User talk:Risker/Archive 16

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OccultZone (Talk • Contributions • Log) 08:32, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Sorry about that

I'm sorry, it was a stupid assumption. --AmaryllisGardener ^talk 00:57, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Heh, no worries, AmaryllisGardener. Kind of refreshing to bump into someone who doesn't know me by reputation! I actually thought a bit about your suggestion, but I know I'm about to undertake a major project with the FDC, and I think I'm going to focus on pushing hard on the notability front as well, because I think that's the best way to start ridding ourselves of all this highly POV commercially focused editing that really is something of a worry. Risker (talk) 01:34, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Disambiguation and userspace drafts

Hi Risker. I was working on a disambiguation clean-up recently, and noticed you were doing something similar. Do you know what is best to do with userspace drafts? It started when I moved Ross Harrison to Ross Harrison (rugby union) and created a disambiguation page in its place. While cleaning up the links to the rugby union player, I came across and blanked User:TomBrady14 (see the page history). But was unsure what to do with User:Strinesian. Maybe a different approach is better, such as leaving a talk page message. If those users are around, they will also get pinged about this. Carcharoth (talk) 13:55, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

I'd probably blank the page. It's pretty obvious from the user's contributions that he created the page on his user page and then copied it over to create the new article. Meanwhile, that data on his userpage is just confusing to anyone who winds up there. For both examples you give, it also looks like the users are long gone, so it's unlikely to result in any backlash. I'm not really working on dab pages; the one I made yesterday was because someone overwrote an article I was watching with...well, let's just say there's an AFD on the "new" content right now. I moved the original article back where it belonged, and created the dab page to make it easier for anyone to find it during the AfD. Once the AfD is over, I'll either delete the dab page (if the "new" article is deleted, because the dab won't be needed any longer) or I'll add some hatnotes to the articles if the AfD results as "keep". Risker (talk) 15:21, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

I noticed that AfD. I'm guessing you will end up deleting that dab page. There must be an easy way to find pages that need disambiguation pages created. The same with biography pages without talk pages. See Talk:Phyllis Harrison-Ross. There was a time when someone with a bot went round finding and tagging those. Maybe someone still does, but not so often. Carcharoth (talk) 17:42, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

Notice of inactivity

Just in case anyone is wondering why I'm relatively unresponsive right now, and will be for the coming month or so, it is because I am very busy reviewing FDC proposals as a member of the Funds Dissemination Committee. I also somehow or other wound up being a "volunteer advisor" to the WMF Elections Committee (apparently this is the result of having been an effective member of that committee in 2013 - which does prove that the reward for doing good work is more work...), so I've been giving them some support to start off since they have shockingly little time to actually mount the elections for 3 members of the Board of Trustees, an FDC Ombud and 5 members of the FDC. Watch for the notices. I encourage everyone to vote, because these positions will all have the scope to affect this and other projects as we move forward.

So, in short, I won't be around a lot until at least mid-May, and won't be undertaking any projects that require extended attention. Risker (talk) 04:27, 13 April 2015 (UTC)

I will quote you . . . .

"Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the living people about whom we write. There is a deadline for them: it is the moment that Google puts our article about them in their top-5 results."

I just looked at your user page for the first time today. I could not agree more with the above statement. Spot-on. Editors need to be constantly reminded we are documenting individuals' lives, in what is often the most highly visible "bio" on the web. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 17:03, 18 April 2015 (UTC)

FYI

[1]. You may have seen this. If not, well, goes to the heart of the project's credibility and neutrality.--Scott Mac 15:26, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Scott Mac, it is a pleasure to see your name again; sad that it is in relation to such a challenging situation. I had a bit of knowledge of the twitter thing (although not about a lot of the other allegations in that report), but it's not something I felt I should include in the publicly visible RFAR; while I do have serious concerns about the specifics of this case, I do not see value in going out of my way to include off-wiki personal (although not private) information that was more appropriately forwarded to Arbcom on a non-public basis. I think probably what concerns me the most about this situation is that it was all so very predictable, and that talking to other functionaries who are more accustomed to handling more controversial blocks would have probably resulted in a different action and outcome. Risker (talk) 15:56, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Actually, on reflection, my chief concern is for the individuals now caught up in the worst type of media storm. Don't know how much you know of UK politics, but this one's going to run for a while yet. Feel free to remove this thread, as even discussing it may be unhelpful.--Scott Mac 16:02, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

I may do that soon. I agree with you that this is going to be a rather awful media storm, although see my last sentence. It's also a predictable one. Risker (talk) 16:05, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Sorry to tread uninvited, but just a courtesy note that I did mention this at Jimbo's talk page. I agree with Scott's last sentence here. I too don't think any more individuals here should be involved unnecessarily, and it would be good if the case is actually opened sooner rather than later to further limit that possibility. Anyway, I digress, as that is something only the esteemed committee can control.... Ncmvocalist (talk) 16:08, 22 April 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Sockpuppet investigation block opened

You were recently listed as a party to a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Sockpuppet investigation block. Given the legal, privacy and BLP implications of holding the case in public the Committee has decided to run the case completely in camera, to that effect there will be no public evidence submission or workshop. Editors with direct knowledge of the events and related evidence are requested to email their to arbcom-en-blists.wikimedia.org by May 7, 2015 which is when evidence submission will close. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 07:00, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

I tried

Risker, I really did try to walk away, but I'm sorry - I have to say it. What you posted on Giano's talk was the biggest bunch of bullshit I've seen in a while. I know we have disagreed on things, but I NEVER thought I'd see you stoop to such things. I actually considered the fact that your account had been compromised. Please, PLEASE, read things before you post something like that again. — Ched :  ?  05:28, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Ched, Giano threw the biggest insult at me that he could possibly have come up with, and he did it deliberately and with anger because I dared to challenge him. I have always told him that the line for me was using articles as weapons, and he did it not just once but repeatedly, and in a manner intended to provoke. If he had done it on Jimbo's user talk or some other non-article page instead of one being highly watched at least in part because of other seriously problematic behaviour by another wikipedian (sadly, because of a delay from Arbcom and conflicts with real-world responsibilities, I did not have a chance to file evidence on that matter, but I'm hoping that they figured it out themselves) - he likely would have managed to get the reaction he was looking for; in fact, he probably would have gotten a better one. Instead, he got himself reverted by a bunch of people who just recognized the edits for what they were and didn't ascribe any mystique to the person making them, who took him to the 3RR board, and he got himself blocked - exactly what should have happened. Well, this whole thing has pretty much been a PR disaster for Wikiepdia; but the answer was never going to be "so I'll stick in a bunch of extraneous hoopla into the article to try to make up for what happened before" - there were perfectly good reliable sources that would have pointed to the investigation, they just didn't imply that Jimbo was behind it all. I hope someone is able to figure out how to reference the BBC interview Shapps gave today; that would at least make sense for inclusion. Risker (talk) 06:38, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Risker, I am sure there is a lot I don't have access to in regards to Shapps. All I know is what is view-able on wiki. You said something to the effect of "do you support inclusion of Jimbo's marriage" ... and that was NEVER something posted in the article. I have no idea what your relationship with Giano is .. nor should I. I am sorry if he insulted you - he shouldn't have. I even admit that anyone who engages in an edit war needs to be attended to. MY point is that at no point in time was there a "Jimbo's marriage" entered into the contents of the article. You questioned me about something that was never posted in the article, but rather you applied what was said in the wp:rs to the article and what I supported.

I don't care about "the investigation", because we can't see it. You stated something that was not accurate, accused me of supporting something that was never posted in the article. If people choose to make assumptions from facts, shame on them. Please don't accuse me of things that I have never supported..

In looking at the talk page for the article, ... I guess some people can support blindness - I can not. Giano stated facts .. plain and simple. Obviously some people don"t like those facts, but truth is what it is. I live in the US, so I really don't care about a minor official in the UK. What shocked me was you response to it all. — Ched :  ?  07:13, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

• Just curious: How did Giano insult you? — Ched :  ?  07:17, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
• and how is it different from how you've insulted me? — Ched :  ?  07:21, 9 May 2015 (UTC)
• psst ... nobody "implied" Jimbo was "behind" anything ... but apparently some people "inferred" it. So it's a "kill the messenger" issue? — Ched :  ?  07:26, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

• OK ... I'll leave it be. Whatever. Not an issue I care enough about to get my butt toasted. — Ched :  ?  07:29, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Ched, just look at the diff Giano carefully chose in order to support...what exactly? That Jimmy Wales founded Wikipedia? Just by making the internal link to Jimbo's BLP, he'd done that. The reference he used, which is very specifically all about Jimmy's wedding to a prominent member of the Labour Party, with lots of other prominent Labour people attending, and has nothing to do with Shapps at all, or allegations of socking, or anything even really about Wikipedia, was inappropriate. There are several contemporaneous news items that specifically refer to an ongoing investigation of the block/SPI - not least the one where ChaseMe gives an interview and says it is under investigation and that he has been chastised - which could have been appropriately inserted. The insult was here where he says "[o]ne can't help seriously wondering, Risker, if you have spent too long at the cosy heart of the exclusive Wiki-family and have ceased to be as objective and PR-focused as once you were." Now, you may not understand why I find that such an insult...but Giano most certainly should have. It breaks my heart to see someone whose work I have respected for years editorializing in the middle of a BLP, especially with the excuse that his edits should be seen as a statement from Wikipedia. And on that note, I have to get up in 4 hours so I'm going to walk away. Risker (talk) 08:14, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

sorry

Referencing the "heartbreak" mentioned above, I just want to say how sorry I am to see this happen (to all of you). I know it must hurt deeply ... for you, for Bish, for Giano. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:51, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Sockpuppet investigation block arbitration proposed decision

Hi Risker, in the open Sockpuppet investigation block arbitration case, a remedy or finding of fact has been proposed which relates to you.  Please review this decision and draw the arbitrators' attention to any relevant material or statements. Comments may be brought to the attention of the committee on the proposed decision talk page. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 13:26, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Sockpuppet investigation block closed

An arbitration case regarding Sockpuppet investigations block has now closed and the final decision is viewable at the link above. The following remedies have been enacted:

1. The CheckUser permissions of Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk · contribs) are revoked. He may seek to regain them only by the usual appointment methods.
2. The oversight permissions of Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk · contribs) are revoked. He may seek to regain them only by the usual appointment methods.
3. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk · contribs) is desysopped. He may regain the tools at any time through a successful request for adminship.

For the Arbitration Committee, L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 17:42, 9 June 2015 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Sockpuppet investigation block closed

Thank You

		The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
		For bravery and integrity during the Contribsx ArbCom case. Vordrak (talk) 23:08, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

		The BLP Barnstar
		For commitment to the truth and integrity during the Contribsx ArbCom case. Vordrak (talk) 23:08, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
	Risker, I know we have some differences on occasion, but I too want to thank you for bringing up the SPI block case and protecting Wikipedia's integrity. Pine✉ 19:24, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

