User talk:JBW/Archive 76

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Batbash

Hi, I don't know how that works, but does it mean that that account was blocked because it looks more experienced than an average newbie is supposed to be? If yes, that is surprising, because I thought the only way to prove some account is a sockpuppet is to find a sockmaster.--Paul Siebert (talk) 20:36, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

@Paul Siebert: If you wish to know more information on why the block was originally placed you should ask Mkdw, who made the block. As for my reason for declining the block, there is another account with similarities to Batbash in so many different ways as to leave me in no doubt that it is the same person. Unfortunately I don't think it would be helpful to give further details, as several of the points of similarity are ones which could fairly easily be disguised if the editor knew what they are. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 21:41, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
Already asked. Thank you.
Actually, I didn't know an accouns can be blocked as a sock even when a linkage with a concrete master has not been established. --Paul Siebert (talk) 22:23, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Check the edits

It’s clear that the edits are improper.Changes Emerson to Emersom Don’t be fooled by their nonsense. Jehochman Talk 13:58, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

@Jehochman: That edit is an example of a sound change known as Sandhi. It is common in many languages for a final n to be pronounced as an m when followed by another word beginning with p or b. An example which I have seen cited in a number of linguistics text books is "London Bridge", which is very commonly pronounced "Londom Bridge" in English, although usually neither speaker nor listener is conscious of the fact, in part because it so common that one is programmed to overlook it. Another example given in the Wikipedia article on Sandhi is "tem books" for "ten books". Because this is a fine distinction normally operating below the threshold of conscious observation I believe it is unhelpful to make the change you mention, but making edits which you and I regard as unhelpful is not the same as making "improper" edits. Whether well-advised or ill-advised the edit is certainly not "nonsense", and was very probably made in good faith. However, all this is really off the point, because the block was for sockpuppetry, and even if one does view the edit you refer to as improper, that does nothing to address my reasons for being doubtful as to whether it is sockpuppetry. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 14:28, 5 November 2019 (UTC)
The behavioral evidence is that the account makes numerous unhelpful edits of this type. If they were correcting an error, I’d agree with you. That’s not the case. I oppose any unblock. This is a clear behavioral match. The user seeking to cause disruption by appealing is not a differentiating factor. Jehochman Talk 17:28, 5 November 2019 (UTC)

dafuq happened to sort-termism ???

poof, gone, just like that, because, wait for it, 3 sources were directly quoted, ten words each out of whole articles? and this is copyvio, seriously? Gem fr (talk) 15:52, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

@Gem fr: I accept that the amount of copying was small (though not 10 words from each article). However, the quoted text was not attributed as quotations. (I see that in two cases you used italics for quoted text, perhaps intending that to imply that the text was quoted, but you did not explicitly say so.) Wikipedia's copyright policy is quite strict, and more restrictive than copyright law, because the policy is to provide content which is completely freely reusable, subject to very weak conditions: essentially subject to attribution. I shall restore the article and remove the speedy deletion tag, but I very strongly suggest that you rewrite it without direct copies of text from elsewhere, to prevent it from being deleted again, which is likely to happen if the article is left in its present state.
fair enough, just do that, ping me when you do, and instead of quoting I will make original stuff ... (And please don't forget to restore links, if any, I saw one was deleted) Gem fr (talk) 20:25, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
You may also like to think about the way you phrased your message to me above, and consider whether other wording might have had a better chance of persuading another editor to your view on the matter. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 17:58, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
@Gem fr: One more thought. In its present form the article clearly espouses a point of view. To comply with Wikipedia policies it should be rewritten from a neutral point of view, and avoid promotion of an opinion. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 18:23, 9 November 2019 (UTC)
@JBW: If you don't explain what point of view the article espouse, don't put the banner: nobody can do anything to fix an unspecified problem. So, please use the talk page, or delete the banner (no need to ping me on this, someone else surely is more qualified to fix a NPOV issue I at least contributed to) Gem fr (talk) 20:56, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

User talk:Gani Gash

You blocked this editor for self-promotion and, given their subsequent edits, you might want to revoke talk page access as well. Dorsetonian (talk) 20:36, 9 November 2019 (UTC)

@Dorsetonian:  Done Thanks for telling me. However, it took me a few minutes to find the account, because its user name is Gani Gashi artist. I tried first Gani Gash and then GaniGash... It's worth being careful to get user names exactly right! JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 17:44, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
Many thanks! And sorry about that bad link; I'm not sure how I managed to truncate it so badly like that (and not notice...) Dorsetonian (talk) 17:48, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
@Dorsetonian: Things like that can easily happen, and I've done similar myself. My impression is that the commonest reason for something like that is a slight miscoordination between the moment of stopping moving the mouse and the moment of lifting the finger from the mouse button when selecting text. Obviously I don't know whether that was so this time, but it doesn't really matter. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 21:11, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

Billy Coleman

Okay JamesBWatson, you have deleted Billy Coleman article that you should have moved to draft, but by deleting links in other articles to Billy Coleman, you have really outdone yourself. As an admin, you should be constructive, instead you are destructive, I am in serious doubt of your judgement. Wolfmartyn (talk) 20:07, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

@Wolfmartyn: I notice that you posted this message after you had had the copyright situation explained to you by two separate administrators, each with over 12 years of experience and over 144000 edits in their history. However, I will say a few things which I hope may help to clarify matters for you.
It is evident from a post you have made elsewhere that you have confused copyright with plagiarism. Plagiarism is using someone else's work without acknowledgement of the fact that you are doing so, and as long as you say where you got the work from it is not plagiarism. Copyright is a very different matter: it is using someone else's work without permission, and merely saying that you are doing so does not mean that you have permission. United States copyright law is very complex, with numerous ifs and buts, but the essential idea is that the creator of a work owns it, and has the right to determine who may use it and how. If Alice writes something, and owns the copyright to it, and Bob publishes a copy of it without her permission, with the statement "I am coping this from Alice's work", he is clearly not plagiarising the work, but he is still violating her copyright. Nor does putting the word "Draft" at the top of the page remove the need to have permission to publish a copy of it. If I were to post copyright infringing material to a draft, as you suggest I should, I would personally be legally liable for copyright violation, as well as being in violation of Wikipedia's policy.
As for deleting links, that is sufficiently standard practice when a page is deleted that administrative tools have built-in functionality to automatically remove backlinks when pages are deleted. If you think that should not be so then you should raise the matter with the people who maintain those tools, rather than complaining to individual administrators who are using those tools in the way in which they are designed to work.
As I said above, I hope those comments may help to clarify matters for you a little, but please feel welcome to let me know if there is anything else you think I may be able to help you with. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 10:10, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

UFC Ultimate Fight Night

Hi JBW!

I see you're a fellow Mathematician! I've been reading a bit more on group theory lately; it's been a while since my Modern Algebra class in college.

Anyway, I was going through the List of UFC Events page and I came across event '060' in the 'Past Events' list. I noticed the link was missing. Do you happen to know why the page was deleted, and if it can be restored?

Thanks for all your contributions!

- MvE — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maxwell vs Euler (talk • contribs) 04:36, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

@MvE: Interesting what you say about group theory, because, several decades after I studied group theory at university, I have recently been doing some investigations in the subject, purely for my own interest.
The article you refer to was originally deleted as a result of discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/UFC Ultimate Fight Night. The latest version, which I deleted, was essentially a straight copy of the version discussed at that discussion, with only minor changes, so it certainly qualified for speedy deletion as recreation of material deleted as a result of a deletion discussion.
As for whether the article can be restored, you are free if you wish to raise the matter with the editor who closed the deletion discussion. He or she is no longer an administrator, so they can't restore the article, but they can consider anything you say and give an assessment of whether there is a case for restoring it. If you do decide to do that, there is then the possibility of taking it to a deletion review.
Since my involvement was purely in relation to enforcing a decision taken as an outcome of a discussion, it was not my task to re-assess the debate, but in order to be able to give as much help as I can in answer to your question, I have looked at it. Apart from the reasoning given by the administrator who closed the discussion, most of the arguments for keeping were from single-purpose accounts, several of them certainly sockpuppets, some of whom used ad hominem attacks on the deletion nominator, and at least one of them had openly stated on another page that their intention was to use Wikipedia as a site to serve the wishes of "fans". The deletion was substantially influenced by arguments that the article conflicted with the policy Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, which seems to me to be entirely true, in the light of what various participants said. Although I have not studied them all in depth, it looks to me as though the same probably applies to other articles on the list you refer to, in which case raising the issue might produce something closer to reasons for deleting more of them, rather for restoring the deleted one you mention.
Well, that's how it looks to me. Obviously you can ask the original deleting administrator for an opinion, if you like, but considering that it was a long time ago, and he/she is no longer an administrator, and is in effect semi-retired, with a recent rate of editing that is a tiny fraction of what it was previously, they may not have a lot to say about the matter, I'm afraid. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 11:24, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Rangeblock request

