User talk:Beetstra/Archive 11

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COIBot whitelisting

Unfortunately, COIBot logged me here. For what, I do not understand. All I did in that edit was some cleanup; I did not add or change any links. I am well aware of Wikipedia's conflict of interest policy and I don't believe that I've ever violated it. Would you mind adding me to the whitelist for COIBot? —Voidxor (talk) 02:10, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

I have added you to the whitelist. A case of totally mistaken overlap (when asking the bot: "TEST: en:User:voidxor/en:Special:Contributions/voidxor scores 56.69% (U->T) and 49% (T-U) (ratio 27.77%) on string erowid.org", I think the match is vOIDxOR to erOwID.ORg (matched characters in sequence in capital). 27.77 is just above the threshold of 25, and hits in the low end are more often, but not always, false). I see you already put a strike-through on the hit. Sorry for the inconvenience. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:20, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Unblocking

Thanks for helping me getting unblocked! It seems like I was really lucky, since Chris G didn't quite believe me, but Slackr unblocked me first. Anyways, thanks a lot. It feels awesome to be back in the community :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Xkoalax (talk • contribs) 17:23, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Oops, forgot to sign it. --Koala (talk) 17:25, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

It looked really strange that you were Grawp, seen older contributions, but I wanted a second opinion. Take care not to follow links from outside that encourage you to edit something in a certain way. Preview first at least. Take care, happy editing. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:30, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

Don't worry, I won't make that mistake again. I guess I was naive enough to believe my editing wouldn't do any harm. The strangest thing to me was that I was accused of sockpuppetry; I thought my block was because of my vandalism. I live in Chile, and my edits have always been from IPs belonging to my country, and I don't know where Grawp is from, but he/she's probably not from my country. Anyway, I'm glad it's all over. Thanks again for believing me. --Koala (talk) 06:41, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

The accusation of sockpuppetry was by someone who was a bit too eager to find vandals, and they tagged everyone who performed similar edits, including at least one administrator. Grawp is a long-term vandal who is a big problem, and the edit you performed, and for which you were blocked, is the same/very similar to what Grawp tends to do. I reverted the accusation, am even tempted to delete the revisions from the history of both userpage and talkpage. Don't worry, just edit happily along. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:27, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

As it was a clear mistake, I can delete the 'offending' revid from the history of your user and user_talk page. It will be invisible to normal users, though admins can still see it. It should not give you any problems in any way, but if you want them gone, that can be done. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:33, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh, that would be pretty nice! If you can do it, I'll really appreciate it! :) --Koala (talk) 08:29, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Done. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:40, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Custom Marble Granite

Why do you keep deleting my page? I worked hard to create a bio for my husband and myself.

Please contact me: my email is Jean at CustomMArbleGranite.com —Preceding unsigned comment added by Custom Marble & Granite (talk • contribs) 22:47, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Please review our spam guideline and our COI guideline. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 23:02, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

This might interest you

Wired for Books director is back. He got upset at us before--what was decided about the template? Katr67 (talk) 23:16, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

I am busy cleaning, and I blocked socks. He is also on WP:ANI, thanks for alerting me! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:38, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

Elimination of Links at Parachute Club (band)

I ask that you reconsider the elimination of band member links since, in this case, the band operates as a collective (as noted in the Greg Quill article referenced on the page) and therefore individual and band member activities overlap. This is evident from the band website/blog, involving significant cross-referencing. Thank you in any event for keeping the band's Wordpress site in.

Thank you in advance for reconsidering matters here.

Dreadarthur (talk) 19:16, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

I did consider. External links on the band are directly linked to the subject of the page, the band. Links to bandmembers are not directly linked to the subject, that is an indirect link. They would be suitable links on the wikipages of the bandmembers. However, you can still use them as a reference. External links are subject to quite some rules. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:25, 6 February 2009 (UTC)

William L. Shirer

I have added back the external reference you deleted. This interview link provides (1) details of the life of the person, (2) record of his actual voice. It is a valuable link and is not spam or off topic. --Fremte (talk) 19:31, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

That is your good right, and I am happy that you are judging it as such. I will however comment: (1) if it provides details of the life of the person, it would make a good reference (see intro of WP:EL) and is hence not really suitable as an external link, 2) rich media should be linked sparsely, they are not accessible for a lot of people, e.g. people behind slow internet connections, and people who do not have the necessery software to listen to the file, as such, again this link fails WP:EL. The link may be valuable, and indeed, it is not spam, however, we until now have 5 sock/meatpuppets and an IP who have been pushing this link massively to external links sections, several of them with a conflict of interest, in total ignorance of people suggesting otherwise, and all of the involved guidelines (as I said, the link fails WP:EL, and I have removed it from many pages which contain massive linkfarms). I hope you give this link (as a link in the external links section) another thought. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 20:30, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Epikouria Magazine

Dear Beetstra,

I would like to ask why you continually remove the references I add to pages? For example, you have deleted the references I have added to Epikouria Magazine, a perfectly legitimate source of information, from the Kasseri article. I really think that you should take a quick scan of the article or reference in question before making such rash decisions. Furthermore, I am not adding the magazine as an external link but a reference...is there some problem I am unaware of?

Ellcuisine Ellcuisine (talk) 10:39, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, your username is similar to the person who did this edit (where the link fails WP:ELNO), and in this edit here you perform a very similar edit. Now we get to this edit, a user who mainly edit similar, and who was also notified a couple of times, and asked to discuss. Could you have a look through WP:SOCK, WP:COI and the other policies and guidelines linked from the blue box at the top of your page. I would suggest you find a suitable wikiproject (Wikipedia:WikiProject Food and drink seems a good one, more can be found via talkpages of pages you like, or via Wikipedia:WikiProject) and discuss with them before proceeding further. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:52, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

Readylinks

Dirk, it appears that the blacklisting of ready-links.com was accidental. The blacklist report did not show ready-links.com, nor did it show links.com. Links.com, on the face, is a beta-test site hosting pages of links. The blacklist report showed spamming of links.links.com, not links.com and certainly not ready-links.com. So the regex expression was probably, as far as I can tell, an error from the beginning, blacklisting what was effectively a host, in toto, based on one account there creating a links page at links.links.com. That page is gone, my guess is that ready-links.com saw it and deleted it.

Now, what's the issue with Hu12? Well, an SPA registered and asked for whitelisting. We know and understand why this request would be denied. However, I saw the request and out of curiosity, looked up ready-links.com. Looks like a real company selling hardware. Found one source fairly easily that seemed like RS. Okay, so why was Readylinks deleted? I can't see the deleted file unless I ask for a copy, but I asked about it on the whitelist page. Hu12 stated that a user had requested it. Now, in the case of another deletion done by Hu12, yes, a user had requested the deletion. An *IP* user with a history that ultimately showed, quite possibly, conflicting COI. So I asked about the user. The user volunteered.

Okay, so far so good. *However,* one issue remains. The SPA requested whitelisting and the deletion took place a few minutes later. Beetstra, that looks like retaliation or punishment for making a request. I'm not claiming that it was that, but only that it looks like that, and how things look can damage the project. Some may think that by raising these issues, I'm being disruptive. I don't think so, but, of course, anyone is free to warn me, seek mediation with me, RfC me, or take an issue to ArbComm. I'm not attacking anybody, but I am questioning certain procedures and process shortcomings. And if I don't do that, who will? There aren't too many users looking at this stuff.

Anyway, as to processes I'm starting, you are, as you should know, quite welcome and even invited to participate to the extent that you can find time. I'll be preparing reports, and the more that those represent consensus, the better. User:Lustiger seth is aware of what's going on, and supportive, as are some other administrators. So, please, help, don't hinder, and don't encourage hostility from administrators whose actions might come into question. I'm not asserting -- and I've been objecting to -- any incivility or assumption of bad faith or other improprieties. We are all, as far as I'm concerned, working for the welfare of the project, and if we disagree, we need to find consensus or else the project will be harmed. Disagreement, sustained, demolishes efficiency, everything becomes more difficult. Let's not go there. --Abd (talk) 17:49, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

All that I am asking is, that you first assume good faith, not first cry wolf. Critisism is fine, and you know that I am evaluating and reevaluating these things as well, and I have also whitelisted or removed things. But I do want to ask you, that if we blacklist, that there are things fishy. That does not have to mean that the links are bad, it can mean that we have to choose sometimes. In all the cases there is abuse, and when the request is 'people who are knowledgeable in this field think this link is useful here', then whitelisting or delisting is an option. Starting with 'this is not spam', or 'this is not abused' is not the beginning. For all links you have been investigating (as far as I see on-wiki), there have been edits which the editors should not have done, which are at least very questionable, or which have sisterlinks which have been abused. I felt on Hu12's talkpage that you were too reactive, and I think that a bit of warning was in place. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:05, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

I've not encountered any blacklisting where something "fishy" didn't happen. However, I've seen blacklistings where what was "fishy" didn't justify blacklisting except under a construction that didn't stand up to even quick scrutiny, or that (one case) involved abuse of tools by an involved admin. The guidelines suggest blacklisting as a last resort, when lesser measures fail. I've seen the lesser measures implemented, then blacklisting the next day though the alleged offenses stopped. I've seen edit counts alone used to justify blacklisting; that's excusable, for an initial action, but not when a blacklisting is challenged as not required, for a large pile of good edits isn't linkspam, it might merely resemble it. Yet when an inappropriate blacklisting is challenged, i.e., one not necessary to protect the project, I've seen edit counts that happened a year ago, that stopped, with the user voluntarily removing the links that were missed by the blacklist volunteers, still used to justify continued blacklisting in the face of requests from regular editors. (And those reports, looking so "bad," included and did not discriminate between possibly rogue edits and edits permitted by whitelisting.)

I think I've been pretty careful not to accuse anyone of bad faith, the heaviest thing I've done is to point out involvement in one case, where the admin directly blacklisted, bypassing process. And I've come to conclude, and you've basically acknowledged, that the blacklist is being used to control content, i.e., to force adherence to the reliable source guidelines as interpreted by a handful of blacklist administrators, not by general consensus. What almost all of it boils down to is a need to separate blacklisting from delisting and whitelisting process, to that the same tight group doesn't control both. Blacklisting is intended as a measure of last resort, not as a routine spam-fighting tool, but if it is to be extended, the relevant guidelines should be edited to reflect the reality, and that process would subject it to community scrutiny. If we can find consensus prior to that, with careful and complete discussion, the community is likely to settle on something better than if this just pops out there, raw, with all those uncooked worms still wriggling.

If you feel I was too reactive on Hu12's user page, please be specific. This is the second time you have asserted overreaction (here) or failure to assume good faith (on the Hu12 Talk page). If I wrote something out of place, I'll redact it. Otherwise, please stop making accusations based on reading projected emotions or accusations into what I've written. --Abd (talk) 23:13, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

The problem is, Abd, that in most of the cases really inappropriate edits are involved, which are linkspam. If whitelisting or de-blacklisting is requested on the basis of 'we NEED this site', asked by people knowledgeable in the subject, and it can be made clear that there is no other way of sourcing it, then we are very willing to do that. And there are several editors on the whitelist which are not involved in the blacklisting. However, the people who added the stuff to the blacklist will comment and sometimes strongly suggest not to whitelist/de-blacklist on the reason that it 'is not spam' or 'is not spammed'. Even lyrikline.org was added by the IP in totally inappropriate places, and there was also a second IP involved, how do we know that that IP does not return, or a third pops up? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:26, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Beetstra. I disagree on your view of the whitelisting process; your view is correct as a description of what actually happens, but the usage of the blacklist (which includes as a modification, the whitelist), as described in guidelines, does notg contemplate its use in this manner. If whitelisting is difficult, the normal editorial process cannot function, where edits, including external links or citations, are proposed, either on Talk, but more often as actual edits, and only quite sophisticatd editors would even know how to request whitelisting effectively. The blacklist guidelines clearly proposed, and the process instructions appear to require, that blacklisting only be used as a tool of last resort. It is being used far outside that. Now, it's quite possible that this is legitimate, but the community certainly has not decided that.

Okay, Lyrikline.org. I haven't found a clearly inappropriate addition yet. The worst I've seen was a link placed on de:Shona_(Sprache), but that link is debatable, and, in fact, I just proposed it, notified the editor who had removed it, waited a bit, and then made the edit. We'll see if it stands.

The "not-spam" argument is just as irrelevant for the whitelist as is the "spam" argument. It should be irrelevant if there was linkspamming or not. Established editors should be able to whitelist with very little ado, subject only to the continued needs for protection. That would be how the blacklist was conceived, and that conception is better than existing process. Basically, the vary small group of administrators should not be a link-vetting committee; there is a conflict of interest, in effect. You don't consider appropriateness in removing links and blacklisting, and it is very clear that blacklist volunteers ignored appropriateness in removing lyrlikline.org links, even to the point of attracting admin attention on de, so you shouldn't consider it in whitelisting, either. That is, as a blacklist volunteer, it isn't your job to judge appropriateness, and the effort to do that is precisely where the blacklist process has gone astray. I think I know what to do about this, and, as you know, you are welcome and invited to participate in advising me on my report at User:Abd/Blacklist and the attached talk page. I'm not in a rush, I want to do this right.

Please advise Hu12 that he's running a bit outside boundaries, I think he may have gotten attached and may feel threatened, so I think he needs a bit of guidance. I'm not attacking him, do not wish to harm him or his work, but ... he may be making a lot of mistakes, a high percentage of possibly problem blacklistings seem to involve him. When an admin starts making mistakes, the admin needs guidance from the community, and he's most likely to accept it from people who work with him regularly, I suspect he sees me as an unwelcome interloper, which is unfortunate if true. While he was initially reluctant to assist in the restoration of Lyrikline.org, once it was done and the bare URL was there without the triggering prefix, he went ahead and very appropriately whitelisted the needed link as a link to the English home page, without being asked, which was very helpful. I don't see this as a war or as the good guys vs. the bad guys, but simply as incomplete process. Thanks again for replying. --Abd (talk) 16:05, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

The blacklists are used to stop totally inappropriate edits ('spam'), or links which are (likely to be) pushed for promotional purposes. In our experience, people who want to use Wikipedia for promotional reasones hardly ever stop after warnings, they switch IP, or create new accounts. They may stop for a short while, but often return (and the edits to, err, UofA, and the state the article was in, did seem promotional to me, though after stubbing down that was resolved).

Lyrikline.org is available in German, English, French, Slovenisch (?), and Arab (?) language. But it was indiscriminately added to a huge list of wikis, including some written in e.g. a Brahmi language ('Bangla'?), Russian, Greek, etc. etc. As you may have noticed, I am from Europe. I am regularly in Sicily, and the people there do not speak one of these languages fluently or sufficiently (I must be lucky if I can order an ice cream in a bar in English, even when the person who serves me is younger than 20 years old!). To the public of such wikis, such links are quite useless (or they should be properly introduced). I can't read the Brahmi language, and I don't know if they have a similar rule in their external links guidelines, neither do I know how fluent these people are in English, but since it is in both en:WP:EL and de:WP:WEB (which both discourage the use of sites not available in the wiki's own language except under some strict rules), I expect that also they will agree that that link there is inappropriate. However, if the local wikiproject here does see the use of the links, I am very inclined to whitelist it here!

If the IP is the same as the German user, then the user was early on warned that there are guidelines ("Bitte lies Dir de:WP:WEB durch und achte darauf, dass die Links in jedem Einzelfall tatsächlich vom Feinsten sind. Weitere Links ohne dazugehörige Begründung oder Kommentar werde ich als Linkspam löschen. Gruß --Sommerkom 17:35, 22. Jan. 2008 (CET)", rough translation: "Please read through WP:WEB and be aware that the links are appropriate/the best in every single case. I will remove any further links without reason or comments as spam. Regards ..."; and the user responded to that), still these indiscriminate additions are after that moment. If the IP is not the same as the German user, then maybe the user was not appropriately warned, but then we get to the point that it is impossible to warn (or engage in discussion with) such users cross-wiki. Also, we conclude that none of the users who used the link are involved in the site (mostly per what they say), and I do believe that Lyriker/Lyrik is not. However, as what we saw above for the links related to uofa.edu, respectable organisations do hire SEOs to improve they search engine results, these editors still may be involved (indirectly) in a promotional way (but that would be assuming bad faith, but on the other side we should not exclude the possibility either). Note that such editors don't seem to have any relation with the link at first.

I do not believe that there is bad faith in those edits by Hu12. The article for ReadyLinks was tagged for deletion (that tag may also have been due to the whitelist request...), and Hu12 may very well have encountered the article because of the whitelisting request. However, if I review it, the article was, and always has been, in quite a bad shape. No references whatsoever, and quite promotional in nature (especially after the 'rewrite' halfway). It is for an admin then the question 'do I delete', 'do I stub down', or 'do I delete and write a stub'. As there were no references, it is quite some work to clean it out to a stub (which then still should be tagged for notability, and may end up for deletion anyway), or just delete, and wait until it gets recreated in a proper way. Or delete and write a stub yourself (which also would require finding proper reason to think it is notable). I do find, that as an admin, we do a lot of maintenance and less true writing, and those questions must be asked. As there was in this case not really a salvageable revid, I would have gone for deletion as well (deletion also hides the promotional revids in the past, they do not really need to be seen by anyone). I do think that is the trust that the community has placed in the administrators to make that decision, and short of oversight, deletion review is always a possibility. The page about lyrikline.org may have been a mistake (could have been stubbed down at that point etc.), in the case of ReadlyLinks I do think that a fresh, independent, rewrite would be a better way forward (if that company is really notable enough). Your opening on User talk:Hu12 "Seems a tad quick for an article that had been around for years. Please undelete and PROD or AfD if you so wish." sounds, IMHO, unnecessery criticising in tone, and I do think that we should give Hu12 more credit for their good work. I think that (the links related to) uofa.edu make(s) a very good example of a pure promotional push of very good sites, and I think that we foremost should keep in mind that Wikipedia is not an advertising medium. As I said above, spammers don't stop because of warnings or blocks (really, SEOs get paid for this, its their job to 'spam', and any form of self promotion is there very unclear! And I have seen enough situations of pure self promotion where the editors really don't get it, even after discussion), there are too many IPs/Open proxies and accountnames available ... blacklisting is harsh, and gives a lot more work if whitelisting is necessery. Therefore, I argue that we only should whitelist if the documentation is unique, if it is not unique, but it takes more effort, then that is not a reason to whitelist. De-blacklisting can be considered if the threat of spamming is really gone, or if people are really going to keep an eye open on the situation. But (and that goes certainly for Hu12) if we blacklist, it has been researched and it is very probably a 'last resort', even if it seems too fast, and there hardly has been any abuse. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:58, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I very much appreciate your comments, Beetstra. Some of what you write, however, shows that you have probably made some assumptions, possibly based on what was asserted, in the case of lenr-canr.org and newenergytimes.com, by JzG, without the deeper investigation that is necessary to figure out what the hell is going on. But, as I've written, lyrikline.org is a poster boy for problematic blacklisting. As to lenr-canr.org, and briefly, the "promoter" of that site, Jed Rothwell, wasn't editing articles, had not edited them for a long time, and the multiple "links" asserted to be linkspam weren't links at all, and blacklisting didn't prevent them. The removed links were added by editors of various POVs, not just "one side." As to newenergytimes.com, no recent possible linkspamming existed on en, and it was never blacklisted on meta, to my knowledge. The sole allegation with respect to NET was "fringe." NET, in fact, is arguably a reliable source. It's edited. It clearly attempts to report neutrally, etc., but it's not my purpose in the short run to argue this, I'm just pointing out the problem: the use of the blacklist to control content, in ways that don't necessarily reflect consensus, but rather rigid rules, i.e., "Fringe sites can't be used." "Blogs can't be used." "External links aren't necessary." Etc.

Now, to Ready-links.com. Beetstra, you seem to have confused AGF with assuming good decisions with respect to Hu12, but not with me. I wouldn't raise the issue of an appearance of retaliation for a whitelist request if there wasn't some substance there. Contrary to what you imply, this was the sequence:

• 20:02, 11 February 2009 [1] Osgrhino requests whitelisting.
• 20:13, 11 February 2009 [2] MrOllie tags for speedy.
• 20:28, 11 February 2009 Hu12 (Talk | contribs) deleted ReadyLinks

Given that there never was any intention to block ready-links.com in the first place, that it was Hu12's error that caused the block, don't you think this action was a tad precipitate and presents an appearance of retaliation? You declined the whitelisting, though whitelisting ready-links.com would be utterly harmless, suggesting that the regex expression be fixed. Now, that expression was probably a mistake from the get-go, the site that was reported on was links.links.com, not links.com. Given that links.links.com is dead, probably killed by links.com as spam, it would seem that the simplest solution would be to delist links.com, period. Blacklistings that don't have a continuing reason shouldn't continue! And especially not erroneous ones! I asked Hu12 to fix his regex, but he's probably feeling a bit burned right now. I'd be more sympathetic if not for the fact that he's burned others with little apparent sympathy, though I have no desire to cause him pain. I read in de's Lyrik and our User:Lyriker's contributions after he was initially warned and then blocked, a great weight of sadness and personal injury. He was only trying to help, and he got slapped and many hours of work were undone.

