User talk:A. B./Second half 2010

This page is a chronological archive of past discussions from User talk:A. B. for the second half of 2010. In order to preserve the record of past discussions, the contents of this page should be preserved in their current form. Please do NOT make new edits to this page. If you wish to make new comments or re-open an old discussion thread, please do so on the User talk:A. B. page. If necessary, copy the relevant discussion thread to the user talk:A. B. page and then add your comments there.

Bot

Hello a.b,

I applied for the Turkish Wiktionary be a bot. But they have any problems, they told me I should by Bot englih Wikipedia.Can please help:: you have me, please? Best regards —Preceding unsigned comment added by George Animal (talk) 20:07, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry I don't know much about bots. I suggest you start at this page, Wikipedia:Bots and go from there. Perhaps you could ask questions at Wikipedia talk:Bots. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:32, 25 July 2010 (UTC)

About templating

Hi, thanks for your advice about not using templates for regular editors. I'm still finding my way around the templates, and that did come out a bit harsh. Nadiatalent (talk) 21:42, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

That's cool. It seems like this place can be so complicated sometimes in terms of norms! Anyway, you didn't seem like the "BITEY" type, which is why I dropped you a note instead of throwing other templates (like {{Uw-tempabuse1}} and {{uw-bite}} ) at you in the sort of online role-playing game of gotcha that crops up sometimes around here. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 02:13, 29 July 2010 (UTC)

Anette Groves AfD

Hi AB. I would just like to reassure you that I am not in the slightest bit bothered by who wins this lowest tier local government ward election. I am however deeply concerned with maintaining standards on the Wikipedia. In order to help me unserstand the AfD process better, I would like you to point me to the rules that state that the rationale for supporting the nominator's claims may only be based on his/her claims and that no new evidence for deletion may be introduced into the debate. Thanks. --Kudpung (talk) 20:27, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

Kudpung, thanks for the note. I don't have a dog in this local Ontario fight (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Annette Groves‎), either.

As an admin, I actually spend the bulk of my time dealing with COI/SOAP/spam issues on Wikipedia[1]. To answer your question, there's nothing that says folks commenting in an AfD have to stick to the nominator's claims; our goal is to decide whether to include an article in Wikipedia. See Wikipedia:Deletion policy#Reasons for deletion: "Advertising or other spam without relevant content (but not an article about an advertising-related subject)" But this same section also says this is "subject to the condition that improvement or deletion of an offending section, if practical, is preferable to deletion of an entire page". We do make an exception for totally blatant, useless spam articles; see Wikipedia:Criteria for speedy deletion#G11 ("Pages that are exclusively promotional, and would need to be fundamentally rewritten to become encyclopedic."). So when possible, we're supposed to clean up rather than delete anything with potential to be an encyclopaedia article. 90+% of the time, AfD discussions therefore turn on the subject of notability notwithstanding the motivation of the article's creator.

There's another low-level Ontario politician with an article with an article in AfD that he or a friend probably created; see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Paul Rexe. If someone expands that article based on the articles that make him notable, he's going to come up against the situation covered in WP:LUC (don't you just love these silly abbreviations??).

I appreciate your care for keeping Wikipedia's standards up -- sometimes it feels like we're spitting in the wind around here, quality-wise! --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:55, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

PS Here are 3 pages of additional, contradictory material for keeping or deleting an article:

• Wikipedia:List of policies and guidelines to cite in deletion debates
• Wikipedia:Arguments to make in deletion discussions
• Wikipedia:Arguments to avoid in deletion discussions

You gotta love this place!

Note that none of these pages are policy pages whereas the pages I cited before are policies.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:59, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

AfD nominations

Just wanted to say that I appreciate working with you on AfDs today. (Annette Groves). I use each issue as a learning experience. Although AfDs often lead to disagreements that some people tend to take personally, I respect the comments and dialogue and appreciate the feedback. I learned a lot today. Again, I enjoyed working with you and hope to glean more from you in the future. Cindamuse (talk) 05:31, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your kind and thoughtful comments. This makes my day! --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:19, 11 August 2010 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/HarbourLynx‎

It really frustrates me when people just say "Keep, but it needs more references" without proving that any exist. Then you get a pile-on "keep, it needs more references" and there might not actually even be any. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Many otters • One bat • One hammer)} 18:22, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

OK. We all get frustrated. I'm just asking you to be a bit nicer to those you disagree with. Asperity doesn't strengthen your arguments; if anything it just makes people plant their feet. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:36, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, A. B.. You have new messages at Rrburke's talk page.
Message added 16:54, 15 August 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Help - I see a backlog being created ..!

Hi A.! You may already have noticed, I am playing with the LinkSaver module, and have been rewriting parts of that. I always noticed that the local reports on meta did not get ANY attention, so .. Category:Local COIBot Reports - Category:Open Local COIBot Reports

I am still tweaking the system .. and the auto-cleanup should be arranged as well. I could use some help with the categorisation (where does Category:Local COIBot Reports get categorised? - the stale/ignored/closed categories when they start to exist).

COIBot will try and keep these reports up-to-date .. maybe you could start keeping an eye. I will start poking Erwin again to get the nice 'add' that we have on meta as well.

Sorry for being a bit incoherent here ... trying to keep up with the bot to see if it does not make major mistakes. Have a nice evening/day. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 20:45, 15 August 2010 (UTC)

Dirk, I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here, but I will re-read it a few times and ponder it. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)}

I thought so .. I needed sleep.