your revert

This has gone on long enough. I've asked before that this not be continued on this page. Please do not continue this discussion here. Risker (talk) 01:07, 26 July 2015 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
About this, two things: I have been struggling mightily with that editor to get them to see their COI and restrain himself. That post was remarkably lacking in cluefulness. There is a note on the top of the COI page that says "Editors discussing proposed changes to WP:COI or related pages should disclose during those discussions whether they have been paid to edit Wikipedia." The editor did not disclose. That is why I wrote the note. Jytdog (talk) 14:40, 13 June 2015 (UTC) He has disclosed his conflict of interest. It is on his userpage. That is what is required. If you cannot restrain yourself over this issue, the first step is to contact the editor directly on their user talk. At very, very most, you could say "please see Snowded's conflict of interest statement on his userpage". Your words and tone give the appearance of belittling Snowded's comments for the purpose of furthering your own personal dispute between the two of you, and that is not acceptable. More importantly, having a conflict of interest is NOT the same thing as "being paid to edit Wikipedia". If you do not understand that, then perhaps it is time for *you* to stop editing in this topic area. Risker (talk) 15:11, 13 June 2015 (UTC) Hm. Thanks for your feedback. I disagree with two things that you write. First I am not having a personal dispute with him; I have been working with him to manage his COI. Secondly, being an officer of a company and editing here = paid editing. I do appreciate your feedback on the hounding thing and will not unrevert you. Thanks for that. Jytdog (talk) 16:19, 13 June 2015 (UTC) See now, that's where I disagree with you. Being an officer of a company and editing in relation to that company are obviously NOT a paid editing situation on Wikipedia. If they were, then Jimmy Wales, and every other member of the WMF Board of Trustees, would all be banned editors. Risker (talk) 16:28, 13 June 2015 (UTC) risker paid editors are not banned in WP. They are allowed to be here if they follow the Terms of Use, which require that they disclose and that they follow project policies and guidelines. Our COI guideline says they should disclose and should not directly edit content where they have a COI, and instead should offer content on Talk pages to be reviewed by other editors for NPOV. So... Jimbo Wales should not directly edit content on WP or WMF, for example, but should offer proposed content on Talk pages for such content. Jytdog (talk) 16:52, 13 June 2015 (UTC) According to your theory, they shouldn't be discussing COI either...since being a Trustee of this organization would put them in COI of discussing COI here. And see, you're doing it again. You're using your personal interpretation of the ToU to deprecate someone else. The ToU doesn't say what you think it says. Risker (talk) 17:02, 13 June 2015 (UTC) And just to point out the simple fact that when the conflict started I immediately initiated a request for an independent admin review which I think is the right thing to do. That resulted in a warning to the other editor. Things blew up again when multiple aggressive COI notices were placed on multiple pages. The COI guideline does not say that editors may not edit pages, it says that they have to be very careful to comply with the rules and should consider not editing but initiating requests instead. The absolutist interpretation of what is a guideline not policy does not help. That said I appreciate what Jtydog is trying to do and I know its difficult but I think it is correct to say that there has been some conflict, the phrase 'struggling mightily' indicates that and was a surprise to me when I read it. But, I know the pressure on editors who take on tasks like COI so I'm personally relaxed about it and I'm trying to work with him/her. However the BLP policy is very clear that editors whose reputation is being challenged should be treated with more consideration that those doing the attacking. The result of all of this is that I plan to outline some possible practice guidelines for those interested in COI issues as soon as the current storm has died down. That contribution was in effect my first step into working on that.----Snowded TALK 17:28, 13 June 2015 (UTC) So much muddled thinking around COI - and yes David, my warnings to you became increasingly aggressive the longer you persisted in ignoring them. You are triply conflicted in all this, just like the other guy. You are not "above this" by any means. In any case, I will keep working with folks. Jytdog (talk) 17:50, 13 June 2015 (UTC) And risker, trustees of an organization have a responsibility to discuss and manage COI in the organization. Your argument is absurd there. And I didn't say that David shouldn't participate in the discussion at COI, just that he needed to disclose his status as a conflicted editor in the discussion. Jytdog (talk) 17:54, 13 June 2015 (UTC) Of course it is absurd. But it is no more absurd than what you are saying. Your interpretation would prevent academics who have been published from discussing their subject of expertise. Snowded is not being paid to edit Wikipedia; he is not a paid editor. He is, in particular, not a paid editor when it comes to the topic of COI. Risker (talk) 19:56, 13 June 2015 (UTC) Risker you seem to be unaware that Dave is cofounder and CSO of a company that makes money providing consulting services in part using the cynefin framework or model, and that he claims (at least partial) credit for the originating the concept, and his company depends in part on his reputation including the explanatory power of that concept, and the thing he posted at AN about was this dif, that attacked the validity of a software product offered by his company and based in part on the cynefin framework. That edit was made by an editor with whom he has a personal dispute outside of WP, who also has a consulting company, and whose company competes with Dave's . Both editors have at least three levels of COI that perfectly clashed in that dif and everything that followed - the brief edit war, the discussion on the talk page, etc. Dave did do well bringing it to the community but that does not make his COI any less present. I will assume that you were unaware of all that, with regard to what you wrote here about the situation.Jytdog (talk) 19:35, 14 June 2015 (UTC) Oi. I am certainly well aware of the conflict of interest. Conflict of interest is not the same thing as paid editing. If you cannot understand that, you need to stop working in this area. Paid editing is things like Elance or other SEO organizations who specifically write for pay, or the PR department of a company. Conflict of interest is not the same thing. Again, if you insist that the two things are identical, which is exactly what you were doing in the edit I reverted, then you need to stop working in this area, because you misunderstand the basic premise. Risker (talk) 19:51, 14 June 2015 (UTC) This is all getting pretty stressful. I have always acknowledged a COI and the second conflict looked inevitable backed off and asked for an independent review. I am an editor of long standing over multiple articles who happens to monitors two articles, one about me the other about a public domain framework, much cited which I created many years ago and which I teach at University and also present in public (mostly pro bono). The conflict was with another SPA editor whose few edits only relate to his COI and who brought an off wiki campaign to Wikipedia. He was warned for that on the independent admin review I requested and the whole thing calmed down. I now have Jytdog raising the temperature on the article, issuing me with multiple threats of ANI referral if I don't do what I am told and now repeating the unsupported allegations that got the other editor warned (linking software to Cynefin and the nonsensical suggestion I didn't create the framework - check Google Scholar). He also seems to be appointing himself as judge, jury and executioner as to the article's content. Advise would be appreciated (including telling me if I have done something against policy) ----Snowded TALK 20:06, 14 June 2015 (UTC) Let me see if I can help a bit here, because there is a widespread tendency to interpret the COI issue and related guidelines in a simplistic way, which is increasingly unhelpful for everyone. I'm a partner in a law firm. The firm is not notable enough for an Wikipedia article, but suppose I were at a larger firm and we had one. If I were to edit the article about my law firm, I would have a "conflict of interest" (the significance of which could be minor or major depending on the nature of the edits). However, I would not be a "paid editor," because my firm pays me to practice law, not to edit Wikipedia. Is everyone in agreement so far? Newyorkbrad (talk) 18:10, 13 June 2015 (UTC) A much better expression of one of the points I was trying to make ----Snowded TALK 18:13, 13 June 2015 (UTC) Thank you for your illustration, NYB. I am afraid, however, that it falls on deaf ears for those who imagine themselves pure as the driven snow. Risker (talk) 19:56, 13 June 2015 (UTC) respectfully NYB and Risker, you don't know me from adam. I work at a university and work with conflict of issues every day there. I spend a lot of time working on COI issues here in WP and am very clear on what the ToU say and what constitutes conflicted editing here in WP. I know very well what the clear center of that is, and where the fuzzy boundaries are. In general, editors here are way too emotional about this, and jump to conclusions way too quickly about what they think other people are thinking, and both of you appear to be doing that. Both of those - strong feelings and jumping to conclusions - have made most community-wide discussions about COI just about impossible. (not to mention the tension between the absolute value we place on anonymity and the concern many have to protect the integrity of WP wrt to COI editing - which stems from realworld relationships). I would be happy to keep talking here if you are willing to slow down and discuss. Otherwise, not much point. Jytdog (talk) 23:24, 13 June 2015 (UTC) Cute. "Too emotional" is a fancy way of saying "your opinions are invalid". You're the one who is going on and on about this, not me; I suggest it is you who is taking this far too seriously and jumping to conclusions. You've made four edits to expand your opinions here since I last commented. Here's a question for you: is the subject Cynefin notable? If the answer is yes (I have no opinion on the matter), then that makes Snowded an academic subject matter expert (SME), just like the history or math professors (or the medical and biology academics) who write books or receive financial benefits for speaking in their area of expertise. The Board went to a fair bit of trouble to say that academic SMEs wouldn't be covered by the COI provisions because, well, they're academic SMEs. (Of course, the ToU doesn't explicitly state that, so they're still at risk. I believe I've made that point before.) And I'm pretty sure you brought a smile to the face of the readers of this page with your comments about your expertise on conflict management. Newyorkbrad and I were longtime arbitrators, and probably have a bit more understanding about the big picture of Wikipedia conflicts than you. Again, the problem I am seeing with your editing here is that you seem to be unable to differentiate between conflict of interest and paid editing, and it seems you're pretty routinely treating them as equivalent. They aren't. Please stop doing that. Risker (talk) 19:51, 14 June 2015 (UTC) Nope, "too emotional" is what it is. I am discussing further as I struggle with your description and analysis of what went on here. For some reason you are not dealing directly with the financial interests in the simple description of the situation. Please note that Dave has clearly disclosed his financial COIs on his userpage so there is no OUTING concerns in this case. Founder and Chief Scientific Officer (CSO) of a company founded in part on using the concept; he also personally provides training and consulting on the concept. Those are facts, that = financial COI. With regard to "paid".... I understand that some may limit "paid" to mean freelancers who contract with clients to write articles for them, but someone whose job in a company is "corporate communications" or "social media" or the like who edits WP as part of their job is also "paid"; it is a very reasonable argument to say that a Chief Scientific Officer who edits WP about part of a company's technology/conceptual platform is also "paid". While the "paid" label is arguable (I will freely grant that) the financial COI is not, and in light of that the "paid" label is just quibbling of the kind that consumes way too much time here. I do understand that Arbcom has taken a very hands off approach to COI and I believe I understand why; perhaps the lack of willingness to address the financial COI in this case is part of that cautionary approach. But leaving it out of the description leads to an incorrect analysis. Jytdog (talk) 20:16, 14 June 2015 (UTC) Jytdog, your edit was reverted because you decided to deprecate another user's edit by claiming that he was a paid editor. Even you now have admitted that your assessment is questionable, and is your own definition, not the one from the ToU or from the broad community. Can I be assured that you will stop making such claims against people in the future? Given the (not unreasonable) community perception of paid editing, calling someone a paid editor when they aren't is tantamount to a personal attack. You should only ever be using that phrase when you have incontrovertible evidence that User ZZZ has received direct financial payment for edits on Article QQQQ. Editing in an area where one has a conflict of interest is not the same thing as paid editing (if it was, then every Greenpeace member should probably be banned from editing any article related to the environment). Ironically, a lot of paid editors never return once the article is created and survives for a few weeks; once they've got their money and their positive review, that's pretty much the end of their activity. We do have some topic areas where there is no doubt paid editing has massively influenced content, even to the extent of creating notability requirements that are driven by the industries involved; I do agree that paid editing is a problem; however, despite my having pointed out one particular area where it is endemic several years ago, it seems nobody really has the willingness to take it on and start moving to clean it up. Of course, there are probably a lot of respectable editors who really don't want those articles to show up in their contributions. Including me. Risker (talk) 20:35, 14 June 2015 (UTC) I am way past the revert - I accepted that at the very top of this thread and that is not what I've been talking about. As for the paid editing thing, that term only arose here because of the specific language at the top of WT:COI - it is not language I use generally because it is a huge distraction from the core issue of the actual conflict of interest at play. What is the area where you see paid editing as endemic? If it is not too much stepping-in-dog-poop I would be happy to have a look. Jytdog (talk) 20:53, 14 June 2015 (UTC) Oh, it's probably very much stepping-in-dog-poop; I'll send you an email, since it's not even a topic I want to have discussed on my page. (Google searches give the darnest results...) If you're really "way past the revert", then can I assume you will not go around adding commentary to the comments of people who edit that page, accusing them of being paid editors when they don't meet the strict definition? If you can assure me of that, then I think we're done here. If you're unwilling to be conservative in your allegations, then there's still a problem. Risker (talk) 21:02, 14 June 2015 (UTC) does that mean that the following accusation made early on by Jytdog will now be struck? I quote " As the founder and CSO of Cognitive Edge, you would be classified as a "paid editor" here for topics related to that company." Given the above I assume so and that I am entitled to claim to be a SME on the subject, although I am happy to accept that any edit by me on the article othe than those which are minor should be change requests on the talk page. If so I'm OK ----Snowded TALK 21:10, 14 June 2015 (UTC) Yes Risker the Snowded thing is just a current not-yet-done-cooking issue so no - you have nothing to be concerned about ongoing with me continuing to do that. (I see you are looking for a definite answer on the behavior thing, and you have it). (And Snowded my comment was reverted by Risker moments after I made it, so I don't know what you are asking about) Just want to add for everybody here that in my work on COI, I have generally found that when I ask editors who have a COI to disclose it and to refrain from directly editing content where they have a COI, most everyone has seen the value to WP in managing COI and has agreed to do both, without much fuss at all. A few people get "prickly" as you are doing, Snowded, but that is rare. I think the complicating factor of your dispute with the other editor might make this more intense and hotter than usual. But we seem to be done here. Jytdog (talk) 21:36, 14 June 2015 (UTC) If you remember Jytdog I had already declared a COI in the past several times but when you raised it I readily agreed to do that in the specific form you requested and to use the talk page requests where there was any ambiguity. I am irritated at being accused of being a "paid editor" and I think you might just have the decency to withdraw that and acknowledge the SME point. that would take the heat out of any interaction between us ----Snowded TALK 21:55, 14 June 2015 (UTC) I'll pick this up with you on you Talk page, Snowded. Jytdog (talk) 21:59, 14 June 2015 (UTC) Risker, the behavior that you say is not acceptable seems to be unabated, IMO (diff highlighting relevant conversation). What now? --Elvey(t•c) 15:26, 25 July 2015 (UTC) Elvey, WP:CIR is required to deal with COI and in your hounding of me and BATTLEGROUND behavior, you are doing incompetent things that are harming people - you have only confused ColumbiaLion more. I am seeking to have you topic banned from discussing COI and from discussing me here Jytdog (talk) 19:13, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Can you comment here ? I copied some of the things you said over there, FYI. --Elvey^(t•c) 04:13, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Elvey, I had hoped that by hatting this section and saying that I didn't want to continue this discussion, it was going to be obvious that I don't want to continue this discussion. Here or anywhere else. I'm working on a different matter and will be for a few weeks, and having my talk page overrun by a discussion that really needs to be in the eyes of the broader community isn't helping. I get that you are frustrated, and I'm sorry about that. But I have limited hours in the day, and as frustrating as you and others have found one particular editor, I'm working on an issue that has been frustrating a lot of people for a long time. I'm going to keep working on that. It means I won't be posting in very many places. Risker (talk) 04:27, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Understood. When you wrote, "I've asked before that this not be continued on this page. Please do not continue this discussion here." the bits I put in bold made your intention far from obvious to me. Prioritize away. Hopefully the three comments of yours that I copied over will be listened to by others.--Elvey^(t•c) 04:52, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

About Pierre Viret - what do you think about this?

Hey Risker,
Just what the section title says.
Peter in Australia aka --Shirt58 (talk) 10:49, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay in responding Shirt58 - this looks pretty good. Thank you for your work on it. Risker (talk) 18:08, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Talk:Sir Peter George Osborne, 17th Baronet

You were involved in this article. I invite you to the RM discussion. --George Ho (talk) 07:16, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for inviting me to participate, George Ho; however, I think I'll keep away from baronets for the sake of my own sanity. Risker (talk) 18:09, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Motivational effect of Commons deletions

Hi Risker, hope you are well! I've not been around for a while, but I noticed the discussions on Freedom of Panorama relating to the harmonisation of EU copyright laws. You commented here that you thought the wrong message was being sent. One of the things that I think is being missed here is that potentially photos that people uploaded to Commons many years ago may get retrospectively deleted. If this does run into the tens and hundreds of thousands, the motivational effect on those who uploaded pictures or use them to illustrate their articles, could be immense. I know from personal experience what it is like to have large swathes of images deleted (look at my user talk page on Commons for the deletion notices). If these changes take effect (and that is a big if) and if Commons (as seems likely) goes on a big deletion spree, then the practical effect is likely to be to discourage large numbers of (in some cases) highly active contributors to the point where they may even cease contributing. That may be in part because those enforcing the rules at Commons overlook the effect of their deletions, but it is something that should be considered, IMO. Can you think of any way to mitigate the impact on people who may not understand why their images are being deleted, if it does come to that eventually? I am going to raise this point on the Wikimedia-l mailing list as well. Carcharoth (talk) 11:13, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't go so far as to say that the rule enforcers would be deliberately overlooking the demotivating effects of deletions; to be honest, I suspect that they depend on it to at least some extent to reduce the likelihood that the user will upload further problematic images. In order to survive, Commons has pretty much had develop a near-automated process and comparatively rigid copyright evaluation structures, and I'm not really sure the copyright focus is a bad thing. On the other hand, there is some pretty widespread questioning of some of the interpretations of copyright (including freedom of panorama), because Commons pretty routinely takes the hardest line it can take. It would be heartbreaking, though for images by contributors like Diliff to have to be removed from Commons; some images are used on dozens if not hundreds of articles. I would hope that we can come up with some sort of system that allows those images to be imported to any project that allows free use, although some of them will have to be modified considerably to meet that criterion. I don't have a good answer.

On the other hand, much as Wikimedia projects will be *diminished* by the absence of the images, the articles will still exist. They will be much less than they could be in a lot of cases, and I agree that the strictest interpretations of the proposed legislation will have a very negative effect on probably over a million articles across hundreds of projects. I objected to the word "must" in the proposed banner; I am not particularly opposed to the banners, though. I found the blacked out images on DEWP to be disconcerting (and since my German reading comprehension is questionable at best, I wasn't sure how to dismiss that), but I do understand its purpose. Risker (talk) 19:53, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Hopefully something can be done. I agree about Diliff's images. He was kind enough to do an awesome set of images of the Frieze of Parnassus for me way back in the dim and misty past. I'd be interested in his views if he sees the ping. Thankfully that sculpture is public domain by age, so no problems there. I still get annoyed that the Commons debates on the photographs of WWI memorials focused so rigidly on the issue of freedom of panorama in France. I wish I had more time to try and summarise the arguments there and try and see if anything might be possible there, but it is difficult to motivate oneself in the face of large and often faceless bureaucracy. Carcharoth (talk) 23:07, 28 June 2015 (UTC)

Impersonation

Ah, already. Thank you. I just woke up, and I was going to do it via WP:DUCK, with some hesitation, as I supposed it could conceivably be somebody trying to get her in trouble. Apparently not. Bishonen | talk 09:34, 5 July 2015 (UTC).

You've got mail...