So we need to look at lyrikline.org. You wrote: Lyrikline.org is available in German, English, French, Slovenisch (?), and Arab (?) language. But it was indiscriminately added to a huge list of wikis, including some written in e.g. a Brahmi language ('Bangla'?), Russian, Greek, etc. etc. Please do your homework, start with Lyrikline.org. On its pages one can browse through and listen to about 4,700 poems by 470 poets in 49 languages. including Russian and Greek. Someone who reads a Brahmi language would probably read English. Further, if there is an article on a poet in a project, then, surely, some of the readers of the article would be interested to actually hear the poet, even if a translation into the project language is not available. If it were totally alien, why even bother with the article? Lyrik didn't create the articles, he just added a link to the poet's page if it already existed. Above, you seem to be assuming that the links were inappropriate, then you justify this assumption with plausible, but not verified, explanations. Beetstra, please respect this: I'm spending hours following the sometimes obscure tracks of what happened, and sometimes documenting it. I'm preparing to start the process of adding links to lyrikline here. See the list of poets at User:Abd/Lyrikline poets, that's a complete list of poets hosted on lyrikline, and don't imagine that I'm going to feed this to a 'bot! There are probably fewer missing poets from en than the redlinks show, because of spelling issues. I've only proposed an edit to one article so far, Chirikure Chirikure, where I did move the article and amended the spelling on my page. I'd give you the link to his lyrikline.org page, but, you know, I can't. Here it is, without the http://,

www.lyrikline.org/index.php?id=60&L=1&author=cc00&cHash=efa2be756d

The poetry is fantastic, and you tell me, is our article better with or without that link? My favorite so far,

www.lyrikline.org/index.php?id=162&L=1&author=cc00&show=Poems&poemId=3122&cHash=d6d6fd3645

is pretty much on point for some of what happens on Wikipedia. Oh, noticed a spelling error. Can't fix it, it's not a wiki, it's an edited site with a review board.

I apologize for the length of all this, but one of the problems on Wikipedia is that snap judgments, some with long-lasting consequences, are made with insufficient evidence and insufficient investigation or discussion. It works, sometimes, but we then need to find ways to deal with what happens when quick and dirty doesn't work. I was trying to avoid process like AN/I, RfC, etc. There has been serious abuse of tools by JzG, and I've done very little so far except when he went to ArbComm and tried to assert a very, very dangerous principle: applying a topic ban beyond its original target, based on some assumption of similar POV. I've been very careful to avoid accusations, but challenging a decision isn't a personal attack. Hu12 may be a bit fried, and is taking routine questioning of actions rather badly, but that questioning is essential for administrators. He's done a tremendous amount of work, but if the quality of what I've seen recently is typical, it isn't as valuable as it would have been without the messes. I wrote that as I started watching the blacklist pages, I found certain possibly problematic blacklistings. Quite simply, it wasn't uncommon that Hu12 was the involved admin. However, he did not blacklist lyrikline, that was Herby on meta, with practically no discussion. The nominator was 124.178.51.181, sole contribution; the request was filed at 03:59, 24 January 2008. Hu12 was the sole commenter there at 04:44, 24 January 2008 (UTC).

The problem isn't that lyrikline.org was blacklisted. The problem is that when requests came from de.wikipedia and others for delisting on meta and/or whitelisting, the original "linkspamming" was cited as a reason not to delink or whitelist. The problem is the block of User:Lyriker contrary to policy and the speedy deletion of Lyrikline.org, and that nobody was watching all this carefully enough. The problem isn't Hu12, Beetstra, it's the process and how it interacts with the community. Whether or not Hu12 makes too many mistakes, or even only a few, wikitheory would suggest that mistakes aren't a problem if it's easy to clean up after them. Is it easy? It might seem easy to a blacklist administrator, but from the point of view of general editors, it most certainly is not. You need help with the blacklisting/delisting/whitelisting process? We can help. But you might have to let go a little. The blacklist guidelines should be followed, or they should be amended to reflect actual practice; probably a little of both needs to happen, and actual practice can be improved. Can we agree on that? --Abd (talk) 17:08, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

I am going to back of away from lenr-carn.org and newenergytimes.com. The situation is quite broad (including an arb com decision regarding an editor), I am indeed looking only at users who are pushing, who have a link-preference etc., and I know there were some editors with a conflict of interest on both. For that I would suggest they would have been more careful etc. I don't think that I am knowledgeable enough about that situation to suggest either white or de-blacklisting, all I see is that there are some questionable link additions to mainspace etc.

lyrikline.org. I did do my homework there, because I knew this was going to be a counter argument. I did check, and I presume that was also done by the people who performed the blacklisting. You assume that people who read the specific Brahmi also read English, I don't think that there is any ground for that. Moreover, people who speak English (and use the English wikipedia) often do speak another language as well, still we have that sentence in our external links guideline. A lot of people in Germany do speak English, but also they have the same sentence there. I am not willing to assume that the Brahmi wiki in question has in its external links guideline that they encourage English links, but say that it is true for this Brahmi wiki. The same link was added in quite short succession to quite a number of wikis, probably following the interwikis and having the link in the copy/paste buffer. If I follow the link, I see a page in English with quite some text, and some links to .. Farsi translations. There is no sign of brahmi (or Catalan, Hebrew, Finnish, Ukrainian ... I guess we are talking 50 additions here). On the fa wikipedia the link was also added, and linking to the fa-data would have been fine, but linking to the English page is probably also there not optimal. In fact, there the link is to the English page, with on top a link to 'You can read this page in the following languages: Farsi'. A direct link would have been better there, don't you think? I am sorry, Abd, these additions were done in oblivion of possible local guidelines (and if the IP is belonging to the user who was warned on de, the editor should have known that there were local policies and guidelines which may control this data), even if they were added to the correct page.

So yes, there is sufficient evidence that such a way of editing is inappropriate. And I still keep in the back of my mind the following possibilities with the two IPs (bad faith warning!): a) they are related to lyrikline.org, and want their site to be better know, b) they are from an SEO who has been payed to improve the search engine results, c) they were added by someone from another site who wants to give lyrikline.org a bad name (when I started here we have blacklisted a handful of sites to protect against a Joe job, depriving all other users who could use the link, even while they were good links), d) on or both belong to user Lyrik; but then they should have known better, e) they were added in good faith, but misplaced. I take uofa.org here as a reference, and I can come up with other cases where good, large, rich, organisations with good information have their priorities totally and completely wrong (and similar some who have succesfully adapted their priorities after discussion, I am busy with one of those cases).

De-blacklisting on meta generally needs a wide support if the 'spamming' was wide scale (and for lyrikline.org, we seem to be talking about 50 wikis), or it must be very clear that the additions have stopped, and that all involved editors are in discussion (and as I said, some spammers/vandals are thick .. they will return, look at e.g. Grawp, JB, the latter editor the one of the massive Joe jobs, he was disrupting the system for months). Otherwise local whitelisting is the way to go. We were discussing another case, where Hu12 was involved, there established editors came to the help of delisting (it is below, I think). That is how it is supposed to be. If site owners or unestablished editors ask, they should be pointed towards an appropriate wikiproject, and local editors should help in the decision. Purely on the basis of 'it is my site, and I don't want it blacklisted' is not a good way forward, and we do use a standard decline for that (that could maybe be expanded).

Other options are maybe in the make, having an anti-abuse system in place can also help (bit like what we do with XLinkBot here on en), where new and IP editors are warned to read and check, while established editors don't run in problems. We could actually consider that for lyrikline.org here on en (though the problem of inappropriateness of the external links here is minimal, most pages linked to are in English and the link is appropriate).

I still believe we work in good faith to protect wikipedia from inappropriate link additions. We sometimes hit links in the grey area (lyrikline.org), or even in the white area (uofa.edu), but absolutely not because we did not look at it carefully! I don't think that we need changes in guidelines for putting things on the blacklist (even for grey/white area links; I'll leave lenr-carn.org and newenergytimes.com out of this reasoning, I'll leave that to others who have more knowledge in that area). We might however want to write it down a bit stricter. Having proper procedures for handling de-listing/whitelist requests is indeed something that we might need. Having people work both here and on meta independent of the ones who blacklist is a reasonable plan (though keeping in mind, if we blacklist there are/were reasons for it, there should be a good reason to de-blacklist on meta to ensure that most of the involved wikis will not encounter the problem later on. Local whitelisting on wikis who have decided as such is probably better.

I guess we haven't ended this discussion yet, and we still disagree on parts if we have sufficient reason to put 'good' links on blacklists, etc. See you around! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:48, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

You assume people who read Brahmi also can read English. Well, it's not just an assumption, I didn't just make that up. Brahmi is script, not language. It developed into Devanagiri, the script used for Sanskrit, and, modernly, for Hindi, Marathi, and Nepali. I haven't looked at it, but most likely, the "brahmi" project is Hindi, because that is by far spoken by the largest number of people. But if there is a pure Brahmi project, the readers would be almost certain to know English, because they are reading a dead language, or ancient script for their own language, and are therefore likely to be highly educated. As to Hindi, if they are literate, as they must be to read the 'pedia, their education almost certainly includes very substantial English. They might not write well in English, but can almost certainly read it.

There are other details in your response above which should be addressed, but I don't have more time right now. Thanks again for all your responsive discussion, it's very much appreciated. Generally, though, my objections aren't to the blacklisting process, as such (when it is followed and not bypassed), but to the delisting and whitelisting process, where different questions should be asked, and there should be no rush to judgment in marginal cases. It is not necessary to decide that the blacklisting was "wrong" to delist. Just that it isn't legitimately needed any more, or perhaps it wasn't ever needed except to call a halt to what appeared to be linkspam, to give time and to force discussion. --Abd (talk) 13:44, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Absolutely, if there is fear of massive inappropriate linking on many 'pedias, and I understand the fear with lyrikline.org, global blacklisting can and perhaps should be maintained, though there may be, at leisure, better and deeper responses (like querying the local 'pedias). The problem arises when a whitelist request comes and is denied based on no need. If a legitimate editor requests it, there is a need, at a basic level. Some kind of review is appropriate, but not a stringent or difficult one. If an editor is willing to take responsibility for it, that should really be enough, unless it is blatantly inappropriate. You know and I know that the editor could add what is effectively a link anyway. --Abd (talk) 13:54, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I know, Brahmi is a way of writing, the languages written in that are e.g. the Indian languages. Gujarati language certainly does not sound like English (and is most certainly NOT a dead language, none of them there are!), and maybe for Gujarati people (and all other people in India) it is quite true that they speak English, I am sure that that does not go for Catalan people. The generalisation does not hold. That specific link would be appropriate on the English wikipedia, and maybe on some of the western-european wikis where English is generally spoken by the majority of the people as a second language, but it certainly does not go for Italy, Spain and Farsi wikipedia. For the latter in this specific case a better link would have been to the Farsi translation of the page (which is the only translation available, as I can see from the page that was linked), but the editor did not make the effort to change that. In other words, a rough estimate for me would be that on 45 out of 50 these links are blatantly inappropriate (even if there are better links that could have been added to most of these wikis, that only shows more that these were blatantly inappropriate). Full stop. If the editor in question can show that the links that he added are appropriate (which they will have a very difficult time to proof), then de-listing is an option (and yes, "No page should be linked from a Wikipedia article unless its inclusion is justifiable." is in our guideline). Until then, local whitelisting is the best and only option. And I have no problem with that, if knowledgeable editors do think that it is a necessery link.

From that, if the link was added to approx. 50 wikis, where a significant number were inappropriate, then a request from one single editor from one single wiki is NOT enough. Be it the owner, or another volunteer. De-listing globally because on de it is perfectly valid (and it is .. like on en), but (in the way it was added) it is inappropriate on a large number of the remaining 49) could very well result in many additions which we have to be cleaned up as inappropriate, as I don't see a reason to believe that those IPs DID actually stop.

Please stop beating this dead horse. I am sorry, the request has to come from knowledgeable editors (and for meta, from multiple wikis; depending on the scale of the problem), and I would then for a such broad scale addition problem first suggest that some wikis first whitelist it locally. I don't know if you noticed, but here the Poetry WikiProject is not exactly running red hot for this link. It may be useful in their eyes (though I don't see much proof of that yet), apparently even they can also live without the information quite well (hey, and the information linked to is in English). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:39, 18 February 2009 (UTC) (added sentence --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:59, 18 February 2009 (UTC))

Oh, regarding your deleted part here. That form of going around the blacklist to insert information which has no agreement for inclusion, would indeed result in an immediate block on the user who is performing the edits that way. And no, there is no limit to the length of a blacklist. We've been there, we've done that. We have an editor who has tried this over and over, finding new places to host their information, all you win is bad faith, immediate long blocks (or even rangeblocks), and an own section in the blacklist. Please don't even think about it, and please, don't tell people not to stuff beans up their noses. If certain info in a certain way is inappropriate, it will be in any way. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:35, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

the blacklist log

[3]. The instructions say that when an entry is removed from the blacklist, it should simply be removed from the log. Yes, that's weird, though the purpose of the log is as an index to blacklist entries, so that they can be identified by searching that page, and if an entry is removed, then the listing doesn't need to be in the log. I think what you did was better, but what do I know? I'll say that trying to track what has happened with various entries has been a tad difficult at times. Readwriteweb.com was, for example, added to the March 2008 section by Hu12, but in June or so, I think it was. Took me quite a while to find that diff, because his edit summaries don't give the names of sites, just +1 or the like. (And I'm not singling him out, I've simply had more experience looking into some of his listings. At least he logged it!) --Abd (talk) 04:15, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

We use a different system on meta, which is a bit more complicated. A problem are the old logs, there it is sometimes very difficult to find why and what was added. We did some work on that on meta (in technical terms): parsing the diffs, see who added what, and make a list of that. That is not perfect, but at least we know here and there who added what 5 years ago. My edit summaries are not very informative either, you need to get it from the logs.

I had a quick look at readwriteweb.com, and I don't see any reason why it should be on the blacklist (or my logs are not old enough, or they are now giving misformed info, I see mainly established users using it). It may be that quite some time ago the site had different policies and working environment, including e.g. that people could write an item in the blog, and link to that from external. If then people follow the link, the writer of the blog entry gets money for it (I think associatedcontent.com has that in their working policy). That is an immense incentive to 'spam' the site, even if it contains good data. But I don't know, I guess you have to ask Hu12 if they still remembers what reason they used to blacklist this. I'll answer to your other post later, bit caught up in another situation which is more urgent to resolve. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:16, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

It's not clear that this was ever the policy of ReadWriteWeb; it could be researched, but it looks like ReadWriteWeb was blacklisted because it's a blog, period. But it's moot. I don't know if you've been following my work on this -- I write a bloody lot -- but, basically, my preliminary conclusion is that, absent malevolence or rank incompetence, which blacklisters should police among themselves -- blacklisting should be relatively free of interference and relatively simple. However, the blacklist message, what you see when you try to put up a blacklisted link, should very clearly direct any concerned editor to a process for delisting, even if they are a site owner editing by IP The delisting and whitelisting process should be abstracted from the blacklisting process, and blacklisting admins should mostly be hands-off except if asked to testify. (Like RL police when it comes to the court system; police can arrest (blacklist) on probable cause, but when it comes to an imposition of a sentence (continuation of blacklist, delisting, or parole, i.e., whitelisting) it is out of their hands. They have a conflict of interest. The police, if asked, will testify as to what they found. Why they decided to arrest only comes up if police are charged with harassment, as long as there was some reason to fear that there had been or would be a crime committed, they've stayed within their allowed discretion.

In other words, let the "cabal" reign, but in a confined jurisdiction. Let blacklist admins be cooperative, mutually supportive, defend each other, etc., but then prevent damage to the project as a whole by setting up an independent delisting and whitelisting process.

It's been said that meta isn't under the jurisdiction of ArbComm. That's an error. Nobody is under the jurisdiction of ArbComm. ArbComm is a body that makes recommendations, it is not the executive branch, it's judicial, and its findings aren't binding on anyone, but individuals -- and the WMF -- can choose to be advised. And given that Jimbo and most admins consider themselves obligated to enforce ArbComm decisions, they are effectively binding. ArbComm, if it found that meta blacklisting was harming the project(s), could advise the WMF just as it does with anything else. However, there is a different process that would be better. The en.wikipedia whitelist is definitely in the bailiwick of ArbComm, and if there is a problem listing at meta, it can be whitelisted in toto, as did de.wikipedia with lyrikline.org. This then becomes a stronger basis for delisting at meta; but perhaps, on the side of keeping a listing, linkspam is a problem on other wikis, not on en. Perhaps there is neglect of many local considerations. Etc.

Separating the processes should take away the circle-the-wagons response when a delisting or whitelisting is requested. In the delisting or whitelisting process, the only question asked is if the listing should continue, be removed, or exceptions made with the whitelist. Whitelist exceptions should be very easy. Delisting can be done, as it was at meta, even if there is some fear of the return of linkspam, by editors volunteering to watch for the return of listings.

I.e., bring some of the distributed intelligence of the users to bear, instead of relying on only a handful of admins and bots and an automated list. Use the automated list as it was designed: to efficiently control linkspam, to require intelligent process when many links are being added. Blacklisters can focus on efficiently detecting linkspam.

Then, from the collection of delistings and whitelistings, performance can be measured. If some blacklist admin is having a high percentage of his or her listings delisted, that can be documented. Note that this isn't a high percentage of complaints, a user-controlled process could process complaints so much more efficiently, with arguments over the propriety of listing out of the way, that site owners could be allowed to request just like any other editor, except that probably the delisting/whitelisting pages themselves would be semiprotected for efficiency, with a clear procedure given for other editors to get help from an autoconfirmed editor.

One of the points is to get the accusation of "spammer" out of the system. All blacklisting work should still AGF. "We apologize for this blacklisting, but your addition of links causes fear of linkspamming, we require some kind of consensus to be shown before large numbers of links to be added. If you are a site owner, we apologize for any inconvenience, and you can request delisting or whitelisting of specific links at .... Regrettably, the volume of inappropriate links being added to Wikipedia projects required that we establish these controls. Thanks for your understanding.

Blacklisters naturally develop a jaundiced eye, and that is why their testimony in delisting and whitelisting should be considered similar to COI. Police are trained to look for crooks, or possible crooks. But a police arrest simply starts an independent process.

That several blacklist administrators took my questions and challenges seriously, and responded helpfully and considerately, has allowed me to see this, perhaps, from both sides, and thus to come up with possible solutions that might express and maintain wider consensus and avoid the black eye we got with ReadWriteWeb.com. "Blogs aren't usable" was a content issue, and, while there are certainly exceptions, content issues should not be the argument for blacklisting, if there are reasonable arguments for delisting, even if those arguments are wrong. It's like any editing. Administrators, with their tools, should abstain from making content decisions except where policy is very clear -- and an administrator who regularly interprets policy in favor of factional opinion (inclusionist/exclusionist) probably should be warned or desysopped. But that should only happen after ample opportunity to reform the behavior, not as punishment for errors, only to prevent continued abuse.

Thanks again, and if you are watching User:Abd/Blacklist, you'll see any specific proposals I come up with. Your help and participation is very much appreciated. We may disagree, even strongly, on specific delisting proposals, but that, I'm sure, we can work out with patience and time and adequate discussion, including the participation of others, if necessary.

