Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/Archive 121

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Congressional lame duck period in 1960

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(for Humanities desk)

According to this article, John F. Kennedy was elected POTUS while serving in the US Senate, but didn't resign from the Senate because he "had no lame-duck period to worry about". This is contrast with Barack Obama, who resigned from the Senate a week or so after the 2008 election. My question: why didn't JFK have to worry about a lame duck period? Also, if one of the POTUS candidates currently serving in the US Senate (there are several) gets elected President, will there be some de-facto requirement that they not be re-sworn into their Senate seats at the start of the 114th Congress on January 3, 2017? That would let them stay in the Senate potentially until the Presidential inauguration on January 20. This is relevant because of the potential change in partisan control of the Senate affecting Senate rules, e.g. the nuclear option stopping a possible filibuster of a new SCOTUS nominee, depending on which Senators are present to vote when the new Congress starts. Thanks. 173.228.123.101 (talk) 00:17, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Done ―Mandruss ☎ 00:22, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 14 February 2016

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== Population of Arabia at the time of Muslim Conquests ==

Does anybody know how many population Arabia had at the time of prophet Muhammad and Muslim Conquests? By Arabia, I mean Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman and other Arab countries of Persian gulf. 46.224.248.52 (talk) 16:55, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Done Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:58, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Practical question

Is it possible to fix the sidebar so that it doesn't obscure the full {{pp}} template? And can we avoid turning this into a discussion about the use of the full template? Thanks. Tevildo (talk) 17:36, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

For me with the Vector skin, the right sidebar covers the lower-right corner of the template without obscuring any of its text, which I don't see as significant. I can make it obscure some of the text by playing with the size of the window, however, so YMMV. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:08, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Try the Help Desk. Its a technical question, no one will help you here...not in the link I stated either. -- Apostle (talk) 18:40, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

This small edit fixes it for me on my display - I don't know if this is the problem you mean or whether it fixes it for you though. (@Russell.mo: - I think we're pretty good about answering questions, so long as the OP takes a moment to ask them specifically and coherently...) Wnt (talk) 20:41, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

I thought it was a technical question, that will change WP template. I guess I did not understand the English again. Sorry

-- Apostle (talk) 20:49, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Wnt - looks good here, thanks. I've done the same to RD/L and RD/M. Tevildo (talk) 21:03, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Scicurious hatting my question

Hi I asked a question at the refdesk, and it was hatted by scicurious because he said my question is preposterous. I asked him on his talkpage, and he said that my question is inappropriate because it involves too much discussion and analyzes the intent of others. I then asked him about why other people have asked those types of questions, and why they don't get hatted.Winkplan211 (talk) 16:25, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

For the benefit of others, (1) you were editing unregistered or logged out then, and (2) this is the question in question. I agree that it is not a question of fact but of opinion, and the desks are not forums for general discussions of this type. As for consistency, you won't find a lot of that on the desks or anywhere at Wikipedia, and that's the inevitable result of group rule. We do our best, and we are continually trying to make improvements to the desks (as seen elsewhere on this page), but it's a messy business. Best of luck. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:48, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Your posting of the question to the Science Desk was absurd, because the question isn't scientific, and you were posting there to avoid semi-protection of the Humanities Desk and the Miscellaneous Desk. The question, if in good faith, is absurd because it makes assumptions that the meanings of words are the same throughout the world (or it may have been trolling). The posting of the question to a Reference Desk was inappropriate because it called for opinions and speculation, and other editors shouldn't post questions that call for opinions and speculation either. Your question needed hatting. Whether other questions also do is outside the scope of this thread. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:17, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

That's a bit harsh. It's natural and reasonable to expect some consistency in the treatment of such questions, very little of that exists, and this user, as far as we know, is the victim of our own failure to agree (i.e., reach consensus and document it) and coordinate. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:27, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Good point, User:Mandruss. I think that any questions that are as compoundly absurd as that one should have been hatted, and if we didn't hat a question that was placed to the wrong desk (probably to bypass semi-protection), and called for speculation and opinions, and was based on a verbal fallacy, should have been hatted. I was harsh. Maybe there are questions that we haven't been harsh enough about. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:03, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

We shouldn't expect expert knowledge of RD usage from first-time RD users (particularly with the lack of consistency) and doing so may very well make them one-time RD users. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:36, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

If you live in Seattle, why does your IP geolocate to Los Angeles? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:44, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, since their stated location differs from what the geolocation services say, they should immediately be suspect. Obviously, they are attempting to conceal the fact that they are in Los Angeles. Good eye Bugs! </sarcasm> ―Mandruss ☎ 17:57, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Or they could be using a proxy server. However, if the registered user is sincere, he'll gladly explain this oddity. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:00, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

They could live in Seattle and be in a hotel in LA on business now, for all we know. There was no reason to even suspect anything more than an understandable mistake here, so why even look at geolocation in the first place? You actually seek out reasons to be suspicious, and then use them to justify your suspicion. There is nothing to be explained here. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:10, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

The troll looks for every opportunity to exploit the strong sentiments about Christians, Jews and Muslims. If you're not paying attention to that, that's your problem, not mine. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:40, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Bugs, why did you call me a troll? I was just asking a question without knowing it was inappropriateWinkplan211 (talk) 20:29, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

I didn't. And furthermore, I think the question you asked is answerable, though complicated. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:42, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm visiting Los Angeles to go see some of my relativesWinkplan211 (talk) 18:22, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

There you go. No explanation required, but given anyway. Of course they could be a troll lying to us, and we should demand proof that they are visiting relatives, perhaps a notarized statement from a relative living in LA. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:25, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

This is an example of a question that was in appropriate because it's all opinion - and inappropriate-squared because it was asked in the science area. Personally, I'd have just ignored it for it's content alone - and transferred it over to the appropriate desk if it had just been in the wrong place. But a combination of both things...I'm not surprised it was hatted. SteveBaker (talk)

There will always be a high level of uncertainty in these things, there is no avoiding that. We will never have enough reliable information, full stop. So the question becomes, should we err on the side of trust, or err on the side of distrust? Which is worse, alienating some innocent readers, or being taken by some clever but innocuous trolls? Which is worse, having the former telling their friends and family what assholes there are at Wikipedia's reference desks, or the latter trading high fives about what suckers there are here? Those are the only two alternatives, and I say the former is worse. Those who choose the other may have personal issues with being seen as suckers, and they may wish to honestly examine that possibility. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:37, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Bowei Huang 2 I have removed this material entirely, it perfectly fits Bowei Huang 2's modus operandi of creating a history with a talk page and talk page comments, and then immediately resorting to questions of the form, If Ideology A holds Belief B, then why doesn't Country C..." Notice the facility with the system, and the lack of userspace contributions typical of new users. This should probably go to SPI or ANI, but I have a birthday party to attend. μηδείς (talk) 21:16, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

@Medeis: Please take it to SPI after the party, and please do me the favor of a pointer to that investigation. Even if you're right in this case, you'd need to demonstrate a solid and accurate batting average (like .800 or better) for me to defer to your superior troll-hunting skills in general, and those of Bugs. But I can be convinced. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:28, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

In the meantime, ask Jayron32 who just blocked another Bowei Huang 2 sock last week. If you want to see Huang's block history and style, click user contributions, then sock puppet investigations then archive. In any case I am not the one who moved or blocked these questions in the first place, and you can see plenty of doubt as to the user's good faith above that has nothing to do with me. μηδείς (talk) 21:35, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

What I see above is (1) Robert pretty close to the fence, and (2) Bugs convicting (or at least indicting) the guy on exceedingly flimsy evidence—as he is prone to do, resulting in almost no credibility in my eyes. I don't call that "plenty of doubt". I am not the one who moved or blocked these questions in the first place - You are conflating evidence of ignorance with evidence of trolling, which doesn't do a lot for your credibility in my eyes. I have never said that the question shouldn't have been removed, in fact I said the exact opposite. ―Mandruss ☎ 21:41, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

You are mischaracterizing what I said. I asked him about the location discrepancy, and he answered my question. No problem. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 22:44, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

So, given that any troll above the age of 5 could easily fake an answer, what was the point of the question? To verify that they were above the age of 5? ―Mandruss ☎ 23:19, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

To see if they had a reasonable explanation, which they did. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:46, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

I concede that I was harsh in labeling the original question "absurd", because, on consideration, it may have been either a deeply ignorant good-faith question or a troll question. It involved a verbal fallacy, that "conservative" has the same meaning among US Christians and among Greater Middle Eastern Muslims, which may have been either deeply ignorant but good-faith, or trolling. (In both contexts, "conservative" can at times mean "consistent with traditional religious values", but that context depends on what the traditional religion is.) At the same time, the question in any case called for opinions and speculation. Also, placing the question, which had nothing to do with science, at the Science Desk, was inappropriate, and was sufficient reason for hatting. A better approach would have been to wait for semi-protection to expire here and post an edit request. Robert McClenon (talk) 22:35, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree with you, if a majority of the population is "deeply ignorant" about these matters. I suppose it depends on your definition of "deeply", but it's a fact that most of us lack both the time and the interest to be well-informed about political issues, and especially world political issues. Haven't you seen the videos of people on the street being asked the name of the current vice president of the U.S.? They weren't faking their ignorance. It's sad and embarrassing, but true.
The fact that the question was inappropriate and out of place is not in dispute here. I don't know why we're talking about that, unless we're debating hatting vs. removal. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:54, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

So instead of spreading knowledge by enlightening readers including the OP -- who is certainly not the only person not to know that the word "conservative" has multiple meanings -- we've labeled him a troll and deleted the question and the answers. Nice work. —Steve Summit (talk) 22:59, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

The question was removed because it was not a question of fact but of opinion, which was the right move. Trolling is a separate issue. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:03, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

It appears that the user was yet another Bowei Huang sock. Ugh. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:07, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

SPI link, please? ―Mandruss ☎ 23:09, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Ask someone who made the connection. It wasn't so obvious to me, but some of the users here know Bowei Huang's M.O. much better than I do. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:12, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

As I thought. Been there, done that. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:14, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Meaning what? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 23:20, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Meaning it's the same old story. Certain people's overestimation of their skill at making these "connections", with no real accounting of their success rates in the absence of an SPI investigation for each case. They weren't proven wrong in a lot of cases, ergo they were right. As far as I'm concerned, and with the evidence I've seen, and I could still be shown to be wrong, there's a lot of self-deception happening in the area of troll detection at these desks. ―Mandruss ☎ 23:32, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

The "same old story" is assumption of bad faith regarding established users, and assumption of good faith regarding users who turn out to be block evaders. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:44, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

As we've said before, asking for real evidence is not assumption of bad faith, so please stop abusing WP:AGF. But let's turn this around. I'm an "established user", right? So, by your reasoning, I can declare any non-established user a sock and they will be indeffed 34 minutes later. And the block, which was based at least partly on my judgment, will confirm that they were in fact a sock, thereby justifying the block. And I can add another notch to my gunbelt for all to see, showing my continued prowess at sock detection. Who needs SPI when they have me? Is this correct? If not, why not? Do you see anything, say, circular and self-validating about this kind of reasoning? ―Mandruss ☎ 02:22, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Your premise would be true IF you had a working knowledge of a given troll's way of working. Open SPI's are not required when the situation is obvious. Unlike you, I assume good faith on the part of the admins who are familiar with these trolls, to be able to identify their M.O. and act on it. If you want to find out how they determined it, send an email to the blocking admin. There's no reason to post any "tells" here that would help the sockmaster to better evade detection. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:16, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Bugs, I'm done trying to reason with you, but I urge you to learn the meaning of the words "good faith", starting with the dictionary definition. ―Mandruss ☎ 05:01, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

I use the equivalent term "sincere". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 05:16, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

To question someone's reasoning or judgment is not to question their honesty or sincerity. I credit you with the intelligence to know the difference. ―Mandruss ☎ 05:18, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

You should send an email to the blocking admin, and get up to speed on the Bowei Huang saga. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:42, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

How do I get future perfect at sunrise to look at my block and unblock me? I'm sorry for my behaviour. And also, whose Bowei Huang 2? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.211.210.198 (talk) 01:30, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Mandruss, you seem to be saying that I should spend an hour of my time to file an SPI to get the most recent troll, who's already been blocked and castigated by several others, to justify my simple deletion of their provocation. Well, no. My Dad's turned 78, the longest serving US Supreme Court Justice has died, and perhaps the most important ever debate of this year's presidential primary is about to begin. A good SPI takes well over an hour to prepare, and if neither Jayron nor Nil Einne nor anyone else involved in the last of Bowei Huang 2's blockages wants to comment, than neither do I. If you want to revert my deletions, feel free, and then maybe I will file an ANI or a 3RR when I have the time to waste. μηδείς (talk) 01:28, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

I have to say, I'm not convinced this is Bowei Huang 2. While there are similarities in the question style there's something about the tone and other factors of behaviour which seem different to me. In fact, even in terms of the question, I'm not sure if Bowei has asked about political parties before. And I don't think they've asked about Islam recently. However there are so many different identities over so many years, and I've surely never seen many of their questions which were deleted or I just didn't check the desk then.

I can't really be bothered explaining the behavioural and tones differences though and to some extent WP:Beans comes in to play. (Not that I'm sure this matters for Bowei Huang.) I will say that I came to this conclusion before this discussion started. I saw their comment on the unprotected talk page and I'm fairly sure I was certain enough that I didn't bother to geolocate or WHOIS the IP.

I did see the similarities and was wondering if the issue was that it was identified as Bowei Huang. But at the time Scicurious had moved and hatted the question without any mention of Bowei Huang and frankly I didn't see much merit in the question as well.

Now that I do look at it, geolocation is another factor. I don't know what CUs have seen obviously but when Bowei Huang used IPs it was always been Australian ones as recently as late last year and some of the stuff did strongly suggest they were living in Australia.

There is the possibility of open proxies, or maybe the story about visiting relatives is true. And if they were doing any of this I guess it would be a good time to try and mask themselves better. (Although Bowei Huang 2 has been around for I think 8 years now and socking for over 4 years or something. While they have changed a bit over that time, I would say all the differences here are fairly unique over that long history.)

To put it a different way, there's enough doubt in my mind that I wouldn't support a block for reason of being a sock of Bowei Huang without further evidence. I'm not sure what the norms are, but I presume a CU could still be done on the account if someone bother with an SPI case, despite the fact the account linked itself to an IP.

