User talk:Courcelles/Archive 61

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Regarding your recent blocks...

Hello Courcelles, I'd like to talk with you about your recent blocking of Glawton and Scdue. As you know, both were edit warring on the Indiana–Purdue rivalry page, before a third-party went into an IRC channel that I idle in and reported the incident. I proceeded to warn both users, and tell them that their behaviour was unacceptable and that it needed to stop. While one user, Scdue, went back and edited the article again after my warning, the other did not, and instead replied on my talk page. You might want to read his reply. He is a relatively new Wikipedian who has already suffered two lovely warning templates on his talk page (warnings before the welcoming template, even), and by the looks of things he is still settling in here and reading our 10,000 policies.

Now, as you should also be able to see, he was perfectly willing to step back and discuss the changes - he didn't know that what he was doing was wrong, as nobody had told him so until I did. After I did, he stopped, and was willing to listen to my advice. Instead you blocked him. I'd just like to hear from you what good that block did for the encyclopedia. That user had already stopped, and was willing to listen to what I was telling him, and from the tone of his message it seemed also like he was still willing to stick with Wikipedia and had a genuine desire to help it out. So what good was it blocking him? All that this has done is moved the problem out 24 hours - when the blocks expire, we will be no farther off that we are now, except we might just have two less editors. Anyways, I'm curious to see what you think. Thanks. Ajraddatz (Talk) 18:32, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Did you see this diff, where the user broke 3RR to inform the other party that they had violated 3RR? It was a textbook two-party edit-war, and blocking both parties is par for the course here, though I won't object if you want to unblock both of them and fully protect the page (though protection policy doesn't favour that option). Courcelles 18:39, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Yes, I saw that diff, and I can't justify his actions in that case. However, his message to me demonstrates his good-faith intentions, and uncertainty with the application of some of the policies. I personally feel that protecting the page for an hour or so, and thus forcing the involved parties to talk it out would be way more beneficial to everyone than just blocking them outright, as it would get them used to discussing things like this, and familiarize them with our policies. Ajraddatz (Talk) 18:42, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, I've never seen a case where an hour's anything, unless it is semi-protecting TFA, does anything except piss people off. If you full protect in response to an edit war, in my experience, it has to be a long protection, 24-48 hours at least. During which time no one can edit the article. Like I said, if you want to unblock, go right ahead, but both users were really being quite disruptive. Courcelles 19:18, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I can't unblock them, which is why I'd like to ask you to. I can help get both users to discuss it, though, and would be more than willing to. If you think that 24 hours of protection would be better, that's your call. Ajraddatz (Talk) 19:37, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, for some reason I thought you were an admin. Should have checked. I've unblocked Glawton, as he was at least trying to discuss. Scdue is staying blocked, due to the egregious personal attack violations, and attempts to sockpuppet (see autoblock #2325778) Courcelles 19:56, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, and ya, Scdue doesn't look like a very nice person. Ajraddatz (Talk) 20:59, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Modern Family withdraw

What was I doing not removing that? I did have a nagging feeling, like I'd left the gas on or something, but then my decorator showed up. Perhaps I was more concerned with the "hint of snow" shade I'm getting him to paint the dining room than actually doing my "job" properly around here. Thanks, and Gah. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:54, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

No worries, it's not a problem. Courcelles 19:18, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Davidson High School (New South Wales)

Thanks for your quick work on Davo. As a teacher, I'm very concerned about the impact of students using wikipedia as a platform for cyber bullying (however pointlessly stupid)... -danjel (talk to me) 20:51, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Agreed... and it's seomthing we see entirely too much of on school articles. At least that one is safe now. Courcelles 20:56, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Wait 2 minutes

Seriously it doesn't hurt to wait. Especially when I'm creating a template as can be seen in all recent edits of mine! You reverting is just plan unhelpful. And before you argue I suggest you look at my edit history and that of Esther Vergeer's KnowIG (talk) 22:35, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Actually, you shouldn't be adding templates to anywhere in mainspace before creating them. I looked for the template thinking you had just made a typo before reverting you; redlinked temporal have no place in mainspace at any time. Even an edit summary saying "currently making this template" would have stopped me from reverting you, you really ought to be using them. Courcelles 22:38, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

