Grandpallama (talk) 15:56, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose - victim blaming makes us all look like a bunch of assholes. Lev!vich 15:53, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

• That's a clearer personal attack than any of the diffs you provided in this thread about Phil Bridger. Grandpallama (talk) 15:56, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

  Haha, yeah right. Lev!vich 16:00, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Problematic editor

Moved to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents § problematic user

 – Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:26, 24 October 2020 (UTC)

OpenStreetMap

Have a look on these uploads. There are uploaded under cc-by-sa-4.0. Is it ok to upload OpenStreetMap cc-by-sa-4.0? If so, it is good to export to commons. Is it good to have location map module instead of having images? --AntanO 02:22, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, freely-licensed images are generally fine, even CC SA 4.0. That said, <mapframe> is available for precisely the same in most cases, and built into many infoboxes in some way, so perhaps Nsenaratna should use those instead. --Izno (talk) 02:56, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

Based on c:Template:OpenStreetMap, they should probably be CC BY-SA 2.0. — JJMC89 (T·C) 02:58, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

The uploads should be fixed to use the above template. It specifies CC BY-SA for the Wikipedia editor's 'work', and the ODbL license for that of the OSM contributors. ɱ (talk) 03:28, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

User Cyphoidlonic

I consider Cyphoidlonic to be a bit too close to my user name, especially considering they have edited an article I have watchlisted, here. Their name feels non-coincidentally derivative and quickly scrolling through that edit history, I find it a bit difficult to distinguish between their edits and mine. Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 16:37, 25 October 2020 (UTC)

If you think so, the proper procedure is:

1. Leave a message on his/her talk page. {{subst:Uw-username|Reason}} is a good message for this purpose. If he/she answers, continue the discussion.
2. If he/she doesn't answer, or if the discussion doesn't lead to a resolution you can accept, take it to WP:RFCN. 217.132.248.209 (talk) 00:31, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

• More info: May be related to sock operator Jaymarturner74 as they have intersections with me at Oggy and the Cockroaches and here where they also intersect with Cyphoidlonic. I blocked a couple of the Jaymarturner socks, so this could be a payback situation. Jaymar appears to like Indian cartoons and international ones as well. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 18:27, 26 October 2020 (UTC)
  • That's what I thought, too, but it doesn't seem to be him. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 18:32, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Talk:Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory

There's an RfC at Talk:Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory on whether to remove the word "false" but the lead has changed significantly and at least some of the "remove" votes refer to a part of the onpening para that we no longer call false. I think this needs careful closure.

The OP was basically challenging reversion of this edit based on this version of the article, but it has since changed to this. Guy (help! - typo?) 14:27, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Wide IP range blocks?

In Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Nisheshbhattarai, a request as been made for a /17 range block, which seems excessive. Is there any specific guidance on the use of wide IP range blocks? WP:RANGE gives some vague guidance, but mostly leaves it up to the individual admin to be careful. -- RoySmith (talk) 19:57, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Collateral damage is more important than how wide the IP range is. Some ISPs, especially in non-anglophone countries, have only one or two people on huge IP ranges. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 22:05, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict

Dear administrators. Can a couple of uninvolved administrators without conflict of interest with the subject help with 2020_Nagorno-Karabakh_conflict article please? Nagorno Karabakh is currently a zone of ongoing violent ethno-teritorrial conflict since September 27, 2020 and there is heavy edit warring going on in the Wikipedia article that is meant to be a neutral summary rather than a battlefield. Being aware of good faith principle, I do have reasonable doubts about an involved administrator @Rosguill: who appears to be providing unilateral support to one side, perhaps due to national or political conflict of interest. I can see POV/agenda-pushing from two users @Solavirum: and @CuriousGolden: on the same side - edits favoring the other side are labeled as "redundant", "insignificant", "unimportant", "fake" and reverted / erased. WP rules are cited and used unilaterally to silence users on the other side. Many thanks, yours sincerely, Armatura (talk) 22:04, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

WP:ASSUMEGOODFAITH – accusing an admin for providing unilateral support to one side, due to national or political conflict of interest and calling others for agenda-pushing. This request is in itself a full WP:BOOMERANG. Anyways, I'm happy that you appealed here. Your behavior has been getting annoying at best, and your edits were WP:TENDENTIOUS to say the least. edits favoring the other side are labeled as "redundant", "insignificant", "unimportant", "fake" and reverted / erased – first of all, why are there edits favoring a party here? Secondly, you always have to liberty to appeal to the talk page and try to achieve WP:CONSENSUS, which you've been violating since you started editing on the page. WP rules are cited and used unilaterally to silence users on the other side – do I have to comment on this, like even? Clearly a nonargument and ridiculous canvassing. --► Sincerely: SolaVirum 13:47, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