A) I rewrote the part of COIBot that saves the reports. The LinkReports where already in a new format, now also XWiki and Local reports are in a new format (they do still look pretty much the same, though, most of the data is still the same)

B) Part of the rewrite meant that Local reports can now easily be saved on local wikis, and I did that for en.wikipedia.org. So next to the m:Category:Open COIBot Local reports for en.wikipedia.org/m:Category:Open COIBot Local reports for fr.wikipedia.org/m:Category:Open COIBot Local reports for de.wikipedia.org/&c. on meta, we have now also here a Category:Open Local COIBot Reports/Category:Local COIBot Reports, which contains the local reports for en. Makes it easier to track the simple spammers on en.wikipedia.

C) COIBot is regularly re-parsing the local reports, keeping them up to date. I am working on a mechanism to close them automagically based on some rules.

Everything still needs to be tagged appropriately. I just started the text with a bit of text, I think we need to expand on it (properly categorise, have proper explanations on what the cat contains). Also note the existence here now of {{LinkStatusLocal}} (which makes the autocategorisation), User:COIBot/EditSummary and User:COIBot/OtherLinks (which make up the display of each diff in the reports).

Sorry for the incoherence. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 06:00, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Question: what would you see as a suitable upper limit for the number of records that the LinkReports should report. I've now set it to 2500 .. but that might take a long time to munch for the bot. Is 1000 better, or do you expect that you run every now and then ('regularly') into cases where 1000 is too low (it can be set 'on the fly', so we could take it a bit low, and when one needs a report with more, you just up the number (in m:User:COIBot/Settings), poke the report, wait for it to be saved, and then return it back to normal)? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:20, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

When you speak of records, do you mean the number of link additions on each report page? As in, whether a web page for one domain will list a maximum of 1000 or 2500 link additions from our projects to that domain? If so, I don't see why you would normally even need 1000. You'd have to have 100s of innocent link additions on top of any spam to get to 1000 in most cases and if you have 100s of innocent link additions, then you really need to think twice before blacklisting. Since you have the option to run longer reports in special circumstances, why don't you set it lower than 1000 if you need the performance. Then when one of us needs something longer, we can fiddle with the settings as you've described.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:41, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

I mean the number of edits (diffs) that the bot reports in a report (each edit can contain more links added in the same edit).

I have noticed some editors who get to about 100 edits before people even notice them (strangely enough ..; note that I have 188 records (!) for ncpdtoo.info).

Performance does not seem a problem yet, the new way of reporting is much faster than the old way. But I agree that 2500 seems a bit much. I'll try 500 for now. I have also put a limit to the number of pages to parse (the part where the bot loads the top revid of the pages the spam is added to to check whether the link is still there) to 100 unique pages (if there are less than 10 unique pages hit, the bot checks all, otherwise it only checks the ones that are done by the editors mentioned in the Local/XWiki reports). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 20:16, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good. I appreciate all your work on this. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:12, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

DRV

[2]

</me claps enthusiastically> Horologium (talk) 21:46, 17 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 01:02, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Userfication

When userfying an article you actually need to move it to user space by typing User: before the move destination. Floribert Piña/Facts Air is still in article space and so are all the others you've just done. AniMate 05:07, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Ooops! Thanks for catching my mistake. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 05:13, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Honestly, I'm a little confused by the userfication. Neither user has edited since May, and I can't see any requests for these being userfied. AniMate 05:17, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

It all started with a new entry on the WikiProject Deletion sorting/Canada list, Articles for deletion/Air Brasd'or. I started digging into figuring out if it could be saved and noticed some patterns common to it and some other aviation articles such as Air Fecteau

I think the same person with weak English skills and an interest in the airline industry has been trying to create articles on defunct, small North American carriers using several accounts. I don't think this person understands our rules on things like verifiability, notability and, of course, sock-puppetry. At the same time, I think this person is well-intended and these little carriers are notable but hard to verify (because they went under before the advent of the Internet so media articles are not available on the Internet). I think with further work finding sources plus some coaching for the editor, some of these articles have potential, as does the editor. For more info, see:

• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Airlines/Archive 5#Large amount of hoax edits on small/defunct airlines
• Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Floribert Piña
• User talk:ClobberDogy#Welcome

Even the smallest carriers are inevitably notable if you dig hard enough for reliable sources.

Normally I look askance at things like sockpuppetry, but from reading the communications, I think this person has been genuinely befuddled by our processes. (For instance, deletions: remove the tag to dispute a "PROD" but never, ever remove the tag to dispute an "AfD" or a "CSD". If you're brand new editor getting multiple articles deleted different ways, it must seem pretty obscure, especially when your English is a weak.)

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 06:31, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Not sure I agree with you on the notability issue, as I'm sure you can find sources proving they exist but I'm unconvinced that existence of a business equals notability. Also, your creating pages in another editor's user space they didn't ask you to create. These are people (or a person) who haven't edited in three months. If you're interested in working on them, you should have them inyour user space. You're welcome to work on them if you really feel a company with a total of four business jets is notable, but do it in your own user space. AniMate 22:18, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

I don't know if all of them are notable. I think  all  are  possibly  notable and the  majority probably  are notable. Yes, existence does not necessarily equal notability, but certain kinds of businesses get a lot of press coverage and from experience you can expect it's out there somewhere if you look. Very small scheduled airlines inevitably get press coverage each time they start serving a new destination. Bancjet Systems is definitely notable; I remember reading about them in the past. Even that cargo carrier with just 4 business jets -- those planes may represent a $15 to $40 million investment. Dollars don't necessarily equal notability, but when enough gets spent or invested, it tends to get noticed and reported.