That's a pretty poor excuse TBH. Just because it's in the rules doesn't mean that common sense shouldn't be applied, especially considering my editing history at current. Second point; how else are you meant to create something when you have to redlink it first, and thus normally do it in the main space. KnowIG (talk) 22:41, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

You go to the search box, type in Template:whatever you want to create; click on that redlink, and after creating a template you then, and only then, add it to articles. Your first point doesn't make any sense, I'm afraid, what excuse did I make? I was not in error, everyone should be fixing or removing any redlink template in mainspace. (There should be a database report for that, actually) Courcelles 22:45, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Ok Thanks for your help. KnowIG (talk) 23:09, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Wait, what?

Just curious as to why you blocked Sundostund after I had opened mediation and both editors agreed to it. Cheers, m.o.p 23:06, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I blocked him while working his RFPP report, and noticing the last week on that article had been little more than Sundostund getting into edit wars (including a short block) and acting like a giant WP:DICK (I also blocked User:Mewulwe for similar reasoning, though he didn't have the history Sundostund did, he was shredding NPA to pieces.) If you want to unblock and mediate, well, go ahead, but I hope you have a hard head, as this user doesn't show any intention to do anything other than break the 3RR to get his own way. Courcelles 00:16, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

1. I replied to you two some hours after Sundostund's block (just sayin').
2. I'm fine with him being let off w/time-served as it will likely facilitate a long-term solution.

Ya know the one about our not doing cool-down blocks? There's the real reason. Cheers, Jack Merridew 04:33, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Unblocking him. Cheers, m.o.p 08:22, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

As blocking admin

Analyzer99 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) I have just received an email informing me that User talk:Analyzer99 is back from his block and the first 2 things he does is blank material (again). I am not an admin thus cant take any action...just though i would pass on the info. If this keeps happening I think we should request a much longer block.Moxy (talk) 17:47, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I don't think he's done enough to get a fresh block, but it's worth monitoring. Courcelles 08:01, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Carl Crawford

Hi there, could you semi-protect/make revision protection for Carl Crawford while also striking the last edit that I reverted? Thanks--TM 15:30, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Done and done. Courcelles 21:59, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Wowwww

Forgot to let you know, in case you missed it, we're trying to get FLs on the main page!! It's started off ok, but please, please be a part of it! Talk:Main page and User:The Rambling Man/Main page FL candidates with suggestions. Looks like you've been busy with a few other things today. Anyway, get in there. Please! The Rambling Man (talk) 22:12, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Hetukar Jha

Dear Editor

It was just by chance that I discovered that the article entitled "Hetukar Jha" has been deleted by you. With all due regard to you I must express my anguish at this decision. I do not think the decision to delete the article is proper by any logic. Prof. Jha is an erudite living scholar whose books have been published by some well known publishers. You should verify these by your own sources. Just because no one came to justify the retention, it should not have been done. The article could have been edited, modifified but the act of deletion is a great disservice to the field of academia and against the very philosophy for which wikipedia has been created. This also indicates the divide that exists between the online world and the offline world.--arunbandana 16:37, 15 February 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arunbandana (talk • contribs)

Restored as a contested WP:PROD. Courcelles 17:48, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the quick response but I am still unable to understand the reasons for the deletion. Could you let me know the same?--arunbandana 09:58, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

When you need to look up something like that, click on the "history" tab, and then on "view logs for this page", which will get you to this screen, that will always display the information you are looking for. Courcelles 16:27, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

--arunbandana 07:32, 20 February 2011 (UTC) Thank u for restoring the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Arunbandana (talk • contribs)

Athlete (track and field)

Hi Courcelles! I see you're in the middle of a big move operation for the Olympic athlete categories. I don't think the category name has been particularly well thought out – the problem is that the most natural form showing the meaning of this modified description is not "Athlete (track and field)", but rather one already in use at Category:Olympic track and field athletes of the United States.