You've reported me and another editor and an administrator because we agreed on things that you didn't? This is a clear violation of WP:IJUSTDONTLIKEIT. Not to mention the fact that you've been particularly mean to users on the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict talk page, violating the WP:ASSUMEGOODFAITH, WP:CONSENSUS and WP:CIVILITY several times. An example can be seen here where you're addressing an IP user who did not agree with your request of addition to the article with "Says the unsigned user who does not realise that Wikipedia records IP (which takes a second to geolocate)", possibly threatening to dox them. Here's another example of the user just straight up accusing me with breaking several policies while breaking literally all the mentioned policies in their own single comment, by going on to call the points I've raised about an addition they've requested to add a "just emotions" and accusing me of WP:IJDLI because I didn't agree with their addition. The user is also handing out warns to users without any reasoning. Most recently, he gave me a warning for edit warring out of a sudden after this report. I asked for the reason. Answer? "count the number of your reverts in 2020 Nagorno Karabakh Conflict article within last two days, that should be enough to see the answer to your question". Handing out warns because I reverted a lot? The user couldn't even name at least one revert which broke the rules when asked. These are only one of the many examples of the same user breaking Wikipedia's rules in the just one article's talk page. Good day. — CuriousGolden (talk·contrib) 14:17, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I have been doing my best to uphold Wikipedia's policies and norms, and to ensure that others do the same. The irony here is that by my count, my interventions have supported the Armenian perspective more than the Azerbaijani perspective that I am accused of favoring. Rest assured I have no particular sympathy for either side of the conflict, although at this rate I'm starting to wonder when I get to add myself to the belligerents section of the infobox. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 15:52, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Userboxes

What is the current state of things as regards pro- and anti-Israel user boxes (search for Israel here)? Do they really have anything to do with editing Wikipedia? I guess I can see it being useful for people to essentially declare a potential COI or POV when others are evaluating their edits, but this one, for example, strikes me as over-the-top. (I'm decidedly anti-drama; this has been in my stack a few days before deciding to mention it.) —[AlanM1 (talk)]— 00:23, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

• This question is probably best for a deletion discussion or village pump RFC. I believe there was a group of editors drafting an RfC on how to handle political userboxen recently, but I haven't been following the latest userbox war. Perhaps one of them will chime in here with more information. To answer the broad question, they could be useful for finding editors interested in improving content relating to the Levant, but like the example you point out, they may stray from that purpose. In sum, there's no specific guidance beyond WP:UBCR and WP:UPNOT at the moment, so if you think something violates those policies, nominate it at WP:MFD. — Wug·a·po·des​ 02:12, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Block review : Linas

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

Linas first started contributing to Wikipedia in 2004 and has written or contributed significantly to hundreds of mathematics articles, many of which are listed on his userpage, both under this account and under various IPs, all of which he has self-disclosed. He is currently editing as 67.198.37.16 (talk · contribs). He has been an occasional critic of Wikipedia governance and administration, stating that it has driven several expert editors away, which is not a particularly unreasonable view to hold, although in the past few years, this has been less noticeable.

Currently, Linas' main account is blocked. I looked into this, and it appears to be this thread eight years ago complaining about Bbb23 largely blanking simple precedence grammar because it was unsourced (which was reverted four days later). Linas suggested that finding and adding citations was preferable to just gutting the article, and believing that admins should set a good example for all other editors, and signed off by saying Bbb23 was behaving like a "snot nosed punk" for not doing so. For this, he was templated for personal attacks, following which he basically told the warning administrator to fuck off, which didn't go down well and ended up with an indef block. I think that's basically the gist of it.

Since then, editors have occasionally suggested Linas should get unblocked [44], [45], [46]. Meanwhile, Linas has abandoned his account (I think he's forgotten the password) and seems content to just edit as an IP, having made plenty of constructive edits to many articles since. So this appeal is more just to lift the block on the editor rather than the account, allowing Linas to just improve the encyclopedia in whatever way he wants. I don't see any value in leaving an editor indef blocked after they had a bit of meltdown eight years ago, and while an apology would be nice, I really don't think it's worth shutting a pretty prolific editor out of the project.