Nil Einne (talk) 12:01, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Nil. I have two very brief comments: first, I noticed the difference in geolocation, as well as the common modus operandi. And, second, every time I have spent a good hour filing an SPI (except, perhaps once--I don't keep records--so this is a wild guess) it has been turned down, since the OP has already been blocked. μηδείς (talk) 04:01, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 15 February 2016

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Question: Correct word? 14 Feb 2016. The grammatically correct way to resolve the who or which dilemma is to use both. A bid sniper is a person who, or software agent which, performs auction sniping. Slightly pedantic and fussy - but fully in accordance with grammatical rules. 81.131.178.47 (talk) 14:15, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Done SemanticMantis (talk) 15:28, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 15 February 2016

This edit request to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Under the Humanities RefDesk Query "Multiple viewpoint novels", please add the following: Another well-known variation of the technique is the 1973 trilogy of plays by Alan Ayckbourn with the collective title The Norman Conquests, which portray the same events taking place in a house (and garden) over a weekend, but with each of the three set in a different room (or the garden). {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 185.74.232.130 (talk) 14:50, 15 February 2016 (UTC) 185.74.232.130 (talk) 14:50, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

Done SemanticMantis (talk) 15:29, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

An observation on possible effects of long-term semi-protection

Since several of the ref desks have been semi-protected for longer periods, I think there has been an increase in newly autoconfirmed users posting inflammatory and disruptive material on the ref desks. Notably, the protection periods are public, and their duration is longer than it takes to autoconfirm a new users account. I wonder if the semi-protection has been seen as a challenge by some, and encourage them to increase their campaigns of disruption? I don't think the ref desk can ban the creation of new user accounts, nor can it overhaul the entire autoconfirmation process (Wikipedia:User_access_levels#Autoconfirmed_and_confirmed_users). Just some food for thought. SemanticMantis (talk) 22:07, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Indeed. Although this is unlikely to be any more productive than the previous discussions, I can still repeat my question - what can we do as an alternative? Not "what should we do?", that question appears to be unanswerable at the moment. What can we do? Tevildo (talk) 22:11, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, I for one was happier with the situation as it stood a few months ago, or whenever it last was that all desks were open for a whole week at a time. We could go back to that. That's something we could do, even if some of us don't think we should. I don't think the bad guys changed since then, I think we did. My aim was not to have any extended discussion, just to point out my observation. SemanticMantis (talk) 22:23, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I Agree with the previous suggestion that another user stated a while back. 24.149.111.152 (talk) 22:53, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

Any hint on which suggestion or which user? As an IP user, I think your feedback is important here, but I don't know what you're talking about. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:26, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Well clearly things have changed. We had hardly any semiprotections until Vote X showed up a few months ago. I don't know if Vote X changed, they just showed up. Nil Einne (talk) 05:35, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Shortly after he was indef'd, right? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:24, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

No, vote X was banned a long time before they showed up here. See Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Vote (X) for Change [1]. However while X is a problem, perhaps there's another editor, I don't see much mention of the open proxies (e.g. random Korean and other IPs) that began significant attacks a few months ago. (But it sounds like X is using enough different IPs that a range block is considered unfeasible.) In truth partly because there's not that much I can do, I'm not that familiar with the details behind the recent attacks. (In fact as an aside, I wasn't even aware we had started to regularly delete stuff from the Ohio State IP.) Actually most of the problematic editors I'm familiar with have thankfully seemingly given up except for Bowei Huang and WickWack (and I guess the racist Toronto editor). Nil Einne (talk) 14:37, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

A wise admin once told me that it's easiest to think of these characters as being actually all the same guy. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:01, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Summary and discussion

I think that we can summarize the positions on trolling and semi-protection into three categories. First, there is the idealistic position. Second, there is the pragmatic position. Third, there is the despairing position. The idealistic position is that we should keep the Reference Desks open to unregistered editors, and that, due to trolling, we need to adopt a consistent sound approach to how to deal with trolling. The pragmatic position is that the idealistic position has been tried and has failed, and that extended semi-protection is sometimes necessary. The despairing position is that perhaps the Reference Desks are themselves a failed experiment and should be shut down, leaving users to go to other Reference Desks that perhaps do a better job of dealing with trolls. As a pragmatist, my question for the idealists is what should be the consistent sound approach to trolling, and also what evidence is there that any particular workable approach to trolling can be adopted that won't lead to quarreling. I would appreciate any comments, including any discussions by idealists of what the consistent sound approach to trolling should be and why they think it will work without being disruptive. Alternatively, if they think that disruption is better than extended semi-protection, can they just say that? Robert McClenon (talk) 18:46, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for summary, it seems mostly fair and accurate to me. In brief, I'm what you'd call an Idealist. I challenge the notion that something "failed" in the past. I think things were fine last year at this time, or even a few months ago. I think think that there was occasional quarreling about trolls/methods/ID, but that was preferable long-term semi-protection. Actually it was my impression that most of 2015 was just dandy on the ref desks - sure, some trolls/vandals played games, but some patrollers removed/banned, lots of us gave lots of refs, lots of IP OPs left satisfied. I personally learned some things, taught some things, and overall had a nice time. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:04, 4 February 2016 (UTC)(P.S. I hope you don't mind the new heading I added, just trying to keep things organized in case this gets long. I hope responses can stay brief, and be about your summary/how people want to identify)

I have no objection to adding a heading. (At least one editor has complained vociferously about my adding of headings to my comments; I am not sure why.) I would ask any idealist to suggest what the consistent workable solution is to the problem of trolling that will not result in quarreling. I think that the difference between most of 2015 and the present is simply that the troll or trolls have become more stubborn and vicious, and that makes it harder. So my question for idealists is what is a consistent effective approach to trolling that will not result in disruption. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:17, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree with SemanticMantis that the "previous" policy had not "failed", that semiprotection need not be a fait accompli, and that we don't necessarily need a new, mo' bettah solution. But Robert McClenon makes a very important point when he asks for a solution that additionally prevents quarreling, and I confess that on that score I for one utterly despair of finding one. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:42, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

I thought some quarreling was widely known to be an unavoidable consequent of running an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Of course I'd like less, but these spats go on all over WP, no? Of course arguments are much more tolerable if we can stay WP:CIVIL, and I'm working on that too. To me the disagreements are just part of the open nature that makes WP so great and yet also sometimes frustrating. In my opinion, the "anyone" in WP:5P3 is just as important as any other guiding principle we have. SemanticMantis (talk) 16:00, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

I'll say it: disruption is better than extended semi-protection. I would rather read racists arguing their point of view under pretense of asking questions than read edit requests, straw polls, filter proposals, protection debates, or ethics debates. I really don't mind - if there's something that looks like a question, I'm happy to see it get something that looks like an answer. And more to the point --- even if racists seem to ask stupid questions from a stupid point of view, so what? There's lots of stupidity to go around, and the efforts some make to make it sound like racism is a totally settled question is just whistling past the graveyard. Hell, just yesterday I found out that Jews are now officially second class citizens in Britain - because potentially they could get Israeli citizenship, the Home Secretary is free to revoke their citizenship for conduct "seriously prejudicial" to Britain's interests ... as defined by the Home Secretary. After that, who knows - deportation, internment? [2] Why the fuck are we pretending we're too virgin pristine and pure to hear anti-Semitic talk when the facts on the ground look a lot like pre-Nazi Germany? We might as well recognize that racists are people too and just wade into it. Wnt (talk) 02:51, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Allowing racist drivel to stand harms Wikipedia. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:01, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

How? This is a Reference Desk. You bring your ignorance, we bring our answers. That's the way it's supposed to work. I've seen this Internet thingy grow from before there was a World Wide Web, and there's always been racists on it, and they've never been anything but an indication that a mode of communication is free enough to be worth reading. Once it becomes some administrator's POV combination echo chamber and inquisition interrogation room, what's the point of looking at it? Wnt (talk) 17:40, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Racism is not tolerated on Wikipedia. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:05, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Tell us, oh defender of the faith, from what font do you draw these pronouncements? If some fundamentalist Muslim has an anti-gay perspective and someone disagrees, do you say that anti-gay Islamism isn't allowed on Wikipedia, or do you say that anti-Islamic fabulousness isn't allowed on Wikipedia? We never agreed on such censorship, and we don't need it. Even those foremost in the hunt for the "racist troll" usually try to justify themselves in terms of various other policies rather than admitting they are on a censorship crusade. I am not saying that I particularly like his content, nor even am I arguing right now sight unseen that you leave it alone, but right now I'm only making the more basic point that you shouldn't ruin the Q and A for everyone else who isn't signed up on the site out of intolerance for his point of view. Wnt (talk) 19:52, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

From the font of observation. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:11, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Well, there's the whole genesis of Wikipedia policy in a nutshell. A few people want to have control and start doing administrative things the rest of us don't agree with. Then they say "we've observed this is how things are done on Wikipedia", so that must be the real policy, and so policy has to be changed to match what is actually done. Wnt (talk) 21:21, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Countless editors have been indef'd for racist remarks. Got a problem with that? Talk to the admins about it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:25, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Countless editors have been indef'd for anti-racist remarks (well, alright, probably most have been indeffed for anti-transphobic, anti-anti-gay, anti-anti-religious remarks, but I think we're both generalizing). Even if there has been bias on the part of the admins against racists, that's not literally a point at law (much like even if there is a huge bias by American law enforcement, it isn't technically illegal to drive while black). If you think I'm going to accept that you can unilaterally come up with some new rule against racist sentiments, you're excessively optimistic. But you do reveal that your crusade against "trolls" isn't really a crusade against trolls at all -- it's a crusade to controll what everyone on the project is allowed to say or believe. The trolls are merely the trial balloons you use for target practice. Wnt (talk) 03:40, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

I follow the admins' lead on these things. If you've got a problem with the admins, make your complaints to them. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:53, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't believe your summary of their actions is technically accurate. Despite some untoward indications to the contrary, they have generally resisted admitting to punishing people for thought crimes, however often they may do it, and so I take them at their word. Wnt (talk) 04:13, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

If you turn in someone at AIV for posting racist garbage, they will typically get blocked for it. Assuming they hadn't been blocked for it already. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 04:20, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

WP:AIV is for reports of "obvious vandalism". While many cases of vandalism use racist terms for shock value, and some are even targeted by racial animosity, there is no rule against asking honest questions that explore racist theories or question the evidence for racial equality.

It's important to remember that banning racist ideas would have a very severe negative consequence - it would mean that statements of racial equality are not falsifiable in this forum, and therefore lack scientific meaning. If a racist sees ten people pile on against his ideas, and an eleventh says "well he has a point here" and gets banned, the take-home message we send is that this is a propaganda forum and only people saying racism is wrong are allowed to speak ... so he ignores us. That's as bad a way to fail to answer the question as there is, and it would mean that the Refdesk fails to accomplish its purpose. Wnt (talk) 12:50, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

The troll in this case is not asking honest questions. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:21, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

My comments above were prompted by your insistence that "racism is not tolerated on Wikipedia". If you accept there is no blanket prohibition on that point of view, then we're back at a more mundane issue of whether a troll is messing with us, with more mundane objections like "how do you know this one (whichever one) is really the troll?" But that's better started as a different conversation. Wnt (talk) 14:05, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

In my experience here, racism is dealt with severely. Maybe your experience is different. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:44, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

I block for racism. Racism is not tolerated on Wikipedia. Thanks Bugs. Drmies (talk) 21:08, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

(unindent)

It seems to me that most (hopefully, all) banning and blockings for racism were actually on grounds of vandalism, violations of WP:NPA and so forth. It's very hard (but not impossible) to be a typical racist without violating lots of actual Wikipedia rules and guidelines. I don't think there are any rules that forbid people from actually being a racist...if they are careful not to insult people personally, not to put things into articles that they don't have solid references for, if they assume good faith and so forth.

A part of the problem here is that we live within the greater scope of Wikipedia. We really do have to adhere to the extant rules and guidelines - and making up our own rules that run contrary to the letter and the spirit of those rules isn't gonna work.

So, what does that leave us with?

Semi-protection: Just seeing the horrible decline in the number of somewhat reasonable questions should be enough to tell us that semi-protection is a failed technique - the 'treatment' is far worse than the 'disease'. Elsewhere in wikipedia, shutting of the ability to edit an article only damages the editors - and only marginally because they mostly create accounts. Users of wikipedia who come here to look up some piece of information are not harmed in the slightest. But here, on the reference desks, it's a total disaster because it impact our users...not just our respondents. So semi-protection is NOT a solution - it's a disaster.

Banning & Blocking: This can work very well for some classes of people - those who use the same IP address range...but some ISP's provide a wide range of addresses and cycle them rapidly - and that makes any kind of blocking and banning very painful. You can't block an overly-wide range of IP addresses because it'll start to negatively impact other users - and you have to be very light on your feet to ban each new IP address as it pops up. So while I don't think we should stop doing this - I think it's never going to be 100% effective.

Vigilantes: Deleting 'bad' questions without discussion or consensus (and often, counter to consensus). This is a favorite of at least a couple of RefDesk regulars - but it too comes with severe problems. If we just allow vigilantes to go out there and gun down the bad guys, we lose oversight and visibility into process. Who do we trust to do this? On what grounds are they deciding to delete? On who's authority are they acting? We've seen this go awry far too often, with these self-proclaimed "expert" troll-hunters deleting questions that they basically "just don't like" - that are actually quite acceptable - on grounds that they "know" the OP is a troll - using criteria for "knowing" and "troll" that are unspecified and not subject to community oversight or adjustment. Recently it was claimed that some of us had a "gut feel" for when someone is a troll and that the criteria had to be kept secret. This is a classic tactic of secret police forces everywhere - arrest people in secret on the grounds of wrong-doings that are never discussed or are not a part of public knowledge. This is most definitely not the Wikipedia way of doing things. If you want to be a lawman - you've got to go pass examination of your history here - go get your admin badge and be prepared to justify the actions you've taken and risk losing your badge if you overreach. The idea that we have roaming vigilantes following their own gut reactions is about as far from Wikipedia rules and policies as I could imagine. So, no - this isn't acceptable.

Deny Recognition: This is the way Wikipedians are supposed to handle this kind of thing. Don't answer questions you think are tollish (or questions you just don't like). Don't discuss whether you think someone is behaving trollish on any kind of public forum. This might work - but it requires some effort on our behalf. We really have to instill this approach into the hearts and minds of our editors - we need a culture of quiet professionalism. Bad questions have to go completely unanswered - unrecognized. You can't get into edit wars with deleting other people's answers. If we believe that a particular editor is answering questions that are clearly trollish - then let's have a quiet discussion on their usertalk page - and preferably take it completely offline to email if we can. Low key, quiet discussions are needed here. I believe that with a new spirit of professionalism and pride in our work here - we could deny recognition to trolls and the problem would largely go away. Simply refusing to answer bad questions can work...but we all need to be on board with it. There will be a problem with new editors arriving and not having that spirit - but it's easier to explain this quietly, and off-desk, to reasonable people than it is to fight trolls. But I recognize that this is a 'soft' answer - trolls will still be able to cause a certain degree of disruption. We may wish to impose additional rules (eg: Impose a "One question per day" limit - or "Questions that get no response within 24 hours are automatically removed - with a brief automated explanation being sent to the usertalk page of the OP") to allow us to purge floods of junk questions. But these need to be rules that do not entail discussion or any kind of judgement that will be arbitrarily ruled. Simple rules that are sufficiently obvious that we can impose them semi-automatically - or even completely automatically - so they don't result in vigilante-ism.

Kill the ref desk: Well, there is a case to be made for doing that. We are an odd corner of Wikipedia - but we do serve a purpose. Wikipedia article talk pages specifically do not allow questions about the subject matter of the article to be asked - they only exist to discuss the article. It's useful to be able to tell people who try to ask questions inappropriately: "You can ask this on the Wikipedia reference desk!" - and when they do, they generally get an intelligent answer. The world (and Wikipedia) would be a sadder, less rich place without us - but there are alternatives.

The options to firmly deny recognition and to end the ref desk are the two that have not yet been tried. Ending the ref desk isn't an experiment we can try - we know it would stop the trolls - but the consequences of it going away would be impossible to assess. So we're left with deny recognition. But doing it won't be a quick process - and it would require a good-faith effort on behalf of everyone to give it a fair trial. Sadly, there are enough vigilantes among us to make that a hard sell. Personally, I regard vigilante actions as "disruptive editing" - and that's sufficient grounds for an admin to kick those people out of the system for a while if we're really trying hard to deny recognition and they won't play ball. But I'd rather do this by getting everyone to understand the need to act as cool, calm professionals - to treat being an editor at the ref desks as a badge of honor - to raise our self-worth to a higher level.