Based on my observation of aviation articles over time, I concluded all these articles had sufficient potential to make it desirable to get more experienced eyes on them. I've posted notes at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Defunct Airlines‎ and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Airlines‎. It's possible that some of the WikiProject people come back saying they don't think these carriers are notable, in which case I defer to their experience.

As for which user space to move those to, I wasn't sure whether to move them all to the current (unproven) sock's account, the creators' accounts or my own user space. I went with the the creators' accounts. If they complain, I'll be happy to move them again. I tried to follow the essay, Userfication, as much as possible.

I left the most recent editor a long note at User talk:ClobberDogy#Welcome; please leave him your own thoughts if you have additional suggestions or if you disagree with my advice. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 23:20, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

Dewan357

Hi, this is Dewan357. You gratefully gave me the standard offer and said that I will be unblocked in September. I am just checking in to let you know because September is a few days away. Thank you (74.102.103.191 (talk) 08:58, 25 August 2010 (UTC))

Sorry, we've never interacted. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:42, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Survey on gender

Hi! I'm Liria Veronesi (User:Akoha77) and, together with Paolo Massa (User:Phauly), I'm starting an empirical research on "Gender and votes in requests for adminship". For this reason, we need to know the gender of Wikipedians who were candidated to become admins.

We tried looking for the templates User:UBX/male and User:UBX/female but only 4 admins use it. We also used the API for getting the gender field in the profile but, out of 1744 admins, only around 400 have filled this field. But we would benefit from a larger coverage, i.e. possibly knowing the gender of 100% of candidates.

So, after asking for advice to 3 admins and receiving 2 positive replies (1 and 2), we decided to try to ask directly to Wikipedians.

Thus, would you be so kind to write your gender [Male / Female / Other], together with a text comment if you want, on my talk page at User_talk:Akoha77? If you prefer to send me this information privately, you can send me an email, the information will be kept confidential and never shared.

Thanks! Akoha77 (talk) 12:48, 31 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer -- I'll be in touch. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:43, 5 September 2010 (UTC)

Template:Do not delete

I noticed that a bot removed a deleted template from a user talk page (diff). This is just FYI in case you have not noticed that Template:Do not delete has been deleted. You added this template to Template:Uw-spam1 (diff). Johnuniq (talk) 03:41, 3 September 2010 (UTC)

User:Smkovalinsky

In case you're interested, I blocked several accounts today as socks of User:Smkovalinsky/User:Petrosianii. Category:Suspected Wikipedia sockpuppets of Smkovalinsky. They've now declared "war" on Wikipedia.[3]   Will Beback  talk  03:29, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

Banning Of gCaptain

I would like to discuss the blacklisting of our site gCaptain.com. I do not see any notes on the discussion page for blacklisted sites and no explanation on why it was blacklisted by you. We are very interested in the quality of our links and have no interest in distracting the conversation here at wikipedia. Thanks, John Konrad - coFounder - gCaptain.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gcaptain (talk • contribs) 20:38, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

--Gcaptain (talk) 20:54, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

I have removed the personal contact information. As explained at User talk:Beetstra#Banning Of gCaptain, discussions here occur on the relevant talk pages. Johnuniq (talk) 00:30, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I apologize for making my appeal here and will move further conversation to the appropriate place. I also apologize for including my personal contact information, my only intention was to be honest about who I am. --Gcaptain (talk) 18:35, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Wow...

		The Socratic Barnstar
		Awarded for the most jaw-droppingly comprehensive talkpage response I've ever seen. Cheers. HausTalk 05:05, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Thanks -- this makes my day.

I wanted to conclusively put to rest the disingenuous claims of innocence and victimization. Otherwise, based on my experience, in the future someone (possibly egged on by the site-owner) will come back and accuse the complaining editors of being "over-reacting" "link-nazis".

By the way, if you check their geographic locations, you'll find some of those IPs traceroute to the San Luis Obispo area, the location of the site-owners and a relatively small area.
--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 12:55, 17 September 2010 (UTC)

Falling rain

PLease see this. I find it extremely concerning that you don't think a website which we have proof for thousands of articles that the data is false isn't worthy of blacklisting.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:25, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

We've already exchanged views on this before. Perhaps you should go back and re-read what you deleted from your talk page:^[4]

"Others care as much about Wikipedia as you do"

"I don't think you were very nice to me with regards to the fallingrain.com blacklisting issue."

"After thoughtfully (in my opinion) laying out the issues^[5] based on 25,000+ spam-related edits^[6] and some hard lessons, I felt like I was being attacked^{[7][8][9][10]} for not caring about Wikipedia accuracy by you when you had little intention of doing any of the work or taking the heat yourself^[11] and, in fact, had created a chunk of the problem.^[12][13] "

"As a matter of fact, I was already well aware of potential issues with fallingrain.com links, having spent hours with just one problematic article about a non-existent city as you can see by my edits:"

"*Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gnaa, Nigeria (2nd nomination)"

"*Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Gnaa, Nigeria (3rd nomination)"

"*Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/Gnaa, Nigeria (3rd nomination)"

"*Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Nigeria#Article for deletion: Gnaa, Nigeria"

"*User talk:A. B./late July 2006#Gnaa"

"*User talk:A. B./late July 2006#Gnaa, Nigeria"

