Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Colonel Warden

Section

@Dreamfocus: this removal of refimprove/morefootnotes involves an article with at least 50% of the article body without footnotes or any other inline citation or clear referencing. Rd232 ^talk 01:47, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Agreed, Dreamfocus is confused. Not the first time. ++Lar: t/c 02:33, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Resorting to personal insults already? Dream Focus 04:04, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Pointing out that you're confused, or as someone else did, characterizing your outside view as "incomprehensible", isn't a personal attack. You are apparently trying to shoot the messenger and distract attention from the actual problem. Not the first time. IIRC you exhibited this same behavior pattern in A Nobody's RfC/U. You should stop. Aside:Geez you have a huge and annoying signature. It's hard to find where it ends. That's not a personal attack either, in case you were wondering. ++Lar: t/c 15:52, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Now you are using a slanderous attack against me, stating I commonly use tactics to distract attention. Ridiculous. Dream Focus 18:50, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

No, what's ridiculous is extending critique of two specific incidents to "commonly". Rd232 ^talk 20:56, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I believe anyone who read the information in those sections would assume it comes from the official website linked to at the bottom of the article. Dream Focus 04:04, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

So what? Sections without footnotes or other inline citation sourced to an External Link which is the official website clearly need either morefootnotes or more-references and probably both. Removing the tags that indicate this need for improvement is wrong. Rd232 ^talk 09:12, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

there's a tag for that, it's "unreferenced section", not "unreferenced." And I point out that using an official website for basic uncontroversial information is explicitly considered appropriate. Further. there is no requirement in policy or guidelines for in-line citations. To quote even the essay WP:INLINE, "Many Wikipedia articles contain inline citations: they are required for Featured Articles, Good Articles, and A-Class Articles" and even that is an essay, and has never been accepted as even a guideline, though it is true that the people at FA have a local consensus for requiring it for FA, and those who disagree simply prefer not to work there rather than bother challenging them. DGG ( talk ) 22:34, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Citing sources says "The policy on sourcing is Verifiability. This requires inline citations for any material challenged or likely to be challenged, and for all quotations." This reflects an increasingly well-established practice in favour of inline citation, because without that you're left with either reliance on a single source or ambiguity as to sourcing. In addition, your point about using an official website for uncontroversial information being appropriate is true - but irrelevant. Articles should not be predominantly sourced to the official website - hence "morereferences" is appropriate. Finally, I don't understand your point about "unreferenced section" - the tag removed without any kind of replacement was "refimprove". Rd232 ^talk 23:55, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

• I would additionally note that, where a template denotes a failure to meet core policy ( {{unreferenced}} / WP:V ), the passage of time does not mitigate the failure (and suggest that the template is no longer necessary), but rather aggravates it. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 03:08, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

If everyone ignores the tag for that long, what makes you think anyone is ever going to bother with it? If you believe something in the article needs citations then you tag that sentence with a citation needed tag. You should have a valid reason. Are people suppose to read through the entire article and try to find out where exactly you believe a citation should go? The refimprove and morefootnotes tags are totally useless. And we are not talking about any tags that for an article that is unreferenced, but one which has enough references already to confirm its notability, but which is tagged as needing more simply because someone thought a longer reference section would look nicer. Dream Focus 04:06, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

(i) Because I myself do "bother" with such articles on a semi-regular basis. (ii) {{unreferenced}} means that "you believe" everything "in the article needs citations", so tagging every sentence (not merely "that sentence") would likely (a) be likely to be laborious & (b) might draw accusations of tag-bombing. Your "Are people suppose to read through the entire article and try to find out where exactly you believe a citation should go?" is quite simply in denial of the intended use of this tag. (iii) (a) I dispute your claim that "refimprove and morefootnotes tags are totally useless." (b) Even if that were true, it would be a reason for TfDing them, not unilaterally removing them from articles without correction of the underlying problem. (iv) Your claim that " someone thought a longer reference section would look nicer" does not WP:AGF. Full, inline citation helps prevent WP:LINKROT and makes it easier to identify irrelevant WP:REFSPAM.
Your "vigorous reality-defying defences of CW" appears to amount to an opinion agreeing with his disagreements with WP:CONSENSUS practice, not evidence that his conflicts with those practices were not WP:DISRUPTIVE. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 05:06, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

In regard to whether we should have tags on articles, I'm personally unconvinced that we should, at least in the present format. I'd prefer if the tags could be reduced in size the same way {{protected}} can be reduced by adding the parameter 'small=yes'. However, this should be dealt with in a centralized discussion, and not by revert warring on an article by article basis. PhilKnight (talk) 14:21, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

PhilKnight: I would put to you that that is an issue separate from whether CW's actions which are disruptive of the (current-but-can-change-if-enough-people-want-it) WP:CONSENSUS approach. If we let everybody disrupt consensuses that they (or we) didn't agree with, Wikipedia would collapse into chaos. Why should CW be the exception? Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 14:28, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand your above comment. Clearly, it's a separate issue, and I didn't say it wasn't. Also, I certainly haven't said that CW should be allowed to be disruptive. What I'm saying is that his opinion on this subject isn't necessarily unreasonable, however that obviously doesn't excuse disruptive behavior. PhilKnight (talk) 17:33, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

In the context of the earlier thread, I thought you were defending CW's actions. As you weren't, we can leave the argument to eventual TfDs, Village Pump, or wherever it becomes appropriate to discuss potential changes to the consensus on how to use tags. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 17:57, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Dream Focus, you're wrong about longstanding unreferenced tags--these are problems that have to be dealt with and should not be trivialized. The older material is generally more problematic than the newer, because checking in earlier years was not as careful. Unreferenced articles must be referenced, and the ones that cannot be referenced after a suitable effort must be deleted. WP:V matters. It's basic. The only point where there is really disagreement is the extent to which people are obliged to try before listing them for deletion. CW knows the importance of WP:V as well as I and Hrafn do, but each of the three of us uses a different strategy for dealing with it. (And I want to say in case it's not clear, that in my opinion Hrafn is one of the people who does try to source before trying to delete--and he, like CW, is very good at it. ) DGG ( talk ) 06:44, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

DGG: WP:Requests for comment/Colonel Warden#Outside comment by Reyk, and my own experience, would suggest that CW's understanding of WP:V is different from mine (and, I would hope, your own). His understanding appears to be that sources are, primarily, necessary to protect articles, and material within articles, from deletion. The need for sources for verifiability appears to be heavily subordinated to that (and often lost completely). The effect is often to disguise WP:OR, not to correct it. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 12:23, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I'd like to point out that the essays WP:PUFF, WP:FAKE and User:Beeblebrox/Adding_sources_as_a_tactical_maneuver illustrate exactly what you are saying, Hrafn. Reyk _YO! 01:03, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Please keep it civil

I'm keeping myself out of this RfC, but I ask that the users who are going to be involved and put outside views/vote comments to please not make snide remarks about the ARS like Beeblebrox did]. I appreciate the effort that Lar made and I request for the rest of you to be considerate like him. Silverseren^C 02:36, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

• I agree entirely that this should not be derailed into a discussion on the ARS- as far as that's possible. It should focus as much on the Colonel alone as possible. The trouble is, a lot of the questionable behaviour has come as part of the Colonel's work rescuing articles for the ARS. So I doubt if the ARS will avoid scrutiny and criticism, even if ideally this discussion centers on CW and CW alone. And can we expect the more vocal ARS members to not close their eyes to the community's concerns, not mount vigorous reality-defying defences of CW simply because they agree with his ideology on inclusionism, and not spew vitriol all over CW's critics? Experience suggests that is too much to expect. So if the ARS (or the most vocal segment thereof) want people to lay off them, they ought to return the courtesy. Reyk _YO! 02:57, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

• When they complain about the ARS, I believe they are just referring the handful of editors they commonly see in AFDs that are tagged for Rescue. Why not just call us out by names? Say you don't like this small group because they disagree with you, and you have nothing better to do than follow them around and try to find every possible excuse you have to drive them off? How does this same group of people find their way to every single RFC or whatnot that someone from the ARS gets dragged into? How many dozens of these things have we had to go through already? And why bring up A Nobody, who hasn't edited since April 3th 2010? Does anyone have a problem with any of the specific cases mentioned, or is it just an excuse to gang up on someone from the ARS? I am quite interested in hearing the opinions of editors who aren't regularly going to articles we are trying to rescue and arguing with us. Dream Focus 04:15, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

• "And why bring up A Nobody" -- perhaps because you likewise yawned at their disruption. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 05:50, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

• Removing cleanup tags on articles not up for deletion has little to do with the primary mission of the ARS, i.e., to try to fix articles already nominated for deletion, in that small subset of AfDs where rescue is a plausible option for consideration. Trying to expand the RFC into every aspect of CW's behavior would be unwieldy (and would fairly open up the discussion to listing all the worthy work CW has done), which is why I perceive Snotty limited the RFC to tag removal.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 05:48, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
• I didn't intend to be snide, I intended to describe a phenomenon that I have observed. I said "many" not "all." As has been correctly pointed out there are some awesome people there who don't use such tactics but instead actually find and use sources to improve articles. That is exactly what the group was intended to be when it started and those users are to be commended for their efforts. Unfortunately there is a subgroup of users who also happen to be involved with the ARS that use puffery and extremely weak sources in an attempt to at least make an article look like it is properly sourced when it is not, and who show a pattern of taking a tactical approach to deletion in that they are more intent on "winning" than on actually improving a badly written, poorly sourced article. I don't see any reason to back away from the position that Col. Warden is not the only user who has engaged in such behavior, but I will grant that the purpose of this RFC is to discuss one specific editor. Beeblebrox (talk) 06:21, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Use of extremely weak sources is a serious matter, but not one that I've spotted amongst all the hyperbole. Can you substantiate that charge and if so would you be willing to add a view? If the Colonel is using weak sources then we should point that out to him and let him defend the sources in question or promise not to use it. ϢereSpielChequers 15:08, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
• Scope creep of the RFC is already unmanageable based on Bali Ultimate's opinion, which essentially calls for the RfC to be a larger referendum on CW, which is specifically not what Snottywong drafted it to be. This is no doubt going to result in much juicy drama, because its just going to be venting and counter-venting without concrete solutions.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 14:23, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
  • The tagging is a symptom of a wider problem. In order to understand the symptom, which this RFC/U is about (hoping to treat it) it is reasonable to discuss the wider problem. Rd232 ^talk 15:14, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

• (ec)I disagree with Milowent and SnootyWong seems to think that related issues are relevant as well. All of the issues being discussed appear to have the same root cause - inclusionist zeal. I don't mean that all inclusionists are like CW, but that his ideology is so extreme that he appears to be acting disruptively because of it. That is how my example fits in here as well. It all ought to be looked at.Griswaldo (talk) 15:17, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

• Yes, but this user conduct RFC is not on CW's "inclusionist zeal": it is on a specific aspect of his behaviour deemed to be disruptive. User conduct RFCs can only ever have a productive outcome if they are limited in scope to things that the user in question can hope to address. Broader conduct problems rarely get resolved at RFC/U. This RFC/U, for instance, did little other than to waste even more of people's precious time, even though Le Grand Roi / A Nobody is pretty much the canonical example of an editor happy to disrupt the project in any way possible to advance his position on the project's inclusion threshold. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 15:33, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

A Nobody/Elizabeth Rogan/The pumpkin king/ etc... choose not to participate in the RFC and choose not to heed any of the concerns and complaints aired there. He was indefinitely blocked about six months later. The second thing was not isolated from the first. Then it was that editor's choice that saw him kicked to the curb. Now it is this editor's choice. Look at the RFC as something akin to an intervention. Sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't. As the shrinks say, "you have to want to change."Bali ultimate (talk) 15:37, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

• One difficulty is that there is so much exaggeration and misplaced criticism that this risks degenerating into an inclusionist/deletionist fracas, and any case against him is greatly weakened. I appreciate that the criticism of him for referencing an article and removing an unreferenced template has now been struck. But there still other diffs in the evidence section that I've challenged, and having rebutted half a dozen I'm not particularly inclined to trawl through the rest. Yes there are may be matters that ought to be looked at, but burying them amidst legitimate edits doesn't help make a case. As for Bali Ultimate's view, I have skimmed the colonel's last couple of hundred deleted edits to see if he ever uses CSD prod or AFD, and found examples of him getting articles deleted by all three, which in the absence of a diff to the contrary is scarcely the action of someone who considers deletion as equivalent to murder. ϢereSpielChequers 15:53, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

• WereSpielChequers: I'd take your complaint of "exaggeration" a lot more seriously if you hadn't turned SnottyWong's "Removed cleanup and unreferenced tags, made no improvements to the article" into "This is cited as an example of Colonel warden removing a Cleanup tag without good reason", conveniently failing to mention that he removed an {{unreferenced}} from a wholly unreferenced article. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 16:04, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

As I said in my view "there are still issues that have been raised where Colonel Warden has made mistakes". I've spent too much of my time adding unreferenced tags to unreferenced articles to defend their unwarranted removal. The only part of that example that I criticised was relating to the removal of the cleanup tag. SnottyWong used that example to criticise the Colonel for two things, removing a cleanup tag and removing a valid unreferenced tag without referencing the article. For the avoidance of doubt removing that unreferenced tag without referencing the article was one of the issues that I was alluding to, whilst criticising the removal of the cleanup tag is an example of what I consider to be exaggeration. ϢereSpielChequers 16:30, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Removal of the cleanup tag is a statement of fact; it is not exaggeration. In that particular case the cleanup tag appears unwarranted, so removal is fine, but the big picture is CW too frequently removing tags seemingly indiscriminately. Rd232 ^talk 16:50, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

The bigger picture is that frequent bad removals of tags would be an issue. It is not a good thing to make it look like there are frequent poor removals of tags by just throwing lots of diffs together and seeing if the mud sticks. Because more of the diffs relate to reasonable tag removal than those that do not then this RfC appears to begin with bad faith mudslinging. Polargeo (talk) 17:19, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

5 of the first 6 are bad removals in whole or in part. CW's defenders aren't helping the discussion by denying this. PS double-checking the other diffs quickly, I don't see any problems with their presentation here either: clearly bad removals in whole or in part. [the Llama hiking unref tag removal was OK, but it clearly needed a refimprove replacing it.] Rd232 ^talk 17:34, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

The evidence section is a bit of a Curate's Egg. If the formulators of the RFC want something useful to come of this it would be helpful if they were to review their case and strike out more of the examples of legitimate editing. Criticising someone for removing an unwarranted cleanup tag doesn't help their case. I've listed several other examples in my view of what I consider to be at best exaggeration - happy to discuss any of the examples I gave, and will retract if someone explains why the Colonel shouldn't have done those edits in that manner. ϢereSpielChequers 18:00, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Seriously? Of all the diffs, I see only 1 which shouldn't be there. For the others, a couple of descriptive mentions of actions that are OK shouldn't be unduly confusing. In sum, if the evidence is a Curate's Egg, it's because CW's indiscriminate removal of tags is, well, indiscriminate (including removals which are OK with removals which aren't). Rd232 ^talk 18:48, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I've listed rather more than one example in my view. If the evidence listed had stuck to examples where Colonel Warden was removing valid cleanup tags without fixing things then most of this discussion would not be happening. There are some unusual and uncommunicative edits - for example I would prefer that he gave an explanation when declining prods. But if we don't like editors doing that we need to change policy - currently he or anyone else is entitled to decline a prod without explanation. ϢereSpielChequers 19:14, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

It really shouldn't be that hard to ignore the parts of edits done which are OK, and which are described in the RFC for completeness (wouldn't somebody complain about misrepresentation if the valid parts were ignored?). Rd232 ^talk 20:59, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

They didn't look to me like they were just described for completeness, for example both the prods were described as "removed prod without explanation". If those Diffs had been more along the lines of "Removal of unreferenced tag whilst leaving the article unreferenced diff diff" then things would have been clear and simple. Alternatively they could have described them as "Whilst removing a prod, removed an unreferenced tag and left the article unreferenced and untagged". That would have focussed attention on problematic editing. ϢereSpielChequers 21:58, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

So, in essence what you're saying is that CW's actions were acceptable because you don't like the way the RfC was worded. Do we really need to pick everything apart down to this level? I think it's painfully obvious to anyone what this RfC is about, even if it is not presented to your liking. Is there really any question that removing an {{unreferenced}} tag from an article with zero references is inappropriate? Is there really any question that removing an {{orphan}} tag from an article with zero incoming links is inappropriate? Does the fact that the prod was also mentioned somehow invalidate the fact that CW repeatedly removed valid cleanup tags without addressing the issue in any way? And then he was warned about it, and continued. And then there was an ANI thread with a consensus that it was inappropriate, and he still continued. And then he was warned again, and he still continued. And then he was blocked. Is this really so hard to understand? Do we really need to focus on the fact that "well, the inuniverse part of the {{multiple issues}} tag on that one diff was debatable, because there was one sentence in a 400k article which explained that this was part of the transformers universe..." and then somehow try to use that argument to assert that most of the diffs show perfectly normal, appropriate behavior? I'm tempted to start a new section on this talk page which describes the significance of each diff in such a way that an infant could understand it, but I'm not going to waste my time with that because I believe I've already described it satisfactorily in the RfC, even if there might be some extraneous information interspersed. SnottyWong ^chatter 23:12, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

"Is there really any question that removing an {{orphan}} tag from an article with zero incoming links is inappropriate?". Yes, there is and I've done it several times. When the article in question is notable but a relatively obscure subject it'd be daft to try to force links to it into other articles: that'd be akin to spamming. For such articles an {{orphan}} tag is just ugly and functionless. Fences&Windows 23:52, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Surely you've read WP:O, in particular the section labeled WP:CANTDEORPHAN, which explicitly encourages you to add an {{orphan}} tag to an article that you can't de-orphan? SnottyWong ^spout 00:50, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Some of the people in this RFC seem to be having problems with the difference between "encourage" and "must".

CANTDEORPHAN is a basic help page. It tells you what options you have and what the template parameters are.

Furthermore, there's a difference between an article that "I" can't de-orphan today, and one that I reasonably expect "nobody" to be able to de-orphan. In the latter case, advertising the subject's lack of connection to anything else might not always be the best choice. Editors are expected to use good judgment—and if they weren't, then we'd have orphan templates applied and removed strictly by bot, not humans. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:45, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't agree that my saying "Once we filter out the inappropriate/incorrect parts of this RFC there are still issues that have been raised where Colonel Warden has made mistakes". is fairly summarised as me saying that "CW's actions were acceptable". I checked one quoted example of his removing an orphan tag, Llama hiking currently has three incoming links but only had may only have had two when he removed the orphan tag, yes we have policy that it needed three so I didn't rebut this or even mention the topic of de-orphaning in my view. As for the Transformers example, I don't know if it was only "one sentence in a 400k article which explained that this was part of the transformers universe". Aside from the article actually being less than 40k and with various references to these being toys and the related novels and even who the voice actor was, my point was that the first sentence made it clear that this was a fictional subject. As for the removing of {{unreferenced}} tag from articles with zero references being inappropriate, I'm glad that you agree with me on that issue, and suggest that you consider my suggestion that "The editors who raised this are welcome to strike the issues where Colonel warden is not in breach of policy, and may choose to refocus the RFC on the remaining items, but I would suggest it would be more appropriate for them to withdraw their RFC and seek to resolve their differences in other ways." If this RFC had been focussed on matters such as the removing of {{unreferenced}} tag from articles with zero references then this would have been a much clearer and simpler RFC. ϢereSpielChequers 00:56, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I, for one, would like to see all of the inappropriate parts struck/hidden, so that we can more easily identify the real problems, rather than the "followed the written policy to the letter, but didn't follow my personal preferences" parts. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:45, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

ARS needs to clean house

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

The good folk of ARS (and there are many... see for example the story Jclemens gave about Yellow Star, an article highly worthy of rescue, in #12 of my questions) need to clean house. They need to come out and state that they will not tolerate disruptive gaming like CW and AN engaged in and that their mission is to save articles that are worthy, by honorable means only, not by chicanery and loading the articles with crap. Projects in Wikipedia have no way to remove members but by making statements like this, perhaps the disruptive members will find somewhere else to go and the taint around ARS will be removed. ++Lar: t/c 15:59, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Agree. ARS has an honourable mission - there are surely many articles nominated for deletion with no/little research, and it is good some people dedicate their time to improve/look after such articles. What is bad is a keeping crusade, which is seemingly the tactic of CW, AN etc who will vote to keep pretty much everything even if it has no actual merit. Rescue should actually involve rescuing, not just sticking in a reference that mentions the topic briefly in one sentence. The Jclemens one is a good example of how members of the ARS should be acting. AD 16:07, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

• Like AN engaged in? He isn't around anymore. So, is CW the only one doing things you object to? Why mention the ARS if there is just one guy that bothers you? And he wasn't trying to save the articles by removing the tags, since those articles weren't up for deletion, he just felt the tags were pointless. Dream Focus 18:48, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

• Like it or not, he gives the ARS a bad reputation imo. And so does the flooding of support for CW from its members. AD 22:01, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

• The "taint" around ARS was branded upon it almost immediately after creation, and some have always viewed it that way even after mainstream media sources praised it. This is all nothing new. See User:Milowent/History_of_the_Article_Rescue_Squadron. That's why the RfC was limited in scope to CW's use and removal of tags. I do not approve of everything CW has done, nor do I approve of the many poor AfD nominations made by editors that don't follow WP:BEFORE, that CW and others have worked to improve. We don't advertise all the bad noms, (e.g., Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Elisa Isoardi, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/ACDSee (2nd nomination) off the top of my head in the past week), we just work on them.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 16:38, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
• In my opinion, the ARS should enact a policy whereby ARS members agree to refrain from !voting on articles that have been tagged for rescue. That would solve just about every problem with the ARS. SnottyWong ^gab 17:06, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

and presumably, those who are not members refrain from voting delete? DGG ( talk ) 22:21, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, actually, you're correct. If the ARS didn't vote at rescue-tagged AfD's, then there would be no reason for anyone to patrol rescue-tagged AfD's to counteract the votestacking. SnottyWong ^talk 22:34, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

• • This isn't about ARS. Frankly, if this RFC/U gets any more scattershot it might as well be closed there and then. It is certainly the case that removing cleanup tags without doing any work is literally the opposite of what ARS is supposed to stand for, and that "what ARS is supposed to stand for" and "what everyone actually knows ARS stands for" are very different things, but none of that can or will be addressed in this RFC/U. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 17:17, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

• Why would any Wikiproject not have its members participate in AFDs about articles that interest them? That doesn't make any sense at all. And really now, stay on topic. Are you going after Colonel Warden again because you believe he did something wrong, or because of your obvious hatred of the ARS? You do show up at every single article tagged for Rescue, and often just criticize it and complain about certain members. If you hate it, why show up at all? Are you just being pointy? Do you look at other wikiprojects AFD list and participate in any of those? Dream Focus 18:48, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Ahhhh, noooo, Dream, you took Snotty's bait! This RFC is not about the ARS or Snotty's views on what its rules should be.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 18:51, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and to be clear, this is not the RfC, this is the talk page of the RfC. So I think we can all take a step back and relax. SnottyWong ^{spill the beans} 18:56, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

While I agree with much of Lar's comments at the top of the section, this is not Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Article Rescue Squadron. Maybe that should not be a redlink, and maybe it won't be soon, but right now it is. I don't hate the ARS, and I to the best of my recollection I have never been among those who argued that it should be deleted. On the other hand I disagree that the scope of the RFC should be so narrow as to only cover the removal of tags. Let's say that somehow we manage to get the Col. to participate and we arrive a solution to the tagging issue that is acceptable to all parties. Lets say the Col. abides by that agreement religiously from that day forward. The other problems being mentioned will still exist, and we'll have to do another RFC to deal with them. I can't see how that outcome is desirable to anyone. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:09, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

ARS itself cannot clean house. The actions of the people who use its banner are individual actions, and they are individually responsible. Some of the people who are involved in cleanup use it, and some , like myself, never use it. (I am technically a member, because I agree with the stated aims, but I otherwise pay no attention to what is said or done on its pages. ) DGG ( talk ) 22:35, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, and I would suggest that while some members may be on the extreme edge of inclusionists, that does not hold for all members, and there are some pretty solid deletionists out there in the ether. It might be better if everyone listened to the arguments being presented about CW, and weighed them according to their merit, rather than worrying about the ARS. --Nuujinn (talk) 22:44, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that bringing the ARS into this helps; Wikiprojects are just loose affiliations of editors, and 'membership' signifies interest rather than any representational role or authority. There are no membership requirements and no oversight. This is a RFC on one user rather than any group to which they may 'belong'. pablo 00:11, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

"Applicable policies and guidelines" section

I believe WP:BATTLE should be added here. It is a policy that directly relates to the ongoing issues identified here. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:26, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Done. I was thinking the same thing earlier today. SnottyWong ^verbalize 22:38, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion

I have an informal suggestion, and I'd like to suggest it here before placing it as a formal remedy. I suggest instead of arguing about individual behavior we try to solve the fundamental problem: Nobody should remove a properly placed problem tag without either solving the problem or explicitly stating why it is not a problem. Similarly, nobody should list an article for deletion without either trying to solve the problem , or saying explicitly why it is impractical or impossible to do so. DGG ( talk ) 22:45, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

WP:BEFORE already applies to the second part. AD 22:48, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

But how many people actually follow WP:BEFORE? :/ Silverseren^C 22:50, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

How many editors actually do what DGG just said? :/ PhilKnight (talk) 22:52, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I think that it is a mistake to conflate the two issues. I agree that removal of problem tags, prod tags etc should always be accompanied by a meaningful edit summary. pablo 22:54, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

• I don't see how bringing AfD into a formal remedy about inappropriate cleanup tag removal has even a hint of relevance. SnottyWong ^chatter 23:18, 7 December 2010 (UTC)
• This user conduct RFC is about one user's conduct (colonel warden's). It is all about, as constructed, that editor's conduct. I suggest if DGG has sitewide policy changes/clarifications to propose, this isn't the right forum (though both his suggestions appear to be solutions in search of a problem; both tagging convention as dealt with at WP:TC and clarified multiple times at AN/I and elsewhere already make the first part of his suggestion clear. Likewise AFD guidelines require nominators to provide a reason why an article fails the various guidelines and policies -- N, V, innapropriate forks, and so on.)Bali ultimate (talk) 23:26, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Re to Pablo X. Two of the first four diffs in the evidence section accuse the Colonel of "Remove prod without explanation". But that is within current policy. If you consider that removal of prod tags "should always be accompanied by a meaningful edit summary" I suggest you try to change the prod policy, not criticise someone who follows the current policy. ϢereSpielChequers 23:44, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm aware of what is within current policy, and also what that policy recommends. I was agreeing with DGG's suggestion above that "Nobody should remove a properly placed problem tag without either solving the problem or explicitly stating why it is not a problem." pablo 23:54, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it was actually Snottywong's edit warring to restore the prod tags that breached policy. Ironic, huh? Fences&Windows 23:56, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Ok, and now the baseless accusations start. Could you provide a diff of where I "edit warred" to restore prod tags? If not, please strike your accusation. SnottyWong ^babble 00:55, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Here. Silverseren^C 02:02, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Hardly an "edit war" but Snottywong clearly did revert the removal of a prod tag, in clear contravention of the policy WP:PROD ("If anyone, including the article creator, removes a {{proposed deletion}} tag from an article, do not replace it, even if the tag was apparently removed in bad faith"). However the real tragedy of that article - something that is in no way Snottywong's fault - is that it was proposed for deletion and tagged as an orphan within nine minutes of creation by a newbie editor. Is it really appropriate to slap an {{orphan}} tag on a new article within nine minutes? How many articles are not orphans in that time scale? Surely everyone realizes how bitey that must be for a new editor? Thparkth (talk) 02:18, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, it happens all the time though. Most users don't want to bother checking for dates and things or, good heavens, check whether an article subject is actually notable. No, instead, it's easier to just slap some tags and a PROD on the article. Silverseren^C 02:26, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

That's bad, and we should do whatever we can to reduce that happening (and if editors make a habit of re-adding PROD tags, that should be addressed). But it seems like a red herring here. Rd232 ^talk 12:34, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I would hope that experienced editors like F&W and SilverSeren would understand the difference between a single revert and an edit war. Such exaggeration isn't helping. The edit identified above was made shortly after discovering that CW had been removing cleanup tags on dozens of articles without fixing the problem. I was quickly going through and reverting each of his edits in which he did so. In this case, my revert apparently inadvertently reinstated a prod tag on the article. Characterizing this minor mistake on my part as an "edit war" is, frankly, intentionally dishonest. SnottyWong ^express 18:37, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

• Sorry, this suggestion is dead on arrival. We're not about to lash together an editor's bad behavior with action on something that isn't policy or even a guideline. "WP:BEFORE WP:BEFORE WP:BEFORE" may be the ARS battle-cry, but it has no application to discussing Warden's behavior. Tarc (talk) 00:29, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

And here comes Tarc with the ARS bashing. I was waiting to hear from you. Silverseren^C 01:59, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Given certain ARS members appear to be trying to use themselves as human shields in defence of CW's disruption, I think they should expect the consequent bruising. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 07:05, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

There is so much work to do here, that it is not really possible to do it as carefully as would be desired, and we really need to cooperate--to use tagging and other devices to help each other organize the work, and not for fighting. Tagging has a place, but it is often done poorly -- in every possible direction: too little, too much, or emphasis of the wrong parts of it. This applies to edit summaries too--I see them missing, too brief, too long, too argumentative, completely wrong headed, and every other possible way to do it carelessly--some of this there will always be. When I think things are obvious enough, I do not necessarily explain in detail--and I think that's true of most of the experienced people here who deal with these matters one way or another It is time that everyone understood that if a change is likely to be questioned, the way to avoid most of the question is to say what you;re doing. There are places where we will inevitably have conflicts because of our different views on what the encyclopedia should contain, but we shouldn't have to have them over methods of working. I don't think we want to overemphasize people's errors.