15:01, 8 February 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by SteveBaker (talk • contribs) 15:01, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Again, while not disagreeing with the basic principle of the above, how do we deal with Vote X and similar banned users who post apparently reasonable material? Delete their postings? But that, as I interpret your statement, constitutes "vigilantism". Leave them up and allow them to be answered? But that's connivance in their ban evasion. Post messages along the lines of "The above comment is by a banned user - please do not reply to it"? Is that really better than deletion? If there is another workable method, I think it'll need to be explicitly spelt out in any proposal that's likely to be accepted. Tevildo (talk) 23:23, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

User:SteveBaker says that the one option, short of shutting down the Reference Desk, that hasn't been tried is to deny recognition. First, I would like a detailed clarification of what is meant by deny recognition. Does it mean to delete the troll posts, or to leave them standing unanswered? What should be done if the troll post is answered by someone who in good faith does not think that the post is trolling? Is there any reason to think that we as a class of regulars will be able to agree on what posts are troll posts? What evidence is there that we will all be able to agree on a single strategy? Robert McClenon (talk) 00:31, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

The comment has been made that we could redirect our Reference Desk to something like StackExchange, which deals effectively with trolls. Do they permit anonymous (unregistered) editing? If so, how do they deal with trolls? If they do not permit anonymous editing, and deal with trolls effectively, then how does that differ from semi-protection in its effect? Wikipedia deals effectively with registered trolls. We just don't deal effectively with unregistered trolls, a side effect of our permitting unregistered editing. Robert McClenon (talk) 00:31, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Stack Exchange is not an option, IMO, although this isn't the thread to discuss why. —Steve Summit (talk) 14:30, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

I note that Steve has replied to WickWack's latest post on RD/S - I've not done anything with it, but I don't think this counts as "Denying Recognition". Tevildo (talk) 13:13, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

And which question would that be? I answered a bunch of reasonable questions - you say that one of them is a notorious troll - but I only have your word for it. On what basis do you make the assessment that this is a troll? I'm betting it's another one of those "gut feel" things - right? If trolls go to all the trouble to ask interesting and reasonable questions, then they aren't "trolling" - and they aren't doing damage to the ref desk...as opposed to the vigilante and semi-protection approaches. SteveBaker (talk) 13:24, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

"I only have your word for it." That's an assumption of bad faith against an established editor, which is what the enablers here do frequently. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:31, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

That's an assumption of bad faith - Only if said established editor was accused of deliberately lying, distorting, dissembling, etc., and that's not how I interpret the words. It's not unreasonable, let alone non-AGF, to ask for evidence to support one's claims (if it is, the scientific method is founded on AGF failure). None among us is infallible or above challenge. ―Mandruss ☎ 15:05, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

By saying too much, it can tip off the troll on how to better evade detection the next time. "I only have your word for it" implies an inherent distrust of the word of the other editor. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:45, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

I could be wrong, but I'm not aware of any policy that would preclude providing the evidence by email. If I then got the same answer from three experienced editors in good standing (including the originator), I could go on faith. ―Mandruss ☎ 15:52, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Feel free to write to the user and ask how he knows. Just don't post such info here. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:21, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm quite happy to post this, as I have before - WickWack is identifiable from the Telstra IP address, geolocation to Perth, lack of references, and, in this case, the misspelling ("binocculars"). My main point is that following Steve's process requires us to allow WickWack and Vote X and similar banned users - not trolls, I emphasize; as we can see, their contributions can be reasonable - but similar banned users to post despite their bans. Tevildo (talk) 16:37, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

OK - so everyone who uses Telstra in Perth and who makes an occasional typo is now automatically "A Troll". That's nonsense - completely unacceptable. Perth is a city of 2.2 million people. Telstra is the biggest cable company in Australia - with about 30% of the market. Nearly everyone misspells a word here and there - so there are probably around 700,000 people whom you'd label as "WickWack". In most English speaking world, 24% of people visit wikipedia frequently - so there are likely to be 170,000 Telestra users in Perth who misspell words occasionally visiting Wikipedia today. How many of those visit WP:RD? I don't know - but I'm sure it's a lot more than just one. So I can tell you with near certainty that if those are your criteria, you are mis-identifying innocent people as "WickWack" with alarmingly high frequency.

Now, if that person was posting something abusive or ridiculous, I might get suspicious. But that post (the one about "railroad perspective" with the misspelled "binocculars") wasn't even a question - it was a response to a question - and quite an interesting and on-topic response at that. I'm sorry - but if that's your definition of "A Troll" - you're showing us PRECISELY why your approach to troll identification is broken. This is abusive and a clear violation of WP:AGF - so let's stop that right now. SteveBaker (talk) 17:49, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Steve, read my reply. I am not describing, and never have described, WickWack as a troll. You are deliberately misrepresenting my position by using that term. WickWack is a banned user, and I am entirely confident that the posting is by WickWack. I do not feel I can have any further useful discussions on this subject. If this ever comes to a formal proposal, your actions have convinced me that permanent semi-protection is the only reasonable option. Tevildo (talk) 18:36, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Troll or banned user is beside the point. You gave your evidence that the user in question is this WickWack, SteveBaker applied reasoning and logic to very effectively pick it apart, and that is exactly why we can't blindly accept one person's judgment on these things. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:47, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

It's worth asking why Tevildo is still so sure that that respondant is WickWack. We asked how the identification had been performed - and we received an answer from Tevildo - and having (I think) quite effectively demolished it, we're still left with Tevildo being "entirely confident"?!? WTF? So, I have to ask: On what additional evidence is that confidence based? That this is a Telstra user, based in Perth who makes spelling mistakes isn't remotely proof enough to warrant me shunning an interesting and thought-provoking answer. Not even close! It maybe reduces this to a 1:100,000 chance that this is WickWack...that's an entirely useless confidence level. Now, had the answer been in any way derogatory, or goading people into a debate, or broaching unpleasant topics, or in violation of some guideline or other - I'd definitely increase that confidence level considerably. But no! This was an entirely appropriate, interesting, polite, on-topic response. Yeah - it doesn't have references - but that's true of a very large proportion of responses to very tricky questions like the one we were responding to. Yeah, the respondent can't spell "binocular" - but if we're banning people for making spelling mistakes, I'm sure quite a few of us are in deep trouble. Sure, this might have been WickWack - but unless you have some more evidence to present, what you have is a "gut feel" which stands very little chance of being correct.

So, Tevildo: Put up or shut up.

This is why the "shoot from the hip" vigilante approach to fighting trolls is so bad. It's just like the Salem witch trials - where people were tried and convicted without anything remotely resembling evidence. We cannot, and must not, condemn 100,000+ people to being blocked from the ref desks, wrongly accused and generally frustrated just because one person here has a "gut feel"! That's bullshit and it has to stop. SteveBaker (talk) 21:27, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Spot on, even if a tad verbose. :D ―Mandruss ☎ 21:50, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

It's assuming bad faith on the part of regular editors, and assuming good faith on the part of drive-bys. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:53, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

(1) It is not assuming bad faith from anyone, as I said above. (2) We should assume good faith from everyone until bad faith is proven. 100% certainty is never possible, but we should get a lot closer than Tevildo did above, which you appear to be defending despite it being shredded by SB, and closer than I think you do a lot of time. I'm sorry you're that cynical, but that's not an issue for this page. ―Mandruss ☎ 00:03, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

He hasn't shredded anything. And kissing up to trolls while disparaging established editors is called a "double standard". ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:01, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

OK, I'll just make this point, as regards "a lot closer". If SteveB's figure is meant literally, we should have about half a million posts from legitimate Telstra users on the desks. Even if it's exaggeration, we should have dozens of them. Can you find one of them? Show us just one legitimate post from an anonymous Telstra user. This is before we get into the other characteristics of WickWack. Tevildo (talk) 09:00, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Oh good grief. Don't you see that I just did that?! If you believe that every post from telstra/perth is WickWack - then every post I find from that area MUST be WickWack...then you ask me to find one that isn't. Don't you see that you've blinded yourself to the possibility that you might ever be wrong? And I didn't say that all 100,000 telstra/Perth/anonIP/Wikipedia-users post to the ref desks...that's clearly stupid - most of them come here to read articles about Japanese Railway stations or something - but, out of 100,000 - it would be surprising if none of them came here to ask a question once in a while. What I am saying it that there is a high probability that a post from an anonIP user in that area ISN'T WickWack...and by automatically assuming that they are, you're potentially making a horrible, horrible mistake. Even if there is only a 50/50 chance - wrongly accusing that one innocent questioner is enough of a bad thing to invalidate utterly the supposed benefit of a valid WickWack identification. So unless you have some further degree of certainty that this is an evil-doer, then you're damaging the ref desk rather than helping it. IMHO, if the questions and answers posted by a telstra/Perth/AnonIP/Spelling-mistooker are not nasty - we should WP:AGF and handle them just as we do with TimeWarner/Austin/Registered/Apostrophe-abusers like me. The only sure way to know you have an evildoer in our midst is if they actually do evil. Put another way - if the only way for evil-doers to do evil is to post innocuous, innocent questions at a reasonable volume so that we can't be reasonably certain that they are doing evil - then what evil are they actually doing? SteveBaker (talk) 15:00, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Steve, not that it's any skin off my big nose, but did you bother to search the archives for the repetition of the spelling error in question that Tevildo recognized before going on this march? It has been all too evident that Wickwack still likes to contribute here (there have been plenty of his postings which easily pass the wp:duck test) and given the context it is not likely a random error, but I won't edit war over this one. --Modocc (talk) 15:47, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

This thread illustrates limitations on a strategy of Deny Recognition. It either assumes that editors can recognize known trolls, or puts a burden on them to recognize known trolls. It is hostile to good-faith editors who would like to become Reference Desk regulars, because they will learn that they can be scolded if they reply in good faith to trolls. I will note that Bugs just said, in a thread at WP:ANI, that continuing to allow unregistered editors to edit is a mistake. I would at least say that tying ourselves in knots, e.g., by a Deny Recognition policy which provides the right to criticize failure to recognize trolls, in order to avoid semi-protection is silly. Deny Recognition is not effective unless the right to respond at the Reference Desk is limited to editors who have been trained in how to recognize trolls. I will again ask for a concise description of how any anti-troll strategy other than semi-protection can be consistent and avoid causing quarreling. Any anti-troll strategy that causes quarreling over how to implement it is playing into the hands of the trolls. In my own opinion, some of the editors here are trying themselves in knots to try to say that we can avoid semi-protection. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:25, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

If you can't tell that a post is from a troll - then is it really a troll? We see (above) a perfectly reasonable, interesting, on-topic response to a question being labelled as a "troll". But why? It's a perfectly ordinary day-to-day ref desk response. I don't particularly care to shut down those kinds of posts. Again, if I can't tell that it's a troll - why try to stop it? If a troll posts reasonable questions and responses as well as nasty ones - then I'm quite happy to deny recognition to the nasty ones and accept the reasonable ones. If the troll can thereby be trained to "play nice" in order to get recognition, then that's a good thing - right? SteveBaker (talk) 17:49, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree that if a post isn't obviously a troll post, it may not really be a troll post. You, User;SteveBaker, said that what we hadn't tried yet was Deny Recognition. Since you think it is all right to respond to a reasonable question, without obsessing about whether it is from a banned user, can you please define concisely how Deny Recognition will work? What I see in Deny Recognition is a formula for allowing some regular editors to attack other reference desk editors for not obsessing about whether the post is from a troll. Can you please define concisely how Deny Recognition will work, and why it is better than semi-protection? Robert McClenon (talk) 17:56, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

(unindent)

It's hardly rocket science. If you don't like a post (rightly or wrongly - and for any reason whatever) - simply don't reply to it - and don't mention that you didn't reply to it - and don't mention if someone else replies to it. If everyone refuses to answer posts we don't like - then with luck, the poster will eventually give up typing junk that everyone ignores - and simply go away - or will be forced to ask interesting questions just to get a response...which is basically fine.

The only problem with that is with people who persistently answer questions that the rest of us think are inappropriate (persistently - not just once in a while). My opinion is that we quietly (and not anywhere on the RD itself), explain to them that this is probably a bad idea because it's feeding a probable troll. I'm not talking about "scolding" or "punishing" - just a quiet, gentle word in the person's ear. Maybe something like: "Hi! I noticed that you've been answering quite a few WP:RD questions that seem to be from people who are asking them just to cause a fuss and get everyone upset. Our policy is to try to ignore people like that rather than answering their questions. It would be helpful to everyone if you could do that too. If it's not obvious to you whether a question is dubious or not - feel free to ask any of the Ref Desk regulars - myself included."...Trying to get an overall feeling that RD editors are sane, rational, intelligent, professional, caring people - who would just like to explain the problem here.

Why it's better than semi-protection is twofold:

Trolls can create multiple accounts very easily - and blocking them is just as hard as blocking IP addresses - so semi-protection won't stop them forever.
It cuts out our legitimate IP users and drastically reduces the number of people who benefit from our service.

SteveBaker (talk) 18:51, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

The other thing people desperately need to remember is that we do not necessarily need an absolute, one-size-fits-all policy here. If we're trying to revert and/or deny recognition to trolls, but we don't manage to do it 100.00% of the time, that does not mean that we have failed. And if we're not trying to revert and/or deny recognition to trolls, but we do sometimes, that does not mean that we have failed, either. (I said something like this eariler.) —Steve Summit (talk) 19:45, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

Sure - there are definitely scenarios where I'd delete a question. For example, if some evil-doer decided to post 100 instances of the same exact question by doing a copy-paste...or if they were using an account that was definitely identified as a blocked or banned user (and by "definitely", I don't mean various gut feels and mysteriously ill-described methods). But doing that requires that the situation is sufficiently obvious that nobody is likely to disagree with it...because once we start arguing a particular case, we're feeding the troll again. To avoid that kind of discussion, we'd ideally want to enshrine the deletion policy in a formal WP:RD guideline or something. SteveBaker (talk) 21:42, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

As far as banned users are concerned, there is no need for such, because banned users are handled on the RD exactly like anywhere else: they get reverted, on sight, no matter what it is they post (question, answer, obviously disruptive, seemingly harmless – it doesn't matter a bit). They get reverted as soon as they are identified, and most of the time that happens through the WP:DUCK test. We do it everywhere on Wikipedia; there's nothing special about doing it here too. Now, for genuine trolling that happens not to be ban evasion (yet), we might talk about additional guidance, but that's a different matter. I really, really wish people would stop mixing these categories up all the time. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:56, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

My point exactly. See WP:BMB. I've deleted WickWack's posting and its replies. If anyone wishes to restore it, I won't take any action. To Steve - show us _one_ anonymous posting from Telstra on the reference desks in the past four or five years that isn't from WickWack, and you might have a point. Tevildo (talk)

It's worth noting that there's a fundamental, base-postulates issue here. Suppose that:

Anonymous user A makes a 100% innocuous, productive edit. (Mainspace, talk space, RD, doesn't matter.)
Editor B knows -- just knows -- that anonymous user A is actually banned user Q. (Doesn't matter how editor B knows this, doesn't matter if editor B is right or wrong in this assessment.) Since banned users are not allowed to edit, editor B believes that the edit in (1) must be reverted.
Editor C believes, since the edit in (1) was 100% innocuous and productive, that it (a) cannot with certainty be known to have been performed by banned user Q and (b) might as well be let to stand. (Editor C may believe this despite having read WP:BMB.)