Thoughts, please. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:16, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

• That's intriguing given the view that we don't entertain third party unblock requests. Does Linas even want to be unblocked? WP:NOTBURO, but this is like condoning all the block evasion. Having said that, I see no point in continuing to block Linas's account if they've been editing right right along. I mean "prevent disruption/non-punitive, right? Be nice to read their thoughts, but I see no benefit to the continued block. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 15:41, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

(elaborating) This flies in the face of all we hold true and dear, but if they've been editing for years constructively and collaboratively, then the non-punitive nature of WP:BLOCK would allow for their unblocking. If they've lost the ability to log into that account, will there be a benefit to unblocing? Even so, Endorse unblock of Linas. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 18:13, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, on the IP's talk page mentioned at the top of this thread, he has said he wants to give it a go. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:48, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

• Third-party unblock requests are not allowed. It's up to the editor to tell us why they should be unblocked if they want to continue to contribute here. Sandstein 15:55, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Anything is allowed if you can put forward a convincing case for it being for the benefit of writing and improving the encyclopedia. Having seen a rather alarming number of long-term editors quit myself, I have to ask the floor - do we honestly need these dog and pony shows? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:56, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

I interacted with Linas very recently because affine connection is on my watchlist. I checked the geolocation of the IP; however, I had not noticed www.linas.org on that same page. The points he made about talk:affine connection were thoughtful, collaborative and constructive. Mathsci (talk) 16:09, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

I will likely not look kindly on an interloper on a blocked user's talk page making spurious arguments for or against unblocking. However, everything is reviewable by the community, as it should be. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 16:11, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Oh, I don't think it's a matter of IAR, so much as we are the servants of the community and subject to the community's will. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 16:14, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Is the community will not that 3rd party unblock requests are not allowed? I thought that enjoyed community consensus. PackMecEng (talk) 16:16, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

@PackMecEng: To me, that applies to the aforementioned kibitzer horning in on matters they are not equipped to address on the user talk page. But I think it would be against WP:ADMINACCOUNT to preclude bringing such matters here. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 16:32, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

But what about your vote at Wikipedia talk:Appealing a block#Third-party block appeals? I don't get it: are you in favor of or opposed to third party block appeals? Surely nobody wants a system where third party block appeals are allowed for some editors but not for others. IAR starts getting real mushy as a reason when this is maybe the tenth time this year that we've had a third party block appeal. Why do we have a rule that no one follows? Lev!vich 16:52, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Probably because it's a de facto bad rule. Unblock requests often don't get considered properly, so someone else has to bring it up here for it to be overturned. Besides, No appeals will be considered without requests by the blocked user. the user did submit a request back then, and continues editing so evidently they don't wish to remain blocked. Plus Thank you! Is there something I should do?. I think this satisfies "request by the blocked user". Anyway, can't see what good continuing this block does for the encyclopaedia. Support unblock. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:09, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Dearest @Levivich:, please reread what I posted here until it comes clear. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 17:20, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

• For some bizarre reason, the user at User_talk:67.198.37.16 is repeatedly denying being User:Linas, and has been accusing everyone who has ever blocked them of being part of some conspiracy. They have also repeatedly referred to the admins involved in their previous cases as "bullies", as "making false accusations", and more. Coincidentally, their original account was blocked for...personal attacks. If they want their account to be unblocked, they need to make an appeal themselves. If they want to keep editing as an anon, at a bare minimum, they need to drop the stick. ST47 (talk) 17:28, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

You can make anything look bad if you cherry pick comments without the context behind them, which is why I specifically made a point of mentioning it at the top of the thread. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 17:50, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

• And made some bizarre assertions about my comments here. So. For unblocking Linas. No way of knowing what's going on with the IP who cliams they are/are not Linas. --Deepfriedokra (talk) 17:33, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

  They pretty clearly effectively stated or implied multiple times they are that editor. Heck, the first few words on their page are: "I've been editing Wikipedia since 2004. I've made edits adding roughly 500 bytes or more to more than 500 articles in math and physics topics. The first 423 of them are listed at User:Linas/Articles. The list below, of more than 100 articles, were edits made anonymously." It's unnecessary to require them to state it in any more obvious terms, and distracts from discussion on the merit of the request, since most the conversation above is on procedure or 'identity verification', neither of which seems like the right thing to be discussing here imo. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 17:39, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

