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Conduct

In light of many recent events, I've been left asking a lot of questions that's led me to some research and reading. I noticed that since ArbCom has been handed a "mess in a handbasket", they are revisiting their own conduct. A little digging turned up this old gem of a poll, and it's left me thinking. Perhaps we as administrators need to be clear on what we expect from each other, but more to the point - perhaps we need to be clear on what the community expects from admins.. I'm wondering if perhaps it's not time to dust off Wikipedia:Administrator Code of Conduct, have a closer look at it, put it up to WP:CENT and see where we stand today, 3 years after the original thoughts. Input anyone? — Ched :  ?  15:45, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

• Note, I didn't run across this on the "Admins reading list", or anywhere in the "New admin. school" — Ched :  ?  16:00, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

re Wikipedia:Admin accountability, who are these people commenting? I recognise barely a dozen or so names, and it says something that so many are no longer with us and yet were so eager to comment on the discussion. I would suggest, also, that any such updated poll need be run over several pages and timescales - I only read half the page and that is several minutes of my life I will never get back. Per Wikipedia:Administrator Code of Conduct, it seems to be a really sensible distillation of the responsibilities of admins and I can only suppose it was not adopted because it was before its time. I think that given a few tweaks it could easily be adopted now. LessHeard vanU (talk) 18:26, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

• Personally I don't mind sticking to a code of conduct - but I have to know what the rules are before I want to play. ;) — Ched :  ?  19:45, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

• We're playing calvinball, Ched. Keegan (talk) 04:42, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

"Administrators, like all editors, should act to improve Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." <-- code of conduct. kmccoy (talk) 04:52, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

Administrators are expected to solve problems instead of making them worse, to recognize their mistakes, to listen to criticism, to communicate when asked, to speak diplomatically when possible, to recognize legitimate disagreement, to exercise restraint and caution and to exercise otherwise their best judgment at all times. Though no administrator will ever be perfect, they are asked to do their best.--Tznkai (talk) 05:12, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

That sounds great, Tznkai. It covers everything without being WP:CREEPy. hmwith☮ 16:08, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

There's nothing in it with any teeth, it's just words and no substance. It leaves admins able to wikilawyer their way out of any misdeeds. DuncanHill (talk) 16:12, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Well, any suggestions, DuncanHill? Tan | 39 16:13, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Of course not, he just complains. I would personally suggest WP:RFDA as a framework for stating what administrators may not do, along the general WP (and Western law) convention that whatever is not forbidden is permitted. Or as a framework for providing examples (perhaps hypothetical?) of what would be considered abuse of the tools. The most difficult part will be getting certain admins to comprehend that they are required to uphold ethical standards with regards to things like disclosure and oh, not lying to the entire community. I agree that while Tznkai's statement is a lovely ideal, it has absolutely no effectiveness; language like 'expected to' means any admin can say 'oops' at any time and that'll be the end of it. We need a desysopping process with teeth that is mandatory for all admins, and we need an admin code of conduct policy that lays out a bright line of what is not acceptable behaviour, a grey area of behaviour that may or may not be unacceptable depending on the circumstances, and obviously things along the lines of "Blocking you without warning for posting 'OMG TITTIES' a thousand times on Pamela Anderson is not, in fact, admin abuse," to protect the (increasingly rare, sadly) decent admins from frivolous complaints.

The community, naturally, will never agree on how to do this. Which means that admin abuses will continue to increase, the divide between admins and regular editors (which, frankly, should not be a distinction!) will become a gulf of impassable proportions, and the inevitable death-spiral of Wikipedia will increase in speed and severity. What is needed is a decree--and as much as I despise letting Jimbo retain his power, this is one of the cases in which he could actually do good for the project, and perhaps make it his swan song before stepping down as dictator--from Jimbo laying out an admin code of conduct and tasking stewards and/or crats with ensuring that an RFDA process functions under the auspices of that code without frivolous requests. → ROUX ₪ 16:44, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't "only complain" (I recently tried to get "appropriate standards of honesty" addede to WP:ADMIN and am participating in the debate there), but as whenever I do try to suggest any positive change or to support such proposals from others it gets shot down by the usual suspects, I am perhaps less prolific in making suggestions than I would be if I felt that there was a possibility of any admins taking them seriously. Great way to go Roux, agree with me but start by having a go at me. Could you maybe tell me on my talk page why you have such a beef against me instead of dropping it into random threads? DuncanHill (talk) 16:48, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

