Wikipedia talk:Requests for comment/Pumpie2

How do we proceed?

Pumpie apparently doesn't want to respond to this Request for comment. We notified him twice, and he has been editing quite a lot since. I see a small improvement in his French station articles: there are less errors because they're shorter. He still doesn't check red links (I keep changing Category:Somme (département) to Category:Somme), he doesn't copy web references correctly from French wikipedia, and English grammar is still troubling him: "the schedule are". He creates loads of useless redirects (like Panayía (Límnos), Greece and Feuquieres-en-Vimeu, France). His latest Greek article is Kostas Tsakonas, that's hilaric again: "His first appearance was in the film and became famous in a movie in the short length by Kostas Zirinis."

So, what do we do next? Markussep ^Talk 12:39, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking of asking myself. I agree with your assessment of his recent French station articles: he's fixed "the station are served" and seems to be generally trying, but the edit summary "new - translated from the fr Wikipedia, all articles with the French line 25 that I did and tabled with a different line corrects it to line 25" demonstrates both effort and continuing major English problems. He continues to be unable to translate novel passages of prose: at Gare de Feuquerolles he rendered La ligne Abbeville-Le Tréport a concrètement bénéficié de travaux de rénovation as "The Abbeville-Le Tréport line, a beneficiary concreting in its renovation works." There's also continuing carelessness in getting details right as he copies and pastes: for example at Gare de Feuquerolles he had the station name wrong in one place and the wrong line in the infobox and left out a line of the station address; at Gare de Balagny-Saint-Épin he had the wrong line in the infobox and the wrong opening date - Gare de Feuquerolles;Gare de Balagny-Saint-Épin, diffs between his version and one worked on by both me and Markussep. In both cases he's done his typical 2 edits and we've put in a total of 4-5 edits to fix the article up. So despite effort, he continues to create considerable work, and his translations are still not up to snuff. I haven't even had time to look at the recent Greek ones to assess their English.

It had occurred to me earlier that one possible partial fix is to withdraw the autoreviewer from his new articles, so that the folks at NewPages could share in the task of assessing which ones need to be labeled Rough Translations. I notice that since this RfC began someone has tagged at least one of his new station articles as an orphan - that's not the urgent problem, but more eyes couldn't hurt and it might help him to see more feedback.Yngvadottir (talk) 15:11, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

For now, I agree with The Rhymesmith's proposal of having him put the articles in his namespace first. Removing autoreviewer rights is not really a remedy, as he will continue creating dozens of horrible articles, and there's only a handful of people who are able and willing to clean up his mess... Although he is indeed trying, he is still a long way from displaying adequate language skills. Aside from that however, it remains apparent that he knows nothing about the context of the articles he writes. If he is incapable of realizing that Γκαίτε is Goethe and not some chap named Geite [1], then I don't have much hope for him. Constantine ✍ 15:50, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

His latest French station articles are worse again, there are so many errors, this should really stop. I suspect he doesn't even look at the articles before he saves them at all, just look at this: [2]. And Pumpie still doesn't respond to our comments. The Rhymesmith's proposal basically means that Pumpie is blocked for article namespace. I was hesitant to support that, since he doesn't mutilate high profile articles, but I guess it's the best option we have. I don't think a RfC can decide on such a sanction, we'd have to ask for arbitration (Administrators' noticeboard is not the place for this I guess). Markussep ^Talk 08:24, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

I guess I agree with you regarding arbitration, because my main concern with the Rhymesmith's proposal is I don't see how it could be enforced. So I suppose you're right, it would have to be enforced by a ban. I don't know what motivates Pumpie in creating so many articles - and wow, he's been on quite a jag again - and I'm not sure it's my business to speculate, but he does try to help out elsewhere, on popular culture articles. So the project would lose that. And it would be equally time-consuming to improve the articles outside namespace. My secondary concern is that this is definitely and self-evidently punishment. I'd be happier with something that got him to learn how to do it right, rather than giving the message that we just don't want articles from him, or about French stations, remote localities, and obscure Greek politicians and films. That was why I went ahead and created a station article he had unaccountably not done. I don't think I can support this proposal, though I do appreciate the spirit in which it's offered and the attention this RfC has started to garner for the problem that a handful of us have been expending valuable time trying to mitigate. If Pumpie is reading this - I hope he will further refine his copy and paste model and slow down to a pace of one article a night, with more than one correction edit, in order to get them right. Because speaking for myself, I do not know when I will find the time to get caught up on those he's already created, and maybe he hasn't considered that one correct article is much more welcome than five or six that contain errors of fact and incomprehensible stuff? Yngvadottir (talk) 14:48, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Frankly, I'm losing hope that his edits can improve. He doesn't communicate, and we can't teach him English, can we? As is, his edits are too unreliable and/or incomprehensible to be of any value IMO. And why start with stations of tiny villages when the main stations of cities like Metz, Dijon, Grenoble and Tours hadn't been done yet (I've created them now)? Maybe arbitration would give him a wake up call. Markussep ^Talk 16:24, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Last night he created some beautiful prose again, see Klassiki periptosi vlavis. I counted 12 errors in such a short article, my personal favourite is "he rose from his cane for building a furnace". I've warned him again. Markussep ^Talk 09:50, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

I admire your perseverance and patience. Ironically, klassiki periptosi vlavis means "typical case of malfunction", which is what we have here. I really want to see him contribute constructively. There is a part of me that keeps insisting that he can be made to do so, but then there is the other part that looks at the dozens of ignored warnings and shakes its head... Pity, both for him and for the project... Constantine ✍ 16:54, 31 August 2010 (UTC)