Still, this leaves us with the problem that not all people who competed in athletics at the Olympics have competed in track and field. Perhaps a more elegant solution would be Category:Olympic competitors in athletics – a term which would fully encapsulate all people who have participated in Athletics at the Summer Olympics. The disambiguator of track and field presents a problem not only for marathon runners and roadwalkers, but also for those such as Ernest Glover (who actually competed in the cross country). SFB 21:52, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

I'm doing this manually instead of giving it to the bot because of a concern there might be other sportspeople thrown in there, not because I picked the name. See Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2011 February 9, where consensus was reached to rename these in this manner, it wasn't my choice. All I'd really ask is to give me 48 hours to finish these moves before renominating this tree if you have a better idea. Courcelles 21:55, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

ETA: If you have a better solution immediately, just let me finish Athens 2004 and I'll stop to let you put up a fresh CFD. Courcelles 21:56, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, give me a message me when you're done and I'll reopen a discussion for an alternate naming. Cheers! SFB 17:55, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Will do. Courcelles 03:13, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Removing a copyvio tag

Hi, could you please exlain to me why you http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lake_Ram&diff=next&oldid=405602966 removed this copyvio tag? Thanks--Kimdime (talk) 15:09, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

I posted this on WT:CP, but it appears to fallen through the cracks. I couldn't figure out what was copied, as the source is in Hebrew. You really need to remove the alleged copyright violation before requesting revDel, and in non-obvious cases like this one, post on the talk page to explain. Courcelles 18:11, 18 February 2011 (UTC)

Please proceed, you will find the original text on page 83-84 of the mentioned PDF, the text has been reverted to a clean version--Kimdime (talk) 09:35, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Done. Courcelles 22:44, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

TXS--Kimdime (talk) 14:56, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Good one

Yea, go do it somewhere else; Wikipedia gives you 3.5 million choices! You'll have much better luck at Hugo Chavez! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:54, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

Don't I know it, doesn't a day go by I don't see something that needs mountains of work to be respectable, much less darken FAC's doorstep. (though, just so we're clear, I wasn' encouraging him to push POV elsewhere on Wikipedia ;) Courcelles 07:00, 19 February 2011 (UTC)

I keep forgetting what good eggs you two are. Just over here for another reason, saw this and wanted to toss out some "atta boys" or "atta girls" at y'all. Keep up the good work! Montanabw^(talk) 04:08, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Heh! and Thanks!

Wow, semi-protection within seconds on Secretariat! Did you just hit a land speed record there? Could you, in fact, have been faster than the noble steed himself? LOL! And thanks! Montanabw^(talk) 04:03, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

RFPP speed is one of the more variable things around these parts! If y'all ever get a team together to get Secretariat up to standards, I want to help. Courcelles 04:09, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

It's a ways back in the queue, but maybe drop a line at WP:EQUINE. I think if anyone actually took the reins, the rest of us would fall in. Seems there's some energy over there right now, but we're scattered about across a lot of various projects. Montanabw^(talk) 05:39, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

embarrassing mistake

Thanks for catching that! I was writing something else at the same time (about a Democrat) and possibly also had Stupak in mind - thanks for fixing my embarrassing error. Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 08:05, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

That old line about if I had a sixpence for every silly error I've made on here... well, it's true. Don't worry about it. Courcelles 09:02, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Comments on RfPP

Courcelles, can you please stop making unwarranted accusations of the IP making complaints on RfPP, or recuse yourself from those types of unprotections? He made loads of unprotection requests a year ago as well, and seems to believe in the principle of unprotection. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 10:08, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

When I make an unwarranted accusation I'll consider it. Every one of them I've seen is a legit protection that had entirely logical reasons for making it, and the IP is simply stiring up trouble by trawling the logs and trashing the reputation of a damned good editor and admin. It stinks to high heaven, the way YM has been treated by certain people. Do your job, protect lowly-watched articles from POV-pushing nationalists, out-and-out trolls, and banned editors, and gets nothing for it but grief, and people who want to open the door to that same crap again, while not being willing to keep an eagle eye on the articles themselves. There's a clear reason 99% of the articles dealing with the Subcontinent suck. Courcelles 10:27, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

You've accused him of being a sock and of wiki hounding with no evidence - that's unwarranted and is the exact behaviour that has been criticised in the press about this project.