• Wow. That's a real blast from the past. I'm almost an old-timer now. Hiding T 12:41, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

• Sorry guy. You're still a newbie compared to some of us. -- llywrch (talk) 21:29, 5 October 2009 (UTC)

To respond to the earlier complaint of "no teeth", yes, thats true, the complaint doesn't by itself have teeth. I don't believe in giving policies teeth, I prefer giving people or bodies teeth. What I outlined above was a standard, which is every bit as important, if not more so. Standards give you a frame to understand disputes in, and encourages a culture for admins to hold themselves up to a standard. The frame is very important, because it gives Arbitration or any other process a measuring stick.--Tznkai (talk) 23:49, 6 October 2009 (UTC)

• Wow, that poll has comments by Badlydrawnjeff. I miss him around the place, his updates on Facebook make me smile too. Guy (Help!) 21:51, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

User:Panasonicc WP:SUICIDE

Resolved

Panasonicc (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log)
Under WP:SUICIDE I'm reporting the following diff.[1] Although the following does not specifically mention suicide, the connotation certainly suggests it. A second explanation is vandalism, although the page's namespace (WP:PROCESS) makes it seem less likely to appear as vandalism than if it were at WP:RD or similar. This is how I'm interpreting things so far, and of course there is inherent uncertainty. I have reverted the provided diff, recommend moving to step 3 and 4 of WP:SUICIDE. ChyranandChloe (talk) 04:50, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

The person would likely benefit from professional attention and the post is clearly a "Cry for help," specifically "I cut myself for attention." My heart goes out to her and her family. Contacting local authorities is appropriate.A checkuser is called for, and the resulting IP can be provided to the local law enforcement. Self harm is not necessarily a suicide attempt. I do not see numbered steps at WP:SUICIDE. Where did you start counting? Edison (talk) 04:56, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

You're right, but there is inherent uncertainty, I read it as a first step in suicide: crying for attention. I counted the section numbers as steps. 2.4 is to do a check user, contact local authorities, so on. ChyranandChloe (talk) 05:12, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

I posted a kind response on her talk page and an invitation to talk to me if she wishes. <>Multi-Xfer<> (talk) 23:19, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Please do not seek to be a crisis counselor. A person in crisis should be referred to a doctor or a crisis hotline or law enforcement. Edison (talk) 19:31, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Three Audit Subcommittee vacancies: Call for applications

The process to appoint the three non-arbitrator members of the Audit Subcommittee is underway, with the election itself starting on 30 October. If you think you may be suitably qualified, please see the election pages for the job specification and application arrangements. Applications close 22 October 2009.

For the Arbitration Committee,  Roger Davies ^talk 21:33, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

IP POV and falsification

This post related to a specific problem, dispute, user, help request, or other narrow issue, and has been moved to the Administrators' noticeboard for incidents (ANI). Please look for it on that page. Thank you.

 Skomorokh, barbarian  10:25, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Banning specific editors from pages

Do we have any precedent for admins banning editors from specific pages? We've got edit wars at Abomination (comics) and Rhino (comics). I don't want to protect them because that feels anti-wiki, but I do want to stop the edit war and I think page banning the two editors might produce a resolution. I'm not really interested in blocking the two editors, it doesn't tend to solve the underlying issue. Although there's a school of thought that indefinitely banning one user might solve a lot of problems. Hiding T 11:15, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Possibly see Wikipedia:Banning_policy#Administrator_topic_bans. Nja²⁴⁷ 11:24, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Or just WP:ARBMAC. I see no problem with being a tad creative with precedent if Hiding thinks its appropriate. Moreschi (talk) 11:28, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks guys, I think I'll act citing those. Hiding T 11:30, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

User:DrBat and User:Asgardian page banned from Abomination (comics) and Rhino (comics)

I have page banned the above two editors for one month or until a resolution is reached regarding the dispute, whichever finishes sooner. Both editors have been warned that any editing of the pages in question prior to a resolution of the dispute will result in a block, initially for 24 hours but escalating to a maximum period of one month. Hiding T 11:43, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Appeal: As per Hiding's advice here: [2], I wish to formally appeal this decision here (now if this is in fact the wrong place, please cut and paste this to the appropriate area ande drop me a line).