Not only does it cause ill feeling, but it can be counterproductive. There's the matter of glass houses. Those who accuse the people saving articles of improper behavior in doing this should look back ayt all their own work. Have they never nominated articles for deletion in the hope that nobody was paying attention? or assumed something would not be sourceable when it was the other way round? Or said that a reference did not justify the statement when when in fact it did? Or brought articles to AfD repeatedly in the hope they'd eventually get deleted? or engaged in the game of removing content, and then nominating as empty, or the variant of removing all the references on some minor quibble and calling it unreferenced? or of merging and then bit by bit removing the material? t

We who work to preserve articles have by and large not been taking these matters to an/i or rfc. Some of my friends have very much wanted to do so, and I have always advised them against it, because I think we'll come out better in the end being the nice guys than winning the quarrels. But I have often been tempted to take each instance of persistent over-eager deletions there, and to challenge every single improper Speedy, and every dubious close. . We've had an understanding that we shouldn't blame each other for making errors, just as we don't blame each for violating NPA, but if one side is going to bring charges against the other in this unfair fashion, possibly it will no longer be best to continue what I sometimes feel amounts to appeasement. This time, the person being attacked is one of the most effective positive workers at improving articles Wikipedia has ever had. Anyone who shares his goals will want to defend him, because he is on balance an enormous positive force for good here. When he deals with an article, its the better for it, and he deals with a great many of them. DGG ( talk ) 08:58, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

DGG, are you suggesting a wider request for comment? Your "if one side is going to bring charges against the other in this unfair fashion" seems to suggest that you wish do discuss more than this user's conduct. pablo 11:09, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Please don't throw me in that brier patch!Bali ultimate (talk) 11:56, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I have concerns about some of CW actions, and have not endorsed any view yet, but if this RFC is based more on substantial disagreement about the ARS and less about CW's actions as an individual, please, by all means, come out in the open about it. When I read this, cited in a comment about a editor characterized as "confrontational", I have to ask wonder. Better to get it over with if that is the case. --Nuujinn (talk) 12:32, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Ths RFC is about this one editor's conduct. His defenders would like to distract from that. If there's broader issues that DGG or anyone else would really like to take up (rather than get the rest of us to start taking swings at a tar baby) this aint the place, and they know that.Bali ultimate (talk) 12:36, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

It's not just CW's "defenders" that are bringing up ARS in their comments. The trout swings both ways--everyone should focus on the conduct of CW, and leave ARS out of it. --Nuujinn (talk) 13:00, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree.Bali ultimate (talk) 13:04, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Me too - have closed the section above. pablo 13:15, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

A question for DGG

In this endorsement, you claim "Even for unreferenced, there can be reasonable disagreements about the extent to which the links or information in the article constitute references ."

1. Please explain how "the links or information in" this dif can be interpreted as something that "constitute references ."
2. Please explain how "the links or information in" this dif can be interpreted as something that "constitute references ."
3. Please explain how "the links or information in" this dif can be interpreted as something that "constitute references ."
4. Please explain how "the links or information in" this dif can be interpreted as something that "constitute references ."
5. Please explain how "the links or information in" this dif can be interpreted as something that "constitute references ."

(All difs taken from the RfC.) Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 13:54, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

• The first one is an article that was one sentence long at that time, and links in that sentence went to another Wikipedia article that confirmed the information there, Let's Face It!. I was involved in the discussion between the editor who tagged it and the one that removed it. As I pointed out there, the editor could've spend a few seconds looking for references instead of just mindless slapping on a tag no one ever takes seriously. In the AFD one editor clicked on Google Book search and easily found references. [1] The editor doing the drive-by tagging has a long history of doing that all over the place. I think this all needs to be taken into context. The pointless drive-by tagging of articles, just to add horrible looking banners at their top that no one ever pays attention to anyway, has got to stop. Dream Focus 17:14, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

• Let's Face It! does not provide WP:RS support for any of the information contained in the Ace in the Hole (Cole Porter song) dif. And not one thing in the rest of your ramble in any way justifies removing a {{unreferenced}} without first providing references. If sources were as easy as you say they were, then why didn't CW add references before removing this tag? I am getting sick to death with 'my dog ate my homework' level excuses being made on behalf of CW -- I find them a in-WP:CIVIL insult to my intelligence. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 18:14, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

That is an ignorant and insensitive perspective on cleanup tags, in my opinion. If you've ever done any new page patrolling, you'd know that unreferenced articles are created at a pretty incredible rate. The Special:Newpages backlog is usually hovering around 29 days long, and new articles which haven't been patrolled after 30 days are taken off the list of new pages. Many of these "drive-by taggings" (as you call them) are done by new page patrollers who couldn't possibly find references for all of the articles they are patrolling. The intent is to mark pages which have obvious problems so that other editors can find them and fix them. Unless there were 100 more editors doing new page patrols, this is the only way this process can work. There is not enough time for the quantity of new page patrollers we have to fix the problems on all of the new articles. Drive-by untagging without fixing the problem basically negates the work that the new page patroller did to identify the issue. If we're assigning blame to anyone, it should be on the creator of the article, not the new page patroller who marked the article for improvement. SnottyWong ^soliloquize 17:35, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

On #4, see the text that says "Research by Dom. Jean Claire..." This is an in-text citation of a source. There's nothing in WP:V that actually requires citations to be fully written out, enclosed in ref tags, or listed in a separate section. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:56, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Disagree. WP:V requires material to be practically verifiable. Just saying "according to John Doe" is not verifiable. We cannot require an editor to read through every last document published by "Dom. Jean Claire" to verify this article. This is not a referenced article. The extent to which some editors are grasping at straws to rationalize CW's unambiguously inappropriate behavior is bordering on sickening. SnottyWong ^confess 18:30, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Even if we pretended that WP:V requires that it be easy to verify the article contents (something it explicitly disclaims), there's nothing in this article that actually requires any citations. WP:V only requires citations when (1) it's a direct quotation, (2) it's been challenged, or (3) the editor—in his best judgment—thinks it's WP:LIKELY to be challenged.

"I notice that there is nothing listed in a ==Reference== section" is IMO not actually a challenge, especially in an article so short that anybody can see that there's no such section. YMMV. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:58, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Firstly, I never said that articles need to be easy to verify, I said that verification needs to be practical, i.e. it needs to be possible. WP:V does not "explicitly disclaim" that articles need to be practically verifiable. WP:V does discuss something about how the source doesn't have to be internet-accessible, and other similar things, which are absolutely right. But verifiability is not achieved by simply saying "According to Heywood Jablowme...", at a bare minimum, the title and author of the published document needs to be mentioned so that verifiability is practical, and that someone would not have to comb through every document that has ever existed in order to find the one you're referring to. This is all exceedingly obvious to anyone who has made more than 50 edits to Wikipedia. Anyway, your wikilawyering has successfully gotten us way off-topic here. This is the first time I remember having any contact with you, but you've made your tactics very clear to me. I will probably ignore most of your future comments. SnottyWong ^yak 21:22, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

first SnottyWong's general question-, then I'll look at the specific articles cited a little later & add my own analysis. There has always been a backlog at NPP, at least for the 4 years I've been here. (SW, you've been here almost as long, so you'll probably remember it also ). Indeed, it was the great multitude of unacceptable articles that kept slipping through at that period that are causing the problems now, as we try to clean up or get rid of them. But we do miss a lot, and perhaps we would do better if more people had time to attend it instead of dealing with charges against each other. The re is also a problem with the quality at NPP. It tends to be much populated by relative beginners, and their tagging tends to be pretty mechanical. We really should organize some way of teaching them, besides the occasional talk page note when one of them does something particularly egregious. I strongly agree with your suggestion that we should 100 more experienced editors there, but I think their role would best be to oversee the tagging of the beginners.

Most articles do not have "curators". They rather have people who fix specific things they happen to look for, and miss many others. Even very experienced people will sometimes miss obvious copyvio. We can't assign blame to new creators--if they make errors, it's because they are still untaught. We should assign blame to ourselves--to the most experienced of us in particular, for not teaching them, for concentrating on improving or deleting articles, not improving the contributor. The most important thing anyone can do at Wikipedia is to teach and encourage new editors. DGG ( talk ) 18:12, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

The "people who fix specific things they happen to look for" will find it a damn sight easier to locate and fix those things if there is a tag identifying the problem placed on the article, no? pablo 19:21, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Precisely. If you're interested in adding references to unreferenced articles, you need only go to Category:Articles lacking sources to find a list of more than a quarter million of them. How does this category collect all of these pages together, you ask? Is there some complicated bot that trolls around all of the articles and figures out which ones have no references? No, the category is created from article patrollers who have added the {{unreferenced}} tag to the article. If we have other editors who are going around removing these tags without adding references, then we are only adding to the incompleteness of this category, which clearly does not help anyone or anything. SnottyWong ^{spill the beans} 19:32, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, there is at least one bot that does exactly that. It tags articles as being unref'd with |auto-yes. Its accuracy is not ideal, but it's usually right.

I might have more sympathy for this claim if the few people who do this were actually in danger of running out of articles to work on. Removing one, or even ten, still leaves them with more than a quarter million articles to go... and removing ten uncontentious articles from the list might usefully focus their attention on uncited BLPs and other disasters. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:50, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

So it's your opinion that editors should tagged unreferenced articles with {{unreferenced}} only when there are very few unreferenced articles that exist? The fact that there are more than a quarter million unreferenced articles out there means that we should just give up on tracking them? How does that make any sense at all? SnottyWong ^confer 21:23, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

DGG's points about supporting NPP are something we should try and follow up; it is the most obvious choke point for quality control. Tagging articles appropriately (not too quickly! WP:BITE) is certainly part of that quality control, and indiscriminately removing such tags is disruptive. Occasional errors and differences of interpretation are normal, but the point to be addressed in the RFC is most fundamentally that CW doesn't appear to be aiming for the same ballpark as everyone else. Whether he's removing them indiscriminately I can't quite say, but it looks like it. This is really not too hard for CW to remedy, and shouldn't really be an occasion for a Deletionists v Inclusionists grudge match. Rd232 ^talk 21:48, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

• The Colonel's own words on the subject make his approach clear enough, here he argues that placing a unreferenced tag is disruptive editing [2] and that only the tag should ever be used. Note that this relates back to link #5 at the top of this section. At the time he removed the tag, the article was three sentences long, had no refs or external links of any kind, and had been in this state for nearly four years [3]. And here [4] he actually seems to be arguing against using sources at all because it somehow forces users to plagiarize those sources. WP:V is right in the five pillars of Wikipedia, it is not just some obscure point of policy, it is part of the very foundation upon which Wikipedia is built. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:49, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

• That AFD was followed up at WP:V — see Wikipedia talk:Verifiability/Archive 41#Clarify policy for another editor. The correctness of my position was confirmed by several other editors there including Hans Adler, Blueboar and Jclemens. My position therefore rests upon a firm foundation. Colonel Warden (talk) 23:19, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

• We have had a large amount of misrepresentation (Let's Face It! & "Research by Dom. Jean Claire..." as 'references'), obfuscation (endless details that do not mitigate CW's behaviour) & digression (especially NPP-related), but nothing that provides an, even superficially reasonable, conciliance between DGG's statement and the cited difs (in fact, as far as I can tell, only two of the five difs have even been mentioned). Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 06:59, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Clarification on "Nazi" comment

I wanted to clarify this a bit because BOZ's "Part the Seconde" addresses it, I believe quite a bit out of context. During an AfD of the entry List of Jewish Nobel laureates one delete voting user (Bulldog) accused a keep voting user (Epeefleche) of canvassing and started a thread on AN/I about it. He also accused Epeefleche of canvassing in the past, related to similar "List of Jewish ..." type entries, insinuating a bias towards promoting Jewishness through listcruft. During the AfD there were all kinds of discussions about Judaism as a religion versus Jewishness as an ethnicity, and so and so forth. In other words this was a context saturated with discussions about Jewish topics of all kinds, and with a great deal of Jewish editors involved as well. When the AN/I discussion turned towards a possible topic ban for Epeefleche, Colonel Warden compared efforts to delete the list to what he called "disreputable tactics", linking the phrase to Nacht und Nebel. While I am firmly against invoking Nazism lightly in any context, I can see how saying "You Nazi", or "they're all a bunch of Nazis", isn't necessarily such a big deal in most contexts. However, to compare the activities of those opposed to keeping a list of prominent Jews on Wikipedia, to a programmatic campaign of Nazi terror, is in my mind "beyond the pale". Now, even to those who still don't think it is beyond the pale, it is clearly 100% disruptive. Most people are going to find this utterly offensive, and they are going to cause all kinds of drama over it. Colonel Warden ought to know that. Unless Colonel Warden has been living under a rock his entire life, devoid of any education in European History, injecting that comment into the conversation is a conscious act of disruption however you slice it. I'm a bit disheartened by BOZ's "Part the Seconde" because it also implies that the offense taken to this comment would not have existed were a friend to have made it. I can emphatically say that for me this is 100% untrue, and especially in a similar context.Griswaldo (talk) 22:07, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Offense, if a friend said it - quite possibly. That degree of drama? Doubt it. Besides, you've spelled out rather clearly that however distasteful and ludicrously overblown, the metaphor was actually rather apposite (in the sense that comparing the roundness of an apple to the roundness of the moon might be apposite). Rd232 ^talk 22:15, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Because voting to delete listcruft that happens to relate to a Jewish topic is of the same shape but simply of a lesser scale than rounding up, detaining and killing those who threaten your violently antisemitic regime? I guess I have a very different understanding of what being "apposite" means.Griswaldo (talk) 22:34, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, it's apposite like comparing a candle to the Sun is apposite, whilst comparing a candle to the moon is not. This is still true even if comparing candles to the Sun deeply offends, say, Sun-worshippers. Apposite != appropriate. PS I'm assuming you understand the concept of metaphor. Rd232 ^talk 00:37, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

In another RfC/U, an editor was accused of calling another editor an "ignorant POV-pushing fanatical bigoted troll". Griswaldo excused this direct personal attack on the grounds that it was Not the best choice of words but entirely understandable. Colonel Warden (talk) 23:27, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

For the record that is the Colonel's own highly inaccurate paraphrase on my comments at the prior RfC. I never once condoned the use of that phrase and I certainly did not "excuse" it. In fact I explicitly told the editor that it was my opinion that he should apologize for calling the other editor a bigot. Of course as others point out the two comments are hardly comparable anyway. Colonel do you really have to stoop so low as to mis-characterize my judgments about a very different insult made under very different circumstances in order to cast aspersions? Geez.Griswaldo (talk) 00:11, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

The Nazi comment is outside the scope of the RfC, which is about CW's tagging behavior. If the RfC is going to be about more in a formal sense, someone please let me know because I may want to actually pay attention. I didn't like CW's comment, I didn't like that he was immediately blocked for it when other people get told to "fuck off" and nothing happens to them, but re-raising this unfortunate incident in the RFC et al. is not accomplishing anything.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 23:34, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

e/c Not the same thing at all. The fanatical bigoted troll remark is not nice and perhaps it shouldn't be allowed (on the other hand it's possible that the person was a fanatical bigoted troll; such are frequently found lurking here and there on the website). But either way, is it even in the same ballpark with comparing people to genocidal murders? No. For my part, if someone called me an asshole, or a troll, or a cunt, etc... I'd laugh it off and would oppose their block. That's just name calling. But if someone equates me to a mass-murderer or a torturer, that's something else again. It ascribes odious action and intent, in a way that "you're an asshole" or "you're ignorant" or "you're a troll," does not. The second is entirely offensive and not to be tolerated at all. As for your overall conduct, the nazi thing is small beer and not much under discussion on the rfc page (though illustrative i think of how you actually perceive people who disagree with you; i think you're misquided, wrong, and harm article content. You appear to think people like me are evil. There's a difference between these kinds of positions).Bali ultimate (talk) 23:37, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

(ec)Well don't worry Warden; there were many others who found your comment repugnant that did not make similar comments at another RFCU. So, you're still covered. Tarc (talk) 23:37, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

See my comment above. I never made any similar comments to his, nor did I condone any as he has suggested. What's next? Unbelievable.Griswaldo (talk) 00:14, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

For a similar example, here Griswaldo directly accuses another editor of "belligerent self-rghteous ignorance". Colonel Warden (talk) 00:51, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

You're comparing that to a Nazi slur? Really? Reyk _YO! 00:54, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Well Colonel I guess I know how you're spending your evening. I hope you find something juicy in my edit history, because so far you must be pretty frustrated to only have come up with this piddle paddle. Oh and by the way, this little exercise of yours appears to be quite illustrative, so thanks for showing us all what you're made of.Griswaldo (talk) 01:54, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

@Milowent

The scope of this RFC/U is Colonel Warden's conduct while editing this site. See Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct/Guidance; RFC/Us:

Allow a number of users to collaborate in discussing wider issues they see with a particular editor's conduct.

Cheers, Jack Merridew 00:59, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

So where it says "this RFC/U is intended to focus only on the issue of inappropriate cleanup tag removal" is the beginning, that's wrong? Seems violation of "due process" or whatever to convict him of things not charged in his indictment.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 05:16, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, there is a point. If this continues the way it is going, we will soon be at the place where the conduct or all parties is examined, and nobody ever comes out innocent. DGG ( talk ) 05:35, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I suppose so, this reminds me of something but I fear retaliation from making hyperbolic analogies.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 13:49, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

"Retaliation"? This is one of the things I find most disturbing about this project. Editors get into little gangs and then suspect that anyone criticizing something they or their buddies have done is an act of on-Wiki political aggression that needs to be defended. WP:BATTLEGROUND comes to mind. Of course editors without friends simply get mauled by the community and tossed to the curb, but if you have some buddies, oh boy will they mount a defense of your actions no matter what you've done. The same thing also seems to happen when editors share POVs. Say you're voting at an AfD, and someone impeaches the behavior of a like-minded voter, and you get the same gang warfare situation. The problem is that often when someone's actions are impeached they have done something wrong, even if the accusations are also often exaggerated. If editors looked out for their friends by actually counseling them on behaving better instead of emboldening them by mounting an unequivocal defense of their actions we'd all be much better off. Yes no one is perfect and we all make mistakes, but we're never going to learn from our mistakes when our friends say, "oh that guy is just out to get you, I'll show him". Consider also that the language we use in these discussions is not just telling of how we approach them, but can also perpetuate a certain atmosphere. Words like "retaliation" come to mind. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 14:03, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

uh, i was mostly joking, sorry. gang and clique behavior like this exists in any large group, whether it be a high school, corporation, etc. wikipedia is really no different. what can be different is whether we let it bother us or try to work around it.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 14:09, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

High school is a place populated by adolescents, but sure clique behavior exists in various adult domains as well. However, it seems particularly bad in online communities, where real world social mechanisms that keep behavior like this in check have less power or are simply non-existent. Just to be clear I'm no saint, nor will I pretend to be, but I've been giving my fair share of apologies recently after noticing not only what I described above, but my own behavior spiraling into antagonism at times. It just really depresses me that we can't have a sober mature look at a problem and help those who cause the problem learn from their mistakes. This situation, to me, seems like the end of a long road on which various complaints have come up about the Colonel, and each time around his defenders have shown up keep him thinking he's done nothing wrong, and each time those who have dealt with him have become more and more frustrated. If some friendly words of advice had been interjected earlier on this journey we might not be here now.Griswaldo (talk) 14:20, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia is a place populated by adolescents too, in reality and spirit! Yes, its worse online. I wouldn't assume no one has talked privately to the Colonel in the past, but if the RfC decides to impose restrictions on him removing tags I presume he'll honor it.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 14:54, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I share your frustration, Griswaldo. I'm all but disengaged from this RfC at this point, because the uselessness of this process is slapping me in the face. Everyone assumes that this is some sort of witch hunt, or that the RfC was started because certain people don't like CW, and then they all feel the need to gang up and "retaliate" in response. The attempts by "the clique" to wikilawyer and rationalize CW's actions in an effort to prove that he's done nothing wrong are absolutely amazing to me. I realize now the level of vandalism that an established editor would actually have to rise to before their clique would be forced to turn on them and agree that they had done something wrong, and we are apparently nowhere near that level. The funny thing is that it's black and white for me (and many others). It's very frustrating, and I find myself often writing responses that are uncivil and then deleting parts of them. It's hard to keep a level head in a situation where reality itself is constantly getting warped and ripped apart by editors who are either intentionally trying to disrupt the process or who are in an extreme stage of denial. I guess I can't stop what I've started, so I'll let it run its course, but the futility of this exercise is now fully setting in. SnottyWong ^{spill the beans} 15:28, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Not futile. Just part of the process. See [5] and [6] and finally [7]. If this RFC yields a change in behavior, great. If not, well, the slow process continues ot lurch forward.Bali ultimate (talk) 15:48, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Very quick response to Rd232 (comment on RfC page)

Moved from RFC page Rd232 ^talk 00:36, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I haven't taken part in this RfC for a number of reasons, mostly because I believe there's a wider issue that will probably need to be addressed at some point. However, I will respond to Rd232 above regarding the Nazi stuff (this was my block) where he says "Mental experiment: how would you have reacted if your closest wikifriend had said it?". Answer: I would have blocked them on the spot. I have a high tolerance for civility blocks but comparing people to Nazis ranks alongside racism, homophobia, death threats etc. on my block scale - i.e. instant block, without exception. Of course, I'm not saying that all my blocks are right, but that's the scale that I work on. Thanks, Black Kite (t) (c) 00:09, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

"comparing people to Nazis ranks alongside racism, homophobia, death threats etc. on my block scale". Wow. I think you need to rethink your scale - it sounds like it's a scale of about 1-3! Try 1 to 100, to allow some room for perspective. I mean, jeez, comparing people to Nazis ranks with death threats?? And, for my money, the fact that for most purposes Nazis are of merely historical interest means that blatant homophobia or racism outranks basic Godwin's law nonsense by quite some distance. Frankly, this sort of oversensitivity seems rooted in seeking to treat that Nazis as some kind of epitome of evil, so that invoking their name is quasi-Satanic. Making out the Nazis to be unique like that merely makes it more likely that some day we won't recognise people beginning to tread in their footsteps. Rd232 ^talk 00:48, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I think it would be wise to tread carefully in this area--we vary greatly in age, ethnic background, religions, etc. For many of us, Nazis are not of merely historical interest. Comparing levels of badness is seldom a rewarding exercise. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:56, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

It may seldom be rewarding, but sadly it is sometimes necessary. And that many people are still around who lived through the historical Nazi era doesn't change the fact that Nazis are not an issue today (especially if you discount a relative handful of thugs who glorify the era whilst having little substantive connection to it). Rd232 ^talk 01:01, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

In this case, it is not necessary. Honestly, I doubt it's ever necessary, but here, the comparison isn't civil. I've made mistakes, and I hope that if and when I'm called on them or have the sense to realize them, I'll simple apologize. --Nuujinn (talk) 01:23, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

While i'm not sure on which would be worse, Nazis, racism, or homophobia, i'm quite certain that death threats should be farther down the bad scale. Silverseren^C 00:59, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

" this sort of oversensitivity seems rooted in seeking to treat that Nazis as some kind of epitome of evil" - er, yes, that's because they are culturally used in that sense. No, they're not unique, but to be honest I'd have blocked him for that trivial 24h if he'd invoked the Khmer Rouge or Saddam Hussein - it's still a completely uncivil, groundless, non-collegial thing to do. So no, I won't be re-thinking that scale, thanks. Black Kite (t) (c) 01:06, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, your scale doesn't seem to able to distinguish between an actual Nazi (including attendant racism and homophobia) and a metaphorical comparison of someone with a Nazi. That's just wrong. Rd232 ^talk 11:59, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

The sack of Troy, says a voice in his ear. The destruction of Carthage. The Vikings. The Crusades. Ghenghis Kahn. Attila the Hun. The massacre of the Cathars. The witch burnings. The destruction of the Aztec. Ditto the Maya. Ditto the Inca. The Inquisition. Vlad the Impaler. The massacre of the Huguenots. Cromwell in Ireland. The French Revolution. The Napoleonic Wars. The Irish Famine. Slavery in the American South. King Léopold in the Congo. The Russian Revolution. Stalin. Hitler. Hiroshima. Mao. Pol Pot. Idi Amin. Sri Lanka. East Timor. Saddam Hussein. Orxy 02:30, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

The ancient history, is well ancient history and because of that doesn't exactly stir up many emotions. However the contemporary examples would be equally bad in different cultural contexts. For those of us in Western Europe and North America it is Hitler and the Nazis, but I'm sure in Cambodia evoking the Khmer Rouge, and Pol Pot is much more offensive than Hitler. Anyway it is a fact that in the cultural contexts of 99% of Wikipedians working on the English language Wiki Hitler and the Holocaust are considered the epitomes of evil.Griswaldo (talk) 03:48, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• When Google say "don't be evil", they are not talking about such things. The current fuss about Wikileaks, the Great Firewall and the like are where I'm coming from. Our philosophy here is to be open and inclusive. The idea that we should restrict information and exclude editors from discussions as a matter of policy seems quite wrong. Colonel Warden (talk) 20:28, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Very quick response to Black Kite (above)

How does that square with your comments in the following, which concerned an editor who wrote inter alia: "I really do think that enthusiastic Nazis deserve pretty much whatever I can throw at them, and the user I swore and cursed at is politically indistinguishable from an enthusiastic Nazi." Your response to requests that the editor be sanctioned, a view that you did not share, was (in part): "he was talking about the politics of an individual editor. He was certainly abusive, but I don't see racism". I'm having trouble to square your statement above that comparing people to Nazis deserves an instant block, without exception, to your taking what appears to be an opposite view in that discussion, involving a different editor (whose statement, I might add, was much more clearly one of accusing an editor of having Nazi views than was the case here (which concerned tactics, only).--Epeefleche (talk) 00:39, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• Not in the slightest bit comparable. Firstly, that editor was not blocked for equating anyone with a Nazi. He was blocked for calling someone a "cunt" ([8]). Admittedly he flew off the handle a bit after being blocked - as editors often do - but given that he'd been accused of anti-semitism and was equating that with those he was in conflict with, well... meanwhile, CW equated people who voted on an AfD with Nazis. But the major point - I blocked Warden for 24 hours. Eleland was blocked for 3 months. That's why I suggested it was harsh. Black Kite (t) (c) 00:57, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Apologies for not being sufficiently clear. Eleland called a fellow editor an "enthusiastic Nazi". You defended Eleland's having written that. You did not block Eleland for having said that, for any period of timet. You did not suggest that Eleland be blocked for that. That seems a bit at odds with your above statement. (Eleland was separately blocked for other language, but there was extensive discussion, that you took part in, as to whether the "you are a Nazi" remark deserved a block).