HJ Mitchell's theory is that these articles weren't intended to be protected forever - which makes a lot of sense. And given that approximately 70 of YellowMonkey's protections have been reversed by numerous administrators it seems quite a few of the admins on the project agree which is why they have been unprotected. Unfortunately given that they were made indefinite and not finite it means that someone does have to go through and check them out.

I totally agree with you that the YellowMonkey RFC case has been handled poorly - unfortunately the people on one side appeared to be over-stating the abuses and the other side appeared to be denying that there was any issue at all. However I don't know what specific things we could have done better, other than coming to a middle ground much sooner. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 10:52, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

And you don't think it's even just slightly suspicious that a dynamic IP that geolocates to Japan comes here to harp on a single admin and does absolutely nothing else? I've seen hundreds of socks, and after that long you learn the signs of when you're dealing with one, and this one almost quacks louder than the "fluoride in water is evil" one. (And going through someone's logs looking for mistakes is clearly "The important component of wiki-hounding is disruption to another user's own enjoyment of editing, or to the project generally, for no overriding reason." It worked so well here that folks drove off the most productive editor in Wikipedia history for no reason or gain, and instead of realizing the horrible mistakes that were made, the bloodletting keeps on going. (though fortunately only a couple seem to still be beating that drum. So, yes, I did accuse the IP of wikihounding, because his conduct is pretty much the technical definition of the term.) As to RFUP, I'll tell you my standard there, it's the same standard I follow at DRV and AE (and DRV and AE regulars tend to agree with more than the regulars at RFUP), the standard is not what I would have done in a certain situation, the standard to overturn another admin's action is that the action (either when done or in light of new information) is so unreasonable that no reasonable admin, aware of all the facts, could have made that decision. That's a very high standard, but if it isn't met, I fully believe no admin should be overriding the admin in the field who had to make the original call.

(Of course, I fully admit I have a much more liberal view of semi-protection than you do.) If you, personally, want to stick Anti-Christian violence in India on your watchlist and filter out POV pushing crap like this, then we can try PC. I don't hold much hope, but if you really want to give it a try and spend your time keeping an eagle eye on it, well, you can. Courcelles 11:21, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Its not suspicious because he's been around before taking a principled stance against other users protections in the past - he pretty clearly just believes the project needs to be open. And its not wikihounding to challenge admin decisions that need challenging. It would only be wikihounding if his requests kept getting denied over and over for policy related reasons.

Frankly I'm all ears about any other options for cleaning up YellowMonkey's inappropriate semi-protections other than posting them all to WP:RUP, the other possible option would be to move them all to pending changes, but that would mean we'd be unprotecting the articles that do deserve protection as well. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 11:53, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