Hello, Risker. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

- yes, responded, you have a copy. Risker (talk) 23:53, 5 July 2015 (UTC)

A request

The following website was added to the spam list back in 2011 [2]. The organization took the advice of the editors and made the necessary modifications to make the site more collegial and a bit easier to navigate for students. Is it possible to get the site removed from that list? Atsme^📞📧 00:50, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Question about recent close

This is as far as I'm going to let this go - It's a wiki, find something to do... Risker (talk) 20:58, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I apologize for bothering you as I know you're busy but I'm confused about your recent close at COIN and I was hoping you could clarify your thinking for me. The close appears to me to be based on two things: applying 2014 policies to 2011 disclosures and that COI doesn't apply to nonprofits. On the first point, that editor was twice notified at the time of those disclosures that she may have a COI and that her edits then were not recommended. I don't understand how bringing it up now is an application of today's policy on those disclosures. On the second point, there's nothing now or in the previous COI guideline that says nonprofits aren't included in COI; it seems to me that the executive director of a nonprofit could have motive to want their site included in External Links. And since it was made very clear that the editor was an executive director of a nonprofit back in 2011, it seems clear to me that the editors that informed her of the COI interpreted the guideline as applying to nonprofits. Obviously I'm missing something because by my reasoning, the discussion shouldn't have been closed for those reasons. Would you mind explaining where I've gone wrong? Thanks very much. Ca2james (talk) 01:51, 6 July 2015 (UTC) Read the close. It's self-explanatory, actually. Volunteers don't have a COI - read WP:COI with regards to the definition of "interest". I think the outing on the templates may be more of an issue, but we'll see when OS finishes the review. Atsme📞📧 02:03, 6 July 2015 (UTC) Atsme was and is the Executive Director of a nonprofit company. Whether that is paid or unpaid, it is a position with fiduciary responsibility. I am asking you to please reconsider your close. Thanks. Jytdog (talk) 02:18, 6 July 2015 (UTC) I edit-conflicted with Jytdog when I was about to post this response to Atsme: What this new information shows is that, at least part of the time you were adding those links, you weren't acting in a volunteer role, and you did have a conflict of interest at the time, Atsme. This concerns me quite a bit; I assumed good faith that your statement that you were a volunteer was true, and now I feel somewhat misled. Instead, you were including your name and your position in the organization to argue from authority to add and keep those links; pointing that out is not outing. (There are several of your edits I've now seen that are not suppressed and include this information and I say this as one of the most liberal of oversighters: I wouldn't have suppressed them.) I'll have to go back and correct my close now. As to your post above, the website is not on the spam blacklist on this project nor is it on the global spam blacklist, so there is nothing to remove. (Hint: if there is an external link to a blacklisted site, the page will not save.) For Ca2james and Jytdog, the 2011 rules do still apply for edits that were made during that time; simply review the articles in question from an objective point of view and determine if the external link is useful and would meet our policy for inclusion. If not, they should be removed, but some of them may be of high quality as "further reading". Risker (talk) 02:33, 6 July 2015 (UTC) Thank you very much for your clarification and for updating the close. I didn't realize you were operating under an incomplete set of facts when you first closed it; knowing this explains why you made the close you did. Also thanks for explaining next steps with these links. Ca2james (talk) 03:52, 6 July 2015 (UTC) You know that she's not only the executive director. The evidence also suggests that she's the founder.-Serialjoepsycho- (talk) 02:41, 6 July 2015 (UTC) The exact nature of her association with the organization is pretty much immaterial at this point; anyone claiming to be an executive director of an organization is acting in something other than a volunteer role, even if they aren't paid. The conflict of interest was confirmed at the time of the edits (and is reconfirmed now). There's no percentage in being vindictive, though; our job is to produce a good encyclopedia, and sometimes that means using information that is provided by people who have more than just Wikipedia in mind when they add links or information. I recognize the difficulty here: if this is a topic area where one has little knowledge, one might make an inaccurate assessment of the value of certain information (weighting it either too positively or too negatively). Perhaps involving a relevant wikiproject or a subject matter expert might be an idea. Risker (talk) 02:52, 6 July 2015 (UTC) I was just pointing out a piece of information that was contained in the evidence at COIN. There is a COI. But no big deal. You have pointed out to atsme that she does have a COI. Now the external links in the highlighted articles can be reviewed to see if they meet current polict standards. In addition the website in question was also used as a source in a few of the articles. A few if the sources were written by the individual that Atsme has claimed to be. Where applicable these sources should be checked against current Reliable sourcing criteria.-Serialjoepsycho- (talk) 03:00, 6 July 2015 (UTC) I was not paid - in fact, I contributed $$ to EWS the same way I contribute $$ to WP. Being on a Board for a small nonprofit doesn't mean you're getting paid. The organization focuses on public dissemination - volunteer writers who provide academic information. I donated footage to EWS, and as such had access to hours of footage that I could upload to Commons to improve the encyclopedia. Please don't be misled by all this COI talk, Risker. The topic hasn't changed. I'm still retired. We're talking about articles and biological information about fish. Jytdog spent 20-24 hrs in one week editing "voluntarily" on WP overseeing his suite of Monsanto & GMO articles. Let's say he gets paid for his work as a biotech or academic researcher whatever. Is he not more dedicated to his volunteer position on WP than I ever was with mine? Are the articles he oversees conflicted? Were my articles conflicted? These are all things that need to be weighed and measured. What is the end result? In my situation, WP got 3 GA and a FA plus uploads of rare u/w to enhance those articles. What did the Monsanto article do for WP? The GMO and GMF article? I think we may need to reevaluate what a true COI actually means. I simply share academic information that is related to the biology of fishes or whatever - I'm retired - when I was volunteering for EWS, I did whatever I could in my spare time. The Board of EWS is made up of fisheries biologists and academics. We meet once/year. It's all volunteer. There is no COI - no fiduciary responsibility - didn't have any then, and don't now. Public dissemination is actually not expensive to provide as evidenced by WP volunteers. The articles in question were already scrutinized under GA and FA reviews - they passed the test - where is the COI? Atsme📞📧 03:04, 6 July 2015 (UTC) Payment is not the relevant factor, Atsme, it is the fiduciary relationship that you have with the organization. I get that it's about fish, which is about as neutral a topic as we're ever likely to see a COI in. Let's see if I can explain where I'm coming from by using a Wikimedia example. Wikimedia Foundation has an entirely volunteer Board of Trustees. They get no money for being on the Board. But they also have to agree that their first loyalty is to the Wikimedia Foundation if there is a competing interest; they must resign board positions from any subsidiary groups (chapters, organizations or user groups), and regardless of whether they are elected by the community, selected by chapters, or appointed by the Board itself, they do not hold constituencies (e.g., the trustees selected by the chapters may not act on behalf of the chapters, but must act in the best interests of the WMF). In your case, you were acting in the best interests of the non-profit which you have helped to organize. It is undoubtedly a worthy cause. But if there is a conflict between what Wikipedia needs or wants, and what your organization wants to have published on Wikipedia...well, this is a classic conflict of interest. Money doesn't have to be involved at all; it's the interest that is in conflict. Now, I sincerely hope that individuals who actually know something about the topic area will review the relevant information, especially if the articles have already gone through extensive peer review such as FA and GA; frankly, there's nothing worse than someone who doesn't understand the topic going through and messing around. But it puts Wikipedia in a very difficult position - no different than if the volunteer chair of the board of the Wyoming SPCA starts editing articles that include links to their organization. It's being done in good faith, and it's being done to share information, but it's not being done with complete indifference. Risker (talk) 04:03, 6 July 2015 (UTC) Yeah, but why doesn't my retirement count? Atsme📞📧 05:28, 6 July 2015 (UTC) I'd expect it to count if you had retired from Earthwave and were no longer involved with the organisation as executive director or on the board. A person can be retired from their "main" career and still be working. I know a few people who've done that: they work at something for a long time, retire, and then start a new career or expand a former hobby into a new career. Ca2james (talk) 05:54, 6 July 2015 (UTC) Thank you Risker. What I was looking for in the COIN posting was simply confirmation of the COI and for Atsme to follow the COI guideline and to disclose it clearly and for her conflicted edits to be reviewed in light of it, I agree that the sourcing and ELs need to be reviewed case by case. Thanks again. Jytdog (talk) 06:52, 6 July 2015 (UTC) I am sorry to quibble but there is something left to fix in your close. It starts out saying "Incorrect application of a 2014 policy to 2011 edits" Atsme's edits from 2011 didn't stand - the links to Earthwave are from when she returned in Jan 2014, as described in the COIN case (which I know is long) If you would just delete that first bit of the close, that would be great. Thanks again. Jytdog (talk) 07:15, 6 July 2015 (UTC) Exactly, and I was retired. I sent the information to OS and am waiting for the final evaluation. Emeritus status is not an active status - it is an honorary position. It was months into 2014 before I edited any of the fish articles. Risker, please re-evaluate your close based on the information I provided in the email. Thank you. Atsme📞📧 12:31, 6 July 2015 (UTC) I have seen no indication that there has been a change in Executive Director from when you first disclosed in 2011 up until today. Even if you step down from that role tomorrow and completely separate from the organization, the active COI has been present from your first edits in 2011 and through your return starting in 2014.. until the day when you step down. And even after that, there will still be a close association since you founded it in 1994 and ran it up until you stepped down (that is at least 21 years, should you step down tomorrow). Jytdog (talk) 13:01, 6 July 2015 (UTC) Emeritus - retired. You are wrong about the COI for retired persons. I don't own any stock in EWS. I was a volunteer. I'm no longer active as executive director - I'm emeritus. That's as much personal information as you need to know as simple volunteer editor on WP. You have no other OS rights. Drop the stick. Atsme📞📧 13:23, 6 July 2015 (UTC) I have seen nothing in the RW that reflects that (I note that someone just updated the Earthwave.org main page to state that you became some kind of emiritus at that day ; the site didn't say that earlier this week nor back in March of this year for example. (you are listed as the earthwave.org domain admin, btw) You updated the Earthwave FB page through last year tracking your WP editing, and as recently as March of this year remarked on your pride in your videos. The ongoing relationship with the organization is clear. Jytdog (talk) 13:36, 6 July 2015 (UTC) What is your problem, Jytdog. It doesn't matter when things were updated. I've been traveling. There was no need - no pressure - I'm retired. The only one with any issues about my retirement is YOU. My user page is dated prior to any dates that you think conflict. Let it go. You are not the one I have to prove anything to - all you need from me is my declaration that I am retired and have been since January 2014. The earthwave.org now confirms it. What you're doing now is trying to force me into an active position with an organization I am no longer active with as executive director. I'm emeritus. It doesn't prevent me from volunteering information - public dissemination- which is what I do right here on WP. Jiminy Cricket, Jytdog. Drop the stick. Atsme📞📧 13:44, 6 July 2015 (UTC) (edit conflict) with an edit to my post above. Posting this revision, and ending my involvement with this. I note that you, as you note above,just updated the Earthwave.org main page to state that your status changed just as you describe above - this changing of sites you have managed in response to these COI issues (like the deletion of this facebook post about Racz) is becoming a pattern. The Earthwave site didn't discuss your emiritus status earlier this week nor back in March of this year for example. (you are listed as the earthwave.org domain admin, btw - and as you noted you still control the website. What kind of "emiritus" status is that?) And the earthwave site doesn't say who is now actually running the organization. You updated the Earthwave FB page through last year tracking your WP editing, and as recently as March of this year remarked on your pride in your videos. The ongoing relationship with the organization is very clear. All this drama and sleight-of-hand is unnecessary. Please stop creating drama. Meh and double meh. I am going to stop discussing this is as it starting to feel just... filthy and will leave it to others. Jytdog (talk) 13:36, 6 July 2015 (UTC) (strike Jytdog (talk) 19:26, 6 July 2015 (UTC)) No, wait just a minute. You have been digging far deeper into my personal life and work associations than what you as a WP editor have a right to do. I want something done about your probing into my private life. For you to do what you've done goes way beyond what our policies allow. You're acting like the FBI. I was simply trying to establish my retirement so there wouldn't be any question. You brought it up to begin with and I accommodated by providing the evidence you needed. What you're doing now is disputing what I'm telling you. Why? It's my disclosure - the notice of my retirement is on my user page - I made it more publicly visible for your benefit. What you've done with your ridiculous allegations and "probing" into my personal life is sway consensus into believing your POV. The declaration of my retirement was made. Your behavior is what is seriously questionable. If you're doing such probing into the private lives of individuals you believe have a COI, there's a big problem. There is also the fact that you accused me of COI on two articles that were not even remotely connected. This is really, really bad. Atsme📞📧 14:07, 6 July 2015 (UTC) Enough, Jytdog; stop haranguing people. We're talking about half a dozen links, half of which are on pages that have already gone through community review and were deemed to be reasonable additions to the page. I don't accept this sort of thing on my talk page. You are not, under any circumstances, entitled to this level of personal information about anybody on Wikipedia, conflict of interest or no. Risker (talk) 18:23, 6 July 2015 (UTC) I agree that my posting was distasteful and have struck it. I realized that i had followed Atsme down the petty-hole which is why I said "done" above. As I noted this morning on my Talk page - this is not some Earthshattering COI like Wiki-PR or Wifione. Her organization is small; her COI has affected only a few articles. The only huge thing here is her denial. I notice that you have not oversighted my comment and I do not believe it falls in the territory of what is oversightable. But I agree - it was distasteful and I apologize for sullying your page with it. Again - out of here Jytdog (talk) 19:26, 6 July 2015 (UTC) PS: Risker your close is still not accurate; the relevant edits are from 2014 and 2015, and the goal of the COIN posting was not to have the links deleted, but to have the COI declared and the edits examined individually in light of the COI - that's all it was for. I realize that Atsme and others blew it up into the more than that, and that I derailed myself above a bit, but the posting and my goal were much more modestJytdog (talk) 19:36, 6 July 2015 (UTC) (finish the thought Jytdog (talk) 19:43, 6 July 2015 (UTC)) Risker, you've done the best you can. In light of my emeritus status and being forced to disclose more info than any other editor has been forced to disclose, my retirement, my willingness to let the outing go, and the time table I emailed to OS, I hope you will consider reverting back to your original close. I don't see how you could go wrong with it. Our first instincts are most reliable. Atsme📞📧 19:41, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

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Send on behalf of The Wikipedia Library using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 04:31, 7 July 2015 (UTC)

Justa Punk SPI

While I didn't expect any action, I question how you could state that there was no reasonable basis to bring the claim. A banned user, with a vendetta against the article, promised to avoid his ban to target the article. He did so through an IP on multiple occasions last year. Now, an almost identical IP makes the same edit, and you claim that that's not a reasonable basis for suspicion? Am I the only one who can see that 124.180.170.151, 124.180.144.121, and 124.180.110.1 all trying to delete the same article is at least a little suspicious? GaryColemanFan (talk) 02:00, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

I've answered at the SPI. And no, I think it's someone who has a different view of Australian wrestling than other editors have, an issue that's pretty much endemic in wrestling articles. The two IPs you've listed are obviously not going to turn up as socks of each other, and this isn't even at the WP:DUCK level given the actual sparseness of SPI findings over the years. There hasn't been a block of an actual sock since 2010; there have only been disruptive editing blocks. Risker (talk) 03:56, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

@Risker: Just want to add that Gary has been demonstrating such a high level of paranoia over Punk that he'll suspect any IP that does anything to an Australian article that'll lead to possible deletion. I suggested to him that he disengage for this reason as he isn't helping, and I was rudely dispatched off his talk page. If you look at the SPI archive, you'll note that I caught Punk red handed IRL (I know his real name and his history in the local pro wrestling biz) and my presence here now should prevent him from continuing his previous antics. So far - AFAIK - that has been the case. I have most Australian wrestling articles on my watchlist, except for Buddy Murphy that I recently removed from it, and if he is stupid enough to show up again legit I'll be onto him. Curse of Fenric (talk) 23:58, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Need1521

Thanks for looking into that. One other very likely sock is ROMBO1616 based on editing the same article Christianization of Kievan Rus' and also the user name, 5 letters capitalised and a 4-digit number.