"I know and respect the fact that you're one of our most prolific and valued editors -- certainly more valuable around here than I am -- but the rest of us mere mortals are still human beings, too. Please don't assume that we don't care about this project just because we don't immediately jump on your command.
--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:28, 26 April 2010 (UTC)"

"Nice? Do you expect me to be nice to you when you are stepping in the way of correcting 9,000 articles, many of which have provable false data? If you swore that a batch of articles contained false data and a source was seriously questionable I would certainly not stop you from doing what you thought was right to correct it and improve the encyclopedia. As for citing examples of my behaviour and sneakily looking for evidence in citations as you;ve done above, I really deplore that kind of behaviour and would normally delete such messages. It is completely unnecessary. An unreliable source is an unreliable source. If there is no trust between fellow editors then how is this encyclopedia supposed to be improved? 9000 BLP errors or copyright violations would not receive the same sort of indolent attitude and would promptly be sorted out. Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 10:17, 27 April 2010 (UTC)"

"'Nice? Do you expect me to be nice to you'? Yes, of course I do. It's the human thing to do and besides, it's a fundamental policy around here as I recall."

"You have shown one set of standards for yourself and a higher set of standards for others, especially when they don't do exactly what they want, when you want it done."

"Ironically, I was trying to work through the backlog of blacklist requests; yours had languished for months. I was trying to get the ball rolling to help you with this process. Many of us, however, have commitments off-Wikipedia and don't have hours upon hours to edit Wikipedia. Additionally, we have other, pressing priorities in improving Wikipedia -- trust me, fallingrain links are not this project's only reliability problem."

"The easiest link removal has by now been done by others but there remain 1000s of these links in articles as references. Every time someone removes a reference -- even a bad one -- they have to make an editorial decision. It's not just house-keeping. Do they find a replacement ref? Just leave a {{fact}} tag? Remove the assertion that the ref is supporting? Remove the ref and just do nothing? What if the reference is the only thing supporting notability? Do they tag the article for notablility? Nominate it for deletion (AfD)? Propose it for deletion (PROD)?"

"Rather than clean up your own mistakes, you want others to do it right away. You want someone else to spend dozens of hours communicating with other editors, discussing reference replacments, and deleting 9000+ links -- 100s of which you added yourself! You decry "no trust between fellow editors" yet you ascribe only the worst attitudes towards those that don't immediately accede to your way of doing things, calling them "indolent", unconcerned, irresponsible and their actions lame and bull -- topping it all with "I seriously question you as a wikipedian". You post notes on other peoples' talk pages complaining about me and my actions, yet complain when I see this and point it out to you."

"How would you feel if you were on the receiving end of what you've done here?"

"Do you feel good about your role in all this? Are you proud of it?"

"--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 12:56, 27 April 2010 (UTC)"

Your only response to this was to erase my comments with the edit summary, "LOL, as if I'd actually been thinking about this guy anyway..."

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:38, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

VolkovBot

Hello A. B. Almost a month ago you indef-blocked VolkovBot saying "Bot possibly causing problems". The discussion on WP:ANI ended in nothing and was archived without any summary. In fact, the bot is active in many wiki-projects for over 3 years now, never being a source of vandalism or anything alike. Despite some speculations on WP:ANI, it was not causing problems but was trying to solve interwiki conflicts that are multiple indeed. Instead, quick reverts did restore the problems. Examples are multiple. Here are some of the most recent bot's edits before it was blocked. NerdyScienceDude reverted the bot's edit on Irreducible complexity which restored the conflict: en:Irreducible complexity >> sv: Irreducibel komplexitet > sv:Intelligent design >> en:Intelligent design. He also reverted bot's edit on Input stating bot malfunction in his edit summary. This revert and not the bot's edit caused (restored) problems: en:Input is a disambig and it was (and still is) linked, among others, to non-disambig scn:Ntrata (which stands for Entrance) and from this and other languages to fr:Intrant (which is an agricultural term). The inital bot edit was intended to solve this problem but it was eagerly reverted and misreported as mulfunction, and the problems are still there. Please unblock the bot asap and let it do what should have already been done. P.S. To be on a safer side, I stop using the -force option for the time being and use the recently introduced -cleanup option instead. --Volkov ^(?!) 21:39, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi. I'm sorry you've waited all this time. I only blocked the bot to "buy some breathing room" until the situation could be sorted out which I thought would be just a few hours. As I put in my comments, any admin was free to unblock the bot and I'm surprised this didn't happen earlier.^{[14][15][16][17]}

I have unblocked your bot. Thanks for all the work you do around all the various Wikimedia projects. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 03:20, 3 October 2010 (UTC)

Famous

I'm honored! Maybe though when I get a mention in the New York Times or Time though...♦ Dr. Blofeld 18:16, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, A. B.. You have new messages at Paralympiakos's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

- just as a side to this template, I'll mention that my reply is just a quick thanks and a description of the problem I sometimes face on this site. Paralympiakos (talk) 19:06, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

Whore of Babylon posting

Hi, please see the talk page on Whore of Babylon, consensus was reached against the changes that user 61.6.163.30 is making. yet he still persists to make them. And also he is reporting me, even though he is in violation of the 3RR rule and is not following wikipedia policy. Willfults (talk) 23:09, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I've been looking at that page and the discussion there is very confusing as to who is saying what. It looks like this editor is adding a lot of sourced material that's relevant.[18] Why are you deleting it? I would think the Catholics view of this concept would need exposition here, for instance. I'm not a Whore of Babylon expert -- just an admin looking at vandalism reports. I don't see blatant vandalism -- I see an edit war with you as one of the parties. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 23:16, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

I suggest you take this problem to Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring, not Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:57, 14 October 2010 (UTC)

User:Your Argument is Invalid

You identified User:Your Argument is Invalid as a vandalism-only account, but you only blocked it for 72 hours. The norm for VOA accounts is to block indefinitely. Thanks! — SpikeToronto 05:33, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm new to WP:AIV. Thanks for the feedback. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 05:35, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

No prob! It’s great to have the extra manpower at the AIV desk. Have fun! — SpikeToronto 05:38, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

It's raining thanks spam!