• Ritchie333 makes a cogent argument for why IAR does apply to some subset of third-party unblocking requests but the ambiguity in Linas's intentions, self-identification, and likelihood of following NPA in the future demonstrate why first-party unblocking requests are always preferable. Normally, I would urge them to stop editing immediately and place a first-person request here but this very recent edit, made in the full knowledge that this discussion is happening, clearly demonstrates they have no intention of letting old sores heal nor do they have any probability of refraining from personal attacks. The appeal (such as it is) should be rejected and the IP blocked indefinitely. Any further sock IP's should be treated a LTA's are normally treated. They may have scads of mathematical knowledge but cooperation is a absolute requirement for participation. They lack the apparent ability to engage in the latter. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 20:20, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

  Then we should unblock with a few IBANs? But I think it's just an editor a bit pissed off at being dragged into this again. Were there any issues with the editor engaging in such conduct before they were dragged into it in the SPI / "Block evasion" & following sections? If grudges were an only-remedied-by-indeff offence, IBANs wouldn't exist; they're good for when editors are a net + but lack some self control in certain situations. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 20:39, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader:, it would greatly depend on how many and with whom the IBANs applied, wouldn't it? At some point, which is almost impossible define in the abstract, the limits placed by IBANs and TBANs and other possible short-of-full-ban restrictions add up to a burden on editing that amounts to something close to a full ban anyway. Where that point is for a particular editor varies widely so discussing it as a hypothetical in this case is of limited benefit. This would have been made mush simpler if Linas themself had contributed here but they seem content to hurl accusations from the sidelines. That this behavior has been clearly communicated to them as unacceptable and that they have continued to nurse those grudges anyway and at the time this is under consideration does not suggest that mere IBANS or other possible short-of-full-ban restrictions are likely to create the net positive editing you posit. I hope that helps explain my earlier statement. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 21:10, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

• I don't understand why this block-evading IP has not been blocked yet. They should not be allowed to edit further until this is resolved. I also don't generally think third-party unblock requests are a good idea. It's all very well invoking IAR, but that is supposed to be for improving the encyclopedia, and I don't think their contributions to maths articles outweigh their repeated blocks for personal attacks and harassment.-- P-K3 (talk) 20:36, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

  For the last 5 years it seems they've been editing as an IP. This is their block log. Excluding a "block evasion" block, it is clean. As to Eggishorn's reply, yes, that explains your position better. Though, I think current posts, whilst it may be better for them not to say anything, are not exactly disproving their ability to contribute productively. And our articles on maths could do with the help. With a general commitment to avoiding personal attacks in the future when in disagreement, without requiring any comment on past events, doesn't that seem like a fair arrangement to extend some rope? It's not like it's difficult to block again if there are future issues. But apparently there have not been for the past five years. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 21:20, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

The problem is that they have had the opportunity to make some sort of such commitment and they are doing the exact opposite. This edit in particular makes an indeff block seem like a kindness at this point. WP:NOTTHERAPY strongly seems to apply. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 21:26, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Maybe. But it's not the community's, or any admin's, job to decide what is good for an editor and their health. And consider what the cause of their current feelings are... What I fundamentally cannot comprehend is why this fuss was even started again. This IP indeed did not cause this "storm". There was no problematic behaviour demonstrated at the SPI, which was also started after the IP had been editing for years.[47]. The original blocking admin states, after dishing out a 6 month block, in Special:Diff/985735664: I chose not to block you when I saw that you were editing again because I thought that having you editing could be a net positive. And nobody is blocking the IP now. So what was the point of the whole mess in February, after the IP had been editing for years? Blind enforcement of policy without regard as to what is a net plus for the project? And what is the point of current events? What was the point of the "Block evasion" section? Did the IP ever bring up "their past" before it was forced upon them? This is all way too rigid. The result? Wasted time on AN, an editor in stress, and the potential loss of a good contributor who has done more for the encyclopaedia's coverage of good articles than many of us here (including myself). And all this for what? A case of an IP productively editing for years?