And with regards to that diff, did that editor go a too far, hell yes. However I've read stuff in British history books about Christian missionaries behaving pretty bad in India and Africa (Such as Niall Ferguson - Empire: How Britain made the modern world, pages 135-140), so it seems likely that Christian missionaries have behaved badly in India and that a reasonable compromise could be reached between the two viewpoints. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 12:03, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Well, here's one that stinks, Angle Park, South Australia. If there was a case for protection, as the author of the article, Yellow Monkey should have made it to another admin. Unprotected and will monitor the situation. Now 14th Dalai Lama looks reasonable. Anglo-Zulu War, spats of vandalism in 2009... who knows, PC1 is reasonable, and I know enough about the subject to be dangerous ;) (or to monitor the situation, so lets try PC1. Done. The rest on Wikipedia:Database reports/Indefinitely semi-protected articles/1 are either Narpangbat, which is something I will not override, or two school articles that were magnets for real shit. Will continue. Courcelles 12:04, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Okay, page 2, First Battle of Ypres, I notice two things, first, there's a GA sitting there for anyone who wants to do a slight amount of work, 2, after three years, PC1 is worth a shot. If it shows up on my watchlist too often, going back to semi takes me four clicks. Most of page 2 of that report is Narpang and schools, though, and well, I spend too many hours cleaning up slander off school articles. Courcelles 12:11, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Page 3 is surprising, Marion Jones appears to suffer much more from test edits than BLP messes, and it's another of those that I feel confident monitoring, so PC1 is worth trying. I sort of expect to swiftly be reprotecting this one, but, it really didn't seem bad. Obvious legit protection at Kylie Minogue. Lots of Indian-Pakistani articles here, which are always a POV pushing dream, so I understand the protections. Page 4, I found Operation Lam Son 719, where blocking 198.150.162.65 would have been a better choice, and, how fortunate that IP is under a year-long block at this time. Can monitor this one, as well. If you could find some admins willing to take articles in their competency and monitor them, ready and willing to slap the protection back on if needed, the results would be a lot better than the shotgun approach at RFUP- and you have no idea how much e-mail is generated for the OTRS team by unwatched pages getting vandalism, which is what the current approach is almost sure to lead too, with neither the unprotector or the one requesting unprotection willing to put in the hard work of monitoring the article. Courcelles 12:32, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

Okay, Brisbane Lions is definitely in that "indef as temporary protection" category, as it was protected due to Brisbanelionsfan1 getting blocked for edit warring and then using an IP sock to evade the block. All well and good, understandable, especially if he was on a dynamic range. However, given the Brisbanelionsfan1 account got off a 2 week block 22 months ago, and has not edited since, the semi-protection strikes me as useless. Again, though, it can join the other 4,000 problematic pages on my watchlist. Courcelles 12:53, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

• I think this demonstrates the same point that the IP and I arrived at on Eraserhead's talk page. Namely, that indefinite semis should really be avoided, because indefinite so often ends up being infinite and we end up with articles that are still protected three years down the line when the issue that lead to it has long since died out. I don't think unprotection is the same thing as saying that the protection was invalid, at least not at the time it was made. Many protections that were valid when they were made are no longer necessary now. Of course, there are plenty of BLPs and schools and other articles that attract juvenile vandalism that no admin in their right mind would unprotect.
• As for YellowMonkey, words cannot express how deeply I regret how that awful business turned out and I'm at least partly responsible for driving him away. The majority of the issues raised in the RfC were perfectly valid, but there were those who had their own agenda and those who denied there was any issue at all and so it turned into an exercise in YM-bashing rather than dispute resolution. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:03, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

"The majority of the issues raised in the RfC were perfectly valid, but there were those who had their own agenda and those who denied there was any issue at all and so it turned into an exercise in YM-bashing rather than dispute resolution." - ++++++++++++++++++ I completely agree, and I'm sorry for my part in pushing YellowMonkey away as well.

Frankly I think the main issue was that for once the side criticising the admin actually had a point and some legitimate evidence, and the other side - at least initially - didn't look at the evidence properly.

And thanks for unprotecting some stuff Courcelles :). I've stuck all the stuff you've unprotected today on my watchlist too.

With regards to India, meh, there's all sorts of issues with India related content. I don't know what the right answer is and we do need to do better on it. In the meantime giving some different approaches a try is probably not a bad idea. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 15:53, 20 February 2011 (UTC)

"Many protections that were valid when they were made" - I'd say this is the case in the majority - if not vast majority of cases. And actually in most of the other cases its more down to him not having enough admin support for cases where he was WP:INVOLVED. Sorry if I haven't made that clear enough before. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 15:55, 20 February 2011 (UTC)