Now, my point in posting this is that editors B and C will never, ever agree. Nothing will be gained by their arguing with each other any further, nothing will be gained by repeated appeals to WP:BMB. Editors B and C will have to agree to disagree on this point. (However, since policy favors editor B, once the problematic edit in (1) has been pointed out, it will typically have to be reverted, even if some other editor turns right around and makes it, since it was after all productive.) —Steve Summit (talk) 22:29, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

It's also worth noting that miscreant admin D blocks long-term editors E and F because he assumes and claims they are "proxying for a banned editor. In no sense at all has miscreant admin D made any difference to Wikipedia other than to falsely block long-term editors, protect ref desks so that legitimate IPs cannot edit and create a hostile environment by poor communication whereby only "those in the know" (i.e. the miscreant admin and his buddies) understand what the hell is going on. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:34, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

I disagree that B & C can't ever agree if they are rational people. If B can explain the grounds on which A was identified as Q, and if they are reasonable then (rationally), C should apply the same test, obtain the same result, agree whole-heartedly that A is Q and back down forthwith. On the other hand, if B fails to adequately explain grounds for accusing A of being Q then C should stand ground and defend A's right to the presumption of innocence. Everything depends on the reason that B identified A as Q. In our recent debacle, B provided an argument of sorts and C doesn't believe it's remotely convincing. How B can stand up and continue to proclaim A is Q without evidence is beyond C's ability to comprehend. In a similar situation in the past, a different B (B³, perhaps) claims to hold their reasons secret on grounds of tipping off Q. C thinks that B³'s reasoning is unacceptable because it makes it impossible for others to verify that the test is valid and does indeed identify A as Q. SteveBaker (talk) 20:56, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't go so far as to include all Telstra but definitely Telstra that geolocate to WA. BTW, I saw this reply after Steve Baker had replied but I think before anyone else had (or maybe it was one more person can't remember) and immediately thought "this sounds like WickWack and the IP also looks like it) and quick geolocation confirmed it's WickWack's normal range. Seeing replies, I didn't do anything. I think a key point many editors are missing is that while to some extent recognition of the IP does come in to play, a lot of time it's fairly obvious from reading the response who it is. When you consider this combined with geolocation or WHOIS of the IP the chance of a false positive is not so high. Frankly with someone like Bowei Huang (who I think gave up editing from IPs) even a single question is normally enough for recognition although since SPI can be variable in what evidence they require, I normally wait a few posts before reporting (but not deleting if there are no replies). Although I think BWH often edits other stuff before coming here now anyway (perhaps partially because the desks they prefer are often semi-protected). P.S. Let's not forget that WickWack got in trouble not for asking questions but for their responses, in particular that they needed to be right so much that they invented other identities to affirm they were right. (And this discovery came after people were getting sick of them being excessively argumentative in their replies about being right, even when they had no sources.) Nil Einne (talk) 15:27, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Since it has come up, I suggest you reacquaint yourself with some other material at WP:BMB It urges us balance ban enforcement with:

Avoiding inconvenience or aggravation to any victims of mistaken identity.
Maximizing the number of editors who can edit Wikipedia.
Avoiding conflict within the community over banned editors.

I suggest that the current state of affairs is not achieving any such balance. I think it is unarguable that long-term semiprotection fails to maximize the number of editors. I think it is unarguable that the previous several thousand words on this talk page constitute strong evidence for conflict within the community. So I ask, why are you behaving against our guidelines? SemanticMantis (talk) 16:17, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Any sincere editor who wants to edit here can do so. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:24, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Although Wickwack is banned [3] and he more or less gets removed on sight (unless we quarrel over it) he is not the cause of the trolling by Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Vote (X) for Change that has led to the current semi-protection. Given the description of their behavior and their unprovoked disruption of the language desk with edits such as this and subsequently reverted [4] by an administrator, I've no doubt that this editor is keen on attempting to reap discord between the various administrators and contributors. And a quick check of these IPs' posts will bear this out. Thus given the severity of their past attacks and the current rough guide on semi-protection essay which says "If semi-protection is to be tried, its first application should be for a short duration, a few days or a week. If vandalism continues after the protection expires it can be added for a longer duration." it's not unsurprising that we have been in disagreement on the proper "balance" here, especially regarding "a longer duration". --Modocc (talk) 17:04, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm sorry, I know there's lots of related issues floating around, and it gets confusing. I brought up the guidelines about balance above because they seem to be to be contraindicating our current situation. I don't care if it's Wickwack, bowei, light current, Vote X, or whoever. I don't care if they are banned users,trolls,vandals, or whatever. My point was that this semi-protection is not balancing anything. While I am open to other viewpoints, I don't understand how one admin gets to go against consensus (even Robert, who doesn't agree, admits below that the consensus seems to be against long-term semi-protection). The protection is disrupting many IP users and many frequent helpful contributors, all because what, FPAS doesn't want to remove Vote X's posts? If he doesn't want to, he doesn't have to, but that doesn't mean he gets to shut everyone else down. The long-term abuse profile you linked advises WP:RBI. I posit that Vote X is getting tons of recognition, right here, right now. So ironically, I guess we can thank the protecting admins for giving recognition attention to these bad faith users. Letting one jerk hold all of the ref desks (and now the talk page!) hostage is just a really sad state of affairs, especially when it seems to also be against our own guidelines. (PS to simplify these discussions, I propose the term "Witch" to be "any troll, vandal,spammer, banned user, or otherwise disruptive user who acts in bad faith". That way we won't have to argue about what category the ne'er do wells in question belong in ;) SemanticMantis (talk) 21:28, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

SM, that term might be construed as being offensive to practitioners of the Wiccan Rede. Shall we have an argument about this, as well? It seems to be our primary skill at the moment. Tevildo (talk) 22:01, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Ha, so now we are too civilized to dunk test witches. :-) Since I'm certain that Telvido, whom you were addressing, and the administrator Fut.Perf. have been acting within the guidelines even when we disagree with them: then feeding the wretched ones becomes unavoidable if we demand arguments and/or every minute detail of the justification(s) for the semi-protections. On a related note, I discovered an essay the other day which advocates keeping a low profile and staying above the fray.. not that is likely, but its best we argue about appropriate policy and for us not tp throw around allegations of its abuse. -Modocc (talk) 22:36, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

If we do want an argument, may I suggest "miscreant"? Tevildo (talk) 23:07, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

"The protection is disrupting many IP users and many frequent helpful contributors, all because what, FPAS doesn't want to remove Vote X's posts? If he doesn't want to, he doesn't have to, but that doesn't mean he gets to shut everyone else down." -- I couldn't have expressed it better myself. Unaware of the ongoing discussion on this talk page, I posted a like-minded message onto his user talk page; but he didn't condescend to respond. --My another account (talk) 20:06, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Something that occured to me, is the premise at the beginning of this question even correct? I don't check out all the desks nor do I regularly check out the history to see what's happened recently, but a lot of the stuff I am seeing is stuff like Special:Contributions/Kevin.b32 coming from newly registered non autoconfirmed editors. The autoconfirmed editors I've seen tended to be Bowei Huang socks who's frequency doesn't seem to have been changed by protections. Are there examples of this increase in disruptive recently autoconfirmed editors (perhaps 2 or 3). Autoconfirmation isn't a particularly high threshold but it is a threshold many can't be bothered with.Nil Einne (talk) 07:53, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protection of this talk page

While I have been arguing, apparently in disagreement with a consensus of the other regular editors here, that long-term semi-protection of the Reference Desks themselves is the lesser evil compared to any other strategy for dealing with trolling at the Reference Desks, since we can't agree on the details of how such a strategy should be implemented, I see that this Reference Desk talk page has been semi-protected. Can the protecting admin, User:Ian.thomson, explain why that is thought to be necessary here? I think that semi-protecting a talk page is an extreme measure. (I do remember once when it was necessary, at a fringe science talk page that was subject to disruption by multiple IPs, but it is an extreme measure.) Robert McClenon (talk) 19:37, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

I too, await an explanation, thanks. SemanticMantis (talk) 21:28, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

It's simple. The ongoing IP edits are providing too much information on the misbehaviour of Arbcom-favoured admins who are compelled to block just about every IP wherever possible around here, and protect the Ref Desk from genuine usage. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy, the blocking admins are actively destroying Wikipedia's core principles and they know it. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:33, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

(I couldn't resist, I made a new section about this below for increased visibility.) SemanticMantis (talk) 21:41, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Although perhaps not wishing to endorse TRM's statement in its entirety, I still must agree that various admins have been rather too aggressive recently in their responses to Vote X. Manual reversion seems to work satisfactorily, on the talk page at least, and locking it for a week in response to eight Vote X postings in six hours does not appear to be a proportionate solution. Tevildo (talk) 21:45, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

31 over 10 days, each making a few posts (so several a day). In that time, there were maybe a dozen semi-protected edit requests. Blocking wasn't working, because he was just hopping to a new IP. If someone disagrees with the protection, I don't mind if it's shortened or eliminated, but that seemed the most obvious solution to me.

And a further note in response to some of the stuff I'm seeing here: I don't know or care about any politics between that sock and arbcom or whatever, I just saw disruptive posts outnumbering useful anon edits by close to 10 to 1 for over a week. When that happens on other pages, we do the same thing, and no one seriously suggests that we delete that article or that it has anything to do with site politics. Same deal here. I suggest a few editors go re-read WP:AGF. Ian.thomson (talk) 01:44, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for the explanation. Are you saying that disruptive edits to this talk page substantially outnumbered good-faith IP edits? Robert McClenon (talk) 02:35, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, many times over. If it was closer to equal, I'd've left it alone. Ian.thomson (talk) 03:04, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Without commenting on the merits of the semiprotection of this talk page, and at the risk of WP:Beans we do already have Wikipedia talk:Reference desk/unprotected talk page if editors need it. We could link to it from the top if needed.

From what I've seen, this is common with user talk pages that are semiprotected, but not with article talk pages. Partially this is because there are often BLP concerns, but I think also because editors can't be bothered dealing with reverting so many IP edits when so few are useful. Definitely with Talk:Poop and Talk:Forum but also I think in cases like Talk:Justin Bieber it gets boring reverting all the Justin Bieber rules/Justin Bieber sucks posts. From a look at Category:Semi-protected talk pages, it looks like the majority just have {{tl:pp-vandalism}} or {{tl:pp-semi-blp}} and one or two have links to WP:RFED (I couldn't actually find a semiprotected article talk page that was in use).

P.S. Some of those are a bit weird. E.g. File talk:Swift performs in St. Louis, Missouri in 2013.jpg. Perhaps it was used in her article, but it doesn't look like that talk page was ever protected so I'm not sure why they ended up on the file talk page.

The only comment I will say about the merits of the talk page semi-protection is I think whether we need to consider if the number of IP useful IP edits are high enough that we should accept the annoyance of reverting unwanted contribs despite the poor ratios. While I never checked, I presume in most of the pages I listed, the number of helpful IP edits is very small because while many of the articles aren't FA, it's still harder to make a useful contrib without careful reading and they're also less likely to bother anyway.

One possibility is to link to the unprotected talk page in the various headers so that IPs can easily find the unprotected talk page. Again at the risk of beans, it looks to me like most constructive IP edits here are edit requests which aren't going to be significantly affected by being on a different page and the unconstructive are attempted to participate in the ongoing discussions by banned editors.

Nil Einne (talk) 08:37, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Many years ago, I did a study by taking 200 randomly selected articles and figuring out the percentage of "good" vs "bad" edits over 12 months for IP versus named-account editors...and overwhelmingly, the good edits were by users with accounts and the bad ones were IP's - it wasn't by a small margin, it was overwhelmingly true. On that basis, I've generally supported semi-protection requests for articles that are actively being vandalized...it works, and it's not a terrible thing for the future of the encyclopedia (although some ardent anon-IP people might be scared off - it doesn't greatly impact the quality of our articles).

But here on the ref desks it's different. We might very well find that IP's who respond to questions aren't very important - but IP's who ask questions are pretty much our core demographic. Blocking them from asking questions easily is like telling IP users that they can't read Wikipedia articles anymore!

As a compromise, I wonder if semi-protection over just some limited IP address range is technologically feasible? That would go some way to solving the telstra/Perth issue. It would still make life harder (but not impossible) for hypothetical telstra/Perth innocents while shutting out telstra/Perth bad guy. I still don't like it - but it would be an improvement over blanket semi-protection.

SteveBaker (talk) 15:43, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

The effect would be achievable, though technically not through semi-protection proper but through an edit filter. I've been considering this myself. It would certainly be more effective than the content-based filters we've been trying so far, and it would lead to considerably less collateral damage than either full rangeblocks (affecting all pages), or semi-protection (affecting all IPs). Trouble is that at least in the Vote X case, the set of affected ranges is quite large, so the filter would be fairly complex. I was under the impression that filters consisting of a lot of complex pattern matching are computationally costly, so we'd have to check with the filter gurus to see if it's advisable. Don't know how big the affected ranges are for the Telstra guy. Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:58, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

It is technologically possible to block certain IP ranges from editing certain pages. Without divulging too much into detail per WP:BEANS, the consequences however would be blocking an entire city from editing said pages (for the refdesks, this would only apply to anon users editing from a specific area). However if this idea were to be implemented, protection would likely be unnecessary and would allow a greater number of editors to edit. If this is a solution that has consensus, I can try to implement it for you guys. Elockid ^{Message me} 15:55, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Steve, while I may regret posting this, I don't think that blocking Telstra would be of assistance. WickWack is not a prolific poster, and manual reversion is all that's needed to deal with him - and, as you point out most vocally above, there are many thousands of non-banned Telstra users who might want to post. Vote X is a different matter - they use a vast range of IP addresses, and a range block wouldn't be feasible, as far as I know - otherwise, I'd expect it to have been tried already. Tevildo (talk) 16:05, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

That's good information. So that brings us back to the previous issue - how do we know that a post is from Vote X? SteveBaker (talk) 18:31, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

It'll be interesting to see the answer to that question, it might help in resolving a small part of our current issues. I don't know it myself. Tevildo (talk) 19:34, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Yeah to be clear, Wickwack clearly isn't the reason the RD is semiprotected and aren't really that hard to deal with or identify. Identifying Vote X is a bit harder although from what I've seen they generally give it away in the end. (Actually I wrote a long comment where I partially address this in reply to the proposal below but I haven't decided whether to post yet.) I wouldn't completely rule out an edit filter based range block of Vote X. IMO the big issue here is complexity. I presume the reason a general range block hasn't been implemented is it's considered too disruptive to block such large ranges throughout the encyclopaedia despite the high level of disruption which isn't just to the RD (they've been around since 2012 or so). To give a random possibly WP:Beans example, I'm not sure if we have to worry about Vote X disruption Talk:My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic and related articles any time soon. Since we're semi protecting the RD anyway, there would ultimately be less disruption here if it was possible and worked. (The ranges are large enough that we may stop a small number of non Vote X edits which is unfortunate, but I think it's difficult to argue that the majority of edits from these ranges here aren't coming from Vote X particularly when they often give it away.) The later may be the other issue, I asked this elsewhere and I don't think anyone answered. Is the editor who was using open proxies (or whatever) and was changing to South Korea and random other locations within minutes Vote X or someone else? Will they be back with a vengence in that form and do they have enough open proxies to cause significant disruption? I guess we won't know until we try. Nil Einne (talk) 07:31, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

That's not Vote X (the person using the proxies). I have been stepping up blocking anonymizing services, so that should be of some deterrent for them. Elockid ^{Message me} 13:06, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

WP:HERE and the Ref Desks

As of this writing, this page is a 385 kb waste of time and effort that, imho could (should?) have been spent actually writing/improving articles. If fact, how does having a "Reference Desk" even contribute to building an encyclopedia? I could understand if it were editors asking for references they need in order to write articles. But the overwhelming majority of RD questions have nothing to do with building an encyclopedia, and the answers usually even less so. It's become a place where some people hang out and ask questions that can be answered with a simple google search while others chime in with their opinions. There are plenty of forums where these people can go socialize, make jokes and argue opinions. Instead of the RfC above, I'd be interested in an RfC in a neutral centralized location to find out whether the community believes the "reference desks" (as they are now, not what they have been or what they could be) are in keeping with WP:HERE and want to keep them or would rather close them permanently.--William Thweatt ^Talk^Contribs 10:56, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. It's even worse than just not contributing to Wikipedia; the Reference Desks actually act as a brain-drain on the rest of the site, sucking in otherwise intelligent people into endless arguments and idle banter that do nothing to further Wikipedias core mission. Shut them down, I say. Musurethine (talk) 12:42, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Note: this is Musurethine (talk · contribs)'s first edit. —Steve Summit (talk) 12:56, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

See this RfC from two and a half years ago. The option to close the desks had some traction but the result was to keep. Recently, it was suggested at ANI by The Bushranger that these desks should be split into a separate Wikimedia entity.[5]] and the reactions to that were mixed. -Modocc (talk) 13:31, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Should we post an RfC proposing such a split? If so, where should the RfC be posted? --Guy Macon (talk) 14:46, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