With all due to respect to Hiding, who has offered good advice in recent times, I believe he has erred here and misread the situation. Yes, I have been editing both Abomination and the Rhino. I have, however, been as the Edit Summaries shows not reverting but rather making constant improvements: [3] & [4].

DrBat, however, has been making constant reverts, and adding nothing to the articles, despite being initially invited, then counselled and finally cautioned: [5] This user was also uncivil towards myself: [6] and formally warned about being abusive: [7]. Please also note that this user warned was last month about constant reverts [8].

My edits were also supported by other users [9] & [10] at Abomination and it is frustrating that despite this "hint" DrBat continued to revert at Rhino to an inferior version. I pointed out that this version lacked a correct lead and other material: [11], and that we could retain the peripherals and cotinue to work on the bulk of the article. Despite this advice, he continued to revert.

I have contributed to dozens of articles and make every effort to improve them. It took hours to complete Abomination, and Rhino was in fact almost finished. A check of the Edit Summary [12] and this line - The Rhino proves to be a perennial favourite in Marvel publications, appearing in over a dozen titles in solo capacity or teamed with dother villains - shows that I was just about to take the advice offered here [13] and create a summary of the signifiant issues, as opposed to a laundry list. Please also note that I wrote both versions, hence improving on my own work is hardly outrageous. The summary would number no more than six points, as opposed to the dozens of listings currently present in the 1990s-2000s section.

In conclusion, I do not appreciate the completely unhelpful attitude displayed by DrBat, and the fact that Hiding automatically places me in the same category as this user. Despite the claim on my Talk Page [14], I did not edit war. As the evidence shows, I did try and discuss the issue, on several occasions. I feel I do not deserve this punishment.

For your consideration. Asgardian (talk) 04:49, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Asgardian has already admitted to intentionally making the article unreadable before to prove his point, so I have a hard time assuming good faith here.

Furthermore, Asgardian's reference to my being "warned last month about constant reverts" was only over whether or not a category should be included in the article. Asgardian has his own history of edit wars, and it looks like he's getting involved in one right now over at the Dormammu article with two other users who don't like what he's doing to it. --DrBat (talk) 02:21, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

You have already been advised by one administrator that this was really nothing more than a bold edit, and demonstrated one style [15]. It should also be noted once again that I wrote both versions, and improved upon the original. This took hours. By your own admission: [16] you claimed that it would take more work to improve those versions, and yet when I continue to improve on what you felt was messy and overdone, continued to blindly revert. It is you who have not shown good faith, by being an obstructist and reverting every step of the way, and even resorting to namecalling, as shown above. You persisted until others supported my changes to Abomination.

Finally, there is no "edit war" at another article (only several users who did not grasp the principles of one of the Guidelines as to the inappropriate use of fictional statistics), so please don't cast dispersions. This is the issue for discussion, and I'd suggest letting the administrators deal with it. Thank you. Asgardian (talk) 06:03, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

You admitted to deliberately making the article unreadable to prove your point. Anyone who clicks on my link will see that for themselves.

This is the issue for discussion, and I'd suggest letting the administrators deal with it. Thank you

Then what does my editing the Stewie Griffin article have to do with anything, since you brought that up?

As for the advice you were given, Emperor said "I suppose it depends - some characters' appearances may all be worthy of mentioning. If it is merely 'and he turned up and battle X. The he battled Y and went of to fight Z' then no, only mention the important appearances. You need to judge it on a case-by-case basis." "and he turned up and battle X. The he battled Y and went of to fight Z" is a lot of what you were doing to the articles, listing pointless appearances like "Abomination fought Angel in the sewers." --DrBat (talk) 10:38, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Apologies

Clickety click too fast on the mouse and I reverted the above by mistake a while back, situation all normal now. --Dave1185 (talk) 06:47, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Dave, just saw that. Thanks for jumping back in. Regards Asgardian (talk) 06:51, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Old Prod

Resolved

Would it be possible for an administrator to copy the material from Bob Guzzardi that was deleted from a prod into my userspace? I would like to try and resurrect that article in a way that passes WP:N. Thanks to all--Blargh29 (talk) 12:33, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

User:Blargh29/Bob Guzzardi. ↪REDVERS ^{I dreamt about stew last night} 12:36, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks!--Blargh29 (talk) 16:07, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Alfred de Grazia merge discussion

This post related to a specific problem, dispute, user, help request, or other narrow issue, and has been moved to the Administrators' noticeboard for incidents (ANI). Please look for it on that page. Thank you.