A more important question is if it's possible to confirm that these accounts are connected to the earlier sockmaster Crazy1980? Other users have made that connection on the Need1521 SPI and with the block of User_talk:ROBIN6129, who contributed to a Need1521 sock section on Jimbo's page, as a Crazy1980 sock. I've also provided differences in the Need1521 SPI of similarities between them. Valenciano (talk) 09:17, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Active sock of account you've blocked

Hi, I noticed your recent block of this user for block evasion. You might look at this notification https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Venustar84#User:Bluestarcanada where it is shown the two users are identical. The Bluestarcanada account exhibits all the same behavior, including disruptive category creation, posts identical material to the ref desks, and is still active. Thanks. μηδείς (talk) 15:56, 9 July 2015 (UTC)

I came here to see what account/block Venustar84 is thought to be evading since there is no information in the block notice or on the user talk page. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 20:40, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

While I'm not going to decline to answer your question Liz, I would like you to articulate clearly why you feel you need to know this information. When you review the edits of the account (if you have looked at their contribs, I'll lay you odds you can figure out which evading account it is) then it's very clear that there is a serious behavioural issue not compatible with participation. There's another hint: why would this account be autoblocked? I'll post the name on your user talk in a little bit, but I'd like you to think about these points first. There's no unblock request, there's no indication that anyone in the community is concerned that the block was not appropriate, and there was plenty of evidence of socking well before I blocked. Risker (talk) 22:55, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Risker, I don't need to know any of this information. I asked because I have had interactions with this editor a while back and I was surprised to read that they had another account. Typically, if there is socking going on, the other account is identified in the block rationale so that is where my expectations were at.

As for guessing who is who, I'm terrible at that. I don't think I would be adept at being a Checkuser because I don't seem to see what is obvious to others when accounts are socking unless the usernames are near identical or a new account is making similar edits right after the previous account is blocked. Sock hunting is not a talent I have and I'm more than happy to leave that pursuit to those who have it!

So, consider my inquiry withdrawn. I was never questioning your admin decision to block, by the way, I just get puzzled when the explanations for blocks are a little cryptic. But there is no need to post this information to my talk page. I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my question. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 23:06, 11 July 2015 (UTC)

Abuse of Coin

You are involved in a recently filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case# and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. As threaded discussion is not permitted on most arbitration pages, please ensure that you make all comments in your own section only. Additionally, the guide to arbitration and the Arbitration Committee's procedures may be of use.

Thanks, Atsme^📞📧 02:05, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Chat

Risker, I'm up and available to gchat. I've never used gchat, so hopefully it's relatively intuitive. Ping me when you're ready. I may step away from the computer for periods of time but I should be around generally.--Bbb23 (talk) 14:49, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Hello Bbb23. I have sent you a gchat invitation, you should see it when you log into gmail. What say we team up at the top of the hour? Risker (talk) 15:02, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Which hour? You posted this at 15:02. You mean 16:00?--Bbb23 (talk) 15:07, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Yes please, 1600 UTC is perfect. Risker (talk) 15:09, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Will do.--Bbb23 (talk) 15:12, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Logged in but don't see an invitation. Somewhere special I should be looking?--Bbb23 (talk) 16:06, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Left hand side of your screen? If there is a sign that says "you are invisible" click it, and the invite should show up. Risker (talk) 16:10, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

I'm looking at the regular Google search page after logging in. It looks the same except that it shows me logged in, there's a button for notifications on the upper right (I have none), and that's pretty much it. There's nothing on the left side of my screen except whitespace. Maybe there's an account setting I need to change? I looked around but didn't see anything that jumped out at me.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:16, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Darn technology with all its variables...Let's try email. Risker (talk) 16:19, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

You need to be on the gmail page, rather than the regular Google search page you were on, to receive a chat invite Bbb23. --Elvey^(t•c) 15:56, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

@Elvey: Yes, I finally figured that out. Thanks, though.--Bbb23 (talk) 16:08, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

I try. --Elvey^(t•c) 04:15, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

One last question for clarity, please?

I just want to be clear in my mind that even though I retired in January 2014, the final determination is a COI regarding the 3 or 4 fish articles I edited after April 2014? Does that also mean I am not ever allowed to cite EWS or link to its PBS documentaries for as long as I live because of my previous involvement? Also WP:SELFCITE states: using material you have written or published is allowed within reason, but only if it is relevant, conforms to the content policies, including WP:SELFPUB, and is not excessive. Citations should be in the third person and should not place undue emphasis on your work. When in doubt, defer to the community's opinion. How does one make a citation in "third person"? Does that mean another editor could cite EWS or B. Wills and it be acceptable? Thank you in advance for clarifying. Atsme^📞📧 19:26, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

The answer to your last question is that you write it just as if you had nothing to do with it: "The Sun is really, really big. Footnote: Expert, Alice (2015) The Size of the Sun. Random Publisher. p. 23" instead of "My research shows that the Sun is really, really big. Footnote: Me." WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:01, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

Oh, that's a good way of describing it, WhatamIdoing. Thanks for picking up on this while I was away. Atsme I hope you found this helpful. Risker (talk) 00:11, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Edit filter

I'm surprised how well that edit filter appears to be working. Worrying. Sam Walton (talk) 22:32, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Samwalton9 good grief! Yeah, that's really really effective. Thanks again! Risker on the road (talk) 06:25, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Is there any progress on this? Sam Walton (talk) 20:17, 25 July 2015 (UTC)

Noting that I have replied directly to Samwalton9. Risker (talk) 00:10, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

User:Venustar84

Looks like she is evading block again. See Contributions/174.7.167.7. Should I start spi? or Behavioral evidence is enough for the block? I think it's a duck and should be blocked immediately. Thank you Supdiop (Talk🔹Contribs) 01:34, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Hello Supdiop - I am not in a position to review this at this time as I am at Wikimania; either an SPI or bringing it to the attention of another administrator would be appropriate. Risker on the road (talk) 06:24, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Old edit question...

I've been expanding various Gamera articles, and Sandy Frank, as the US distributor of said films, tends to come up tangentially, especially because 5 Gamera films (and a parody song) ended up on MST3K. I see your last two edits to his article in 2014 were unsourced BIO removal and an OTRS ticket item, which might have been name and birthplace(?). Per the unsource, I went looking for sources. IMDB has the same information that was removed, so clearly it's out in the public. I'm wondering what the nature of the OTRS is, then, and whether IMDB is RS enough to source the same info from there and put it back in the article. Can you clarify some of this? Thanks! MSJapan (talk) 23:35, 25 July 2015 (UTC);

IMDB is never enough to source anything that is disputed, and since this information is disputed, MSJapan, it's not going to be able to be used here. We're perhaps a bit more responsive than IMDB (especially about birth information, which we know can be used inappropriately by persons other than the article subject) when it comes to concerns expressed by article subjects. For all we know, IMDB sourced their information from the old versions of the Wikipedia article, which didn't meet sourcing standards. Sorry I can't help you further in seeking this information. Risker (talk) 00:09, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Missing 411 page deleted

You deleted a page called missing 411. Is there a copy of it remaining somewhere ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.26.253.190 (talk) 10:08, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Well, it's a deleted article so the data is available to administrators. On reviewing the content, though...it is a poorly written article that could have been deleted under several speedy deletion criteria. If you want to write on the topic, I recommend you start from scratch; this isn't even a good baseline. Risker (talk) 12:08, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Talk?

I am open to hearing your criticism of my work at COIN (you expressed concerns at Arbcom) as I know I screw up - and maybe I have been working with some bad assumptions that need correcting - but I hope that you would be open to discussion. Shall we talk? Would be happy to do so here, or via email or phone which we can set up offline off course, as you will. Jytdog (talk) 14:04, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Hello Jytdog. I'm happy to have some discussion with you, but I've got some specific wiki-plans for today that involve other people so I am not really available today. I've also got to get ready to go to Wikimania (for FDC orientation...anyone who thinks these things are vacations should see my schedule...) so perhaps trying for something on Monday or Tuesday might work. I'd prefer to do this onwiki as much as possible. Risker (talk) 15:07, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Great thanks. I am watching your page, so whenever you are ready. Jytdog (talk) 15:13, 12 July 2015 (UTC)

Hi. I'm still hoping to talk with you about COI issues as I don't understand your views on COI broadly - and specifically with regard to individuals who use Wikipedia to WP:PROMO their own views and publications per WP:Conflict_of_interest#Writing_about_yourself_and_your_work. I know last week you were busy and then there was Wikimania.... just letting you that I would like to continue the discussion. Thanks Jytdog (talk) 14:13, 20 July 2015 (UTC)

so Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Orangemoody/Articles this is what you have been dealing with, perhaps. Thanks for that work. Jytdog (talk) 23:12, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for compiling this as well, as it looks like it was a lot of work. I suppose the Foundation should start handing out gift baskets for this kind of stuff, but that is just my opinion. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 23:46, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

RfA

Hi Risker. I spotted your comment: "... the cadre of bureaucrats could have changed this behaviour by refusing to consider opposes based on grocery lists of candidate expectations" Really? --Dweller (talk) 22:32, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

There are people who have over 30 points in their "must have" qualifications. Most existing administrators could not even meet the standards that these people are setting (in fact, I'd venture to guess that many of the people with these long lists might not even be able to fulfill their own criteria - some of them aren't admins themselves). Some of the criteria on these lists aren't even all that appropriate. It does not surprise me in the least that 'crats don't seem to be aware of these expectations. Several of the lists have contradictory criteria, so if a candidate wants to get the support of User A, then they'll have to forego the support of User B - not because of the effectiveness of their actions, but simply whether or not they've done enough/too much X or posted frequently enough/too often in namespace Y or had a certain arbitrary percentage of Z. (There's one out there that requires users to edit template space, did you know that? How reasonable is that?) These long lists of "qualifications" aren't consistently applied by their advocates, either, which just makes them that much more absurd. Of course, it's all moot; it's been blatantly obvious since at least 2009 that bureaucrats had stopped giving more or less weight to oppose arguments. It's been years since we've seen a 'crat publicly devalue an oppose that says "did something dumb four years ago, not trustworthy". It counts every bit as much as "user was blocked two days ago".

Bureaucrats have studiously stood by and watched their most important role become deprecated because they didn't want to appear "involved" in RFA reform. Well, you could have collectively changed the way that RFA descended into darkness by refusing to allow certain behaviours at RFA; you as a group chose not to do that. You folks don't even bother looking at RFAs that are closed very early, or so I've been told. It's like you guys don't even care about RFAs until the clock has ticked down, and anything goes there until that time. Yes, I think the bureaucrats have a lot to answer for when it comes to the ineffectiveness of RFA. You've allowed bullies to run the place for a long time (even well-meaning people can be bullies), and it has had a direct and negative effect on the project. I had a rather unpleasant RFA back in 2008, but I gutted it out, and it wasn't that much better or worse than most RFAs. I wouldn't even consider running today because every bit of evidence I see indicates that the RFAs of 2013-2015 are far worse than the one I went through. Risker (talk) 23:00, 28 July 2015 (UTC)

Hmm. You've given me some food for thought. --Dweller (talk) 08:38, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Happened to be cruising by and wanted to comment: that the RFAs of 2013-2015 are far worse than the one I went through. This is precisely why have declined every potential nomination. I think I would have a lot to offer as an admin, but I am not putting myself through an RfA in its current form.--ukexpat (talk) 19:54, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

For what it's worth, when I did my RFA in 2009 I thought RFA was a madhouse at that point. Which, of course, is nothing to what it's like now. :) Killiondude (talk) 21:05, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Before the currently running RfA I would have argued that RfA isn't that bad these days, but after seeing someone claim a user is WP:NOTHERE because they don't significantly contribute to writing articles I'm not so sure. Sam Walton (talk) 21:08, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

Risker. I'm not sure I agree 100% with all of your thinking. But I agree/sympathise with enough of it, that I'd like to do something about it. How about this shopping list of issues, for starters, all based on your comments above:

1. Editors showing up at RfA with unreasonable shopping lists
2. Opposes based on "did something dumb four years ago, not trustworthy"
3. Looking at RFAs that are closed very early
4. Bullying behaviours at RfA

Before we get into what could be done about things, is that a good summary of the issues you perceive? --Dweller (talk) 08:55, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

• It's not entirely clear to me where the notion that bureaucrats' are responsible for "publicly devalu[ing frivolous] opposes"/"refusing to allow certain behaviours" comes from, indeed our guiding document says nothing of it. I'm not even sure we have a mandate (or bully pulpit as someone called it) to step in before the bell has rung, and as you say, doing so has lead to cries that this made us involved. Of course, I'm relatively newer - but is there any concrete basis in history for this role you say we've been remiss in fulfilling? Genuine question. As far as I can see, it's the wider community that is ultimately responsible for decorum. –xeno^talk 04:21, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

  (Just FYI Risker, this was a question to you; it perhaps wasn't clear given that your talk page was being used as a speakeasy at the time. It's something that I've wondered about a few times in our discussions on the subject.) –xeno^talk 12:13, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Ahh, sorry Xeno and others - I've been tied up on doing a special project that doesn't leave a lot of onwiki footprints the last few weeks, and I entirely missed this. I am not sure that there is a strong historical record on this issue; however, behavioural factors on the part of voters has been an issue addressed by crats in the past (see this archive for an example related to hypothetical socking). (I'll note that same archive gives an example of one of the few times where an RFA was extended, and subsequent events demonstrated that the "bad behaviour" for which the candidate wound up not being granted adminship was subsequently proven to be entirely correct behaviour on his part. I was concerned then that the RFA was extended at the request of a single oppose voter who very skilfully changed the outcome, and if you guys did it today I'd be extremely disturbed.) A significant change in RFA is that the community used to do a much more vigorous job of policing inappropriate behaviour at RFA - personal attacks in the past were actually dealt with relatively vigorously, but they are now pretty routinely accepted today. You're all still admins, and I do expect you all to respond to personal attacks that are occurring right under your noses. If you're not addressing PAs - which bluntly put will affect the entire nature of the "discussion" and thus have an impact on the consensus - then you're assessing tainted RFAs where there is no reasonable grounds on which to assess the consensus. This isn't a great summary of my thoughts on the matter; I'm responding late and do want to give you some response, though. I'll try to get back to this early next week after I finish the project I've been working on. Sorry! Risker (talk) 12:52, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Risker, I look forward to your further thoughts on this. Point well-taken about the 'admin' thing, of course I once-upon-a-time wanted to give up that flag. –xeno^talk 13:33, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Your comments

I find strong agreement with much of what you have said at BARC. I also note it seems an increasing number of opposers are coming under attack against them personally, rather than their comments. Support for this proposal continues to wane. It dropped below 62% today. As support continues to drop, I think we can expect antipathy to increase. You (as opposed to your comments) are now being attacked by multiple individuals. This is predictable, if disappointing. A proposal comes forward, seems to gain instant traction, and then slowly falls apart. Hopes are dashed, work is crushed under the weight of opposition. People get upset, and finger pointing (from all camps) begins. It's already begun.