At the same time, CW referred to a tactic being used (not an ad hominem remark), did not use the phrase "Nazi", and simply mentioned a tactic that was one the Nazis (and others) had used. And for that, you blocked him. To my mind, those appear not only fairly inconsistent with each other, but the Eleland example appears at odds with your first comment above.--Epeefleche (talk) 03:16, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• OK, I'm confused now (1) How, exactly, would I be supposed to block Eleland for his "enthusiastic Nazi" comment when he was already blocked for three months? (2) I did not defend his comments at any time, I only suggested the block length was too long given the provocation he was subjected to, and (3) I think you'll find the only people claiming that Eleland was racist were very heavily involved editors on the other "side" from him - uninvolved editors disagreed, (i.e. one current arbitrator said "Eleland called that comment for what it is: supremacism, or at best it is an intentional jibe intended to infuriate the opposition") as did I. So yet again, your comparison is no comparison. Black Kite (t) (c) 07:37, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• 1) If an editor, already blocked, engages in behavior for which they have not been blocked, it is appropriate to add on a block for the second behavior. We don't give editors blocked for infraction A a free pass for infraction B. 2) I read your comments specifically as to his calling people Nazis differently. But any editor here can look at them for themselves, and draw their own conclusions. 3) Interesting -- I wonder if it is possible that any of the claimants here are also "on the other 'side'" of the party being complained about.--Epeefleche (talk) 19:32, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• So Black Kite should have extended the block from three months to three months and a day? Reyk _YO! 00:00, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

• Yes, that appears to be the rather odd suggestion, each to their own though. Black Kite (t) (c) 01:32, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

• That would make his prior statement a truthful one. And of course, it would be a rather odd suggestion to say that if editors are blocked for three months, they then have a free pass to engage in blockable offenses. Odd, and counter-productive -- you only block the "better" citizens for the same offense? No, that has little logic behind it.

And of course it is a much worse thing to call someone a Nazi, rather than to accuse them of using a tactic used by the Nazis. Given that distinction, I would think he might have worked himself up into a slightly greater lather, and found that the infraction warranted a more extended block addition.

While we're on that point, and speaking of peculiarities ... seriously, now, is Black Kite going to start blocking editors who accuse others of engaging in blitzkrieg attacks, making statements reminiscent of the Big Lie approach, and taking steps akin to asking others to stop smoking?--Epeefleche (talk) 07:01, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

• Sarcasm, especially rather childish sarcasm, is rarely useful. No further response required here, I think. Black Kite (t) (c) 07:30, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

• The socratic method is useful, if people have open minds. Ad hominem attacks of "childishness" are, in contrast, not helpful. The point--the distinction between you not blocking someone who calls another a Nazi, while blocking someone who simply accuses others (in general) of using tactics that the Nazis (and others) used, stands.--Epeefleche (talk) 20:50, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

• Yes, the last word is yours, enjoy. Just a shame you used it to repeat a point that's already been refuted, but hey. Black Kite (t) (c) 21:32, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Troll bait

this fridge may need to be locked

We seem to have laid out a fair share of it, and they are coming to feed. Absolutely not trying to blame the Col. or any other specific party for this, trolls are trolls and will go where they think they can cause the most trouble, but maybe we should consider semi-protecting the page. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:43, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

• Watch the Soks!

Did you see that User:Benjiboi (former ARS-regular) was just dinged for running 25 soks? Two of them made pointy edits re teh Colonel and Snottywong. This is why Colonel Warden's issues are inextricably connected to the usual disruptive editors that are (or were;) involved in that, uh, squad. They're all of a piece. Expect moar of this shite from the usuals. Cheers, Jack Merridew 00:31, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Alison dinged another five; They're all of a piece. Cheers, Jack Merridew 08:48, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Guilt by association? If anyone who ever advocated to save articles should turn out to be a sockmaster and consequently be banned, then they all should be? I could as readily say that anyone who ever nominated an article for deletion should be banned, because some such people have turned out to be sockmasters also. This is a new low for the discussion, except for the nazi nonsense above. If the people in opposition to ColW have to resort to this sort of thing, it implies that either they know their substantive arguments are too weak to be convincing, or that they hold so much malice that they cannot resist the opportunity to supplement them by abuse. Among the considerable number of people who are superior to me at argumentation, you're in my opinion the most skillful of them all. I have no doubt that you could make a very powerful case against any particular editor, particularly such an active one. I have no doubt that you could write a denunciation of the work of this particular editor that would seem extremely convincing and fair indeed (at least to those who would not investigate the actual facts). So why should you resort to this? DGG ( talk ) 05:32, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for wording that more eloquently than I ever could. I was about to say something akin to what DGG said before he did so. Silverseren^C 05:37, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not taking the bait. DGG, you know the behaviours and editors involved as well as the considerable number of concerned editors do. I've said I'll likely offer a view; I offered to help draft a broader focus version of this RfC/U. You also know that I've not been much involved in AfDs for some time and am not particularly familiar with Colonel Warden's editing; mucking through it all would take a lot of time. Seems to me you're daring me to to pick up the task.

I'd have to review the history of this RfC/U itself, but I've seen several sock posts come and go; wonder who they might be... Sure they may just be run of the mill trolls, but mebbe Benjiboi has another ISP/computer/browser, or mebbe they're socks of folks we know. You've been urged to not be an enabler, and I'll add "please". Cheers, Jack Merridew 06:25, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I do not judge people at Wikipedia--I shall never run for arb com. I judge edits and editing, and, in this context, arguments. You have just admitted you rushed to condemn before you looked at the evidence. While you admit you don't know that your charges are true, you use language and innuendo that assumes he has. If you take the view of execution pubishment first and trial afterwards, then any one who speaks in defense or even in extenuation is an enabler: that's the argument for inquisitorial procedure of an inquisitor. By all means take a look. I'll have back tomorrow to read your apology. But let nobody say I did not warn you first about what you seem to be doing. DGG ( talk ) 07:03, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh, I've seen enough to be sure of my position. And just look at what others are offering. I have not looked sufficiently to prepare a comprehensive view of the problem. See, I don't keep lists of bad acts, like you-know-who did. It still seems like you're daring me, here; what's next? Meeting on the playground at lunchtime? Please drop the hyperbole such as 'executions' and 'inquisitor' — it's right up there with the Nazi smears. Cheers, Jack Merridew 07:50, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

If we're dishing out roles for a playground roleplay, can I suggest DGG for the role of Comical Ali? Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 09:47, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I know you think I am misinterpreting. But if you think I am telling obvious lies, which is what that individual was known for, would you specify what they are, or else retract. DGG ( talk ) 19:45, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I've realized what I should have realized last night, that this part of the discussion is getting nowhere. People will judge adequately by what has already been said. DGG ( talk ) 19:51, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

• Sigh. So, would anyone like to discuss whether or not we should find an uninvolved admin to consider protecting the main RFC page? Beeblebrox (talk) 19:47, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

  Sorry. Semi would do little, really. I see two dinged soks in the history and they we dealt with in the appropriate manner. Cheers, Jack Merridew 22:11, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

DGG, you say you do not judge people, just edits and editing behaviour. Yet your outside view is largely speculation about the motives of Colonel Warden's critics, with not a diff to support any of it. How do you justify that? Reyk _YO! 23:14, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Quite correct, I should have said that I try not to judge individuals. DGG ( talk ) 05:44, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

DGG: your 'outside view' exhibits very little evidence of your even 'trying'. Your unsubstantiated statement that you "see the objections here not an objection to what he does, but an objection to the fact that is in able to rescue articles that some people would prefer not to have rescued" is not only a gross violation of WP:AGF, but demonstrates a complete denial of the evidence presented on this RfC, which does not portray isolated "error[s]", but rather a pattern of conscious deceit to hide and disguise articles to shield them from deletion. That denial was what evoked my above, unanswered, question to you and my identification of you with 'Comical Ali'. To date, you have not exhibited even a factually-based judgement of either CW or his opponents -- merely a rush to prejudgement of both. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 06:16, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Leave DGG be. He made much the same defenses and denials on behalf of A Nobody and a few others of the since perma-banned ("the reason they don't like him is because he does such good work!") He's of course, entitled to his opinion, but it doesn't convince the audience as he likes to say. Just the choir (when you're a jet you're a jet all the way, don't you know).Bali ultimate (talk) 11:51, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Blue hair

A comment of AniMate's catches my eye as this relates to a recent incident. He says, "He's definitely vengeful. He recreated blue hair which was deleted after a nomination for me, writing yet another substandard article for it. I can't help but feel this was as a result of conflicts with me, since he made no such efforts for purple hair, green hair, or pink hair."

What actually happened in this case was that I was checking out the edit history of an editor at RfA and so came across Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Blue hair (2nd nomination) in which she had commented. I didn't bother commenting in the RfA as it seemed like a snow result but the topic of blue hair tickled my fancy and so I checked it out. I found some fascinating scholarship such as Gods' blue hair in Homer and in eighteenth-dynasty Egypt and so restarted the article afresh. This had nothing to do with AniMate. He is an editor with whom I have had little interaction that I recall as being significant and so I do not know what I am supposed to be vengeful about. And how would writing a fresh article be an annoyance for him? Are we not here to write articles?

After this article was created, another editor placed a notability tag upon it. This was Bigger digger, with whom I had had some recent interaction. I didn't agree with the tag, as I had cited a source which was specifically about the topic of blue hair but, as the article was new, decided to leave it alone and see what other editors made of it.

So, AniMate's supposition of vengeance is imaginary and I demonstrated restraint in the matter of tagging in this case.

Colonel Warden (talk) 00:40, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I've just looked at the deleted article on Blue hair and in my view it is as the Colonel says an article started afresh and therefore not the sort of recreated article that {{G4}} was intended for. There are two tests one should apply when recreating an article deleted at AFD, similarity to the deleted article and addressing the reasons for the deletion decision. The deleted article in its final version consisted almost entirely of a list of blue haired Characters, and in my view the current Blue hair is not "substantially identical to the deleted version". The closing rationale in the AFD was "Completely random, unsourced list of fictional characters that have blue hair. Additionally, there is nothing in the article to justify why "blue hair" is notable." In my view the Colonel has clearly addressed the first point and I would hope that even his detractors would accept that he has made a good faith attempt to address the second. As an aside I almost succeeded in restraining myself from noting the Wikipedia priority of having an article on blue hair before one on either grey or white hair. ϢereSpielChequers 09:52, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

The article itself would not appear to be AniMate's concern. But I took a look... and found Benjiboi's sock user:Bluedogger mucking about. I found we have long hair, too ;) Cheers, Jack Merridew 10:22, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Why does this matter enough that you had to point it out? Silverseren^C 10:26, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

While I'm not sure I buy CW's explanation, Benjiboi's sock doesn't concern me. Benjiboi and I got along well, worked together on some things, and generally had a respectful on-wiki relationship. I'm not impressed with his recent actions, but would happily and enthusiastically welcome him back under WP:Standard offer. AniMate 10:40, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I've mixed feelings re Benjiboi; I do much appreciate his work on Senang Hati Foundation. Most of the 30 socks are from just the last few weeks. If he pops over to Wikisource, I'll show him the ropes. I'm mentoring another en:banned user there, now. Cheers, Jack Merridew 10:51, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Now I've got mixed feelings about him too, but would really like him to work his way back here. You're exactly the kind of off-site mentor he needs, sockpuppet. AniMate 10:59, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

I've watchlisted s:User:Benjiboi, but he's never edited there. I expect he's reading this, so he can find me. Finishing up s:Treasure Island this week... Cheers, Jack Merridew 11:56, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

re to Jack Merridew. If Animate wasn't concerned about the article why raise it in the RFC? There have been many criticisms of the colonel raised in this RFC both in the evidence section and elsewhere. If the colonel and others start their response by answering points such as the declining of prods and the writing of articles please take that as a positive - we should be trying to resolve differences here and I believe that much that has been raised is resolvable and explainable. The only criticism that has been struck so far is that he removes unreferenced tags when he adds a reference. I'm obviously relieved that this is no longer part of the case against him, as I think it is a positive that people reference articles. May I now suggest that we focus next on the first issue raised in the evidence - the colonel declines prods without explanation. I have suggested that that be struck, though I'd be be just as happy if it was rephrased as "whilst declining a prod" as that would make it clear that The Colonel like anyone one else is perfectly entitled to decline prods. If that suggestion isn't acceptable to the filers of this RFC, would someone like to explain why they think declining prods without explanation is not good editing, then we can ask the colonel to respond or perhaps agree to give more explanation when he declines prods. ϢereSpielChequers 13:05, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I think that should be clarified. I do not think that merely recreating an article that has been deleted is a vengeful act. I'm also confused by Reyk's comment regarding the prod of Bugoff--it appears that the prod was not contested, and Reyk's response suggests a lack of concern about the issue. Some of the criticisms, such as this, are very thin indeed. While I do see some significant issues being discussed such as the "Nacht und Nebel" comment, some of this appears to be nit picking. I can well understand that CW ruffles feathers, and I've butted heads with him a couple of times, but generally speaking I see him as a valuable member of the community. I'm not sure what the solution is here, but I think at this point the RFC lacks focus. --Nuujinn (talk) 13:26, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

@WereSpielChequers; AniMate's term for Colonel Warden's approach was 'vengeful', which I've seen, too; cf my comment in Sjakkalle's view re puputan. AniMate's word for the recreated blue hair was 'substandard' and I appreciate the absurdity of skipping over grey and white ;)

I tidied Sontywong's draft before this went live (converting to use {{diff}}) and in the process noted a diff that didn't match the description (a reftag removal with a ref added). I noted it and Snottywong removed it. Was another missed? I also suggested a wider focus as there are many other issues which keep spilling out in the views and on this talk. I've not been involved in any of the prod/deprod stuff in about a year. Sure, anyone can remove a prod. Should it follow that anyone can systematically remove pretty much every prod they can find? Isn't that the gist of what's being alleged? I think that would amount to systematic disruption; moar intent to confound all aspects of deletion. Cheers, Jack Merridew 22:33, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi Jack, there are several issues that I covered in Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Colonel_Warden#Outside_view_by_WereSpielChequers and I'd be interested in your views on them. Some things are hard to check though. For example it was easy to check that two of Llama hiking's current links were there at the time that the colonel removed the orphan tag, but to know whether there was a third you'd need to look at articles that have since been deleted or edited. I've removed a fair few orphan tags in my time, and while I'd expect that the vast majority still have at least three links, there are bound to be some which are now orphans again - so I'd rather give the Colonel the benefit of the doubt on that one. As regards legitimate removal of unreferenced tags, the 8th Nov example has been partly struck out, though I'd prefer if it said "whilst removing an unreferenced tag," and in Wikipedia:Requests for_comment/Colonel Warden#Users_certifying the_basis for_this_dispute Hrafn struck the one I queried within an hour of my querying it. Hrafn went on to list 5 examples of inappropriate removal of unreferenced tags from October and early November at Wikipedia_talk:Requests_for_comment/Colonel_Warden#A_question_for_DGG. So I'm happy to agree with everyone from DGG to Bali and yourself that there was a problem a month ago with the Colonel removing unreferenced tags from unreferenced articles, though for this to be an unresolved problem we would need to see some current examples.

As for whether the Colonel is accused of "systematically remove pretty much every prod they can find? Isn't that the gist of what's being alleged?". As far as I'm concerned this is a completely new issue that I hadn't previously seen raised in this RFC (apologies if it has been the subject of ANI threads or threads on his talkpage, I don't follow every ANI thread and I don't watch his talkpage). I occasionally prod articles, I don't particularly keep tabs on them but I do see articles I've prodded popping up amongst my deleted contributions, so if someone is systematically declining prods they certainly aren't declining all of them, though I agree that it would be disruptive if someone did so. So far we have had evidence given that the Colonel declines prods and does so without explanation, policy allows him to do this, and I would support him in continuing to decline prods, though I would encourage him to give explanations when he does so. Mass declining of prods is a very different issue, and I would be interested to know what scale this alleged to be on, and whether it is sensible or not. Someone who declines prods that always then get uncontentiously deleted at AFD would in my view be achieving little, someone who declines a lot of prods but whose decline is rarely overturned at AFD is clearly an asset to the pedia. If you want to widen the RFC to the issue of mass prodding then some stats would be really helpful. ϢereSpielChequers 16:06, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• The suggestion that I "systematically remove pretty much every prod they can find" is very far from the truth. What actually happens is that I patrol prods from the following page: category:Proposed deletion. This category groups prods by day and I try to keep up with them all. A typical day has about 50-100 prods. I scan all the titles and what I'm usually looking for is a topic that that seems familiar in some way. If it is familiar to me then it seems likely that the topic is notable and so I investigate further. I don't have any exact stats but my impression is that I deprod about 1 article per day on average. That's about 1-2% of the total. Representing 1% as 100% seems typical of this RfC - taking a small number of incidents and trying to suggest that all my activity is like that. Colonel Warden (talk) 18:42, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• I just took a look at Category:Proposed deletion as of 4 December 2010 as I have some catching up to do. I checked out three articles of the 98 listed. Time Doctor sounded interesting but was just some time management software which didn't interest me so I moved on. The prod of sonneteer suggested that the article be redirected to sonnet. I took a look at sonnet to confirm that similar content was in that article and then made the redirect. I didn't bother to mention the prod in my edit summary because prod should not have been used for this. My edit summary focussed upon the substantive change - the creation of a redirect. I then looked at expenditure cascades. This sounded like trickle down so I took a look at that to see if merger was appropriate. After I got the gist of the two topics, I decided that the topic was different and notable and so removed the prod. The prod hadn't given a reason so I didn't dwell on counter-reasons in my edit summary. The article needed a proper lead so I added one with a source and then updated the article's talk page with appropriate templates. So that's my idea of proper prod patrolling — a triage process in which one looks at promising candidates and takes appropriate action depending upon what one finds, having due regard for our editing policy. Colonel Warden (talk) 19:12, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• Thanks Colonel, that seems fair and reasonable. I try to keep an eye on Category:BLP articles proposed for deletion in a similar manner and I'm sure I average more than 1 incorrect tag cancellation a day, plus the occasional speedy deletion. So from the sound of it I decline a higher proportion of BLP prods than you do normal prods. Would you be willing to put a prod decline reason in your edit summaries? I appreciate that policy only encourages you to do so, but it obviously irritates some of your fellow editors. ϢereSpielChequers 20:17, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Move to close

Proposal: close the RFC, now. Yes, it was needed, and hopefully the user got something out of it in terms of what the community thinks. However, RFC/Us are supposed to be part of a process of dispute resolution, and at this point it seems more like a process of dispute continuation or even dispute causation. Let's just pull the plug. If the problems persist, I suggest the most plausible option that might actually help is finding a mentor. Rd232 ^talk 20:32, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

• Agreed It just seems to have devolved into bickering now. Silverseren^C 20:38, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
• No. Dispute resolution is hard, and takes time. For once the subject of the RFC is actually engaging and there is a real chance to resolve these issues. But nothing has been resolved yet and I don't think adopting a defeatist attitude is going to help. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:21, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

  Alright, if you think we're actually going to get anywhere with this. Though I think the concerns above about the unnecessary items on the list of issues with CW should be addressed. Silverseren^C 21:23, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

• No. I'm gonna get to a view this weekend. Cheers, Jack Merridew 22:13, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
• Yes, please. This train is not going to get un-wrecked. Everyone knows that there are deeper problems with both CW and the culture he represents to be discussed, but an ever-expanding RFC/U ostensibly on the relatively innocuous activity of removing cleanup tags is not the right place to do it. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 23:53, 9 December 2010 (UTC)
• An early close would be the best possible outcome at this point. The bickering and scope-creep serves only to dilute what little weight an RFC/U carries in the first place. Thparkth (talk) 12:43, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
• No - I'd rather not see those who have pushed levels of needless verbosity be rewarded for their efforts in achieving a stalemate. As it stands now 45,000 more bytes have been expended discussing the discussion rather than the RFC/U itself. So pardon the tone but how about this; everyone voluntarily shut the fuck up and stop squabbling here. If you have a point to make, then make it within the confines of the actual RfC. Tarc (talk) 14:48, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose: given that the only specifics of this dispute that CW has responded to was a a single dif that had already been stricken, it would seem to be premature to end this RfC. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 15:29, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
• The whole point of an RFC is to garner wider views on issues of concern and measure the wider levels of support for specific points. So far we can sucessfully gathered the views of the usual suspects and we already have a good idea of what they think. How about we all now stand back and let the uninvolved members of the community chime in rather then trying to shut down discussion and stifling debate. Spartaz ^Humbug! 15:34, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
• Agree There is clearly no consensus on the desired outcomes stated in the RfC asking CW to voluntarily desist from various tagging activities. Given that, further discussion is a waste of time and results in unnecessary bad feeling. Perhaps a statement from CW voluntarily offering to explain tag removals where necessary will alleviate the concerns of others but the reality is that this isn't going anywhere. (P.S. I'm not a usual suspect, merely an unusual one.) --RegentsPark (talk) 15:37, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• Comment well I'm satisfied if for now this suggestion to close merely helps focus minds on thinking about what the RFC might reasonably achieve, and I do take Spartaz' point about hopefully getting more input from uninvolved people. I don't want to create further meta-discussion that distracts from the substance, so please consider the motion withdrawn. Rd232 ^talk

Sourcing

One of the issues raised by a number of editors is the quality of the colonel's sourcing with this cited by User:Reyk as "a book published in 1997 as a source for an article on a TV episode aired in 2003". Though according to the link it was a book published in 1997 about a TV episode first aired in 1998 and released on DVD in 2003. I'm quite prepared to believe that a book published one year could have information in it on events planned for release the next year, especially if some of the material had already been recorded. But in the circumstances I think it would help to check it. I would be interested in knowing from the Colonel what specific information he sourced from that book, and if anyone else has access to that book it would be helpful to have a neutral person check that reference. Also I'd be interested if Reyk explained why they used the 2003 date and not the 1998 one. ϢereSpielChequers 22:33, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

• I misread the 2003 DVD release date as the original airing date, but 1998 is still later than 1997. And you can confirm for yourself that the source doesn't mention the subject by following the link to the Encyclopedia of Japanese pop culture. It provides a search pane to look for things inside the book, and "Countdown to Destruction" (the name of the episode), "Power Rangers in Space" (the series it was the finale of), and "The Best of the Power Rangers: The Ultimate Rangers" (the DVD) - they are not mentioned at all. Reyk _YO! 23:02, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

WSC, you seem unable to recognize that Colonel Warden ever adds irrelevant, misleading, or "bogus" sources to articles that he's endeavoring to rescue. With a little digging, I could cite a number of examples, but I'll confine myself to one that I happen to have been thinking about lately. In his zeal to rescue an article that I had nominated for deletion (for a reason entirely unrelated to the presence or absence of sources), he added a "source" here and commented in the AfD that this somehow "show[ed] the article's potential". The work he cited, however, has nothing to do with the topic of the article, as it deals (insofar as it deals with street names at all) with the naming of streets in a completely different area—how, exactly, were any of his "rescuing" edits relevant either to the rationale for deletion or to any reasonable improvement of the article? (Indeed, his removal of the orphan tag touches on the explicit topic of this RfC.) Deor (talk) 03:02, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• User:Deor said nothing of this at the time. Now that he challenges the source, I provide a better one and go on to flesh out our coverage of notable Parisian streets and their appearance in literature. See Le Paysan de Paris for a fresh example of my work. Colonel Warden (talk) 09:31, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi Deor, I have only commented on this one sourcing issue, please don't assume what my opinion might be on others. I have commented on several pieces of "evidence" in this RFC, as a result of my comments a couple of items have been struck or modified. I would welcome your views on any of my outstanding concerns expressed in my view. We have now narrowed this particular one from a 1997 source being used for a 2003 program to a 1997 source being used for a 1998 program. That still looks odd, and I would be interested in the Colonel's response to Reyk's comment above. Personally I don't have this book or any intention of getting a copy, but it would be helpful to know what the Colonel sourced from it, whether the Colonel had access to the physical book or was using the same Google lookup as Reyk mentions, and if so whether it contained information about what was then an unaired program. ϢereSpielChequers 15:47, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

(out) Often books have dates which are the year ahead of the date they are actually placed on sale. Really. And often TV shows have a copyright date for "first airing" which may be a year later than the filming occurred. Really. Quibbling over a single year seems non-utile at best. Collect (talk) 15:28, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I've called for the book in question via interlibrary loan, and I imagine that a couple of other editors have had the same idea. We'll be able to settle this one in a week or so, I imagine. --Nuujinn (talk) 16:29, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Feyd's view

Is there somewhere I can specifically not endorse this? Actually defending the practice of "revenge" deletion noms as an act of selflessness done for the betterment of Wikipedia? What a load of nonsense. I understand sticking up for someone that you respect and share a common philosophy with, but actually defending a bad-faith practice, admitting that the nom was done out of spite rather than out of seeing any genuine reason to delete the article is out of line. This "ends justify the means" mentality is the whole point of this RFC, it saddens me to see someone going to such outrageous lengths to try and justify it. Beeblebrox (talk) 18:59, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• "Is there somewhere I can specifically not endorse this?" Here is as good as anywhere, i suppose.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 19:05, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

FWIW, in Gavin Collins's RFC an editor added a rebuttal section to one of the view segments. Seems fine to me to do something like that, since the idea is to discuss the issues thoroughly. --Nuujinn (talk) 19:26, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• What we have here is a small number of cases being represented as a norm. What's actually happening here is that I'm responding to the common complaint that all I do is try to keep articles, being a "rabid inclusionist" or some such falsehood. To address this, I try to work the other side of the street from time to time. I do not find this easy because I try to observe WP:BEFORE and I am usually able to think of a good alternative to deletion as that procedural policy advises. So, when an opportunity to nominate an article for deletion comes along, I will tend to take it. This sometimes arises when I am reading the user page of another user but this should not be a problem provided one observes restraint and does not make a personal crusade out of it by nominating multiple articles in a harassing way. In the case of the chess opening article, it immediately struck me that this was game-guide/how-to material and so this was contrary to WP:NOT. Other editors regularly nominate articles for deletion using the policy WP:NOT and so the idea that I should not be able to do the same seems quite bizarre. Please see WP:SAUCE and the Golden rule for more on that. The nomination was not successful in that case because chess fans turned up to defend their "cruft" but so it goes. I argued in support of policy to give the issue a fair hearing but there was no consensus for this.

After another case or two of this sort, I might see about getting the policy changed. I have been down this road before with WP:DICDEF. I tried nominating articles such as dude for deletion, citing this policy but there was no consensus for deletion in such cases. I therefore sought to reduce WP:DICDEF to a guideline. This seemed to stick but then User:Wolfkeeper flipped out and accused me of being a vandal. He caused a lot of fuss about the matter for some time but has now been banned, I think, and WP:DICDEF has been softened now.