2A02:C7D:8002:3D00:0:0:0:0/64 – the most recent disruptive editor has been blocked for 31 hours but more in that range have been active today. –Skywatcher68 (talk) 21:36, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

@Skywatcher68: Agreed. I've extended the block to the whole range. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 21:48, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

your reply on Wikipedia talk:Articles for deletion/International Christian School of Budapest

Sorry, I had already copied that comment over to the main AFD page but forgot to remove it. May I copy your reply over also and then blank the entire talkapge? Meters (talk) 22:54, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

My mistake. I see you actually answered before I copied it. I obviously messed up. Up to you which copy you want to remove. I'll just remove my copy Meters (talk) 22:59, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

hi

i asked a q at the teahouse about editing. i need something easy to help out with. maybe a few tasks? Baozon90 (talk) 16:01, 16 November 2019 (UTC)

Sneaky vandal

Hi, JB. I tried reporting 69.115.43.92 at the vandalism noticeboard but nothing happened; they're still engaging in subtle vandalism despite a final warning two weeks ago. They're also a repeat offender, having been blocked three times last year. –Skywatcher68 (talk) 07:49, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

All of their recent edits here, for example. –Skywatcher68 (talk) 08:02, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

Protest of your unblock of BrownHairedGirl

Hello. I believe that Diannaa's block was preventative, and that your unblock without consulting the blocking administrator was inappropriate. The block was made 15 minutes after BHG reaffirmed that she saw her incivility to be justified by NA1k's conduct, saying, "I note yet again that you focus entirely on the forms of words used, and not on the substance of the problems which I have described." ([1], not my emphasis) This is not the case of Diannaa seeing an old comment and blocking 19 hours later, as you imply in your unblock note; the block was imposed directly after BHG's response to Diannaa's explanation of why her conduct was not acceptable. She was evidently blocked, not only for making that initial comment, but her inability to recognize why that comment is improper and why she is subject to WP:5P4 when responding to and talking about arguments (in this case, NA1k's) that she (and I) think are erroneous. The "forms of words", as BHG puts it, are extremely important. There are ways to refute an opponent's arguments without calling them hurtful names, questioning their intelligence, accusing them of trickery, evasion, manipulation, devious activities, and such. As BHG refused to acknowledge that, thus meaning they would not see any issue with repeating such conduct, I believe the block was justified as a preventative action against incivility, and that you should have consulted Diannaa prior to your unblock. Thank you, Vermont (talk)—Preceding undated comment added 22:53, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

+1 — Ched (talk) 23:53, 17 November 2019 (UTC)
I applaud JBW's unblock, as no reasonable person could see BHG's comments as personal attacks (and I know ad hominem well). I think Diannaa needs to take a break from mopping of her own volition before ARBCOM gives her formal invite to close the janitor's closet for the long term. Chris Troutman (talk) 00:30, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Chris, you know full well that nothing of the sort will happen. JBW, I also object to the unblock which was issued without consultation of the blocking admin and in spite of your acknowledgement that BHG's unblock request was not compliant with policy. For whatever reason, BHG has been permitted to make repeated attacks regarding the intelligence of another editor and Diannaa's block was the first meaningful consequence for this long-term disruption. I doubt very much if such latitude would be extended to a non-admin who unapologetically resorted to personal attacks and bullying over an extending period of time. This type of special treatment is unhealthy and damages the morale of rank-and-file editors such as myself. Your unblock has continued this pattern of special treatment and leaves me doubtful that anything will be done to stop harmful behavior that has hindered effective discussion of portal-related issues and driven some editors away from the topic. Lepricavark (talk) 01:17, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
I agree with Lepricavark. I am continually concerned the unblocked user continues to fail to take responsibility for their actions after six months of a continued harassment campaign. SportingFlyer T·C 03:01, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
About an hour after you left this comment, BHG referred to NA1k as "the miscreant". ([2]) She also wrote that she roadtests her comments to ensure they are twistproof. I agree with her; they are twistproof. They're quite blatantly WP:NPA. Vermont (talk) 02:12, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
@Vermont, Ched, Chris troutman, Lepricavark, and SportingFlyer:, since you have commented here, and @Diannaa and BrownHairedGirl:, since it concerns you.
  1. I made no "acknowledgement that BHG's unblock request was not compliant with policy". I acknowledged that it was not compliant with advice to blocked editors as to what is most likely to be accepted by an administrator reviewing an unblock request. That is all.
  2. I reviewed the unblock request on the basis that the reason for the block was what the blocking administrator visibly said was the reason. Most of the criticisms above are based on other things, not part of what she visibly said was the reason. I now see that Diannaa did in fact post a brief note about her reasons for blocking on BrownHairedGirl's talk page, hidden in the middle of the page, three sections up from the unblock notice at the bottom of the page. If she had placed that note about the reason for the block at the bottom of the page, or if she had put it in an orange box that looked like a standard block notice, or if she had added to the block log rationale a comment referring to the talk page discussion, or if in that block log she had stated that the cited edit was merely part of a continuing problem, I would have taken it into account. As it is, I saw a block log rationale which explicitly stated that the block was for one edit, over 19 hours before the block, and I briefly looked over the page for a block notice with more detail, but found none. I make absolutely no apology whatsoever for not having read the whole of the talk page, more than 47,000 words long, on the off chance that there might be further information about the block hidden somewhere in the middle of the page. The action I took was based on the block having been made for the reason that Diannaa visibly and publicly stated was the reason. I don't think I have to answer criticisms based on the block having in fact been for other reasons. Diannaa has more than enough experience to realise that making block reasons clear and easily determined is at least as much (if not more) for the benefit of administrators reviewing blocks as for the benefit of the blocked editor (who, after all, already knows the relevant history).
  3. The edit which was stated to be the cause of the block was not a personal attack. Whether one takes the view that other, related, posts were personal attacks or not, and whether one takes the view that the cited edit formed part of a complex of edits which together constituted personal attacks or not, the edit which was stated to be the cause of the block was not in itself a personal attack.
  4. You will probably have noticed that I am expressing no view on whether BrownHairedGirl's actions do or do not justify a block. My purpose is only to answer criticisms of the unblock I made, in the context in which I made it, which is a very different matter.
To judge by the indenting, the comment beginning "About an hour after you left this comment..." was intended as a criticism of what Chris Troutman had said about BrownHairedGirl's editing history and Diannaa's administration history. One cannot criticise a view expressed by someone on the basis of events that had not yet taken place when they expressed that view. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 10:50, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
  • I appreciate the ping, ty. — Ched (talk) 10:56, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
  • My note of BHG's use of personal attacks was not criticsm of Chris Troutman, or his comment. I was informing him, and those reading, that she engaged in such conduct shortly after being unblocked for it. It's a simple statement of her recent actions with regard to personal attacks, and that I believe they are personal attacks. It was aimed to change Chris Troutman's opinion, not criticize him. If you interpreted it as a criticism of anyone other than BHG, then you interpreted it incorrectly. Vermont (talk) 11:11, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
@Vermont: OK, I accept that. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 11:34, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
  • The unblock was fully within the realms of administrator discretion, and, frankly, that's the fundamental criterion. ——SN54129 11:19, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Of course. Agreed here, although there's no issue in contesting an unblock. Vermont (talk) 11:48, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
  • With regard to points two and three, I had previously assumed that you had seen Diannaa's explanation of how the edit constitutes a personal attack, which you can see here, and had taken it into account with your unblock. Basing an inherently controversial unblock (of an administrator currently involved in a lengthy ANI discussion), I would think it logical to read the section where that edit was made. Obviously, no one wants to subject you to reading 47,000 words, but if you had checked the page history you would have seen Diannaa's edit with the summary of "you are blocked for personal attacks", which also would have linked you to that talk page section. On another note, I agree with your point #1; of course, one needs to review the merits of both the block and the statement, which you did, and GAB is a explanatory supplement to a guideline, unrelated to policy. With regard to #4, I agree that Diannaa should have worded it better (if her intention was also to block for a continued pattern of incivility rather than only that specific edit) and probably created a new section with the explanation of the block. Best regards, Vermont (talk) 11:48, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
@Vermont: You are right, it would have been better had I checked the editing history of the talk page. However, I still think the blocking administrator should have made it clearer, and administrators usually do make their statements of reasons for blocks clearly visible without having to search through talk page histories, so while I accept that my failure to check the history can reasonably be criticised, I don't think I can be blamed very heavily for not doing something which should not have been necessary, and which I had no reason to think would be necessary. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 13:32, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
  • JBW, thank you for the ping. There are many things of substance that I might say, but having blocked for a "personal attack" which wasn't a personal attack (it was an evidenced comment on conduct) by an admin who has expressed an interpretation of policy which makes some key policies and guidelines unworkable, I will say only: thank you for upholding policy by unblocking.
As I noted in another post on my talk, that block has forced me to drop my preference for open discussion. So I won't engage with the other comments here. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 12:24, 18 November 2019 (UTC)