As to the log. Yes, it's difficult to find listings, often, and there is one present blacklisting I know of where there is no log entry on en.wikipedia: newenergytimes.com. lenr-canr.org was also not logged with the addition, but only with the removal (by you). That was only one of several "irregularities" with that process. The delisting process for lenr-canr.com was under way at en, with JzG notified (having refused to reverse the unilateral listing as requested on his Talk), and participating with tendentious argument, when JzG went to meta and requested global listing. There was no linkspam (this will be discussed or reported at User:Abd/Blacklist/lenr-canr.org and the case page for NET. There is no sign in the meta discussion that resulted in listing that the editors were aware of the en.wiki process. JzG didn't notify us about meta, and he didn't notify meta about us. And, as you know, once a site is listed, the presumption becomes, very easily, that it was justified and there should then be proof that links are necessary, which requires resolving, sometimes, tough questions where the appropriateness of links is debatable, as they are, practically intrinsically, with lenr-canr.org and newenergytimes.com. That debate should be among editors in general, not administrators alone as prosecutors, judges, juries, and executioners. It spills out. JzG, at the same time as he removed links from the Cold fusion and Martin Fleischmann articles, as he had done for quite some time, blacklisted unilaterally, without logging and without discussion, and blocked the site owner, Jed Rothwell, for linkspamming. He had previously been accusing lenr-canr.org of copyright violation, which is actually libelous if done without evidence, and no cogent evidence has yet been presented on this, it doesn't stand up under discussion, and it has been discussed, but JzG continues to assert it as if it were simply a fact. (The same argument, equally preposterous, was advanced with lyrikline.org) He topic-banned Jed Rothwell as well. Jed Rothwell is an opinionated and perhaps arrogant individual, and has that reputation, I've been told, in the cold fusion field. But he's also an expert on the topic, he has read everything in the field, he's known, and lenr-canr.org is respected as a library of documents, which is its clear primary function. The bibliography there is apparently complete and very useful, and was at one time linked from the article at the same time as Pcarbonn took out many individual paper links. That's a classic solution to the problem of linkfarms, and it was appropriate, but you can imagine what happened. "Fringe!" "Copyright violation!" "POV pushers!" The needs of a reader who wants to know what's going on, what's the latest research (not just what was official opinion twenty years ago)? What's being claimed? And, of course the reader also needs to know that these claims haven't been generally accepted. But the needs of the reader? Who cares about that? We must enforce policies! As you know, the suggestion that it would be useful to readers if they can conveniently read a paper, instead of trying to get a copy of something published in China that is available at one university library in the United States. That is claimed to be sufficient for verification, which it technically is, but verification is not the only reason, not even the major reason why I, as a reader, hop to the references. I want to know more than I will find on Wikipedia. It is part of the encyclopedic project to create a gateway into the literature on a subject, traditional encyclopedias have always done this with references to available publications as recommendations for further reading. The baby, serving the readers, got lost in the linkspam bathwater.--Abd (talk) 13:27, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

For me it is also unclear regarding readwriteweb. We may never know, some parts are quite some time ago, and there may have been abuse/inappropriate use of some kind, a move of domain, change in the policies of the external website. I guess the most important part is, knowledgeable editors in the field have commented, and it has been removed. Lets move on on that one.

I deeply disagree with that blacklisting admins should not be involved in the de-blacklisting and/or whitelisting requests. They know why something is blacklisted. If a link is widely misused, but has some potential here and there, then total whitelisting or de-blacklisting will just result in continued abuse. That part of the information is a necessery part of making a good decision. If a good site gets blatantly spammed, and we would not be able to provide that proof, then whitelisting would enable proper use, but also the blatant spam. Going on with your police analogy, the arresting/investigating police officers do get invited in court to provide their evidence and to express how they came to their conclusions.

No, for me the solution is, for the grey and white area of links, go to a wikiproject who is knowledgeable on the subject pertaining the links, and get their opinion. File the whitelist request, some regulars there will include information on why it was blacklisted, and then there is still time for the project members to interact and give their point of view. In that case a good decision can be developed. Note, that if we decline, as we expect more abuse and do not see the use does not have to mean that the discussion is closed. If after 2 weeks there are still no useful reasons brought why we are wrong, then that shows that apparently no-one is interested. Most discussions are there for weeks, there is ample time to contact knowledgeable editors.

I know there are mistakes in logging, sometimes we forget, sometimes the logs are not as complete as they should be, etc. In principle, if there is not a proper log, and we can't quickly find any proper evidence then de-listing is often the immediate cause. I don't want to say much about lenr-carn.org and newenergytimes.com, but what I see from logs is that there is an unhealthy preference by some users in the past, there was point where there was a document which was not the same as the original, and a lot, if not most, of the information can be sourced to the original source, not to the online copy on lenr-carn or newenergytimes, making these sites unnecessery. Moreover, I whitelisted a conference proceeding paper. Those are not peer-reviewed, they can be used for statements 'someone announced that they did this', but not for 'someone did this' .. one has to take extreme care with these. If there is any doubt, discuss on the talkpage and get to an agreement, don't push the information. Even if you disagree with the person who removed, and why he removed, the talkpage is the place to be.

IMHO, we have a good procedure for delisting/whitelisting. We ask for established users to show the significance. A. B. has shown that for uofa.edu, the editor who requested the whitelisting was playing the system. I went with the remark that it was a notable organisation, but that is still questioned. Still insisting that if an owner is asking for de-listing, that we should grant that without discussion? If a site-owner says 'it reflects bad on me that the site is on the blacklist', is he then genuinely honest? Do you, after the evidence that A. B. presented, still believe that uofa.edu was not part of a SEO's worklist? So you want to take the blacklisting administrators out of the de-listing/whitelisting process, and give these SEO's what they want? You know, I actually feel guilty that I de-listed that site, as I was, clearly, not informed properly by the delister, and have been used by them to get what they want. I should have redirected this user to an appropriate wikiproject. How do you feel about your help in this blatant attempt to promote?

I am, next to blacklisting, trying to work with wikiprojects to improve this situation (I mean the text printed in x-large). I really think that if there are better sources than some sites which are questionable, that we should give them preference. Maybe it is better that we focus on that more than on sites which are questionable, or which were inappropriately added and for which there is hardly any local support that claims their use. Please move on. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:08, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, "move on" could be unfortunate. I have responses to much of what you wrote, but no desire to irritate you with detail when you think the matter is settled "Move on," though, for me, would mean -- after my report is written -- moving on to the next step in dispute resolution, unless I come to a point that I agree with you that no changes are needed. I'll say this much: it is a lousy procedure for delisting/whitelisting even if it's right ninety percent or more of the time. Realize that most spammers won't show up for delisting or whitelisting, so those who do show up are often those who think they didn't do anything wrong, and by routinely denying these, without sensitiveness and consideration if we are going to deny, we are creating reserves of ill-will that ultimately come back to bite us. As to uofa.edu, the question isn't whether or not they linkspammed. Let's assume that they actually paid for linkspam. So? The blacklist is intended to protect the project, not to punish "spammers" and website operators. Tell you what. Show me the most efficient way to watch for links to uofa.edu, and I'll do it regularly, and notify you of anything marginal, and the blacklist page if I see something egregious. I'll also revert what I think isn't appropriate or at least reasonably so. Good enough? But if you really think the delisting was wrong, you can reverse your decision, though I'd not recommend that unless you have reason to expect serious abuse.

As to lyrikline.org, the major additions seem to have come from one user who has had stable IP for years. That would be User:Lyriker on en.wikipedia and Lyrik on de. It seems quite possible that other additions aren't from him. I can tell you that are there a few in the last month that aren't from him, because, on de, they are from me. With regard to the article on the Shona language, I suggested the change in Talk, no response, then I added it, and I notified the de editor who had previously communicated with Lyrik and who had said that the link was inappropriate. He was puzzled, I don't think he remembered his prior decision, and perhaps my edit summary convinced him it was okay, I don't know. And I restored links that Lyrik had added to articles on de, and then took out at the end, when he realized that what he'd done was offending people. Have you actually read the evidence on this case, Beetstra. This guy immediately stopped when warned. Immediately. He sputtered a bit, then apologized and he took out a lot of links, but clearly didn't finish. I think his heart was broken. Think about it. That's the damage that abrupt and rough handling of blacklisting is doing. Have you read the communication with Hu12 on User:Lyriker? That was an abusive block, contrary to policy. It wasn't reviewed because Lyriker was plainly so upset that he didn't put up an unblock template, maybe didn't understand the directions.

I don't think you've understood. I agree with the blacklisting. What I don't agree with is the rest. This was a user who would have cooperated with proper advice, who would have abstained from adding links to other language projects when there wasn't consensus to allow it. But blocking him for taking the user name "Poet" in German? Deleting the article on Lyrikline.org, which was quite easily seen to be notable, having won the Adolf Grimme Award the kind of thing that is the standard for notability of web sites? You know another one of the seven winners that year? Wikipedia (de). Maintaining the blacklist is debatable at meta. Not on en.wikipedia, or on any language 'pedia that is an interface language for lyrikline.org. As to the others, I'd want to review the situation in more detail, outside the jaundiced view of those who routinely fight spam. It may be that there should be a global blacklisting -- though I'm far from convinced -- with specific invitation to each 'pedia to discuss whitelisting there. You mentioned Catalan. There are 8 poets with poetry in Catalan on lyrikline, so a blanket assumption that links to lyrikline for a pedia in that language were inappropriate is incorrect. But if there is already an article on a poet in a pedia, it could be argued that a link to lyrikline for that poet would be appropriate. Suppose it's a notable German poet, such that an article might exist. Suppose the poet has a web site (i.e., some archive of the poet's work, official or the like. Would it be inappropriate to link to the site on, say, en.wikipedia, if the site is in German, without translation? But if we are done, we are done, and I will, indeed, move on. You'll see, I presume, my report, before it is more generally released and used, and you will have the opportunity to comment then.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Abd (talk • contribs)

And again you are twisting my words, and misinterpreting every single word. I am done here. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 23:35, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Dance lessons?

Our child seems to have forgotten how to dance.  ;-) --Versageek 06:35, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Now that is funny. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:18, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

User Internetguide

re User_talk:Internetguide

First edits out of the gate after unblocking is to start re adding his links and Request delisting of his links. which he has attempted before MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/February_2009#filmtaka.com. --Hu12 (talk) 18:51, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Reblocked. There goes my good faith. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:49, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

One can only AGF, then its up to that user to act in GF....Thanks ..--Hu12 (talk) 19:58, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

Dirk Beestra

Dirk, Your behavior as an editor or administrator is counterproductive to the Wikipedia project. You have done a lot of damage by erasing the hard work of many people, who have no conflict of interest other than working for or being a student at the university where the linked content resides. Your definition of "spam" seems unique and it is certainly applied arbitrarily. You should consider another hobby, one where you can inflict less harm. Most of the Wired for Books' interviews had been on Wikipedia for several years before you began your campaign of destruction. Tens of thousands of people listened to the interviews. Now, you have taken away these resources away from Wikipedia users. And to top it off, you have never indicated that you have listened to a single interview, instead you delete valuable content and block hard-working contributors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.235.71.150 (talk) 21:31, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

First of all, please make sure you address people correctly, and sign your posts. I'll answer to these sentences one at a time:

Dirk, Your behavior as an editor or administrator is counterproductive to the Wikipedia project.

I beg to differ, and I did not become an administrator here because I am counterproductive.

You have done a lot of damage by erasing the hard work of many people, who have no conflict of interest other than working for or being a student at the university where the linked content resides.

Having a conflict of interest is not the only problem, and that was told the editors over and over. These links are in violation of our external links guideline, and the way of adding is certainly not the way forward.

Your definition of "spam" seems unique and it is certainly applied arbitrarily.

My definition of spam is quite close as that defined in our spam guideline. Moreover, I have, repeatedly, told the involved accounts, and on the noticeboards, that I do not regard the links as spam, but the additions (the way and where) inappropriate.

Most of the Wired for Books' interviews had been on Wikipedia for several years before you began your campaign of destruction.

My first encounter with editors who have as a single purpose adding these links is indeed something like 1.5 years ago. I have only 'targetted' additions by these editors. Other additions have NOT been touched by me.

Tens of thousands of people listened to the interviews.

I have never questioned that, and I do see the use of these links to the project .. but NOT in this way.

Now, you have taken away these resources away from Wikipedia users.

No, only the ones that you have pushed, and I (and others) have given the involved accounts on quite some occasions hints on how we could go forward.

And to top it off, you have never indicated that you have listened to a single interview, instead you delete valuable content and block hard-working contributors.

I don't have to listen, again, this way of 'contributing' is and never has been the way forward. The involved accounts were over and over asked to discuss. But that is not done, editors INSIST.

These edits have been discussed on several of our noticeboards, and on talkpages of involved accounts. Others than me have suggested to blacklist these links, so that they can't be used as a resource anymore. I have opposed such an action, as I a) believe the links can be of use (though not in the way several accounts are adding them), and b) don't think that we are exhausted in the ways to handle this.

I will mail this response also to you. Please stick, as I suggested, to ONE account, I am watching them. Don't evade blocks again, you are very likely to be blocked. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:11, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Missa Mercuria

Tahnk you for deleting my second version of Missa Mercurias Desciption. If you would have looked at it,the Second version had no Cpoyright Violation,while the Text was all written by myself. By the Was,I'm having the CD right in front of me,where i got the credits I had in the first and in the second version of my text. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Stargazer1980 (talk • contribs) 14:57, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I answered on your talkpage, and undeleted the last revision. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:22, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Plumber - Twinkle edit conflict

Hi

We had a Twinkle edit conflict earlier, I think you type faster than me lol, and I reverted the same page as you did which meant that as I did it after you, it started to revert your reversion and report you for vandalism which I cancelled straight away before saving it...I think I fixed it with an undo, but don't know if there is anything else I need to undo in case it reports you for vandalism instead of the IP we were both trying to revert.

That was complicated to explain ! Anyway, sorry about that --Chaosdruid (talk) 16:16, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

I'll be waiting for the block ;-), and start to wonder if I can unblock myself then ;-). I think all will be fine, thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:24, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Photos of the Philippines and Viet Nam

Hey Dirk

In 2005 we were in a Restaurant in St. Petersburg Florida and were talking about the Philippines.. Wikipedia was also a Topic..

Hence we took on to make a few photos and add them to Wiki.. However as you probably know people use the photos for commercial purposes and claim them as their own.

In the one trip we made 17,000 photos.. And organized by Municipalities.. Uploaded to http://www.batch2006.com/...

As you may Notice there are "no external links" to anything on the pages.. All are removed from the Messages as they come in..

Anyway... We did not supply the hundreds of other relevant pages for the Philippines.. Nor did we go back and do the Batch2008 as was planned..

It is a shame though as most of the municipalities of the Visayas and Mindanao have no relevant information..

Anyway that was I think what you had requested in early 2008.. We have no intent to continue the project as was extremely expensive..

It is not our intent to spam just let the info be available to the public.. Sorry I am not a writer, nor do I want to be known..

Yours and appreciate your work with Wikipedia!! Ateamfog Tampa, Florida USA

P.S. We have read the Guidelines about External links several times and none apply! Ateamfog (talk) 00:09, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

However, we are not a linkfarm. You could consider uploading the images to wikipedia, and use them to enhance the articles, and write content in them. I suggest you read WP:EL and WP:NOT#REPOSITORY again. I have or will undo your linkadditions. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:26, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

from Aerobaticteams web site

Hi, my site "aerobaticteams DOT net" is blacklisted for a long time since my past webmaster spaming to reach me more trafic. Since that stuped thing my site is blacklisted. Please help if you have time to see my site and insure that Aerobatic teams website is not a spam site.

Regards —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.100.78.9 (talk) 12:48, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

It is maybe not a spam web site, the question is, is it of use to this wikipedia? I would see if you can find a suitable WikiProject (see Wikipedia:WikiProject, or via banners on talkpages you are interested in; my guess would be Wikipedia:WikiProject Aerobatics or something similar), and post there to see if they are interested in your site (or the information on it). I hope this helps. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:49, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

My remark on IRC yesterday

Sorry I couldn't do it (bring this list below 200-ish), I just had yet another hell of an afternoon/evening, got back home at 22PM, and couldn't manage to do any complex task whatsoever

Today was kinda busy too, but I think I'll be able to finish (or at least go on with) three tasks I gotta do (including the one we're talking about here) tonight.

See ya anyway

Alphos ^{[bother me]} 18:44, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Heh, Don't worry, Alphos. No need to apologise. I seem to be programming more and more things so it just keeps high (though I have also programmed some things to close the ones which do not seem to be an acute problem anyway). Guess we'd should try to do some effort to get it below 100 in the end (I see yesterday quite some work was done to bring it down, actually). See you around! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:00, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

iharem.com author asks forgiveness

I am the author of iharem.com. Iharem.com began as a visual adjunct for an erectile dysfunction support group, attended mostly by prostate cancer survivors, here in New York City. During the last 7 or 8 months, the iharem.com blog evolved into a art and culture blog, where I post contemporary and historical imagery related to the Western concepts of "harem" and "odalisque." I am particularly interested in exploring the conceptual intersection between fine art and social exploitation of the female construct. I am entirely responsible for placing links on what I thought would be appropriate Wiki pages. I did not take the time to read and understand that placing several links in a short period of time violated Wiki policy. I apologize for my ignorance. Please allow the restoration of these links, as, I feel, that the iharem.com blog, which now holds nearly two hundred images, would be a welcome link for those interested in this topic. Thank you. Darryl Mitteldorf <personal data removed> —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.107.91.92 (talk) 03:51, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Blogs are generally not suitable external links, as shown in the external links guideline. I would suggest that you consider expanding the articles by helping us with nice images (I mean, upload them to commons, and use them in suitable articles). Otherwise, can you contact a suitable wikiproject (see banners on talkpages, or via Wikipedia:WikiProject), and see if they are interested in the link. I hope this helps. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:02, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Your Message to Coverage 1600

Hello Dirk:

Thanks for your message to me. Gosh ... I was trying to be helpful, adding external links on appropriate pages, but one of the administrators says the links I've added could cause a site to get blacklisted. I thought that Wikipedia was a gathering place of helpful information which could make this tremendous online encyclopedia even better. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to do, so I guess I will just stop editing anything else. The links I added are to a site that doesn't even earn money and is online to help students learn and educators teach. Sorry for whatever trouble I have caused. --Coverage1600 (talk) 03:52, 19 February 2009 (UTC)Coverage1600

I'm on my way to your talkpage. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:22, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your intervention in this, Beetstra. At the same time as we firmly intercept possible linkspam, it's very important that we continue to assume good faith. There is no conflict between very stiff resistance to large-scale addition of links -- and I'd call the edits here large-scale, and AGF, and I'd suggest that some of the language in WP:WikiProject Spam be amended. Fighting spam isn't in conflict with WP:AGF as is implied there. If I commit an apparent crime, the police will arrest me on probable cause, professional police behavior doesn't include insulting me, nor even assuming guilt, just an appearance. If all response to possible linkspam were as AGF as this one was, we would have less damage from overlisting, fewer burned newbies. It would also have been harmless if the site were listed, as long as recovery were swift and the unnecessary damages were avoided. The links could all have been removed if someone had wanted to do that -- and, as you know, links should be removed if blacklisted because they interfere iwth editing the article --, and then restored quickly if found to be useful, or just Talk page notices added regarding them (so that any editor who thinks, yes, these are good links could quickly restore.) Thanks again. --Abd (talk) 13:27, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

And thanks also for your comment in the specific lyrikline whitelisting I requested. It should be very helpful. --Abd (talk) 13:30, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

There is just one warning. The user responded immediately to 'warnings', and has stopped for now. In all cases trying to welcome the user and ask him to see if he can contact a wikiproject is the best solution, the link gets used by quite some others as well, and may have proper use. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:27, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Oh, and you are welcome regarding lyrikline. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:27, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Your help with Edgewater, NJ article

Thank you for restoring the information from my edit and removing only the offending external link. I appreciate your time, of course, but also the fact that you called the error to my attention. All the best, Manray00 (talk) 14:30, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Heh, you are welcome. Hope to see you around! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:33, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Reminder:Drugbox, Chembox

The Drugbox and Chembox still does not display correctly with FF2, due to name wrap issues in particular with IUPAC name. The IUPAC names still are not searchable, which was the rationale for reverting edits to the display representation. But the order stands, and nothing works. Just like with Ph..ips. 70.137.151.133 (talk) 14:46, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Heh, I'll bring it up again. Probably this needs bugzilla and time. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:51, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

I brought it up again. Another 'solution' was suggested, if the show button does not help, open the document in edit mode. There you can select the name. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:30, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Travel2Macedonia spam removal

Dear Dirk,

I have tried to contact someone from the link you have pointed me but useless - the secton is so main. I've post an article, but soon have found it deleted. I have to mention to you again that this web site is of the tourism interest of Republic of Macedonia.

Is there a person that I can contact through user Talk?

Best regards —Preceding unsigned comment added by Gorco (talk • contribs) 07:56, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

As I said, find a wikiproject, here you have the main page, there is a directoy linked from there (Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory), I see Europe (Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory/Geographical/Europe), and then you browse further (but maybe from Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory you need to follow another path .. you are the specialist). I hope this helps. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:24, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I confess I do not understand.

Dear Sir,

The link I put on the masturbation page has been removed, and I have been chastized for adding it. But, I confess I do not understand. I noticed a link to the Buddist perspective on sexual matters. Since Christianity is a major force in the world and has done much to influence public attitude toward masturbation, I thought it helpful to add a link to a site that presents a positive approach to the subject. If the Buddist link is ok, why is the Christian link forbidden? I am not trying to be arguementative. I am just trying to understand.

I also notice on the page about Religious attitudes toward Masturbation that the Christian info is very inadequate. It deals with Evangelical, Orthodox, Catholic, and the attitudes of other sects, but has no reference to Pentecostal (or Spirit-filled) beliefs on the matter. I think this is a major oversight since that sector of Christianity is large, and influential. But, if I add an edit to the poorly done Evangelical section, or add a Pentecostal section, and give any reference links, I feel I am in danger of being banned completely.

I do acknowledge that when I first joined Wikipedia I made some big mistakes and put links in inappropriately. For that I am sorry. However, now I am merely trying to make a positive contribution.

Your advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks. (Galatians5one (talk) 14:15, 24 February 2009 (UTC)).