Colonel Warden (talk) 19:49, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

You do sometimes appear to be seeking revenge on those you see as your opponents, but even if that was not the case here, Feyd apparently believed that it was and mounted this defense of it that essentially would exempt you from WP:POINT. I don't think anyone but him is convinced by the weird logic he used though, and holding up ANobody as a figure to emulate certainly doesn't strengthen his case. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:59, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• I read Feyd's posting just now and didn't quite understand it so I wrote the explanation above to clarify my position. It is perhaps also worth mentioning that the nominator of this RfC, User:Snottywong has nominated multiple pages of mine for deletion. Colonel Warden (talk) 20:07, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I've got to say that "Im not sure whether this exceptional selflessness results from an almost ANobody level of compassion for others" reveals a perspective that I hadn't considered it possible to hold.—Kww(talk) 20:14, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I generally find Feyd Huxtable's posts, particularly the longer ones with extended sentences and innovatively sparse punctuation, somewhat difficult to understand. I must admit I haven't ever considered 'compassion' to be relevant to Wikipedia. pablo 20:46, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

My confusion was more to ascribing it as a major motivation to either A Nobody or Colonel Warden, or thinking of it as something that A Nobody stands as an example in regard to.—Kww(talk) 21:20, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

• Looks like I was wrong, one user has actually endorsed this nonsense and stated that they agree in principle with the ideas expressed. How anyone could honestly believe it is ok to make a bad faith deletion nomination to prove a point (again whether or not that is what actually happened) is beyond me. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:31, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
  • CW's explanation here at least suggests there was no bad faith behind the noms. Feyd on the other hand seems to be advocating deletion nominations to try "to communicate how unpleasant it is to have your article attacked at AfD". Not good. To CW - I suggest a commitment to lay off fishing around for article creations on the user pages of delete !voters at AfD - even if done in good faith - would help very much here. --Mkativerata (talk) 21:35, 10 December 2010 (UTC)
• I find it astonishing that anyone would think it's OK to nominate an article for deletion just so the creator would know what it feels like, and even more astonishing that anyone would hold up A Nobody as a role model to emulate. Reyk _YO! 21:51, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

An admin (User:RegentsPark) endorsing a view essentially supporting WP:POINTy AFD nominations! Ohhhkaaayyyy then. Rd232 ^talk 01:08, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

That is frightening. That Dream Focus endorsed it is unfortunately not surprising, but it's sad to see an admin sign up for that.—Kww(talk) 02:32, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

This is the source of all of our problems

• Feyd's outside view is disturbing to me, and reeks of hypocrisy. When someone nominates an article for deletion in good faith, and it later turns out it shouldn't have been nominated, many of the inclusionists get all up in arms, throwing about WP:BEFORE and WP:IMPERFECT and belittling the nominator. But, when CW nominates an article for deletion to "communicate how unpleasant it is to have your article attacked at AfD" (even if that wasn't his intention, Feyd clearly believed it was and interpreted it as such), Feyd endorses this and says it's ok because CW was just trying to make a point. There is an obvious problem being demonstrated here. The degree to which wiki-politics and "wiki-friendships" is affecting certain editors' judgement is troubling. Just because you like someone, or you think they're a good editor, or you're in the same wikiproject doesn't mean you should endorse their disruptive behavior. This is a common thread running through this RfC and demonstrated in many of the outside views. This is the source of the battle between inclusionists and deletionists. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and that opinion should be individually expressed. Once a bunch of like-minded editors get together and start colluding to push their point of view, that is when other editors (who are acting individually) are going to feel pushed aside, abused, bullied, and marginalized; and that is when those editors are going to push back in opposition of this bullying. This is the source of the whole problem; this is why ARS is a failed organization, and this is why the inclusionist vs. deletionist battle rages on today. What would it take to get you to objectively look at the evidence provided in this RfC, and say "Yeah, CW is a prolific editor, and he's my friend, and we're both in ARS... but these edits/nominations just aren't right." The only way CW is ever going to realize the need for reform is if his close friends tell him "CW, you know I think you're awesome, but you really shouldn't be deleting cleanup tags like that." or "...you really shouldn't be nominating articles for deletion out of revenge" or "...you really shouldn't disrupt the AfD process by moving the article and creating a new article in place of the redirect", etc. etc. etc. Jclemens attempted to do this by taking charge of the situation and sending multiple warnings and a block to CW personally, and he was attacked for it. This really needs to stop, as the volume of drama it creates is overwhelming. SnottyWong ^babble 23:24, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I looked through the "evidence" and pointed out several flaws. Why haven't you amended your "evidence" to strike the bits where the colonel was within policy so we can focus on the areas where he was not within policy? ϢereSpielChequers 23:30, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Because you should be intelligent enough able to see the big picture without me having to strike it through, even if some of the evidence is borderline in your opinion. SnottyWong ^talk 23:31, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

To be clear, this is not a trial, and we are not in a court of law. This is not how I approach Wikipedia. I think if we all strive to be reasonable individuals, we can all see the big picture; the problem that is highlighted by the diffs provided. If a few of the diffs are borderline or even if one of them was a mistake, I apologize, but that doesn't invalidate the RfC. I could strike a few of the diffs out, and I'm sure I could replace them with more diffs if I had the motivation to search through CW's contributions even further back than I did. I don't plan on doing either of those things. SnottyWong ^comment 23:39, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

This may not be a trial or a court of law, but it is a request to comment on some evidence about a particular editor's behaviour, and I have been doing just that. Some of the evidence is troubling, some is merely borderline, but some has been clearly rebutted, and the more I look the more flaws I find. For example your 6th November diff says the colonel "made no improvements", but the colonel edited that article again just 7 minutes later - if you look at the two diffs in combination then the charge "made no improvements" needs to be struck. Two of the other editors who've presented evidence in this RFC have promptly struck things after I've pointed out flaws. Why would you not want to do the same? Unless we can agree what the relevant evidence is we can't even agree whether the big picture is about tag removal or the deletion process. There were many examples in the evidence, if half a dozen are resolved and struck during the RFC then that doesn't invalidate the RFC, it just means we can focus on the issues that remain. But if the people bringing the RFC won't strike rebutted or resolved items because it doesn't matter to them whether their evidence is mistaken or not then of course that would invalidate the RFC. ϢereSpielChequers 23:59, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Ok, list the disputed diffs on your talk page and I will take a look at them when I get a chance. SnottyWong ^chat 00:15, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your amends and your response on my talkpage, I still have a general concern that leaving in behaviour that you concede is correct or debateable detracts from your evidence and leaves us discussing why certain things are in the evidence you present. If you accept that the Colonel is entitled to decline prods or remove a {{deadend}} tag from an article that is not a deadend, then why not simply rephrase your evidence as "whilst declining a prod" or "whilst removing a deadend tag from an article that admittedly had one link". That would clarify that the RFC was not about prods and allow us to focus on those of the colonel's edits that are clearly against consensus. As for the 14th Nov example, you criticise the Colonel for removing a refimprove tag in that edit, but neglected to mention that there were two refimprove tags in the article and the Colonel removed one but left the other. I think most of us would agree that where articles have been overtagged, culling duplicate or contradictory tags is useful cleanup. In my opinion your evidence statement "Removes refimprove and expert tags, as well as seven "citation needed" tags. Added two sentences and a reference to support them" still gives a rather misleading impression of an edit in which the Colonel left the article with a refimprove tag. Now one can argue that in that instance he went from an overtagged article to an undertagged one, but no article needs two {{refimprove}} tags any more than it needs two {{unreferenced}} tags. ϢereSpielChequers 19:05, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

This is a long-term pattern with some users; Pixelface did it to me. So did Grawp. Cheers, Jack Merridew 04:15, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Response to Outside view by Thparkth

I was actually very close to endorsing this view. The only thing I can't get behind is the idea that this behavior wasn't disruptive. I can agree that if someone did this once (or on a very small scale), it is not disruptive. But, when a clear pattern emerges where an editor is removing every cleanup tag from an article without fixing any of the problems with the article (especially when those problems are obvious), then it is absolutely disruptive. Thparkth remarks that "Just as CW was free to remove cleanup tags he disagreed with, any other editor was free to revert his removal. This is not disruption, even when done on a large scale." I believe that this is disruption, especially when done on a large scale. Would you be ok if I wrote a bot which combed through every article and removed all of the cleanup tags? I doubt it, because that would be disruptive. CW's behavior was a growing pattern which was doing exactly that, except obviously on a much smaller scale than every article on WP. SnottyWong ^soliloquize 00:00, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I took a fair amount of time to form an opinion on the "disruption" issue. At the end of the day, I don't think CW was disruptive by intent, and I don't think he was disruptive in any serious way in effect. I think his behavior was mostly annoying rather than disruptive. Of course, there is an argument that if you annoy enough people, that is a form of disruption in itself... Thparkth (talk) 03:33, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

What makes you think that using deceitful edit summaries wasn't disruptive by intent? I'm interested in hearing anyone defend that practice.—Kww(talk) 04:15, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't see how repeating behaviour, even after being repeatedly warned about it, can be considered to be unintentional. As far as being disruptive in practice, there are some quarter of a million articles on Wikipedia tagged as unsourced (the oldest dating back to October 2006). Removing {{unreferenced}} from unreferenced articles, without providing references, disrupts ongoing efforts to identify and remedy these articles. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 05:13, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

(to Hrafn) - If something is not disruptive, being warned about it does not make it so. As far as the {{unreferenced}} tag is concerned, the empirical fact is that adding it to an article which nobody is watching, while making no attempt to reference it yourself, makes no meaningful difference to the odds of it ever being referenced. Unreferenced tags do not work and this is why I conclude that removing them is not disruptive in practice. Thparkth (talk) 12:38, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually that category shows a very clear pattern that the number of articles tagged as poorly referenced falls over time, recent months having ten times as many as months in 2006. That may mean we need to think in a timescale of years not months, but I for one am confident that when we approach our twentieth birthday many of these backlogs will be ancient history. Also remember that poorly referenced articles are a relatively low priority, so we may not see a major cleanup exercise until after more urgent backlogs have been cleared, Category:Uncategorized pages Goes back to Sept this year, Category:Unreferenced BLPs still has a few from 2008, but until very recently went all the way back to early 2007. ϢereSpielChequers 14:13, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Forgive me but I linked to the wrong category - it should have been WP:ALS which lists almost 300,000 unreferenced articles at present, including nearly one hundred thousand tagged in December 2009 alone. There is a wikiproject doing invaluable work to deal with unreferenced articles, but at present it has taken them ten months to process 37% of the articles tagged in October 2006 - or more than two years to process one month's articles. I don't want to belabor the point, but at this rate, an article tagged in December 2010 will most likely not be dealt with in the lifetime of anyone alive today. Meanwhile, there is a strong argument that a sizable proportion of those articles don't need to be referenced in the first place - such as the 100,000 bot-tagged "Year XXXX in science|art|architecture" articles from Dec 2009 which only link to other (hopefully referenced) articles. They no more need to be referenced than a DYK on the front page.

Leaving that aside, I want to make it clear that I do not - in general - approve of removing {{unreferenced}} tags from unreferenced regular articles - I think it is annoying, and I think it is against consensus. I just don't think it is disruptive - a strong word with a specific meaning. To call something disruptive, it is necessary to be able to show that some useful outcome was prevented or delayed, and how this was so.

Thparkth (talk) 19:25, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

• You don't need a category to find unreferenced articles — all you need is to click random article. I did that just now ten times:

1. Niza, Croatia - no references
2. Nağdalı, Lachin - another stub but referenced by GEOnet.
3. Francisco Martínez Marina - referenced by the Spanish Wikipedia - not a reliable source
4. Naomi King - the first article with a decent reference - the Miami Herald
5. Reynolds Bench - no references but the article is copied from a source - the Geographic Names Information System
6. Li Na (tennis) - a substantial article. It has a few references but nowhere near enough to verify all this information. There's a BLP cleanup tag on one of the sections; it has been there for over a year (the dating bot is not reliable). The editor who placed it has made no other edits to the article. He's a veteran editor and so his approach to the problem is interesting as an example of experienced editing. I am not persuaded that it is working.
7. Passo de Camaragibe - there's some sort of reference but it doesn't tell me anything. It seems to be a link to a database that has been scraped.
8. All the Right Moves - a Tom Cruise movie. It has a couple of links as references but they are not the sort of link that I want to be clicking. I'd rather not have these references in the article.
9. Swimming at the 2007 Summer Universiade. Some tables ripped off from Swimming World magazine. In the UK, this would be a copyright violation. The magazine is cited as a source but, really, it has been plagiarised.

So, none of these articles have satisfactory references by our expected standards. We could scatter lots of cleanup tags on them but that wouldn't be helping, would it? If anything, it would be making matters worse by distracting from agreed priorities such as the unreferenced BLPs. The real problem which is revealed by this brief survey is that referencing is not a fundamental part of the process of article creation and editing. It is a major chore which can only be done well by able and experienced editors. These are in short supply and the one example we see here is just tagging the needed work as someone else's problem.

Now, I'm one of the few editors who actually does add good references to articles. And what is my thanks for having done this thousands of times? It is to have my good faith questioned, for this work to be called fraudulent and deceptive, to be blocked and now subjected to this auto de fé.

So what's the answer? Maybe I should keep a count of every reference which I add and then update a userbox from time to time? But then the nay-sayers will claim that these references are mostly fraudulent and there's no easy way to demonstrate the quality of the work. Perhaps I should step up to GA/FA work where one's work is audited but I don't like what I've seen of the FA process - too bitchy and picky. Perhaps I should give up article work and just hang around policy pages and other discussion pages. Hmm. Let us seek wisdom. A quotation of Dr Johnson comes to mind so I go to Wikiquote to check. I find many good aphorisms there and here are a few which seem fitting:

• I hate a fellow whom pride or cowardice or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl. Let him come out as I do, and bark.

• Dictionaries are like watches; the worst is better than none, and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

• Wickedness is always easier than virtue; for it takes the short cut to everything.

• The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most risible scenes in the farce of life.

• I am inclined to believe that few attacks either of ridicule or invective make much noise, but by the help of those they provoke.

• What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

• Men more frequently require to be reminded than informed.

• All the performances of human art, at which we look with praise or wonder, are instances of the resistless force of perseverance: it is by this that the quarry becomes a pyramid, and that distant countries are united with canals.

• No man is much pleased with a companion, who does not increase, in some respect, his fondness for himself.

• No place affords a more striking conviction of the vanity of human hopes than a public library.

• We are inclined to believe those whom we do not know, because they have never deceived us.

• Example is always more efficacious than precept.

• Self-confidence is the first requisite to great undertakings.

• A man may write at any time, if he will set himself doggedly to it.

• A fly, Sir, may sting a stately horse and make him wince; but one is but an insect, and the other is a horse still.

• No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money.

This last is the quote I had in mind so I shall pause there, take a bath and muse further.

Colonel Warden (talk) 10:14, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Colonel Warden:

1. Thank you for that lengthy and utterly irrelevant digression into the works of Johnson. I'm more of a Pope man myself.
2. Yes, the tagged unreferenced articles are only the tip of the iceberg -- but I would suggest that the tagged ones have a considerably higher chance of rectification than the untagged ones.
3. You bring up the problem of "unreferenced BLPs", and recent efforts to rectify it. How is that problem being identified so that it can be managed? By TAGGING the affected articles. (Which allows Wikipedia to invite editors to "reference a random biography" -- which it could not do without tags) Yet you go out of your way to deny that means of management to the wider problem.
4. You ask "So what's the answer?" The answer is:
   1. STOP REMOVING {{unreferenced}} tags from unreferenced articles without adding references.
   2. Stop trying to find excuses for your disruption.
5. Oh, and you might care to answer the specifics of this RfC, apart from a single already-stricken dif, which is all you've answered so far.

Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 10:42, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

"We could scatter lots of cleanup tags on them but that wouldn't be helping, would it? If anything, it would be making matters worse by distracting from agreed priorities such as the unreferenced BLPs." (i) yes it would be helping, by giving a clear warning to readers, a clear invitation to readers and editors to help, and identifying problem articles (ii) it doesn't distract from unreferenced BLPs since they are categorised separately. Rd232 ^talk 12:09, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Indeed they are categorised separately. How do they find their way into the various BLP sub-cats? By editors adding a tag to identify the issues, as is longstanding practice. pablo 12:14, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes. Rd232 ^talk 12:48, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

• Colonel. Yes we have quality issues on Wikipedia, and some of the poorly referenced articles are in some ways as bad as our unreferenced ones. We will also have endless discussions as to what is or is not a reliable source, looking at the article on that Tom Cruise movie I was surprised that you didn't place any value on the link to Time Magazine. Translations of a Wikipedia article are a different matter - I'm of the view that the translator should include the sources, but it was easy to click on the link and at least source the year of birth and death from it. But we work here by consensus and the consensus is that tagging unreferenced articles with {{unreferenced}} and poorly referenced ones with {{refimprove}} {{primarysources}} or other appropriate tags is part of our modus operandi. I don't believe that anyone is asking you to add these tags yourself, and I'm actively defending you when you remove them correctly, but I would like your agreement that as long as the consensus is to use these tags you will only remove them where consensus would support you in doing so. You are of course free to continue arguing for a change of policy, and I would agree with you that the current arrangements are not working well, though you might not agree with my preferred solution of a DE wiki style prompt for sources in the article creation process. But whilst it is perfectly in order to try and change consensus by persuasion, it is not acceptable to systematically edit in breach of it, and I would like clarification from you that will restrict yourself to arguing for a tagfree wikipedia and not trying to implement it. ϢereSpielChequers 13:33, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

• Yes, I agree. Colonel, I would ask that you consider the variety of ways of working different editors exhibit. Sometimes I pick random articles and add tags as I go along, esp. when tired or having to pay attention to someone or something else, too. I regard this as sorting work, getting articles in virtual piles that can be addressed later, and it puts articles in my watchlist. Sometimes I work my watchlist, and sometimes I work off a list, lately the unreffed BLPs. So the tags are something that I find useful, and I would ask that you give that aspect of them due consideration. If it is the appearance of these tags in the article that troubles you, and I know it troubles others, I would be happy to help work up a proposal to deal with that issue---seems to me we could figure out some way to toggle showing/hiding tags. --Nuujinn (talk) 14:09, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

• Whole-heartedly agree. This is all anyone has been looking for since the first ANI thread. WSQ, if you deleted your current outside view and replaced it with your last post in this thread above, I would be the first to support. No one is trying to force CW to change his opinions about cleanup tags, we're just trying to get some confirmation from him that he understands he can't make unilateral decisions about how cleanup tags should work and then act on them. If he wants to work towards consensus to change how cleanup tags work, then I encourage that. But you simply can't just go around doing what he's been doing. CW, no one wants an "Auto de fé", all we're looking for is confirmation that you understand. SnottyWong ^{spill the beans} 16:46, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Snotty Wong, I'm tempted to base a proposed solution on that, at least as regards the tagging issue. The sourcing issue I may leave to others, though I'm still hoping for a response from the colonel re the 1997 source for a 1998 broadcast. You might want to reread my view, I think you might find you could sign up to that with a "OK I choose to refocus the RFC on the remaining items". I don't yet see any need to delete or strike out my view any of it. ϢereSpielChequers 21:54, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

My problem with your view is that you focus only on the diffs (actually, just the parts of the diffs) that you believe to be justifiable, and you completely ignore everything else. What you ignore most prominently is the overall pattern; the big picture. In many of the edits shown in the diffs, CW removes 2 or 3 cleanup tags, but you comment that one of those removals could be justified as appropriate. What you don't comment on, however, is that in each of the edits CW removes every cleanup tag that is at the top of the article. There is no exception to that. Therefore, it's difficult for me to assume that CW is actually evaluating each cleanup tag for appropriateness, and he just happens to have decided that in every case, all of the cleanup tags were inappropriate. Instead, I must assume that CW is indiscriminately removing all cleanup tags. This is the point which is not addressed in your view, and the reason why I can't support it. This is also the reason why I declined to strike anything from the Cause of Concern based on your outside view (see my comments on your talk page for more detail). SnottyWong ^yak 23:22, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Let's make a deal...

This is not specifically about Colonel Warden, and it's not about unref'd-tags or prods... it's about The Problem™ — what's the problem? Well, folks will differ somewhat, but the nutshell is that there's been a fucking war going on for years concerning deletion.

I've advocated broad topic bans; sometimes voluntary, sometimes as restrictions.

What we need is for a group of editors to drop the stick and back away from the WP:BATTLE. Something like a half dozen from each 'side'. Say for six months. With an option to renew.

• No participation in AfD.
• No editing articles at AfD.
• No moving, or merging, or fucking around about it.
• No passing notes about them, or any other shite, broadly construed.
• No penalty for breaking your word... other than loss of face.

This has been proposed before, so call it bipartisan-supported:

“ Just as I have avoided commenting in AfDs for some time now, anyone else should have no problem taking a step back as well ... it's probably best that the more pollarizing and controversial figures step back from commenting in those discussions and focus on article development anyway as there are plenty of other non-controversial editors who can comment one way or the other.^cite ”

The dozen to be discussed, but I suggest Colonel Warden, Dream Focus, I/Okip, Feyd Huxtable and a few more. I'll offer myself, too (nb: someone find out how many AfDs I've started in the last six months, and the number I've participated in; low numbers, I expect). Jack Merridew 04:56, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

While some sort of voluntary deal between the most combative editors might be helpful, we need to remember we are writing an encyclopaedia. Improvement of articles at AFD is a healthy part of the process — nominators of AFDs really should not think they've lost when an article at AFD gets improved to the point where it clearly belongs in wikipedia. Though I can understand them being embarrassed when it happens by the adding of a source that was easily found via Google. As for moving articles that are at AFD, I've done this myself especially where the surname was in lower case. I don't see how this causes a problem at AFD as long as you leave a redirect, and such moves as well as improving the article can sometimes de-orphan it. I rarely participate in AFDs but I often categorise articles that are at AFD or fixed typos in them, and I see no merit in leaving an article unimproved for a week when one could improve it. ϢereSpielChequers 10:25, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

That's not the point. It's perfectly possible to rescue articles without taking on board the set of behaviours repeatedly found to be disruptive by a whole group of others. That was why JM specifically limited it to a finite group of editors whose behaviour in the process of AfD has caused unnecessary levels of drama. Those in the community whose behaviour on and around AfD does not lead to frequent drama would hopefully not be affected by this. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 11:43, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

That's not how I read the "deal" proposed above. If there were a rephrased deal proposed that concentrated on genuinely disruptive behaviour, and encouraged editors to concentrate on improving articles instead of whatever is genuinely disruptive then that would be a different matter. ϢereSpielChequers 13:04, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Chris's reading is my intent. The 'drama' and the 'disruption' amount to the same thing, and, for those I'm suggesting, the 'improvements' aren't necessarily improvements, they're often filling the article with dubious references; they're faking it. Recall the endless episodes of badgering anyone opining <del>; *this* drives editors away from AfD. They make AfD a WP:BATTLEGROUND. A small group is responsible for endless editorial conflict, a failure to work collaboratively, and they continue to spread or inflame this dispute.

Note that this deal leaves everyone free to improve most articles at any time. The goal here would be to reduce the toxicity and rancor that ensues from the involvement of the more polarizing and controversial figures. fwiw, I was not even considering yourself or DGG. No one is disputing that articles should be improved while they're at AfD; the concerns are about the legitimacy of the improvements and the tactics employed to confound the process. Moves like fixing case are not the issue; shite like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Aircraft design (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Aircraft design process, aircraft design process, aircraft design) and the moves there, are (that had nothing to do with Uncle G's comments re literally breaking things with moves, it's about changing the topic under discussion while in mid-stream and derailing discussion with the aim of 'no consensus'.) A Nobody did a lot of that, and Colonel Warden has taken it up.

Anyway, all of the legitimate improvements and discussion points can be made by others who would remain free to participate. That the suggested editors refuse to step back from the 'trenches' is indicative of their lack of faith that others will get it right. I only suggested a dozen, while there are thousands of active editors available to calmly, civilly, rationally, and appropriately participate. Those editors represent consensus; The editors I'm pointing at represent disruption. Cheers, Jack Merridew 18:01, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I just took a look through yesterday's AFDs to see the drama that User:Jack Merridew is talking about. The closest I found was Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Criticism of Twelver Shi'ism. That looked fairly heated but seemed to work itself out. User:DGG !voted to delete it and I might have too as Criticism of... articles tend to violate WP:NPOV. The AFD that I appear in is Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Floating breech and the remarkable thing about that one is that I'm the only editor to comment on this matter. I think I've called it right and don't see other editors stepping up to fill my place. So, there doesn't seem to be a particular problem at AFD that needs fixing except apathy and lack of attendance. Colonel Warden (talk) 12:49, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

The main problem at AfD is lack of participation. I think Jack's proposal was perhaps a good idea a few years ago; currently not so much. pablo 13:49, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

later, in the light of a little more research Not so much, possibly due to the departure of three or four more combative editors, but the conflict is still there. Chris Cunningham's point below about that spilling out to other places, particularly RfA, is a good one. pablo 23:00, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

The lack of participation is primarily due to the hyper-toxicity of 'the trenches' (Cas's term). If the controversial figures leave it all be, the environment will improve and the level of participation will improve. The keep-at-all-costs set likes a low-participation environment as it will typically leave the field to them and result in no consensus to delete. Anyway, it wasn't really my suggestion; see the cite I gave for the quote. Cheers, Jack Merridew 18:01, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Re this, "The lack of participation is primarily due to the hyper-toxicity of 'the trenches' (Cas's term)". You think so? I mean, the majority of AfD discussions are not contentious, its the contentious ones that we remember and devote too much time to. I think the more people that participate in any AfD makes one of two results more possible: (1) the 'right' result, or (2) a no-consensus keep because it gets too convoluted. Hence, in my opinion at least, greater participation at AfD will not increase deletion rates. But maybe your view is right, I don't know of any study we've done on it. I think low participation rates at AfD are due to the fact that most editors aren't interested in AfD by itself, but only if an article of great interest to them is nominated. With 3.5 million articles, only a few small percentage will see AfD in any given year.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 18:41, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Low participation rates can be due to many things, but the degree to which anyone who isn't opining to keep is badgered and soapboxed against both in active AfDs and afterwards across the whole of projectspace (most notably RfA) has and always has had a chilling effect. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 21:05, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Yup; as we've seen, before. This is one of the reason's I've not yet thrown my hat in the ring. Cheers, Jack Merridew 22:58, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Hypertoxic seems to be an extreme characterization. What I see are mostly straightforward calm discussions. The contentious ones fall into two broad categories, one's in which there are "fans" for lack of a better word of the article's subject, and those between regulars who sometimes or often slip and fail to assume good faith or make snarky comments. I've slipped a few times--it's regrettable, but it happens. I can't help but say that I find it ironic that Jack's bringing this up. --Nuujinn (talk) 18:50, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I've stricken "hyper", fwiw. I'm sure there are many calm discussions out there; I'm not talking about that non-problem, I'm talking about the rancorous AfDs. It's the rancor that's the problem, and I believe that some need to take a step back. Milowent, how about a break? Would you like to see some specific editor give it a break? Jack Merridew 19:20, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Me?!?!? All my comments in AfD are gifts to humanity! But I'll limit myself to one AfD comment per day for the next month if Snotty does the same. That's a real offer.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 21:13, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

gifts to humanity^{{{citation needed}}} Sounds like a side-deal you two might work-out. That one comment at any AfD, or one per AfD? Jack Merridew 22:52, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Only one comment at any AfD per day. So 30 total comments for the month, that's it.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 04:16, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Jack, can you point to a couple of recent examples of AFDs that illustrate the problem you are describing? --Nuujinn (talk) 21:45, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Beyond the aircraft one? I've not participated in many AfD of late. I did note Dream Focus badgering folks with almost 30 comments in AfD/Fictional history of Green Goblin. Jack Merridew 22:52, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I should have been more explicit. You mentioned "rancourous" AFDs as if that's a major problem these days. Not that there aren't any, but it seems like lately the number is reduced, so I'm asking you for some examples, not limited to ones in which you participated. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:05, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Also, I just read through AfD/Fictional history of Green Goblin, that one is pretty bad. My only comment is that editors that always !vote one way do not seem to carry much weight in discussions. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:11, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I expect the number is somewhat reduced. We banned A Nobody, and I/Okip seems to have largely folded. He said he 'hates this site' in one of his more recent posts. This is what Pablo is getting at, above. I've few recent examples at hand, because I've not been much participating in the trenches of late. I'll grant that that may be helping, too.

The Green Goblin AfD is rather over-the-top; Dream Focus does this all the time. Colonel Warden did is in AfD/Girls Just Wanna Have Fun (Xena episode).^{but not recent} This is what DGG's getting at, below.

nb: the " class=texthtml" in your sig is a syntax error; you should remove it.

Cheers, Jack Merridew 01:33, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Tell you what, I'll fix it if you swap that monstrosity of a sig you're hauling around for something small and simple and agree to leave my posts intact, spelling errors included. Deal? (; --Nuujinn (talk) 02:22, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Deal, but the indenting was off and should be kept on track. The above sig was a one-off and motivated by my noticing that Dream Focus's sig is malformed (]]''' should be ''']]). Here's my usual sig; Jack Merridew 02:49, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Fixing indenting is fine, Ah jest don't want everbody thinkin Ah'm smarter then Ah am. Let me know if this doesn't suit--> --Nuujinn (talk) 13:46, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Question: Just something I noticed after you brought up the Aircraft design article and its previous AfD. Is accidentally not putting in a redirect on the AfD as big of a deal and disruptive as the people who voted Delete in the AfD then going into the article's talk page afterwards and making a "consensus" to turn it into a DAB page? I consider the latter to be a much worse problem and I have difficulty in assuming good faith on their purpose of doing so. Silverseren^C 21:17, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm not buying the accidentally. Colonel Warden is not a stupid editor; he knows exactly what it is that he is doing. I'd not seen the discussion that led to that becoming a dab page; you should work on your lack of good faith and use fewer “scare quotes”. You think teh wiki would fail if you took six months off deletion? Jack Merridew 22:52, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't think I have had problems with AfD, so I see no reason to take any time off from it. I largely only involve myself in it now when I get informed of an article that could be improved. I then go in and improve it before I comment at the AfD. Banana powder would be a good example. And my use of scare quotes was, I believe appropriate, since I do not consider two users to be a consensus, especially when one of them was a delete voter in the AfD. Silverseren^C 23:02, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Not surprisingly, people on both sides tend to think that they are being unfairly set on, and that their opponents are winning when they ought not to be. Everyone is particularly aware of the times they have been beaten. I participate much less in AfD than I use to because I think those !voting to deletion are so much in the ascendency that it's not worth arguing with them except on the clearest cases, or the ones so important that it's worth facing the hostility in order to indicate that not everyone feels that way. From the general line of discussion above, it is clear that there are good people who sincerely feel the opposite. Probably both of us have some basis: if it were actually analyzed, we'd probably find that many articles are kept when they shouldn't be, and many are deleted when they shouldn't be, and both of them happen too much of the time--the point is to reduce the total number of errors, and not worry about the balance. Similarly, a high proportion of sources is of less than perfect reliability. I tend to think sometimes they are unreasonably removed when they do contribute to the general notability, the opponents feel that sometimes they are unreasonably inserted when they do not. I conclude that both things happen altogether too much of the time. If people see it as attack & defend, of course they're going to use whatever arguments are available, whether or not they are actually valid. The only way I know to deal with this is to have more people participating without any previously fixed views, on the sort of articles they do not care one way or the other about. I have no idea who it was that suggested it above also. The only way I know of to reduce the toxicity is to really enforce the rule that nobody at AfD comment on other people's arguments--but enforce it in a reasonable way, by striking out such arguments, not punishing those who make them. Perhaps we have reached the point where we need contentious AfDs clerked; I certainly think we need that at RfC. We're ever going to settle the problem that we each of us have somewhat different views of what Wikipedia should be like, so we are going to have to learn to not get angry about it, or those who do not like to see or experience anger will indeed leave. DGG ( talk ) 00:04, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi, David. Good points. This thread is about making a sweeping deal. The editors I suggested are not going to sign-on without a nudge. You're influential with them (and others). What's the downside of contentious editors giving AfD a break? A Nobody's gone, and that may have helped; my reduced participation may have helped, too. Let's do more of this; urge your side to pledge a six month break along the lines of what I proposed. Suggest others from the <del> camp and I'll urge them to abide. Isn't this in line with your view of increased participation by those without a previously fixed view? If we can reduce the rancor, more people will participate in the discussions.