A new Wikimedia site whose user base will consist of about a dozen persons per day worldwide, asking questions, and about another dozen regulars, providing answers? People, get a grip. One of the factors that makes this whole endless debate so useless is the tendency among the regulars of pathetically overrating the importance of the whole thing. Just fathom this: among the millions and millions of people who turn to Wikipedia every day in search of information, maybe 10–20 per day end up at the desk asking a question (and that already includes the trolls and the serial-stupid-question-asking regulars). The number of casual visitors who even just look at the desks in search of information without participating (i.e. people other than those who ask questions and the regulars who answer them) may be somewhere in the hundreds. Compared with the total traffic at Wikipedia that's a tiny, near-negligible number. If the entire refdesk were to be zapped today, how many people worldwide apart from us regulars would even notice, let alone care? Fut.Perf. ☼ 16:46, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Hard to argue with that reasoning. Could well be a monumental case of bikeshed. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:54, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Indeed it could, along with "editors" who do nothing to improve Wikipedia for our readers and actively degrade the project for our IPs who act in good faith, other than protect themselves from scrutiny. If it's such a big "non-deal", why all the protections, reversions, blocks etc? It can't work both ways. If the current function of Ref Desk is no longer tenable because it's continually being protected by such "prefects", let's make it clear in the instructions that IP editors are no longer welcome. That's the ultimate solution unless the current "approach" changes somehow to preserve one of the fundamental tenets of Wikipedia. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:10, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Requiring registration for the ref desk would significantly curb the problem. And requiring registration does not alter the "anyone can edit" aspect. They just need to do a few minutes of work to get an account set up. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:51, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

The real question seems to be not whether IP editors are "no longer welcome" at the Reference Desks, so much as whether the Reference Desks have a special inviolable mission to IP editors that warrants overriding the standing policy on semi-protection, which is that it may be used when necessary. Some of the regular editors here seem to think that any semi-protection violates the mission of the Reference Desks, which is to serve the unregistered editors, and that we must avoid semi-protection. First, if they think that, they should file an RFC at WP:Protection policy to specify that the Reference Desks are special in that way. Second, we have seen that quarreling about alternatives to semi-protection are more disruptive than semi-protection, and so are not pragmatic. Robert McClenon (talk) 19:30, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

What we do know is that the current approach of prefect admins reverting, blocking and protecting is making no difference at all, and it could be argued that it is making the situation worse by highlighting it. The status quo is wrong, we all know that, including the prefect admins, so let's do something different lest this become a venue where IPs aren't allowed. As I said before, let's rework "anyone can edit" to "anyone with an account can edit".... The Rambling Man (talk) 20:50, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

The rationale is that en.wikipedia.org is the wrong venue for the venue. That may be true, but moving the venue wouldn't solve the problem. It would only relocate it. Those of us who went to the new location to continue their participation would be faced with the same problems, and their time would still be diverted from developing articles. Those who did not would simply be dumping the problems on someone else, and they could just as easily remove these desks from their watchlists and stay away from them. I don't see how changing the host would be a solution to anything, aside from the fact that, strictly speaking, the encyclopedia's primary mission is being compromised. It would be a purely symbolic move. Things like DYK are also ancillaries that are not about the development of articles and drain significant time from that effort. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:12, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

We did just fine in an era before the vigilantes and aggressive admins got involved - but it's hard to say what is the cause and what is the consequence. If you look at WP:RD around 2007/2008, there was considerably more professionalism and much less meta-discussion - back then I don't think anyone would even consider getting rid of it. We were getting around 70 questions per day - and independent studies done of our performance were favorable:

[6] [7] "The quality of answers on the Wikipedia Reference Desk is similar to that of traditional reference service. Wikipedia volunteers outperformed librarians or performed at the same level on most quality measures."

Locking the desks up so people can't ask questions freely - and then claiming that we have hardly any posters is hardly a fair way to judge how well we fill a need. I agree that spinning it off as a separate WMF project doesn't make much sense. Moving it completely outside WMF would be relatively easy - it doesn't consume much in the way of server resources - but the lack of traffic coming from Wikipedia would be a death-knell.

IMHO, we need to find a way to fix this service - and build it back into a service that's at least as good as it was half a dozen years ago. I think the way forward is to discourage vigilanteism and to keep uninvolved admins who don't understand how we work off of our backs. Every move that either of those groups go through feeds the trolls. There were still trolls in 2008 - we dealt with them quietly, and mostly by either ignoring them or providing dead-pan answers - they weren't a problem at all.

SteveBaker (talk) 17:57, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Trolls are going to troll. They're going to do whatever they want and nothing we can do will stop them.

Admins are going to block posters, delete questions, and wall off the refdesk entirely. They are going to do whatever they want and nothing we can do will stop them.

The difference, of course, is that trolls are a minor nuisance. In the lack of any organized initiative against them whatsoever, we might each have to blank a section every few days. That would be a shame.

Whereas an administrator has the ability to keep new users from getting involved or getting answers, to dismiss our collateral effects on article writing, to deny any value to archives of answered questions, to insist that no format but the one they have in mind counts as an encyclopedic resource, and when all else fails, they can simply destroy the whole Refdesk outright.

A reasonable person might question whether someone who can't see any value in having a Refdesk at all should be taking the lead in enforcing "anti-troll" restrictions that most people here strongly oppose, and answering discussion on the topic with a big slice of I Didn't Hear That slathered in a sauce of Only Admins Get A Vote. A reasonable person might think that someone who actually likes and values the Refdesk might do a better job of enforcement, or non-enforcement, of anti-troll crusades.

But what reasonable people think doesn't matter - only what admins think matters. The medium is the message, and the message of Wikipedia is one about power establishing itself and defending itself at all costs. There is no Science or Humanities in that message, and no room for them there.

The real lesson we can take from this is that not just this refdesk, not just Wikipedia, but the entire Internet is a dead end. It is all about power and control, masquerading temporarily as content. Everything written, whether to the Refdesk Archives or to Wikipedia or even to the online newspapers and scientific journals ... all of it comes with an expiration date. A Dark Age is the manifest destiny of a culture subsumed by power and control. Wnt (talk) 18:11, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree about Dark Age, and I've long believed that we'll enter the next one within a couple of centuries at most. This goes to my personal userbox:

This user is aware that, in the end, it's only Wikipedia.

Truth be told, our lives are little more than ways to occupy ourselves until the next collapse. But I've found that to be a tough sell, and understandably so. I'm just occupying myself, like you and everyone else, and the Internet, Wikipedia, and RD are part of that. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:29, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Would you assert that a library reference desk is a wasted effort, and that they should all be closed? After all, they do not increase the number or quality of books on shelves, they take up space, and they cost money. They only serve to help patrons, rather than improve a library's infrastructure, holdings, or income. Why indeed to libraries tolerate such a drain on their resources?

It really comes down to what you think any of this is HERE for. I think it's obvious to see that a reference service fits easily and cleanly into WP/WMF goals. Also recall WP:PAPER, and all those kilobytes of discussion are not wasting much of anything. Also recall the fact that nobody is obligated to spend any time on WP:RD, so I have a hard time caring if anyone doesn't like the ref desks' presence. I advise such people to simply not read our reference desks, which I'm told is both free and easy to do! (I also think concern trolling may be an interesting and relevant read) SemanticMantis (talk) 15:34, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

I wouldn't (and haven't) asserted "that a library reference desk is a wasted effort..." I do assert that Wikipedia isn't a library. It's a "free encyclopedia that anybody can edit". Neither my Funk & Wagnalls nor my World Book Encyclopedia included a desk/forum where a group of editors hung out and asked/answered questions with actual references, much less jokes and opinions. Reference desks do belong in a library, they don't belong in an encyclopedia. If, however, you insist on comparing this to an actual library reference desk (a premise I don't accept), this sort of useless, opinionated, unreferenced answer, which is the norm here not the exception, wouldn't be tolerated there either. I'm not trying to be dismissive of the contributions of the few editors such as yourself who actually try to provide neutral, referenced answers to legitimate thoughtful questions. On the contrary, I enjoy reading your answers and those of a few others, for example, and I sometimes learn things. However, as great and well-researched as your answers are, neither the question nor the answer contributes to the building of the encyclopedia to any significant degree. There are entire websites out there which exist solely for the purpose of answering people's questions (and frankly do better overall jobs at it). We don't need to attempt to duplicate that here. At best, the ref desks are a distraction (from the Project/content creation) and, at worst, as exemplified by the current farce, contribute to the general public's negative view of WP. WP would be a better, more productive place without them.--William Thweatt ^Talk^Contribs 05:18, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments.
A couple of years ago I made the mistake of trying to enforce the instructions at the top of a reference desk page. I was promptly slapped down by an editor with years of experience, who was one of the responders violating the instructions. When I got zero support at the desk, I took the issue to the Village Pump and dropped a link to it in the RD discussion. I got no support there either, from either RD regulars or others. Nada. The take-home was that the most important thing is to avoid offending experienced editors (a respected editor with about 8 years of experience actually said that at VP). Conclusion: Those instructions don't mean squat to the Wikipedia community, they're just bureaucratic noise to be ignored at will. The rules for the desks are whatever those then present wish them to be, and they will vary with a period of days or hours as that mix changes. Nothing in that area has changed in the past two years. ―Mandruss ☎ 05:36, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

@WilliamThweatt: With regard to "Reference desks do belong in a library, they don't belong in an encyclopedia", you may want to see the fourth (and the ninth) paragraph here. I vaguely recall using Britannica's reference service myself once in the late 1950s or early '60s for some forgotten school project (since my family did own a set). Sure, the existence of that service was basically just a marketing ploy, but it at least shows that providing such a thing wasn't thought to be antithetical to an encyclopedia's goal of satisfying its customers. Deor (talk) 06:26, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, Deor for that link. I too used those old school 'pedias back in the age before internet, but was unaware of any such service. Interesting. I think, however, the key is in this sentence [t]he salesman also offered, at added cost, access to a research service that would gather data on any question you asked (strictly limited in frequency, however). It was an additional service for which the customer had to pay extra and had strict limitations on frequency. Not really comparable to either an in-person library ref desk or WP ref desks, imo. It was, as you point out, a marketing ploy; the only relation it had to the encyclopedia is that the salesman already had his foot in the door. I think its purpose was not to satisfy customers but rather to make money. Regardless, I'm not saying the ref desks are "antithetical" to (i.e. mutually incompatible with) WP. I'm saying they're simply irrelevant to content creation/maintenance and do nothing to advance the goal of building "a free encyclopedia that anybody can edit" while providing a forum wherein certain editors freely opine and joke. To re-purpose a term from RfA, the ref desks have become a net negative, a diseased fruitless limb whose time for pruning has come (again, imho).--William Thweatt ^Talk^Contribs 07:20, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

FWIW, I also used the Britannica Research service. I was only a teenager at the time - my parents had bought a set of Britannica - and with it came a perforated sheet of about 50 stickers - each good for one free query at their service. I used it several times - often for the kinds of questions we see here every day. I remember asking "Is Time Travel Possible?" - mailing it off, with a sticker. Many weeks later, I got a thick envelope with reprints of a dozen scientific papers - and a hand-typed reply pointing out some Brittanica articles that I might not have read - and explaining why the articles the reprinted for me were important. This was most certainly the "snail mail" equivalent of what we do here. So there is precedent.

Furthermore, "Wikipedia isn't a library" is becoming less true as time goes on. We have 5,000,000+ english language articles - which is perhaps like having 500,000 non-fiction books on shelves. That's considerably more material than most library reference desks have at hand. SteveBaker (talk) 16:26, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

@WilliamThweatt: Well I'm glad you think at least some of us are doing it right :) Here's the thing: we'll always have bad answers, and WP will always have bad articles. The point is that we can improve. That's the wiki way, right? For a ref desk question, we may only get a few days, so it is indeed more ephemeral and different than article space. But I don't think anyone would way to shut down WP just because some articles are not great. As others have noted, other encyclopedias have offered reference service. I also posit that we do help improve the encyclopedia, though I don't think that is necessary to justify our existence. I know I add wikilinks and correct typos to articles I cite with some frequency. And we must have helped Kavebear (?) write and reference a whole section of our Hawaiian history over the past year. Finally, I think the distraction argument is a red herring. I like to help people as I can, when I can, and I like the way I can do ref desking in 10 minute chunks. If the ref desk were closed, I don' think I (or many others) would suddenly go off to improve our articles. Basically, I think WP was created largely to help the public have easier and freer access to information, and that the ref desks are consistent with that goal. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:25, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

William Thweatt's points are well taken (and I mean that), but it's worth noting that, for better or worse, the Reference Desks are a core part of Wikipedia, as evidenced by the fact that they're linked to right there on the Main page, with a friendly note stating we "serve as virtual librarians" and "tackle your questions on a wide range of subjects". The desks are not just a playpen for a few bored regulars, and they're not just for other Wikipedia editors who are doing research for article space.

These notions could certainly evolve and may be doing so now. At some point, if the only-for-registered-editors trend continues, we're going to have to see about getting that link deleted from the main page. —Steve Summit (talk) 17:20, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

In my opinion, the "only-for-registered-editors trend" (AKA lengthy and often-renewed semiprotection) is a rational response by the protecting administrator to persistent trollfeeding by refdesk regulars. Get rid of the trollfeeding and the need for often-renewed semiprotection goes away as well. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:44, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Nothing new here

Occasionally I ask questions at the reference desk. Sometimes I glance at this page too. It's a shame to see, every time, that the page is filled with permanent argument about how to manage the reference desks, which seems esentially unchanged over five years or even more. It seems that more effort goes into these dicussions here than actually goes into answering the relatively modest number of questions that are posted. My first advice would be for reference desk administrators to take this discussion out of the public view. Obviously people are going to keep trolling when they see the constant drama and argument that they provoke. Secondly, I think you guys are making it more difficult than it needs to be. Delete the stupid questions silently. If a genuine question sometimes gets accidentally deleted then tough. If a troll sometimes accidentally gets answered then so what. Senior editors should, at least publicly, be supporting each other's decisions in this regard, not constantly bickering in full view. 81.132.196.131 (talk) 00:25, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

I mostly agree, in that what the trolls are accomplishing is getting there to be bickering in full view. I think that, when questions are improperly deleted or hatted, issue does need to be taken, because the deleting of legitimate questions is even worse than bickering, and that therefore editors who think that a question should be deleted or hatted should carefully consider whether they will be supported. I certainly think that this comment illustrates the limitations of Deny Recognition, in that a policy of Deny Recognition that is accompanied by rebuking of editors who respond honestly to questions that are thought to be troll questions is even worse than just either ignoring the questions or responding to them. I mostly but not entirely agree. The silent deletion of genuine questions however should not be ignored or tolerated. Robert McClenon (talk) 01:43, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

And again I would point out that the help desk doesn't have these problems and encourage everyone who is discussing this here to try to figure out why we have a problem that a similar board on Wikipedia avoids. What are we doing wrong that they are doing right? And please don't claim that we are somehow special. The only thing "special" about us is that our behavior encourages trolling. --Guy Macon (talk) 14:42, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

That premise attempts to validate the "look what you made me do" game. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:50, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

The help desk is much narrower subject matter. It's mostly about how to use Wikipedia. It wouldn't seem likely to draw trolls very often. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:59, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't follow that. If one wanted to, they could easily troll HD by asking dumb questions about how to use Wikipedia. It wouldn't take long before WT:HD looked a lot like this page. Guy's question remains unanswered. ―Mandruss ☎ 16:23, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Or like "Why do the Jews control Wikipedia?" Right. Maybe you or Guy or someone who lauds the help desk could find a few examples of how they've dealt with trolling. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:15, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Guy's point is that they haven't dealt with trolling, because they don't have a significant amount of it. He asks why the difference.
I was a fairly active HD responder for something like a year, and I never saw anything that resembled trolling. While false positives are a problem here in my opinion, it would be highly unlikely to have significant trolling activity there and miss it completely. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:30, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

And my point is that the narrow subject matter range of the help desk is not conducive to the type of trolling we get on the ref desks. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:55, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

And the type of trolling is beside the point. A troll doesn't care how he gets his fix. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:12, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

No, it is not beside the point. If you think of the trolling questions that keep recurring here, few or none of them would likely get asked at the help desk. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:14, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

(Shakes head in utter astonishment. Walks away, again.) ―Mandruss ☎ 20:09, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

In response to Guy Macon's question, I can think of three things. (When I say "we" below, I refer to the reference desk participants collectively.)