The next trouble spot will be when this RfC closes. It will, I think, end up around 55-58% support. What has happened before (I do not remember where, but I think from RfA 2011) is since this gained "majority" support, somebody will press ahead with it and begin implementing it. This, despite the bureaucrats standing against it (Worm being the exception). There's going to be a great deal of protest if that happens. --Hammersoft (talk) 21:14, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Ask yourself this . . . .

Would you, acting as a company CEO or VP for personnel, require fifty written complaints from your employees that one of your male managers made sexist comments to, about or in the presence of subordinate female employees before you initiated an investigation? If so, you do not have a sound understanding of the potential legal liability of an American company for the misconduct of its employees in the year 2015. The standard you have suggested on the BARC RfC discussion page is so high as to be virtually meaningless in practice. By the time any such standard was invoked, multiple other processes to desysop the misbehaving would already be in process. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 21:38, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Please stop coming up with such facetious examples. We're not CEOs, we're not VPs of personnel, administrators are not anyone's employees, sexist comments would be made in the presence of the entire project (remember, Wikipedia is akashic - even suppressed edits can be retrieved by a select few editors). That editor can be dealt with at AN or ANI whether or not they have admin/crat/CU/OS bits. Contrary to some strange rumours, plenty of admins have been blocked for their behaviour and have been treated JUST like any other long-term, experienced community member. I cannot help but suspect that you are using the "sexist" example because I'm a woman. If we blocked everyone on this project who's ever made a remark that could be considered sexist, we'd reduce the entire editing community by about 80%. You're throwing up smokescreens here. And Hammersoft was right. Risker (talk) 21:47, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

The really weird part about all of this is that your name was recently mentioned to me as a possible admin candidate, and I said at the time that I didn't know much about you, but that I didn't know anything negative. If this is what you're "really like" as an editor, then I probably should have said nothing at all. Risker (talk) 22:10, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Interesting, Risker. So, in your estimation, having a grown-up discussion in real-world terms disqualifies me from being an administrator? Really? In my world, the ability to engage in robust give-and-take, without personalizing the discussion, is viewed as a significant plus. Perhaps not for everyone unfortunately.

I have no idea what your academic, professional or business background is, and you give few hints on your user page. I'm a practicing attorney who has served as the general counsel (senior VP for legal affairs) for two different corporations, and, yes, in that role I have had to supervise the investigation of sexual harassment complaints. In order to protect the company and minimize its potential legal liability, I have had to warn employees for relatively minor comments or conduct infractions, and, yes, I have had to fire employees -- male and female -- for inappropriate comments and/or conduct involving other employees in the workplace. In that role, I was judge and jury, and my CEO did whatever I told him in order to protect the company, and, by extension, our other employees. The fear of getting sued by one employee as a result of the misconduct of another is palpable in 2015; in situations where one employee has clearly crossed the line, you don't hesitate. You get rid of them. That's how you protect your other employees and the company.

Yes, I asked you the question in those terms because I wanted you to recognize how ridiculous it is to suggest that we wait for 50 complaints before accepting a requested review of an administrator's conduct. That said, I could have just as easily asked you about 50 complaints about harassment or discrimination based race, ethnic background, religion, sexual orientation, physical impairment, etc. My point is we cannot afford to wait until we have 50 angry editors before reviewing a situation. We're not talking about the usual "he blocked me because I'm a sock puppet" or "she locked the page because we were edit-warring" or "he closed the XfD in a way with which I disagree." Those are all part of the typical admin's job, and experienced editors know that. I am unwilling to post names on the discussion page, but if you want an example of a troubled admin that ANI could not address and ARBCOM did not take up until it was too late, I will remind you about BWilkins/Dangerous Panda, who was giving off signals of a potential meltdown for 2+ years before ARBCOM finally took messy, but necessary action. What do we say to the young editor who got blocked in 2012 because that admin did not understand the notability precedents applicable to certain sports articles and their contents, speedily deleted a dozen or more such articles, refused to explain his actions because her was too busy, then as an involved admin blocked the editor and removed his advanced permissions when he protested? Oh, sorry, maybe we should have dealt with this sooner?

Bottom line: there are legitimate questions about admin conduct, most of which could and should be addressed at a level below desysopping, and there should be a way to handle that before it lands on ARBCOM's plate with a thud, and a dozen different parties to the case. We might even save a few good admins from turning down a bad road by addressing legitimate problems at a lower level sooner. Regards. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 22:54, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Dirtlawyer1, please could you drop the stick? You say that, "In [your] world, the ability to engage in robust give-and-take, without personalizing the discussion, is viewed as a significant plus." But you have personalized this. You have singled out Risker out of all those taking the opposite view to you for aggressive and dogged questioning. Not satisfied with the debate on the relevant talkpage, you have brought the matter up here on her talkpage. Again, your tone is needlessly aggressive and asks "Would you, acting as a company CEO or VP for personnel, require fifty written complaints from your employees that one of your male managers made sexist comments to, about or in the presence of subordinate female employees before you initiated an investigation?" That isn't a genuine question to which you are seeking an answer, but a piece of rhetoric, and the scenario you have chosen (sexual harassment) is unnecessarily inflammatory and only serves to make the discussion more unpleasant. Please stop and walk away for a bit. WJBscribe (talk) 23:07, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

No, WJB, I did not single out Risker. Risker was engaged in strongly worded debate on the discussion talk page. There is no good answer to the question I asked; I'm well aware of that. That's why I asked it. It's an analogy that shows the flaws in the other party's reasoning. I think you know this. I believe that Risker is a mature adult and can speak for herself, as she proved quite capable of doing on the discussion talk page. I will walk away, WJB, but recognize that your suggestions that the analogy is "inflammatory" and my tone "needlessly aggressive" are themselves rhetorical exaggerations. Risker does not believe that there are any administrator problems out there that are not already being adequately addressed by ARBCOM's process. In my answer above, I've named one name and provided one egregious example where ARBCOM failed for two years to address recurrent problems with one administrator. You would both do well to consider that example. Feel free to drop by my user talk page later if you're up for a serious discussion. Regards. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 23:22, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Dirtlawyer1, I'll put this bluntly. You did target me; if you were just interested in "robust discussion" you would have stayed where the conversation was and not come to post here. I believe that you yourself have failed to realize that you're engaging in second generation gender discrimination by specifically raising the issue of "sexual harassment" with pretty much the only woman who's disagreed with you about the general topic. Notice how I'm not going to ask for your desysop, what with you not being an admin and all, but it is something to bear in mind that when you decided to increase your level of aggression on this topic by taking it from the page where it was discussed directly to my user page, you did so by specifically using a strawman argument on an issue that would disproportionately affect women editors. The catch, of course, is that I've been here long enough to know exactly how genuine sexual harassment is dealt with here, and it doesn't require anything more than a bunch of editors on ANI and an admin to push the block button. It doesn't need a bureaucracy. It needs warning; if that doesn't work, it needs blocking; and if the behaviour continues, Arbcom has plenty of ability to desysop. Risker (talk) 23:42, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Risker, you may be blunt, but you're also off topic. In fact, you've lost the thread completely. Self-evidently you have not yet grasped that I was not suggesting Wikipedia has a problem with administrators engaged in sexual harassment or sex discrimination; I was using a real world analogy to suggest that waiting for 50 fifty complaints (or 50 !votes) about administrator conduct problems is a very bad idea because it leads to festering problems. You missed that -- whoosh! -- clean past you. As for your suggestion that I am engaged in some form of "second-generation sexual harassment" because I engaged in a discussion with you (a woman) is so remarkably off base that I am stunned. I engaged in discussion with you because you were the only person (not the "only woman") who was making his or her strongly worded opposition to the proposal in this afternoon's discussion, and you were also making unsupported assertions and drawing unsupported conclusions about the proposal, all the while protesting that you supported some form of genuine "community-based" conduct review, which under questioning proved to be false. All of my questioning was an attempt to tease out your real position, which you just forcefully stated above: you don't support a community-based conduct review process, you support ARBCOM and will support nothing else that has a reasonable chance of gaining community support. That was the honest answer I was trying to get you to make earlier. Now that we've established that, I respectfully request you withdraw your assertion of "sexual harassment" for the simple reason that it's a false and grossly unfair accusation. It's now my turn to be offended. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 01:01, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

See now, you're not getting it at all. You deliberately chose an extreme example for which you knew full well the project as a whole has a challenge addressing (if you didn't, then you're not aware enough of issues on the project to be commenting). You pointedly raised it on the talk page of a person who has been pointing out second generation gender discrimation - which is not the same thing in any way, shape or form as "sexual harassment", but is the passive and often unconscious use of gender-specific expectations to elicit responses. (Example: expecting women to not use the same language and tone as men, which is pretty much what you're doing here. You're the one who brought up the hyperbolic situation, not me.) I am not being off-topic; you took us off-topic. You are completely wrong about what I do and do not support, and you are deliberately and repeatedly misstating my position. Six months from now, I think there's a fairly good chance of getting an actual community-based desysop process in place. What you're stumping for is not community based at all, it is complaints based. I worry that you have confused complaints with the community. The community is an awful lot bigger than one or even two complainers. I don't have the time to waste on looking up the request for a former administrator to apply her own selected "voluntary desysop" measures, but there were easily more than 50 people who supported her doing so, and most of them just signed their name, they didn't have to come up with paragraphs of prose. That's what I expect we can still do, get 50 people over the course of three months to ask an admin to go through a new RFA. It's a fraction of what's required on other, much smaller projects. I don't think that is an unreasonable expectation. Incidentally, what I hear anecdotally from editors of both the French and German wikipedias is that many of the people who didn't contest or voluntarily handed in their bits were actually pretty good admins who'd done one stupid thing, so it was still pretty unforgiving. Arbcom does do a better job and is more of a community-based process than anything you've proposed or supported; 100% of arbitrators are community-elected, with an explicit understanding that desysopping is part of their job. None of the bureaucrats were elected for that purpose, and in fact they have worked for as long as I have been part of this project to avoid participating in any dispute resolution while wearing their 'crat hat; they even avoid closing non-RFA consensus based discussions. You may not be aware of this, but the premise upon which the BARC proposal is based is fundamentally flawed in that it requires almost every active bureaucrat to participate in every discussion that comes up; there simply aren't that many active 'crats. Yes, there are a lot of them. Half of them are barely participating in the project at all, and several haven't done 'crat actions in years. You want community-based desysopping, leave the 'crats out of it entirely except for reading the results of the re-RFA. I'm seriously disturbed that you are mischaracterizing my opinions so badly. Risker (talk) 01:25, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Risker, likewise, I am seriously disturbed that a community leader has just accused a good-faith editor of 6+ years of "second-generation gender discrimination" in order to score debate points and chill the conversation. That's a shame, but when when you're a carpenter, I guess you think everything can be fixed with a hammer. When you work with gender discrimination, you tend to see it everywhere. No good faith, assume the worst, even when you've clearly misunderstood the other person's points. You've also completely ignored the substance of my four paragraphs above, and pointedly ignored a glaring example of ARBCOM's failure: until you can accept the failure to deal with BWilkins/Dangerous Panda for two years, you will never understand the damage that unaddressed admin problems cause. You apparently view the world through the lens of an ex-ARBCOM member: carpenter meet hammer. Your ambiguous suggestions of a reverse RfA for desysopping would be far more painful the involved admin, far more fractious for the community, and lead to more rather than fewer than hard feelings. Any community-based desysopping based on the RfA model would be a carnival of blood, and further poison related processes, and would have no possible outcome other than "retain" or "reject". And the likelihood that most administrators would support such a reverse RfA process is low. You refuse to accept that another committee-based mechanism might address problems at a lower threshold, with lesser remedies, and prevent situations from escalating to the level of ARBCOM's desysopping someone. As for your criticisms of the present BARC proposal, I probably agree with most of them, but I also recognize that it is the only viable game in town, and much of the criticism can be constructively addressed and the proposal improved significantly. And, no, you're not revealing anything to me about the activity level of the 'crats, etc., that I don't already know. I design and fix organizations and processes for a living; I have no doubt that the proposal can be modified, and made to work. And, yes, those fixes may reduce and alter the proposed role of the bureaucrats while retaining their involvement. What is required is constructive criticism, and imagination, not obstructionism. Before today, I had never visited your user talk page, but having spent some time here, and read your comments to other editors, I now understand what motivates your opposition to this proposal: fear of score-settling, and fear of your fellow editors who cannot be trusted. The BARC proposal can be modified, fixed, and made to work, but I don't believe that's what you want. You want to preserve the status quo and prerogatives of existing institutions. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that's not leadership; that's an ostrich burying its head in the sand. Good night. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 02:23, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Dirtlawyer1, you realise that I was the only arbitrator to accept a case against BWilkins when he first came to arbcom, right? For pretty well precisely the reasons that you identified. At that time, there was still the now-deprecated RFC/U that some of my former colleagues thought was useful (I never saw a RFC/U that really had an impact on an editor's behaviour, and thought it was a waste of time), but in the interim the solution was that BW used his non-admin account and de-watchlisted noticeboards. I don't know why you think there would have been a different outcome from a BARC; I expect that it would have been exactly the same. That *was* the lesser sanction you're talking about. That *was* the step before desysop. Didn't change his behaviour at all, I quite agree. (Elsewhere on this page I talk about having a list of problem admins; he was on it.) I am not being an ostrich here. I do not believe that the solution to problem admins is more bureaucracy; in fact, it is my considered experience that every time we add a layer of bureaucracy, we make things *less* effective. AUSC is a good example: they couldn't even come up with a recommendation for removing CU tools from a CU who had clearly violated the much more stringent expectations on checkusers. (Arbcom did the right thing there; full disclosure, I brought that case to Arbcom, and was surprised they didn't just take the tools away by motion.) I am sorry that you cannot see that "form a committee" has almost never resulted in improvement to the project. It took Arbcom many years to become a genuinely community-based committee that was genuinely responsive to the needs of the community. It has its good years and its bad years, but you will get that with any committee. I do believe that, given the very good support amongst community members for the BARC proposal, there's a significantly better chance for the re-RFA option to pass; the seeds have been planted, and there are a lot more community members than administrators participating in these discussions, which was not always the case in the past. I can't support anything that adds another layer of bureaucracy, though. And I can't support anything that makes it impossible for admins to have a life outside of Wikipedia. There have been many occasions where I've been largely absent from the project for several weeks at a time. Believe it or not, that actually resulted once in *my* being brought before arbcom for failing to do something that I simply was not in a position to do during a period when I was rarely logging in for, well, having a life outside of Wikipedia. As it happens, Arbcom was well aware contemporaneously of why I was paying almost no attention to Wikipedia at the time (this was during the time that I was on the committee), and the entire premise of the case was absurd, but that didn't reduce the viciousness of the process. It also made me think long and hard about whether I wanted to work with a community that ate its young the way Wikipedia did. I stuck it out, but I'm darned if I'll support a process that's explicitly designed to do just that. Risker (talk) 03:00, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Risker, you have said several mouthfuls in your last post above. That said, it's been a long day in RL, I am tired, and I should not respond at length now. I do want you to know, however, that I believe your roles in the 2015 Chase me/Guardian case and the 2013 BWilkins case were admirable. You deserve kudos, in particular, for your prosecution of the Chase me/checkuser mess, which, apart from the self-evident misconduct, was hard evidence of multiple institutional control problems within Wikipedia. In my 6+ years on-wiki, I have avoided direct participation in ArbCom proceedings like most sensible persons avoid the plague, but I was compelled to comment in the run-up to ArbCom accepting the Chase me case: [3]. In my grumpy opinion, both of those admins had long-term patterns of problematic conduct that escalated over time because the issues remained unaddressed at earlier stages. It is not lost on me how multiple administrators and others were willing to defend and excuse the obviously problematic behavior of those admins, even to the detriment of affected editors and third-parties. On that note, I will retire from this conversation for now, and return tomorrow to hopefully engage you in a more productive conversation on the basis of your last post above. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:59, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

A desysop question

Hi Risker,

As someone who, I think, either disagrees with me about an alternative desysop procedure, or at least partially disagrees with me, I'd be interested n your take on this. This is the fundamental question, in my mind at least, but it seems to always get lost (maybe it's only the fundamental question to me). Assuming no actual misuse of the tools, should an admin who would not pass an RFA if it were held today remain an admin? Assume, for the moment, that there was a relatively painless easy process to determine this - I understand that you don't think this can be painless, and foresee misuse by trolls, and see that as a big problem, but I'd like to separate it out from the basic question for now. Say an admin is constantly acting like a jerk, or constantly seems to inflame disputes rather than deescalate them, acting in a way that (if he were not already an admin) would doom his chances at an RFA, but wasn't misusing the tools... would it be best if they were not an admin? Everyone seems to me to be focusing on misuse of tools, but that's not the critical issue; ArbCom can actually be used for that. But ArbCom will never desysop someone just for being a gigantic jerk, or acting less maturely than was expected at their RFA, and I think that's why a lot of people (subconsciously?) would like another process.