  • Actually, I have just realised something which I hadn't thought of before, but which is now blindingly obvious, and which in my opinion unequivocally makes the block contrary to policy. Diannaa blocked BrownHairedGirl for editing which took place on BrownHairedGirl's talk page. She did not remove BrownHairedGirl's talk page access. A block which allowed BrownHairedGirl to continue editing her talk page cannot possibly have been preventive, when the action it was supposed to prevent was editing that talk page. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 13:40, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
    • I don't think you are correct about that, since talk page access should only be removed if it is abused. "This option is not checked by default, and typically should not be checked; editing of the user's talk page should be disabled only in the case of continued abuse of their user talk page."
      I am disappointed that you say that you did not look at the page history or read the events leading up to the block. You only read the block log and discovering the 47,000-word talk page with no block notice, decided to unblock based solely on the information contained in the log. I don't know if you would have unblocked or not had you dug a bit deeper.
      On another note, BrownHairedGirl has pinged me to her talk page, but yesterday she asked me not to post there any more on this topic. It's not fair to ping me to her talk page, where I am not welcome to post, and then to post a lengthy analysis of my behaviour without right to respond. I'm not sure i *would* respond, but this strikes me as being unfair. Posting this comment here, as I am not allowed to post there. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 13:51, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
@Diannaa: (1) "This option is not checked by default, and typically should not be checked..." (my emphasis) Perhaps a situation where the whole point of the block is to prevent abusive editing of the talk page could reasonably be regarded as outside the range of circumstances to which that "typical" situation applies. (2) "...editing of the user's talk page should be disabled only in the case of continued abuse of their user talk page." Isn't "continued abuse of their user talk page" exactly what you consider to have happened? (3) No, I don't know, either, if I would have unblocked or not had I "dug a bit deeper". Please bear in mind that I have already stated that the fact that I didn't dig deeper can reasonably be criticised, and everything I say should be taken in the context of that statement. However, I still stand by the rest of what I have said above relating to that. You stated that the block was for one particular edit, to which you gave a link, and I took you at your word. I do not think that I have said, as you suggest, that I did not "read the events leading up to the block", but I absolutely do not think that any criticism at all is due to me for not looking at the part of the history which followed the action which you stated was the reason for the block. It is now clear that in fact your decision to block was triggered by another edit, many hours later than the one you cited, but I was not to know that. While it is true, as I have already said, that I could have looked at the talk page editing history, and if so would have found your other statement making it clear that the block was not in fact for that one edit, do you think that you could have, and perhaps should have, made the situation clearer? JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 14:33, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
I didn't leave a block notice, it's true. I did that because I thought it was customary not to do so when blocking a long-time contributor. I should have done so, and I should have created a new section with a block notice and details of my rationale instead of posting in the section where we were having the discussion. This would have made things clearer for the reviewing admin. Sorry for the mistake.— Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 14:46, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
As talk page access is given to blocked users solely for the purpose of appealing such block, and using it for other purposes could result in a removal of talk page access, blocking with talk page access was the most reasonable way to do so. It does prevent, by guideline rather than technically, the conduct that caused the block. Had BHG abused talk page access by using it to continue, then talk page access would be removed. Ones talk page is not a safe haven from WP:5P4. Vermont (talk) 14:04, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
      • Dianaa, after I ended the conversation you responded to me, despite my request not to do so. You responded by misusing your admin powers to block me. And you did not leave the customary block notice.
I made one reply to that. It's my talk page, and I am entitled to have the last word there. Which I have done. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 14:12, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Her reply to you was an administrative action. You can't avoid administrative actions (not discussing the merit) by telling them not to edit your talk page. Vermont (talk) 14:42, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
It strikes me as inappropriate, when an admin is on the verge of blocking you, to ban them from your talk page, forcing them to leave without taking action.
The personal attacks in your post were not as severe as some in the past: there's been a lot of improvement, but still contained a statement about your perception of the other editor's perceived lack of intelligence and nefarious motives. Your response to my analysis stated you did not see any problem with making such comments and did not intend to stop, so I blocked you. I don't think my block was an abuse or misuse of admin powers; it was a judgement call based on your behaviour and the likelihood that it would continue. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 14:48, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
I have to go get ready for work now, ttyl. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 14:55, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Diannaa, you gave no indication whatsoever that you were acting in an admin capacity, or that you were on the verge of blocking me. Both of those points were stated by you only at the the time of the block.
Or are you saying that you are now thinking of blocking me again?
There is more I could say, but I have said it already. Sadly, I see no indication that you are reading it with an open mind. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:25, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
@BrownHairedGirl:Here is the diff where I explicitly stated that I would block you: special:diff/926298589 — Ninja Diannaa (Talk) 17:27, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the diff, Diannaa.
I genuinely did't notice that second part of the last of 4 sentences. That diff posted here is the first point at which I became aware of it.
At that time, I was involved in stuff happening fast and in multiple places. So I was speed-reading, and trying to skip dialogue which seemed unproductive. I was not even conscious that you were an admin. Yes, I could have checked, but with all that was going on I had not done so, and you had not said that you were. In hindsight, I see two indicators which might have prompted me to investigate further (the date as thread title and the warning triangle), but I was making quick assessments.
As far as I was aware, you were simply an editor with whom I was having an unproductive conversation from which I wanted to disengage. So when you did block me, my first thought was "where did that come from"?
Re-reading the discussion, I can see now how it would have looked different from your side if you assumed that I was aware of a block warning and was ignoring it. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 21:51, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Thank you BrownHairedGirl for this statement. Hopefully we are done with your talk page now, JBW! Thanks for your patience. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 22:02, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
@BrownHairedGirl: While I stand by my unblock, under the circumstances in which it happened, the more I have seen of your comments relating to this whole event the more I think you should step back, and take a break from everything connected to it in any way, or perhaps even a break from editing Wikipedia at all. Not only are Vermont and Diannaa obviously 100% right in saying that you can't avoid administrative action by banning administrators from your talk page, but also, and more importantly, I have enough experience of you over the years to be 100% certain that if you were thinking calmly an rationally you would never have entertained that idea for a moment. As I said on your talk page, I have regarded you as one of our best administrators, but what I have seen of you over the last 18 hours has been totally out of character for you, in ways which suggest to me that, whatever the rights or wrongs of the case you are concerned about, you have allowed your feelings about it to get in the way of your judgement. I am sincerely saying this as a friend, in the hope that if you listen and consider what I say it may be helpful to you. Please step back, and as I said, take a break, to give yourself a chance to see things more clearly.
BrownHairedGirl and for Diannaa, in response to comments you have both made above, I do not think it is always necessary to post a formal templated block notice to a long established editor, and sometimes I don't. In the case of someone with as much experience as BrownHairedGirl, she certainly doesn't need one. However, I do think that it's a good idea to always make sure that the block reasons are very readily visible, whether by means of a templated notice or otherwise. As I have already indicated, I actually think that in many cases giving clear reasons for a block is less to do with informing the blocked editor than to do with making it easier for any future administrator to find the relevant information. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 15:16, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
I wholeheartedly support your unblock of @BrownHairedGirl and condemn @Vermont's use of BHG's later conversation with me (which didn't name and wasn't about NA1K) to bash BHG here. Instead of following her edits looking for stuff to twist into a narrative of dark conduct, why don't you do something useful on Wikipedia like edit an article or go for a walk. Newshunter12 (talk) 15:58, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
Newshunter12, If it wasn't NA1k she was referring to as "the miscreant", who was it? Regardless, it's uncivil. And although it has no real bearing on my arguments, I've been doing quite a lot of other useful work for the project. Best regards, Vermont (talk) 16:04, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
@Vermont In my opinion, as the other person in that conversation, it was a general statement not in reference to anyone specific. Please do not twist her words out of context in the future. That you hear "miscreant" and immediately think of NA1K is your problem, not hers. Newshunter12 (talk) 16:11, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
"However, I seem to have the joy of being followed by an admin who adamantly refuses to consider the substance of the misconduct I describe, but who appears to be scrutinising my descriptions for anything which might be critical of the miscreant." ([3]) Please tell me how this is a general statement and refers to no one specific. You know full well it refers to Diannaa and NA1k. Vermont (talk) 16:14, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
@Vermont I never said the admin wasn't clearly Diannaa. However, you could plug any editor into the spot held by "miscreant" and the statement would be the same. It was a vague, general statement you are twisting out of context. That you think any "miscreant" must mean NA1K speaks to your apparent low opinion of that editor, not imaginary abuse by BHG. You are taking this in circles, so this is the end of my part in this discussion. Newshunter12 (talk) 17:19, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
You say this as though I was the one calling another editor "the miscreant", not the one calling it out. I'll request that, in the future, you refrain from posing red herring arguments in an effort to defend incivility and harassment. Regards, Vermont (talk) 17:46, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