 Skomorokh, barbarian  10:25, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Licensing reminder

Hi. Just a general reminder pursuant to a WT:Copyclean thread that text imported under GFDL licensing after Nov. 1, 2008 is a copyright violation unless it is also licensed compatibly with CC-By-SA. The only exception is if it was imported from another Wikimedia Project; so text that was translated from say, the German Wikipedia is still good. See Wikipedia:Licensing update#Content restrictions and wmf:Terms of Use. Understandably, this still causes some confusion, given that it's such a big change. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:12, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

We should add a note when people edit so that they are aware of this issue in the section where we normally note that content is being released under the GFDL and the relevant CC license.JoshuaZ (talk) 18:02, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

WP:AIV Backlog

Resolved

- backlog has been cleared Stephen! ^Coming... 16:12, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

There is a backlog at WP:AIV.--Zink Dawg -- 15:58, 8 October 2009 (UTC)

Sockpuppet ?

This post related to a specific problem, dispute, user, help request, or other narrow issue, and has been moved to the Administrators' noticeboard for incidents (ANI). Please look for it on that page. Thank you.

 Skomorokh, barbarian  10:25, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

AIV Again Backlogged

Resolved

AIV is again backlogged. If an admin or three could take a look, it would be appreciated. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 02:56, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Special:AbuseFilter/213

This post related to a specific problem, dispute, user, help request, or other narrow issue, and has been moved to the Administrators' noticeboard for incidents (ANI). Please look for it on that page. Thank you.

 Skomorokh, barbarian  10:25, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Redirects

Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2009 October 9 has over 30 identical deletion requests for redirects to {{Citation needed}}. I don't think this is likely to result in a proper discussion of the issue and would appreciate some thoughts on how it might be better handled, perhaps through some sort of RfC process. Guy (Help!) 09:06, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

I'm working on merging some of the related ones together; I hope to cleanup my mess. Apologies. –Drilnoth (T • C • L) 20:23, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

There's something similar going on at Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2009_October_9, multiple identical nominations by Debresser. Those don't seem likely to garner the proper discussion either. Equazcion (talk) 22:31, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

User talk:JohnMSJ

This user is engaged in outright vandalism on topics relating to the former Yugoslavia (see [17]). He has been caught twice and reverted, and warned (see [[18]]). Why not simply ban him? Rms125a@hotmail.com (talk) 16:23, 9 October 2009 (UTC)

Barack Obama page Templates Problems

I know that this might not be the place for this, but can someone please figure out why the templates on his page are not working. It seems that there are too many there. At issue is the fact that the Featured Article template was hidden for quite some time, and this can mix up perceptions of the page. Any ideas? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 03:37, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

A couple didn't exsist (hence they were red) but all others are working and showing up properly as of this writing. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 03:51, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

They do exist. They are linked correctly in the editing stage, but when you click them, it doesn't work. I moved the FA template, as it was on the bottom, and it miracously worked. I think that we should figure this out soon, as it's rather silly for a FA to have dead template links. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:24, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

• Updated the header for better explanation of the subject of this thread. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 04:33, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

After messing around with the templates I noticed this warning at the top of the page: "Warning: Template include size is too large. Some templates will not be included." Some of the templates have got to go or the template include size bumped up. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 04:45, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I say we do the latter, since there will be more templates someday. Even after he is out of office, I still see templates being added, assuming he lives to old age, since it is unlikely he is just going to sit around for the rest of his life. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:48, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

(after ec) The page is hitting the Mediawiki pagesize limits. The NewPP limit report in the page source says:

NewPP limit report
Preprocessor node count: 192669/1000000
Post-expand include size: 2047999/2048000 bytes
Template argument size: 991704/2048000 bytes
Expensive parser function count: 6/500

and the Post-expand include size is essentially at the upper limit, which would prevent the remaining templates from being transcluded properly. The large size also presents a server load and page accessibility issue, so it would be advisable to reduce the number of navigational templates on the page. Abecedare (talk) 04:50, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Well one box is probably going to go, so that's not going to be an issue. Would splitting the page up a bit more help, since it is such a large article? I did notice that it takes a while to load though, so splitting it wouldn't be that bad of an idea. Lets also consider that Obama's article is only 7 kilobytes smaller than George Bush's article, so this might be saying something. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 04:55, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