Thanks for you remark. I indeed reverted that link again after you were warned on your talkpage (and responded to that). As you already imply, that other links are there is not really a good reason to add more, it would warrant a discussion to see if these links should be there, or which should be there.

My suggestion is to go into discussion. You can do so on the talkpage of the page where you think the link is of interest, or if it is of interest to more pages, you might be able to find a WikiProject (a directory of WikiProjects can be found through here: Wikipedia:WikiProject). Another way to suitable wikiprojects is to look at banners at the top of the talkpages of the pages you think your link is of interest, from there you can select one which would be most suitable. There you can discuss with other editors and see what they think about the link. I hope this explains, but if you have further questions, don't hesitate to ask. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:31, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the additional info at User:Abd/Blacklist/lyrikline.org

You left out one important edit: Lyrik/Lyriker (that's his IP, no doubt) began removing links, and one of them was removed from nl. I think he gave up in despair, because he was going down a list in alphabetical order of removals and stopped in the middle. But, in spite of no continued addition of links, he was still blocked five days later. He did reassert a link (more than that?) but with discussion and a plea to not delete the link. I don't see the link he was pleading for as abusive, but, of course, others may disagree; I doubt, though, that this was discussed on nl; if it was, I'd love to see the discussion. I do wonder why the IP was gratuitously blocked, when it had completely stopped editing. Spanking editors is not allowed, or is it on nl? I haven't looked at translations of the logs yet.

The problem isn't the blacklisting, Beetstra, it's the other stuff. Removal of arguably legitimate content without discussion, incivility toward editors who are trying to improve the projects, blocks, stonewalling (Lyriker tried to discuss this), and then tendentious argument against delisting (possibly reasonable in the case of Lyrikline, we still don't agree on that) and whitelisting. In discussions on the blacklist pages, it is commonly said, "Just ask for whitelisting." Ask for whitelisting, well, it is not easy. Whitelisting, especially, should be independent, so that we don't have the same small group of admins making both sets of decisions. Whitelist decisions are easily reversible, if there are a few problematic whitelistings, the project won't crash. I have no problem with emergency blacklisting, and removing a whitelisting in an emergency qualifies as that. But, really, what would happen if the page on Chirikure Chirikure gets whitelisted? I can think of two links, one on the poet's page, plus one, if accepted, on the page on Shona language. It's been proposed there, but, as usual, no comment in response. I did restore the link to the de page on Shona (sprache), having notified the editor who removed Lyrik's addition of the link, and with prior discussion in Talk there. Whether the link should be there is certainly debatable, but, to me, the answer is fairly obvious. It's a notable example of Shona, with translation, thus generally of interest, in the absence of better links.

And if the whole site is whitelisted on en, again, what's going to happen of harm? I would begin adding links slowly, with discussion, doing it right. If someone else adds a link, it's not terribly likely to be grossly inappropriate, but if it is, it would be easily removed. Wiki. We should try it. I would watch for link additions; if I knew better tools than a simple link search, that would show me recent additions of a link instead of all occurrences, it would help. --Abd (talk) 17:54, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I noticed that. As I mentioned earlier, policies and guidelines on en have no reflection on other wikis (de.wikipedia e.g. does not have anything like a conflict of interest guideline or a spam guideline, but it.wikipedia does have the latter). Their rules may be stronger or weaker. If the edits on nl are defined as abusive etc., and they expect that the editor starts with other links, then the block can be defined as preventive. Even with something like lyrikline, there is sometimes more to a situation then you think.

You say 'removal of arguably legitimate content without discussion', the English guideline on external links says "No page should be linked from a Wikipedia article unless its inclusion is justifiable.", hence, the inclusion should be argued, and as that has not been done, it is better to remove and discuss. If you are going to argue 'leave it there and then discuss', I have been there, over and over, in the end, the 'arguably useful' material is deemed 'indeed sometimes good, but in quite some cases superfluous', but does not get removed. I vote for 'if the additions were not discussed, we first remove, discuss, and then (controlled) re-include if discussion heads that way' (I could work with a 'cleanup wikiproject', who actually evaluates every link-addition, and does remove the ones which are 'too much', but we don't have anything like that, and actually: I don't think that is going to work either). When I perform these massive cleanups, which I do every now and then, I do have other (regular) editors (who actually follow the page I am cleaning) sometimes come to me, saying 'this one is quite good, I reverted you', I can't do anything but agree with such decisions.

Whitelisting indeed can be difficult, and that is a matter of not enough uninvolved editors who comment or take action. You see that I am answering, but most other editors don't. Wikipedia is discussion based (and not a vote ..), whitelistings can be discussed, but if people don't care (as apparent in this case from the Portals/Projects ...), then discussion stops. At the moment, it is simple, if we (blacklisters) don't comment, not many people will comment. If there are enough people keeping an eye on this, then we blacklisters would not have to take care of also this work.

I don't think it will do much harm. But that is what is being discussed there, and I'd like to hear specialists as well in this case. Lyrik(er) could have been useful (and still may be!), it is unfortunate that the early warnings (nl, de) did not give the suggestion that his way of editing could be interpreted as inappropriate, and that they'd better discuss before going on. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:25, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

As to the work load, you are absolutely right. I believe that other editors, who don't have to be administrators, can be recruited to support whitelisting (and maybe delisting). I'm certainly willing to do it, and I'm not going to support whitelisting for any site being actively linkspammed, but if a specific link that is appropriate for an article is being linkspammed, then, to avoid damage to content, other measures (besides removal of a whitelist entry) should be used to detect and revert inappropriate addition of that specific link.

I'm concerned about "massive cleanup," when links have been added that are arguable. But we can address that later. To me, it's really just a matter of broadening attention to the problem a little. I'll note that admin tools and specialized linkspam knowledge aren't necessary for cleanup, and in the Lyrik example on nl, we see some problems with this cleanup.

ELs don't have to be discussed before insertion, normally, and if there is language to that effect, it's misleading. They must be "justifiable," which simply means that a user should be prepared to justify them, not that the user must get approval first. The guideline merely suggests that large-scale addition of links can cause problems.

Now, as to Lyrik. I've read the nl guideline on external links. It would appear that the link could be allowable. The warning (link to google translation) placed by GijsvdL says "Without consultation and argumentation again placing the link can be seen as vandalism." At this point the editor had added three links, the warning came one minute after the third link was inserted.

On January 21, at 14:51, Lyrik adds another link, with a note (commented out in the wikitext) explaining it. "The poet reads his poems himself on this non-commercial international poetry website supported by the Goethe-Institut. Please do not delete." At 14:52, the link is removed by GijsvdL, and a new warning placed on the IP talk, which, of course, the IP might not see before editing again.

At 14:52, GijsvdL was running what looks like recent changes patrol. At 14:53, GijsvdL again warns Lyrik, with a request to read the above warning. Which it looks like Lyrik had read, because of the note inserted with the link. At 14:57, the IP replaces the link, still including the argument, and at 15:04, GijsvdL again removes the link. No response to the request or the argument for the link's usage. There is no Talk page for the article. At 15:04, GijsvdL replaces the IP talk page with a warning that the IP is being used for vandalism, entry reads: "January 21, 2008 15:04 (CET) Continuing SPAM on several articles." The IP made no more edits on nl.wikipedia, except for one, removing a lyrikline.org link, on the 24th.

On January 29, the IP is blocked, notice on the talk page is "Cross-wiki spammer, German publishing advertising continues to make, Block OT." The block log reads: "January 29, 2008 22:25 Moira Moira 62.96.74.70 is blocked for an indefinite period (anonymous, registered user is blocked). Reason (repeated vandalism)"

Summary. Having made three additions of links, having previously made many such additions over a long period of time on de., the user was intercepted by a patroller and warned. The user attempted to comply with the guideline by providing a reason for the edit when the user made one more edit, which was immediately reverted. Perhaps hoping that the reason would be noticed, the user adds it again. The user is slapped with a vandalism tag, and, it looks like routinely, is indef blocked on the 29th. Did the nl admin notice that the only continued edit was a removal of a link?

On the blacklist history page, I make a mistake, I think. The link removed wasn't added by this IP. It was added by this edit on January 18. This very likely to be Lyrik IP, though it is also possible that Lyrik got the note from the other IP. [4]. What's interesting here is that the note was removed by IP probably a blacklist volunteer operating from meta (I could check this.) And the link was replaced by an nl user. This is what Lyrik removed, and quite likely, it couldn't be replaced because of the blacklisting that day. This nl edit, who has substantial contributions, also reverted another linkspam volunteer removal (same IP), and that link still stands on nl. [5].

Here is what I see on nl. The only time that an nl editor actually looked into this, the link was supported. The editor followed the nl guideline on external links, though not necessarily in the way expected. Assumptions of bad faith afflict the blacklisting process. Lyrik was naive and had no idea how to pursue appeals process, and, I'd say, most users would be completely at sea.

Yes, poster child for problems with the way blacklisting is working. I think we can fix it without damaging the legitimate needs of the blacklisting process. And I'm hoping you will stick with me on this.

By the way, it's pretty plain to me that the blocking admin on nl didn't carefully examine the record, or the ameliorating circumstances would have been noticed. Rather, as I mention above, these kinds of blocks were, for this admin, routine. (I'd call this a reasonable speculation.) That's what happens when preventing linkspamming becomes more important than content. There isn't time to look into details, and it may be assumed that if it's a problem, the user will appeal with an unblock template, etc.

You are right. One of the problems was lack of welcome and guidance. I'd say there should be some work on the templates, to provide better instructions and specific ways to do what the user might legitimately want to do. Blocks on users, considered necessary to prevent linkspam, should be short and thus re-examined, and, as I've written elsewhere, there should be some kind of apology with them, they should not be more or less "Die, Spammer!" It's not only the newbie like Lyrik needing guidance, it's the spam volunteers. --Abd (talk) 21:40, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I am glad we agree on that, we need more manpower (probably on all ends, also for blacklisting stuff, I know that there is still a LOT that is pure spam which passes the filters, just because we don't have time to monitor it all, the bots catch way more than the ones in m:User:COIBot/XWiki, and even with the XWiki we can't keep up).

Cleanup is a difficult one, if most of the edits seem fine (except maybe a bit linkfarmy here and there), I prefer the editor to stop and discuss, and maybe go through his edits and clean some where necessery. If there are several which are really arguable (like an earlier example, a museum also has a vase, and adds a link to their vase to the page Vase ..) and I have such examples more in the list, and the editor does not respond too much, or at all, then I am cleaning all, even if there are some that are good and on topic (the ones that are helping can always be reverted again). Here the argument is a bit useless, the link was blacklisted, it is better that all the links are removed, as it does in the end give disruption (one example, if a vandal comes after this and blanks the page, then we need to remove the link at that point, and good-faith helpers get the blacklist warning suggesting that they are spamming, while all they do is help fighting vandalism).

Yes, in all cases the link appears to be on topic, but all the link additions are questionable: in some cases a Dutch translation is available that is not linked, and in some cases there is no Dutch translation available at all.

But still: Lyrik/Lyriker/62.96.74.70 did get warned on several wikis that he'd better discuss (responded here and there), and that there may be better ways for practically ALL links that were added (and I have shown several examples where that is certainly true!), I actually have not seen many link additions which were the best choice on most wikis! Why, because the editor did not care to read first, and did not care to discuss. One wiki blocked him without warning, most wikis do give Captcha's when adding new external links, tc. etc. Still he proceeded.

Now about us volunteers. Most of us are long term editors, and quite a number of us are administrators (the Dutch blocking admin is actually a wikimedia steward), some active on OTRS, others also otherwise highly trusted users. And we are in the meantime not talking about one editor making a decision anymore, we have several editors on several wikis (some of which are also active on meta, though Mer-C, GijsvdL and Moiramoira are not often there, mainly reporting, generally not discussing etc.) who have found these link additions questionable. As we are admins, we should have (at least had) a broad trust from local communities, and the meta admins have to be a local admin as well before they become admin there (for Stewards and checkusers an even wider trust is needed). They should know and have read the policies (at the very least there where they are local admin). These policies and guidelines have carefully chosen wording, based on long discussions between a large number of editors (both admins and non admins). And they are there for a reason. And some admins are a bit more active than others trying to keep them up. They have their specialism and do look. You again say, and you say that of almost everyone who removed lyrikline.org and other links, or blacklisted it, blocked editors in question or oppose you in other ways, that they did not look properly (and you can say it of me now as well, I fully agree with the indef block on Lyriker here, seeing the evidence, and I also agree with the blacklisting of this link; I am however prone to local whitelisting if local projects/portals are interested). I am sorry, Abd, you say that sometimes you don't know the full evidence (and here you are also still missing crucial points! Why? IMHO, because you say first that we make a 'total error', clearly not knowing the whole situation, and fail to ask why (seeing that you are still missing a crucial point you apparently still failed to ask)), and still you say that 'the blocking admin on nl didn't carefully examine the record' (have you seen of how many admins you now said that?). Probably also User:EdJohnston did not look at it properly? Or maybe you did not look at it properly? We are writing an encyclopedia here, not a dictionary, a publication of original thought, a soapbox, a linkfarm, a blog, the yellow pages, a manual, a guidebook, a crystal ball, a database of lyrics .. you name it.

So yes, we agree, get more manpower to help with whitelisting, get projects and portals properly involved. I would be glad to leave it mainly to them. But at the moment, if the blacklisting editors don't keep an eye at the situation as well, not a lot gets done there. And as is clear from this, you need editors who have a good knowledge of such situations to see what is going on, as with blacklisting, whitelisting is not always a simple and light matter. There is a lot to it! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:09, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Whitelisting a whole site is dangerous, and should be carefully considered. What I'm saying is that sometimes editors, being human beings, have a tendency to argue for their original decision, beyond the basis for that decision. I.e., we can all agree that the lyriline links posted raised concerns about linkspam. The name raised a concern (I think improperly, but still reasonable) about the user name and possible COI. Deleting lyrikline.org was a bit worse, since it's easy to discover the notability of lyrikline.org. But none of this was an egregious error, if it had not been later defended. You have a reasonable basis for wanting to continue the blacklisting. I can -- and probably will -- argue against that; however, if I can't get one link whitelisted on en.wikipedia, trying for total whitelisting, and even more, for global delisting, would surely be impossible. If you think that whitelisting the link to the Chirikure Chirikure page causes some risk, you really should have told me. You have never actually stated that, and you have, indeed, indicated the opposite, that we should consider whitelisting the whole site. If not for that, I'd not even be suggesting it. How can I suggest, without being disruptive, that we whitelist the whole site, if I can't even get one link whitelisted, and then maybe another after that, etc.

As to the argument presented about rush not being necessary because no request is for a citation, that's only the case because I haven't pursued the reliable source argument, I've stayed with one very simple proposal: whitelisting one poet's page for an external link. The multiple language arguments are irrelevant there. The linkfarm argument is moot, the article isn't overwhelmed with links. The copyright argument is total B.S. One link won't be linkspammed. What is the reason for not whitelisting? You are actually proving that the promises made on blacklist pages are empty. I'm not the first editor to request a lyrikline link, I noticed lyrikline because of what seemed to me to be a strange denial of a whitelist link. Whether that was right or not isn't the point. The point is that a request from a regular editor should routinely be granted unless there is good reason to deny it, not merely a judgment that the specific link isn't necessary. And what I want to do is to set up a process that works as is being promised! You won't have to lift a finger, it will make your blacklisting process easier, and if I'm wrong about being able to recruit some help, well, the whitelisting process will be slow and frustrating, and it won't be your fault.

You've suggested that the editor didn't follow nl guidelines. He did. He was blocked anyway, and if a highly reputable editor blocked him, it only goes to show that highly reputable editors can act excessively dealing with "spam," particularly when they don't have the time to deeply investigate a case. That block was five days later, after the linkspamming had clearly stopped voluntarily. Why was it necessary? Blocks should be necessary to prevent damage, not just punishment for past sins. The editor actually started to remove links on the 24th and was blocked on the 29th. He removed a link that had been restored by another editor when it was taken out by MER-C, and by the time the original editor came back, I'm sure, the blacklist was operating and it couldn't be restored. You've looked at the evidence page, User:Abd/Blacklist/lyrikline.org, and from our prior discussion, you should know all that I've said here. I find your comments today and yesterday bizarre and contrary to earlier ones. What happened? --Abd (talk) 19:33, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Abd, the thing is, you are pushing it. Several editors have commented and are not all too positive, and the wikiprojects are not (yet) responding. And then you move on, next forum where you ask.

About the COI, if we say COI, we do not only look at a username. There are many ways to find some more information on accounts. IP-tracks can sometimes be followed or give immediate information; the user may be active under the same username on other sites (there are hundreds of wikis out there!), may be uses the same username on a forum related to the site that the editor adds. And even then, if the user is not related to it, then it is even a better reason to indef the user, as then it clearly is abuse which may reflect badly on the actual site. Hu12 does not block at first sight, Hu12 follows such tracks. Most of us do. And when I do follow some tracks in this case, I come to the same conclusion (quite quick, actually), as does COI specialist EdJohnston probably (who is hardly active on link blacklistings). Calling the block then a total error without yourself knowing which tracks Hu12 followed is harsh, and does not invite to a better explanation.

The problem with the recruiting is not only that you need the manpower, but also manpower who knows where to look, and what goes on. That was why I mentioned uofa.edu. De-blackisting got the abuse going again. It is controllable since it will be one page, but what if it is something that can be spammed wider? Then if other people who did not carefully examine the whole story do give me more work. You either need to know where to look, or to involve the blacklisting admins yourself.

Well, if they was reverted and warned on nl, they was not completely following the rules there ("Without consultation and argumentation again placing the link can be seen as vandalism", there is no consultation). The rules suggest discuss, not 'add the link anyway but give a reason why you do it'. I think indeed that the block was totally unnecessery (though I can't see if e.g. he started editing and created a page which got deleted afterward), hence, I do not conclude that the block was wrong, but it looks superfluous. Maybe the deletion of the links without discussing them is just as offensive? But if you want more info, ask Moiramoira, they is quite talkative.

I de-blacklisted uofa.edu, because I believe that that can be controlled. I do not expect many problems with whitelisting lyrikline.org, but since the original scale, and the scale of possible abuse of whitelisting the whole domain is quite substantial, I want more backup from a project. If they think the link is not suitable/useful here, then why even run the risk of abuse. One link will not be too bad, indeed, that can't be misused on a large scale, but it also does not prove anything, and whitelisting the site link-by-link is just generating work. Better do it good the first time.

I am sorry to see that your initially good initiative now runs into a wall of many admins, who get more and more annoyed. I don't think that is a good start for this. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 20:55, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Beetstra, it's frustrating. I did not request whitelisting for lyrikline.org in toto. You suggested it. I requested one link. Sure, you want backup from a project, but why? Ordinarily an editor can add a link without any problem. If an article is inactive, nothing happens. If Recent Changes patrollers don't like it, they take it out. Now, we have the global blacklist in place because of massive addition of links. It's possible that the block was not in error. But User:Hu12 didn't provide any evidence, he asserted the problem with the user name as being obvious, from the name itself. That was an error. He may have had all kinds of secret evidence, but, on the face, it was an error, so don't blame me for questioning it!

As to inserting the link to the article, I've done way more than is expected. I've discussed it on the article. I've gone to portals and wikiprojects. And there is no cogent opposition to the link. Why can't it be whitelisted and used? I can tell you what I suspect: blacklist administrators come to see spammed websites as "Bad." For them (i.e., possibly for you, it is a BATTLE against spam. Now, I agree that blacklist work is necessary, you know that. I'm trying to approach this carefully, gingerly, one step at a time. A week is too long for a whitelist request to stand there, with plenty of comment, a clear consensus, or at least a basis for a clear decision. A discussion like this is the first step, due process, in WP:DR. It shouldn't take a week, not with admins like yourself seeing it. You know, I'm sure, that this one whitelisting wouldn't bring down a rain of linkspam. You also know that it doesn't open the floodgates, I'd have to come back with a request for each link, until and unless there is a broader decision. You should know that if lyrikline.org is whitelisted here in toto, that doesn't establish a right to put any single link in any article, normal process still applies.

No, it wasn't canvassing. It was asking for admin assistance, to do something that takes an administrator. Any administrator. I could go to individuals, but I wanted to see how the process worked. And boy is it broken!

As to a wall of administrators, I don't see it that way. I see some blacklist admins circling the wagons, mostly, with a few popping in who don't understand the issues. JzG is probably going to be history if he continues, at least as far as his admin bit is concerned, and quite likely a topic ban is looming as well. JzG has raised his peculiar copyright standards again and again, perhaps when he's got an axe to grind. He's the one who brought up copyvio here, as being a problem, and User:Stifle apparently bought it. Do you imagine that I'd be doing this work if I didn't have administrative support? But I'm trying to do it through ordinary channels. The Chirikure Chirikure whitelist request was believed by me to be a truly good external link, the kind that is positively recommended by WP:EL.