Just picking your brain - my thinking on this is still evolving. Doing it here because I'm already fed up with about 30% of the people posting at the BARC page. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:36, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

(uninvited visitor comment) There is no admin—other than those people who make one minor edit a year to retain their status and then disappear again—who doesn't have at least five people who hate their guts and think they "constantly act like a jerk"; you, me and Risker all certainly fall into that group. Short of re-running an RFA for every single admin—which would be a time-consuming and soul-destroying exercise—there is literally no way to determine whether an admin "would not pass an RFA if it were held today"; even the usual three people who are usually held up as textbook Bad Admins (I'm sure you know who they are) have their admirers and might manage to get enough of them to turn up to get them past the bar; conversely, the textbook Good Admins have made enough enemies along the way that they couldn't be certain of passing. ‑ iridescent 22:45, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

I understand the pitfalls/impossibility of trying to come up with a relatively painless system, but I first want to know the basic underlying question; If you ignore the problem with how it would work in practice, is "would pass an RFA today" a reasonable criterion in theory? --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:50, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

How can you ignore the "how would it work in practice"? Iridescent is quite right I'm afraid. Eric Corbett 22:59, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

(most of this written before e/c with Eric's post) For example, I think there are a decent number of people - admins included - who think I suck. I suspect, but don't know for sure, they're outnumbered 2-1 or 3-1 (66%-75%, RFA discretionary range) by people who disagree and think I'm doing OK. The painful/gameable part of that is important; if I had to re-run an RFA right now I doubt I would, it's too much bother for something that doesn't bring much enjoyment anymore. But the underlying criterion seems sound; if there is no consensus that someone should remain an admin, it seems like they shouldn't be one. if there were a relatively painless/ungameable process to determine that, I wouldn't want to be an admin if I thought less than 66% of people thought I should be one. I actually wouldn't want to be one if I thought 51% of people thought I shouldn't be one. If there were a painless way to find that out, I'd want to know. (partially answer Eric, after an e/c) I don't want to ignore the practical effects forever, just at the beginning of the discussion, to figure out more clearly where people stand. We should (IMHO) separate out objections based on the difficutly in coming up with a relatively painless, ungameable system, to objections based on the idea that unpopular admins should still be admins as long as they're not misusing tools. Not because that will solve the problem, but because at least we'd be talking to each other instead of past one another. The current dysfunctional way we "discuss" this is deeply frustrating. --Floquenbeam (talk) 23:04, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

But you can't separate them out. The only alternative to "desysopping based only on demonstrable abuse" is "desysopping based on 'I just don't like the guy'", since there's no way to quantify "being a jerk". The moment you open up the box marked "a sizeable number of people dislike this person" as a reason for taking action, you either open it up as grounds for blocking also—and you, me, Risker and Eric immediately become metaphorical grease spots on the Wikipedia sidewalk—or you formalise "admins are a special class and subject to different rules", which is never going to fly. ‑ iridescent 23:13, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Iridescent, I agree with you up to a point, but only up to a point. A purely subjective standard for evaluating administrators would indeed be problematic; but there does come a point, in practice as well as theory, at which an administrator's conduct should result in removal of adminship even in the absence of overt misconduct or a "smoking gun" instance of "abuse of tools." Imagine, for example, an admin whose each and every posting on the project was accompanied by a gratuitous, nasty remark but always staying just this side of an actionable "personal attack"; or an admin 90% of whose AfD closures, routine as well as controversial, were plainly offside of consensus; or an admin who was routinely being brought to ANI three times a week, on legitimate rather than dubious or trumped-up grounds, and was almost invariably being reversed.

Such administrators the project can do without, and if such an one had been brought before the Committee when I was an arbitrator, I would have carefully considered whether he or she should retain adminship. If I thought there were a meaningful number of admins falling into these categories, and with whom the ArbCom was refusing to deal, I would be carefully considering how to move ahead with an alternative path to desysopping. However, in my experience of the project over the past (I find it difficult to believe this) nine years, the percentage of such administrators is slight—slight enough that I am not convinced that a whole new bureaucratic (sic) apparatus is needed to deal with them. YMMV (and I realize that Eric's M certainly MV). Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:33, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Heh. I would have desysopped them without hesitation. Back before I was first on Arbcom, I had a mental list of admins I thought were problematic; there were about 10 admins on it. All but one is now desysopped or has left the project, at least one of them leaving to avoid an Arbcom case. I think I've got a pretty good nose for genuinely bad sysops. Risker (talk) 23:59, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Am I the one who survived? The Nose of Risker sounds like a powerful artifact if it can truly tell a bad admin. Jehochman ^Talk 14:24, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Heh, Jehochman, you were never quite that bad. Maybe the alternate list... ;-) Risker (talk) 12:49, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much. Have to run. Lots of work to do. Jehochman ^Talk 17:52, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

@Newyorkbrad:I agree with you in theory. I am probably naïve (having been accused of that many times before) but I would have hoped/expected your examples to pan out as follows:

• …an admin whose each and every posting on the project was accompanied by a gratuitous, nasty remark but always staying just this side of an actionable "personal attack"

  I would believe that this admin is clearly violating Wikipedia:Administrators#Administrator conduct, which states:

  Administrators are expected to lead by example and to behave in a respectful, civil manner in their interactions with others.…Occasional mistakes are entirely compatible with adminship.…However, sustained or serious disruption of Wikipedia is incompatible with the status of administrator, and consistently or egregiously poor judgment may result in the removal of administrator status.

  Therefore, an RfAR or a block/ban discussion on AN/ANI is completely warranted.

• …an admin 90% of whose AfD closures, routine as well as controversial, were plainly offside of consensus

  Clear case of failure as regards Wikipedia:Administrators#Accountability, bullet point 5 "Repeated or consistent poor judgment". Once again, RfAR/AN/ANI is the existing and appropriate venue for desysopping (or the functional equivalent of a perma-block/ban) for this hypothetical admin.

• …an admin who was routinely being brought to ANI three times a week, on legitimate rather than dubious or trumped-up grounds, and was almost invariably being reversed.

  Same as above

So I think we have processes in place to handle these admins; we need to be utilizing them in actual cases. -- Avi (talk) 00:24, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Let me give an example from my own experience. I was so shocked at the oppose votes during my first RfA that I withdrew my nomination, even though it's quite conceivable that had I not done so I would now be one of the anointed like yourself. Liz in her recent RfA chose a different path. Eric Corbett 23:18, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

• Floquenbeam, I pretty much agree with Iridescent on this. I do not believe that more than 5% of current, active administrators would pass today's RFA. I believe that every administrator who has posted on this page in the past year would get desysopped or come darn close; certainly with the BARC proposal they'd be likely to be complained about there. I believe that you're probably going to be amongst the first targets of this "new" regime, and that you'd probably pass a forced re-RFA if it was a genuine community decision (similar to the German/French model) but that you'd be desysopped if the proposed process went through (if not on the first try, then on subsequent ones), because it is designed in such a way that anyone who does anything out of the ordinary will be particularly targeted. I think you're a good admin. My opinion would be irrelevant. I kind of think that you'd be so heartbroken when the (definitely inevitable request came through that you'd probably quit, and that would be an enormous loss to the project. This is my honest opinion: that people like you, and probably like me, who do hard things, will be the targets. Risker (talk) 23:32, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Dinosaurs once ruled the Earth; now they don't. Eric Corbett 00:36, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Eric, you mean we aren't mastodons anymore? Risker (talk) 00:50, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

• PS: Hi everyone! Hors d'oeuvres are over there on the sofa table, and adult and soft beverages on the counter! Do try the salmon... :-) Risker (talk) 23:45, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Assuming I don't just quit this place in disgust over this: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Mass creation of blank pages, I'll review and comment later. And Risker, you're running low on salmon. --Floquenbeam (talk) 14:16, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

The thing is, I've had a very liberal recall policy for a long time now, and no one has tried to use it. If gaming were as likely as you think - if you think I'd be one of the first admins up against the wall - wouldn't someone have tried to do so by now? I'm also thinking about TRM's recent sort-of reconfirmation RFA at AN or ANI; he's pissed off a lot of people in his day, but there was pretty overwhelming support for his remaining an admin. I'm not as pessimistic as many of you that something like BARC would open the flood gates.

I feel bad using an actual person as an example, but... yeah, the ex-admin mentioned above. I would have liked a way for the community to realize it had made a mistake in granting the bit earlier, rather than wait for an "excuse" to go to ArbCom. It took actual tool misuse for ArbCom to desysop him. If there were a way to convince ArbCom that there was a reasonable consensus that they can include "acting in a way that would have failed your RFA if you'd done it before getting the bit" as a reason to desysop someone - if that could be considered "no longer has the trust of the community, so re-do an RFA", or even "may no longer have the trust of the community. so re-do an RFA", I'd be willing to drop something like BARC and try that instead.

As a side-issue but somewhat related, I think RFA would gain more good admins, and have a lot less yuckiness, if people could say in their RFA's "I will not block anyone for anything except vandalism", or "I know you all think I'm a crazy deletionist/inclusionist, so I won't close AFD's", and have ArbCom desysop by motion if the promise is broken. You'd get less angry opposition (because people wouldn't be as worried that they were dealing, say, with a closet civility cop), and thus more people willing to go through an RFA if there were less angry opposition, and thus ultimately more admins. But right now I'm pretty sure if I tried to bring a "conduct unbecoming" type case, it wouldn't get very far. I don't think ArbCom thinks that's what people want it to do. --Floquenbeam (talk) 20:41, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Floq, nobody (and I really mean nobody) takes anyone's voluntary recall measures seriously; the number of times that administrators have just blithely ignored them makes them meaningless, and the community's given up trying to "enforce" them. I can't remember the last time anyone tried to activate one of those. It does not surprise me in the least that Arbcom tends to have to desysop people who are going off the rails; based on my (rather extensive) experience, one of the signs of admins who are heading for disaster is the unwillingness or inability to understand that they're not currently up to the job. Lots of admins have the sense to go sit in the sunshine when this place starts to get too weird, or to go off and do something else and learn to ignore their talk page (like I did last night, doing something behind-the-scenes after a tough day rather than answering here). It's the ones who become obsessed not only with the need to act as administrators, but also unwavering in their belief that they make no errors, who are genuinely problematic. They almost always eventually crash and burn if they can't change that pattern. (In short, hubris is the main reason for desysopping. Bad actions are a distant second.) The fact that you regularly re-examine your actions, and are willing to admit you have or could have made an error, is what makes you a good admin.

One of the issues that comes with adminship is that almost all administrators change over time. I can't think of anyone who became an admin contemporaneous to me (and who are still around and active admins) who still carries out admin tasks the way they did back in 2008. They've refined their work, or they have specialized in particular areas, or developed new skills. Most of us have ventured into areas that we didn't focus on at our RFAs. Quite honestly, we didn't know enough about what we'd want to be doing 3 or 5 or 10 years down the road when we signed up for the bits. This is why I'd be hesitant to extract "promises" from RFA candidates not to work in certain areas or carry out certain tasks. Honestly, the community has to get over the fact that RFA candidates are human beings and not perfect automatons. None of these supposedly higher standards have resulted in "better" admins; in fact, I'd argue that they've created administrators who are less willing to do any of the hard parts of adminship, thus increasing the burden on those who *are* willing (or feel sufficiently obligated) to do those things. They certainly haven't resulted in *enough administrators to do the work*, even the uncontroversial work. I'd be interested to hear why you think hobbled adminship is a useful thing. I personally think that if someone isn't going to be able to fully use the delete or block tools, if they're only allowed to use them under specific circumstances, we've just created a whole new bureaucracy to monitor the tool use by those individuals, we've created a whole new drama sink for people to insist that HobbleAdmin did something ever so slighly out of their agreed-upon parameters, and we're gonna have more wiki-lawyering than ever. We have more than enough ways to hurt people now - and believe me, every time that someone's taken to arbcom, or to a level where genuine sanctions can be imposed, we cause them damage, even if they're fully exonerated; we don't need to create new ones. Make the existing ones more effective, yes. But we don't need new ways. Risker (talk) 12:49, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Regarding I can't remember the last time anyone tried to activate one of those, there was a somewhat half-hearted attempt to initiate a recall last month. As in virtually every case anyone has actually tried to initiate a recall, the admin in question simply marked their recall criteria as historical and carried on as if nothing had happened. IIRC (and I may be wrong) User:Herostratus is the only admin in the history of Wikipedia who has actually honoured a recall petition.

I can understand the arguments for "hobbled adminship" to some extent; I made a promise in my RFA not to be the admin to pull the trigger on the deletion of fictional characters, and have tried to stick to that, although someone will no doubt pop up now triumphantly waving a counter-example. (My view is that Wikipedia's articles on fictional characters are generally of highly dubious quality and rarely appropriate. I note that this article is still an incoherent trainwreck, eight years after a bunch of people attacked me for my lack of faith that the wiki-process would magically clean it up.) I'd be against making it enforceable, though; as Risker says, it would lead to endless lawyering about whether any given action was covered by a given pledge, to an extent that would make "behaves disruptively in any discussion" look like a model of clear boundary-setting.