Hutch–Kinahan feud

Thank you for blocking 78.18.19.209 for disruptive editing. There were a few other IP addresses that edited that article (and others) in a disruptive manner - you may want to take a look at them too:

  • 78.18.18.60 - this editor made a number of disruptive edits during August to the above article as well as RTÉ News and Current Affairs, List of Judges of the High Court (Ireland) and Murder of Elaine O'Hara - in the first article, some of the references have either been moved or replaced with incorrect markup - such as this or adding unsourced material like this or this. Particularly nasty were this edit which added the name of a convicted murderer in a particularly nasty murder cast as a legal advisor and this, which replaced the name of the same murderer with the name of Orla O'Donnell, a journalist. The familiarity with the murder case makes me suspect that the broken English of some edits may be feigned rather than genuine. Several of the disruptive edits to articles other than Hutch-Kinahan feud were reverted. This user hasn't edited since 18 August last but given the similarity in the IP address I wonder if it's the same person as you blocked using a different IP address.
  • 213.202.136.217 - this editor edited Hutch-Kinahan feud, List of major crimes in Ireland and List of Judges of the High Court (Ireland). In the former this editor added unsourced edits such as this and this. In this edit the name Graham Dwyer is replaced with the name of journalist Orla O'Donnell, as with the vandal at 78.18.18.60.
  • 78.18.238.156 - this editor added unsourced material such as this and this and this.

That covers some of them - not all of these IP addresses have been active lately, so I realise there may be no need to take any action. Thanks again for blocking the vandal. Autarch (talk) 22:05, 29 October 2019 (UTC)

@Autarch: Thanks. When I was looking into this with a view to blocking I noticed other IP edits too, though I don't remember whether they included the ones you have mentioned or not. Unfortunately the 78.18... and 78.19... edits are spread much too widely to range block them all, even if we ignore 213.202.136.217. I have placed a block on a fairly small range, on which more than 99% of the edits over the last 3 months appear to be from this person, and maybe when I have more time I will look into the question of whether there are other ranges to be blocked. On the basis of what I have seen it seems unlikely that it will be possible to cut off all of his/her potential IP addresses, but if we can block enough of a disruptive editor's IP addresses their editing can often be significantly slowed down, and sometimes in that situation an editor even eventually gives up altogether, so it's worth trying. JBW (talk) Formerly known as JamesBWatson 16:04, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. I just noticed that some more dubious edits were made as 78.19.236.26 (blocked) and 78.18.124.217 (not blocked). Maybe the next step should be WP:PAGEPROTECT. I'll take a look at other pages edits by those addresses over the next few days and see if they unconstructively edited also. Autarch (talk) 01:23, 18 November 2019 (UTC)
The anonymous editor is back at 78.18.99.249 - have reverted and warned them.Autarch (talk) 22:43, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

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Editing Dead link

Hi, When I browse, found this dead link. If you would like you may replace this dead link.

Dead link Page:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power

Dead link: Reference no 86. (The True Cost of Solar Power)

Live url for Reference no 86: The True Cost of Solar Power

Thanks Osuna — Preceding unsigned comment added by BlancaOsuna (talk • contribs) 14:25, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

(by talk reader) @BlancaOsuna: I've corrected the reference templates. –Skywatcher68 (talk) 21:20, 15 November 2019 (UTC)
Hey, JB, evidently this editor would prefer an admin fix those links. Mind undoing that undo? –Skywatcher68 (talk) 18:28, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
@Skywatcher68: Actually, yes I do mind. After I read the original message above, I was thinking what to say in answer to the editor, when you posted your message in this section, and I thought "OK, Skywatcher68 has dealt with it, so I don't need to bother". However, when I saw your latest message I looked further into the editor's history. It is clear that their only purpose in editing is to post spam links to their wiki. What the message here was about was trying to get me to do that for them, to avoid being seen to do it, because they had been warned about doing it. You, quite rightly, cleaned up the link, but in a way which did not introduce the spam link they had asked for. That is why they reverted it, not because they wanted an admin to do it. I have blocked the account, and I don't wish to get involved in editing the article, but you are free to repeat your edit if you wish to. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 21:31, 16 November 2019 (UTC)
They've made a rather strange edit to their talk page. –Skywatcher68 (talk) 22:22, 19 November 2019 (UTC)
@Skywatcher68: JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 09:30, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
It's like they're pretending to be someone with poor grasp of the language and used proper grammar by mistake then edited it out. –Skywatcher68 (talk) 15:35, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
@Skywatcher68: Yes. There are certainly many parts of the English speaking world (including the city where I grew up) where "learn" for "teach" is very common in popular speech, and I can easily imagine someone used to speaking like that first putting it in the form that comes naturally and then realising and "correcting" it to standard English, but why anyone would follow standard usage first and then deliberately "uncorrect" it is difficult to fathom. Oh well... JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 20:01, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

Another vandal

I found this guy on the DVD/Blu-Ray 2020 page, threatening me to get out. I think he might have relation to that IP hopper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/XLS20 Luigitehplumber (talk) 13:45, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

@Luigitehplumber: Yes, it looks likely, but I can't see any evidence that makes it certain, or even nearly certain. One thing that looks interesting is that the account, which hadn't been used for quite a while, has come back into use just after the IPs were blocked. If that is significant then it's likely there will be more editing from the account in the near future. If so, and if you notice anything more suggesting a connection to the IP editor, please let me know. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 14:43, 20 November 2019 (UTC)
Hey, JB, I've done some looking around. Check out this edit summary from the same locale back in April. –Skywatcher68 (talk) 05:26, 21 November 2019 (UTC)

Google Code-In 2019 is coming - please mentor some documentation tasks!

Hello,

Google Code-In, Google-organized contest in which the Wikimedia Foundation participates, starts in a few weeks. This contest is about taking high school students into the world of opensource. I'm sending you this message because you recently edited a documentation page at the English Wikipedia.

I would like to ask you to take part in Google Code-In as a mentor. That would mean to prepare at least one task (it can be documentation related, or something else - the other categories are Code, Design, Quality Assurance and Outreach) for the participants, and help the student to complete it. Please sign up at the contest page and send us your Google account address to google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org, so we can invite you in!

From my own experience, Google Code-In can be fun, you can make several new friends, attract new people to your wiki and make them part of your community.

If you have any questions, please let us know at google-code-in-admins@lists.wikimedia.org.

Thank you!

--User:Martin Urbanec (talk) 21:59, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

User:Mohamed_saadi_rami

I just saw your note at User_talk:Mohamed_saadi_rami after noting the editor's continued problem at The Lion King (2019 film) at AIV. (Their continued insistence here is that the film is "live action", for which they have been repeatedly reverted while ignoring all talk requests and a brief discussion on the article's talk page.)

They might be reblocked by the time you get this, but I figured I'd give you a heads up. - SummerPhDv2.0 22:51, 24 November 2019 (UTC)

Dcw2003 (talk)dcw2003 note

00:56, 1 December 2019 (UTC) I will be very careful about my uploaded photographs JBW and thank you for unblocking me. Thank-you for your consideration. I am a strong advocate of including photographs in wiki articles, but I must be more careful. Thank-you for your consideration. Feel free to write to my talk page if you can provide any additional information about photos that can become public domain that are published after 1923. I really need to stick to fair use as uploads as there is a little more leeway in uploading a single fair use photo in a bio if it is the subject of the article. If you disagree, or wish to respond let me know. Otherwise thank-you, and l hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dcw2003 (talk • contribs) 00:56, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2019

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2019).

Administrator changes

added EvergreenFir • ToBeFree
removed Akhilleus • Athaenara • John Vandenberg • Melchoir • MichaelQSchmidt • NeilN • Youngamerican • 😂

CheckUser changes

readded Beeblebrox
removed Deskana

Interface administrator changes

readded Evad37

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • The global consultation on partial and temporary office actions that ended in October received a closing statement from staff concluding, among other things, that the WMF will no longer use partial or temporary Office Action bans... until and unless community consensus that they are of value or Board directive.