Look at the Stifle decline. Do you think such a ridiculously poor decision, based on total misunderstanding of the issues, considering the arguments presented, should be tolerated? I've seen similar decisions on the pages. I'm asking you personally. I'm telling you that allowing this kind of stuff is likely to cause quite a bit of disruption, as the community figures out what has been going on. It was a simple request for admin assistance on AN. You made it contentious. Why? What would have been the harm of the one link?

I'm starting to get some dark thoughts, so I'll go look at something else now! Something nice and relaxing like compiling an RfC. --Abd (talk) 02:27, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I am withdrawing myself from the lyrikline discussion, I am too involved now. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:42, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

COIBot link monitoring for bangkokpost.com

I just came across Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/bangkokpost.com, and it seems that the url has been monitored because user:Bangkok on the Dutch Wikipedia added a link to bangkokpost.com, causing overlap in the names. I'm not quite sure if the url is still being monitored. Since the Bangkok Post is one of the two major English newspapers in Thailand and a heavily relied-upon source, shouldn't it be whitelisted? Or is it already? --Paul_012 ^(talk) 11:43, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

It is not actively monitored, but was indeed reported once because of a 'silly' overlap. I have now whitelisted the site on COIBot, and deleted the report. Thanks for the remark. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:03, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Stifle's decline of the whitelist entry for the one Lyrikline page

Beetstra, this will escalate the whole blacklisting/whitelisting issue rapidly. You know that the reason for decline is preposterous. It shows Stifle is declining not based on the actual arguments presented, and he actually suggested that I violate copyright (he's confused "not copyvio" with "public domain." It's copyrighted material, sometimes copyright Lyrikline, sometimes by other publishers and used with permission. Can you think of anything to do to put us back on an even keel here? --Abd (talk) 20:12, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Yep. I see that. I am withdrawing myself from the lyrikline discussion, I am too involved now. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:40, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Shona poet

On Lyrikline's specific link for the Shona poet, what kind of "specialist" are you suggesting? What do we need to know that we don't know?--Abd (talk) 21:40, 23 February 2009 (UTC) (moved from discussion above, as it is a bit separate from the above. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:41, 24 February 2009 (UTC))

The kind of 'specialist' would be someone from an appropriate Project of Portal. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:41, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Beetstra, I'm puzzled. What are you planning on asking this person? Wikipedia isn't a bureaucracy, and we don't have certified experts. I'm not understanding the issue, what is it that we need to know that we don't know? WikiProjects and portals are accessories, they have no right to control content (but they may assemble some kind of rough consensus, which doesn't stand against the general community of editors).

I'm not convinced, from your comments on consultation, that you understand the wiki way. Normally, any editor may make an edit, and editing is only proscribed, sometimes, if one expects that it will be contentious, and then, though it isn't rigidly required, one may be required to consult first. What objection do you expect to adding the link to Chirikure Chirikure? I don't expect one, unless somehow it is attracted by the discussion on AN or on the whitelisting page. I.e., He Who Shall Not Be Named may show up.

User:Lyriker was blocked ostensibly for a bad username, but clearly the original cause of the negative attention was his addition of links here to many articles. Now, if I'm an editor and I think that I'd like to add links to that many articles, how can I do it legitimately? Do I have to go to a Wikiproject?

I'll tell you the answer. I don't have to go to a wikiproject. WP:EL only suggests, When in doubt about the appropriateness of adding new links, make a suggestion on the article's talkpage and discuss with other editors. But what if I'm not in doubt? However, suppose I know about the linkspam volunteers. So I go to the talk page and declare my intention to add the link if nobody objects. Is this enough?

Yes, it's enough. That's how a wiki works. I can normally simply add the link. However, if I fear contention, I can discuss it. And then when I put in the link, I might reference the Talk page. I'd like to know why linkspam volunteers have some privileged position to determine content! You have linkspam volunteers IP editing, cross-wiki, to remove legitimate links. At least they don't edit war! Except that they have the upper hand, because if their removal isn't noticed quickly, the blacklist takes over, and most local editors haven't the foggiest idea how to deal with it, and if you think it's easy, you must think I'm an idiot. It's not easy. Enough. Either we work together, or we are involved in a dispute, and I'll follow WP:DR. I think you have been very helpful, but then.... you turn it upside down. Something is really off. --Abd (talk) 02:43, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I am withdrawing myself from the lyrikline discussion, I am too involved now. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:40, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your help, Beetstra. --Abd (talk) 15:06, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Wrongfully blacklisted due to unknown activity

Dear Sir,

We are a main online hotel bookingsserver in Belgium, representing more than 400 hotels in Belgium and over 100 hotels in the Netherlands. Apparently we are mentioned on your blacklist, so we were informed by mail from one of our customers.

We have no idea how this can have happened. So it seems there were a lot of links made to all different cities to all of our websites, which is an activity we do NOT do nor allow.

The easiest explanation would be a competitor in our market trying to see how fast you get blacklisted on Wikipedia using our websites and our links for his own use. This of course is malicious practice to which we have no answer but to contact you to rectify the error.

We would be pleased to see all these links removed both from BoekUwHotel.be, BookYourHotel.org and BoekUhotel.nl even if this erases links placed to us by other users.

We most certainly ask to be removed from your blacklist as you are a major provider of information on the web and our website does not want te be associated with blacklisting on such an important server. We do believe in the potential influence of your blacklisting on other media related to and with our website so we urge you to take a look at our position.

Most sincerely,

David Boussy

81.165.17.164 (talk) 13:32, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Dear David, as far as I can see, the three links you mentioned are nowhere blacklisted. There is a report on boekuwhotel.be here: m:User:COIBot/XWiki/boekuwhotel.be, all three sites were added in the same edits to quite some places. I will comment there further. If it is true that it is not someone from your own organisation that is spamming the link (this might be a good faith action by a member of staff who is trying to be helpful, you might want to send an internal memo), then it is someone quite close to you (same internet provider). I will keep an eye open on this case. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 13:44, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I have left a note on the mentioned bot-generated page, if you want to prevent spamming, the blacklist can also be used as a protection against Joe jobs. In that case I'd like you to mail info-en-c@wikimedia.org with such a request (that is the email address of the wikimedia organisation, which can handle such requests). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:11, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Dear sir,I thank you for your swift comment. The first thing i did was asking the staff if anyone tried this but none of them did. All employees have been working here for quiet some time and i have no suspicion of actions of this kind performed by our staff.In Belgium there are only 2 major internet providers for our small country. I had a look immediately and indeed the IP points unfortunately to a location in Belgium and to the same provider. The best idea i can come up with is someone trying to test how far you can push Wikipedia before blacklisting. Our webservers are an ideal target as we cover a lot of cities and hotels. If I understand your message well, we are no longer on any blacklist by the Wikipedia community? So if people would point to our website as a resourcefull place for hotels this would be possible and all malicious links were removed? (Those links in all these cities to our websites)I thank you again for looking into this matter. Kind regards 81.165.17.164 (talk) 17:40, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't think it was every blacklisted (but I may be mistaken, it is more difficult to find if a site which is not blacklisted anymore was at some time on the blacklist). There were concerns, and I have left a note on a report (the one linked above, m:User:COIBot/XWiki/boekuwhotel.be), which was indeed pushed a bit, but not to a scale where blacklisting was necessery. The link was discussed with some others, and I think they will be a bit careful to blacklist this now (seen your concern). We are not as keen on blacklisting links as many think, there really needs to be substantial, uncontrollable abuse before we do (and a new system to control these things is rolled out as we speak, which may result in even less disruption than blacklisting sites). I hope this resolves things. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:08, 27 February 2009 (UTC)

Please whitelist ExpressIndia.com

I cited this site as a newspaper, and its page Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/LinkReports/expressindia.com appears only to be on the list because one person with the username ExpressION12 added a link from it. I think it's obvious that any relation between username and .com name is coincidence. The site is a good news archive, or at least, the link I added from it still links to a stable news article. Wnt (talk) 09:28, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Done, I also deleted the report, it should not be regenerated now. Thanks for the analysis. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:08, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Old spammer talk pages

FYI: deleting old talk pages is being discussed again. Please see Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Proposal at Wikipedia talk:User page#Non-contributors; this follows earlier discussion at Wikipedia talk:User page#Non-contributors and Wikipedia talk:User page#OLDIP removal. I have added a subsection, Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion#Old spammer talk pages asking that old spammer talk pages be kept. Your opinions, whether pro or con, would be helpful. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 04:03, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

CON. Archive them, and replace them with a {{re-welcome(anon)}}. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:11, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Welsh Police Stations

Hi Dirk,

I'm trying to create a resource both to allow citizens here in Wales to locate their local police as well as provide historical information on police stations within Wales. Please undelete my article. Things will develop!

Cheers,

James

Drseuk (talk) 14:39, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

This info is inappropriate as a start. We are not the yellow pages. You can restart the page with other info, but please leave out telephone numbers and similar information. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:45, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi Dirk,

Thanks for the quick reply.

Clearly telephone numbers are allowed within wikipedia (e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/999_(emergency_telephone_number) ). That said, I appreciate your comments re: not being a yellow pages etc.

I would appreciate it if you'd undelete my pages for the time being and see how they develop. I firmly believe that we, as Welsh citizens (yes, me too!), have a right to know where we can locate emergency police support and find out about the history of policing in this realm.

Regards,

James —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.137.7.50 (talk) 14:52, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

That is an article about a telephone number, not a telephone number in an article about an organisation, that is something completely different (and also WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS applies to this argument). I'd really prefer you to recreate the articles with other content, you can make them encyclopedic.

Yes, everybody have a right to know where to locate emergency police support, but that is outside the scope of an encyclopedia. We are not the yellow pages. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:56, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi Dirk,

Cheers.

If you could undelete the affected pages, I shall remove the (telephone / fax etc.) contact details as you've requested such that they become articles purely related to the history of Welsh policing (/ police stations). Is it acceptable to leave the map references / coordinates in situ?

Regards,

James —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.137.7.50 (talk) 15:09, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

You can just start over. There is nothing left in the pages when you remove the contact info. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:34, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

"I suggest you either self-nom it or I will PROD it in a few days."

I thank you for your time in helping me get used to things here and I've had a look at the links you helpfully suggested (e.g., what wikipedia is not).

Cheers,

James —Preceding unsigned comment added by Drseuk (talk • contribs) 00:42, 5 March 2009 (UTC)

I presume someone is suggesting that you either nominate the articles for deletion yourself, or try to write something and then propose deletion. I then other people think it should stay, it will stay. I'll have a look later on. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:32, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

EnLinkWatcher2

I noticed that EnLinkWatcher2 hasn't been reporting that much in #wikipedia-en-spam lately. Is the bot down perchance? Themfromspace (talk) 04:41, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Really strange, it looks like all the analysers are hanging, but all the warners still work .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:27, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Old IP talk pages

Moved from WP:AN/I. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:11, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Dirk: Looking quickly at your page, a couple of comments:

1. Listing the IP talk pages there stops any deletion of them. This is the absolute first thing I asked A. B. to do when she came to me in January regarding old IP talk pages. I'm quite frustrated about that.
2. Looking at the results, it appears to be 750 IP addresses. Nearly 90% (perhaps more?) don't have a talk page at all and never did. The few that do look like either (a) simple vandalism (e.g., Special:Contributions/68.227.85.13) or (b) would have been skipped due to being warned for spamming. There be something that I'm missing in my cursory look-over, but this appears to be an issue for maybe 3 out of 750 pages?

As I said, I'm quite frustrated that this list is only now being compiled when I brought this up weeks ago and was told that no type of list was able to be compiled. --MZMcBride (talk) 19:47, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

MZM, this is not the place to fight about that. I have always said, that most of these pages can safely be deleted, but some of them are proof, or are support for other actions in wikipedia (blacklisting of links being one of them). The list of 750 is for that. The first 250 give you full support for deletion, I have even listed several there which have not been deleted, but which can safely be deleted (that is flaw one in the criteria)! The second 250 give 4 talkpages, of which, under the current circumstances, 3 would be falling under the current policy (in a year, and when this list would not be pointing to them). My point is simple, your criteria for deletion are incomplete and the way you determine which to delete is seriously flawed. Several editors were questioning the deletion, you proceeded. Several editors told that you already caused damage, you did not help in repairing, you proceeded in deleting more. You asked for examples of talkpages which are useful, there are some examples.

Listing all IPs is not an option, that is not a way for us to keep track of it, it is an unworkable way forward, where would I get the data now for a case which may emerge next week, in the meantime you delete thousands of pages? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 20:36, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

Is there any check in your mind that would be sufficient to ensure that spam-related pages aren't deleted short of checking every diff of every IP? That is, is there any way to automate this process in your mind? You say "your criteria for deletion are incomplete and the way you determine which to delete is seriously flawed." I'm curious if you believe any criteria are complete. --MZMcBride (talk) 02:11, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

One more thing. In several examples, you cited "15 IPs all needing to be checked" if they were all red links. However, you've also said in several places that the taggings are often wrong (people tag simple vandalism as spam, or people choose not to warn at all, etc.). So wouldn't any admin have to check all the IPs regardless of whether a talk pages exists? (And of course contributions are still visible to both admins and non-admins.) --MZMcBride (talk) 03:35, 7 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi, I did not read further discussion elsewhere yet to see how they evolved, will first answer here. Thanks for coming here, let's try to get somewhere! First, I do agree that for all IPs at least the message flag should be reset, and the messages on the talkpage should be removed. They are probably not meant for the user that is using the IP now.

I don't think this can be easily automated, no. Some can be automatically excluded, that is easy.

Yes, They all need to be checked anyway, but that process can be done by everyone if the revids are not deleted. If we want to see the contribs of the user, then we have already found him (those tracks are clear). But has the user been warned for the actions? Check timing of warning and contents of warning against the contribs of the editor. If the revids of the talkpage are deleted, it comes down to admins to check these. Know, that if the editor adds exact the same piece of text 2 year later, then it is physically the same person, even though the editor has now a completely different IP. I see with XLinkBot often cases of some IPs spamming, me putting the link on XLinkBot, and then XLinkBot reverts and warns a couple of times. Then 3 months later suddenly an account comes up, autoconfirmed and all, who spams exactly the same articles. What happened? Their IP gets warned, they create an account, do some silly, unrelated or minor edits or wait three months doing nothing, and start spamming. Timing of account creation only minutes after the last IP stopped spamming. No blocks yet, abuse stopped .... As I have given as example earlier, if Grawp comes with a new IP, you block on sight, why? Because you know his modus operandi, and know he was warned. These cases are often less bad, still for some, if they return after a week, a month, or two years ... we sometimes know it is the same physical person, and hence immediate block is often in place.

I know that speedy criteria are never complete, but if I check 4 talkpages and see 3 fail in a range of 256 possible talkpages .. on the other hand, another range of 256 talkpages had some which stayed and could probably be deleted. But the first 75% failure rate, 50% on the other example I mentioned. I really hope that the error rate over tens of thousands of pages (I heard A. B. saying that he was getting tired of scrolling through pages with 5000 deleted pages, may I ask how many your script deleted?) is getting way below 1% .. but I think it is going to be difficult to get it below 5% .. that is in the end also thousands of pages.

About incomplete:

• Blocks: blocks includes rangeblocks (I assume you check for these locally), and from some time ago also for blocks applied mediawiki wide (used nowadays while waiting for blacklists to kick in).
• Blocks 2: IPs often don't get blocked, they change their IP and go on. Only if we are really fast, that makes sense. And some IPs we simply can't block or only if it really gets bad (those UK IPs which were used widely after the album cover image, government IPs?).
• Incoming links 1, if the case is cross-wiki, there are not always local reports, but the incoming links are coming from other wikis (mainly meta).
• No activity by the IP, does that include deleted activity (I assume you check for these as well).
• Incoming links 2, not all actions require a signature (is that not omited for RFCs?).
• Incoming links 3, especially IPs don't always know that they should sign. Sinebot is active since August 2007, pages before that were often not signed, are you sure that that criterium can be met? And then still, Sinebot does also make mistakes, I see it miss signatures. And some IPs sign by hand, not leaving a link to the talkpage. And where those IPs should have signed, those are often discussions that matter.
• Tagging: Some of the deletions I saw had an IPsock tag on the userpage, not on the talkpage. Indeed, talkpage is not tagged.
• Incoming links 4, some of our reports link to the userpage, or to the special:contributions (I do that with the XLinkBot log), or may just state the whole range and not link to individual user(-talk) pages.
• Warnings: as mentioned, warnings are not always proper (vandalism warnings for spam, etc.).
• Warnings 2: also mentioned, people use still custom warnings, 'Hi, I have reverted your edits, please don't insert your own links. Thanks. (sig)' ..
• Users are allowed to blank warnings, under the idea that they have then read the warning. If the warnings for spam get removed by the IP, the word spam is not anymore on the talkpage, so you would now delete it, right?

On the other hand:

• Some unsubstituted templates are just as confusing as a spam message which is not for the editor.
• Talkpages with only a nice and friendly welcome message get deleted.
• By far not all the 'spam' warnings for users are for spam, it may be plain vandalism where the user replaced e.g. the homepage of their school with a movie on redtube. Those get by XLinkBot tagged for spam (well, for inappropriate external link addition I prefer to think), but are just plain vandalism. Similar for taggings for inclusion of example.com. Difficult to distinguish!
• Blocks 2: If the user has changed, then having had a block on the IP is not a reason not to at least blank the page. The user is long gone.

There may be more points of interest here, but this shows in my (humble) opinion, that automated deletion is dangerous. Thanks again, and sorry for the block(s). But I had too many concerns, some of which already raised over a month ago, which under the current policy were not met, or which were impossible to check automatically (or which the current automated process did not seem to follow). I know the policy was discussed over and over, and was (apparently) carefully thought through, but I am afraid it was not done good enough. I am sorry you become the victim here. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:17, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I am copying (with a bit of refactoring) to WT:CSD. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:02, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Other spammer talk page deletions

FYI: there have been some more, unrelated spammer talk page deletions by others. See the notes I left for Mr.Z-man (CAT:TEMP deletion bot's operator), Sloane‎ and Tiptoety‎. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:13, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I know, the policies and guidelines here are seriously flawed. It is not the users applying them, the deletions are mostly according to the policies ... see discussion above, there is stuff deleted that should not be deleted, and stuff which is not deleted which easily could be deleted. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:32, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

COIBot status?

So far as I can tell, COIBot last ran a COIReport on March 6: WP:WikiProject Spam/COIReports/2009, Mar 6. It's not easy to be sure about that, though, as WP:WikiProject Spam/COIReports is woefully out of date (since last July). Is the bot just down, or ? Thanks in advance, Dori (Talk • Contribs) 23:14, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Should still be running normally. I'll check. Good to hear people are still following it. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:44, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

I updated the table. The report-save sub-process of the bot died. It is now running again (but it looks like I have a performance problem .. need to have a second look). Thanks for the alert! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:58, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks so much! Dori (Talk • Contribs) 01:43, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

License tagging for images

Dear Dirk,

There seems to be a small issue with 2 images on my Toyota Motor Europe page. For 2 images I've received a notification that the license status of the image hasn't been indicated. Thought I did though... Can you provide me with any guidance? Please note that both images are available on Toyota Motor Europe's media site (http://www.toyota-media.com). On the website I couldn't find anything on licenses. Many thanks --Tmecorpcomms (talk) 07:56, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, I am sorry, I would not know these things. I would suggest to go to Wikipedia:Media copyright questions, there may be guidelines on how to proceed. (sorry for the late reply). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:30, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

MediaWiki_talk:Spam-whitelist#economywatch.com

Can you have a look at this? It appears to be a reasonable site but there is probably a good reason it was spamlisted. Stifle (talk) 13:24, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

I whitelisted the link, thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:30, 18 March 2009 (UTC)

Argentine IP hopper

Please disable all the Argentine IP hopper rules. Will explain at Wikipedia talk:Abuse filter. Dragons flight (talk) 14:50, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Werdna is/was also looking at it .. I think the effect is 'semi-real' .. may need more work, but for now this is the fastest. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:51, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

See talk, they aren't faster, they are killing the condition limit and not executing at all. Dragons flight (talk) 15:09, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Ah. OK. Sigh, this thing is more sensitive then it should be... --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:51, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

REBOL edits

"I have removed large parts of Rebol, and cleaned up and tagged the article. Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising an organisation or business, and we are not writing a manual here. Could you please familiarise yourself with some of our policies and guidelines (they are linked from the welcome template above) before continuing. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:09, 24 March 2009 (UTC)"

I don't know if this is the appropriate place to discuss the matters, correct me, please if I am wrong. My contribution is below (thanks in advance for taking time to read/answer):

The notability tag

All the sources below (used as references in the article):

• Roberts, Ralph (2000). REBOL for Dummies. Hungry Minds. ISBN: 0764507451.
• Goldman,E., Blanton, J. (2000). REBOL: The Official Guide. McGraw-Hill Osborne Media. ISBN-10 : 007212279X.
• Auverlot, Olivier (2001). Rebol Programmation. Eyrolles. ISBN10 : 2-212-11017-0.
• Auverlot, Olivier (2007). Rebol - Guide du programmeur.
• In English: Auverlot, Olivier, Wood, Peter W.A. (2009). Rebol - A programmer's guide.

are reliable secondary sources, i.e. "credible published materials with a reliable publication process; their authors are generally regarded as trustworthy or authoritative in relation to the subject at hand".