• Please pardon the intrusion. This tin of thanks spam is offered to everyone who commented or !voted (Support, Oppose or Neutral) on my recent RfA. I appreciate the fact that you care enough about the encyclopedia and its community to participate in this forum.
• There are a host of processes that further need community support, including content review (WP:GAN, WP:PR, WP:FAC, and WP:FAR). You can also consider becoming a Wikipedia Ambassador. If you have the requisite experience and knowledge, consider running for admin yourself!
• If you have any further comments, input or questions, please do feel free to drop a line to me on my talk page. I am open to all discussion. Thanks • Ling.Nut (talk) 02:13, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

re User talk:86.32.109.14

Respectfully disagree. They repeatedly and disruptively inserted unsourced controversial material about a person, and continued to do so after multiple warnings. -- Cirt (talk) 14:34, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, A. B.. You have new messages at Paralympiakos's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

(Sorry it took so long for me to respond. Have been offline) Paralympiakos (talk) 23:04, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Just as an update in case you haven't seen, it looks like my message of help was positive. The user responded on my talk page saying that he/she would send me a full message later. Paralympiakos (talk) 11:34, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

That's great. Thanks for your help. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 11:36, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

68.44.187.208

Hey. I reported 68.44.187.208 (talk · contribs) for vandalism a little bit ago after this edit. Another IP (138.89.227.86 (talk · contribs)) came along a few minutes ago and made a very similar edit. Not sure how to proceed here. Maybe an SPI? OlYeller^Talktome 19:55, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

The IPs are from close but different places in New Jersey. One through Comcast and the other through Verizon. OlYeller^Talktome 19:58, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the update -- I've blocked both IPs for 72 hours. Clearly they're related. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:14, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Mymcheung

Hello! Before I start, I just want to thank you for helping with Mymcheung. Okay, so I've decided to warn him a last time (since he seems to be completely ignoring all of our warnings/notifications). Here's the link to the warning if you want to look at it or reply. If you don't agree/want to talk to me, please reply to this or you may come to my talk page and post something. Thanks! :) Endofskull (talk) 23:06, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't see that he's made any edits since I left my message for him 20 hours ago at 03:03, 9 November 2010 (UTC). I suggest you revert your latest warning -- it just looks like "piling on". That is unless I'm missing something in the edit histories; if I'm missing something, let me know. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 23:13, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Ah, yes. You're correct. I'll remove that, and I won't add it back until I see him edit again (if the edit's bad). Sound good? Endofskull (talk) 23:22, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Here's a person who spent several hours trying to add content and he got kind of beat up. His efforts were misguided but it would be great if we could keep him interested and channel that energy into productive editing. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 23:39, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

German IP

Just to let you know I responded to you comments about the German IP as I belatedly noticed that discussion. Nil Einne (talk) 03:52, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

That's very, very helpful information! I was just starting to go through it. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 03:53, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, A. B.. You have new messages at Ma8thew's talk page.
Message added 17:47, 11 November 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Anon comments

Thanks for your lengthy reply and cogent advice. I firmly believe that the questionable edit commentary from an anon is ONE person only although operating under the cover of anonymity, uses the company network to escape scrutiny; trying to engage the person in discussing the edits is fruitless as many others, much better suited than myself, have tried and failed. FWiW Bzuk (talk) 17:18, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

I suspect you're right. The problem is that they're sailing (just) inside the bounds of minimally acceptable behaviour (or at least the kind of behaviour that's not blockable). I'll also note several other things:

• Sometimes military types work so much around other crusty personalities they don't realize when they're operating in a different environment. This guy sure sounds like the type. He may not be trying to offend others.
• His (or her) edits do seem intended to build a useful encyclopaedia.
• He seems to know something about what he's talking about. That doesn't mean he's right -- just that he's not some kid eating Cheetohs in his mom's basement making stuff up.

Still, I can see how he must be irksome to deal with. I know from my own editing I sometimes wish I could lower the Cone of Silence on such people. The community granted me the technical ability to do this as an admin but not the right in such cases.

I'm sorry I can't be more helpful. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:41, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Listen, I realized that most of his edits were formulated around sound reasoning and an understanding of military aviation history and terminology, it's just so frustrating to deal with edit comments that are often disparaging and not "friendly" in nature. The constant use of SHOUTING commentary indicates a frustration with others, probably much like himself, that are only trying to assist in a massive global project. As a disclaimer, nearly all of his/her outbursts had been directed at others, but I just felt he was using the "cloak of invisibility" to shield himself from any reproach. FWiW, thanks for hearing me out. Bzuk (talk) 18:31, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Meta Element (Article) External Links