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 02:48, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

IP user: 216.169.31.181 and 219.89.209.120 are the same

Thank you for blocking IP user 219.89.209.120 for overlinking but I just discovered that User talk:216.169.31.181 also did the same "work". I suspect these 2 IPs are the same user - Jay (talk) 14:20, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

@Jay: You may be right; certainly they have similar editing interests, and a generally similar style. However, if so then at least one of the IP addresses must be a proxy, as one of the IP addresses is allocated to an ISP in New Zealand, and the other in the United States, but I have not been able to find any evidence that either of them is a proxy, VPN, or anything of the kind. I have searched for clear evidence that they are the same person, but I really haven't seen anything more than a rather vague "they do a fairly similar kind of editing on articles in the same topic area". I have not managed to pin down any similarity specific enough to conclude they are the same person, and it does look as though there may be significant differences too. For example, although I did see examples of overlinking from 216.169.31.181, what I saw did not look like the almost obsessive overlinking from the editor who has used 216.169.31.181 (and at least one other IP address). In that last sentence I deliberately said "what I saw", because I have not looked at anywhere near all of the editing, so I may have missed some important evidence. My conclusion is that there is enough similarity to be suspicious, but not enough to definitely conclude that it's the same person, and in view of the IP addresses geolocating to different continents, on the whole they probably aren't. However, if you can provide any specific evidence significant enough to justify revising that opinion, please let me know. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 18:40, 3 December 2019 (UTC)
Ok thanks. Will update you if I have anything - Jay (talk) 05:19, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

Looks like we have a new IP hopper editing on behalf of their clients

Hey, JB, you should check out these edits. –Skywatcher68 (talk) 02:26, 4 December 2019 (UTC)

@Skywatcher68: A classic example of how difficult it can be to communicate with an IP editor whose IP address keeps changing, as it is very likely that the person in question never saw any of your messages. I have blocked the IP range, and posted a fairly long message on one of the talk pages, explaining the situation. Incidentally, while your posting COI messages to IP talk pages was fine, I'm not so happy with the part of this edit relating to use of multiple IP addresses. IPv6 address from many ISPs are likely to change without warning, and usually without the user even knowing that anything has changed, so the editor may have been acting in perfectly good faith, with no "attempts to avoid detection or circumvent the blocking policy". JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 15:10, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
Noted. –Skywatcher68 (talk) 14:10, 5 December 2019 (UTC)

You've got mail

Hello, JBW. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.TheSandDoctor Talk 16:54, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Errm...

This talk page is probably not the best place for this, but I really feel I want to say this now, and this is the first place I thought of.

Over the 13 years in which I have been editing Wikipedia I have again and again and again been amazed at the frequency with which new editors post messages contesting speedy deletion nominations, and seem to be unaware of the fact that in their statement why the page should not be deleted they are in fact confirming the reason given for deletion. For example, I have many times seen things along the lines of saying that an article should not be deleted as promotional, because the band that it is about (usually, but not always, it is a band) is not yet well known, and having a Wikipedia page is important for them to get publicity and get well known. However, I have just seen what must surely be the example to crown all examples. The emphasis in the following is mine, but the wording is copied and pasted, and is verbatim:

This page is not unambiguously promotional, because its about a young musical band from Morocco, and through this page we are looking for to promote their music.

Not promotional, but looking to promote???? JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 22:20, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) ... not sure whether to cry or laugh, but wow. That clueless or that brazen, you think? AddWittyNameHere 00:28, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
@AddWittyNameHere: Clueless is my guess. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 15:11, 4 December 2019 (UTC)
I must agree....not sure whether to laugh or cry at that. --TheSandDoctor Talk 16:58, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Apology and thanks

Hi there James. A few years back, I accidentally published a Wikipedia page. You (very rightly) deleted it, and I made a very silly comment on your talk page. There is no way you will remember this, but I just wanted to apologise for the 12 year old version of myself that had no place being on Wikipedia. I also wanted to say a big thank you, as after seeing your talk page, you have clearly done a lot of fantastic work on this site which I use so much. Thank you for making it a great place to be and for putting up with people like me! I didn't know how else to get in contact with you, so if you want to delete this feel free and sorry if I shouldn't have posted here. Summit09 (talk) 16:11, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

@Summit09:
  1. You are absolutely right, I didn't remember it. In the scale of problems I deal with almost every day on Wikipedia, it was really minor, and not worth bothering about. I accept your apology, but it wasn't at all necessary.
  2. Wikipedia didn't exist when I was 12, but if it had done I am sure I would have done some pretty stupid things, so I really can't get worked up about anyone else who does the same.
  3. Now that you are older, I hope you can make useful contributions to the encyclopaedia. If you enjoy doing so half as much as I have over the last 13 years, it will be worth your while. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 22:38, 8 December 2019 (UTC)

Article war: Ed Asner

On the article covering actor Ed Asner, there is a constant edit war, but the article is not protected. I feel that something should be done about this. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.24.210.141 (talk) 00:25, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

I don't see a constant edit-war on that article. Can you say specifically what edits you are referring to? JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 13:19, 29 November 2019 (UTC)
There is no specific edit or edits, but there are disputes over several aspects of the article, most notably what name Ed Asner gives by, mainly whether it is Edward Asner or Ed Asner, and which city in the Kansas City area he was born in. There is conflicting information as to whether he was born in the Missouri part of that city or the Kansas part. Even the articles over each city conflict regarding notable people. These edits have a long history, and I think to eliminate confusion, this article should be at least semi-protected and the correct information placed. I cannot do much to help, so I apologize, but I think something should be done.
I understand what you mean, but the editing that had taken place when you posted your messages here was just an ordinary case of an article where, at different times and from different editors, there have been disagreements about different aspects of editing the article. That is normal, and is to be dealt with by the normal bold, revert, discuss process. Since you posted your messages here there have been edits between two editors disputing the name of the subject of the article, in a way which looks as though it may be the beginning of an edit war. If it continues, then I will be willing to consider possible administrative action, but we are not at that stage yet.
Did you have some reason to believe that the edits were likely to move towards an edit war before they actually started to do so? JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 09:49, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

The conflicting edits were going on for a while and are still going on, such as Ed Asner's credited name being changed from Ed to Edward and back, all that. I just think that a larger-scale edit war is inevitable. Anonymous, Dec. 11 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.24.210.141 (talk) 22:52, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

User: Train of Knowledge

Hello, again. I know I already talked to you about the whole Ed Asner thing, but there is something else that came to my attention. A registered user vandalized the article over the 1975 Disney movie The Strongest Man in the World, and they are known as the Train of Knowledge. I thought nothing of it at first, but then I checked their user page, and I've seen abuse of power as a registered user, and I think that they must have their account deleted. I know that I don't have an account, but Wikipedia standards do not allow this. Thank you again for your time. Anonymous, Dec. 11 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.24.210.141 (talk) 23:00, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Talk page of user in question was User talk:Train of Knowledge where allegations made. Suggest to please be initiate appropriate actions. Thankyou. Djm-leighpark (talk) 23:14, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
It is perfectly clear that this was a mistake, not vandalism. Perhaps Train of Knowledge could be criticised for not being more careful, but he or she has already apologised for the mistake and promised to check more carefully in future, so there is no need to pursue that matter. The IP editor needs to be more willing to accept that other editors are human and make mistakes, and needs to be less aggressive when dealing with other editors with whom she or he has disagreements. I would post a message to that effect on the IP talk page, but Train of Knowledge and Djm-leighpark have already said all that needs to be said there, so it can be left as it is, unless there are further instances of the same kind of problem. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 21:40, 12 December 2019 (UTC)
I do apologize for my behavior toward this subject. I did not see it as mistake, and it being a mistake was not obvious at all to me. I guess it is a mistake, but I just thought that they would notice this problem and not revert it. Yes, I did overreact a bit, not seeing it was a mistake, and I do apologize for that, but I think they should have paid attention more. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.24.210.141 (talk) 00:55, 15 December 2019 (UTC)

Cheers

Damon Runyon's short story "Dancing Dan's Christmas" is a fun read if you have the time. Right from the start it extols the virtues of the hot Tom and Jerry

This hot Tom and Jerry is an old-time drink that is once used by one and all in this country to celebrate Christmas with, and in fact it is once so popular that many people think Christmas is invented only to furnish an excuse for hot Tom and Jerry, although of course this is by no means true.