Other sources that were used in the article:

• Sassenrath, Carl. The REBOL scripting language. Dr. Dobb's portal. - the author is the designer of REBOL, but the publisher is independent and not associated with REBOL, so it is yet another secondary source (although, in this case, even the usage as a primary source would do, since it was used as a source of the designer's quote)
• REBOL Technologies. What is REBOL? - is a primary source used to establish the pronunciation
• The REBOL Programming wikibook is a tertiary source, which, according to the WP:Reliable sources "may be used to give overviews or summaries"

When I consider just the above mentioned reliable secondary sources, and sum up the pages: 480 + 731 + 476 + 260 + 6 = 1953, a question remains: "Is the notability tag justified by WP standards?"

The primary sources tag

The question "Is the primary sources tag justified by WP standards?" is closely related to the above mentioned notability question. Does it take into account the existence of the above mentioned reliable secondary sources?

I apologize for inconveniences caused by my introduction of any other (not one of the above mentioned) reference.

Creation of new WP articles

Do I understand correctly, that your idea when replacing the links to the free software Freebell, Orca, R-Sharp and RebGUI interpreters was to suggest that there should be articles about them? (My idea was, that the language is notable enough to be covered by an article, while the individual interpreters are not notable enough to justify stand-alone WP articles for them?)

Removal of the Syntax section

It is hard for me to imagine a language article not mentioning its syntax (I did not find any WP programming language article not mentioning its syntax.) Are you sure, that such a section really does not belong to the discussed article?

Removal of dialect sections

The dialects mentioned in the article were used to explain "What REBOL dialects are?/How they look?" - which I see as an encyclopedic matter worth mentioning to an uninitiated reader.

As opposed to other languages, REBOL is more like "a bunch of dialects" used for creating other dialects, than like a "one monolithic language". This information is currently missing from the article. By removing the sections, did you mean, that such an information does not belong to the Wikipedia?

Removal of the designer quote

Your reason for removing the designer quote: "does not explain dialects" does not take into account, that the removed quote characterized dialects as (by the language designer's opinion) the most notable feature of the language ("...[REBOL's] greatest strength is the ability to easily create domain-specific languages or dialects"), which looks as an unfair treatment of an uncontroversial and well sourced statement.

The See also section

The contents of the See also section you put in is controversial. (See the article discussion page, where a reader points out at the fact, that the languages mentioned are actually unrelated.) Wouldn't a list of related topics, such as:

• Dialecting
• Domain-specific_language
• Language-oriented programming
• Linguistic method
• Parsing expression grammar

be much more relevant to the article subject?

Peta 77.104.243.33 (talk) 15:53, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

p.s. the reverted order in the dialect section looks worse than the original, since the first part originally explained the importance of dialects (now missing), the second explained how dialects look, and the third stated, that users can create their own dialects. The reverted order first states, that users can create their own dialects, without explaining what are dialects. Peta 77.104.243.33 (talk) 16:50, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Answer

Wow .. quite a post .. I'll try to answer them:

1) Notability - If I look at the statements in the text which are referenced, all of the linked references are on Rebol domains, or on, and that is really a bad one, on wikibooks. On each of them: 1) rebol server, 2) Rebol for dummies ... 3a) a statement which appears in a book, that is not sourcing, 4) describing a function, 5) wikibooks, 3b, 6) and 7) describing a function, 8) from rebol site. These are not statements that are giving notability, they describe. Software manuals don't make it notable, professional reviews do (but the fact that there is a Rebol for dummies does indicate notability. So question if the notability tag is suitable .. guess so.

2) Prim. Sources. - As I said, much is linked to rebol sites and manuals ..

3) New articles - If the subjects are notable enough, indeed. But we are not an internet directory, so the rule is not 'if it is not notable enough for an article, then we link to it outside'.

4) Syntax - Not in this way, if I (re-)read that section, I could indeed have left the first two sentences, but the rest is more manual like/list of features. I would have expected a description of how the syntax would looks like, not a list of it. Comparing to other pages on wikipedia is not always good (see WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS).

5) Again it is a manual for the dialects.

6) Quote - Yep, it could have been descriptive, and this would then be a reference for it.

7) See also - The 'languages with similar objective' is also out of the scope, putting them in a see also is better, using them in a text or in the intro (Rebol has similar objectives as Boo and XL) would have been better. If these terms are not used in the article, then those are maybe more suitable.

'8') reordered dialects - it now starts with 'REBOL users can define their own dialects, reusing any existing REBOL word and giving it a specific meaning in that dialect' .. that seems to me a very good start, if I was going to use Rebol, then that is perfect intro info. If you start with 'An example of REBOL's dialecting abilities can be seen with the word return.' .. ???? What are dialects? Why does it have that?

Sorry, I looked at this with a non-specialist programmer eye (still, I do use programming languages as bot operator on wikipedia), and to me this article looked for big parts like a manual. I hope this explains a bit more. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:06, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your answers. I disagree with your notability and "primary sources" statement based on the fact, that the source books are "books published by respected publishing houses" as required by Wikipedia:Verifiability#Sources.

Since the questions and answers contain some relevant informations, I would like to copy them to the discussion page of the discussed article, if you agree. Peta 77.104.243.33 (talk) 09:39, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I am not questioning that the references are reliable, and I already say, that having a 'Rebol for dummies' probably means that the subject is notable. However, the statements that are referenced, and the references on those do not give them notability. If e.g. I have a manual written by a source not affiliated with the company, and I say 'the machine can be switched on using the power button(ref to "this machine for dummies")', then that does not make the machine notable. However, a statement like 'Rebol is widely used by e.g. Big Company 1(ref), Big Company 2(ref), has been subject of several studies(refs) and descriptions(ref to the same "this machine" for dumies)' would (this is an ugly sentence, but I hope you get the idea).

Copying this there is fine, of course (we can even continue the discussion there). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:48, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Links recently removed

Hi - just trying to find my way around here a little and see that some of my links have recently been removed. Whilst far from spam, I would be interested to know why. Whilst my content offers nothing in terms of new information that isn't found anywhere else, neither is the information of other links on there. SEDS, for example, have a link on every Messier page there. I like to consider my content to be a cut down version of interesting facts rather than so much you don't know where to read to find what you want.

I would like to have your thoughts on this because as I said, this is just cut down information for quicker reference and with different images. UKAstro (talk) 19:45, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

I would like you to read our conflict of interest guideline and the business FAQ, and have a look through the external links guideline and the spam guideline. This is an encyclopedia, our main goal is to incorporate information, and only link to it in special cases (see also 'what wikipedia is not'). I am sure you will be able to provide more info (being a specialist on the subjects), and write content about it. If you have further questions, don't hesitate to ask. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:50, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the update Dirk. I shall certainly look to add more information around these but I will have to redesign the pages and categotise areas and make use of anchor tags to get to the info required more quickly. I shall resubmit this information and hope it will be more like what is required. Many thanks, Andy, UKAstro (talk) 18:17, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I see the latest page I put up there was also removed. I have read through the information you provided, but I am not able to write lots of content when the whole idea is to provide people with a cut-down version of the facts, clearly labelled and laid out (not everyone wishes to read a small book to find the facts they want). Perhaps you would mind giving me a little feedback specifically on what the problem with these is? It is just that you can find this information elsewhere if you are willing to just keep reading? Thanks UKAstro (talk) 23:43, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

I think it is best for you to go to a wikiproject, that is a place where wikipedia editors with similar editors come together. A list of projects can be found via Wikipedia:WikiProject. Another route which is generally faster is by going to the talkpages associated with pages you are interested in. Often there is at the top a banner, or a couple of banners from wikiprojects with which the article is associated, you then just click the link in the banner for the project that best suits you. If you post a question/suggestion on the talkpage, then they can help you improving wikipedia.

I would in all cases be careful with adding links to your own website yourself. Just don't do it, and certainly not without first having a thorough discussion with other editors knowledgeable on the subject (e.g. with the people from a suitable wikiproject). Even if there is no immediate financial gain for you in having the links to your own website, there may be indirect gains (other example: non-profit organisations don't get money because they have a link here, or because they sell things, but having their links here results in their organisation being known better, and hence people might donate more money because their organisation is linked from here ..), and as those can't be verified it is better to avoid such things quite strictly. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:08, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Just chiming in to back Dirk Beestra up. Don't add your site to Wikipedia. Personally I don't see it as a link. It isn't a reliable source -- see WP:RS, this is not an insult -- and I think it fails WP:EL also. Dougweller (talk) 19:02, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Reversions

Greetings. Undoing a revision is called for under instances of vandalism. See Talk:University of Atlanta#Blacklisted website. Also refer to WP:UNIGUIDE for university infobox usage. --Aepoutre (talk) 14:45, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

The link is approved for that, and WP:UNIGUIDE is just that, a guideline. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:26, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

Hi, again. I left a message at Talk:University of Atlanta#Hatnotes and really would like to offer up my sincerest apologies. As I said there, it was really out of character for me, and must have seemed rather "bratty". I feel quite the fool, and hope that you can forgive me for... whatever the hell that was. Wikipedia burn-out or something; I don't even know. --Aepoutre (talk) 21:00, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

No harm done. I left a message on your talkpage. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:50, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Edits

I received your note regarding recent edits i've made.... I'm a little confused. My purpose is not to have any disruptive edits but on the contrary add access to the most popular versions of the Book of Genesis on the market today and not for commercial purposes. I've left notes on the individuals that reverted my edits and have not received a response. Is there an article or something that would help bring me up to speed on the do's and don'ts of wikipedia. I very much want to go about the participation process in the right way and respectfully.

Bpmiller (talk) 17:49, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the message here. For you a good start would be the external links guideline and the conflict of interest guideline. Your link seems to fail the first, and you appear to have a conflict of interest, which gives you the strong advice not to add the links yourself. Also, don't repeatedly undo other peoples edits, if there are concerns, please discuss first, and try to achieve consensus before adding your information/links again.

thanks so much for your help Bpmiller (talk) 18:00, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Another problem seems to be, that several of us get a 404 'page not found' (diff, added link: this link. I am in the UK, not sure about the others, but is your site worldwide accessible, or is there something else wrong?

Please discuss additions first on the talkpage, and refrain completely from replacing references. Another good place to discuss may be with a wikiproject (see Wikipedia:WikiProject for a list, I guess Wikipedia:WikiProject Bible may be a good one; there are users there which may share your interests, and may be interested in the information you have to share).

I'll drop you a welcome template, if there is none yet, it will be at the top of your talkpage, and contains many of our policies and guidelines, and will explain a bit more about this site. If you have further questions, don't hesitate to ask (though I am leaving to have my weekend soon). Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:57, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks.. I'm not sure why some of the links were giving a 404 ... maybe I'm not inserting them right. our website is available globally, we have people from around the world coming every day. the summary for the book of joshua is @ http://www.just1word.com/view/book+of+joshua in a bible format it is @ http://www.just1word.com/bible/verse/joshua and for a particular verse in it @ http://www.just1word.com/bible/verse/joshua_1:4 We have not received any feedback that these pages are not displaying correctly in the UK... if this is the case, please let me know. I appreciate the advice. God bless... 18:07, 27 March 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bpmiller (talk • contribs)

You both might want to see this [6]. The site is erratic, sometimes s 404, sometimes it works. Possibly just not enough bandwidth. Dougweller (talk) 18:50, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

GlasgowMods - The Mod Generation

I own the site www.themodgeneration.co.uk/ which is not for profit and wholly concerns the Mod subculture

- i have added this site as link on different Mod pages within Wiki but it has been removed as Spam

- can you check the site

- it is NOT spam —Preceding unsigned comment added by Glasgowmods (talk • contribs) 07:19, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I have warned you on your talkpage. Please have a closer look at why it was removed, discuss first, and stop adding the link or reverting removals. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:29, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

why are you referring to this link as spam - have you looked at the site?

you have sent me quite a rude message for attempting to add a relevant link to the subject - why?

i edit the category Modernist/Mod in the Open Directory Project with the username 'troublewithid' - where you will also find a link to this site - i edit all the links in the Open Directory Project for this category

i cant see any reason for you to refer to this site as spam - it entirely relates to the mod subculture

you've said 'start a discussion' - where do you want me to start the discussion? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Glasgowmods (talk • contribs) 09:39, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I am sorry, but several editors have removed your link, and you are (rudely as well!) reverted them. I have explained to you, that though the link is not spam, it fails our policies and guidelines. Thát is why it has been removed. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:50, 27 March 2009 (UTC)

I came along as someone who is not versed in Wikipedia but who is 100% involved in the Mod subculture. I looked at the links that had been added in this category (most of which i have myself added to the Open Directory Project) and added one of my own. After a while my link started being removed by Mike.Lifeguard who states: 'If I removed your favourite link, I consider it to be spam. If you disagree, revert me. If you'd rather talk about it, please do so on Meta'. So i reverted it and i noted that this user subsequently withdrew their objection. Recently my link started to be reverted again so i did the same.

Just to be sure you know - i spend several hours per day maintaining the site `the mod generation` as well as contributing to several other mod sites and maintaining the Open Directory Project category for Modernism/Mod - this is done without any financial incentive (there is no advertising or requests for donations on this site - unlike some of the others which are linked to in this Wikipedia category). To be refered to as 'spam' and accused of 'disruptive edits' is therefore quite insulting.

If you could be more clear on what your objection is and what you want me to do it would be quite helpful. At the moment, as far i can assertain, all of the links currently in place should be removed as they are either repeated on several categories, contain an abudance of advertising and appeals for donations, contain copyrighted material, are not maintained regularly or properly, have not been party to any discussion, or are not enitirely specific to the topic. Note, however, i have no objection to these links and i have included most of them myself elsewhere, but i would like to be judged under the same criteria that has found these links to be acceptable.

If you simply tell me how i can resolve this matter i would be grateful

^{comment added by Glasgowmods (talk • contribs} 09:10, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Category:Wikipedia sockpuppets of Amithani

For every category you create, you should specify parent categories to which it belongs. In the case of a category like this one, parent categories are provided automatically when you include a {{Sockpuppet category}} template.

I am a human being, not a bot, so you can contact me if you have questions about this. Best regards, --Stepheng3 (talk) 05:10, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Should != must. But thanks, I'll try and think of it, though a bot should do it in these cases. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:43, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for your willingness to cooperate and for everything you contribute to Wikipedia. I once tried to get a bot designated to do this task, but was unsuccessful. Feel free to try. --Stepheng3 (talk) 22:31, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I did not mean I was going to write this. It is just that these categories are to store socks, for these categories I really don't care if they are part of a larger category. I am not browsing the category system to find sockpuppets, I find users and see that they are part of a bigger group of accounts. I think the FAQ you refer to is mainly for articles in mainspace which are categorised somewhere, and for those I do totally agree that they should be part of a tree. For these I don't see that necessity. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:59, 30 March 2009 (UTC)

Paul O'Grady Wiki Article

Hi Dirk, Im Just Trying To Edit The Article By Putting My Paul O'Grady Fan Club Link In In The External Links Section But It Keeps Dissapearing On Me. Do I Need Permission To Do It Or ?? Please Get Back To Me As Soon As You Can Also I am New To Wikipedia Thanks For Reading Chris —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.45.255.165 (talk) 18:13, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

'Fan club', 'my'... I see that XLinkBot left you a message, pointing you to the external links guideline, maybe you also want to see the conflict of interest guideline. It keeps disappearing since it is not suitable, I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:06, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Re: Paul O'Grady Article

Hi Dirk,

Sorry Im a Young Poster,So I Don't Get Much,But I Think I'm Not Allowed To Post Fan Club Links Only Official ones

Again Thanks For Helping Chris —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.45.255.165 (talk) 21:28, 31 March 2009 (UTC)

Your comment in Wikipedia:Requests for comment/JzG 3

Thanks for your comment there, Beetstra. Obviously, I don't agree with everything you say, but I do respect your point of view, and, as you know, my long-term goal has been to engage the community in the blacklisting process so that the problem of a small group making decisions with large consequences is lessened, plus more attention means more support.

However, I'd like to correct something. The most egregious blacklisting was of newenergytimes.com. This is basically a journal, with a full time editor who is supported to cover the cold fusion field. It can certainly be argued that there is a POV bias there, though, in my more considered judgment, they are reasonably reliable. Krivit, the editor, is a professional and conducts himself that way. The site is highly notable, it is described and discussed and covered in some detail in reliable sources, and it should have an article. The only reason I haven't started one is that too much at once can burn out the community, I'm sure it would be controversial and, Beetstra, contrary to some of the implications in the RfC, I aim for minimum wikidrama consistent with not simply lying down and playing dead permanently.

Newenergytimes.com and Krivit were in the news last week, massively. We have a project which has not been fully covering an important topic, important historically and as an ongoing field of scientific inquiry, covered in peer-reviewed journals. The arguments about lenr-canr.org and newenergytimes.com being fringe have some weight, as to usage in articles, but have far less weight when it comes to deeper discussion of a topic as can take place in Talk pages. It is a constant need to unwiki links to these sites in order to be able to cite reliable sources, because it is quite frequent that all that is available easily is on them. Otherwise, it's just abstracts, and the devil is in the details.

For editors to be able to intelligently discuss sources, they must be able to read them. This matter of "convenience links" is not just for citations in articles, it is actually much more important for discussion on Talk.

As to the whitelisted link, you will see in the RfC, if you read it, a smalltext comment stating the current status. It's in the article it was whitelisted for. I also placed it with a reference that had been long standing in Cold fusion. It was taken out of there with the same arguments that had been used, and ultimately rejected by consensus, at Martin Fleischmann. I have not pushed for it, that's not how I work. I did not push for other links, or broader whitelisting, for it is very simple: if we could not get one link approved, and then stable, there was no chance of getting an entire site whitelisted or delisted. We got one link, and then it took weeks of work to bring the discussion to a point where consensus was clear, culminating with an arbitrator popping in and asking about copyvio. It's obvious he had been solicited, almost certainly off-wiki. But he left, apparently satisfied. It was a huge effort, Beetstra, made necessary by a single abusive blacklisting, there was no linkspamming, in fact, no copyvio, and "fringe" is not a legitimate argument for blacklisting, and I'm sure that is what ArbComm would decide if it goes up that far, something I'd greatly prefer to avoid. With the blacklist in place, editors simply won't use the site, the argument "you can always whitelist" is empty, it's far, far too hard.

There are matters for serious concern that I uncovered, Beetstra, and I only raised one narrow issue in the RfC, an issue which has been ignored by most editors, which is typical. JzG is a master at this. Instead, the issue becomes me, or "fringe," or "POV pushing," etc. Please don't fall for it. --Abd (talk) 20:18, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Again, Abd, regarding newenergytimes.com, there are things which you don't know, which you may not get to know (in this case), but which are of influence on that situation..... Sorry. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 20:45, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

I am going to expand on this. Yes, it may be a good plan that sources can be used on talkpages, but that is not a problem of whitelisting or blacklisting, that would be a mediawiki problem. Again you address a problem at the wrong level. You should file a mediawiki bug, and try to exclude talkpages from the blacklisting process. You are never going to get whitelisting through because you want to link to it on a talkpage.

Another point that I make in my comment, is that you do start with first asking questions in a direct manner, which is not giving answers. Saying that people made a mistake is not going to get you anywhere, if you don't know the basis of their decision. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 20:55, 3 April 2009 (UTC)

Changes made by SmackBot

Hi, thanks for your message, SmackBot makes a number of changes that are available to all WP:AWB bots - in general these provide a number of non-controversial minor improvements.

The issue you raise is related to these, and is the normal way of doing things for the standard usage of that feature.
Regards, Rich Farmbrough 00:48 4 April 2009 (UTC).

Hmm. I think it is a style issue, which here went wrong. The template was appropriately placed, but it was maybe the wrong template. I think it is solved properly. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:51, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Your comments at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/JzG 3

Thanks for your comment in the RfC, and thanks for the overall agreement on the "basis," however, the general pattern when someone like JzG is challenged is that the discussion gets redirection off into irrelevancies. I did not attack JzG as an editor, and the RfC did not assert that his actions were, in their goal, improper, the RfC is solely about the issue of use of tools while involved, which is, all by itself, damaging, because it drives away editors who encounter it, creating an impression of an oppressive administration. If the actions are improper in effect, it only adds to this.

I have had several encounters with Abd, on and off wiki, and I must say that I concur with the basis of his views. That does not mean that I agree with his continued attacks on the problem, trying to push his point, without actively getting involved in trying to solve the basis of a problem.

I haven't been "continually attacking the problem," in fact, I had pretty much left it behind, at least for the time being, until JzG MfD'd the evidence page, and it was practically demanded that I file an RfC. I still took a month to do it. I don't like this at all. But from many accounts from other users, I know that what I've seen with JzG is just the tip of the iceberg, and even if it were the only incident, admins have been desysopped by ArbComm for less.