Evidently this user doesn't care if their original account is unblocked or not - they just want to continue editing math articles. The first half of their user talk page shows (a) that they have lots of positive contributions and (b) can engage in conflict resolution regarding math articles. Evidently they cannot engage in this type of conflict resolution (and that's okay - this stuff is unlikely to come up again unless it is brought up, just as it didn't before), and they simply want to wait till "the storm passes", so let's just let the IP do their thing and end this nonsense, either with an unblock of Linus, or leaving it blocked and letting him edit as an IP. But it's all way too pedantic. And frankly, I think it's the job of good administrators and a good community to facilitate editors who are a net + but cannot navigate through this bureaucuracy. I'd say it is to our discredit, not the IP's, if a situation is created where a good editor cannot be unblocked. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:05, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

The "good editor" in question had a lengthy block record prior to the 2012 indef block and a long term history of incivility and personal attacks. The editor was no stranger to ANI and Arbcom pages and never expressed any cointrition for the behavior that led to the 2012 block or, as far as I know, to any of their previous blocks. All of those blocks arose in the context of what most other users would have regarded as minor conflicts related to math articles or math pages. The IPs response at the IP talk to the current discussion demonstrates similar problematic conduct attitudes, as well as unwillingness to admit any fault for prior problems. We do not unblock under these circumstances. At a bare minimum, WP:OFFER always requires admiting past wrongs and promising to avoid behavior that led to the prior block/ban. None of that is in evidence here, quite the contrary. Nsk92 (talk) 12:41, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Once a criminal always a criminal is bad philosophy in my eyes. I consider the IP's block log, over the past 5/6 years, more relevant than a pre-2012 block log. That was 8 years ago. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 12:44, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

"Once a criminal always a criminal" -- I never said nor implied any such thing and I specifically mentioned WP:OFFER as the standard path to redemption here on WP for indef blocked users. We are talking about the proposal for unblocking User:Linas here, and that user's block history and history of long term incivil behavior prior to the indef block are certainly relevant to the unblock request. Forgiveness is a great thing, but it has be predicated on first admitting one's responsibility for past misakes and promising to try to do better in the future. That's what WP:OFFER requires and this is also a standard requirement for the unblock requests for temporary (rather than indef) blocks to be shortened or lifted. But no such admission of responsibility and promise to try to control one's temper have been forthcoming in this case, and based on the IP's responses at their talk page, it seems unlikely that this is going to change. Nsk92 (talk) 16:26, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Nsk92, those incidents are all over 8 years ago. The ANI threads linked don't have any contributions from him and seem to all have a common theme of "Well I don't like the way he said it, but I sympathise with the basic points". More to the point, although he is currently testing people's patience, I don't see him calling anyone a "fuck brained idiot" anymore. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:46, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Yes, they are from over 8 years ago but the block itself is from 2012. The point is, the 2012 block was not an isolated incident, but a part of a long term pattern of incivility and personal attacks. That is definitely relevant to any unblock considerations and you should have made the existence of this history clear instead of trying to minimize it in your opening statement above. In the IP's talk page thread related to the current discussion, the IP, while not using profane language, is making pretty bizzare and erratic accusations against other editors, including those who ostensibly are trying to support his case. In addition, there is no hint, event to the slightest degree, of expressing contrition or admitting any responsibility for the behavior that led to the original block. We simply do not and should not unblock any user under these circumstances. Nsk92 (talk) 13:03, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

• I don't see the IP repeatedly denying that they're Linas, in fact they seem to straightforwardly claim to be him at the top of their talk page. Also, they were blocked for block evasion, for six months, the block has simply expired. I'm all for taking this opportunity to review whether they should simply be unblocked, but their comments on their talk page are a bit bizarre. They're claiming that they thought the block had expired, but they're also claiming they're being subjected to an unappealable block in perpetuity, they're claiming they can't be considered a sock because their account was blocked so long ago, they're claiming they were told to evade the block by bureaucrats, and it remains unclear whether they even have access to the account anymore, they claimed there was no reason for the block evasion block and they're a victim of a harassment campaign, they claim they're the victim of bullying, they claim they're being silenced because they're a critic, they attacked the admin who blocked them, it's all a bit much. I'm happy to consider an unblock request coming from them, but they seem fairly obstinate and unwilling even to make a simple unblock request in good faith. Someone literally told them that they weren't doing themselves any favors and that they should simply ask for a Standard Offer, and they completely ignored the point and started asserting that they weren't doing anything wrong. They were indef blocked for long-term behavioral problems, and in theory I could support giving them a free pass for the years of block evasion and granting a SO unblock. The only thing standing in my way is the user's own conduct. Like this isn't rocket science, just log into the account and ask for a standard offer unblock, but they seem unwilling to do that simple thing. So I'm a bit skeptical that we should welcome this user back into the community with open arms. I would need to at least see some level of reasonable communication coming from them. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 21:17, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
• What Swarm said. He literally summed up what I was already thinking by the time I got to his comment. When it has been this long and we have an editor with unique skills, I tend to lean towards bending the rules a bit (or a lot), but Linas seems to be going out of his way to make this difficult for us to do. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 21:35, 27 October 2020 (UTC)
• When someone says For the last week, I've been waking up in the middle of the night, wondering what unpleasant surprise awaits me on this talk page, and toss-n-turn for hours. Next morning, bleary-eyed and unfocused, I stress-eat to calm myself down. WP is literally the most toxic place on the internet that I know of; editing here is literally unhealthy, both physically and mentally., we should not let them edit here. I don't care if they're William Shakespeare, this isn't healthy. The user says editing here is literally unhealthy, both physically and mentally, let's not second-guess their judgment. If things change, they can make an unblock request. This is coming together as a pretty good example for why we should not entertain third-party block appeals. Did this thread make things better or worse for the user? Lev!vich 22:58, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