I like the idea of contentious AfDs being clerked. Something like an uninvolved admin simply declares a conduct restriction; some of: one comment per editor per day, a participant ejected from the AfD (and the article for the duration), editors required to keep their post together in a 500 word block without making reference to other editors or their comments (stick to the article issues). The clerking admin could specifically exempt an editor in the 'dozen' from this deal in the case of an article they had a previous significant involvement with (and could cast a baleful eye on the nominator if it is someone close to the other 'side'). We could allow an exemption to the dozen-deal for arguing in the other camp; I'll go argue to save something; ask Dream Focus and Colonel Warden to attend to arguing to delete things. This would apply to working on the articles, too.

We all know the broad patterns here. Let's set aside our differences and solve this war. Cheers, Jack Merridew 02:37, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I really think we need to get this into perspective, folks, and I hope you don't mind me making a few points.

• I dip into AfD when I have time, and I've contributed to a fair number now - and what I see is 100 or so articles taken to AfD per day, with only a very small proportion of those becoming contentious. We tend to remember difficult situations, especially if we have been involved ourselves, and we tend to forget the multitude of non-contentious situations that pass us by every day - that's just human psychology. So my first thought is that problems at AfD are significantly (though not deliberately) exaggerated.
• The battleground nature that erupts in a very small proportion of AfD discussions is regrettable, but I think it is a necessary price we have to pay in order for our community/consensus approach to content creation to work. If some of our most creative contributors are amongst those with the strongest and perhaps most defensive opinions, then that's to be expected - it's just human psychology again.
• I nominate articles for deletion occasionally, and I !vote Delete when I think it is appropriate. But for me, the best result is not that I "win" and an article is deleted, but either that I'm shown to be wrong or that work is done to an article that results in its becoming worthy of being kept. If someone can do either of those things, they gain my respect - our primary purpose here is to build an encyclopedia, not to unbuild a !encyclopedia.
• Concerning the editors suggested in this proposal, and the suggestion that they should keep away from AfD for a while, the only one I recognize is Colonel Warden (the subject of this whole RfC), who I've actually only encountered on a few occasions - sometimes I've agreed and sometimes I've disagreed. Recently, for example, I !voted Delete on an article that I thought was sure-fire non-notable (and was badly written), but the Colonel did some good research and rewrote it to create a pretty decent article that was well worth keeping. In another recent case, Colonel Warden defended another article and uncovered a lot of well-sourced information - in that case, it ended up in a redirect, but even then we had uncovered some good stuff that deserved to be included somewhere. In those cases, had Colonel Warden not worked on the articles and kept away from AfD, we would have lost one article and lost some new information that should be added elsewhere.

Anyway, that's turned out kind of waffly. What I'm really trying to say is that I appreciate the sentiments expressed in this suggestion, and I think various people could learn from them, but I don't think that asking some of our most passionate AfD contributors to stay away is a good move. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 09:49, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

• I think this is a nice idea in theory, but I don't think the ARS will ever agree to it. The ARS tag is too effective of an invitation to bloc voting, as evidenced time and time again, and I can't imagine that a section on a talk page at an RfC about one of their most partisan members will make them see it as anything else. The current AfD for blue hair shows this, with votes from members who have done little or no actual editing of the article. AniMate 00:34, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

  Thanks. Of course they won't agree. Notice how they've fled from the thread. Rather disappointed that DGG won't pick-up on it. In the end, it's more useful to have pitched it and had them not even consider it. In the spirit of this proposal, and per Cas's recent note, I'll refrain from opining on the basket of sentences, which is a wonderful turn of phrase. Offer 'em list of colors to stuff up their noses. Seems no one followed the cite on the quote I offered... “Rescue” is not about editing articles, it is about obtaining a non-delete result in the BATTLE. Cheers, Jack Merridew 04:12, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

  Rescue is not about !voting--the majority of AfDs are and always have been closed as well-deserved deletes. (If it were about !voting, and the ARS were dedicated to that, and effective, such would not be the case.) The facts are sufficient to disproves Jack's argument, just as sourcing will be more effective than any degree of ingenuity in trying to bias a discussion. . Normally, rescue means finding sources that show notability ; sometimes it is answering other objects--in each case, so the consensus will agree, and keep them. The ARS is not to my knowledge an organized body, but a rather a loose association of people who share a common interest, though not necessarily to the same extent or in the same manner; as with other Wikiprojects, the only qualification for membership is to list oneself as a member. (I joined to express a common purpose, as I have joined a number of other Wikiprojects, but otherwise ignore both their working pages and their notices; I suspect that goes for the majority of people listed there. ) If I were to focus my activities on deleting articles I considered hopeless, I'd do as the responsible deletionists here do: pick the ones that look unsourceable, try to source, and them nominate the ones that were actually impossible to source adequately=a very effective way to get articles deleted. As someone who is focused on rescuing articles, I do the exact same thing, except for trying to work on the ones I think will have some possibilities. Both approaches to Wikipedia deletion are entirely reasonable. To argue for rescue while not willing to work for it is lazy and not particularly productive; to argue for deletion without trying to verify that it should be deleted, likewise. (If CW never effectively sourced articles, I would think very different of him.) I really am puzzled by the focus on the ARS, which to my mind has accomplished little harm, and much less good than was hoped for. CW saves articles because of the work he does, not his affiliation with any group here. If he makes mistakes, they're his own also. DGG ( talk ) 07:31, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

  David, I'm trying to get a dialogue going with you... yet you reply to me in the third person. I see that AniMate referred to the ARS above and I replied using 'they', but we're both talking about a small subset of the 300+ people, most of whom are only loosely affiliated in the manner you characterize yourself. We're all talking about the ones who are hyper-aggressive in their argumentation, who are extreme in the dogmaticism and stridency, who engage in various dodgy tactics: folks modeling themselves after A Nobody and I/Okip. These are the folks that *are* the ARS. So when ‘we’ refer to the ARS, we don't really mean you, WereSpielChequers, or Jclemens, or most of the other 300+. We mean the problematic fistful; those are the ones I'm suggesting step-back.

  You (and Cas) generally supported my taking a step back from AfD, and I have. I've relativity little involvement in the past year... and you still say that most articles taken there end up justly deleted. Why will you not support having some of the more controversial figures from “your” camp giving it a rest? That's a quote from A Nobody, up there. He, too, was fine with seeking to remove me and others from the trenches... but , of course, he never stepped-away for long, or much changed his tune.

  A few folks have commented to the effect that the carnage in the trenches is not as bad as it was. *good* That would be due to the project having resolved the issue of A Nobody and I/Okip. Anyone saying AfD is now a basket of kittens? We would not be here if that was the case. More resolution is required. These folks look to you for guidance, and this imposes a responsibility on *you*. They won't listen to me, or to anyone who's ever been critical of them, who's ever opined delete on some turd of an article they like. We're the Evil Deletionist Scum, to them. A Nobody liked to use all-caps DENY re his critics, as if we were no different than trolls like Grawp and Wik (prolly before your time). They listen to you, and you need to stop enabling their behaviour and start moderating it.

  I implored Jclemens to block Colonel Warden, and he did. He very much didn't want to, but he saw that it was needful and did what was necessary. You have to take the lead in solving the problem that the community has with the behaviour of these users. All their critics can do is plod through the various DR steps that will eventually lead them to BANTOWN or imposed restrictions. If you don't get your oar into this, that's where this will eventually go. But if you do the right thing, you can change their approach, and save their hides. As the say in Bali, up to you. Sincerely, Jack Merridew aka david 08:45, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Check out the "off with his head" oppose at this RFA yesterday. The "off with his head" phrase is a small joke, but the whole thread that ensues is pure battleground and point-making by CW. He doesn't seem to be taking any of this much to heart all (it's clearly a piece of retaliation for some slight real or imagined). [9]. Jack -- as for DGG not wanting to talk directly to you, of course not; he has no interest in the beliefs or opinions of those who disagree with him, as his user page makes clear: I do not attempt to convert my opponents--I aim at converting their audience. Bali ultimate (talk) 16:31, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't know Richwales and have not read the rest of his RfA. His is the only current RfA and it's currently at 76%, so he would seem to be a non-idiot. The joke re “decapitation” is fine; the fuss over the edit is not. The POINTy nom is appalling; I've {{rescue}}-tagged as this is what the ARS purports to be all about. It'll be interesting to see what can be found. I've seen DGG's user page statement; it's been there for as long as I can remember. It sure has a whiff of cordite about it. I'll be mostly off until the new year (aluminium tubes in the sky). Merry Christmas, Jack Merridew 17:47, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the AFD nom is badly timed, pointy, and inappropriate--that's the kind of example folks should be using here. I think CW has some valid points about the edit to the decapitation article, but it would have been enough to point to Tahvo Putkonen and the related edits to make his point. I disagree that the joke "off with his head" is fine--that, too, is ill advised, especially in an RFA discussion where tensions may run high. Also, I note that CW was asked to consider rephrasing it, but thus far has not. I hope he does. --Nuujinn (talk) 01:31, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I'd not seen Kingturtle's request. I'm impressed at the level of attention this is getting. Cheers, Jack Merridew 05:42, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

@Bali; looks like we're only going to get an indirect elucidation. Cheers, Jack Merridew 05:42, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Jack, I will be glad to discuss with you the nature of AfD, and the way of dealing with helpful but imperfect editors, but this will be better done outside of a already polarized conflict, and not in a context where people are expected to discuss things with those who take the occasion to belittle them. DGG ( talk ) 05:26, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I didn't see this when posting the above, and it didn't {{ec}}. And I just had a connection outage, so I'm tardy replying:

The nature of AfD is pretty well understood. It's the solution to the problem that remains elusive. Various versions of my “deal” have been floated over time, and the die-hard inclusionists consistently fail to even appear at the table. There's no coordinated campaign to delete things. What there is, is a spectrum of views held by regular editors of this project, and that includes a fair number who see things being inappropriately included, who see inappropriate referencing being used, ... disruptive tactics employed, who see, quite clearly, that there is a group of editors intent on thwarting any and all efforts to delete anything that is not an outright copyvio, a hoax, or a gross BLP violation. Beyond that, they want an article on damn near anything you can type between pairs of brackets. This is a recipe for endless baskets of sentences. They fragment topics to an inappropriate granularity instead of building content up into decent sized baskets of distilled wisdom. They drag the whole project down by creating articles about crap.

The point of discussing The Problem here, as opposed to just between us over a nice cup of tea, is that we've a gathering of a fair number of interested users and there's an opportunity to actually forge a solution, while the fire's hot, so to speak. I'd be fine with a sidbar with you, but it would just be about us coming to understand each other. But in that context, there is no opportunity to actually resolve the ocean of rancor that washes over whatever AfD the usuals chose to cluster-fuck over.

Anyway, AniMate's right; this deal was stillborn. This whole RfC/U is going nowhere, and I'm going to California for the rest of the year. I'll check in a bit, but mostly not. Happy Holidays to all; ciao, Jack Merridew 08:11, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Fresh examples

I am catching up on the backlog AFD of discussions which I have missed. In the course of this, I expect to be editing articles to address the issues raised in the discussions. I shall list relevant examples here to demonstrate my customary behaviour and the way in which this improves our content:

1. Insult comedy

Yeah, you don't have to be a hardcore inclusionist to recognize that as a bad afd nom. Don Rickles alone is enough to establish this as a notable genre of comedy. I've been reading this TLDR nightmare which is more the type of contentious fancruft pop culture content that tends to descend into endless bickering between a few users. Beeblebrox (talk) 21:12, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

View by Kww?

At View by Kww, Kww brings up the question of whether the edit summaries used by Colonel Warden are appropriate. Leaving aside that general question, the examples Kww uses are all redirects that CW reestablishes as articles with references. I've read the prior discussion Kww refers to, so I see that the two are in conflict. While I would advise CW to be more complete in edit summaries as a polite and easy way to avoid this kind of contention, I'm curious about these particular examples. Assuming that I, as an editor, know that an article has been converted to a redirect, is it not an act of simple logic to deduce that if references are added, that the redirect has been undone? Or am I missing something? --Nuujinn (talk) 17:26, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

You are assuming knowledge. A review of his contributions shouldn't require one to know the state of the article before his addition. In general, Colonel Warden has a disdain for notability requirements, and has been accused on numerous occasions of misrepresenting and stretching sources beyond the breaking point to create the appearance of notability where none actually exists. He hides them in edit summaries to thwart review. In general, it can be assumed that any article based solely on sources found by Colonel Warden needs careful review.—Kww(talk) 17:55, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't believe I am assuming knowledge, but perhaps I am not expressing myself clearly enough. If I know the article is a redirect, I can assume, I think, that addition of sources means the direct has been undone. If I don't know anything about the article, what I know from the summaries is that references have been added to an article. Now, I don't know that a redirect has been undone, but I would think neither would I care, really, since I don't know anything about that article. You've provided three examples, and I looked on the talk pages, and saw no controversy expressed, so I'm guessing no one cared about the redirects being undone.

To be more general about context, as I've said, I have butted heads with CW myself a time or two, and I'm not discounting that some of the items being discussed are significant, but it seems to me that some of the examples folks are bringing to the table, such as these three, are pretty weak cases for disruption. Honestly, the notion that CW could hide anything in an edit summary is absurd--by this time, I'll bet at least a dozen people are analyzing his every edit. And if you believe that "it can be assumed that any article based solely on sources found by Colonel Warden needs careful review," why not provide examples of articles that are based solely on sources he provided and show that he is "misrepresenting and stretching sources beyond the breaking point to create the appearance of notability where none actually exists"? I don't know, it might be the case, and finding some good examples of that would bolster the case against CW than citing three failures to announce in an edit summary that he's undoing a redirect of an article to which apparently no one objected. I'm just sayin'. --Nuujinn (talk) 18:25, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

To claim that no one objected to his resurrection of Bulbasaur or that Teletubbies thing shows a failure to research history: both have been taken to ANI. Bulbasaur basically made it to Arbcom in the form of the Episodes and Characters decisions. Look at "Outside comment by Reyk" to see an example of what Reyk refers to as "phony sources". My main memory of him stooping to absolute garbage was Biker's Bell, which you can see if you are an admin. If not, you will just have to rely on the summary of his actions at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Biker's bell.—Kww(talk) 18:55, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

I see, I was looking at the article talk pages under the mistaken assumption that conflicts would be discussed there first, silly me. With all due respect, ANI is the seat of all drama so I don't pay much attention to it, but I took a look and what I am seeing is what appears to me to be largely philosophical and personality conflicts, with some mud on multiple faces and some editors getting carried away. Regarding bulbasaur, I see that you rightly brought the issue up at ANI, and discussion ceased after Black Kite started the RFC. The RFC for bulbasaur seems to indicate that there is substantial disagreement as to what should be done with it, but CW doesn't seem to stand out as particularly disruptive, just one of a number of editors who should have known better than to edit war. And I see that the RFC was dropped, which is a shame, really. And no, I'm not an admin, but looking at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Biker's bell, I see that a number of editors reacting rather badly, verging on incivility. The sources CW added may have been total crap, and he should know better, but he seems in that discussion less disruptive than some other editors. Honestly, I hope that CW does change some of his behaviors, but I think those of you with serious concerns need to narrow your focus if you want to show those of us trying to work through the material what's really the problem here. I'll take another look at Reyk's examples, I glanced at a couple and recall being underwhelmed, but I could well have missed something. Also, FWIW, I just went through a number of articles CW started looking for weak sourcing, and I'm not seeing much of a problem. And again FWIW, I do not subscribe to CW's extreme inclusionism, but I think he's entitled to his opinion. --Nuujinn (talk) 20:07, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

The point, which you seem to miss, is that Colonel Warden's edit summaries do not indicate what he is doing, and serve to actively mislead as to what the major effect of his edits *are*. If you resurrect an article and add one reference, the resurrection is a major part of the edit, and he refuses to mention that in his summaries. Why do you think that is acceptable? Or is it that you need to me trawl through and find a dozen more examples? I can, but, as I said, the nature of his deception slows the search.—Kww(talk) 22:52, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks KWW, your three examples are clear, but the most recent is four weeks ago, a second is from March and the third from 2008. Is this a current problem? ϢereSpielChequers 23:43, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Not in the last four weeks, but he has never made any statements that he will stop, and has made statements to the effect that he will continue. Like I said, I can trawl through and find more examples in the period. It's been a chronic problem.—Kww(talk) 00:08, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Please don't. A pattern has been established. Rather than examining the specific incidents in detail it is more important to identify the problematic behavior patterns and suggest potential solutions. Really, that is the problem, every time a pattern is identified somebody asks for examples. They get them, and then they try and find some reason it is not a problem, or try to suggest that taken individually they are not so bad. That rather misses the point that we are not trying to look at them as individual incidents but as part of an overall pattern. So, much of what you see is not all that bad unto itself and would not be a big deal if it were an isolated case that only happened one time. If I drive past a stop sign one time, that was probably just a mistake, a moment of inattention. If I drive past half the stop signs I see over a period of years that is a pattern of not stopping for stop signs. I don't see what is so complicated about that logic. Now apply that to what we see here. If CW had used an edit summary one time that minimized the fact that he was actually making a very major edit to a page, that could be chalked up to inattention or forgetfulness. However that is obviously not the case, it is part of a pattern of deliberate deception and a piece of the whole problem of CWs ends justify the means approach to content. Beeblebrox (talk) 00:43, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

If we are going to abandon the RFC for lack of modern evidence then I agree there is no need to look further. However I do find some of the issues raised here are troubling, I accept we will need to close this RFC if we can't put together a case based on recent editing, but I'm not quite convinced that we are ready to do so. ϢereSpielChequers 16:29, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

• A few points
  1. I agree if the edit summaries are intentionally misleading we've got a problem.
  2. I think that 3 errors (if that's what they are) in more than 6 months isn't much to hang your hat on. Does he generally clearly note undoing redirects?
  3. I saw that 2 years ago he didn't feel that clearly noting the undoing of redirects was important. I'd hope he'd no longer hold that opinion.

Hobit (talk) 04:59, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Four weeks ago is a modern edit. I guess I can get someone to write a script to go through his edits and compile an exhaustive list, but it's not just three cases. Those were three that I could easily find links to. His response to my last complaint was to delete the comment with an indicator that he had replied elsewhere but the indicated section doesn't contain any response to my complaint whatsoever.—Kww(talk) 17:03, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

you are making accusations you cannot prove. It is several weeks now that evidence has been requested and has not been forthcoming. To say that if someone looked there would no doubt be evidence, when evidence has not been presented, is not a fair accusation of wrong-doing to make against another person. The actual standard I'd suggest , even so, is something significantly more that 5 or 10% error. I'm not aware of anyone here who can consistently do better than 5% , unless they limit themselves to the obvious. DGG ( talk ) 04:23, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I'll get the script written to trawl through his contributions. However, there is no indication that this is any kind of "error": he has stated that he did it intentionally because he doesn't consider the intervening redirect to be of importance.—Kww(talk) 04:39, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Examples from this year (earliest first): [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]. Kanguole 15:04, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

• The examples provided by Kww were cases which were already the subject of significant attention. For example, the most recent case of Akela (Jungle Book) arose after I observed a conversation between DGG and Lord Orpeth. I looked into what was going on and it seemed that Akela was a substantial character which would be very well known to British readers so I decided to help out by improving that one. I added a citation to a good source - The Routledge history of literature in English and removed the unreferenced tag which appeared in the earlier version which I was working from. My edit summary was "+ citation -tags &c." which is a formula which I have used before and so my browser prompts me with it to save me retyping it all.

This edit did not go unnoticed as the article was tagged again within 6 hours. The idea that there was any deception here seems both false and absurd. In a case of this sort, there are often several editors involved who have the article(s) on their watchlist and they will be well aware of what is happening. It was obvious from the outset that Lord Orpeth is heavily involved in work upon this group of articles and so regularly reviewing and editing its members. In such cases, my edit summaries emphasise that a citation is being added because this is usually what is wanted - a citation to a reliable source which establishes notability. Other aspects of the edit are covered in the catch-all "&c." per the advice of WP:EDSUM: "Mentioning one change but not another one can be misleading to someone who finds the other one more important; add "and misc." to cover the other changes."

I went on to do more with the article and commented on the article's talk page, endorsing the comment of another editor there that merger was inappropriate. My actions were thus in accord with talk page consensus.

The bottom line in this case is that the article has been significantly improved by me and no-one now seems to dispute its status. So, what is the problem supposed to be here? If editors still find my edit summaries too terse then I shall perhaps be more prolix. But, in reviewing Kww's own edit summaries, I don't find them a good model of clarity. For example, he often seems to make edits of this sort. The edit summary indicates that there's a sockpuppet issue but doesn't give any details of the edit being made to the article. And the diff provides no details either. As an ordinary editor, I have little idea what is being done here and so there is a lack of transparency.

Colonel Warden (talk) 13:37, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Colonel Warden, thank you for the explanation. I also note that you did put a note on the talk page mentioning your actions. I think increased verbosity in your edit summaries and on the talk page would be helpful in avoiding misunderstandings in the future. The same likely applies to others, I find myself considering how I might be misunderstood as I often use terse edit summaries. Also, nice job on the article. --Nuujinn (talk) 13:56, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

All anyone is asking of the Colonel is a simple statement the effect of "any time my edit undoes a redirect, I will note that in the edit summary". I can't see how that is an unreasonable request, but it has been refused every time I make it. Trying to cover such a major change in "&c" is ridiculous. Note that he still won't agree to this. That is the essence of the dispute, and the essence of the behaviour that is disruptive. He knows that other editors consider his behaviour unacceptable, and, instead of taking the simple step of correcting it, persists and attempts to cast aspersions on other editors. If this was the first time, I'd accept the "misunderstanding" label. It's not the first time.

As for my edit summaries: that's the edit summary for removing material that was added by an editor in evasion of a block or ban. The content of the material removed is irrelevant, and describing it in any detail would defeat the purpose of removing it.—Kww(talk) 14:55, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Note to all: ten more examples have been added to the view. I hope that ten examples in the current year is enough to demonstrate that this is a willful piece of behaviour, not an accident or misunderstanding.—Kww(talk) 15:14, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm going to make sure that all of my future edit summaries include "misc. &c." so that I'm covered against any complaints that may arise about my edit summaries. CW, I'm pretty sure what people are looking for in these cases is something more like "Restored previous version of article in place of redirect". Something that clearly shows you converted a redirect into an article. "+citations -tag &c." gives absolutely no indication that you've converted a redirect. And which tags is the "-tag" referring to? SnottyWong ^verbalize 15:22, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with Kww that this does show an undesirable patten. First, let me say what I think is appropriate to say in extenuation:

I do not consider these edit summaries deceptive, because it is extremely clear in reading the edit history what has happened, and nobody who was actively working with the article would have failed to see they had been reverted. Reverting a redirect is very obvious in the edit history, especially now that we have size counts. Indeed, once something is redirected, any further edit to the redirect is unusual, and seeing these in the edit history is a pretty clear indication that the article was expanded. If someone is even glancing at related changes or a watchlist, the size of an action is immediately visible--andI for example rely on that indication in screening a very large watchlist. However, when looking at a watchlist and seeing the large addition, one soes not simultaneously see the revert--one must recall hat this has happened to catch it & this is not necessarily all that likely with large watchlists.

It is also true that in general the actual reverts could be well defended, that enough was added to justify reverting the redirect. Additionally, some of the examples here countered equally bad examples. The first Earl of Stamford, reverted a redirect that was equally done with adequate summary, by Ironholds. [20]

Anyone might do something this this once in a while: for example. I know I sometimes go into an article to copyedit, say so in the edit summary, realize that something more drastic is necessary, do it, but neglect to add to the summary. Nor do I necessarily mention all the tags I add or remove. But if I had done something quite as drastic as some of these I hope I would have either remembered to change the edit or make a null edit to add another summary. I might have missed even this once or twice, but them I would have apologized when someone first noticed.

More generally, there is so much to be done here that we all do take short cuts. There are many other ways of making bad edit summaries that are equally or even more misleading. It is very tempting especially with an unwatched article when one knows one is right to simply do the necessary and hope that it really was unwatched. It is very tempting--and not at all infrequent --to make a series of very small edits that none the less have a cumulative effect: for example gradually removing a large number of examples. It is tempting also to say something like "remove bad examples", while removing the entire content, or say something like , adjust to match guidelines when the actual change is to match a very disputed view of the guidelines. And so on. Experienced people learn to defeat such tactics, by simply looking at the actual edits.

Now, despite what can be said about extenuation, this sort of edit summary use was wrong. Edit summaries are intended to help the inexperienced. They do not necessarily know what they are expected to watch for, or to watch at all. If an article is drastically changed, they do not know the extent it was justified or the reason for doing it.

Even for the experienced, long watchlists are hard to deal with. if one works with many articles, one doe not usually remember all the details of each of them. To cope with the workload here, we need all the help we can get. The point of an edit summary is to alert someone who may even be glancing at the record.

More generally, ahortcuts have to be done with judgement. One of the rules for showing good judgement is that if it something to which someone is likely to object, one must to be candid and fully disclose it. I do not think all of the ones here were done with good judgement in this respect. As I said just above, lots of people tend to hide what they do from those who would oppose it. (It's a very frequent method of POV-pushing)

Nor is it good judgement to deny ones errors. I make them, and if someone shows them to me I admit them and correct them. Even if they tell me about them in a thoroughly hostile spirit, I still admit it and correct them.

In particular, it is the merest sort of protective instinct that, if one knows one is under hostile scrutiny, one must be extra careful about everything that could possibly be misinterpreted. .