With us, it's personal. We don't just quietly deal with trolls and vandals, we are on a quest to eradicate them.
We give plenty of recognition. Related to the above, our responses to trolls and vandals and our debates over how to handle them are voluminous and very visible.

I would comment that a few editors here think that we should have a very strict Deny Recognition policy, but that they attempt to impose that by scolding other editors who don't recognize a troll post, and so respond to it. The scolding is an even better form of recognition. Robert McClenon (talk) 16:55, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

We alienate posters we don't like. When someone posts something borderline, we tend to assume they're a troll or a vandal, and to berate them for it or accusatorily question their motives. I can't prove it or cite examples, but over time this may tend to turn the occasional casual troublemaker into an active troll, or into a singleminded vandal with a vendetta against us. —Steve Summit (talk) 17:25, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Your third point there is the "look what you made me do" game. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:53, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

I'll see your "look what you made me do" and raise you "look how you made me cut off my nose to spite my face". —Steve Summit (talk) 19:26, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm saying that the trolls who get angry about being banned (Light current would be one), justify their behavior on the grounds that Wikipedia "made them do it." Nobody makes trolls do anything. They freely choose to do what they do. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:32, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

And I'm saying that the RD regulars who get angry about being trolled, and in response do things that may damage the desks, justify their behavior on the grounds that... —Steve Summit (talk) 20:31, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Who's angry? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 21:06, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

That's a very diplomatic use of "we". ―Mandruss ☎ 17:43, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

I think the "Guy's point is that they haven't dealt with trolling, because they don't have a significant amount of it" comment confuses cause and effect. To be blunt, pretty much every online forum that deals with trolls the way the reference desks do is flooded with trolling, and most online forums that deal with trolls the way the help desk does don't have much of a trolling problem. Steve Summit's post above correctly identified what we are doing wrong. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:19, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

I stand corrected, then, and I reiterate Bugs' request for some examples of how trolling has been handled at HD. As I said, I never saw any of it during my year there (nor did I witness anyone else seeing it). ―Mandruss ☎ 22:04, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

I would like User:Guy Macon to clarify what he is saying is different about how we handle trolling as opposed to how the Help Desk handles it. I think that I agree, but would appreciate clarification. I think that I mostly agree with Guy, as explained in my post below, that we encourage trolling by trying too hard, first, to deal with trolling, and, second, by complaining noisily about semi-protection. Is Guy saying that we try too hard to come up with solutions to trolling and so reward it, or what? Robert McClenon (talk) 16:58, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Our biggest problem is that certain individuals insist on trying to control the behavior of others. That never works. We need to put a stop to that kind of behavior, because it has a long history of generating increased trolling everywhere anyone has ever tried it. We need to stop feeding the trolls. We need to either ignore posts we don't like, reply to posts we don't like with a deadpan serious answer to the question asked as if we never noticed that it was an attempt to disrupt the helpdesks, or report posts we don't like at ANI for the admins to deal with. We need to stop responding to trolls. We need to stop hatting or deleting comments by trolls. We need to stop talking about trolls. We need to stop talking about each others responses to trolls. We need to stop making trolls the center of attention. We need to stop making regulars who respond to trolls the center of attention. We need to put all of the above in an RfC (possibly as a limited-time experiment), achieve an overwhelming consensus that this is what we want to do, put it in our guidelines, and report anyone who refuses to follow the consensus at ANI so that they can be blocked for being disruptive. What we are doing now is not working. --Guy Macon (talk) 17:57, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

I support that, with emphasis on put it in our guidelines. I think an RfC including "all of the above" would be unworkable, but I don't see why it can't be broken into smaller pieces. For example, the three alternatives beginning with "We need to either". And stay away from tangential discussion in the RfC. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:39, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Breaking it into a series of RfCs is a good idea. Alas, I don't think the RfC that addresses the problem that certain individuals insist on trying to control the behavior of others (behavior that increases trolling every time) will pass. I think we have too many refdesk regulars who really, really like controlling the behavior of others and too few that are willing to let it go, even for a limited-time trial. :( Every time the refdesks feed a troll a devil gets his horns... --Guy Macon (talk) 00:30, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

I, too, agree with this, but I have to ask: if trying to control people is a fool's errand, how do we expect to control the behavior of the people who insist on trying to control people? —Steve Summit (talk) 01:32, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Trying to control people when you are an ordinary editor just like they are is a fool's errand, but controlling people when you are an uninvolved Wikipedia administrator works just fine, and can be enforced if needed with blocks or topic bans. All we need to do is to decide to ignore the minor disruptions and to report the major disruptions at WP:ANI so the admins can do the job we elected them to do. --Guy Macon (talk) 15:41, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Still nothing new here, but comments

I agree with User:Guy Macon that trying to control or change the behavior of other editors here does not work. A few regular editors here apparently think that they will be able, by sufficient persuasion (or lecturing or berating), to impose a satisfactory strategy for dealing with trolls. Any such assumption is either foolishness or arrogance (or both). Therefore, continuing to discuss what the Right Strategy is for dealing with trolls is a mistake. In particular, trying to discuss what the Right Strategy is for dealing with trolls that will work better than occasional semi-protection is a mistake. The use of semi-protection for dealing with disruptive unregistered editors is supported by Wikipedia protection policy. If you think that the Reference Desk is so special, as a service to unregistered editors, that it should never be semi-protected, post an RFC to amend the protection policy by exempting the Reference Desk; don’t try to modify policy here by local consensus. Complaining about the behavior of other editors here doesn’t help (and encourages the trolls). If you think that the behavior of another editor, such as improper hatting or deleting of troll posts, is problematic, but doesn’t require WP:ANI attention, take it to the other editor’s talk page. The hatting or deleting of troll posts at the Reference Desks has been shown to create more controversy than it avoids. Either ignore the troll posts, or respond to them as if they were not troll posts. (The deleting of troll posts at the Help Desk does work, but there is consensus there as to what are troll posts, and there isn’t consensus here.) Stop trying to change the behavior of other editors. Stop complaining about the behavior of other editors here. Either complain to them on their talk pages, or complain at WP:ANI after reading the boomerang essay. If you really think that the Reference Desks should never be semi-protected, file an RFC at WP:Protection Policy; don’t file an RFC to that effect here, and don’t complain here. (I agree that three months of semi-protection is too long, but that isn’t the main problem, and that doesn’t excuse a lot of noise here.) Robert McClenon (talk) 17:19, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

How should editors deal with other editors who are trying to control other editors here? Either complain to them at their talk pages, with templates if necessary for using a talk page as a forum, or, if necessary, take them to WP:ANI after reading the boomerang essay. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:19, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

I fully agree with Robert McClenon's comments above.

   |                                             .--.
   |                               ______.-------|  |
   |        __                    (_____(        |  |\\\\|
   | __..--  ``--.._                 __/ `-------|  |--,
   |        __       ``--..____ .--'| \    ___   |  |  ||
   | __..--  ``--.._           |    |  |  |   |  |  |  ||
   |                  ``--..___|    |  |  |___|  |  |  ||
   The plug is pulled.          `--.|_/          |  |  ||
   Ignored is the disruptive one.  ____\ .-------|  |--`
   Feed him I will not.           (_____(        |  |\\\\|
   |                                     `-------|  |
   |                                             `--`

--Guy Macon (talk) 17:38, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

+1 ―Mandruss ☎ 19:06, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Another semi-protected edit request

Please append to WP:RD/L#Grossepelas with an appropriate placement and indentation:

I searched for "grossepelas" in the full OED Online. No hits. I then tried "pelas" on its own. It found a word "pela", but this is the same for a certain Chinese insect or the white wax that it secretes, so I don't think that's relevant. Of course if the word is badly misspelled this approach would not be helpful.

I googled for "grossepelas" and got 10 hits: one was this thread, and all of the others were in either German, French, or Portuguese. I did not try to figure one what they were about, but in every case "grosse" and "pelas" were separate words (or for the German hits, "pelas-" was actually the beginning of a longer word that happened to be hyphenated). I doubt that any of them are relevant either. --69.159.9.222 (talk) 00:46, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Done ―Mandruss ☎ 00:50, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, that was fast! --69.159.9.222 (talk) 01:09, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

And another semi-protected edit request

Please append to WP:RD/L#Words about size in English:

Some large dictionaries provide usage information that helps distinguish similar words like this. In my Random House Unabridged Dictionary from 1978, it says:

Great, big, large refer to size, extent, and degree. In reference to the size and extent of concrete objects, big is the most general and most colloquial word, large is somewhat more formal, and great is highly formal and even poetic, suggesting also that the object is notable or imposing: a big tree, a large tree, a great oak, a big field, a large field, great plains. When the reference is to a degree or quality, great is the usual word: great beauty, great mistake, great surprise; although big sometimes alternates with it in colloquial style: a big mistake, a big surprise; large is not used in reference to degree, but may be used in a qualtitative reference: a large number (great number).

And it says:

Little, diminutive, minute, small refer to that which is not large or significant. Little (the opposite of big) is very general, covering size, extent, number, quantity, amount, duration, or degree: a little boy, a little time. Small (the opposite of large and of great) can many times be used interchangeably with little, but is especially applied to what is limited or below the average in size: small oranges. Diminutive denotes (usually physical) size that is much less than the average or ordinary; it may suggest delicacy: the baby's diminutive fingers; diminutive in size but autocratic in manner. Minute suggests that which is so tiny it is difficult to discern, or that which implies attentiveness to the smallest details: a minute quantity, examination.

I would add that there are some specific senses where only one of the synonyms is used. For example, a lower-case letter may be called a "small letter", but not a "little letter".

--69.159.9.222 (talk) 01:08, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Done A nice contribution to the answers too. --Modocc (talk) 01:32, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

SPI notice

Just a general PSA: please report any incidents of racist/Nazi socking here. These guys come in batches. Thanks, GAB^Hello! 00:58, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Discussion at Template talk:Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#Template-protected edit request on 18 February 2016

You are invited to join the discussion at Template talk:Editnotices/Page/Wikipedia talk:Reference desk#Template-protected edit request on 18 February 2016. Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 19:17, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

"What Is Different?"

Two questions have been asked about the Reference Desk about “What is different?” The first is how is the Reference Desk different from the [[WP:Help Desk|Help Desk]. The second is how is the Reference Desk in 2016 different from the Reference Desk in 2008. I will try to provide partial answers to both, with more confidence that I have the first partly answered. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:28, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

How is the Reference Desk different from the Help Desk

The first difference that I see has to do with the ideas and ideals of the regulars. The Help Desk regulars are committed to Wikipedia as a whole, and see the Help Desk as a way to assist users in editing and using Wikipedia. This also applies to the Teahouse regulars. The only real difference is that the Teahouse is oriented to experienced editors advising new editors, while the Help Desk is oriented to experienced editors advising any editors, and the Teahouse regulars make it a point to be friendly. However, the Help Desk regulars focus on Wikipedia and on its policies and guidelines. They have no special dedication to the Help Desk; they see it as a way to help Wikipedia in general. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:28, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Some of the Reference Desk regulars have a passionate commitment to the Reference Desk, as a special mission of Wikipedia, and some of them see it in particular as a service to unregistered editors. I will call them the IP outreach regulars, just because I need a term for them. As a result, some of them are upset by any semi-protection of the Reference Desks. This dedication to the unregistered editors, while meaning well, has odd side effects. Trolls see that semi-protection of the Reference Desks will upset and annoy the IP outreach editors by causing the Reference Desks to be semi-protected. At the same time, Wikipedia policy does demand that troll attacks be dealt with by semi-protection. The problem is that the ideal of the IP outreach editors that the Reference Desks should never (or almost never) be semi-protected cuts against global Wikipedia policy. Then, further, in order to minimize the need for semi-protection, some of the IP outreach editors try other strategies for combating trolling, but strategies that have not achieved and will not achieve consensus, such as aggressive deletion of troll posts, or a Deny Recognition strategy that includes the berating of other registered editors who do not recognize trolls, and so respond to them as legitimate unregistered editors, or who choose to answer the trolls as if they were legitimate unregistered editors. So the first difference between the Help Desk and the Reference Desk is that the Help Desk is simply a sub-community within Wikipedia, but the Reference Desk is a community with its own values that sometimes cut against those of Wikipedia. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:28, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

The second difference results from the first. Because trolls see that they can annoy the IP outreach editors by causing semi-protection, trolls are tempted to troll just in order to cause semi-protection and watch the quarreling about it. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:28, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

So, because some Reference Desk regulars have decided that the Reference Desk is special, and should be unique in Wikipedia (in terms of focusing on unregistered editors), the Reference Desk is special, and chaotic. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:28, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

If a troll targets the Help Desk from IP addresses, the Help Desk will be semi-protected for a few days, and the Help Desk regulars will say little about it, and the troll will go somewhere else. If a troll targets a Reference Desk from IP addresses, the Reference Desk will be semi-protected, and the Reference Desk regulars will quarrel about how to deal with it, and the troll gets what they want, disruption. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:28, 16 February 2016 (UTC) Robert McClenon (talk) 03:28, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

I think you're making too much of this recent example. I will admit to being very vocal in my objections recently. But, like Modocc above, I never complained at all about any semi-protection until I became aware of this unprecedented three month semi-protection. Do you have diffs of regulars objecting and complaining to 0-48 hour semi-protection? I don't recall ever seeing that, but sometimes I also go several months without looking at the talk page. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:00, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

It is true that I didn't see complaints about one-day or two-day semi-protections until the excessive three months. However, now I am seeing statements that the Reference Desks should never be semi-protected, even for two days, and I am responding to those statements. I agree that the three months is excessive, and is contributing to further attempts by other editors to change the behavior of other editors. However, I am responding to the statements that the Reference Desks should never be semi-protected. Any effort to impose such an exemption from policy should be at the policy talk page, not here. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:02, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

I think it's safe to say that "the Ref Desks should never be semi-protected" is a minority view. Note too that such a position is nowhere stated in the RFC currently running, the only formal RFC that's been held here in recent memory. —Steve Summit (talk) 18:15, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

True, but there were complaints, to be sure a minority, that never semi-protecting the Reference Desks should have been one of the options. As the RFC is worded, it refers to a two-day maximum, and there are a few responders who opposed that, such as myself, because we said that five days should be the maximum. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:16, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

I think the main difference is the help desk doesn't get borderline questions, and as you say they are designed to help WP contributors more than the general public. The help desks are also not usually in the business of discussion amongst responders, and incremental improvement over the course of a few days. For example we get many questions that start out with no refs, then a few refs, then a disagreement and another ref etc, and sometimes all of that is important to getting a sense of an answer, especially for nuanced and subtle questions. I think all of these differences are ok, and I also think it's ok if we get a little more trolling than the help desk. SemanticMantis (talk) 14:59, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

The main difference is our Nazi Troll and Vote X haven't yet gotten FPAS to semiprotect every ref desk for two full months. Once they do that, they'll move on to the Help Desk and Teahouse and T:MP with their shit until FPAS feels the need to semiprotect THOSE for two full months each. Eventually, the two of them will collectively shut down any place for casual readers to drop in and ask questions. The thing is, they wouldn't be able to do so except for the singular, personal vendetta of a single person who has decided that their way to stop them is the only way. They're playing him like a fiddle to do their work for them. --Jayron 32 03:04, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