I have to say I agree with Levivich in that anyone who says that really needs to take a break from Wikipedia ASAP. I still think Standard Offer type appeals are worth doing when the blocked editor isn't quite sure what they need to say in an unblock request. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 23:23, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

• We should not entertain third-party appeals. That statement is subject to WP:IAR in some situations, but per Swarm and Levivich this is not one of them. Absent an unblock request from Linas I think this should be closed without action. — Wug·a·po·des​ 03:55, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
• Agree with others that third-party appeals should be reserved for extraordinary circumstances. I don’t think this is one, but I do appreciate Ritchie’s train of thought. At the end of the day the person has to want to make themselves engage with the community again and address concerns. A necessary part of that in most circumstances is them making the request. TonyBallioni (talk) 05:16, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
• This incident makes me sad, because it's a story repeated so often. A user happily edits in some quiet backwater of the project for many years. Then some incident occurs drawing them into the drama boards and they get it all wrong. They haven't learnt the skill set needed to deal with the intensity of scrutiny, they respond to criticism by hitting back, they get stuck on trying to prove their innocence in the original incident. In the end, the situation escalates and a once productive editor gets a long term ban. The skills needed to overturn such a ban are ten times those needed to cope with the initial problem, so there is no real way back. In my view it's a net negative to the project, we've lost so many editors to the same basic story, so many that there are entire websites dedicated to once productive editors who fell foul of the Wikipedia system, half the sockpuppets we deal with were once productive editors. Our dispute resolution system is badly broken, it's a system that works to escalate conflicts rather than calm things. It's a system which pretty much assumes the worst and generally get it. I wish there was a better way.--Salix alba (talk): 07:53, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
  • I agree and according to comments above, the user is a benefit to the encyclopedia so arguing about who should fill in the unblock form is not helpful. Some people don't like buckling to what they regard as pressure and if investigation doesn't show a reason an unblock should not occur (apart from WP:BURO), Linas should be unblocked. Johnuniq (talk) 09:51, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
• I was going to sit this one out but the comment above by User:Salix alba (who, as a member of WikiProject Mathematics, I would have assumed to be familiar with Linas' history there) forced me to speak up. Btw, I also believe that the opening statement by Ritchie333 significantly understated Linas' previous issues before the 2012 indef block. Linas didn't simply "happily edit" for many years prior to that block, nor was he just "an occasional critic of Wikipedia governance and administration". In fact, Linas had a lengthy block record going back to 2007 and a long term history of problems with incivility and personal attacks, that led to those blocks. Looking through User talk:Linas and the archives of that talk page illustrates these problems quite clearly. As an example, the 2007 thread User talk:Linas/Archive14#Speedy with malice? is particularly instructive. Nor was Linas a stranger to the drama boards. There have been quite a few ANI threads (prior to this one):
  • Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive570#Linas, soapboxing on wikiprojects (and userpage)
  • Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive564#Nuclear meltdown at User talk:Linas
  • Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive720#User:Linas
  • Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive567#User:Linas again
  • Declined Oct 2009 Arbcom case request by Linas
• Note that WP:OFFER requires, in particular, that the blocked user "1) Wait at least six months, without sockpuppetry or block evasion; i.e. with no edit, using any account or anonymously, on English Wikipedia. 2) Promise to avoid the behavior that led to the block/ban." None of these conditions have been satisfied here. An unblock request simply should not be enteratined under these circumstances, regardless of who filed it. Of course, it is extremely sad that we have an editor with valuable expert knowledge who has created a substantial amount of high quality Wikipedia content in the area of their expertise, but has exhibited a persistent pattern of incivility and personal attacks when dealing with even minor conflicts. But disregarding such problematic conduct issues is not the answer, and what has just transpired at User talk:67.198.37.16 shows that these issues aren't going to magically disappear by themselves just because we want them to. Nsk92 (talk) 11:12, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
• Support unblocking If Ritchie333 thinks that Linas can be reintegrated into the Wikipedia community, let him unblock the account in his individual capacity as an admin and let's see what happens. Iaritmioawp (talk) 11:19, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
• WP:IAR for the unblock as they've been helpfully contributing for quite a while. Add the condition that for any uncivil remark, it's an automatic 30 day block (and the IP). Any uncivil remark on the talk page adds another 30 days. If Linas can control their temper and their tongue, Wikipedia regains (formally) a useful editor. If not, no harm. Ravensfire (talk) 14:24, 28 October 2020 (UTC)
• Strong support unblocking. This is long overdue. Wikipedia is a better place with Linas editing, as is clearly shown by his outstanding contributions as an IP user to mathematics articles. There are only 20,850 articles listed under Wikiproject Mathematics, and I dare say Linas' contributions cover a significant amount of them. Actually, from what I've seen in my experience with mathematics articles, Wikipedia already covers well most of the easy topics in Mathematics, and it is desperately in need of experts in Mathematics to write more complicated articles like Conservative system. Otherwise the mathematics side will become stale. I can assure that Linas is one of these experts, and it pains me to admit that he knows more about ergodic theory than I do. Finally, I've interacted with him a few times in the past, and they were all nice collaborations. Regardless of what happened in the past, it is crystal clear that he deserves a second chance. For those who disagree, please consider the possibility of giving them WP:ROPE. If Linas is as problematic as you are making him seem (he is not, at least not anymore), he will quickly hang himself. Walwal20 ^{talk ▾ contribs} 23:10, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