What should be done? I am not a blind supporter of CW. I have told him for some time that is is overusing some of his methods. There is a reason in acting provocatively at times, and a reason sometimes to call attention by pointy behavior. (Myself, when I want to be provocative, I say provocative things rather than do them-- if done right it gets the point across without being disruptive). He's lately been doing this too much, and he needs to change. I agree completely with Kww above that a fair minimum we are " asking of the Colonel is a simple statement the effect of "any time my edit undoes a redirect, I will note that in the edit summary". ". DGG ( talk ) 17:02, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Agreed. There is now plenty of evidence that this is an ongoing problem and CW should really agree to note all such actions. It is, after all, the main thing that he's doing in those edits. This would ideally be one outcome of this RfC. At the same time I'd hope that if he does agree to this and forgets to do one or two no one will jump all over him for it. Hobit (talk) 17:25, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I think all anyone is looking for are edit summaries which accurately describe what the edit was, in particular when the edit is major or not a run-of-the-mill, every day edit. This is expected of all of us, and the vast majority of us comply. This is not difficult to do, nor is it difficult to know when a longer edit summary is appropriate, and when a short abbreviation will suffice. We shouldn't have to tell CW, "Ok well, from now on, whenever you change a redirect into an article, you should really say so in your edit summary" and "You shouldn't remove cleanup tags without fixing the problem that they're referring to" and on and on. All of these overly specific instructions we're forced to give CW are reminiscent of teaching 3-year-olds how to act. What other blatantly obvious instructions must we give to CW to ensure that he is behaving in a non-disruptive way? At some point, the response of "Ok CW, well now you've been warned, so don't do it again" has got to change to "CW, you should have known better and you shouldn't need a warning for such things." Editors should not need to have babysitters constantly checking their contributions to make sure they're behaving. In my opinion, CW is an expert at playing dumb, and this is yet another example of the games that CW plays to continue pushing his POV. SnottyWong ^{spill the beans} 18:15, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

I have to concur. It brings to mind a small boy whom, having been told not to throw rocks at his sister, proceeds to pelt his sister with small clods of dirt. When told not to do that, the boy begins to pelt hard clumps of dog feces. When told not to do that, ....—Kww(talk) 19:24, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Exactly, and we can either play his game, or we can send a clear message that we're not that dumb and we won't tolerate the games anymore. I believe this is what Jclemens tried to do by blocking CW, but the outpouring of drama from CW's supporters seems to have diluted that message substantially. SnottyWong ^confess 19:36, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

• I would like more than "any time my edit undoes a redirect, I will note that in the edit summary". Because, like Kww's example of various missiles the small boy launches, there are other significant changes to an article that it would be better to describe rather than using a catch-all "&c", a minimal "-tag" or employing a term which may be unfamiliar to many users (especially new users) and then requiring them to visit User:Colonel Warden/glossary to construe. I know that I do not sometimes explain my edits fully, I think that I do when there is a major change, however. pablo 20:12, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

• Ok, I'm convinced by the list provided by Kanguole that there's a pattern, and while I do not personally think that the terse edit summaries are an attempt at deception as some have suggested (simply because it could not work as a deceptive practice given the number of eyes upon him), it is clear to me that Colonel Warden would be well advised agree to use complete edit summaries or notes on talk pages if only to help defuse the situation. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:30, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

• Not ".. or notes on talk pages ..", please. The idea is to be able to see this by looking at his contribution summary, not by digging into the history and talk page of every page he has edited. He has obscured his tracks well enough to make it difficult to gather evidence, and there's no reason for that to continue. Note that to find these links, Kanguole had to download CW's contribution history to a local computer and then run scripts over the result to collect the evidence. Placing notes on talk pages won't get rid of that problem.—Kww(talk) 00:52, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Personally, I think if we ask for one, we should ask for both, if we are considered undoing a revert that significant a change. And we should ask the same of ourselves. Of course, I've spent several hours the last few days walking through diffs to make sure I could see what exactly was happening to a number of articles through time. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:59, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

• In most of the examples provided by Kanguole, I indicated what was being done by "rv" - the customary abbreviation for revert. For example, in the first case, the edit summary was "Harry rather than Henry, eccentricity, rv, &c.". This indicated that I was reverting the previous edit and addressing it in various ways. Now, "rv" is perhaps too terse but it is a common abbreviation here. I was wondering myself what "ce" meant when I saw it a couple of times this evening. Then I thought for a moment, checked an edit and figured out that it must mean "copy edit". I don't particularly like that usage but so it goes.

Now in such a case as Harry Grey, 3rd Earl of Stamford, it seems that you don't appreciate what is being done. DGG gets closest with his observations above and I suppose that's because he too is sometimes adding serious content. When I perform an edit of this sort, I'm usually wading deep in sources and the article, mulling over the details and deciding how to put it all together. When I come to write the edit summary at the end, it's the content which is at the forefront of my mind because that's the substantial thing - the encyclopedic information that we're supposed to be here for. My edit summary tries to convey the essence of the content edit succinctly and, as I don't want to repeat it all, I usually abbreviate quite severely. In this case, it seemed that the trouble had been confusion between the names Harry and Henry and so that's what I emphasised. The eccentricity of the person had been detailed by the source and so I mention that. The revert of the redirect is not dwelt upon because that's a fading memory. The explanation of why I am reverting is implicit - it is because I have found some more facts and sources about this nobleman and am adding them to the article.

To address this confusion, I may unbundle my edits so that they are more atomic. If each edit does just one main thing then it may be easier to summarise. I have no fixed policy about these things - I just evolve my style as things come to me and and I learn more wrinkles like the "ce" abbreviation. But if you've taken this to the point of developing code to analyse my edits then what is the point? Why are you so interested in the fine detail of these edits? I think I get a clue from Yellowslime's contribution which I noticed this evening:

"Here here. I've had this page on my watchlist since like 2008, in anticipation of a discussion being started on his problematic behavior. In the intervening years, things don't seem have improved. Yilloslime TC 18:59, 7 December 2010 (UTC)"

I couldn't remember this guy so look back to see what his beef was and it seems to be a content dispute about Singapore Airlines. He and another editor were locked in conflict and I helped the matter along by finding a good source which verified the information which was disputed. He thanked me at the time, "Kudos to Colonel Warden for digging up a reliable source ..." but, because this didn't suit his case, he returns now two years later to get his revenge. You guys just seem to be interested in finding sticks to beat me with. Why should I help you do this? What's in it for me?

Colonel Warden (talk) 01:31, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I think the unbundling notion is quite a good one, especially if you provide a summary for each. I'm glad that you're responding to these comments, and I can understand that you might feel attacked. Indeed, I cannot argue that there is none of that here. But I think you could help us figure out what we could do together to ease these tensions, yes? --Nuujinn (talk) 01:37, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

To answer your question of what is in it for you, if we can resolve these issues here through some sort of voluntary agreement the chances are much lower that there will be further drama related to your editing. That has obvious benefits for you, and for the project as a whole. That remark from Yilloslime is unfortunate and does not represent anyone but that user. This isn't supposed to be about getting revenge on you, it's supposed to be about identifying and resolving issues with your approach to editing here without threats of blocks or bans looming over you, as they would be at ArbCom or ANI. I know this can't be easy, to see so much energy expended on analyzing and critiquing your edits. Anyone who has ever gone through an RFA knows what that is like, and I'm sure I am not the only one who appreciates the fact that you are taking the time to engage and discuss all this. Hopefully by the end of the thirty days (or before) we can arrive at some solution that is agreeable to most participants, but the more extremist users will never be satisfied until you are either declared a saint or permanently banned, depending on which extreme they support. We should all do our best not to let extremism from any quarter distract us from the real issues identified here. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:16, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

To be perfectly frank, Colonel, it's because I don't find your judgment on sources trustworthy, and you have stated on multiple occasions that you have problems seeing the necessity of WP:N. You resurrect articles that when there is significant disagreement over the notability of the topic.

Take the noted difference in the edit summary for http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bulbasaur&action=historysubmit&diff=348819275&oldid=340008393 for example: you included material from http://my.hsj.org/Schools/Newspaper/tabid/100/view/frontpage/articleid/336320/newspaperid/1422/Pokemon_Pres_Spearot_Uses_Cartoon_Icons_To_Give_Children_A_Wii_Bit_of_Joy.aspx. That material is from a high school newspaper, and pertains to a high school Pokemon fundraiser. The only mention of the topic is as an aside about the favorite Pokemon of a high-school student. There's no way to seriously defend that as a suitable material for a Wikipedia article.

The purpose of having edit summaries when you make changes like that is to allow editors to review the edits that are most likely to have problems.

Your "fading memory" defense would be more credible if I could find any undoing of a redirect where you noted that you were doing so. I can't find any. How is it that it always slips your mind, even when you know other editors find the practice highly objectionable? This kind of thing is why I find extending you any assumption of good faith so difficult: it's so much more likely that you do it intentionally in order for your edits to evade scrutiny.—Kww(talk) 03:22, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Kww, here is where I decisively part company with you. We've reached more or less of an agreement about edit summaries and reverting redirects, which is the most clearly demonstrable of the problems, and it might be well to leave it at that. You asked for a reasonable admission, you've gotten agreement from CW's strongest supporters, and from himself. But instead you seem to be attacking the good faith of another editor--and such a line makes attempts at compromise meaningless. I do not remember every edit I have made in the last 4 years, and I do not think every active editor who works on a wide range of topics does; nor will I now say that everything I may have said in the past four years is correct, and I would question the self-perception of anyone who actually maintained such a position. If I really set my mind to it, I could attack at least 2/3 of the sources used here as being used at least somewhat inappropriately or with insufficient detail. I cannot believe that at this point you would want to undo the good result of several weeks of hard work from all of us. DGG ( talk ) 08:46, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

attacking the good faith of another editor.

[Jack Merridew] is the only editor active in Wikipedia who I feel certain is acting in deliberate bad faith.

WP:KETTLE, WP:BATTLE, WP:ABF. Jack Merridew 01:28, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

• On a similar note, given the above discussion I was going to agree with kww's view listed on the main page. But the sentence about lies made that impossible. If folks stay on the actions you'd all like fixed and stop trying to ascribe evil motivations I think you'd get a lot farther with forming a consensus. Hobit (talk) 13:19, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

• Yes, I agree completely. As CW noted, he did use rv in many edit summaries to denote his actions, an abbreviation that is specifically allowed at WP:EDITSUMMARY, and I fail to see what a revert of a redirected page could mean but a restoration. Given the disputes, I still endorse the notion that CW would do well to be more explicit in edit summaries and talk pages, but the statement which could be construed as personal attacks need to stop, all around. --Nuujinn (talk) 13:27, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

(responding to all three) You can't really have an open RFC without having negative statements. It really does come down to the core dispute between people about CW. There's one camp that sees him as a reasonable content contributor with occasional lapses, and another that sees him as a chronically disruptive editor that makes occasional good contributions. In one sense the only thing that matters is whether the edit summaries stop. However, I think it's still important to come to conclusions about motivations. The one I provided above is a classic example of why I have formed the opinion of CW that I have: it was a bad edit in so many facets. Bad content, bad source, and a licensing violation (it was copied from a project page without attribution). These are the kind of problems I expect from a rookie child editor. CW is not a rookie, and not a child.—Kww(talk) 14:54, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I disagree that motivations are relevant. Actions are relevant, not motivations. Gavin Collins comes to mind as an editor with apparently good motivations. And motivations are not knowable to us, speculating on what motivates an editor is not helpful. --Nuujinn (talk) 15:45, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I take it if motivation is off the table as a topic we will also not hear any more defense of CWs actions based on his supposed motivations. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:22, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

I can't speak to that, but feel free to call me on it if I defend or condemn him based on my belief as to what his motivations are, or ask me to chime in when you see it done. I also think that if we are to get any consensus on any of this we need to tighten up our own behavior in general. I've been drafting a view on that aspect, but haven't decided it is worth it. The short version is that in reviewing the diffs presented, I've found a lot of confrontational phrasing by a number of editors. It appears to me that the disagreements about what ARS does or should do are bleeding through here as well, and I think we all know how high feeling in that area have run at times. My hope is that we can all agree to tone things down a bit and work at playing nice, and it feels to me as it there's a tipping point here where we might get some good out of the discussions if we are careful, both in regard to CW and in the general debate about ARS. But then delusion springs eternal in the valley of my pea sized brain. --Nuujinn (talk) 21:16, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

One more point: I have no intent of derailing things. If we can get agreement from CW to not undo redirects without noting it explicitly in its edit summary, that can be a solution to the view that it has been an unintentional lapse, and it can be a solution to the view that it has been done with malice aforethought. There are some solutions out of this RFC that would require agreement on intent, and some that would not. That solution falls into the category of one where we can all agree it's a problem even if we don't agree on why it's a problem.—Kww(talk) 02:40, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Well said. Hopefully Colonel Warden and others will take from this discussion that being verbose in edit summaries is a good thing. --Nuujinn (talk) 16:14, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Let's hope so. It is depressing to read that the same issue was raised in December 2008 and received the same responses, down to "&c". Kanguole 10:09, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

proposal draft - let's just do the minimum

I believe there's a consensus here that CW has disrupted Wikipedia. We might argue about how bad the disruption was, or how much of the disruption is on purpose and how much is just innocent neglect, or whether editors are exploiting that to push for severe restrictions. That takes us off track. There's an agreement there's been some bad behavior, so let's address it and let CW continue on as an ordinary editor.

1. Use more verbose edit summaries especially when reverting all edits, including the reversion of tags or redirects.
2. Comment on content, not contributors. This should also apply to groups of contributors. The only exception should be if CW is raising an actual conduct incident about a specific editor, which should be done at the appropriate forum.
3. Don't disrupt Wikipedia to prove a point. This includes starting AFDs on rival editors out of spite or renaming articles at AFD.

Some people might ask for harsher measures. But for the sake of building a consensus we should just forcefully remind CW about principles that ALL Wikipedians should be following anyway. I believe CW is reasonable and will abide by these principles and all problems will stop. Shooterwalker (talk) 00:21, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

as for point 2, not only is calling out any one person for this a little inadequate and overly narrow focused, people can be criticized, as I have been criticized above, for not commenting directly on contributors, but instead talking impersonally. Apparently, it was seen as evasive or impolite, in failing to recognize what they said as individuals. Let's face it, there is no form of interaction at Wikipedia which will not be accepted if one approves of the message, but be the subject of adverse comment if one disagrees with the message. Unless we intend to enforce it equitably on everyone, it's saying , don't comment if the comment is opposed to what I want to say. (I recognize that Shooterwalker did not mean to imply this, but that's how this will be used.)

as for #3. renaming an article at AfD is sometimes highly desirable and not at all pointy. People only object to it if it defeats what they are trying to accomplish. DGG ( talk ) 01:27, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Frankly, I'm a little shocked to see opposition to what should be basic principles that apply to all Wikipedians. I'm only asking to state it more forcefully to a specific editor who has actually crossed a line. We're not trying to tell CW how to be friendly. We're trying to tell him how to be civil. No one has ever been taken to AN/I or RFC/U for talking about the content... and that's not anywhere close to CW's problem. And I should add... no one is enforcing anything here. I'm just asking to restate a rule that CW crossed.

I'm a little more sympathetic to the idea that a rename might be done in good faith, but I've seen many AFDs close with a rename as a solution and see no reason you couldn't at least discuss it. Worst case you could create a new article under a different name if it's a matter of writing a better article with a different scope. Shooterwalker (talk) 01:43, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Violation of the broad principles here will be easy to establish by those editors who can engage in discussions like this in good faith. I don't regard DGG as being in that camp, and wouldn't recommend that others do for the sake of establishing this as the best way forward at this time. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 04:13, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Nice to see you in violation of #2 yourself. And now I'm in violation of #2 too as I'm commenting on the editor, not the comment. Or at least as I read #2. The point being that #2 is probably overly broad. I'm good with #1 and #3 and some rephrased version of #2 (just a pure link to WP:NPA would be fine). Hobit (talk) 13:44, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

What-Chris-said; this is probably the most useful recommendation to emerge from this RfC. Cheers, Jack Merridew 17:42, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

For #1, WP:REVEXP explains why reverting without a clear edit summary can cause so many problems, and should be avoided. – sgeureka ^t•c 08:09, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Agreeing with thumperward on DGG in these matters. It was pure jets vs. sharks for him to the bitter end in the case of ikip and a nobody and this instance seems no different. Pity.Bali ultimate (talk) 13:35, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Wow, WP:KETTLE much? First I disagree with you on this. Strongly. Second you are one of the worst offenders of exactly what you are calling David out for. I'd say something like "unbelievable" but frankly I've come to expect that behavior from you, so I'll stick with "pity". Hobit (talk) 13:48, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I've never led anybody down the primrose path to bantown with bad advice and encouragement, unlike DGG. Take a look at the talk page of Wikipedia:Requests for comment/A Nobody (a process i did not participate in) it was all justification and enabling of the user. When it came time to ban the user (well nigh unanimous): Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive615#Time for community ban of A Nobody? DGG remained ideologically pure, taking the vote only as evidence of "how extremely effective he was here" against the others. DGG's general view was that A Nobody had not been disruptive at all. That is largely his position here. It's a pity because if his friends chose to listen to only those within the echo chamber (as has been the pattern) strong action eventually gets taken and not to their liking. I'll leave it there.Bali ultimate (talk) 14:05, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

The net effect off DGG's defense of his ideological friends to the bitter-end is that they evade dispute resolution until the community is fed-the-fuck-up and the party in question is banned. So, it takes longer, but we skip intermediate resolutions that might have restrained whatever specific inappropriate behaviors while allowing whatever useful contributions. We have a barnstar for this? Cheers, Jack Merridew 17:31, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

While I think it's a good thing that we're getting over the fallacy that DGG is reasonable when it comes to the ARS, because from everything I've observed he is willing to excuse any behavior from his friends, I'm not sure here is the best place to discuss this. Yes, members of both factions have some negative opinions about each other, and it's not exactly a secret. Instead of rehashing those opinions here, let's refocus on the outcome of the RfC. AniMate 16:11, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Yup. There's an interesting take on this at User talk:FeydHuxtable#Wikipolitics. Cheers, Jack Merridew 17:31, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

"minimum?" That's just a deferral of the problem until later. As has been said by many, the problems are of a much lager scope. Jack Merridew 17:31, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

I have to say, it's a carrot to CW's defenders while still trying to prevent future wrongdoing. I have a lot of respect for DGG and thought he would take the carrot. Shooterwalker (talk) 00:55, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Countdown to Destruction

Regarding this diff pointed out by Reyk, I am sad to report that I see no justification for sourcing any of material in the lead to page 190 of Mark Schilling's The Encyclopedia of Japanese pop culture‎. The article that begins on page 190 covers the Power Rangers, and concentrates on the marketing aspects and the history of the show. It makes no mention of "Countdown to Destruction", or of Power Rangers in Space, and the last season it mentions is the 1996 season of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers. I am curious as to how Colonel Warden will explain this, if indeed he chooses to try--I've left a question on his talk page, and received a comment that did not really address the issue. Hopefully he will comment more fully here or there. In any case, I find this particular example very disturbing, and I've added a line to the RFC on sources. --Nuujinn (talk) 18:19, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

He didn't read it is the answer (this is quite common though, of course, hard to prove which is why he carries on). It's par for the course. He just doesn't care about such things. Look further up on his talk page at User_talk:Colonel Warden#Glossary of jive talk. This was a redirect he'd created that was tangential to some of his disputes with me. The problem was, he took an unsourced article that at least made sense at the original location Viper Slang and moved it to something that made far less sense. At any rate, it was still unsourced. An editor points out to him that such things need sourcing/foornotes at his talkpage. His cavalier response? That is a low priority - work for gnomes. It is more important to settle the fact of the article's existence, its title and scope. Several of my followers are now in attendance and I have flagged it for a couple of projects. Many hands make light work. It's all of a piece.Bali ultimate (talk) 18:38, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Oh yeah, in the case of the article i mention this edit inserts a line of text and a source. The problem? The "source" didn't support the line of text at all.Bali ultimate (talk) 18:49, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

No doubt that the source and the attributed text have nothing to do with each other in Bali ultimate's example.—Kww(talk) 19:05, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Big thankyou to Nuujinn who has gone to a lot of effort to straighten this out. I have to say I'm not the least bit surprised at Nuujinn's finding that the source doesn't mention the subject, or at Colonel Warden's smug and dismissive response of "I don't give a shit, take it up at the article's talk page". Reyk _YO! 00:24, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

You mean to tell me he's been using reliable sources to verify statements that they didn't actually cover? Shooterwalker (talk) 00:29, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Please, let us maintain low tones. --Nuujinn (talk) 00:37, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

He's been doing that for years, Shooterwalker. That's what's so mystifying to me about people viewing him as a constructive editor.—Kww(talk) 00:57, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I think the misuse of sources here is a much more serious issue than inappropriate edit summaries. This is disruptive in an attempt to push his extreme inclusionism POV. AD 00:46, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

• (ec)I agree. Colonel Warden does not like to see anything being deleted from Wikipedia, and will do anything to prevent it. In fairness it needs to be said that Colonel Warden often rescues articles legitimately, using real sources, and I don't think anybody has any problem with that. The trouble is that he does not scruple to use dishonest and underhanded tactics when legitimate arguments fail. We see him sneakily undoing redirects, making no mention of them in his edit summaries. We see him make legitimate tagged concerns magically disappear, for fear that someone who patrols the relevant backlogs decides the problem is unsolvable and nominates the article for deletion. But I think the worst thing is this business of phony sources- here he's not just lying to the Wikipedia community, he's lying to our readers as well. Reyk _YO! 01:06, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
  • Before we dial the drama dial all the way up to 10... would someone be able to produce more diffs for those of us not as familiar with this situation? We assume good faith until proven otherwise, and a single diff could be a mistake or a bad day. I'm also trying to WP:AGF for Reyk and Kww that there is in fact a broader pattern here... I'd just like to see some diffs that show a pattern of misquoting sources before calling for anything harsh. Shooterwalker (talk) 01:12, 19 December 2010 (UTC)
    • Seriously? He's blatantly attempting to trick readers into believing the facts stated are backed up by the source he has picked. I don't think a pattern is needed to see this is a problem. If CW actually admitted what he is doing is inappropriate, and he is deeply regretful for his serious error in judgement, perhaps we don't need to be harsh. But all we've seen is excuse after excuse, not only from CW but from the clan at the ARS. This is disturbingly similar to A Nobody and if he is not careful he will end up the same way. AD 01:18, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

(ec) I've been going through CW's citations from the last month or so today. The reference from the Encyclopedia I have and the one Bali Ultimate cites above are the worst I've seen so far. There's one for the article Keith Coster that I am now suspicious of, and am trying to track down the source. So far, the rest look reasonable or at least arguable, but I can't claim that I'm being exhaustive in my efforts, as getting ready for travel and the preparation of a fine french onion soup from scratch have been a distraction. --Nuujinn (talk) 01:22, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Nuujinn. Feel free to scrutinize CW's work. Until then, I think we should assume this is just a one off... and I'd reiterate my proposed solution of a firm warning to not do this. That will make it easier to address his behavior should it repeat itself, and hopefully put him back on track to being a good editor. Shooterwalker (talk) 01:27, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I think that although there is disagreement as to whether CW will come around, it is better to assume that he will and act toward that goal. I would also encourage him to respond to this issue, as it is quite serious. --Nuujinn (talk) 01:29, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't quite understand how two distinct examples in a month (Chinatown article, Jive talk example) and the Power Rangers misrepresentation could possibly constitute a "one off", but YMMV. Anyone got easy access to The new encyclopedia of the occult By John Michael Greer? I'm scanning through deleted articles and found a case where the citations provided are to pages not available in the Google Books summary.—Kww(talk) 01:41, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Particularly since in my outside view I pointed out that several people have been complaining about CW's phony sourcing for years. Reyk _YO! 01:44, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

The more documentation you can provide for that, the better, Reyk.—Kww(talk) 01:50, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Not trying to be difficult. Just that this RFC is a mess. Remember this all started because CW was reverting clean-up tags and now it's starting to look like a WP:COATRACK with everyone piling in. No doubt some people are here in bad faith just to complain about any negative interaction and call for his head. This puts a bigger burden on the good faith editors to actually focus the RFC and produce the diffs. Somewhere in the shuffle, the diffs that unequivocally prove years of phony sourcing were drowned out. I'd echo Kww's call for documentation... not just the complaints but the actual edits from CW that sparked them. Shooterwalker (talk) 01:54, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Yes, but complaints by others are not documentation for anything other than others have complained. What is required are diffs of the actual edits by CW in which inappropriate citations are used. And fwiw, from what I can see, the Chinatown edit is arguable, see User_talk:Nuujinn#Your_question for my reasoning--the short version is that the reference apparently does support the assertion that some people did refer to Monterey Park as a Chinatown, even tho the reference refutes that this is the case. --Nuujinn (talk) 02:02, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Suspect citations

These are some that look suspicious, derived from looking through his deleted contributions. All but one of these are just suspicious, not smoking guns. The particular pattern I note is using references that can't be verified in the form given: online links, including page numbers, to Google Books copies that don't include the page used as a reference. I'm not sure that technically this is any illegal practice, but as a pattern combined with the previously uncovered false references, it's suspicious. I've provided diff links for admins (because these are deleted contributions, normal editors can't see them) but have quoted the relevant sections.

There's not much doubt in my mind about the use of http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~oren/pubs-pres/2005/pub-0514-simEthics-IITSEC.pdf . It just doesn't support the cited statement.

'''Green Restaurants''' are environmentally low-impact restaurants designed and built using materials and technology that reduce its carbon footprint and lower its energy needs. Such restaurants can become certified for conserving water, energy and lowering food waste.<ref>{{citation |title=The Encyclopedia of Global Warming Science and Technology |volume=1 |author=Bruce E. Johansen |year=2009}}</ref><ref>{{citation |title=Encyclopedia of Organic, Sustainable, and Local Food |author=Leslie A. Duram |year=2010}}</ref>

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=Green+restaurants&timestamp=20101121124613&diff=prev
• Suspicious to me both because it's to a hard copy source and because it's vague. No page, nothing to verify against.

It was on Omega’s next mission that he was afforded his opportunity for vengeance. Discovering that the Constructicons were mining an asteroid, [[Optimus Prime]] requested Omega investigate, only to learn of his secret history with the Decepticon team. It was on this occasion that Omega chose to speak in complete sentences for the only time since being altered by the Robo Smasher, in relaying what happened between him and the Constructicons to Prime. Sending Omega on the mission anyway, Prime’s trust proved misplaced, as Omega disconnected his communicator and attacked the Constructicons directly, shattering the asteroid during the battle and revealing that it contained an alien creature which promptly attacked [[San Francisco]]. Rather than defend the city, however, Omega pursued the Constructicons and only halted when Prime entered the conflict, forcing the Decepticons to retreat and convincing Omega to save San Francisco, claiming that there had to be more to life than revenge.<ref>{{citation |url=http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=B3YrAQAAIAAJ |title=Transformers and Philosophy |author=John R. Shook |page=181}}</ref>

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=Omega+Supreme+%28G1%29&timestamp=20101107160557&diff=prev
• Suspicious because of a trend I have noticed in the past: using Google Books as a reference, but using pages not available in the Google Books view, again making verification difficult.

'''SimSummit''' is a forum for organizations interested in [[Modeling and simulation|Modeling and Simulation]] technology, professional development, industry, and market. Participants meet at simulation conferences and workshops to coordinate across the simulation community on topics including ethics,<ref>{{citation |url=http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~oren/pubs-pres/2005/pub-0514-simEthics-IITSEC.pdf |title=Ethics in Modeling and Simulation |author=Tuncer Ören}}</ref> professional certifications, and the [[Modeling and Simulation Body of Knowledge]].

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=SimSummit&timestamp=20101015195820&diff=prev
• I can't find support for the cited statement in http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~oren/pubs-pres/2005/pub-0514-simEthics-IITSEC.pdf

"'''Smeg'''" is a mild [[vulgarism]] which reached prominence through its use as a supposedly inoffensive expletive in the [[United Kingdom|British]] [[science fiction]] [[situation comedy]] ''[[Red Dwarf]]'', in which it was used from the start.<ref>{{citation |title=The Guinness book of classic British TV |author=Paul Cornell, Martin Day, Keith Topping |year=1996 |quote=The first season also introduced the word 'smeg' (as in 'smeghead' or 'smeg off') to the English language.}}</ref>

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=Smeg+%28vulgarism%29&timestamp=20100915124254&diff=prev
• Suspicious because of reference problem: a quote of a specific sentence, with no indication as to where it can be found.

Sam leaps into [[Carnegie Hall]] as Andrew Ross, a blind pianist. While continuing the charade of being blind, Sam must both convince his girlfriend's mother to accept him though he's blind and save his girlfriend from a serial killer.<ref>{{citation |journal=Journal of popular film and television |year=1993 |http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kuoKAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA115 |page=115}}</ref>

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=Blind+Faith+%28Quantum+Leap%29&timestamp=20100830110404&diff=prev
• Again, one of those mysterious missing page links: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=kuoKAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA115 can't be viewed, despite being formatted as if the page were present.

It is a [[dual carriage-way]] with a grass [[verge]] in the centre.<ref>{{citation |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=mZpMAAAAYAAJ |title=The face of London |author=Harold Philip Clunn |date=1970}}</ref>

The road was planned by the [[London County Council]] in 1928 as part of the [[Tower Gardens Estate|White Hart Lane Estate]].<ref>{{citation |title=Housing |publisher=London County Council |year=1928 |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=3lkgAAAAMAAJ}}</ref>

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=The+Roundway&timestamp=20100729190545&diff=prev
• More of the trend: online links to online versions of the books where the text cannot be found. In thise cases, he can't be bothered to tell us the page where we might find it if we happened to encounter a physical copy.

Furthermore, there is the famous scence in the [[Godfather (film)]] (1971), in which [[Michael Corleone]], [[Virgil Sollozzo]], and [[Captain McCluskey]] meet at the small Italian [[restaurant]] where Corleone "makes his bones" by executing both.<ref>{{citation |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=wvERLzlJ5okC&pg=PA210 |title=Reel food |chapter= |author=Marlisa Santos |chapter=Leave the Gun; Take the Cannoli'': Food and Family in the Modern American Mafia Film | publisher=Routledge| year=2004}}</ref>

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Undelete&target=Film+depictions+of+Italian-American+mafioso+eating+dinner&timestamp=20100510055208&diff=prev
• Yet another unavailable page, despite a link indicating that it's available.