Hey A.B., sorry if this isn't the right place- I do not know the ways of wikipedia. I just wanted to send you a message to check out the talk page for Meta element. I posted a new section there concerning the external links section and would love to here you word on it. Thanks - Seanxpollock (talk) 00:25, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you, I didn't realize that page for only for requesting blocks. I was simply reporting a repeat of the same sort of behavior which got him blocked previously so that you as an Admin could do whatever you felt might be appropriate. If it doesn't bother you, it doesn't bother me and so I will do nothing. There are 100 election articles (two per state), and I simply don't have the time or interest to chase each one down separately. Again, thank you for your time. (Added: I now see he took it upon himself to remove Christine O'Donnell. According to his edit note, "...and for the record she was not a major candidate." You may have heard of her. Or not. I expect Jerzeykydd will have trashed the rest of the election articles in less than a week. Again, thank you for your time. I will not be wasting any more of my own time on Wikipedia, as you obviously think it's hilarious to watch him continue his 'work' unabated.) Flatterworld (talk) 19:44, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

97.102.105.41

Why did you unblock him? I tried to communicate with him multiple times during the edit war but he flat out ignored me and continued to edit war across 17 pages. The IP who argued that you were wrong was also edit warring over the same content. I know it's stupid to edit war over spacing, but I've tried to talk to them but they flat out ignored me. If he starts removing the spaces, again, and without communicating with anyone else, I'm coming to you.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:08, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

And the arbcom and my block log has nothing to do with the shit that went on on these pages, so I don't know why the hell you brought it up to that IP editor.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 20:16, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

You ask why I unblocked this IP. I have explained my reasons on these two talk pages:

• User talk:97.102.105.41#Reversing your block (and an apology)
• User talk:174.1.48.24#97.102.105.41's block

As you know, WP:AIV is for vandalism. I did not see any vandalism. What I saw was an edit war including 3RR violations by both of you. I'm not sure what the difference is between your edits and the IP's other than he uses no edit summaries and you use them, albeit occasionally. I saw your terse comments at User talk:97.102.105.41#Spacing at TAR articles but I did not see any other discussion of the issue on any article talk pages -- am I missing something? Maybe a Wikiproject? I did not see any consensus behind either your position or the IP's. I saw this IP was not just a drive-by but has built content in addition to contending over spaces in tables.

If I had it to do over again, I'd have just reported you both to Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring and moved on.

I encourage both of you to avail yourselves of our dispute resolution processes. Hopefully you can amicably come to a consensus along with some outside editors and put this behind you.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:34, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

The changes I made added a space before the ƒ symbol used in the tables on all of the articles. For some reason, the two IPs do not agree with the addition of this space. I did not really think that adding a space would cause all of this nonsense. And that IP was not adding any other content. He was merely repeatedly removing my changes to the page to make it more easy to read for everyone. I seriously doubt that this IP is going to communicate at all once he returns to editing. At least you were able to stop him from (technically) repeatedly removing content without discussing it first (which can be considered vandalism).—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 22:39, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Contrary to your assertion, spot-checking the IP's first 30 edits out of his or her 221 total, I don't see anything having to do with spaces.^{[19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48]} Some of these edits were minor, some weren't. As for the vandalism assertion, whether you agree with it or not, our policy says the disputed edits were not vandalism; see Wikipedia:Vandalism#What is not vandalism ("Disruptive editing or stubbornness", "Edit summary, failing to provide an" and "Incorrect wiki markup and style").

I certainly hope at least one of you will finally start using the article talk pages to draw in other editors and build consensus. Until then, I just see you as two equal parties in an edit war.

--A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 23:49, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

You've pointed out a shitload of edits from last month and the other month that have nothing to do with the dispute.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 23:50, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

You said the IP was not adding any other content (see above). --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:06, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Not on Monday and Tuesday when the problem edits were made.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 00:31, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Some old spam investigations

I would like to enquire about the status of these spam investigations before I remove them from User:COIBot/Poke, leading them to be forgotten.

• Wikipedia:SBL#ad-sense 9574247032165131. Is this fit to be moved to the meta blacklist talk page?
• Hiox India
• freehoster.cn
• imats.com
• backlinksteam.com
• axetue.blogspot.com
• payperclickecomtastic.com
• Tequila

It's been an awful month due to exams. Unfortunately, that's when the knockoff spammers went on a spamming spree - I now have 9 lots of knockoff spam to investigate. MER-C 08:27, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Done -- thanks for reminding me.

And thanks for all you do with this knockoff spam. Sometimes it must feel like MER-C vs the entire population of China. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:37, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

More Amazing Race disruption

I recently decided that the section titles on the various pages could use shortening, so I changed "United States" to "USA" and "United Arab Emirates" to "UAE". I also made it so Hong Kong, Macau, and Guam, were not considered as stops in China and the US due to their unique statuses in both nations. The usual person has come in to oppose.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 02:49, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I was just catching up on the exchange at User_talk:174.1.48.24#Section_headers when I got this note. I recommend you both sort this out on the article talk page(s), drawing in consensus from other editors. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 02:52, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Fine, I will bring it up on the TAR17 talk page.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 03:10, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

And that devolved quickly.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 03:17, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I saw your article talk page post, which seemed very appropriate. What happened? --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 03:34, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Check his talk page, again.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 04:11, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Might I bother you again concerning User talk:Password1125#TAR17? He is the one seeking to massively reformat articles this time around because he found the one formatting on one article, which has not been implimented on any other article before.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 05:58, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

It seems that two people are running this account. And both of them are particularly rude.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 06:23, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

And here's how he responds to my uw-npa4im.—Ryūlóng (竜龙) 06:27, 25 November 2010 (UTC)

I've been offline while this happened so I'm sorry I wasn't more help. I'm glad to see this account get blocked although I suspect whoever was behind it will probably come back in a new guise. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:06, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Gustavo Cerati

Hi A. B., sorry for disturbing you. My major contributions are in es.wiki. Today an user left me a message he told me an IP deletes his contributions in the infobox of the article about argentine musician Gustavo Cerati [49] Is that o.k? or are a vandalism? Thanks. Alakasam (talk) 16:27, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

I recommend your friend join in the discussion at Talk:Gustavo Cerati#Infobox / Notable Instruments. I doubt this is vandalism since the IP is using an edit summary. It looks more like an editorial dispute about to escalate into an edit war. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 01:06, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your attention and help.