However, his approach is sometimes a bit too reactive, and I have warned him for that. He often has given the feeling that editors who perform actions with which he has a problem have not looked at the situation in a proper way (and tells that to those editors in a direct way). I am afraid that this has resulted in several cases where the editors who are approached in such ways are not/have not been cooperative further. For at least one of these cases I have suggested Abd to look better at the evidence that is available, but that did not result in him adapting his opinion, asking for the proper evidence, or trying to learn how some evidence is collected. He instead insisted in saying that others made the mistakes.

I actually don't know who you are talking about, nor the case you are considering. Yes, I have an opinion regarding certain actions. I can think of an editor in particular, an admin, but, Beetstra, you should realize that this admin is famous for being nonresponsive to criticism. But I don't know if that is who you are talking about. If you'd like to be specific, I could re-examine my position, but I don't write critical stuff without very good reason. As you know, I've tried very hard to understand the blacklisting process, it's arcane and difficult to follow, and my goal is to improve the process, not to condemn anyone for making mistakes. Mistakes, however, become more problematic when they can't be recognized and fixed easily.

I have looked at the cases for de-blacklisting of lenr-canr.org, and for whitelisting several links on lenr-canr.org. My general view of the site is, that a) it contains a lot of information which, although it is a legal copy, is also available from the official site. A direct external link to the information on lenr-carn is hence just a convenience link, and not giving more value than a link to the official information (or, for books, a link to the automagically linked ISBN). b) it has information which is a copy of the original data which has been altered (which was shown for one example), and c) some information which is unique, and should be linked to the site. An example of the latter was whitelisted (while all former were rejected), though the whitelisted link was deemed not to contain information which was of use for the wikipedia article, and the reference was rejected (I haven't checked now, but I don't think there are links from mainspace to lenr-canr.org).

You are incorrect. The link you whitelisted stands at Martin Fleischmann. It was even more difficult to get it there than it was to get the whitelisting, because JzG edit warred to keep it out. You may have thought that it was gone because I didn't directly push it by putting it back, until after finding consensus on the Talk page. As I recall, I eventually put it back, JzG removed it again, and then someone else put it back and it stayed there. An arbitrator showed up and asked questions about copyvio, it's pretty clear that he was asked to do something about this; he appears to have left satisfied.

Your view on why we need "convenience links" doesn't match actual requirements in articles on the topic in question. We need them for Talk even more than for the article. Sure, we can put in references to the ultimate source, which we do anyway -- this is about lenr-canr.org -- but we need citations not just for technical verification, but for further research by readers. One of the major academic usages for Wikipedia is as a place to find important sources for specific issues. Sure, with much more difficulty a reader can find some of the sources, but an obstacle is created by the blacklist. It's been decided again and again that Wikipedia needs to maintain and allow anonymous editing, but the blacklist prevents an anonymous editor from using what may be a legitimate source.

However, even more deeply, we need those sites for discussion in Talk, where the only argument that would have been relevant would have been the copyvio argument. RS requirements don't apply to Talk pages, and good thing. We can often find reliable sources by consulting these more marginal sources.

Further, lenr-canr.org isn't the only site JzG blacklisted. He also blacklisted newenergytimes.com, which is an online magazine covering the field of low energy nuclear reactions. This website is notable, and I've been considering requesting delisting or whitelisting of the home page, and creating the article; the editor is Steve Kravit, and he's been quite prominent in the news in recent weeks because of a presentation he gave at the recent American Chemical Society meeting in Utah. But there is plenty of reliable source about this web site from the past as well. My opinion is that it is reliable source for some purposes, especially as it reports on claims being made in the field, news. Kravit is a journalist by training, if I'm correct, he's not some crackpot.

The use of the blacklist to prevent linking to pages on the argument that they are "fringe" is utterly unacceptable, and it will not stand if it is challenged. I haven't challenged it, yet, but I will if better solutions to the problems are unreasonably resisted. Beetstra, I'm not in charge, I just work for those who are, and they will tell me if I'm off. I listen. I'm not about to dive in to try to impeach the process and the volunteers, whose work I appreciate, without doing what you want, helping to make it all work better.

While I agree that JzG was involved in the dispute, e.g. meta blacklisting was requested by JzG, but performed by another editor after looking at the evidence, and hence I do not see that that is abuse of position. De-blacklisting and whitelisting requests were also handled by other editors, while JzG commented left and right.

You've missed an important part of the history, entirely. JzG unilaterally blacklisted. It was not "requested" by him, it was *done* by him, without a request and without discussion. The actions are shown in the RfC evidence. You have been confused by what happened later at meta. The only actions questioned by this RfC are his admin actions on en.wikipedia. The meta action is mentioned just to not leave the issue hanging. As you know -- I think you closed the discussion -- the delisting request on en.wikipedia for lenr-canr.org was pending when the meta blacklisting took place. Meta was not informed and apparently did not know that the local blacklisting had even happened or that it was being challenged, and JzG certainly did not tell them. You closed on the basis that it had become moot. I decided not to challenge the meta action, even though the basis for it was unclear, nor did I challenge your closure, for a number of reasons, but the basic one was this:

If I cannot get one page whitelisted on en.wikipedia, there is absolutely no use going to meta, even if technically the blacklisting was improper according to blacklisting guidelines. Beetstra, if the blacklist is going to continue to be used for other than dealing with linkspam, not possible to control with lesser measures, the guidelines should be changed! So my strategy was to get one page whitelisted, first, and I didn't even have to ask for that, Enric Naval did. And then I shepherded it through to becoming stable in the article. I was up against a tendentious editor who doesn't actually discuss, he just removes or reverts, and he has supporters who agree with practically whatever he does. But they aren't as tendentious, they are more amenable to reasonable agreements, and the farrago of arguments the editor had constructed were dismantled. They were all either moot or downright misleading.

And you've swallowed one of these arguments: b) it has information which is a copy of the original data which has been altered (which was shown for one example)

I don't blame you, Beetstra. JzG makes a barrage of arguments when he wants to push a conclusion, and he knows that some of them may stick. (I don't suspect him of bad faith deception, I assume that this is simply how he thinks. Lots of people do this, invent arguments why some conclusion they have decided to follow is right, but it's quite dangerous here, because disputes get amplified and become difficult to resolve.)

This issue was considered in detail in the informal RfC I conducted at Talk:Martin Fleischmann. The original data was not altered, at all. Rather, a public domain document was presented, with a preface written by Rothwell -- who is, after all, an expert on the topic, published, and notable, in fact -- and that's it. The preface was clearly distinguishable from the original document. Further, the source from which lenr-canr.org had obtained the document was shown, and, quite properly and rapidly, the more primary source was referenced. There was no dispute at the article. But JzG used this fact over and over again, one single example of "alteration," though one harmless in terms of verification and only problematic in terms of preference, for reasons detailed in the guidelines, to claim that it "alters documents," as if this were normal. It's not normal for lenr-canr.org, even that kind of "alteration."

Beetstra, I know that I can be irritating, and I apologize for that. However, I might be irritating because I'm probably spending ten times as much time and effort or more on the narrow areas I work on than those I'm dealing with. I might know what I'm talking about.

You do realize, I hope, that attempts are being made to ban me, I'm being threatened with being hauled before AN/I, and clearly for filing the RfC, which simply brings up and shows patent and obvious violation of administrative policy. I wouldn't have done it if I didn't have support from administrators. The name Abd means "servant." I take it seriously. --Abd (talk) 03:37, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Pff, again a very long remark. I'll try to get through it.

I do think your way of solving problems is pushy, and you are not solving the problem at the basis. You point, e.g. that if you are not able to link to an online version is hampering the possibility of editors to follow discussion is totally flawed. If you are NOT able to find an article yourself if you want to get involved in the subject, but you MUST have a link, then there is something wrong. That is convenience, it is NOT a must. And even, when you would say that there is a copy available on lenr-canr, then you already help them there. The other half of that is that we can't whitelist links for use in discussions on talkpages, as that would at the same time enable use in mainspace (and if there is still abuse of a link, that would still mean that the link can be abused in mainspace). Now for lenr-canr that abuse is minimal, but it is by no means a reason to whitelist if it is only for a discussion on the talkpage. If that would have been your goal, you would have filed a bug report for the mediawiki software which would allow per-namespace blacklisting, can you PLEASE show me that you attempted that already?

I have a couple of times said to you that your opening questions on administrative actions are too harsh, and border on assuming bad faith. You clearly did not know the basis of the situation in some cases, and you just showed with newenergytimes.com that you sometimes still don't know what is going on at other levels here in Wikipedia. Do you realise that there are private communications between editors and site-owners, which we can't reproduce on Wikipedia, but which nonetheless are recorded? Do you understand that sometimes that can be a reason to keep stuff blacklisted, or editors blocked? That you don't see the evidence does not mean that you are there. And in the case we are talking about the same admin, do you realise that if "this admin is famous for being nonresponsive to criticism.", that that is because of the ungrounded attacks on his administrative decisions, and not because of him not being willing (or able) to give the information? Do you realise that your opening attack is just resulting in people being nonresponsive? In some cases I take seconds to find the evidence, I tell you it is there (and in some cases just under your eyes!), but you insist in your own point, it is not you that is wrong, it is the editor.

I found it now, not exactly used as a reference, actually I have no clue what that reference is adding to the document, but I am not a specialist in Cold Fusion. And as it is an unverified reprint, I doubt if it is useful.

No, I did not. At the time the link was abused in the process, and we blacklist links for that all the time, abuse->revert->blacklist, we don't go through the process for 'emergency' blacklisting. And I mentioned the meta blacklisting, it was requested by JzG, performed by Erwin. So you are at the very least, again, close to misinterpretation of the situation?

Again the point of needing on talk, where is you bug report? And I still stand with the point, that you don't need the link, it is absolutely not true that you can't discuss without the link, the information can be found, even without link.

I already mentioned newenergytimes a couple of times, and you know what I answered to whitelisting and de-blacklisting requests. There it was abused cross-wiki, and pushed by another editor.

And you continue to assume bad faith on JzG. Was the copy altered or not (OK, a preface, but it is not the original)? So why link to the altered copy in stead of the original? Why not link to the original and to the copy? I see that there have been editors who only link to the copy-material, NOT to originals at all! And that is wrong, however you wriggle and turn.

If I were you, I'd try to work on that, you can also accomplish change without being irritating.

I do, and I must say that there I am ambiguous. and reading through this, I have made up my mind.^* As I said, you do address basic problems, and we do agree sometimes in the basis, but you totally fail to address the problem. You complain that the blacklist also disables linking from talkpages, but you don't try to find broad support to implement a solution for that, you complain about blacklistings in an aggressive way without knowing the source and basis of the problems (and how our local policies and guidelines apply to that, and sometimes the wording of those is harsher then the problem, but some of those things are simply implemented to protect the innocent as well!), and you complain that there blacklisting and whitelisting is handled by the same editors (which is not strictly true as there are editors on the whitelist which hardly ever are seen on blacklists, and also often necessery to show which problems lie at the bottom of the blacklisting, as even you sometimes fail to understand why), but you do not participate in, or start, a project to do that. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:18, 4 April 2009 (UTC).

^*I amended my note. I have read through this discussion again, and you still don't want to even think about the possibility that your opening actions are based on incomplete information, and even after being pointed there you don't want to see it or do attempts to see it (and this is not strictly lenr-canr only!). Also,your accusation that some editors are famous for nonresponsiveness is missing a broader view of such a situation or possible reasons for that. You keep your point of view, and all but you are right. I am sorry, Abd. I am afraid we are done. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:29, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Just as a side-note. I do agree that maybe JzG is a bit too involved in the situation, but a) it seems that there are several editors who think similarly or discussions must be held before the edits get into place (I mean, there are no cases where the original edits with links to lenr-canr.org are accepted without discussion, and in all cases they lead to a compromise, suggesting that there are issues where JzG sees them), and b) non-involvement of JzG in these issues would by no means mean that the edits would go through without the discussion; he may be active in the field, but it does not mean that others do not agree with him, and that, if he is not active in the field, the edits would be right. The issues are there, with or without JzG. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:12, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Well, thanks for the detailed remarks above, but no thanks for this. Our interchange here has laid out the foundation of a dispute between us (which has nothing to do with JzG). I pursue disputes slowly and carefully. Your "fear we are done" creates a presumption, your endorsement at the RfC seals it, even though previously you said this, and we weren't done, and we found consensus. We are done. Thanks for your cooperation in the past, but, unless you change this, the next steps become more difficult and take more time and involve more editors, this is simply WP:DR. I still intend to continue the work with improving blacklisting/whitelisting process, when I can get to it, and I would certainly continue that before assuming that the issues cannot be resolved without fuss. I have not attacked blacklisting as designed, or your work. I will assume that efforts to discuss the problems directly have failed. Nevertheless I'm still grateful for the detail you have provided. --Abd (talk) 14:31, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

? "Our interchange here has laid out the foundation of a dispute between us"? I am sorry. I don't see a dispute. "Thanks for your cooperation in the past, but, unless you change this, the next steps become more difficult and take more time and involve more editors, this is simply WP:DR"? What do I need to change, and why are you telling me that the next steps will become more difficult? I am not making things more difficult, and am not planning to do so. Please Abd.... --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 20:48, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

Dirk, you said "We are done," and now you ask me to explain. Please make a choice. Either we discuss this or we don't. You indicated I should be banned, and you gave this discussion as a reason. So, if I continue to discuss, I'm increasing the cause for my banning. If I do that deliberately, that's disruptive. I see dispute in the discussion above, but it is over matters we have already discussed. If we are to continue to discuss, we would have to address each issue, to attempt to find consensus on it. It will take time. And I'm not going to continue this under threat of ban. So, you can undo that comment in the RfC, by redacting, or, as you said and I then confirmed, we are done with the first stage in WP:DR which is direct discussion. It has broken down. --Abd (talk) 03:22, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

continued discussion

Abd, we discussed a lot about these things in the past, and we disagree on all cases (though we agree for some things in the basis of the problem), and on parts of effects of blacklisting. And you disagree with JzG. You choose to persue that action, and I agree more with JzG, than with you there. I still believe that in all cases that we two have discussed blacklisting was appropriate, and whitelisting only necessery on specifics. Blocks that were given in some cases were also fully appropriate. You now requested a comment as you fail to acknowledge that maybe sometimes actions are correct. I agree in the point, and I have said that in the RfC, that maybe JzG should have stepped away earlier (leaving it to other knowledgeable admins), but the result is by no means wrong: lenr-canr and newenergytimes were rightfully blacklisted, he only should have left it to others (and for meta that happened on lenr-canr.org). That is the comment I gave, and what I agreed upon. When you brought that back here on my talkpage, and persued again that lenr-canr and newenergytimes were wrongfully blacklisted, not willing to acknowledge that maybe you are also sometimes wrong, then we are done. We are not getting anywhere. Do you plan to start an RfC or an arbcom on all admins you have a conflict with? You first yell at people (and that is what I told you), and when you don't get your way, you go further in the dispute resolution process until it ends somewhere. I stand by my point. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:54, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

• Okay, let's stick with what is right in front of us, this discussion. Please read what I write carefully If you think this too long, I apologize, but the issues raised can't be dealt with in a few words. One matter is urgent, and you may have to read more to understand it. I'm bolding it.
• We disagree on the blacklisting. However, you have told me that there is secret evidence. Fine. I know what to do about that, it basically means that we are done on that point. I go to ArbComm by email. However, until then, I'm still free to state what I stated, not in a disruptive way (have I gone to AN/I to complain?) but in discussion when it is relevant. In the present case, whether or not the blacklisting was, in the end, appropriate, in itself, is moot. I didn't raise it as a complaint. I listed it as an admin action requiring the use of admin privilege. Do you disagree that it was that? The blacklisting could have been correct six ways till Sunday, and it still would have been in the list.
• You "agree more with JzG" than with me. Just be aware what you are agreeing with. The blacklisting violated administrative policy against action while involved, which is fundamental. Whether or not the two sites are blacklisted are not is a detail which pales by comparison. A bad blacklisting decision doesn't risk the admin bit. You, for example, are in no danger from your position on the blacklistings. I think you are wrong, but I also think you have the right to be wrong, and, indeed, a responsibility to act according to your convictions. I'm not your boss, nor would I want to be.
• A block made by an admin in long-term dispute with the editor blocked is not "fully appropriate." It's not appropriate at all, it is never appropriate, absent clear emergency. No emergency was alleged, nor is one visible in retrospect. Again, if there is secret evidence showing emergency, well, that's a conversation-stopper. Please don't assert it if there is no necessity, that could endanger your admin bit. Precedent, Beetstra, I know it, I'm not just trying to make some point in a debate.
• We have a dispute on the general process, on using the blacklist when lesser measures would suffice to protect against linkspamming. That's unresolved, but I have not pushed it. My opinion has been that I should do much more work to improve the process before raising the issue. If you read the RfC, you will note comments about this. Not only is my position not isolated, it will prevail, I predict, if this goes up WP:DR. I did not raise this issue in the RfC. You did.
• In particular, using the blacklist to prevent linking to a site on the basis that it's "fringe" is dangerous. Fringe web sites can often be used legitimately in articles, and even more in Talk and on User pages or WP space. Requiring an editor to get a link whitelisted is cumbersome and places content decisions in the hands of administrators not familiar with the articles and their needs. These are decisions that our structure suggests, for very good reasons, be made by editors involved with the article, the very opposite of "neutral administrators," who are tasked with ensuring conformance with behavioral guidelines. To put it bluntly, if they know enough to make a good decision, they have likely become involved. Usually, though, what I see when admins make decisions about articles like this, they don't know enough, and they are not, in fact, involved. They may or may not make a good decision, probably more often than not it's good, but the exceptions can do quite a bit of damage.
• The blacklist was designed for preventing linkspam, and the danger involved was well understood by the developers and those who wrote the guidelines (given in the instructions for using the list). There is no way to restrict the blacklisting to a particular namespace because namespace is irrelevant for linkspamming. If the blacklist is needed, it will properly apply to all spaces, because linkspammers will use any space they can access. The problem, Beetstra, is created by using the blacklist to make content decisions. That should stop, immediately. If we cannot agree, then what will happen is exactly what should happen, WP:DR. Because you are defending the status quo, it's up to me to pursue that if we can't find agreement directly. It's more efficient if we can find agreement. Don't you agree with this? However, you can, at any time, say, "We are done." In which case for me to harass you about it would be a behavioral violation on my part. I haven't done that.
• Hence when you say "We are done," please mean it. I'll stop, but then, if we haven't reached consensus, I will, if I consider the matter ripe, pursue it exactly as the dispute guidelines suggest. Don't confuse delay in this with a decision having been accepted. DR may be disruptive, but it is minimally disruptive. I could have gone to mediation with JzG, which would have involved only one other editor, but he ignored a request for informal mediation and I have no expectation that he'd have accepted formal mediation, and some reason to believe that he'd have ignored a mediation, so it would have been a waste of time, involving more than one other editor. Hence, since I knew that the community would not accept JzG's actions when raised in a deliberative environment, which RfC starts to be, I put the RfC together. I did not canvass, beyond obtaining some help putting it together, off-wiki. I did not go to AN or the Village Pump, though I could have. I did it minimally. Threatening me with a ban over this is, itself, disruptive, and that could be "litigated" later, but I let nearly all stuff like this pass by, until and unless I consider it "ripe." I pick ripe fruit, Beetstra. I leave the rest on the tree for others. Trying to pick unripe fruit shakes the tree, causing damage.
• The correctness of the blacklistings and blocks was irrelevant, which is why I didn't challenge that in the RfC. Because, however, you raised the issues in your comment before the RfC, which must have meant that you thought it relevant, I came here to discuss that with you. We have a dispute about the blacklistings being correct. That's clear, isn't it? If it's not proper for me to discuss it here, where should I discuss it? Again, all you had to do was say, "We are done," but that has a consequence: I then go up WP:DR. Because I don't intend to pursue this immediately, I'm not going to ask you to suggest a mediator. Instead, I would prefer to presume that we can work this out, between us; but your comment at the RfC calling for my ban, based on discussion here, if you let that stand, requires me to stop. And it makes the matter fairly urgent, you have damaged an existing RfC by raising an irrelevant issue. So, I suppose, you can, as an alternative to redacting your comments about this, suggest a mediator. Do one or the other quickly, please.
• To be clear, my alleged misbehavior is irrelevant to the RfC on JzG. The RfC raised a serious behavioral issue which everyone agrees was "not good." But it's worse than that. It's strictly prohibited. Whatever I did was irrelevant, I did not provoke him into making those actions while involved. I could be indef blocked later today and JzG will still lose his admin bit if he doesn't recognize the issue and respond appropriately. (In fact, it might make it happen faster, by forcing an immediate escalation.) By not facing the issue and giving their friend good advice, his "friends" are doing absolutely the worst thing they could do to him. In his response, JzG did not address the issue raised by the RfC at all, I read it again, there isn't a trace of response, and this mirrors his prior behavior, making it all the more clear why the RfC was necessary. I'm not blowing smoke, Beetstra; while it's always possible I'm wrong, it's not likely in this case. Let me put it this way: if JzG gets away with his stonewalling, Wikipedia is dead, it would just be a matter of time, because the fundamental basis of how the place works would have been corrupted and sustained. However, he won't, because there are senior editors, administrators, and arbitrators who do understand the importance of this.
• Beetstra, there is something that may not be visible to you. I have well over thirty years of experience with organizations similar to Wikipedia. (I'm 64 years old.) I came prepared, and I keep learning. I write a lot because I know a lot and see a lot; this may look like arrogance, and I apologize for my clumsiness. But I'm far more careful than you might think.
• Again, to be clear: You "agreed upon" the appropriateness of the blacklistings, but this was irrelevant. JzG has gotten away with abuse in the past because editors would make precisely the argument you made, and the very serious behavioral issue was covered up and ignored. Once you whitelisted the lenr-canr.org link, you know what happened. JzG edit warred to keep it out. That was not an issue for the RfC, beyond mention of it (as showing continued deep involvement; he could have been correct about keeping it out). I took the edit warring to AN/I. What happened was typical: it was claimed that this was a content dispute. I even wrote "Assume that JzG was right, that the link should not be in the article: does this then justify edit warring?" You know the answer, but that answer wasn't consensus at AN/I, because that issue was not addressed, except by a few. The closing admin said, basically, "content issue, move along." It wasn't a content issue, just like my original involvement in this whole mess wasn't about content. I had no content involvement at the time. I didn't intervene on behalf of a fringe editor. I intervened to protect Wikipedia, and originally assumed that, of course, it was so obvious, JzG would say, "Oops! My bad! I should have gone to AN. I'll fix that now." It would have been over, Beetstra, with so many words. But JzG has learned that he can ignore the policy, and others will back him up by diverting attention from the policy violation to the content, and he makes decisions that are popular among a certain segment of the admin community. Just like ScienceApologist, in fact, they excused his misbehavior because they agreed with his agenda, they did not restrain their friend, even at the very end, when he was openly defying ArbComm. I presume you know the end of that. --Abd (talk) 13:37, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

It is in part what I said. Maybe he should not have done it himself (and the meta blacklisting was not done by himself). But I don't think the action was bad enough to loose an admin bit over. If the blacklisting was because he wanted to restrict the site for no reason .. then it would have been bad. His judgement at that time was 'fringe', and it was abused, OK, he is probably wrong in it being fringe,

Yes, the function of the spam-blacklist has changed without wide community objection. See the current status of the abusefilter, some things it filters are not abuse but user mistakes .. and we have already for some time a bug report to rename the spam blacklist, because the name is misleading.