—Kww(talk) 17:14, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

• Reel food p210 is available to me on Google Books. This page does not mention the Italian restaurant scene -- but on closer examination it does mention the scene on p213 -- but discusses it in terms of Michael committing "the act that will essentially seal his fate in the family business", not "mak[ing] his bones". Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 17:47, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

• This is worth probing a little further before we draw any conclusions. I may dive in myself if I find time. Shooterwalker (talk) 18:04, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Unfortunately these links are only viewable by admins. AD 18:09, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Kww has done an excellent job quoting CW though... so it should just be a matter of looking up the original source to see if CW quoted them accurately. Shooterwalker (talk) 18:18, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Re KWW, as much as I don't want to defend CW, Google Books can appear differently depending on where you are in the world. It may also be the case that he actually has a copy of the book. AD 18:12, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

That's why I won't describe these as anything more than "suspicious": worthy of investigation, but not necessarily wrong.—Kww(talk) 18:49, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Just to point out that the use of quotation marks does not always imply that the text in question is a quotation. In this case, it is trivial to point out that "to make one's bones" is an idiom implying coming of age or passing a certain trial to entry, and that the use of quotation marks was simply intended to denote the use of a figure of speech. Certainly the scene in question exists in the fictional work in question, and the reference provided backs up its importance (through Google Books, it's the entire point of that chapter, and should probably be used extensively as a reference for other parts of that article).

It is worth noting of course that part of the problem here is that we should be able to implicitly trust that editors who have been around as long as CW are adding valid references rather than having to check every one, and that the onus on building that trust lies with CW. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 18:56, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

"Makes his bones" in a mafia context actually take its original meaning -- that of winning acceptance by the criminal organisation by committing a violent crime (usually murder). The trouble is that this (largely positive) idiom conflicts with the source's largely negative idiom of "seal his fate in the family business" -- which implies that having lived by the sword, he will die by the sword. Yes, the two idioms are talking about the same thing -- but very much from glass half full versus glass half empty viewpoints. This suggests to me that little care was taken to ensure the source's viewpoint was accurately reflected in the article text. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 04:06, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

True enough, but that is the kind of nuance that editors argue about all the time. While some of these citations are proving problematic, this one doesn't really seem to be so.—Kww(talk) 04:14, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Regarding the others:

• Green restaurants: the first book (ISBN 0313377022) has a discussion of the Green Restaurant Movement and Green Restaurant Association on pp258–259 that supports the second sentence, though the book seems to use a different definition than the article (emphasizing sourcing and recycling instead of construction). The second book (ISBN 0313359636) has a passing mention of the GRA on p328.
• Omega Supreme: the book (ISBN 0812696670) is only available in snippet view. Searching for "Omega Supreme" finds one sentence (p181) in a discussion of Optimus Prime: "... in Episode 45 when Optimus must convince Omega Supreme to give up his desire for revenge in order to save San Francisco from an alien invasion, he is only able to do this by appealing to Omega Supreme's inner emotional turmoil, helping Omega overcome his obsession with revenge."
• Smeg (vulgarism): the book (ISBN 0851126286) is only available in snippet view. Searching inside the book finds a quote "How can the same smeg happen to the same guy two years running?" (p177), but not this text.
• Blind Faith (Quantum Leap): searching Google Books for "Blind Faith", "Quantum Leap" and "Sam Beckett" yields the cited volume of the Journal of popular film and television, but gives no view or page number.
• The Roundway: the book ([21]) is only available in snippet view. Searching indicates that the name occurs on pp99, 100, 102. There is no mention of a dual carriage-way or grass verge, though it is said to be 100 feet wide. An estate is mentioned, but it is not unidentified in the snippets.

It appears that when seeking to save an article at AfD, Colonel Warden searches Google Books for the disputed title. That approach produces a range of outcomes. Sometimes it yields clear evidence for the topic. Sometimes articles are expanded with items related to the original topic only by name, e.g. [22], [23]. But if Google yields only a snippet view or no view at all, such a citation cannot be verified without acquiring a physical copy, as Nuujinn has done above. In that case at least, it appears that CW did not use a physical copy: the book does not contain the phrase "Power Rangers in Space", but if you search without quotes you get the cited p190, where a caption contains those 4 words, but not all together. Kanguole 01:24, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I'll just say that one thing I have observed with Google Books is that sometimes the display of a book or books will change over time. For example, I have used a book on which I could only see certain pages in one chapter to source a few different articles. When I came back to re-check that same book months or years later, I found that not only could I not see some of the pages I had previously referenced, but that some of the pages I could not previously see were now visible - this allowed me to add a few new references, but I was dismayed that I could not go back to check the ones I added earlier. To illustrate with a fictional example, perhaps in February 2008 I could see pages 12-14, 16, and 18-20 of a book; if I came back today, I might see pages 10-12, 15, and 17-19. What this means for Colonel Warden, I do not know, but this is a possible explanation for why some of the links to Google Books do not add up - if the diffs in question are not recent. BOZ (talk) 04:58, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Ideally, it should be largely irrelevant if a given page is inaccessible on Google Books so long as the page and edition are noted accurately in the citation. The problem is that there is sufficient doubt in the minds of a number of editors in good standing that CW's references can be assumed to validate the material they're being attached to. This becomes especially problematic when CW is strongly associated with the ARS, which ostensibly works to validate the notability of articles by adding appropriate references to them. It is very important to note that CW is being singled out here, which implies that the majority of editors involved at ARS are trusted to add sources which do indeed validate whatever they're attached to. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward: not at work) - talk 05:35, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

And we should not lose sight of the fact that some of the ones that people could check failed. The edits to The Roundway,SimSummit, Omega Supreme (G1), and Smeg (vulgarism) all misrepresented the contents of the quoted material. That's a 65% failure rate, well beyond what can be explained by good faith mistakes or the vagaries of Google Books.—Kww(talk) 05:46, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Are you certain that it was misrepresented? Sometimes information spans multiple pages and you might have to read around to get the point that was verified. If you're 100% certain, then we have a much bigger problem, and I think we may need more than a warning. Shooterwalker (talk) 06:32, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

If "information spans multiple pages", then the onus is on the citing editor to cite the full page range they are relying on. And a 'mistakes were made' excuse for failing to do so gets very thin when (i) the mistakes would need to be repeated excessively & (ii) the 'mistakes' conveniently fit a clear pattern in support of an explicitly-stated agenda. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 06:38, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm quite curious to see what Colonel Warden has to say about this. This reply to a good faith attempt at clearing this up raises a whole lot of red flags. In fact, I'd like to see what his supporters think about that as well. AniMate 07:01, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

(Replying to Shooterwalker): I'm quite confident on the SimSummit case: we have access to the full PDF. On Omega Supreme (G1) and Smeg (vulgarism), we have the text from the cited page. The Roundway has some slight haze because the book may have used synonyms.—Kww(talk) 14:10, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Proposed solution

I've proposed a solution which I think will satisfy everyone's demands for assumption of good faith. Whether it's due to error or intent, refraining from the use of snippets should resolve the issue.—Kww(talk) 20:07, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Note that I don't think that this solution covers the SimSummit case above, which still appears to me to be an intentional case of misrepresentation. We have the complete PDF, as did Colonel Warden, and the PDF simply doesn't support the provided text.—Kww(talk) 20:11, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

(replying to SnottyWong's proposed revision)

Snotty, I think you are a bit off with that proposal. Google Books is great, and its use shouldn't be discouraged when Google is providing the complete text of the book. For people that live in remote places, it can be the only way to examine the text of physical books (I lived for years on a Dutch-speaking Caribbean island, for example, and inter-library loan just wasn't an option for English books). The problem is when Google Books only provides a snippet, and I tried to tailor the solution to match the problem.—Kww(talk) 22:26, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

I agree with you completely, perhaps you misunderstood my comments. Google Books is a great tool, but in some cases it has limitations which drastically reduce its usefulness (and I'm referring to when it only shows you a 1-2 sentence snippet where your search term appears). In those cases, when it's impossible to verify whether the book only contains a passing mention of the subject or if it covers it significantly, the use of Google Books should be discouraged. Unless you have access to the source (or, at the very least, access to enough of the text to verify the statement in the article and/or have the ability to determine whether it is significant coverage), you shouldn't be adding sources to articles and/or claiming that a subject is notable based on a 1-sentence snippet that you read on Google Books. SnottyWong ^babble 16:49, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

(replying to Milowent's comment) No, this solution was not proposed due to Bali's comments below. It was in response to the research above which showed several cases where some might argue that the reason the source was misrepresented was due to confusion from the brief text in the snippet. Those mispresentations are a serious problem, whether you believe them to be accidental or intentional.—Kww(talk) 22:44, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

• I guess I should look at a few more examples, then, because so far every example i've looked at has been ambigious at best in terms of prosecuting CW.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 23:40, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Response on the matter of sourcing by Colonel Warden

There's some interesting points coming out of this discussion though it does seem quite tangential to the matter of tagging. I was not aware of what BOZ says - that Google Books changes its behaviour over time though this is just a special case of the general problem of linkrot. I have noticed that Google's snippet view can cause confusion. Sometimes you will see a phrase in a snippet but if you try to search directly for that phrase in the source it will say that it is not there. I've noticed similar behaviour in pdfs previously and it seemed to be due to line breaks or other control characters.

I'm puzzled by some of the comments above. For example, the matter of Glossary of jive talk. In that case, I thought it to be an excellent source as it was a bibliography which spoke strongly to the notability of the topic and was a treasure trove of good material. I'm wondering if some editors are taking this matter of sourcing too literally, like User:Gavin.collins did. They should please note that we must be careful not to copy sources too closely lest we be accused of plagiarism or copyright violation. Following the banning of Gavin and the disgrace of Rlevse, this seems the greater risk. I have started using direct quotations from sources, where convenient, but place these in the citation using the quote parameter and this seems a good approach to the problem. I would do it more but often this requires copy typing from a graphic image and this can be quite a chore.

Kww claims an error rate of 65% in my sourcing and this statistic seems quite absurd. My general position is that my sourcing is all made in good faith and that my error rate is small - 1% or less. When I get digging for sources, it seems to me that I do quite a good job. By such work, I am able to turn around articles such as tiger versus lion or blue hair so that they are well-sourced and so make other similar articles look weak by comparison. My latest effort has been for spark (fire). This started as a prod of a meagre stub, IIRC, but is coming along nicely now. I didn't know much about the topic when I started and have been quite pleased by what I've turned up so far. I especially like working upon topics such as sparks or nagging because these are everyday matters which we ought to cover better than we do. They can be difficult to source because you often get thousands of hits on Google but most of them are passing mentions and you then have to find the sources which address the topic more directly. I have various search techniques which assist in this, such as looking for particular key words in the title of the source. I am still developing such techniques and adding to the range of sources available to me. I should perhaps spend more time at places such as the reliable sources noticeboard to compare notes with other sourcing specialists. My impression has been that they are usually dealing with the tendentious use of sources there and that seems quite tiresome, but I shall take another look.

Colonel Warden (talk) 09:32, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Would you please consider discussing the Power Rangers article. Nuujin has access to the source, and this would be a great time to make clear what you were using the source for. AniMate 09:43, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Gavin Collins was a disruptive editor and Rlevse was a plagarizer. You appear to be a disruptive editor too - but of a different sort: You serially make claims about source material that are proven to be false. That has nothing to do with the faults of others. This response is an excellent example of the logic free game playing that you're so fond of and that is so contemptuous of others. If you haven't read and understood a source, you can't use it. Period.Bali ultimate (talk) 12:14, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

OK, Colonel, here's an example from a few days ago. You apparently found some mentions of Martial by Googling for xenia. Have you read Martial? What exactly do his couplets have to do with parting gifts? What do they have to do with ancient Greece? Did your bringing him up in the AfD serve any purpose other than to muddy the water of the discussion? Did you mean for it to have any other function than that? Deor (talk) 12:27, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

• I was, of course, Googling for "parting gift". The source has something to say about this topic on pages 2-3, "Parting gifts tended to be objects of value rather than food: precious metals, arms . . . ". The object was to demonstrate that, by a simple search, one could make something of the topic. By providing evidence rather than mere opinion, I hoped to raise the level of the discussion. At AFD one should not be required nor expected to bring the article immediately up to a FA level of accuracy and exquisite perfection. One is just trying to show that the topic is not hopeless and so further work may be fruitful. Colonel Warden (talk) 13:05, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

• So you meant to say that the editors of that particular edition mentioned Greek parting gifts in their introduction, not that Martial's work itself mentioned them. Why didn't you say so, rather than saying that Martial's work could be used to source the article? Why didn't you link to the specific snippet result you were looking at, rather than linking to a Google Books page showing no text whatever? Deor (talk) 13:34, 20 December 2010 (UTC)
• (edit conflict)It is hard to see how a passing mention in an introduction to a book of poetry from a different culture to the "section about Ancient Greece" specified in your comment, does anything to "raise the level of the discussion". At an AfD you are "expected" not to bring up trivial mentions (as WP:NOTE defines that term), and to demonstrate a reasonable degree of understanding of its relevance to the topic. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 13:39, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Response to Colonel Warden's continued avoidance of matters

Colonel Warden:

• I would note that you have not responded to a single one of the specific issues Kww raised above.
• I would further note that you have not responded to a single (unstricken) dif contained in the RfC's 'Statement of the dispute'.

When are you actually going to address the specific complaints made against you? Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 10:25, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Numerous points have been raised in the RfC and many or most of them seem outside its formal scope. I have tried to avoid responding in a detailed blow-by-blow, point-counterpoint way as this would tend to be too scrappy and get bogged down in detail rather than addressing the general issues. I'm not sure when I'm supposed to make a formal response to the specific issues. This thing is open for 30 days and still has some time to run, right? Maybe I shall say more during the Christmas break or perhaps I shall be diverted by it. I have much to do this week besides Wikipedia ... Colonel Warden (talk) 10:45, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

The (unstricken) items in WP:Requests for comment/Colonel Warden#Statement of the dispute are "outside its formal scope"? Either (i) you did not understand my second bullet point or (ii) you are dodging the issue. You have failed utterly to address even a single specific point. In fact you seem more interested in quoting Samuel Johnson "in a detailed blow-by-blow" manner, than in doing anything that actually addresses the complaints made in this RfC. Given that this RfC is almost half over without a single comment from you that is directly responsive to the complaint, I think it is not unreasonable to have concerns about getting a full and frank response out of you in the timeframe. I would have considerably more sympathy for your claim of time constraints if you did not always seem to have time available for seemingly-endless nit-picking & game-playing argumentum ad nauseum on AfDs. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 11:23, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

It seems good to keep providing fresh examples of my work such as the parting gift matter raised by Deor above. These are fresh in my mind and so easier to respond to. They also represent my current methods and practises best. In some cases, these may reflect and demonstrate my response to the various comments and criticisms which have been made - more restrained untagging, more comprehensive edit summaries and the like. Colonel Warden (talk) 13:08, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

The string of difs I listed in WP:Requests for comment/Colonel Warden#Statement of the dispute, in response to Lambanog's implicit question, were all taken from the last couple of months. Of course they're now a couple of weeks older, due to your failure to address them in a timely manner. Quit dodging! Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 13:19, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

The scope is all conduct, not just what Snottywong brought to the table. Jack Merridew 18:16, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Well I hope we dole out some barnstars for his good conduct along with his lashes.--Milowent • ^talkblp-r 22:41, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

You're free to hand out all the bling you want. Jack Merridew 05:51, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

I've been persuaded that CW could use a reminder to use better edit summaries when reverting, and to avoid personal attacks ... and that attacking a group is not an exception to WP:NPA. But.... looking at this use of sourcing I think he's been generally decent, with a few that are loose at worst. Shooterwalker (talk) 04:36, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

That depends what you mean by "loose". At Ivanhoe Primary School, he added two citations: [24][25]. The first is not viewable on Google Books or Amazon; it was published by the school and is available from their office for AU$20.[26] The second is available only in snippet view, in which one might miss that it is actually about a town of the same name in a different state.[27] Kanguole 13:48, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm having a hard time understanding why people are willing to forgive his sourcing. It's not loose, it's bad.—Kww(talk) 15:09, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

And it is certainly part of the overall pattern of "rescuing" article by any means necessary. Adding a source that you have obviously never actually seen with your own eyes is not just bad practice, it is deception. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:03, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

'bad' would be fraudulent, disruptive, dishonest, blockable, *bannable*. cf: User: Drew R. Smith. Cheers, Jack Merridew 21:11, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

There are repeated examples of cases where CW's use of source is demonstrably dishonest, because when challenged he does not respond in the way which an honest editor would do: engage in a genuine discussion, and withdraw refs which don't stand up to scrutiny. The fact that this happens so often justifies the stronger conclusion that his intention is fraudulent. The uses of those fraudulent sources at AFD is disruptive, because it increases the workload in AFD discussions as other editors are either defrauded by assuming that Col W has acted in good faith to provide solid refs, or are required to respond by introducing critiques of the sourcing which unavoidably disrupt the flow of discussion and distract from the assessment of genuine refs. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 22:23, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

It doesn't at all follow that the Colonel's occasional reluctance to engage in lengthy discussion means he's dishonest. An AGF explanation is that he enjoys variety and doesn't want to get bogged down on relatively trivial topics once his attention has moved on. Its good to talk, but the Colonel is far from the only editor who values brevity. If folk dont like particular references and the Colonel doesnt respond to challenges the references can be removed.

So far the investigation by multiple editors only seems to have unearthed two unambiguous cases where the Colonel inserted refs that didn't support the info he added (SimSummit and Countdown to destruction). Article rescuers will often split their work into a research phase and a writing phase, where we first compile a list of potential sources and only add the best to the article. It seems very plausible the Colonel could have mixed up the content of the sources when he was making notes during the first phase. The SimSummit sources does mention the conference, it just doesn't support the particular information added by the Colonel.

If there are only two mistakes out of the hundreds of sources the Colonel has added, it would suggest his accuracy is far higher than the average accuracy displayed by his detractors here. (There's at least two mistaken accusations out of less than 20 specific examples of questionable sourcing, not to mention the even higher proportion of false accusations about invalid de-tagging). I also note there's a history of false accusations against the Colonel on sourcing even before this RfC, I guess some deletionists cant believe how quickly the Colonel is able dig up quality references.

All this is not to say editors arent right to be concerned, Id agree with Snotty that the Colonel should slow down a little as its very important our articles are reliable. But the evidence presented so far doesnt even begin to support the notion that the Colonel uses sources dishonestly. And two mistakes on relatively trivial articles don't outweigh the enormous positives from his 20k+ contributions. FeydHuxtable (talk) 15:54, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

If he corrected the errors when they were pointed out, I'd agree with you. His reaction to having an error pointed out is to try to pretend it didn't happen or that the person pointing it out is exaggerating. That's dishonest, and makes people believe that he has been dishonest from the beginning.—Kww(talk) 16:25, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

I fully agree it would be best if he corrected or at least admitted errors when they are pointed out, though again the number of genuine errors he makes seem to be far fewer than some of his detractors seem to believe. FeydHuxtable (talk) 16:32, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that it's hard to know how many errors he's actually made. That's the challenge with trust. A few errors have caused some parts of the community to lose trust in most of CWs other edits... but his supporters have tolerated the errors because they assume his other edits must be good. So we're left with an RFC where some people have lost trust in CW and others are still assuming good faith. It's hard to find something everyone has consensus on... which is why I'd just focus on warning CW to be more accurate with sources in the future, to avoid personal attacks (even towards vague groups of editors), and to use precise and accurate edit summaries when reverting. Principles that every Wikipedian should abide by, but CW has shown a pattern that makes a reminder necessary. Shooterwalker (talk) 17:04, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Im sure it appears that way to several so its great to have the opportunity to point out not all of the Colonels supporters are making assumptions. Up until November when my notebook caught a virus from one of the Colonels links ( safe diff showing this ) I used to religiously check all online sources relating to AfDs I voted in. This wasnt as I didnt trust my fellow squad members, I just like to know whoes efforts to credit and also to be able to make an informed comment about how much significant coverage the sources provide. In total i've evaluated about 40 sources of the Colonel's. This allows me to be sure with a margin of error of about 10% and a confidence of about 80% that the Colonels accuracy is indeed close to 95%. (Those figures are largely correct whether the total number of refs added by the colonel are 200 or 1000, I cant see his deleted contribs to know the exact amount.) If youre interested in all this I can happily post you some good links about quantitative analyses, appropriate sample sizes and the degree of certainty they afford. But I guess the point Im getting to is supporters such as myself arnt relying on unjustified assumptions. FeydHuxtable (talk) 17:35, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

PS, apart from what you said about assumptions and the inference about a pattern, I think thats a very pertinent comment and agree with all your other points. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:04, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Given the number of sources which CW adds, I'm not sure to whether 40 can be considered a representative sample. I'd also want to see a little more on how you assessed accuracy: my concern with CW's sources is not that they are blatantly unrelated to the content he refs, but that they do not fully support the conclusions he draws from them, whether in terms of fact or as evidence of significant coverage (I lost counts of the number of times that CW insisted that one or two passing mentions of a topic amounted to significant coverage per WP:GNG). The distinction may be subtle, but is an important one, and the reason that it has become a bone of contention with CW is his repeated refusal to discuss reasoned concerns about his use of those sources. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 18:36, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Even if the Colonel had added 20,000 sources , to guage his accuracy with a margin of error of 10% and a confidence of 80% we'd only need a sample size of 41. I agree yourself and KWW have raised good points about the importance of dialogue and of always providing page numbers for book refs. As the concerns about detagging and edit summaries seem to have been taken on board, hopefully these other points will be to. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:52, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

User:FeydHuxtable said "to guage his accuracy with a margin of error of 10% and a confidence of 80% we'd only need a sample size of 41". Actually you would need a random sample to ensure this is true. Are you sure that you have a random sample? I also share User:BrownHairedGirl's concern that while on the surface some of his refs look to be applicable to the subject I have found that while most are generally on the right subject they don't actually support the text they are referenced to and are basically just rapidly "shotgunned" from a Google search instead. If you are going to use statistical analysis, (which is not a bad idea) the methodologies need to be very carefully thought out and open to peer review to ensure mistakes were not made. - Ahunt (talk) 19:06, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Exactly. Did your sample only include sources which are accessible on the internet? What if CW frequently adds offline sources which he hasn't read, or worse, deliberately adds bad offline sources because he knows the chances are quite slim that someone will go to a library just to verify his source? SnottyWong ^verbalize 13:16, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

The only offline source in my pool was the one for Countdown to Destruction, which Im counted as incorrect on Nuujin's word. As you say it would have been better to include more books. And ANHunt is right about a random sample – compared to a truly random selection of the Colonel's online source insertions, my pool would tend to underestimate the Colonel's accuracy. I mostly checked links from AfDs I took part in, the Colonel might have been more hasty in adding refs to articles at risk of deletion compared to his regular editing work. Both the incorrect refs that led me to arrive at an accuracy of only 95% were from those I checked as a result of this RfC. As critics seem to have been attempting to only post examples when the Colonel was at least arguably in error, this part of the sample pool can be expected to heavily underestimate the Colonel's accuracy. If we took the time to audit the Colonel's work to a professional standard, Id not be surprised if we found his accuracy is closer to 99%, in line with the Colonels self assessment above. Anyhow, this is all within the suggested 10% margin of error. Considering the gravity of some of the charges laid at this RfC, I fully agree with Ahunt that its worth analysing the evidence carefully. And as we've seen, the more rigorously we evaluate the Colonel's work, the more distinctly a clear picture emerges showing a mostly very high editorial standard. FeydHuxtable (talk) 18:46, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Feyd, if you post the full list of refs you checked, along with your assessment of each one, then others can review your methodology; but until then your use of figures adds a misleading veneer of authenticity to an unsubstantiated assertion. Just from the RFC, I found two edits which between amount to four improper use of refs, and in each case CW refused to discuss the problem. If those are part of your sample of part, we already have a 10% error rate, and if we note that CW repeatedly reinstated some of the contested refs without trying to address concerns, then we should really count each reinsertion as a separate incident, which woukd put the figure even higher.

If you really do want to "analyse the evidence carefully", then please produce that analysis. But until then your claims of "a mostly very high editorial standard" appear to be based on some combination of a skewed sample and an odd assessment of what counts as accuracy. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 19:34, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Im sorry but youre quite wrong, posting a full list wouldnt show my methodology, which anyway has already been largely revealed in the thread above. If we were really interested in accurately accessing the Colonels work, the key would be to start with a transparently random way to select the sample pool. Then cynics would have no grounds for concern over partisan cherry picking.

I only mentioned stats in response to a view that assumptions were being made. And I only started posting on the talk page to highlight the fact that the available evidence is grossly insufficient to support the extreme claims made by critics. For the purposes of this RFC, a professional class audit would be overkill. It was merely be necessary to analyse with sufficient rigour to avoid "Representing 1% as 100%" and thus make one of our best editors look like one of our worst. Something that was a real danger here, as the Colonel pointed out much more concisely.

An RFC has no power to enforce anything and the Colonel has already adjusted his conduct in accordance with the original tagging related issues. Like Snotty Im not on Wikipedia as I enjoy this type of chat so Im afraid Im going to "do a CW" and bow out of this discussion.In the unlikely event that a related arbom appears, Im confident the relative strength of the evidence and arguments offered by editors like DGG, Dream ,Epeefleche, Milowent, WhatamIdoing, WSC and myself will be apparent. At least they will be to any moderately talented impartial analyst. :-) FeydHuxtable (talk) 20:47, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

So you don't want to show how you assessed his edits, and you acknowledge that your selection wasn't random. That's up to you, but don't expect others to believe your unsubstantiated assertions, which would be dismissed by any "moderately talented impartial analyst" as hot air.

If you really want to believe that CW is "one of our best editors", I can only hope that you enjoy the fantasy. If I thought that CW's deletion=murder claims, his refusals to discuss sourcing, his blustering assertions that passing mentions are evidence of notability per GNG, his repeated misuse of gbooks snippets, and so on amounted to "one of our best editors" I would simply stop devoting my time to editing wikipedia. If this does end up at arbcom, it will be very interesting to see what the arbs make of how some of CW's fellow diehard-inclusionists have been prepared to defend the indefensible. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:20, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

The statistical analysis was never very relevant anyway. We all make the occasional sourcing error: misreading a source or misinterpreting it. But when we see Colonel Warden citing article text to sources he cannot have read, as in the Ivanhoe Primary School example mentioned above, or the Countdown to Destruction source he refuses to discuss, or this (book), this (book) or this (book), it ought to raise fundamental concerns about his sourcing practices, regardless of any amount of good sourcing of other articles. Kanguole 23:34, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

If CW is "one of our best editors" then I think the entire Wikipedia project is untenable. I am glad to say that in over five years here I have found that editors like him are very rare and almost no other editor I have worked with would resort to his tactics of falsifying refs, moving articles to new topics in the middle of AfDs to "save' them and similar bizarre behavior, otherwise I think we would all have to give the idea of an encyclopedia up. User:FeydHuxtable, I am afraid you have discredited your own arguments by refusing to present your actual data for examination. - Ahunt (talk) 23:43, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

The statistical 'analysis' is not only irrelevant but highly subjective and mathematically bogus, and I suggest it be ignored. pablo 00:19, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

I just remembered that Kirill Lokshin puts it well in his essay Professionalism: "Our readers come to Wikipedia expecting to find a serious and reputable intellectual resource."