No matter what concoction is your favorite to imbibe during this festive season I would like to toast you with it and to thank you for all your work here at the 'pedia this past year. Best wishes for your 2020 as well JBW. MarnetteD|Talk 05:04, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

Apologies

I just wanted to say I am sorry for the inconveniences I've done last year and I regret ever complaining about a TV show on this site. I've read and understand about the true usage on Wikipedia. Please don't suspend my account. I have Asperger's Syndrome and I'm also an artist. Kristie Ann Webb (talk) 06:06, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Anime South

This article was last deleted in July 2007. A new article appeared in January 2008 and has since been edited by lots of different editors. How could it possibly be a valid G4 deletion? An AfD from 12 years ago is essentially worthless. —Xezbeth (talk) 11:31, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

@Xezbeth: Well, I think there are circumstances in which an AFD from that long ago might be relevant, but having looked back and thought again I agree that this isn't one of them, so I've restored the article. Thanks for prompting me to reconsider it. (However, you may like to think about whether the way you phrased your message was the one most likely to get sympathetic consideration of your point.) JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 13:12, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Good luck

豊かな十年へようこそ/WELCOME TO THE D20s

Miraclepine wishes you a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and a prosperous decade of change and fortune.
このミラPはJBWたちのメリークリスマスも新年も変革と幸運の豊かな十年をおめでとうございます！
フレフレ、みんなの未来！/GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR FUTURE!
ミラP 02:58, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Blocking accounts of Millions

Hi, You do realize that by blocking IP 2409:4064:0:0:0:0:0:0/34 you have ended up blocking Hundreds of Millions people from editing wikipedia. The 2409 is one of the unique Ip to hundreds of Millions Reliance Jio internet users in India. That means every customer using the IP has a dynamic IP of later strings but the 2409 is common. So someone using 2409 caused vandalism and for that millions of Indian editors are basically locked out of wikipedia for it? 117.205.196.161 (talk) 14:05, 22 December 2019 (UTC)

I think that's pretty cool: millions of people unable to edit. Hopefully, there will be news stories about this and investigation into why Wikipedia's volunteers have to set up range blocks to prevent vandalism. Surely there are points to be made about the problem of online anonymity and the lack of corporate responsibility regarding ISPs. Everyone comes here and thinks they have right to vomit their unsourced POV across our website. Nobody ever considers what's actually best for our readership. Chris Troutman (talk) 14:15, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
I agree with Chris totally. I have had enough with "hit and run" editors (IP users) -Jay (talk) 14:26, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
  • I have problems really understanding anything with IPV6, because it's just incomprehensibly large numbers all the way down. But there does seem to be distinct editing sessions from this range, and at least some of the contributions appears to be from well-meaning probably younger editors. It may be worth considering whether we couldn't be more surgical with disabling account creation. GMGtalk 15:04, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
    • If we are talking mandatory registration, I'm all in. Chances of WMF agreeing? 0, I'm afraid. John from Idegon (talk) 15:30, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
      • No, I mean that when enacting a range block, you have the option to disable account creation from the entire range. (Though theoretically, default existing tools could disable anonymous editing entirely in...a way that would involve a lot of math.) Disabling account creation for range blocks is a great deal more powerful, and must be used a great deal more carefully, especially in large ranges. But IPV6 range blocks are like dropping a nuke in a desert anyway. GMGtalk 17:10, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
  • When anyone complains about a range block, especially an IPv6 range block, they usually come up with claims of blocking enormous numbers of people. However, they invariably get the numbers nowhere near right, for several reasons. How about this case? (1) Well, to start with, the IP editor who started this section seems to think that everyone using IP addresses beginning 2409... is blocked, and that that means "Hundreds of Millions people" [sic]. However, the range 2409:4064:0:0:0:0:0:0/34 does not cover all IP addresses beginning 2409..., nor even one thousandth of one percent of them. In fact it covers one in 262,144 of them. The original poster justifies the "Hundreds of Millions" claim by saying "2409 is one of the unique Ip to hundreds of Millions Reliance Jio internet users" [sic]. Indeed, the total number of subscribers to Reliance Jio is about 355 million, so if the number of subscribers is proportional to the number of IP addresses, then the number in the range 2409:4064:0:0:0:0:0:0/34 will be about 355,000,000 ÷ 262,144 which is about 1350, nowhere near "hundreds of millions", not even millions, nor even tens of thousands. (2) The number of people who have IP addresses in a blocked range is not in any way a reasonable measure of how many people are prevented from editing Wikipedia, because well over 99.9% of people never edit Wikipedia anyway. Looking at the editing history of the range, it is perfectly clear that a large proportion of recent editing has been done by a small fairly number of people, as shown by various features, such as similar editing to the same or closely related articles, using the same IP address or closely related IP addresses. The number of people who edited using that IP range over the last month or so looks like having been a few dozen, but even if it was 100, we are nowhere near to the "hundreds of millions" of people supposedly prevented from editing. (3) The original poster says that the terrible block on "hundreds of millions" of people was because "someone using 2409 caused vandalism". No, it was because the majority of editing over a long period has been disruptive editing of one kind or another, not because one person did some vandalism. The original poster must have known that, because I said so quite clearly in the block log, and that person would not have known that I was the person who placed the block unless they had seen that block log. Evidently they chose to ignore it, because it suited their purpose to claim that the iniquitous block had all been because of the actions of one person. (4) I never make any IP block without first checking the editing history of the IP address or range in question over a time period substantially longer than the length of the block, to asses the likely ratio between collateral damage and prevention of damaging editing. On this occasion I decided that there was far more disruptive editing than good editing, including a large amount of editing by one or more long-term disruptive editors evading blocks, but that nevertheless there was a significant number of good edits. The block I placed was for a small fraction of the time it would have been had those good edits not been there. (5) I know exactly what it is like to be prevented from editing because of an IP block caused by other people's disruptive editing, because it once happened to me. It was annoying and frustrating, but I accepted that it was, unfortunately, necessary to prevent persistent vandalism, and so instead of whining at the blocking administrator about how unjust the block was, I created this account. Yes, it was inconvenient having to do so, and it delayed my being able to edit, as I could not create an account right away because account creation was blocked. However, I was able to do it, and so is anyone else who suffers collateral damage from an IP block. (6) IP blocks with account creation permitted are useful in a small, limited, range of situations, but in most situations they are close to useless, because whoever one is trying to block from editing can just create an account and carry on editing, so the block achieves precisely nothing. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 20:33, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
...First off, paragraphs. Second, I'm not sure you are entirely correct, though I'm happy to be corrected myself. I believe account blocks apply cookie blocks, while range blocks do not, which is much of the rationale for applying range blocks without account creation disabled. Though I don't think either of us can actually see how many accounts have been created from this range. GMGtalk 21:11, 22 December 2019 (UTC)
@GreenMeansGo:
Paragraphs: yes, thanks for pointing that out. I'll try to remember.
Cookie blocks: Yes, that does make a difference, which my comment above didn't address. How much difference depends on the circumstances. For example, many long-term serial-block-evaders know enough to delete cookies after each block, whereas the typical casual school lunch break vandal doesn't. And knowledge of what IP address created what account would certainly help in making informed decisions about what blocks, if any, to use. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 12:46, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
Just thinking out loud at this point, but now that it's come up, it would be exceptionally useful to have a tool a xtools.wmflabs that would give at least a raw count of accounts that have been created from an IP range, and possibly also number that were subsequently blocked individually as accounts. I presume no such tool would be allowed to identify individual accounts by name, but as far as I am aware, without CU tools, it's not possible to at all judge potential collateral damage from disabling account creation from a range. I'm not even sure it's possible with CU access. Umm...KrakatoaKatie, is this correct? GMGtalk 14:37, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
  • @GreenMeansGo: We can see accounts created from an IP, but this range is way too big for that to work. We can only see them one at a time among a list of other edits from the IP or range, so for a big range, it's next to useless. To my knowledge, XTools doesn't have a capability like you're suggesting. IP users can use ACC to request an account, though they're waaay backed up at the moment. Katietalk 22:54, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Hmm. I wonder is such a tool is even possible. Not even sure who to ask. GMGtalk 23:43, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
Why can't we just create a policy to make registration as mandatory? Is there a forum like afd/tfd to propose / vote for this? I would love to vote for mandatory registration. − Jay (talk) 16:03, 24 December 2019 (UTC)
I have been caught up three times in rangeblocks because there was an idiot vandal on my IP (I live in an apartment block).
On the first occasion, it took me only 2-3 hours to find {{unblock}}, which got prompt action.
On the second occasion, it was a hard IP block by a steward whose email account was not open. I could not even edit my Talk Page. That needed an email to an admin I know, five or six hours for him to wake up on a different continent, and two interventions to get the block lifted. Still, I was back editing within eight hours or so.
On the third occasion, it was a hard IP block by a different steward with a closed email account. I couldn't edit my Talk Page then either. By now, I had been told how to file a UTRS request, and that worked well. I was only unable to edit for an hour.
I think I now have WP:IPBE. You can still colour me unimpressed on hard rangeblocks. Narky Blert (talk) 23:03, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – January 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (December 2019).