What does WikiBlame do?

My understanding is that it, and its alternative, Blame, are designed to identify who added given content to an article. I don’t see that they accomplish that very well, if at all. Am I missing something here? soibangla (talk) 18:15, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Everyone asks what does WikiBlame do but no-one asks how does WikiBlame do. 😔 TryKid ^{[dubious – discuss]} 18:21, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

I haven't tried WikiBlame, but the Who Wrote That? browser extension is wonderful for identifying who wrote the content, when, and what else they wrote. Schazjmd (talk) 19:04, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Hey, cool, thank you. soibangla (talk) 19:07, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

I have tried it (I am on Chrome) - it appears to be quicker to use than WikiBlame. Slick!— Diannaa (talk) 20:07, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Trying this out and it looks awesome! Shame it only works on articles (for now). —Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 20:13, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Tenryuu, I agree, I'm looking forward to it becoming more full-featured (like working in infobox and tables). It would be fantastic if it worked on any wp page. Schazjmd (talk) 20:41, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Being stalked by User:Koncorde

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

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I've noticed it a while ago, whenever I create an article or edit it a lot... Koncorde appears there, reverting and edit warring, and I'm getting sick of it.

I think it's a result of a disagreement we had months ago... but it's not normal. No, it can't be a coincidence that he's on every edit I make.

Innovations in the piano, Concrete piano, List of Jewish Nobel laureates, Mifal HaPayis, Cadenza, Cadenza Piano, Sunderland A.F.C. supporters are just a few examples of articles he had never touched before I appeared there, and then suddenly automatically appearing and harassing me.

This is not a coincidence. Maxim.il89 (talk) 23:14, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

You are right, it's not a coincidence. You make poor edits that attract attention. I see the attention from any number of venues that I go to. I look at what else you are up to. I see other issues. I respond to them. You revert any feedback or changes because, y'know, you don't understand how BRD works and then descend into a madness of accusing anyone that disagrees with you of edit warring, bullying etc. Anyone can review your edit history and see dozens of instances of you reverting editors that don't believe your additions are right and proper and then descending into the whirlpool of attempting to overpower people with an aggressive battleground mentality. Koncorde (talk) 23:45, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

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

Glucken123 for RAA for deleting my topic on Lincoln Project Page

• The Lincoln Project (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) Johnuniq (talk) 09:48, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I keep having my topic deleted on Lincoln Project wiki page by user: Glucken123, he has deleted my topic twice now and is acting in bad faith and attempting to whitewash the Wikipedia page for the Lincoln Project. I did not add any edits to the page but included in the talk page that there are credible sources which state that Lincoln Project inadvertently spread Iranian disinformation about proud boys emailing potential Democrat voters. This user repeatedly deletes my topics without giving any rationale and I would like to request administrator action Pformenti (talk) 09:40, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