The falsification of references has no place in a serious and reputable intellectual resource. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 02:05, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Still up to his tricks

An unfortunate distraction. Original comment stricken by author—Kww(talk) 18:51, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Here's one from just this morning. An AFD argument claiming [28] a source covers a street "in some detail." Extra credit for obfuscation as he refers to "numerous" sources while only offering one. In fact, it's a paragraph mention (only available on "snippet view" too, so he really doesn't know what's in there (he does, however, quote the entirety of what can be read for free -- a sentence fragment). He's just tossing it out there to muddy the waters. Warden's not dialing it back at all, and seems to be deliberately thumbing his nose at all concerns raised here, which raises the question about next steps.Bali ultimate (talk) 13:11, 20 December 2010 (UTC) (Striking since this is distracting from much clearer examples; while i think i have a point here it's far less important than those being dealt with in "Countdown to destruction" up aboveBali ultimate (talk) 14:32, 20 December 2010 (UTC)). The numerous sources to which I refer were added by another editor following the nomination of the article at AFD and I showed a diff to demonstrate this. I brought forward yet another source as it seemed an excellent one for our purpose. It is Aberdeen: an illustrated architectural guide. It contains a section about the street in question and has an architectural focus which seems a good basis for working upon the topic. Your objection to these contributions seems quite incomprehensible. Let me provide another fresh example, which shows an alternative. This comes from user:Jclemens who is newly elected to arbcom and so seems to have some standing. In this example, he says "there's probably enough sourcing to keep because after all, it's Star Trek, and we all know there's a ton of sources for Kirk's underwear somewhere...". Would you prefer that my contributions to AFD be of this opinionated, hand-waving sort? It seems to me that I am being crucified here for providing sources of good quality which advance the discussion significantly. Other editors who do far less than this are not hauled over the coals for it and the lesson seems clear: less is more. Tsk. Colonel Warden (talk) 13:51, 20 December 2010 (UTC) Is good faith thrown out the door for every one of CW's edits now? What does this have to do with removing tags from articles? Here, you can tell from the Google snippet information that there is a separate section in the book on the street, between pages 32 and 34, though perhaps only a paragraph or 2. But it is covered in other sources as well, as CW says, e.g., [29]. I wonder what work the nominator did beforehand to decide this street was a "Non-notable street" (the entirety of the nominating statement). Instead of assuming good faith, shall we RFC him as well?--Milowent • talkblp-r 13:56, 20 December 2010 (UTC) If he's found to be repeatedly lying about things, then perhaps an RFC would be suitable for that person. But hardly relevant to the ongoing pattern of deception and exageration here.Bali ultimate (talk) 14:01, 20 December 2010 (UTC) (edit conflict)Well as Colonel Warden appears to be militantly disinterested in discussing issues relating to "removing tags from articles", we might as well discuss this as anything. And the assumption of good faith is generally inversely proportional to the evidence of patterns of disruptive and/or deceitful behaviour (if it weren't, then WP:ANI would be empty). HrafnTalkStalk(P) 14:04, 20 December 2010 (UTC) (ec)In my opinion, this RFC has been become an absolute unmanageable quagmire because Bali (among others) decided to make it a indictment of everything CW does instead of focusing it on the tagging allegations that Snotty raised. Evidence like this Aberdeen Street example doesn't show an "ongoing pattern of deception and exageration"; its shows that a lot of editors are cross with him and frustrated that this RFC has gone nowhere for 3 weeks.--Milowent • talkblp-r 14:10, 20 December 2010 (UTC) The rfc has been quite useful. CW has gotten a lot of feedback AND we now have evidence of a "prior attempt at dispute resolution." As you'll note on the project page, this is about far more than de-tagging, and is about an overall pattern of disruptive behavior around deletion. He will now either make substantial changes as a result of this feedback, or he won't and further steps will be taken. That's generally what RFCs are for.Bali ultimate (talk) 14:15, 20 December 2010 (UTC) Damned if you do, damned if you don't. People didn't respond appropriately to the tagging issue, so it was broadened in order to demonstrate that Colonel Warden is a disruptive editor and that corrective action is needed. Now that broadening itself is being condemned. Perhaps the real blame lies with Colonel Warden's long term and widespread use of bad editing practices? After all, there's no requirement that people disrupt the encyclopedia do so in neatly defined ways, so there's no reasonable way to make the RFCs adhere to a restriction like that.—Kww(talk) 14:21, 20 December 2010 (UTC) I'm not seeing any problem with either the AfD comment or the additions made to the article. I would very much appreciate it if someone could tell me why, in terms of policy, either the AfD comment or the additions to the article are problematic, because right now this seems more like a lynch mob than an RFC/U. Thparkth (talk) 14:19, 20 December 2010 (UTC) We've discussed a lot of additions to a lot of articles. Which particular edit are you failing to see the difficulty with?—Kww(talk) 14:21, 20 December 2010 (UTC) The one we're discussing now, where he makes a valid comment in an AfD, based on the addition of multiple sources to an article. Thparkth (talk) 14:22, 20 December 2010 (UTC) Just a member of the lynch mob chiming in. What do you think of the "countdown to destruction" section up above and the specific examples therein, Thparkth? Maybe you haven't read it yet. Have a look, then let us know what you think of those examples and of the "overall picture." It's rather myopic to focus on just one little cherrypicked example, I think.Bali ultimate (talk) 14:25, 20 December 2010 (UTC) No, I'm not going to discuss "countdown to destruction". I want to discuss the specific issue that you raised in this section, this diff which you described as a "trick". I would like to know what specifically you believe is wrong with this specific case which you raised. I don't think this is an unreasonable request. Thparkth (talk) 14:29, 20 December 2010 (UTC) I've stricken my comments to focus on the clearer, less controversial issues in "Countdown to destruction." Perhaps you'd like to address the appropriatness of claiming sources have things in them they do not have at all. Or not.Bali ultimate (talk) 14:33, 20 December 2010 (UTC) The RFC's scope is limited to tagging, no matter what else we've discussed. Its right there: Cause for Concern: "Colonel Warden has displayed a pattern of behavior whereby he repeatedly tries to delete and/or marginalize legitimate cleanup tags on articles without actually fixing the problem to which the cleanup tag refers. This is just one part of a larger pattern of Colonel Warden's disruptive behavior with regard to the deletion process on Wikipedia in general, however this RFC/U is intended to focus only on the issue of inappropriate cleanup tag removal." What we now have is evidence of some offending behavior with tags that has turned into a pitchfork and torches brigade. Future wikipedians will no doubt relish our work here.--Milowent • talkblp-r 14:24, 20 December 2010 (UTC) Please do not refer to this effort as a "pitchfork and torches" brigade. I've tried to calmly point out misbehaviour on Colonel Warden's part, and do not believe that I have been caught up in any mob hysteria. Perhaps you could look at the section above related to his abuse of sources and make specific comments about them?—Kww(talk) 14:29, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Closing (again)

I realize I supported letting this thing run it's course, but it seems to have done so now. I asked CW if he would add anything else he had to add nine days ago. [30] He replied that he was drafting a response five ago.[31] It seems we have some who think we should continue to wait. So I guess what I would like to know is how much longer we should wait before allowing an uninvolved party to commence the close. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:46, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

My !vote would be two more days, that would mean that CW would have had a week to draft his response from the time he declared he would do so. He could have responded to comments during the RFC, so it isn't as if he's not had time. I do hope he provides some form of response. --Nuujinn (talk) 02:51, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

• I jotted a few points down but didn't have time for the detailed grind of diffs and such. My antagonists seem quite picky and openly do not AGF and so one has to back up every statement with meticulous care and evidence. My current plan is to address the sourcing issues in the section above and to get back to the main response. But you guys are not the only people who nag me and there are many demands on my time... Colonel Warden (talk) 08:11, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

• I do not think it is being "picky" to note that (i) CW has not addressed a single, unstricken dif contained in the 'Statement of the dispute' & (ii) that CW appeared to have ample free time to discuss the works of Samuel Johnson at great length. I therefore put it to CW that he is avoiding discussing the complaint and that it is exactly this style of game-playing that has resulted in a large number of editors withdrawing the assumption of good faith with respect to him. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 08:23, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

• I have put some details in the section below. I had to write this twice as my first effort vanished into the ether for some reason - an error in one of the links, it seems. It's quite a chore preparing stuff like this but I have more to come which I expect to post tomorrow as I've already spent far too much time on this today. Colonel Warden (talk) 14:34, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Kanguole's list

Kanguole lists some sourcing issues above and this list seems of a manageable size to address:

• Ivanhoe Primary School. This seems to have been confusion between Ivanhoe, Victoria and Ivanhoe, New South Wales. This misunderstanding seems easily corrected. I have moved the citation to the latter article and have added some details from the source to improve our coverage of the topic.

• Countdown to Destruction. It's hard to recall the details of this case but I suppose that I was misled by a coincidence of keywords when searching. The addition was reverted at the time and I did not dispute this or return to the matter. Looking again at this now, the source seems worth using elsewhere and so I have added it to Japanese popular culture. This had a {{unreferenced}} tag which was erroneous because the article already had several references. I added this additional reference and removed the tag. I also replaced the {{cleanup}} tag with a {{japan-culture-stub}} tag as this seemed to address the article's state better.

• Antoine de Paris. Kanguole complains about Monsieur Antoine. This is a book of 248 pages devoted to this topic and so seems an excellent resource for this article. Kanguole's objection seems absurd and he says nothing of the other sources for this article.

• Compagnie della Calza. The source objected to here is likewise a book devoted to the topic. The author, Venturi, is cited by numerous other authors writing about this topic and so, again, it seems an excellent resource. Again Kanguole says nothing of the other sources provided.

• Saint Francis of Assisi school. Yet again we have a book length source devoted to the topic.

In judging these examples, it seems reasonable to compare with the critic's own work. The most recent articles created by Kanguole seem to be Tribal Group and Edwin G. Pulleyblank. The sourcing for these seems to be generally weaker, being a press release, a Who's Who entry (usually considered suspect as such entries are written by the subject), a deadlink and some journalism. Neither of these articles have a good substantial source like the books listed above. I therefore do not accept Kanguole's claim that there is a fundamental problem with my work. It just seems occasionally imperfect as expected by our editing policy.

Colonel Warden (talk) 14:31, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

• A "From inside the book" search on The Encyclopedia of Japanese pop culture at Google books does not turn up the juxtaposition, even coincidental, of the keywords "countdown" and "destruction". It is therefore difficult to perceive a WP:AGF reason for this reference having been included in Countdown to Destruction in the first place. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 14:53, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

• That episode was the finale of Power Rangers in Space. If you search Google Books for these keywords (finale power rangers in space), you get page 190 in that source, as Kanguole observes above. The "from inside the book" search is quite limited and doesn't seem to support multiple keywords. It will give null returns even if a page contains all the specified words. I usually find that you have to use single keywords to get results from that search option. Colonel Warden (talk) 15:24, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

• Yes, but that turns up the unpromising fragment: "Defending the earth from the dangers of space: the Power Rangers in a battle-ready pose" -- no indication in the slightest that this is relevant. Further, the keywords are so generic that the probability of a false positive is inherently unacceptably high (when in fact you are meant to be certain that the source contains the cited information). This is not WP:Verifiability, this is WP:Colonel's Careless Crap-shoot (slim possibility that the information might say what CW hopes it does but a large chance it says something completely different). Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 15:59, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

• Based upon such "methods" I can inform readers that Colonel Warden is quite famous -- having been mentioned in 543 books, some of them dating back to the early 19th century (are you a vampire CW, or a time traveller?). Can readers imagine what sort of WP:Complete bollocks articles we would allow if we allowed this sort of thing? Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 16:07, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

• A reference is a work used to support statements in an article. If a book seems relevant but you can't access it, it is not a reference, or indeed a source for the article. Perhaps it is Further reading. Kanguole 15:10, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that it a critical point. From my point of view it is completely inappropriate to use a work to which you do not have substantial access as a reference. Google snippets should not be used as references in articles, nor should a search result of keywords. Colonel Warden, you say you were "misled by a coincidence of keywords when searching," but have not said that use of a book to which you apparently did not have access as a reference for Countdown to Destruction was inappropriate. Do you think that your actions in that particular instance was or was not appropriate? --Nuujinn (talk) 15:40, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

If the information available in excerpts is sufficient for the point it can be used, unless reasonably challenged for either the presence of information or the context. In this case, the challenge was reasonable, so further discussion is needed, which should be deferred until someone obtains access to the actual book. I point out that about half our sourcing is based on excerpts. Even in the most exacting scholarly work it is acceptable to use an abstract for a reference, if one indicates it clearly. If the information is based on gbooks, or the newspaper first paragraphs or citations sometimes given in G news, it should be stated--but it is I think sufficiently stated by giving the link to the actual source used. Of course, in scholarly work, it is accepted that the workers be scholars and therefore have access to a g scholarly library, and that they use it, and therefore cite on the basis of having seen full sources whenever possible. But Wikipedia is not a scholarly work, and most of our contributors do not easily have such access. (we can possibly do something about paid online sources, but print is trickier). It would have been much harder to write an encyclopedia of the comprehensiveness of Wikipedia without reliance on excerpts, even for those with a good library available. I often use such excerpts for convenience, because I can go much faster: I would do do that were I writing a scientific paper. (btw, Nuujinn, you've used such excerpts yourself--see [32]) DGG ( talk ) 17:56, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

DGG: CW's statements clearly demonstrate that he had no real idea whether the claimed information was in the source or not -- he just hoped that it might be there, based on the presence of some very-generic key-words in a search yielding a hit. Do you think that this is a reasonable approach? If not, then why are you defending CW? Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 18:12, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

It's unreasonable to compare Nuujinn's use of a snippet to CW's, DGG: the snippet Nuujinn used is of text where Google Books returns the entire text of the surrounding pages, allowing reasonable judgment of content and coverage. That's completely different than an isolated snippet that doesn't even contain the phrase that was searched for. One is reasonable scholarship, one is active misrepresentation of a source.—Kww(talk) 18:25, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Yes, comparing five isolated words with four full pages is hardly comparing apples to apples -- but then, as I pointed out in #A question for DGG above, DGG's explanations of CW's actions haven't come even close to matching the facts. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 19:01, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

To be perfectly clear, I endorse the use of Google's previews, and as DGG notes, I use them myself. DGG, please note that it is the use of google snippets or hits to a search that point to a book to which no text or only a partial sentence or so is available to which I object. The key is substantial access to enough of the source to be able to use it as a reference for the material being sourced. And in regard to "In this case, the challenge was reasonable, so further discussion is needed, which should be deferred until someone obtains access to the actual book", please note that I do have the book in hand, and there is nothing in it at all about Countdown to Destruction. I asked CW directly some time ago whether he had access to the book, and he refrained from answering the question. I would be much less concerned if he had said something to the effect of "yes, I screwed up and should not have done that." --Nuujinn (talk) 19:44, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

• CW, I have just been looking at Compagnie della Calza, where you say that "the source objected to here is likewise a book devoted to the topic. The author, Venturi, is cited by numerous other authors writing about this topic and so, again, it seems an excellent resource".
  Indeed it might be an excellent source, but only if you had read it. I am suspicious about the absence of a page number, and the link you provided is to http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ddiWOwAACAAJ : no preview. So what exactly did you read which led you cite the book as a reference for a particular fact, rather than as suggested further reading? Also, it seems that the book is in Italian. Do you understand Italian? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:43, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

• I had a similar question-mark over Hubert Demory (2006), Monsieur Antoine: grand maître de la haute coiffure française, l'Harmattan, ISBN 9782296015494, again no Google Books preview, WorldCat states it is only held in a couple of libraries in the US (Yale & the Library of Congress), one in the UK (the British Library), etc. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 05:17, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

• I have also been looking at Saint Francis of Assisi school. CW says above say "yet again we have a book length source devoted to the topic".
  Actually, what we appear to have is no more than the title of a publication labelled The vision and the challenge: St. Francis of Assisi School, 1955-1995; all the Google Books tell us about it is that was by someone called Tom Nugent and "Gateway Press, 1995 - 134 pages". Nothing about whether it was a book or a pamphlet, who Tom Nugent is, or anything at all to let us judge whether this book is a reliable source or if he is independent of the subject, or even if it is about the school in Baltimore rather than another 1955-founded example of the hundreds or thousands of schools with the same name. (The gushing title suggests that this work is a hagiography, not an independent assessment).
  Yet on the basis of this 134-pages which he almost certainly didn't read, by an unknown author whose hagiographic title suggests "in-house puff piece produced for 40th anniversary", CW added a footnote to one sentence to justify a factoid gleaned from the book's title ... and on that basis, unmerged an article which had been merged at an AFD discussion. So now, on the basis of the existence of these unread and unassessed 134 pages we once gain have an article with vapid puffery like "unique learning experiences" and "Students are expected to treat each other with care and respect." (Hey, that sets em apart from all those schools where pupils are expected to treat each other with careless contempt!)
  This vanispamcruftisement should go back to AFD, and this time it should be deleted, to prevent CW from restoring it on the basis of such such flaky evidence. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:35, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

  Aha, here it is. Gatewaypress.com in Baltimore, via the wayback machine: a self-publishing outfit.

  So it probably is about that school, but as I thought from the title, it's self-published.

  At AFD, CW repeatedly denounces editors for not allegedly not following WP:BEFORE. Doesn't look like CW did much WP:BEFOREing when he unmerged this school-puff. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 05:41, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

  The remaining claimed reference at Ivanhoe Primary School (in addition to the one removed yesterday) is of a similar nature. Kanguole 12:32, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Three further aggravating factors on the Saint Francis of Assisi school incident:

1. The article had been redirected pursuant to WP:Articles for deletion/Saint Francis of Assisi school
2. CW's edit summary in overturning this AfD decision was a deceptive "+ citation &c."
3. In spite of only claiming an (as it turns out inadequate) source for a single paragraph, CW restored a large amount of unsourced information at the same time (in direct violation of WP:V).

Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 06:04, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Uncovered by accident

CW's attempt to wikilawyer a speedy deletion of a duplicate article (Thomas Sheridan (actor), duplicating Thomas Sheridan) led to a little more scrutiny of it ... and it turned out that this CW-created duplicate was based on The British Cyclopedia of Biogrpaphy, which actually referred to the subject's father. The material referenced was in the source, but since the father was the subject of the entry, it established notability of the father, not the son. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 07:52, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

• I wrote an article about the father too: Thomas Sheridan (divine). I started a stub on the son at the same time because they have the same name and it seems good to get clarity in such cases of possible confusion between people of the same name. See David Nutt (publisher) for a similar case which I created at the same time as I fleshed out David Nutt. My mistake in this case was not to look for existing Thomas Sheridan articles as I don't seem to have found the dab page at the time. BHG seems to have made a similar mistake in not realising that I was working upon both father and son. I have now updated the Thomas Sheridan (divine) article to add appropriate links to his namesakes and have asked for the actor stub to be userfied so I can check it for loose ends too. Colonel Warden (talk) 11:08, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

Whether or not you were working on father and son, you had no business creating a duplicate article ... and you didn't even have to find the dab page, since the son was at time the primary topic. You berate everyone else if you think they have not followed WP:BEFORE, but you didn't do some very basic checks here.

Whether or not you were working on father and son, you had no business using an encyclopedia entry on the father as evidence of the notability of the son.

The idea that you "were working on" both doesn't add up either. You did one edit to Thomas Sheridan (actor), leaving it as a substub, and abandoned it. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:01, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

• The British Cyclopaedia of Biography well supports the notability of Thomas Sheridan the actor as the latter part of that entry is about him, not his father, detailing his career and saying "He obtained much celebrity in his new profession...". The other article could use this source as it currently has no inline citations and so needs more work. The speedy deletion was improper because it did not allow for merger of this information as specified by CSD A10. Colonel Warden (talk) 12:27, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

• Col W, go read WP:GNG. After all the AFDs you have participated in, I don't believe that you really think for a moment that ten lines in an encyclopedia entry about someone woukd pass muster at AFD as "significant coverage". --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:54, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

PS Now that you have spotted this page again, please will you explain what you were doing with Saint Francis of Assisi school and Compagnie della Calza, where the problems are set out in the section above? --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:04, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

• In light of these events I have despaired at ever reaching the Col. The Sheridan deletion was in the realm of housekeeping as it was a one-sentence long improperly sourced sub-stub that duplicated an existing topic. If the Col. hadn't chosen to make a big deal out of this completely justified deletion this never would have even come to light. I don't see any hope here of arriving at a voluntary agreement. I had hopes when we started but now it seems clear there is no desire on his part to even acknowledge the problems. I'm out of here. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:14, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

• Agreed. The same conclusion I came to a few weeks ago. SnottyWong ^express 00:28, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

• It served its purpose. We got a number of people to examine the issues, and all the reasonable ones agreed that there was some level of problem here. Even FeydHuxtable recognized some level of problem. I think most people will perceive DGG as defending the indefensible. Once the RFC is over, blocks against CW for further instances of trouble will probably be upheld by the community.—Kww(talk) 00:36, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

• I agree with User:Kww, this has been a very useful exercise. I think the evidence is very clear that there was a lot of intentional deception going on and no adequate explanation has been forthcoming. CW knows he will have to stop or be blocked. - Ahunt (talk) 01:27, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

• Actually, I have certainly not been defending each of his individual edits and taggings and references and edit summaries, as he knows very well, but as anyone else can also check. This rfc was brought , and quite reasonably so, on the most obviously problematic part: the edit summaries. There has been sufficient discussion of them that I think CW now more fully understands the needs of explaining. And I have in the last month seen many others--including myself--profiting by this lesson also: the quality of edit summaries by regular users has been improving. Therefore, the RfC has met its goal and more than met it--it has been effective in changing the behavior of not just its subject, but of all of us. This could have been done very simply, but other people have brought into the rfc other aspects--some about the aspects of his editing mentioned, some about his general attitude. He has certainly made some mistakes. I have certainly made some mistakes, though not as many as he, for I do not do as much article work as he does. There are many who make fewer, but this is almost always because they do less positive work. A person will make no mistakes, for example, in using dubious slightly references if they add no references at all, but only remove those others have added. This is not a place for precise scholarly work, but for good acceptable work to cover as much ground as possible. Scholarship --original synthesis as well as original research--must go elsewhere, though scholars writing in a suitably unscholarly manner are badly wanted here. CW meets the necessary standard more fully than almost anyone else here.--certainly more fully than anyone else who works on such an incredibly broad range of subjects. As for CW's general attitude towards Wikipedia, Kww is correct: I fully support it, as I have a very similar view myself of what the encyclopedia should be like and how it should be edited. I not only regard it as defensible, but as so obviously desirable as not to require much defense. I know there are those who would prefer a less comprehensive encyclopedia, and it's they who would have problems defending their position. Not us. DGG ( talk ) 02:46, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

• DGG, thank you for clarifying your view. I disagree with a lot of it, but it is helpful for you to set it out.
  You say that "this is not a place for precise scholarly work", and on that I think you have identified a fundamental point of disagreement which will arise again and again. My own view is that Wikipedia's core policies clearly set out that it strives for a scholarly standard; as a work-in-progress we often fall short, but the goal of scholarly work is clear.
  You clearly don't share that goal, and try to justify that by redefining "scholarship" as solely original research or synthesis. I find this very funny, since it pretty much defines librarians as non-scholars; I wonder what would happen in an academic library if someone went around cataloguing material sloppily and intentionally inaccurately, defending their work by saying "this ain't scholarship anyway". Would their feet touch the floor on the way out?
  Even if your desire for a more comprehensive encyclopedia were preferred over an accurate one, that does not just justify the repeated addition of bogus or irrelevant references. If an editor can't find a genuinely reliable source which genuinely confirms the point made, there is a simple solution: leave the article or assertion tagged as needing a reference. Adding a bogus ref simply masks the problems, and degrades the encyclopedia rather than improving it. If CW's difficulties arise from working in such a broad field, then there is a simple solution: narrow the scope, and learn how to source things properly within a particular field. There is no deadline: the gap can be filled later, but papering over it doesn't help.
  You also make a narrower claim that CW makes mistakes because he does so much, and so you find this acceptable. The never-mind-the-quality-but-feel-the-width idea would be no defence even if your premise were true, because CW has repeatedly shown no interest in clearing up even when his mistakes are identified by others. Look even at the most recent examples, in the section above headed Kanguole's list: no response from CW, even tho I specifically drew them to CW's attention on his talk page. When other edits try to verify CW's sources, and find problems, they frequently find that their efforts have been wasted, because CW will not discuss the problem and reverts their removal.
  The fact that you consistently defend all of this by explaining away each individual problem as an aberration, and defending the overall effect of bogus referencing as a good thing has confirmed what I have long thought: that CW's systematic degrading of Wikipedia is part of a wider problem. The contempt which you and CW demonstrate for the core policy of WP:V will at some stage have to be tackled. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 04:36, 11 January 2011 (UTC)
• The issue at hand is deliberate and systematic deception, not differences of view on inclusion policy (except in that the deception seems targeted to confuse the standard of inclusion that we do have).
  It would be nice if we could have a user RFC (or a RfA, or an AfD process for that matter) without people bringing up issues of 'partisanship'. The constant search for the path of most drama helps perpetuate the myth that Wikipedia editors are binarily split into two unthinking herds. The reality is that this only really concerns a very few editors who seem to have every interest in prolonging and publicising this supposed schism. pablo 09:29, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Rebuttal of DGG's I'm-not-defending-CW-defence-of-CW

The following is a response to this comment from DGG.

Unreferenced tags

• DGG states (i) "This rfc was brought ... on ... the edit summaries." & (ii) "I have certainly not been defending each of his individual edits and taggings and references and edit summaries".
• The first point is inaccurate because a major point of the complaint was the removal of templates, with {{unreferenced}} templates being a major focus. The second is problematical because he gave the following blanket defence of CW's detagging: "Even for unreferenced, there can be reasonable disagreements about the extent to which the links or information in the article constitute references ." Of course this fails to mention any specific "individual" detaggings -- but then CW's behaviour is always easier to defend if you stay as far away as possible from specifics.
• I put this issue to DGG at #A question for DGG above, but he seemed more interested in discussing WP:NPP instead.

"Mistakes"

• DGG attempts to ascribe CW's pervasive misbehaviour to honest "mistakes" ("He has certainly made some mistakes.")
• I direct readers attention to the Saint Francis of Assisi school incident discussed above. In ascribing this to an honest mistake we would need toi accept that CW simultaneously:
  • Made the mistake of subverting an AfD (a reasonably clear violation of WP:CONSENSUS).
  • Made the mistake of doing so on the basis of a WP:SPS, he had apparently never sighted (a clear violation of WP:V).
  • Made the mistake of restoring a majority of material that was not cited even to this source (also a clear violation of WP:V).
  • Made the mistake of making an edit summary that grossly misrepresented both the type and the magnitude of the edit.

Assuming that all these were simultaneous honest mistakes pushes credibility and WP:AGF well past breaking point. At this stage any editor, who does not suffer from a deep psychological inability to perceive purposeful wrongdoing in CW's actions, would declare WP:DUCK and conclude that CW was purposefully and dishonestly gaming the system.

• In demonstrating how deep DGG's inability goes, and how reflexive his defence of CW is, I would point to the discussion above where DGG attempted to equate Nuujinn's use of Google Books (in a situation where 4 full pages are available for context) for referencing with CW's (where in one case a search for 5 separated words yielded a hit, but no relevant text).

In concluding I would suggest that DGG's views of CW are not just one-eyed but utterly discredited. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 05:53, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

I largely agree with you here, but why are you wasting time on dear old DGG? He's an ideological extremist whose user page (and interactions with the broader community of editors) makes clear he has no interest in meaningful interaction with the heretics who disagree with him.Bali ultimate (talk) 06:19, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Whilst I agree with you that DGG is psychologically incapable of changing his mind on this, I think there is value in demonstrating that the Emperor has no clothes. It moves the conversation from (what have to date been pervasive) airy defences of the indefensible, forcing it to address specific and obviously dishonest behaviour. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 06:57, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

eDrama is likely but...

I took the liberty of removing this piece of tripe. I have little doubt it will be readded post-haste, but I think Okip should consider trying to weigh in in support of Cw without slagging the RFCU creator. Tarc (talk) 03:04, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Funny stuff... SnottyWong ^prattle 06:03, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

I can see very well why the two editors just above might dislike it: it shows their comments here in a context they probably do not want to admit to themselves. DGG ( talk ) 02:50, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Amusing that it has been the wiki-buddies riding to the rescue that have ramped up the eDrama more than Okip himself did. Tarc (talk) 03:39, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the personal attack, DGG. Sorry, but can you point to the comments that I made at this discussion which are so shameful that I can't even admit them to myself? Or show me the evidence of my "bullying" that Okip accuses me of? I invite you or Okip to dig as deep as you like into my contributions and find some evidence of a pattern of wrongdoing on my part. I can't imagine how you ever managed to pass RfA here. I'd like to personally request that you consider adding yourself to this category. SnottyWong ^verbalize 03:44, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

No DGG: what "it shows" is how you reflexively demonise anybody who has the audacity to point out what a complete and utter scoundrel your bosum-buddy CW actually is. You relieve the cognitive dissonance reports of his bad acts creates by angrily shooting the messenger. Hrafn^Talk_Stalk^(P) 06:01, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Best to let this go. DGG won't really condemn anyone who agrees with him ideologically. We've seen this here with his defense of CW and previously with his defense of A Nobody. Similarly, in these situations Okip usually goes after other users rather than focusing on the subject of the request for comment. We've seen this before when his outside view in A Nobody's RfC primarily focused on Jack Merridew, Lar, and Protonk. This is a sideshow best fit to be ignored. Let's hope someone comes along and closes this soon, since CW doesn't appear to really be willing to discuss specific problems and fighting with his cheerleaders is an exercise in pointlessness. AniMate 09:02, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. This has become utterly pointless and needs to be closed. SnottyWong ^express 14:56, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Regretfully, I concur. I was hoping that CW would address the issues brought up here in a straightforward manner, but clearly that is not going to happen. I sincerely hope that CW decides to modify his behaviour in the future, taking greater care to explain his intentions. But at this point, I think we're done here. --Nuujinn (talk) 16:16, 11 January 2011 (UTC)