I partially disagree. The bit about the the singular, personal vendetta is spot on, but the Help Desk and Teahouse don't have the cadre of dedicated troll feeders that we do, so such lengthy semiprotection won't be needed there. --Guy Macon (talk) 03:36, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

At least until they move over there, and then when FPAS follows them to stop them, it'll be three months there too. --Jayron 32 03:38, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Good point. I hadn't thought of it that way before. Without naming names, clearly the Troll Feeders will follow the Trolls if the Trolls start trolling somewhere else. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:21, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

How is the Reference Desk different from in the past

I am guessing at how the Reference Desk is different from in the past. However, here are two thoughts. First, there were always trolls, but there were fewer vengeful banned editors, because there were fewer banned editors. Second, there either were no IP outreach editors, or there were fewer editors who focused on IP outreach, and therefore who were deeply upset by semi-protection. The trolls have caught on to the ability to annoy the Reference Desk regulars, especially those with an IP outreach mission. That is my theory. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:28, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

One admin at his discretion decided to increase the protection lengths last year on the basis that a few days and then weeks were "not working". When the Humanities desk gets trolled again, by his discretion, but based on his recent prior record, he will ramp it to another three months unless we come to some understanding that this is unwarranted. AFAIK, this protection length is unprecedented for these desks and so your theory is wrong. --Modocc (talk) 03:52, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree that the length of semi-protection is excessive. However, you have not disproved my theory. The fact that the ~~Help~~ Reference Desk regulars get so wildly outraged by overly long semi-protection encourages trolls to pull on the chains both of aggressive administrators and of IP outreach editors to get them to snipe at each other. That supports my theory. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:05, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

You said "Help Desk regulars" when I think you meant us, but we are just as cool. The current trolls have been around longer than just the last few months and the semi-protections were infrequent, so there weren't many complaints or anything like the current mutiny so your theory is a red herring. --Modocc (talk) 04:20, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

It is true that the trolls have been around for a while. However, this, in my opinion, changes little. It is true that the recent semi-protection has been too long. However, what I have seen is that the amount of outrage at semi-protection has increased. Please provide evidence that the amount of trolling has not increased. Both FPAS, who is an aggressive semi-protector, and Ian Thomson, who is not an aggressive semi-protector, have provided considerable evidence of increased trolling. Outrage at the semi-protection is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Because the troll likes to see the outrage, the troll, who might troll anywhere, targets the Reference Desks, where semi-protection causes complaining, and results in bizarre idealistic schemes to make it unnecessary. Please show me some consistent argument, rather than mere assertion, that we are not dealing with a self-inflicted condition by inviting the trolls. Robert McClenon (talk) 06:17, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Sorry , but the burden for your cycle of outrage theory is upon you to show with diffs. For example, I did not raise any complaint about the semi-protections until the three months Humanities desk protection went into an effect. Any diffs I did otherwise? In fact, this would be true of most editors here especially those that have weighed in at the above RfC and agree with keeping these desks more open. Even those that oppose explicit restrictions likely ask for reasonable discretion. Furthermore, there is already a de facto consensus to keep heavily edited community pages such as ANI open to IPs because they are contributors too and because of that even though ANI gets more trolling than we do the admins do not dare impose weeks long protections and/or wheel-war over it. So your theory that it's just us that are overly concerned, idealistic, upset, affected by concerned trolling, self-defeating or otherwise wrong to express our differences and effect change in this is just pointless and accomplishes nothing. -Modocc (talk) 14:21, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

ANI does not get protected very often, but trolling in front of the admins is a rather foolish thing to do. Here, they can get away with it. The obvious solution is to try the patience of the troll. Protection for a few hours is useless. Three months is too long. What should happen is that anytime one of desks gets trolled, a week of semi-protection should be placed on all of them. Once that week is up, if the troll starts again, put another week on. At some point the troll is likely to get tired of having to wait it out for week after week. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:38, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Bugs, there are administrators watching this page "so trolling in front of the admins is a rather foolish thing to do." Thus perpetual semi-protection is precisely what they do not do at ANI and what we don't want done here. Also, you obviously have not looked at ANI's block log or you wouldn't be asserting that "ANI does not get protected very often".--Modocc (talk) 14:44, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

The problem is if the troll sees the semi-protection as disruption (as MANY people here see it). In which case the more semi-protection there is, the happier and more trollish the troll becomes. The assertion that the troll-joy comes from the debate is likely to be true also - but even if we stopped discussing it, the ability to block IP edits at will is a power we really only want admins to have...but this idea passes that control over to a troll who can now impose semi-protection at will using the admins as his/her tool to disrupt (and ultimately, IMHO, destroy) the Ref desks. SteveBaker (talk) 14:49, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

The ref desk started as a spinoff of the help desk and has grown to what it is now. If it had stayed part of the help desk, the help desk would be dealing with the trolling. And I think you overestimate the importance of the ref desk to the general public. Most any question asked here can be asked on Google. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:34, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Bugs, can I ask you a question? Why do you spend time here? You don't give references very often, and now you think that most of our questions can be answered with google?! I don't want to get in to that-- what I'm curious about is why you are specifically here at the ref desks, so active, so often? I really want to know. I'll give my answer, even though I think it's obvious to anyone why I'm here: I like to help people, I like to learn new things, and I like to find and share references. But after several years, I'm still not sure why you're here. Please understand I don't want to fight or argue, I'm just genuinely curious, and maybe your answer will help me understand your position better. Feel free to comment on my talk page if you think this is too off-topic. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:42, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

That's an exceedingly good question - and one I've often wondered about. Why is Bugs is here? Personally, I'm with SemanticMantis. I like to help people (and I often answer questions on other, more specialized, forums too). When someone asks an interesting question - it causes me to dig into parts of the encyclopedia I might otherwise not visit...often I find things to fix or improve...the number of times I find a missing article has been asymptoting towards zero over the past few years - but it happens. I learn a lot - and it drives lateral thinking, which is useful. SteveBaker (talk) 16:15, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

The reasons you two give for being here are in line with the reasons I'm here. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:34, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Summary

By focusing on the special mission of the Reference Desk to serve legitimate unregistered editors, some Reference Desk regulars have made it harder to serve legitimate unregistered editors by providing an incentive to illegitimate unregistered or banned editors. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:28, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Comments? Robert McClenon (talk) 03:28, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Very insightful stuff. I would like to see an example of the help desk being shut down for several days to curb trolling. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:56, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

What do you mean by shut down? Do you mean semi-protected, or fully protected? If the Help Desk were semi-protected for several days, the Help Desk regulars wouldn't complain. Trolling by registered users is dealt with not by full protection, but by blocking the trolls. Only at the Reference Desk do the regular editors think that semi-protection is shutting down the site. Robert McClenon (talk) 04:02, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I was referring to "the Help Desk will be semi-protected for a few days", which I presume no one at the Help Desk has any problem with? But if the Ref Desk(s) get semi'd for a few days, complaints begin to rumble. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:31, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Bugs, here's the protect log for the help page [8]. As you can see, they do semi-protect, but the longest period I see is under 48 hours. I admit I've complained vocally and recently about a three-month semi-protection. I'm not aware of any ref deskers complaining about 0-48 hour protection, unless you'd like to share some diffs? SemanticMantis (talk) 15:36, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, it appears that they simply deal with it rather than fussing about it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:04, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Exactly. At least the two most recent semi-protections of the Help Desk, by the way, have been due to trolls complaining about the semi-protection of the Reference Desks. As Bugs notes, the Help Desk just deals with it, by reverting and semi-protecting. The archive of the Help Desk talk page shows no complaints about semi-protection. They just deal with it. However, they don't have the idea that the Help Desk is an outreach mission to unregistered editors and must be kept open to them. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:10, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Bingo. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:17, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

I see two problems here. First, there are complaints about short-term semi-protection. Some editors have said that we should never semi-protect the Reference Desk. Notice that a few of the responders to the RFC supported the limitation to two days only because it didn't include never. Second, three months is too long. However, the complaints about short-term to medium-term protection (granting that three months is long) encourage trolls to cause semi-protection. Also, the trolls did attempt to spill the semi-protection controversy to the Help Desk, but were just reverted and semi-protected, because the Help Desk regulars see the Help Desk as part of Wikipedia, not as something "special" that needs different policies. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:15, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

A few hours is not long enough here, and 3 months is way too long. The earlier proposal to set 2 days as the maximum should be revised to set 2 days as the standard. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:18, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

I like that idea and I'd like to see whatever language is accepted written into the guidelines and/or policy. I disagree with SteveBaker's view that "No semi-protection at all" should be an option, but at least he is entitled to advocate this position even if its not supported by others here. --Modocc (talk) 18:29, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

I'll add that the language would need to be generalized to provide some guidance for other boards too and the restriction can be tweaked such as "...shall ~~only~~ be protected for a [standard] maximum of 48 hours at a time, and shorter protections should be tried first during periods of heavy abuse. [If an administrator at their discretion imposes longer times for any reason (such as not enough administrative attention to ongoing problems or they become difficult to handle) then they should defer to administrators that reduce the time to the 48 hour standard.]" This in whole or in part could be added to the rough guide. --Modocc (talk) 18:50, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Before casting anything in stone, I think the short list of admins who monitor the ref desks should agree to try it as an experiment. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 18:51, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Based on what I've seen in the ANI block log, I could find many instances of two and three days but only one or two instances of a five day period. Thus, I also suggest a broadening of the suggested standard maximum to: "...a standard maximum of 48 to 72 hours...". --Modocc (talk) 19:15, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

It's not just a matter of duration - frequency of application also matters. In the end, our users mostly care about the probability that at any given moment, they'll be able to ask a question - and perhaps respond with a followup with in 24 to 48 hours if it's needed to fully answer it. It's pointless to impose (say) a 48 hour limit on protection without also stopping it from being applied 15 times per month! SteveBaker (talk) 17:48, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

@SteveBaker: It's not completely pointless because the troll might get tired. I mean, if a couple of trolling posts get the desk locked down three months at a time, then it's light work for him to keep it serviced year after year. But if he has to come on here every other day he might get bored and forget to do it. We need to realize that the admins and the trolls here are fundamentally on the same side, with the same goal, and indeed... they may well be the same person. Wnt (talk) 13:00, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Since the essay needs revision I've cautiously tweaked it some to better reflect on-going practice [9]. It's a start, but we need to add further guidance delineating how different pages are to be treated. --Modocc (talk) 21:26, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

I'd argue that the long-term semi-protection is what's preventing me from serving legitimate unregistered users. I take your point, in a sense you are invoking proximate and ultimate causation, and looking toward a hypothetical latter while glossing over the former. My retort is that when someone has thrown up a needless barricade in my path, I don't choose to engage with philosophy of land use development and public works, I try to remove the barricade. SemanticMantis (talk) 15:04, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

Full protection on

Misc desk is now fully protected, and not even the basic courtesy of a protection template. Fucking shitty admin action. DuncanHill (talk) 17:34, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

I see that was a mistake by FPAS, who changed it 18 minutes later. To his credit, this looks like a short protection consistent with what was asked for in the RFC. Wnt (talk) 17:54, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, he admits that the full protection was a minor error. I thank FPAS for limiting the semi-protection. I am not optimistic that the Miscellaneous Desk will be open for very long, but FPAS has given the troll a chance to go somewhere else. Robert McClenon (talk) 18:05, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

This is an example from what FPAS is "protecting" me from.

“

The smell of gum trees after rain ... Can anyone explain why the leaves give off that delightful smell? Here in London it's been raining for most of the year so far but the leaves of the trees we have here never give off any delightful odours. 78.149.195.161 (talk) 18:13, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

”

I don't need that kind of protection, and I think FPAS has a real problem with this need to assert authority and control over harmless posts. Oh well, Give 'Em Enough Rope as the saying goes. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:45, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

That's not how I read it. To my mind it's more a white knight complex, the idea that only they and those who support them are capable of dealing with the problem. In other words, not a thirst for power but simple arrogance.
I've found this to be quite common among editors with 8+ years here, but few of them have admin rights. Like benevolent kings or pet owners, they are very paternalistically taking care of us. It's clearly at odds with everything Wikipedia is about, and it should be stopped, but I wouldn't begin to know a realistic way of making that happen. ―Mandruss ☎ 19:30, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

I'm afraid you're right Mandruss, and since FPAS' actions have been sanctioned by Arbcom and those who disagree are accused of "proxying for sockpuppets", there's little hope that this behaviour will cease. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:32, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

User:The Rambling Man - Your comments are unhelpful. User:Future Perfect at Sunrise was formally admonished by the ArbCom for inflammatory and uncivil language. You were formally admonished by the ArbCom for incivility also. When you say that FPAS's actions were "sanctioned by ArbCom", that is ambiguous because the word "sanctioned" is not only ambiguous but is an auto-antonym. However, you seem to be using this talk page only to snipe at FPAS and to snipe at the ArbCom. If you don't have anything constructive to say here, either answer questions at the Reference Desk proper or edit somewhere else. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:50, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

No, I shall continue to make such observations as I see fit. You will not censor me. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:17, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

User:The Rambling Man - Both you and User:Future Perfect at Sunrise were admonished by the ArbCom for incivility. You are being uncivil and are not being constructive. I am not censoring you. I am reminding you that the ArbCom cautioned you, and you seem to be ignoring that caution. Unfortunately, conduct at the Reference Desks almost certainly will go back to the ArbCom. Do you have anything constructive to say about semi-protection or about the Reference Desks in general? Robert McClenon (talk) 21:34, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

I'd suggest you stop attempting to bait me. You are not helping yourself nor are you helping progress this problem to any kind of valid solution. I have already stated that the current ownership of the desks is inappropriate and inadequate in solving the problem. My position stands. In the meantime, I suggest you try to work on improving Wikipedia for our readers for a change. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:42, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Oh, you know I hadn't thought of that. I guess that's more charitable, isn't it? Still a bit sad, and I expect more from our admins. We don't yet have an article at White Knighting or Whiteknighting, but here's some interesting coverage at urban dictionary [10], and rationalwiki [11]. The (always intentionally offensive) encyclopedia dramatica [who can't be linked] says, among other things, that this kind of 'defense' makes "the defender look pitiful, and making the entire situation one big clusterfuck" SemanticMantis (talk) 19:42, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

There are more details of this devil than I care to share, but the entire so-called "protection" edit or the rationale [of your example from the science desk] was this action which is just one of a sequence of removals of a banned user's edits that I haven't the time or need to address as being proper here (go ask FPAS if you have a problem with his actions). In any case, I've read walls-of-text above complaining about the all too frequent complaints of obvious troll and banned-user whacking, so to everyone I extend a silly WP:TROUTing and a piping fresh hot cup of tea (which I hope is better than the house brand). Since ANI hasn't been shut down, its my hope we can toss our emptied cups and deescalate most of the fruitless finger-wagging. --Modocc (talk) 21:28, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

How would something on the science desk justify protecting the miscellaneous desk? DuncanHill (talk) 21:38, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

It would help if you could be bothered to actually look at the edit histories before you complained here. The reversals of the Vote X edits had nothing to do with the most recent protections; both of those were because of the nazi troll (on both desks). Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:41, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

It would be helpful if you knew how to semi-protect instead of full-protecting. It would also be helpful if you bothered to explain yourself instead of taking the patronizing attitude you so often do. You're angry with me right now because I called you out over your own ballsup. DuncanHill (talk) 21:46, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Fut.Perf., Duncan queried me regarding what I wrote which was ambiguous without actually complaining about it and he did complain initially about your mistake before you fixed it. I didn't mean to imply that the semi-protections were due to the Vote X reversal nor was I complaining about it although it may have appeared that way. My head is spinning now. -Modocc (talk) 22:57, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