I've restored your talk page section; I don't know if it's worth including in the article, but blindly removing content from a talk page is a little excessive; it's a reasonable question (i.e. not the type of ridiculous rant that would merit blanking). Primefac (talk) 09:57, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Iman Farzin

I am not sure how much went on at the Farsi wikipedia, but there appears to be some kind of battle ground going on with the Iman Farzin article and the follow-up AfD, with an IP turning up to it's single keep post! I feel maybe it needs a little more monitoring. Govvy (talk) 11:22, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

Seems to be getting a lot worse, :/ Govvy (talk) 16:39, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

It looks to me like a typical AfD discussion, with feelings running strong. It's certainly not out-of-control. But I'll add it to my Watchlist. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 21:47, 28 October 2020 (UTC)

ATK Mohun Bagan FC

Is there an admin around who can take a look at ATK Mohun Bagan FC? Apparently the article was redirected to Mohun Bagan A.C. per some prior merge discussion. Looking at the page history this result appears to be contentious with some back and forth reverting going on for quite some time. This seems to have been previously discussed at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive325#Closure of the merger proposal with no resolution at there appears to be an ongoing discussion about this at Talk:Mohun Bagan A.C.. The page has been protected multiple times over the years due to disruption and is currently indefinitely protected to stop IPs from editing it; a SPA, however, recently showed up, got autoconfirmed, and immediately started to try and recreate the article. I've got know preference either way, but it seems it would be best to let things be resolved throught discussion and see if there's a consensus to restore the article and undo the redirect. -- Marchjuly (talk) 02:08, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I just temporarily blocked one of the edit-warring SPAs. Beyond that, I know very little about the topic, so I'm reluctant to fully protect until someone more familiar with Indian football can help us determine what the stable/closest-to-consensus version is. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 02:29, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I also raised protection to ECP since the existing semi-protection didn't stop this. With that, I think the content dispute can be handled by normal editing and discussion, so I don't think full protection is needed yet. If edit-warring continues despite the ECP, full protection should probably be the next step. — Wug·a·po·des​ 03:18, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

While looking at the RFC I see no consensus to merge the article. The consensus was based on SPA’s !votes. It has been discussed on the admins' noticeboard and nobody opposed the overturn of the merger then. Further discussion on the same regard also shows the consensus is to overturn the merger.–– Akhiljaxxn (talk) 03:45, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Password reset emails not sending?

Hi, I hope this is the correct forum. I'm trying to change the password after receiving a breach notification yesterday in iOS. Nothing ever arrives from wikipedia.org, but I can send and receive to other domains. Can someone look at the outgoing mail logs? My admin account has had the same linked email since 2006. Whophd (talk) 07:31, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I should add: The old password stopped working at the same time, so I am worried about the breach being real. I'm surviving here on browser tokens. Whophd (talk) 07:33, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I have just sent e-mail to myself using the e-mail user function, and it arrived to my mailbox.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:09, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Whophd/Ymblanter?? Johnuniq (talk) 08:15, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

Try WP:VPT and include the details from your talk, although I don't think your email address should be included. Also say what an iOS breach notification is, and what makes you think the old password stopped working. Do you have "Send password reset emails only when both email address and username are provided" enabled (that is, with a tick) in Special:Preferences? Johnuniq (talk) 08:15, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

RESOLVED: I talked to the sysadmin who saw some logs coming in from Wikipedia.org. They were going to another address for which an old redirect alias had broken. I think I need to wait out the timeout now. Thanks very much for your time though, and sorry about that. Still a mystery how the old password is in my password manager on multiple devices (and I memorise it) and it stopped being accepted this week. I have checked for sockpuppet activity and found none. iOS gives data breach notifications in iOS 14: https://www.apple.com/ios/ios-14/features/ Do we leave this notice up or may I delete it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Whophd (talk • contribs) 10:19, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

•  Comment: I note that this user is claiming to be an administrator on their user page. But, as far as I can tell, the user has never been an admin, or even held any advanced permissions whatsoever. Their UserRights log is completely empty. Unless the account has been renamed or something was done from Meta, this appears to be a false claim. Unfortunately I cannot edit the page due to an abuse filter. 192.196.218.202 (talk) 11:25, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

• I've inquired on the user's talk. Tiderolls 12:28, 29 October 2020 (UTC)