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 20:06, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Missing brackets

Hi JBW, on this edit Special:Diff/935800492 I see you're missing the closing square brackets on your WP:NOTE text. I'd correct it myself, but it would substitute my signature. --Drm310 🍁 (talk) 22:20, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Michael Keaton

On the Michael Keaton article, there is persistent sockpuppetry, where one person with multiple IP addresses is making edits of unconfirmed speculation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.24.210.141 (talk) 22:37, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

article deletion

Hi JBW, my main concern is that the article on “Kent Tate” has a “conflict of interest” that will never be resolved so I requested a deletion understanding that there will not likely be an article regarding my notability in the future based on my current career. I certainly rely on Wikipedia myself and if I saw the article and I didn't know the subject I would not find it credible. Best Regards, Kent tate (talk) 09:14, 16 January 2020 (UTC) Kent tate (talk) 00:28, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Deleted page from 2017

Hello, a page of mine was deleted under CSD G12 in 2017: TimedText:Sample of "Jealous" by Nick Jonas.ogg.en.srt. Would it not be fair use if it's hooked up to the audio file it transcribes (File:Sample of "Jealous" by Nick Jonas.ogg)? That's what I believe it was doing. -BRAINULATOR9 (TALK) 00:26, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

@Brainulator9: I'm not sure about the circumstances, but I've given it the benefit of the doubt and restored it. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 11:36, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Middle-earth redirects

Hello there. I've seen that you have deleted the content of the redirect Middle-earth plants following consensus at AfD. You'll find that the same practice of re-creating an article after a consensus to delete at AfD, only to redirect after (effectively keeping the content that was agreed to be deleted in the redirect history) was done at List of Middle-earth rivers (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Middle-earth rivers (2nd nomination)) and Middle-earth roads (Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Middle-earth roads). I also don't quite understand its purpose, but it's effectively going against community consensus. Regards, RetiredDuke (talk) 22:41, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

@RetiredDuke: Thanks for pointing that out. I have removed the re-creation from the editing history of those pages, and also several more that I found when I checked the editor's page-creation history. I have also posted a message to the editor's talk page about it. I hope that will put a stop to it, but if you motice it happening again please let me know. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 12:58, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for your guidance. I appreciate your comment: "Wikipedia's licensing terms require attribution of all content, which is achieved by keeping a history list of all edits." I don't understand why some discussions are closed with decision to "delete and redirect" instead of just redirect. This deletes all history Goustien (talk) 04:07, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
@Goustien: There are often good reasons for deleting history to do with the particular history of the particular deleted page. However, even when that is not so, if the consensus is that the page should not be on Wikipedia, and if there is no specific need to keep the history (for example, for attribution of merged content), deletion of history prevents some editor from coming along and just reverting the redirection. That happens reasonably frequently, and very often a long time after the deletion discussion, so it is not realistic to expect every deleted page to be watched indefinitely for such changes. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 10:55, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you

I have seen your message but next time please try and be helpful and respectful. Thank you Chaze mwale (talk) 14:42, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

@Chaze mwale: In what way was I unhelpful or disrespectful? JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 14:52, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Please share your direct contact. Chaze mwale (talk) 15:01, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, what does that mean? I can only guess that you you mean you want me to post my personal email address or something of the kind. Is that what you mean? If so, why? What do you intend to say that you are unwilling to say here? Since the only contact I have had with you is explaining a couple of facts about Wikipedia policy to try to help you avoid wasting a lot of your time on work that is bound to be deleted, I can't imagine there can be anything confidential you have to say to me, and it's fundamental to the nature of Wikipedia that all communication should be open unless there's a good reason for it not to be. Also, on the rare occasions when there is good reason to communicate confidentially, I certainly don't do so by publishing my personal contact information on a publicly visible web site. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 15:15, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Looks like that animation hoaxer from Southeastern Michigan is back again

Hi, JB. You should take a look at edits from 2600:1007... and 107.77... when you get a chance. –Skywatcher68 (talk) 15:52, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Blocked 2600:... range for a month, as there has been a lot of disruptive editing on a number of pages, and a much smaller amount of constructive editing. Not so sure about the 107..., and I don't have time to check thoroughly now. I may possibly come back to it, but I may not have much time for Wikipedia over the next couple of day. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 17:05, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Thanks. 2600 has also edited from 2600:1007:B0A0:24BE:498C:F54:D83D:C6AE recently; I'll let you or another admin know if I see activity from any other nearby ranges. –Skywatcher68 (talk) 21:03, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

You've got mail!

Hello, JBW. Please check your email; you've got mail!
Message added 01:55, 18 January 2020 (UTC). It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

Home Lander (talk) 01:55, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

@Home Lander: Replied. JBW (talk) 16:37, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

extended-confirmed protection on Belgrave, Leicester etc

Hi JBW! I noticed you put extended-confirmed protection on a few of the Leicester articles regularly targeted by our mutual block-evading friend. It's certainly justifiable, there's been real long term targeting of some of them, but my first thought on seeing it is that it might hurt more than it helps. Given how often he reappears, and the sheer number of related articles he seems determined to help with, it strikes me that it may be preferable to leave those couple of low-traffic articles he particularly likes as just semi-protected because the simple fact that he nearly always edits them and is hence identified. We both know he'll be back again, but to me it just increases the chance it'll be at some other obscure corner and he'll carry on unnoticed for longer. Just thought I'd give you my view on it; the protections are completely reasonable. Cheers ~ mazca talk 20:28, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

@Mazca: You may be right. It's impossible to be sure, but I've lifted the protectin from Belgrave, Leicester. Please feel free to unprotect any others that you think would be better not protected. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 14:48, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, as you say there's no way of knowing exactly what's going to help here. I'll leave it how you've left it now and we'll see where and when he next turns up. ~ mazca talk 18:21, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Recreation of a deleted page by a banned user

Hello there JBW (talk · contribs), there is a page RJ Alok previously deleted by you under G5 is now recreated with the name R.J. Alok, please have a look. Seems a case of sockpuppet.Shubhi89 (talk) 11:27, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

@Shubhi89: I've CSDed it. Nigos (talk • Contribs) 11:58, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Jim Drucker

I gather the page for this fellow was deleted because some user was blocked and creating it. But the subject seems notable. Commissioner of both the Continental Basketball Association and the AFL.[4][5][6][7] Can we restore or create his page? --2604:2000:E010:1100:21AA:D601:F22C:B289 (talk) 09:00, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

I know of no reason why an article about him should not be created. As for the page I deleted, it was not an article about him, just a redirect to Continental Basketball Association. JBW (talk) 16:47, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Unusual one this

Hi JBW, please take a look at this, found again through a Wikimedia image link, see: کاربر:Naghizadeh156/صفحه تمرین. This no-edit user on Persian Wiki is using the the page as blatant advertising for his business. I don't know what can be done on Persian Wiki from this end. Maybe you have an idea? Many thanks. Acabashi (talk) 15:55, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi, Acabashi. The only thing I can suggest is to contact a Persian Wikipedia administrator. With a bit of searching around and use of Google translate I managed to find the list of Persian Wikipedia admins, here. Checking that list I found an admin who claims to have a good knowledge of English, and who also edits English Wikipedia reasonably frequently. You could try contacting him or her on their talk page, User talk:Gnosis. JBW (talk) Formerly JamesBWatson 15:27, 20 January 2020 (UTC)
Many thanks. I'll try that. Acabashi (talk) 09:09, 25 January 2020 (UTC)

I think we have some bored students coming in from a cloud

63.137.76.23 via iBoss. –Skywatcher68 (talk) 17:41, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Yes, and quite a few more IP addresses in the range 63.137.76.0/26, since 2017, so I've blocked the range. JBW (talk) 21:02, 30 January 2020 (UTC)

Rename

Hey JBW, You might not be aware of this but clicking rename user button from "Show preview" do not generate permalink for reason (as happened here). ‐‐1997kB (talk) 12:23, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

@1997kB: No, I wasn't aware of that. I'll try to remember to watch out for that in future. Thanks for telling me. JBW (talk) 12:50, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

User Suarez9348

Hey, I saw you recently welcomed the user Suarez9348 as an editor. They seem to be very easy with vandalism accusations and warnings, as they threatened me with being blocked for a little change that I found useful (on the page of filmmaker Ishmael Bernal, in his "as an artist" section, the link to Malate makes no immediate sense, now again) and then undid my change. They did not respond to my answer to their accusations on 'my' (this shared IP's) talk page and deleted my criticism of all that from their talk page. Maybe you also wanna talk to them or something? I don't know the wiki protocol for something like this... Thanks and best regards, 1 motivated office worker 91.229.57.240 (talk) 12:18, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – February 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (January 2020).

Guideline and policy news

  • Following a request for comment, partial blocks are now enabled on the English Wikipedia. This functionality allows administrators to block users from editing specific pages or namespaces rather than the entire site. A draft policy is being workshopped at Wikipedia:Partial blocks.
  • The request for comment seeking the community's sentiment for a binding desysop procedure closed with wide-spread support for an alternative desysoping procedure based on community input. No proposed process received consensus.