It doesn't, I used scare quotes with regards to SematicMantis's science desk example which applied only indirectly. Thus, to clarify, I've added a bit more to my post so it refers to that part of the discussion. --Modocc (talk) 21:56, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I was mistaken, I apologize for mixing in a not-as-relevant issue. I apologized to FPAS on his talk page, and he told me I was not allowed to speak to him, then deleted my comment where I apologized. Granted I was also criticizing him at the same time, so I'm not surprised. Seeing what a helpful and constructive ball of cheer he is, I will try to console myself from the loss of the pleasure of his discourse. SemanticMantis (talk) 23:32, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 18 February 2016

This edit request to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Please put a protection template on Wikipedia:Reference desk/Miscellaneous. If it is to be editable by admins only, then at least they could do the rest of us poor saps the courtesy of that. DuncanHill (talk) 17:37, 18 February 2016 (UTC) DuncanHill (talk) 17:37, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Not done It's currently semi. See the last page-log entry. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:43, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Was full when I asked. I've added the template, as apparently this is too complex an operation for any admin round here. DuncanHill (talk) 17:46, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

I agree it should always have a template when there is any kind of protection, but that issue applies to every page on the site. Those of us who care are permitted to add or remove those templates as appropriate. When I do that, I see it as just doing what little I can to help out, sort of like adding "unsigned" templates. Admins are never going to change their behavior on anything just because we think they should. ―Mandruss ☎ 17:50, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected correction request

In my last edit to WP:RD/L, please strike out the confusing non-word "qualtitative" and insert the correct "quantitative". Solly aboul thal, folls. --69.159.9.222 (talk) 18:14, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Done Tevildo (talk) 18:23, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks. --69.159.9.222 (talk) 05:53, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

All words were once used for the first time. ;) ―Mandruss ☎ 18:24, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

(But that one has already been used about 380 times on the web alone. You'll have to be more creative.) ―Mandruss ☎ 18:33, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

I wonder how many of the 380 are supposed to be "quantitative" and how many are supposed to be "qualitative"! --69.159.9.222 (talk) 05:53, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

I propose "qualtitative" adj. - possessing the quality of quantity. This is more clear with examples: "there are 10 people in the room" is a quantitative statement, while "there are happy people in the room" is a qualitative statement, and "the number of people in the room" is a qualtitative notion :) SemanticMantis (talk) 21:15, 19 February 2016 (UTC)

Semi protected editing request

With regards to this story about Royal Mint legal tender coins that cannot be spent in any reasonable way, and are thus pretty much worthless unless you are in debt to a court in which case the "legal tender" provisions activate; can you give me a definitive list of UK coins that retailers and banks have to accept by law for normal transactions, not just "legal tender" settlement of debts? Thank you — Preceding unsigned comment added by RoyalMintQuestion (talk • contribs) 20:37, 18 February 2016 (UTC) Done, posted at humanities desk. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:01, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Semi protection editing request 2

The Royal Mint is introducing a new £1 coin in 2017. Please can you tell me if the current £1 coins will still be legal tender after this date. Thank you. RoyalMintQuestion (talk) 20:43, 18 February 2016 (UTC) Done, posted at humanities desk. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:01, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Debate @ Humanities: "Is a viable Palestinian State a possibility?"

How come we righteously shut down people who try to get us to engage in speculation and debate - because it's against the rules, after all - but when they ask a question that can be answered with a simple Yes or No answer (see the first 2 responses), we (some of us, anyway) happily provide all the speculation and debate one could ever wish for, and there is no shutting down to be seen?

Whence this double standard?

Does the rule read: "We engage in our own speculations and debates whenever it suits us, but if you try to start a debate or to get us to speculate, we'll come down on you like a ton of bricks"? -- Jack of Oz ^{[pleasantries]} 21:20, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

It would be helpful if those who own the desks would publish their list of approved debaters. DuncanHill (talk) 21:40, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Jack, I addressed your question a couple of days ago on this page. "The rules for the desks are whatever those then present wish them to be, and they will vary with a period of days or hours as that mix changes." The desks are largely a place for certain editors to engage in stimulating conversation; i.e., forums. It's been that way since I arrived on scene, nobody seems to care much, and it's why I don't wear a responder hat much on the desks anymore. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:38, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Yes there are double standards, and the enforcement seems to depend on who cares the most, makes the most noise, and is WP:BOLD enough. You yourself technically have the option to remove all or part of the post, including responses that are speculative and debate-y in nature, if and when you think they are violating our guidelines. You have to also be prepared for some users to not like it though. I have consistently and repeatedly advocated for sanction/removal of our responses rather than questions. That is also right there in our guidelines, that say: "Generally speaking, answers are more likely to be sanctioned than questions." [12]. That is specifically about medical advice, but I see no reason why it shouldn't apply to egregious speculation or debate. The way I see it, if we're going to argue with each other, we might as well do it in a way that doesn't interfere with our patrons as much. Anyway, if you, or anyone else doesn't like the way things are being done here, and chooses to remove responses to better meet our guidelines, I will fully support your right to do that in general, with WP:BRD being used for specifics. SemanticMantis (talk) 23:51, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Nazi troll

Can we do something a bit more effective against the Nazi troll? AlexTiefling (talk) 23:10, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

Only semiprotections, or asking a CU to see if a rangeblock is feasible on their underlying IP range. Fut.Perf. ☼ 23:15, 18 February 2016 (UTC)

What else can be done about trolls? Robert McClenon (talk) 21:12, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Does the troll have a name?

Does the racist anti-Jewish troll have a name, either a blocked or banned user name, or the name of a long-term abuse file? We know who Vote (X) for Change is, and we know who Wickwack is. Does this particular troll have a username or case file, or are they just the racist anti-Jewish troll? Robert McClenon (talk) 21:12, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Soft Skin, apparently. See GAB's post below. Tevildo (talk) 21:17, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Soft skin (lowercase s on second word). Just clarifying so name is easier to locate. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 21:22, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you. So anti-Jewish throwaway accounts (and the recent anti-Jewish trolling has been from throwaway accounts, not from IP addresses) can be reported as socks of Soft skin. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:24, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

The LTA page is at Wikipedia:Long-term abuse/Ref Desk Antisemitic Troll. Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:26, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

I guess Soft skin is as good a name as any, although the editor has been bothering the RD for longer than September of last year. I always thought the anti-semitic troll was the same editor as the racist Toronto editor. I mean the one who talked about Negresses and how blacks have low IQ and are criminals and stuff, not Donmust90 who AFAIK wasn't the same editor.

But I now think I'm mistaken. The geolocation and WHOIS info are diff (diff ISPs) even if both are Canada. I don't think it's that they moved or changed ISP since I found stuff that appear to be from the Toronto troll that post-date stuff from Soft skin/the Alberta troll. Also the anti-semitic troll (the IPs in the ranges I looked at) seem to concentrate on anti-semitic stuff (how Jews control the world or the Nazis are hard done or evil Jewish plots involving homosexuality or abortions or whatever) with the occasional mention of the plight of the white rac. Whereas mentioned the Toronto troll was on blacks.

One thing I did learn; it seems the anti-semitic editor is the same as the editor who's been asking all those questions about oral sex disease risk or something else related to sexual health. I found Special:Contributions/199.7.159.81. And it seems User:Whereismylunch was blocked as a sock of another identified master of the anti-semitic troll. Not naming here because of the name but there are about 12 blocked accounts from 2014.

I also found what appears to be another IP albeit already blocked Special:Contributions/24.207.79.50. I saw that due to this edit [13]. This IP is a diff ISP and seems to geolocate to BC, but it seems clear from that it's the same as the sexual health editor.

Frankly I don't know what to make of Special:Contributions/199.7.159.55. It associates the 24 IP with the 199 Sexual health IP again at least in 2014. The 2015 stuff in 199.7.159.55 is a little odd but I guess they just happened to get the IP again. (It obviously could be diff people, but the earlier stuff strongly suggests the sexual health editor is the same as the anti-semitic editor.)

P.S. There was another editor who seemed to sometimes post anti-semitic and bigoted stuff about black people way back when (as well as anti GM rants, polychotomous keys, some sorting algorithm they developed and a bunch of other stuff). But they were from Florida and AFAIK haven't been here since 2010. I'm fairly sure this isn't the same editor as either Toronto or Alberta/BC.

P.P.S. I forgot to mention it's obviously possible the Toronto editor is the same just that they have access to yet another ISP with diff geolocation details. But I didn't notice of Alberta/BC posting racist stuff about blacks. Nor for that matter Toronto being particularly anti-semitic although I think Toronto has used quite a few more ranges than I looked at. The one case I found seemed to be more positive about Jewish people or at least Ashkenazi Jews than being anti-semitic. Although the sexual health stuff does suggest Alberta/BC has been careful to avoid posting both the anti-semitic stuff and sexual health stuff while editing without an account from the same IP despite 1 slip up so it seems they possibly have tried to maintain distinct identities.

Nil Einne (talk) 20:52, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 21 February 2016

This edit request to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Where can I submit a question asking for the citizenship of a person in the U.S.? My grandmother lives in the U.S. and is unsure of the citizenship of those wanting to rent her apartment in Nebraska. How can you know of the citizenship of a person?. Thank you. --190.50.126.207 (talk) 23:36, 21 February 2016 (UTC) 190.50.126.207 (talk) 23:36, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Done. Deor (talk) 00:05, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 21 February 2016

This edit request to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

During segregation, especially during the 50's/60's, did many white southerners 'dislike' or 'hate' coloured people? Would it have been possible for coloured and white people to be friends on a personal level, or was there animousity? I am struggling to get into the mindset of segregationist white southerners during the 50's/60's. Thanks. --Finderoomertæs (talk) 20:15, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Finderoomertæs (talk) 20:15, 21 February 2016 (UTC)

Done. Deor (talk) 00:10, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Congratulations! You have now posted a question from an already-indef'd user. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:01, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for pointing that out, Bugs. I'll clearly never be able to show my face in public again. (Perhaps if you concerned yourself more with the quality of your own contributions here and less with the identities and motives of others, everyone, including you, would benefit.) Deor (talk) 08:24, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 22 February 2016

This edit request to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

129.45.14.131 (talk) 11:40, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Not done. No text in request section. Tevildo (talk) 12:25, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 February 2016

This edit request to Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

Please add this answer to the Humanities Desk, Feb 23, Website for looking up all flights out of an airport, thank you. 184.147.122.76 (talk) 18:54, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

If you look up an airport by IATA code at https://www.world-airport-codes.com, you can scroll down and click on “Flights at __code__” to get a dropdown list of destination airports with their IATA codes. 184.147.122.76 (talk) 18:54, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your help. We apologize for the behavior of others which has led to the desks being protected. I have added your response to the thread in question. --Jayron 32 18:55, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Thank you very much Jayron. 184.147.122.76 (talk) 19:44, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Should Refdesk guidelines address conspiracy, contributory infringement or related issues, and if so... how?

I feel like it's opening Pandora's box to broach the question, but my nose is telling me the box is already cracked. I'm not going to give any specific examples where this issue comes in play - every time where I've been suspicious, I have convinced myself that discussion was in good faith - even so, intuition tells me that the hostile attention paid to the Refdesk will eventually include the official variety.

Currently, the Refdesk guidelines do not in any way address questions that, if asked and answered, might get the two parties into the cross-hairs of the US federal government. For example:

"I tried to do a one-pot meth synthesis but nothing precipitates. What am I doing wrong?"

"I'm trying to go through Turkey to Syria to join the fighters. How will they try to stop me?"

"Where do I pirate Game of Thrones?"

(Well, technically I think a link policy addresses the third - but only as a link. If someone says "Go to Pirate Bay and type......" I don't know where things stand.

Now it should be obvious that nobody should ask these seriously, as a matter of self-interest. Unless, that is, the person asking imagines (most likely incorrectly) he has perfectly concealed his real IP address, or imagines (absolutely incorrectly) that being a troll will protect him from a conspiracy charge for something he doesn't really intend to do, or (most relevantly) he is a government agent in the first place.

It also appears that these questions can be rephrased in ways that cannot be seen as anything but legitimate scholarship, for example:

"I read most methamphetamine is being made by a synthesis in a soda bottle. How can you do a whole reaction in a soda bottle?"

"How are foreign fighters trying to enter Syria via Turkey actually caught? Don't they blend in with hundreds of thousands of other visitors?"

"Is Game of Thrones still being pirated? Where? Why hasn't the company been able to stop it?"

We can't afford to give up on the second category of questions, because so much of what goes on in the world is defined by illegality that we would be left unable to comment on most matters of current political significance. Yet we could have someone targeting us for trouble, and we shouldn't let ourselves be Pearl Harbored. I think for us one of the more important questions is going to be, how sure do people have to be that there is a criminal purpose before it counts as conspiracy (or contributory infringement, or some such thing) to offer assistance? What happens when you think someone might have criminal intent or might not and you honestly don't know which? Can we take an assurance of a legitimate purpose at face value, and have any kind of reassurance from it? And what do we do in the instance where someone asks the first type of question, then comes back (perhaps even as an IP "sock") and asks the second kind of question? And then there's the international aspect - Wikipedia may be under US law, but what about when a responder lives in a second country and the provocateur lives in a third? Like I said, Pandora's box. Definitely a question our guidelines against legal advice prohibit from being answered on the Refdesk. And yet, I feel like our policy is going to need to answer it. How do we protect our people without letting ourselves be dragooned into somebody's censorship army? Wnt (talk) 19:14, 20 February 2016 (UTC)

In my opinion, we can discuss this, and it might be interesting, but ultimately this is no concern of ours. WMF has lawyers, who are experts who get paid. We may be experts but we're not acting as such, and we certainly don't get paid. If any of these issues were seen by WMF to pose significant legal risk to WMF or WP, then we simply wouldn't have a reference desk. WMF and WP don't especially care if some user chooses to post dumb incriminating stuff here, we just remove it along with any other unwanted content, and perhaps provide records later to comply with court orders. This also gets back to the perennial misunderstanding here of what disclaimers are. These are not normative guides to conduct, they are legal instruments designed to limit or avoid liability for WMF. Have a good careful look through Category:Wikipedia_disclaimers, and perhaps some of your concerns will be lessened. SemanticMantis (talk) 17:16, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

@SemanticMantis: I understand the WMF is protected here. My concern is mostly for the people answering questions. Infiltrator actions might be elaborate - one person posts something, someone else (also an agent) answers it, and the third person who comes in to address some point that came up in the meanwhile ... could become the target. You could see yourself as just correcting bad science, but if somewhere in the past few pages Alice and Bob have presented themselves as planning to do something criminal, who knows what will happen? Wnt (talk) 19:35, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

Ah, I see the distinction. My impression is that same disclaimers that (essentially) say WMF can't get in trouble because of my posts also effectively say that I can't get in trouble because of my posts. This is probably not true at some level (harassment, threats, stalking, etc). Your level of participation, risk aversion, and shady knowledge may vary :) If this sort of thing concerns you, I suppose you could put links to your own personal disclaimers in your signature, but that may or may not add any additional legal protection to yourself.

You could also ask WMF legal team for advice on the matter [14], but I suspect they'd advise you to ask your own legal professional... If you do get any info out of them, I do hope you'll report back. SemanticMantis (talk) 19:51, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

More from WMF legal: this [15] says "For that reason, the Wikimedia Foundation should advise editors and administrators who do not comply with their local laws that they do so at their own risk." Seems pretty clear, but they later say they might help you out pro bono if you find yourself a defendant in legal proceedings. So I guess you should be careful not to aid or abet any activity that is illegal anywhere, but also recall that it was legal during prohibition to sell grapes with instructions on how to not make wine [16]. SemanticMantis (talk) 20:05, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

archiving instabilities likely

I am once again traveling, with sporadic Internet connectivity, so archiving may be intermittent for the next 3-5 days. Feel free to add date headers if you see them missing. I doubt anything will get so overloaded that manual archiving will be necessary. —Steve Summit (talk) 03:17, 26 February 2016 (UTC)