I agree entirely with the contention that the proposed BARC process will just drive people out of taking action in contentious areas. Even if you put some kind of "must have 20 signatories before the petition will be considered" threshold, that still means that Wikipedia Review, the GGTF, Gamergate or any other reasonably large off-wiki lobbying group—not to mention any relatively active wikiproject—have the power to drag anyone to whom they take a dislike into an endless cycle of bureaucracy.

(Elephant in the room which everyone seems too polite to mention: the assumption throughout this proposal is that the 'crats are highly respected neutral and dispassionate observers who can be trusted to make the difficult decisions. In reality, Wikipedia:Bureaucrats#Current bureaucrats contains at least one, and arguably quite a few more, of the admins who would be first against the wall if a desysopping process went ahead, and nobody seems to have given any consideration to how that is going to work. Let alone what happens when someone hauls a serving arb or a WMF dev in front of the committee.) ‑ iridescent 14:55, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Rats, they're on to us. Time to re-paradigm the cabal . -- Avi (talk) 16:02, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

You know, when you said that, it occurred to me that there's a very good chance each person reading that comment would come up with a different 'crat (or list of 'crats) who'd be first against the wall. Risker (talk) 16:17, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Yep, and we can't all be first against the wall... Rock, paper, scissors anyone? WJBscribe (talk) 16:26, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't know about you, but I'm bringing a shotgun 8-) -- Avi (talk) 16:33, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

As a historical note, I can think of at least one other instance (Crzrussian) in which an admin honored a recall request. But that was in 2006, so I'd say your overall point stands unchallenged. I agree with the rest of Iridescent's points (other than the last paragraph). Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:58, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

• Risker restocks the beverage area and lays out fruit and cheese to replace the salmon and hors d'oeuvres. Risker (talk) 16:17, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Just last month The Rambling Man put himself out there for recall at ANI. This was during the Kww/TRM debacle and before Arb took up the case. While not an official recall based on a written, personal policy, I think it is worth noting as it was as public as you can get. We can argue about his interpretation of the event afterwards, but there was a consensus to keep. My best guess is he would have stepped down had it not gone his way. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 16:47, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Correct. FWIW, my "interpretation of the event afterwards" was simply a statement of fact, the community were invited to decide whether I should be desysopped, and it was closed with a consensus not to do so. It was not an invitation for the community to "admonish" me, whatever that means. Several people offered many and differing opinions. But in answer to Dennis' point, yes, I would have stepped down should consensus have been found for that (as I clearly stated in my opening statement at ANI). The Rambling Man (talk) 16:57, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

My ears are burning

Apparently someone mentioned me in the thread above. Based on a quick scan it looks to be about admin recall. I'm for that, and I'm also for having a magic unicorn to ride to work, and since both are about equally likely to ever manifest I don't have much interest in the subject so I didn't read the thread. But just FWIW:

If you look at User:Herostratus/Administrator reconfirmation, you'll see where I thought thru and laid out a detailed procedure for recalling admins using existing policies.

That's key because of course you're never going to get any new policies approved. Anyway, User:Herostratus/Administrator reconfirmation is based on the observation that it's really hard to get approval to do anything here, but it's also hard to get approval to stop you from doing anything. In particular, rather than proposing to publish a page, just publish the page and initiate an MfD to delete the page; put your opponents in the position of having to put together a supermajority or winning argument. This is exactly how I created WP:SERVICE, on purpose, so I know it works.

However, I tried to pull the trigger on this on DangerousPanda. DangerousPanda was a really bad admin and not long after got de-admined by ArbCom. However, even for DangerousPanda I got zero signatures and a lot of how-dare-you flack and insults. It's all here: User talk:Herostratus#Petition for reconfirmation RfA for User:DangerousPanda

So I guess people are pretty much of the mind "if it's not a approved procedure, I don't want to go near it, even peripherally". Oh well. However, I suck at politics, and I don't do IRC or make wikifriends etc. I keep hoping that someone who does would pick up on User:Herostratus/Administrator reconfirmation. I'm not holding my breath but you never know. Herostratus (talk) 04:12, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
	For Wikipedia:Long-term_abuse/Orangemoody. Keegan (talk) 23:18, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Good work uncovering all of that. Thanks to you and others involved. Chillum 00:04, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Enjoy yourself now that this is all done. --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 00:18, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks from me too, and to all involved in this task. –xeno^talk 00:24, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

+1 (Just got home). Good work all around, but most especially Risker. -- Avi (talk) 03:23, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Orangemoody

I left a question for you at WP:AN, but I forgot to include your name, so you didn't get notified. Please pretend that I linked your username instead of leaving a message here :-) The section is "Technical question". Nyttend (talk) 01:55, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

No problem, Nyttend - I've already answered there. Risker (talk) 02:11, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! Just wanted to make sure that the bot had blocked everyone it should have, and nobody else. Related question — are we deleting everything by the Orangemoody folks, or not? You say both "the articles are all being deleted" and "Review the edits of the sock accounts for any undeleted article creations. It may be appropriate to delete these articles as well". The latter sounds like we're not deleting everything (may be appropriate suggests that it may not always be appropriate), so I was unsure how to interpret things and declined one speedy request. Let me know and I'll happily delete it and others. Nyttend (talk) 02:48, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

@Nyttend: the socks would often go around and add templates like {{wikify}} to articles to add a review of their contributions to be that as simply wikignoming. Sometimes they would edit or tag articles that other socks had created to cause discord in editing to show "clients." This type of editing is what needs reviewed, to make sure it was innocuous. Keegan (talk) 03:25, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Nyttend, I've taken the liberty of referring your question back to the AN thread, because it's worth broader input. In short, we're now at the point where the further investigation is pretty much in the hands of the community. Risker (talk) 03:36, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Sure, sounds good. I just thought (1) this was one of those situations where the functionaries needed to make a decision in camera due to checkuser-related matters, and (2) we were just supposed to follow directions. I just wasn't sure what the directions were supposed to be, and I didn't realise that this kind of thing was open to discussion. Nyttend (talk) 03:49, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Orangemoody

Hi there, I'm Ethan Chiel, a reporter working for Fusion (if you'd like independent confirmation you can send me a message on Twitter or at my work email (firstname.lastname@fusion.net). I was hoping I could ask you a few questions about Orangemoody. thanks, ethanchiel —Preceding undated comment added 03:04, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello Ethan, I've referred your request to WMF Communications team, and to some of my colleagues who have worked on this. I hope this will be helpful. Risker (talk) 03:50, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
	At the risk of being tacky for using the same barnstar for the same thing, Orangemoody deserves at least two. Thanks. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 03:13, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

One is not enough

		The Multiple Barnstar
		Thank you for your tens, nay hundreds, of hours of work in breaking up this protection racket! -- Avi (talk) 03:35, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

		The Checkuser's Barnstar
		For taking part in the Orangemoody investigation. Thanks for defending Wikipedia from this evil paid editing ring. Vanjagenije (talk) 09:05, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

List of users for the Orangemoody thing

Is there a list of users on the site that we could go to review in order to ensure that every blocked user is covered and we aren't looking at the same users multiple times? Thanks! Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:09, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

It's at Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Orangemoody/Accounts. Perhaps a few people can organize a review process on the talk page? Just a suggestion. Maybe an admin and an editor working together, since there's a fair bit of deleted content involved. Risker (talk) 04:27, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

That makes sense. As such, I have already gone through the first ten users on the page and did a non-admin check of things (active content), and there is one instance where I noted an admin should check up on it. I'm hoping others will follow suit, and I will refine the process in the coming days to make it easier to do. I did add notes so we can easily figure out patterns on that page, just in case anyone cares. Thanks again for the help though, as it is greatly appreciated! Kevin Rutherford (talk) 15:53, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Is it known whether these users have abused just the English edition, or is there any indication that other Wikipedias have been targeted, too? Asav | Talk 12:44, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Asav, we did not look past the English Wikipedia for contributions of these accounts outside of our project. Only a few do have contributions on other Wikimedia projects, most frequently on Commons for uploading of images. We have advised the CheckUser mailing list of the report we have published on English Wikipedia about this sock ring, but their local checkuser policies and availability of personnel will determine whether an investigation is initiated on other Wikimedia projects. Risker (talk) 13:08, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Related

Has WikipediaismadebypeoplelikeM78E been checked for involvement here? The username makes me think of Wikipediaismadebypeoplelikeus, which was blocked in relation to Orangemoody, but likeM78E has already been blocked here on unrelated grounds. Asking because sanctions for likeM78E have been requested at Commons (for copyvios), and before I block the guy there, I'd like to know whether I ought to take this situation into account. Nyttend (talk) 20:15, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

IPs

I've noticed 42.0.7.30 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) and 42.0.7.24 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) are both duck IPs with .30 editing today to contest a PROD (see COIN. Should these be rangeblocked? Thanks for your efforts with all of this and sorry for having to ask you - I couldn't think where else to post. SmartSE (talk) 21:26, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Possibly related

See WP:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard#Lighting companies and awards which too me looks like quid pro quo article deletion of Gregory Kay and creation of a new draft, deleted a month later (failure to pay?). Maybe you will recognize the pattern, or can disconfirm. If this turns out to be part of the group, the editor has an Elance account advertising his services and his real-real-world identity can be traced; also through other behaviors and his fmr Wikipedia username. I sent the info that connects the Elance-Wikipedia accounts, in an email to Smartse on 15 August. — Brianhe (talk) 16:45, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

User:Hertizsedlon

What does this mean: Wikipedia:Sockpuppet_investigations/Orangemoody#03_September_2015 ? I intentionally avoided checking the suspected puppets because I was unclear what to do if they were confirmed. You didn't use the normal "explanation" in the block but the one I cited, and you didn't tag. I just prefer to duplicate whatever it is you do as the "expert" in this matter. Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 04:41, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Gah, you're right about the block message and tagging. Shows I'm a bit tired. Check your mail. Risker (talk) 04:55, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I can't begin to imagine how tired you must be. If you're up to it, though, could we gchat again? I have some questions that would be more efficiently disposed of interactively. Let me know. Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 19:45, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

I'd love to, but I am tied up for the next couple of hours with some time-sensitive stuff. Say 2200 UTC? I'll be sure to be around. Risker (talk) 19:57, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

No problem. That's in about 1h40m from now or 3:00 p.m. my time. If you initiate it (not sure I know how), I'll look for it.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:21, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Orangemoody sock?

He admits creating article for client

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Siddharth_Balachandran&oldid=679539918

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions&diff=679540162&oldid=679532612

--112.79.37.141 (talk) 06:12, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

• Most paid editors aren't Orangemoody related, and this one doesn't appear to be, judging by their behavior and methods. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 16:26, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

contacting Orangemoody victims

Only after firing off an unsolicited email to one of the (probable) Orangemoody victims, alerting them to today's Daily Beast article and urging them to read about the scam and contact Wikipedia if they were victimized, did I run across your comment on the Talk page for Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Orangemoody/Articles: "We have referred those issues to the WMF to make contact with the article subjects and determine what further actions can and should be taken." While I did take great pains in my email to emphasize to this potential victim that I was NOT a Wikipedia admin or official representative, just a user/editor (offering UNPAID help down the road in re-establishing what seemed, to me, a genuinely notable bio, lacking only inline citation savvy), afterwards I had second thoughts: was I involving myself inappropriately, perhaps even creating potential problems for an ongoing official notification or investigative process? Just to say, it might be appropriate for you to insert, perhaps on a more visible page, an admonition to folks like me NOT to contact subjects directly if that's unwanted and unwelcome at this time.

Obviously I hope they bust these guys, and the community remembers that the non-notable as well are just as much victims of this scam. No doubt more so in some cases, for being so vulnerable Vesuvius Dogg (talk) 16:52, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

Activity note

Just a note that I've got a nice big stack of questions, queries, CU requests and unblock requests to follow up on the Orangemoody case, and I'll be working on them in the coming 36 hours or so. I trust nobody would begrudge me the chance to step away from that work for a short period; it was a very long 8 weeks. Risker (talk) 20:38, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

no. Not acceptable. You should be expected to continue working your tail off for free for a $70 million organization which insists on maintaining policies that are not reasonably enforceable. (I'd say "thank you" for your worth thus for but someone might consider that payment.... ) NE Ent 21:21, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, NE Ent, for keeping it all in perspective. I lol'd! (And I for one don't think the WMF should be a $70 million organization. Just for the record.) Risker (talk) 21:30, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Drive by - NE Ent you are one of my favorite editors - witty, intelligent, perceptive with a sense of humor that makes me lol - and even though we have never had the opportunity to collaborate or engage in conversational intercourse, I quoted you on my user page. I also wanted to extend a sincere Thank You to Risker for her tireless contributions, particularly to the Orangemoody case. I suspected foul play was amiss but not to the magnitude of what was recently uncovered. Kudos!!! Atsme^📞📧 01:15, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Possible account deletion?

Is it possible to delete user accounts on Wikipedia? RocketMaster (talk) 15:03, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) No. The user account itself cannot be deleted. User pages can be deleted, but very rarely are user talk pages deleted. It's a copyright issue: we have to preserve attribution of edits to comply with our creative commons licensing. Courtesy vanishing is the renaming of an account to a random string of numbers and letters for those who wish to leave Wikipedia permanently, but it is not very difficult to figure out the user's original name based on their user talk page history. Altamel (talk) 15:18, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks

Wanted to leave a note that I appreciate your thorough and precise contributions on User:Doc James/Paid editing and related pages. It's clear that you've given it much thought and I think your resulting analysis hits the nail on its head. – czar 22:49, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Invitation to subscribe to the edit filter mailing list

Hi, as a user in the edit filter manager user group we wanted to let you know about the new wikipedia-en-editfilters mailing list. As part of our recent efforts to improve the use of edit filters on the English Wikipedia it has been established as a venue for internal discussion by edit filter managers regarding private filters (those only viewable by administrators and edit filter managers) and also as a means by which non-admins can ask questions about hidden filters that wouldn't be appropriate to discuss on-wiki. As an edit filter manager we encourage you to subscribe; the more users we have in the mailing list the more useful it will be to the community. If you subscribe we will send a short email to you through Wikipedia to confirm your subscription, but let us know if you'd prefer another method of verification. I'd also like to take the opportunity to invite you to contribute to the proposed guideline for edit filter use at WP:Edit filter/Draft and the associated talk page. Thank you! Sam Walton (talk) and MusikAnimal ^talk 18:22, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Edit filter

Hi Risker. Is Special:AbuseFilter/708 still useful/being used? Sam Walton (talk) 19:58, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Ping. Sam Walton (talk) 23:29, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, Sam - I don't know of anyone who is actively reviewing the data from that filter right now, so I suppose it can be turned off. Someone else may come banging on your door to get it reinstated; however, right now I'm focused on Funds Dissemination Committee stuff for most of the next month so it won't be me.