The "complex processes" were precisely what I was trying to avoid. User:UltraExactzz truncated the article to a sub-stub, but didn't remove it. In short, it's not sourced and can't be. I wrote the truth about the matter to mitigate further damage to the man's reputation, as this is a high profile result on search engines, #1 on yahoo.com. The only WP:RS would come from PACER, which is eyes-only, requires registration confirmation via US Mail, and one cannot transmit or print documents from this Federal Court record site. Thus, any link to PACER would be impossible. Please use your newly expanded administrative powers to simply delete the article by fiat. It's actually truthful to the best of my knowledge now, but it's clearly original research and is indefensible under Wikipedia's current BLP policies. Disclosure: I don't know the man, but I have family in Logan County where the story was a big deal at the time, but has since been pretty much forgotten. Apparently he's just a private citizen now, quietly living his life. He may merit an anonymous mention in a larger article about Logan County politics, which would be a huge article that would have to include JFK's famous $35,000 bribe to carry Southern W.Va. in the 1960 Presidential election. Are his actions as big a deal as Kennedy's bribe? No. PBF1974 (talk) 15:31, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't normally delete articles "by fiat". I encourage you to post a note at the noticeboard to which I gave you the link. As for PACER, I can get PACER access if someone needs a specific document. If this person was covered in the local news, it should be possible to construct a story using other reliable sources; otherwise it should be deleted. The folks at that noticeboard can help. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:37, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Any comments?

I blocked Jofree (talk · contribs) for spam, you chimed in with the related spam domains. I've had an email in which he says@

Hello Doug:

Thank you for your service to Wikipedia and end-users.

It has been quite a while since I have been in my account at Wikipedia and today saw for the first time your remarks about spamming. I apologize for the links being perceived as spam. Three years ago (2007) I actually thought that I was adding value to the submitted articles. I now can see how some of it could be perceived as spam.

Just so you know, the main website: www.freemaninstitute.com has well over 750 pages, with some of the following:

* Black History collection of 3,000+ documents and artifacts -- www.BlackHistoryCollection.com

* Ancient Egyptian Photo Gallery -- www.freemaninstitute.com/RTGpix.htm

* 100s of quotations, educational pages, humorous items, and much, much more...

On the website (freemaninstitute.com) I have taken great care to include 90% - 95% educational material and perhaps 5% - 10% "propaganda" about what my company does. This is intentional, because I always seek to add value to people.

I am still a wee bit confused about two items. Perhaps you can provide clarity:

1. The Rosetta Stone replica I have developed is the world's first and only full-size, 3D replica available to the general public. It is a remarkable opportunity for people to see a replica, get educated about its historical significance and then to go to the British Museum to see the real deal.

I launched the RS project at the Library of Congress in the Fall of 2009 under the umbrella of my non-profit organization. QUESTION: How was it determined that the RosettaStoneReplicas.com was spam and who reported it as such?

2. If one of my publishers or my agent wanted to do an article about me or The Freeman Institute, does that mean the websites (www.freemaninstitute.com, www.JoelAFreeman.com, Black101.com or RosettaStoneReplicas.com) added to provide additional information for readers about what I do would be considered spam? If so, does that mean that I would be blocked from ever contributing to Wikipedia again?

All of the stuff I read in my account information was quite ominous and I wanted to develop a clear understanding before making any recommendations. Just wondering...

What do you think? Thanks., Dougweller (talk) 19:16, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Doug, it would have been so much better had this person heeded the requests and warnings we gave him:

• User talk:68.48.86.40 -- 3 warnings
• User talk:69.138.188.194 -- 1 warning
• User talk:Jofree -- your warning

Somehow, I think the tone of the email you got seems a bit disingenuous, given this history of warnings.

The persistence and extent of the spam was sufficient to trigger two different noticeboard posts:

• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2009 Archive May 1#freemaninstitute.com and related spam
• Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spam/2008 Archive Apr 1#Adding website to multiple articles

I'm surprised we didn't blacklist these domains at the time.

Take a look at those domains (there are links on Jofree's talk page) and see what you think of their encyclopaedic quality -- it seems like there's a lot of self-promotion and self-published content there.

In answer to your correspondent's questions, he should not be adding any of his links or creating articles about himself. The same is true of his agents, publishers, etc. He can go back and read all those notices and the material they link to -- they spell out our policies on spam, self-promotion, external links, conflicts of interest, etc.

He seems marginally notable, so any article created on him might end up in a public deletion discussion, which can be a little awkward. Also, if he or one of his agents created the article, it would likely end up with stuff like {{advert}}, {{notability}} and {{coi}} tags on it, which could be a bit embarrassing.

Given any more transgressions, I'm not sure Jofree would be blocked from editing again but his domains would certainly get blacklisted (all of them). They might get blacklisted anyway if it turns out there have been any more link additions since your warning last year. Since our blacklists are reportedly sometimes referred to by search engine staffers when doing their own linkspam investigations, blacklisting might or might not have consequences beyond our own sites (if so, that's beyond our control).