So it is a separate issue, which has nothing to do with lenr-canr per-se. He did something he should not have done. But in that case most admins here can't do anything, as we probably reverted the vandal we block, or reverted the spammer we blacklist the link for. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:05, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Just to be clear, in the case of lyrikline.org, the evidence was clear, not hidden, the block here well within the realms of relevant policies and guidelines, as was blacklisting of the link. In newenergytimes.com the evidence on-wiki is also clear (cross wiki spamming and abuse; two independent individuals), and that was what the blacklisting was based upon (I did not thoroughly check the content, I don't know in how far the content can be of use, for that some whitelisting requests may shed light; knowing what I know I would not oppose removal too hard, but again, I did not check contents). I also believe that the situation for lenr-canr.org warrants to keep the site blacklisted (with some parts being whitelisted), though I will agree that the reason with which it was blacklisted was wrong ('fringe', could also be a misunderstanding/misinterpretation, or an interpretation on how it was used ... and I think that the site at that time was abused, though I'd have to see timing of that). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:29, 5 April 2009 (UTC)

Chembox CAS?

Hey Dirk

Thanks for fixing it up so quickly. I think last night, we agreed that only validated CAS numbers were to be external linked? I'm commenting because I found Zirconium_lactate which does not resolve. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 14:48, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Heh .. well, that can be done (tweak the template), though I would also argue that when they get incoming hits from the other chemicals not on their list .. that they can check whether they want to have them (they can easily log it and see which ones give a high number of wrong hits ..), wrongly linked CAS-numbers would also come in nicely (they might fix them ..), .... but if you guys have agree on only linking the validated ones (or if that is the appointment with CAS), I would say 'make it so' (you did not really have to ask ..). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:59, 8 April 2009 (UTC)

Hi Dirk, I would not oppose the current (link all) solution, and I agree with your reasoning. I don't suppose the rest would be unhappy, either. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 02:06, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

Mods (lifestyle) link submissions

You have archived the talk on Glasgow Mods - The Mod Generation [7] but this matter is not resolved.

My link submissions remain deleted whilst several others with no more pertinence to the topic remain. I have opened a discussion on the process for adding links to this topic [8] in the meantime, however, i would appreciate it if you could either restore my link or apply whatever criteria you have used for removing it to the other links in the topic.

thanks Glasgowmods (talk) 08:48, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh. It got auto-archived, missed your remark. Sorry. Well, I don't have much to say, suggest the link on talkpages where your link may be of interest, or discuss it with a WikiProject. If they respond positively, they can add it. Otherwise, well, then it is not deemed a suitable link, and you will have to leave the matter. I guess this is quite similar to the previous answer I gave. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:59, 7 April 2009 (UTC)

yes, it is uncannily similar to your previous answer - and doesn't answer any of the points i raised. i am surprised that after acting so quickly in removing the link and blocking me that you now dont have much to say.

what criteria did you use to deem the other links as suitable? why is one link continually being deleted while others with less worth to the topic remain? you are the person who has deemed it an unsuitable link and removed it (and subsequently blocked me for reverting this) so i would hope that you would revert it.

Glasgowmods (talk) 06:06, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

That there are other links there is not a reason to add more (see WP:OTHERCRAPEXISTS), we just may not have come to it yet. Links are included because of adding to a page (and where you link just is a copy of a wikipedia page ...). No page should be linked unless its inclusion is justifyable. If you believe that your site has more merit to be there than other sites, again, discuss with a wikiproject or on the talkpage. If it is there deemed an addition, then it can be added. If that is not the case, then I am sorry, then it will not be included. But your behaviour of repeatedly undoing others edits and pushing your link to the top of the page was certainly not the way forward. I hope this explains a bit more. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 07:30, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

Mr Beetstra, i am a 42 year old man - you talk of 'my behaviour' as if i'm a naughty child. I had already explained the reason why i reverted the deletions made by other users (none of whom, as far as i am aware, have any involvement in the mod scene). Had any of these users taken the time to explain their action perhaps i wouldn't have reverted it, but as far as i could see they were deleting something they thought was spam when i knew perfectly well that it wasn't. In any case, if there is a policy of not reverting anything why is this facility available and why did the initial user who deleted the link suggest it? Unfortunately, i do tend to put new posts at the top of a web page and wasn't aware this was also unacceptable behaviour.

As you know I have attempted to discuss adding links to this topic - after a couple of replies the subject matter seems to have dried up - so where do i go from there? I have been unable to find where the other links were discussed so i can follow that lead.

But really, in the final analysis, if all you can find on the site i am linking to is a copy of a Wikipedia page then i know i am probably wasting my time.

Glasgowmods (talk) 19:33, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

You are partially right, none of the early reverters warned you. However, you must have asked yourself why your link disappeared, and if I am correct, 'new accounts' and IPs get captcha's and remarks when adding new links.

I believe however, that you are a specialist, and I am sure that you can contribute content to the page while waiting for more comments on the talkpage. Also, in the history of the page you might be able to find other people who know about the subject, and who you can contact. I hope this explains. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:48, 14 April 2009 (UTC)

edits on page FreeON

Hi

I am new to wikipedia and don't know whether this is the right place for me to leave this comment. Please advice in case it is not. I would like to know why you reverted Matt's edit on FreeON. What was wrong with what Matt changed?

Thanks Nicolasbock (talk) 03:04, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, well. The warning that was left on his talkpage explains all of that. I did not yet realise that both you and Matt have a conflict of interest here. Could both of you also have a look at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest and Wikipedia:BFAQ? Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:59, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Guess who's back

... back again. [9] [10] [11]. AbuseFilter time? MER-C 12:31, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

This needs more drastic measures ... watch your mail. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:51, 10 April 2009 (UTC)

Hipposudoric acid

Are you sure about that IUPAC name for Hipposudoric acid? It looks to me like you've claimed a ketone group where there's actually an alcohol... Evercat (talk) 19:26, 11 April 2009 (UTC)

I am not sure if the alcohol group there is 'always' there, it may shift to the other places due to some tautomerisations. The compound on the images on ChemSpider is exactly the same, with the 3 keto-groups and an alcohol group. It may be due to the base-framework that the name seems strange. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:23, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

"The compound on the images on ChemSpider is exactly the same, with the 3 keto-groups and an alcohol group."

Oh? When I look at the ChemSpider page I see four ketone groups with no alcohol group... Evercat (talk) 22:22, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Having said that, I've looked again at the structure given at [12] and I do see how the tautomerism would proceed. It looks fairly straightforward. But then, I'm just a 1st year biology student. :) If you're happy with the link to ChemSpider I'll restore it... Evercat (talk) 22:38, 13 April 2009 (UTC)

Confused about conflict of interest on FreeON page

Hi,

I've reviewed the web pages you mentioned to Nick Bock, but have no idea what the problem is still, or how to remedy it. We are wiki newbies, and could really use some help resolving this.

Thanks, Matt Matt Challacombe (talk) 13:50, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

The problem is that we are writing an encyclopedia, while you and Nick Bock were trying to incorporate texts which may be too promotional. Remedy: Please discuss on talkpages before making considerable changes. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:59, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

Unlogged

Sup, is there any way 2 prevent this ip from editing unlogged? It's a shared adress with a somewhat diverse userbase and blocks could affect good standing editors. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.200.122.230 (talk) 09:28, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Editing unlogged? I am not sure what you mean? You can create an account .. ?? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:32, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes, of course. Good standing editors with an account use this ip when editing, but since it's a shared ip address, sometimes vandals and spammers may use it on wikipedia (editing as I do now, without an account). In this case, blocking the ip will also prevent account editors from, you know, editing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.200.122.230 (talk) 09:36, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Eh .. yes. For logged in users, there is IP block exemption. We could disable the autoblock so not to block the logged-in users. But seen that this account is only used by one person while editing as an IP, I don't expect too much problem, I think we are targetting just the one we want to.... --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:48, 20 April 2009 (UTC)

Bug in COIBot

Hi.

I think there is a bug, or perhaps design error, in COIBot. It has just reported two of my edits in Wikipedia:WikiProject Spam/COIReports/2009, Apr 22 thus:

1. 15:31:54, Wed Apr 22, 2009 - user:91.84.39.186 - user talk (contribs) on page Reiszug (diff - undo) -> (redirectsite) www.funimag.com/funimag10/reszug02.htm on domain funimag.com is a redirectsite for 404.online.net/ on 404.online.net
2. 14:56:20, Wed Apr 22, 2009 - user:Starbois - user talk (contribs) on page Reiszug (diff - undo) -> (redirectsite) www.funimag.com/funimag10/reszug01.htm on domain funimag.com is a redirectsite for 404.online.net/ on 404.online.net

I've checked, and the script is absolutely correct in saying that the two urls it quotes are redirects for 404.online.net. The only problem is that those urls do not appear in the article in question. The urls that are actually in the article are www.funimag.com/funimag10/RESZUG02.htm and www.funimag.com/funimag10/RESZUG01.htm. These urls are identical to the ones quoted by your bot, except that the case of the last element is different. The upper case versions of these urls are not redirects, and are appropriately cited as references in the article. If I owned the target pages I think I'd be a bit upset with my ISP for setting up redirects in this fashion, but it remains the fact that the report is misleading.

I suspect your bot is deliberately lowercasing the url. I can see why it might do this, in order to deal with the computer name part of the url, which is case insensitive. But the rest of the url is definately case sensitive and should be treated as such. -- Starbois (talk) 11:53, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Heh, you're absolutely right. I am afraid that part of COIBot does not have the correct part available. Rest assured, we are checking these things manually before we would do any actions, and this is not something we need to take action on. I wonder how I can solve this problem .... I'll have a think about it. Thanks for reporting this, it is a new 'gadget' I programmed, and it does do a good job here and there, but it would be nice if this could be resolved! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:30, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

DDP

Thanks for all your help!!! CashRules (talk) 18:58, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:06, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Abd and JzG

An Arbitration case in which you commented has been opened, and is located here. Please add any evidence you may wish the Arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Abd and JzG/Evidence. Please submit your evidence within one week, if possible. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Abd and JzG/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 02:13, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:41, 25 April 2009 (UTC)

Not happy.

Your bot has put my name on the spamlist and I am not happy about it. Its the 333rd one on the list.--Launchballer (talk) 14:49, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

If you look at the top of the page, then you know that having your name there does not mean you are on a spamlist. I'll have a look. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:50, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

OK, I had a look. This is indeed a case of 'silly overlap', and I have whitelisted you accordingly. My apologies for the 'mistake' of the bot, but please understand that your appearance in one of these reports, by no means, means that you have a conflict of interest, or that you are a spammer. I hope this resolves the matter, but if you have any further questions or remarks, don't hesitate to contact me. Thanks for reporting this to me! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:02, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

Thank you--Launchballer (talk) 16:08, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

{{talkback|Beetstra/Userwatch}}

??? I thought all was resolved. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:16, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Spam blacklist and escaping characters

Note that /s don't need to be escaped with a \ on spam-blacklist entries. See mw:Extension:SpamBlacklist#Syntax. Stifle (talk) 09:38, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

I know that the mediawiki software is hacked for that, but for clarity I prefer to just add them. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:52, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Lostthegame whitelisting

What was the rationale behind whitelisting this link? I don't see how it could possibly be interpreted as "official" or a reliable source. As you are probably aware, the owner of the site has waged a low-intensity self-promotion campaign here and elsewhere. Thanks, OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 21:20, 12 May 2009 (UTC)

Only this link is whitelisted, and it can only be used on Jonty Haywood and The game (others being blocked by the abuse filter, or by XLinkBot). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:17, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I checked. Yep, that is what I did. I whitelisted the index.htm, most editors will not figure out that that is the link to use in their attempts, moreover, XLinkBot will revert if they manage to do it, and it should be blocked by an abusefilter anyway (have not tested that, but it works fine on other links). It is indeed not a reliable source, but a kind of 'must have' external link on those two pages (per WP:ELYES). I hope this explains (did you see abuse somewhere, now?). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:27, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

I understand why it would be appropriate for Jonty Haywood (though that article shouldn't exist in the first place), but don't see how Google-hits merit it's usefulness for the Game article. Yes it gets the most hits, but it doesn't have much competition either. How much can really be said about the Game's concept? I find it distressing that Haywood and his followers are allowed to promote his crap on Wikipedia. Many of them have already been banned (not just by me) for this never-ending campaign. OhNoitsJamie ^Talk 15:31, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, we agree on the appropriateness I think. For the game it is indeed less appropriate, for Jonty Haywood it is the better page, but it indeed gets high hits on google (as it does not have much competition), which then makes it the 'most official site' for the game as well. I don't think that the blacklist is a way to control them, it here gives more rise to drama and more food to the trolls. If Jonty Haywood should exist is another question, and until that question is solved, I think that the link is appropriate there. This is all they get at the moment, any further misuse should be handled appropriately. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:03, 13 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh, the filter does its job properly. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 10:37, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

I looked over the bot and how it works. Very good job, Beetstra, many important aspects have been considered. I would also suggest an output file (flagged edit page) that sets up diffs for more marginal cases (for example, external links added by autoconfirmed editors). I think the point is to make it easier to review edits. It's not terribly harmful to revert, once, an addition of a questionable external link by an IP editor. If the IP editor reverts, however, I see the bot as being designed not to revert again. I agree with that, but this should be flagged for human review. So the bot would do two things: revert likely linkspam, then flag possible inappropriate insistence by an IP editor. Flagging, if done discriminately, would create a kind of Recent changes page that trusted editors could maintain. (List of trusted editors: the editor list is a protected page, additions by any admin. Then the actual flag page would be semiprotected. Bot would revert any changes to it by an editor not on the list of trusted editors. The idea is to spread out the labor, yet keep it efficient. When an editor reviews some diffs for edits of concern, the editor would remove the diffs from the page, leaving less work for others to review.

Ohnoitsjamie, see Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Abd_and_JzG/Proposed_decision#Purpose_of_the_spam_blacklist. Use of the blacklist for content control ("not a reliable source") and outside linkspam more than ordinary editing and bots can handle, is being deprecated. One of the reasons is to inhibit all the drama over contested blacklistings. Beetstra's bot is operating as an ordinary editor, without admin privileges, and is designed not to set up and perform truly controversial reverts. Plus if some IP editor really thinks a link should be there, they can directly revert it back in, or, if the bot is set more tightly (which I'd recommend if it turns out to be needed), they would have to find an autoconfirmed editor to do it. If an anonymous editor can't find anyone to agree, well, there you have it. This is the point: to efficiently prevent linkspam that is probably inappropriate from slipping through the cracks, without, at the same time, preventing reasonably legitimate links from being added.

Damn! You anticipated the trusted users concept, and it looks like you are implementing it. This could vastly increase the efficiency of anti-linkspam efforts, while, at the same time, reducing or eliminating the occasional harm to content that results from spam interdiction. (I just spent a day recovering material that my spam filter deleted when I upgraded to a new version and didn't notice it had caught some important faxes.) Your approach has wider implications than just linkspam control. --Abd (talk) 14:24, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Abd, take care, this is the second time today that you say something along the lines of "Use of the blacklist for content control ("not a reliable source") and outside linkspam more than ordinary editing and bots can handle, is being deprecated". In both cases, the site is simply spammed, or abused in a form which has nothing, or hardly anything to do with referencing, they simply have been spammed. Good advice: before you again use the argument that sites should not be blacklisted because they are not a reliable source read into the past, and do some research. Blacklisting because a site is not a reliable source is indeed deprecated, but that does not mean that the comment 'it is not a reliable source anyway' as a reason not to delist it (after massive spamming or blatant misuse) is not valid! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:49, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Okay. Apparently this is important to you. Certainly, I'll be careful. --Abd (talk) 02:24, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I am sorry, I think it is. It is in part where I wanted to get with part of the ArbComm, but I think it will not get there, and we may need some difficult discussions elsewhere. I still believe that JzG did not blacklist to control content, I do NOT believe that was his intention or thought, but because JzG believed (and that may have been totally wrong!) that it was abused to an extend that he thought blacklisting was merited. I do not believe that he blacklisted to control content (but that that happened). It is in a way a problem with the spam-sentence. Some sites are not spammed massively (like losethegame.com, those are almost all single edits, strictly more vandalism than spam; hence that I more stick to 'abuse' type of wording), and in some cases I do not see how to stop the abuse in another way. Another example could be suite101.com, that does not fall under 'widescale spamming', but it are many small little cases (there are other issues there, but well).

I agree with you that we have to take into account that misuse of references is not necesserily a form of abuse (though it can be!), and that we there have to be very, very careful and that those cases need to be specifically discussed and scrutinised before actually blacklisting. In a way I am very disappointed with the ArbComm and its outcome, as it does not actually say a lot that we did not know already. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:47, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

AfD nomination of University of Atlanta

An editor has nominated University of Atlanta, an article which you have created or worked on, for deletion. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also "What Wikipedia is not").

Your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/University of Atlanta and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).

You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate. Thank you. A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:51, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Heh, that closes it, this farm should be closed and stuffed into a sock. I have summarised the accounts on ANI, could you add those I missed? I say, let an uninvolved admin block all of them, no questions asked. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:27, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

I went ahead and started an SPI on this mess. See Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Amithani. MuZemike 17:57, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 18:06, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

EnLinkWatcher2

Hello,

EnLinkWatcher2 seems to be acting up slightly - specifically it is not reporting UTF8 page names correctly to the IRC feed. It has been reporting them wrong for at least 4 days. Since my bot, WebCiteBOT, is relying on the IRC feed at #wikipedia-en-spam it would appreciated if this was fixed. --ThaddeusB (talk) 00:54, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

I'll look into this, can you give me some examples of screwed up things? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:46, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

en:Primera División de México Clausura 2009 Liguilla (instead of en:Primera División de México Clausura 2009 Liguilla

en:Kapuvár (en:Kapuvár)

en:Manuel Santillán (en:Manuel Santillán)

en:Controller–area network (en:Controller–area network)

en:2008–2009 Sri Lankan Army Northern offensive (en:2008–2009 Sri Lankan Army Northern offensive)

hope that helps --ThaddeusB (talk) 14:54, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Yep. I'll see if I can solve this. Thanks. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:04, 17 May 2009 (UTC)