I want to take this opportunity to thank you publicly for all of the work you have done in the background, both on the Orangemoody case, and in so many other ways. Your work on the edit filters, in particular, is vitally important, even if it isn't something that attracts a lot of attention. It's the kind of old-fashioned, foundational work that goes unsung, even though it's really what makes this site work. Risker (talk) 15:52, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough; I've disabled it with a note to let me know if anyone still needs it. And thanks and thank you for your work on the Orangemoody case and elsewhere! :) Sam Walton (talk) 17:48, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Request for clarification of an ArbCom decision you participated in

Hi. I have filed a Request for clarification of Remedy 2.2 of WP:ARBRAN, concerning a topic ban placed on User:Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ). Since you were a member of ArbCom at the time, any insights you may wish to share about the committee's thinking would be welcome. Thanks. BMK (talk) 21:46, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Hello, BMK. I'm not going to comment because I really can't remember much about this, and I long ago cleared out most of my arbcom-related emails and documentation. Risker (talk) 23:54, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. BMK (talk) 00:04, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Please sign new Wikimedia confidentiality agreement for nonpublic information by 15 December

This is a message from the Wikimedia Foundation. Translations are available.

As you may know, the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees approved a new "Access to nonpublic information policy" on 25 April 2014 after a community consultation. The former policy has remained in place until the new policy could be implemented. That implementation work is now being done, and we are beginning the transition to the new policy.

An important part of that transition is helping volunteers like you sign the required confidentiality agreement. All Wikimedia volunteers with access to nonpublic information are required to sign this new agreement, and we have prepared some documentation to help you do so.

The Wikimedia Foundation is requiring that anyone with access to nonpublic information sign the new confidentiality agreement by 15 December 2015 (OTRS users have until 22 December 2015) to retain their access. You are receiving this email because you have access to nonpublic information and are required to sign the confidentiality agreement under the new policy.

Signing the confidentiality agreement for nonpublic information is conducted and tracked using Legalpad on Phabricator. The general confidentiality agreement is now ready, and the OTRS agreement will be ready after 22 September 2015. We have prepared a guide on Meta-Wiki to help you create your Phabricator account and sign the new agreement: Confidentiality agreement for nonpublic information/How to sign

If you have any questions or experience any problems while signing the new agreement, please visit this talk page or email me (gvarnumwikimedia.org). Again, please sign this confidentiality agreement by 15 December 2015 (OTRS users have until 22 December 2015) to retain your access to nonpublic information. If you do not wish to retain this access, please let me know and we will forward your request to the appropriate individuals.

Thank you,
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Posted by the MediaWiki message delivery 23:33, 15 September 2015 (UTC) • Translate • Get help

• Addressed the main one, will hold for the OTRS one since it's not complete yet. Risker (talk) 23:52, 15 September 2015 (UTC)

Relevant question regarding new nonpublic information policy

Risker, seeing the new nonpublic information agreement pop all over my watch list this afternoon, and recalling your involvement in the recent Arbcom case regarding Grant Shapps and The Guardian, I have a very simple question: in your understanding, does the new policy prohibit the checkuser's conduct in the "Chase me" case? I left a question on the policy talk page [4], but I'm just a random Wikipedia editor and I have zero weight with WMF personnel. That said, the question needs to be asked by someone, and it deserves an answer. As I said on the policy talk page, if someone familiar with the intent and drafting history of the new policy cannot answer the question with a simple "yes" or "no," the policy has a rather glaring hole in it. I'm a practicing lawyer who spends his days drafting complex contract documents, and when I read the operative clause, my reaction was "huh?" In my opinion, the new policy is clear as mud on a key issue that deserves crystal clarity. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 00:36, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Well. There were so many things wrong, in my opinion, with what happened in the case you reference that "disclosure" to the media was not even at the top of the list. The checks should never have been run, to start with; there was no evidence to link the account to a specific individual, or even to link it to any other account; there was no basis on which to block without warning; there was no reason provided, as best I can tell, for the media to have been provided with the information before the English Wikipedia community was provided with it, particularly given its obvious inappropriateness. Much as I like ChaseMe as a person (and I do, he's a nice guy), it still takes my breath aay to think that *anyone* with access to non-public information could draw so many bad conclusions and make so many bad decisions on a single case.

It is entirely possible that one or more of the accounts blocked in the Orangemoody case is in full or in part the "real world" name of a person who used that account (we made no attempts at all to link usernames with 'real-world' names), and there have been other sockpuppetry cases where a real-world name has been linked based on solid evidence, or because one of the accounts is the real-world name of the person who operated multiple accounts; I believe those are the kinds of cases that are referred to in the policy. The news media is almost secondary to this entire issue; any provision of information covered by the exceptions to the non-public information agreement is expected to be made to the applicable editing community (in our case, English Wikipedia), and if the media pick up on it, well...it's a wiki and it's public, just like every other page here. I don't think it's necessary to "forbid" providing non-public information to the media specifically because it's not permitted to provide it to anyone except in certain specific situations anyway. Risker (talk) 03:13, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to respond, Risker. I agree that there were multiple instances of poor judgment, bad decisions and problematic behavior in the "Chase me" case. That said, the two biggest problems I saw were (1) the disclosure of nonpublic information by a checkuser, and (2) the checkuser presuming to speak directly to the media regarding that nonpublic information. The irony, if the public pronouncements of Arbcom are to be taken at face value, is that there was no direct evidentiary link between the user account(s) in question and the person who was publicly named. My reading of the nonpublic information policy is that no one should be disclosing nonpublic information about anyone -- but especially their actual names -- regardless of their conduct. "Chase me" should have been given the benefit of that same policy but for the fact that he had freely identified himself and disclosed his real name in the media. As far as I know, we don't "out" anyone, which strikes me as the ultimate violation of the nonpublic information policy. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:16, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Well, as I read it, the "disclosed" name was more a BLP violation because neither the public nor the non-public information linked the individual to the account. The whole thing struck me as one of the most absurd wiki-episodes I've encountered. Trying to modify policy (especially global policy) based on a single weird case is generally a bad idea. Risker (talk) 06:21, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

"Hard cases make bad law," eh? I had wondered about the absence of a definitive tie between the checkuser data and the publicly named person, and the fact that it may not have been a violation of the nonpublic information policy as written. Not being privy to Arbcom's deliberations, I can only guess what their logic was in deciding the case. That's one of the reasons I raised the issue, and suggested that WMF policy needs to be reviewed in the light of the case, especially provisions dealing not only with nonpublic information, but also the whole idea of volunteer functionaries presuming to speak to the media, ostensibly on behalf of Wikipedia. Anyway, thank you for sharing your perspective. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 21:13, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Question

Hello, Risker. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

I got a question about referencing and how to insert citations i've emailed you it. Please check into it. Ok?

The question you emailed me has nothing to do with referencing or citations. I have already read it and responded to it. Risker (talk) 06:17, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Checkuser?

See Wikipedia:Conflict_of_interest/Noticeboard#Kazakhstan. John Broughton suggested checkuser involvement might be useful; I believe he is right. Could you please have a look? With thanks and best wishes, Andreas JN466 08:32, 19 September 2015 (UTC)

Looking for an uninvolved admin...

Does this sort of statement seem okay to you? Seems to me it's a bit creepy and feels a bit stalkerish... Ealdgyth - Talk 13:52, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Similar names of Orangemoody sock

User talk:Arr45678 is similar to User:Arr4--38.95.108.250 (talk) 10:39, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

No real made new article

Neriosa isn`t real sorry i made a Cyclone Madi Page Cyclone Madi from 2013 that is real Cyclone Madi is ok cheers Fun Cake (talk) 15:34, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for letting me know, and for being forthright, Fun Cake. I have deleted the article. Risker (talk) 22:51, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Virginia Tech Richmond Center

Hi Risker. Declining the G11 is certainly a valid option. Has it really come to this that G11s are declined due to WP:OTHERSTUFF [5] ? DGG invited me to work on other unis, not sure if he was concerned with even-handedness, but there's only one of me and 5M articles. ;) Widefox; talk 09:14, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Hello?

Hi Risker,

I saw your post at the Security review - and wondered if I was still welcome on your talk page.? — Ched :  ?  02:50, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Of course you are, Ched. What's up? Risker (talk) 02:59, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

First - I hate that it seems the only time I talk to you anymore is when I disagree with you. I just don't do IRC anymore. :( ... anyway - my first thought about your post here - "wow - that's harsh" (the "it's just a website" concept) But I do understand your thinking - so I might support that with some provisions: 1) Some sort of grandfather clause; whereas current admins are not subjected to it until they are notified and sign-off on some "I know this" page. 2)All future RfA pages make it extremely clear that this is what is expected. 3) The security requirements are made VERY clear. Not all editors know that "8-bytes=8 characters in your password.

There's other stuff I could say (and even want to say), but they are more of a personal "sorry" type of thing. — Ched :  ?  03:26, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi Ched. Yeah, I know it's a bit tough-love, and I agree that it is something that would have to be phased in, although believe it or not we did actually do that back in around 2007 or so, forcing admins with "weak" passwords to change them, and I believe it was to a minimum of 6 characters. I think the provisions you mention would be realistic. But really, all the fancy rules in the world would not have prevented any of the known incursions into admin accounts. I do think, as well, that it's just a website. But people can participate in the website just fine without admin bits - 75% of our serious users do so all the time, and that doesn't even count IPs who don't even have "autoconfirmed" rights, let alone admin rights.

I've been sorely disappointed in the behaviour of some of our admin corps recently, and even more so the Arbitration Committee. And no, don't even ask, there's no way I'm ever going back on Arbcom. It helped me to grow, but I've moved on to more interesting and useful work since then, and when I work with groups they are far more collegial and willing to find middle ground. Turns out that old saying about the fights being the nastiest when the stakes are small is true. Risker (talk) 03:38, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Dag-nabit. How, HOW did you know I would mention you becoming active on Arbcom again? Yes, I know you're active in other areas, but have to admit to not knowing details. (I am a terrible stalker). I very much agree with you on the current committee (although I think there are a couple who show promise - DGG and Thyrduf come to my mind). I also agree with you on the core content creators. I'll be honest Anne, I find it harder and harder to deal with the kids. There's just no respect for the history and legacy that made this site. When you, and NYB, and Carch watched over thing, at least we knew what to expect. I don't know. I"ve had some rough times lately off-wiki .. I'm tired ... talk tomorrow? — Ched :  ?  04:11, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, you would have been about the 10th person to suggest it, that's how I knew. I'm not sure that it's "the kids" that you're having a hard time with, to be honest; there are plenty of people over the age of 30 who seem to be behaving in knee-jerk fashion without any thought to a bigger picture, not thinking things through, and not realizing the damage they are doing. (On the other hand, at our age, someone who's 30 is pretty much a kid...) It's been kind of like watching bulls in a china shop, except some of those bulls are the people we'd expect to be doing the cleanup, not the smashing. Not sure how much I'll be around tomorrow (I've got a big pile of stats to complete), but my email is always open to you. Best, Risker (talk) 05:37, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Yea - I've missed ya. I'll do an email in soon.  :-) — Ched :  ?  05:48, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm sure more than 10 have thought it; the wiki-22 is that anyone I respect enough to want on the committee I respect too much to ask subject themselves to being on the committee. "I like you, so won't you please jump in that tar pit?" NE Ent 23:04, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom election-related question

Hi Risker, I saw that you recently said this: [6], at Brad's talk page, in answering a question that MastCell asked you. It was in relation to members being obstacles to improvement. I'm particularly interested in it, in relation to the upcoming election and the fact that I will try to make recommendations in my voters guide. You linked to a discussion about BASC. I've read it, and as a relative outsider, I'm unsure what to conclude about it, although I can see multiple different ways that I might interpret it. I'm not necessarily asking you to name names (but I wouldn't stop you if you did!). But could you please give me a pointer or two about what I might read into that BASC discussion? Thanks! --Tryptofish (talk) 18:26, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

I first suggested to arbcom colleagues that we should stop reviewing anything but AE/arbcom blocks/bans way back in 2009, within months of my first being elected to the committee, and even before we started referring to the block/ban review process as BASC. Even back then it was a terrible time sink, with fewer appeals then than there are now, almost none of which result in "success". Even those that are counted as successes are borderline; I'd say that the ones that turn out to result in genuinely productive editors is below 1% of total requests. For five years on the committee, I advocated dropping BASC. For the last two years off the committee I have continued to advocate dropping BASC at any relevant discussion of which I was aware. When I was on the committee, I saw no point in taking such discussions to the community, because I already knew that there was insufficient support on the committee to get it to approve the change in Arbcom procedure. Some of the reasons I heard: "the community never lets these people back in" (tell that to Peter Damien and dozens of other editors who returned after a community discussion), "we can't afford to lose good editors" (unfortunately, "good" being a problematic designation given the contribs of many of the blocked editors). When I realized I was going to get nowhere with the rest of the committee on this issue, I started looking into better ways to manage the flow of the emails, and proposed the use of one of two CRM systems that the WMF agreed to make available to us and to keep supported. Because those CRM systems failed to be absolutely perfect (according to a definition of perfect that varied from person to person), that never happened. Thus, not only were we doing work we probably shouldn't even be wasting our time on, but we were doing that work while intentionally not attempting any process that would allow for improved efficiency in doing the task. In fairness, one or two arbitrators didn't like the CRM systems on offer while others just didn't care enough one way or the other to express an opinion, or decided they weren't willing to waste time talking about a task they didn't do and didn't really care about. Just like on Wikipedia, it's the people most determined to see their preferred outcome who wind up monopolizing the decision-making. I believe I've said most of this onwiki in various discussions before (although probably not pulling this all together so tightly). But I do find it rather humorous that now, after ex-arbs they liked better than me have thrown in the towel on BASC, and right smack in the middle of the nomination process, we're suddenly seeing a change of heart, and the committee is about to divest itself of one of its most pointless and time-wasting activities. Risker (talk) 19:00, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

I see, thanks. Based on MastCell's question, I had been wondering whether there might have been certain members who, unknown to the community, were repeatedly thwarting efforts to improve things. But it does seem to be true that BASC is now going away. And I will shamelessly say that I doubt that anyone who pays attention and is in their right mind likes any of them more than you! Thanks again. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:09, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, Risker, for trying to make Wikipedia better. Great change requires great patience. I'm glad your view eventually prevailed. Jehochman ^Talk 09:04, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Good job

I wish that more admins would forget about the templates and write custom block messages instead, as you did here.  — Scott • talk 09:36, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Scott. I'm sure if I dig long enough and hard enough, I could probably find a template that would almost work in situations like that, where the "evidence" is all over the place. But we're supposed to be writers here, no?  :-) Risker (talk) 09:44, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:39, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Wongdon

Hi Risker. I appreciate you speedy deleting Wongdon, but I just thought I'd drop a note to inform you that WP:R3 wouldn't apply since it wasn't a recent creation. In the future, please check the history and make sure that it's a recent creation before deleting under that criterion. Cheers, -- Tavix ^(talk) 05:51, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Oi. It certainly wasn't an attack page, which is what you tagged it as; the redirect criterion was closer to reality, although a good old-fashioned G6 would have done just fine. I cannot imagine why you would have tagged it as an attack page, Tavix, but it's certainly an implausible redirect. Risker (talk) 05:55, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Wong-don. Where I'm from, wong can be used in an insulting manner, hence the attack page. Now that I think about it, G3 probably would've been the best call overall since it's obviously vandalism, but we're splitting hairs. -- Tavix ^(talk) 06:01, 29 November 2015 (UTC)