Wikipedia is just a terrible place to promote yourself or your stuff; the results can be counterproductive and hard to predict. Ironically, the anti-spam specialists like me are the softies; post these links' history and an e-mail like this at Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents and get ready for an aroused mob with blocks, templates, blacklists, and angry digital incantations. Our community at large is very intolerant of self-promotion when they catch it, especially when the perpetrators have blown off our requests and rules. I think this guy would be well off to just tiptoe away while he can. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:12, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. I've told him that I strongly advise that any attempt by him or anyone working for him to create an article is done through Wikipedia:Requested articles, and that his domains were lucky not to be blacklisted. Dougweller (talk) 21:57, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Query about another editor

Is user Cynwolfe someone more special or important than the average contributing member of the public, or is he a moderator or editor of some special note? Please see my talk page for more information (bottom, today's date). Thanks! AMittelman (talk) 22:16, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Cynwolfe is not an administrator and has no special, magical powers or status. She is, however, an experienced editor and content-builder (which probably makes her more valuable to Wikipedia than an admin like me). --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:27, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Thank you!

Yes, I wrote only the full and complete truth as I know it, without omitting key facts that put the story in its necessary context. The Kennedy story can be found at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n12_v26/ai_15991320/ which describes a book written by one Raymond Chafin called "Just Good Politics." You are correct that although I am familiar with Wiki markup and formatting, I am not accustomed to your new referencing practices. I am trying to take the burden off Mr. Esposito, who was really a tool of the Federal Government in a large sting operation. I still think the article title should change, but that would be up to you. It would result in no loss of information, and it would actually improve the Wiki. PBF1974 (talk) 16:31, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Hello, A. B.. You have new messages at C.Fred's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Since that's now a three-way conversation, I'll keep that conversation centralized there rather than scattered multiple places. —C.Fred (talk) 16:37, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Good idea, Fred. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:38, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

I don't want to die or go to jail, but I'll be brave and write the truth.

I'm writing a quick and dirty article on the 2004 political scandal. It should come out looking good, and the wikignomes can tweak it if they want. C. Fred disagrees that the Kennedy ref is necessary. I say it is essential to put this into its historical context, and I have cited it. It shows just how corrupt Southern WV is. I am good at lrning2internet, so I caught on quick to how the footnotes are done. I wrote for the Wiki years and years ago before WP:NOR was taken seriously. Please do not try to find out who I am. I am just doing what I consider to be the Right Thing for both Wikipedia and my parents' hometown. I know User:Alison personally, so you can guess how I learned wikimarkup and don't know how to cite. Well, I do now. I'm gonna need a barnstar for this for making the truth known and reducing the undue weight of Mr. Esp0sito's crime. Don't people give those barnstars out like candy? PBF1974 (talk) 17:57, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Not to me, but I think a lot depends on whether you belong to some sort of cabal or something. Alison would know all about that stuff. I reckon I get a barnstar about every 5000 edits or so. Then again, maybe I'm just cranky and marginal. Who knows -- take the quiz (above) and see for yourself. As for who you are, no offense, but I could care less; good content is appreciated whomever it comes from. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:03, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

2004 Logan County, W.Va. Political Scandal

I wrote this new article, referenced this as well as I could even though one site I wanted to ref was blacklisted. I redirected the one-sentence entry on Esp0sito to the new article. If someone can find out anything good about him, they can write a new article that isn't a sub-stub. I know he has an ex-wife, has a current wife, and I think they have a labradoodle dog and some cats. He's just a pretty cool dude AFAIK. Oh, and this is vital: He drives a white SUV and smokes cigarettes. I know I'm making a silly point, which is that there's not much written about the guy except about the scandal, unless one wishes to search the microfiche records or morgue of The Logan Banner. PBF1974 (talk) 19:16, 8 December 2010 (UTC)

Eagle's link tools

Not sure what to do about this ... if the tools can be restored, or if the links need to be removed from {{LinkSummary}} and {{LinkSummaryLive}}. When clicking on Eagle's link tools in those templates, I get the error message: "The page you requested is hosted by the Toolserver user eagle, whose account has expired ..."

Any suggestions? --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 05:23, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm sorry to be slow in responding -- I've been offline for awhile traveling. I don't have any good answers for this. I suggest perhaps raising the question at:

• WT:WPSPAM
• Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)
• One of the contact methods (IRC, mailing list) at https://wiki.toolserver.org/view/Contact
• meta:Talk:Toolserver
• meta:Talk:Spam blacklist

Good luck. Thanks for all you do. --65.15.108.225 (talk) 22:56, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks

A short note of thanks for the explanation (the first cogent one I've seen) and statesman like manner of handling these issues. Your concern for wiki comes through and having allowed a little time to pass and having reread your note a few times I realise my support for the underlying concept of wiki is undiminished. There seems to be no concern about uploaded images and I'll take that advice about links and propose them on the article discussion page (maybe those that are externally approved as educational resources would be appropriate suggestions) and leave it the wiki community to take it from there. Not sure how future reviewers recognise that links have been added legitimately in this way eg the Brookwood Cemetery link which has been through this process and removed again and reinstated again! But maybe a step at a time. Thanks WyrdLight (talk) 22:30, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the nice note -- this makes my day. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 01:46, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Quick note

I've left a note here relating to the Megafauna vandal. I'm so glad to see there are others working on this irritating issue. -Thibbs (talk) 02:30, 17 December 2010 (UTC)