• Abecedare, is there some way to bump up that limit size or is that as high as MediaWiki is willing to let it go? - NeutralHomer • Talk • 05:03, 10 October 2009 (UTC)
  • The limits will have to be raised by Tim Starling or other developers, and though I have no inside knowledge, I would consider it unlikely they'd do so just for one or a few pages. FYI, without any of the navigational templates the page expands to around 1.36 MB, which is well within the mediawiki limit. Even disregarding the mediawiki limits, having a page size so large is arguably making it inaccessible to anyone with a "slow" connection, and that may well be over half of the world's internet population (just a guess).
  • By the way Wikipedia:VPT may be a better forum for questions and discussion. Abecedare (talk) 05:23, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Looking for a technical fix for this is really asking for special dispensation to be made for bad articles. When it comes to navigation templates this article is bad. The same list of cabinet officers is given three times in three separate navigation templates, for example. And that's far from the only duplication. The succession boxes are duplicated, too. Fix the poor quality of the article, and the technical limitations won't be an issue. Uncle G (talk) 06:31, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

If you know which templates to remove, please feel free. I would mention why you are doing so on the talk page just so no one reverts you, it being a well-watched article and all. - NeutralHomer • Talk • 06:54, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

That is a ridiculous amount of templates there, what happened to old fashioned prose? All opened they expand to a third of the article. Garion96 (talk) 09:25, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

disclosure: bulk Afd newb bite undone.

Just a quick heads up to disclose my latest invocation of IAR:

Nezzadar stumbled across a series of shipwreck stubs recently written by a newb, and nominated them all, individually and simultaneously for deletion. I shudder to think how a newb must feel to log in, find their talk page filled with official-looking templates, and discover that everything they've contributed is threatened with deletion. And I can't imagine how they are supposed to spread themselves across so many discussionss. This seems to me a horrible case of newby biting, so I have deleted eight of the nine AfDs. The one remaining should suffice to test whether the broader community shares Nezzadar's concerns.

Links: User talk:Whodidwhat, User talk:Nezzadar#Two things.

Hesperian 06:30, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Good call. Ideally we would want to have obtained Nezzadar's concurrence before the deletion of the AFDs, but since the user is not around I think this was a good application of IAR to avoid driving away a new contributor. Abecedare (talk) 12:12, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

There was one article left nominated (fair enough I suppose) - Adele (1906). A little searching has turned it into a decent enough article which I've now nominated at DYK as it still within 5 days of creation. Mjroots (talk) 14:33, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Inappropriate closure at WQA

I was attacked by two people who made claims against me alleging abuse. I asked them to back it up with diffs and they refused. I posted a WQA. Involved user Jack Merridew closed it because he said there were multiple pages dealing with it. There were no other pages or sections dealing with their false claims against me.

I reopened since there are no archiving standards at WQA and they are supposed to be archived without responses after so many days. As the person complaining, the WQA can be open as long as I feel there is a problem (as long as anyone feels there is a problem). SarekOfVulcan closes it in a different manner and claims that "ANI thread, an RFC, and MFD", although there is no ANI, RFC, or MFD on the matter, and an MFD would not apply to comments by other people. I add a note that the user was involved like I did for the previous one.

Archived by a user saying he wasn't involved, even though he was a participant in the discussion. He claims it was "Redundant given ANI and MfD and RfC". There is no ANI on the comments, no MfD on the comments, and no RfC on the comments.

Involved user Ncmvocalist adds a claim that it was forum shopping even though there are no other pages or threads dealing with the comments. Removed per it being a personal attack header on a page that does not accept such things. Reverted and claimed that my edit was disruptive.

WQA is supposed to handle when people are incivil to each other and making such comments. People, all involved, attempted to close it without any discussion of the inappropriateness of the comments or trying to resolve the matter. If I cannot turn to WQA to handle such things, why is there even a WQA? Is it really appropriate for people to make such claims without proof and close the thread making claims that are patently false? I am posting here because I would like to be able to use standard DR process without the harassment by involved users. Ottava Rima (talk) 14:52, 10 October 2009 (UTC)