Technical news

  • Twinkle now supports partial blocking. There is a small checkbox that toggles the "partial" status for both blocks and templating. There is currently one template: {{uw-pblock}}.
  • When trying to move a page, if the target title already exists then a warning message is shown. The warning message will now include a link to the target title. [8]

Arbitration

  • Following a recent arbitration case, the Arbitration Committee reminded administrators that checkuser and oversight blocks must not be reversed or modified without prior consultation with the checkuser or oversighter who placed the block, the respective functionary team, or the Arbitration Committee.

Miscellaneous


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 15:05, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

The closer's barnstar

The Closer's Barnstar
Your thoughtful and concise close at the troll page did not go unnoticed.

Please accept this token of appreciation for your excellent work.

——SN54129 14:19, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Amber Heard

Asking for moderation about the Amber Heard section of Personal Life relating to Johnny Depp. CaffeinAddict (talk) 03:04, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

@CaffeinAddict: What do you mean by "moderation"? If there were only a couple of editors involved in the discussion then it might help to ask for a third opinion, but with several editors (7 if I counted correctly) already having taken part, one more would not make much difference. You may possibly have a misunderstanding of the role of administrators on Wikipedia, and your use of the word "moderation" does make it look that way. Unlike some other web sites with user-submitted content, Wikipedia does not have "moderators" who have the authority to make rulings in the case of disagreements over content. In general, administrators have no more authority in that respect than any other editors. However, there is one aspect of this case which potentially may become a matter for administrative action, depending on how things continue. More than one editor has raised concerns about the reliability of sources that have been used or referred to. Wikipedia policy is that content which has been disputed must not be added or restored to an article without reliable sources. That is especially important in the case of negative statements about any living person, which is evidently the case here. In fact the policy on living persons requires that "contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced should be removed immediately and without discussion". Therefore, if any editors were to continue adding disputed content without citations to reliable sources, it might become necessary for an administrator to take actions to prevent those editors from doing so.
At a quick skim through the discussion there appears to be substantial consensus against inclusion of the disputed content.
I notice the appearance in the discussion of several editors who have never edited before, or at most made one edit. That includes two accounts which were both created years ago, but which previously had either never edited or had merely made one edit in user space. Whenever a discussion attracts several such editors with no or almost no history of editing, one tends to wonder why that has happened, and how they became aware of the discussion, and whether they are connected to one another in any way. JBW (talk) 16:32, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

Thanks bud. CaffeinAddict (talk) 03:07, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

    • FYI kinda didn’t read all that. Have better things to do. CaffeinAddict (talk) 03:08, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Revdel request

Could you please revision delete this copyvio? thanks! buidhe 03:57, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

@Buidhe: The text in question originated in the Wikipedia article Ring 0: Birthday. Versions of the text are to be found on numerous web sites with user-generated content, including blogspot, wikia, IMDb, etc etc, and it is often difficult to tell whether content in web sites of that kind is copied from Wikipedia or vice versa, but on this occasion it is perfectly clear. The text has been built up on the Wikipedia article in numerous edits over the course of the last six years, while copies in other places correspond to various different versions of the Wikipedia article, depending on when they were copied from it. I have added attribution to the editing history of Ringu Blu-Ray Arrow Collection in an edit summary. JBW (talk) 11:34, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Draft Article

Hello JBW. Sorry for the late response. Thanks for taking my article Draft:Baskut Tuncak back to draft. I am, in fact, confused as it has remained with problem despite many times that I have worked on it. Anyway, I'll try to save it this time and I appreciate if you have any clue how to do so. Alex-h (talk) 22:49, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

Dead Men of Dunharrow

Thanks for restoring the history of Dead Men of Dunharrow! Faolin42 (talk) 12:11, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Whoops! Shouldn't have mentioned it :-) Faolin42 (talk) 01:02, 9 February 2020 (UTC)

Obvious conflict of interest

Hi, JB. Gilroy, California is being edited by a city employee; I've already posted a COI notice on their Talk page. –Skywatcher68 (talk) 23:22, 7 February 2020 (UTC)

And virtually every IP edit of Mount Holyoke College since September has either been from the college itself or the Holyoke area. –Skywatcher68 (talk) 16:28, 11 February 2020 (UTC)
I figured Heather McComb was being edited by either the actress herself or her agent. COI notice has been posted to the talk page of the editor using her name. –Skywatcher68 (talk) 21:43, 14 February 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Editnotices/Page/Shyne

Template:Editnotices/Page/Shyne has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Shhhnotsoloud (talk) 11:20, 16 February 2020 (UTC) hi jbw, just emailed you. a bit lost in here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dragarcher (talk • contribs) 17:09, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Help

hi JBW,

I am new here and would like to ask for your help to public an article.

I have emailed you.


Dragarcher — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dragarcher (talk • contribs) 17:19, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

User:Ihimelrana

Hi. User:Ihimelrana is another one using Wikipedia for a personal web page, found again through a Wikimedia image. No editing anywhere else since 2018. Thanks. Acabashi (talk) 11:08, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Acabashi Thanks for letting me know. I have deleted the page, and psoted what I hope is a reasonably friendly talk page message explaining the reason. JBW (talk) 15:57, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

ASH BAKER

I'm not creating a personal page. Its a page for ASH BAKER as a new artist, a reference for people to see more information about the singer they like. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ASH BAKER (talk • contribs) 16:26, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Got some IP POV-pushers

Hi, JB. I just reverted some removal of referenced content from Shehu Dikko for the third time this month, evidently these IPs don't like the fact that his legal troubles are mentioned there. –Skywatcher68 (talk) 03:14, 26 February 2020 (UTC)

Skywatcher68 Yes. I've placed a couple of blocks, and, perhaps more usefully, protected a couple of articles. JBW (talk) 21:02, 27 February 2020 (UTC)

The Sandbox article.

As you asked, I am not planning on releasing the article to the encyclopedia, its more of a school project for maths class and a way for me and some friends to learn about the wikipedia editor, and since UI had no intentions of publishing I thought it would be fine. Hope you’re able to un-delete it if possible. Thank you for your patience, seeing as I was in no condition to answer your question right away for being sick.

) 141.0.234.252 (talk) 19:14, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Despite your failure to give me any information about what "Sandbox article" you are referring to, I have worked out that you must be the editor who has the account "Silense03". Between the time when I posted my message to you asking about the page and the time when I deleted it you made 63 edits, over a period of three days and four hours. It is therefore absurd to claim that you were "in no condition to answer [my] question right away for being sick". You may like to think carefully about whether posting such obviously false claims increases the likelihood that the person yo are addressing will consider what you say favourably. (You may even like to consider whether it just conceivably might have the exactly opposite effect.)
Your story about "Ådne Abs Åkerøy" was fictitious. Your claim that he was somehow the hitherto unacknowledged originator of a trivial statement that had been obvious for hundreds of years to anyone with a basic understanding of complex numbers was fictitious. Wikipedia is not a free web host for storing pages for use for purposes unrelated to building the encyclopaedia, whether it be for one's personal amusement, for a school project, or for any other purpose. JBW (talk) 20:18, 28 February 2020 (UTC)

Yhlqmdlg

Hi JBW

Just FYI I have moved Yhlqmdlg to the upper case version, following a request at RMTR. You previously deleted it following an AFD request, but it looks to me as if things have now changed as the album has been released now and is widely sourced. Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 10:48, 29 February 2020 (UTC)


A beer for you!

Thanks I appreciate it. Do you have any idea how I can turn the page from a draft into an official page ? Also, I cannot upload any images because I am not an auto confirmed user. Is there a way I can fix this or is it possible you can upload the image to the page for me ? Derrick Will Write (talk) 22:15, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – March 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (February 2020).

Guideline and policy news

  • Following an RfC, the blocking policy was changed to state that sysops must not undo or alter CheckUser or Oversight blocks, rather than should not.
  • A request for comment confirmed that sandboxes of established but inactive editors may not be blanked due solely to inactivity.

Technical news

  • Following a discussion, Twinkle's default CSD behavior will soon change, most likely this week. After the change, Twinkle will default to "tagging mode" if there is no CSD tag present, and default to "deletion mode" if there is a CSD tag present. You will be able to always default to "deletion mode" (the current behavior) using your Twinkle preferences.

Miscellaneous


Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 11:20, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Baskut Tuncak

Hello JBW, I appreciate that you moved my article Draft:Baskut Tuncak from deletion to draft. I have worked on it and think it is changed a lot. Could you please check it now? I welcome and comments you may have. Thanks Alex-h (talk) 13:17, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

@Alex-h: I looked at the draft and made my personal assessment of it. After I had done that I realised that it had previously been an article, and had been discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Baskut Tuncak, so I looked at that discussion.
From looking at the draft, without being aware of the deletion discussion, I formed the personal opinion that Baskut Tuncak was well worthy of an article, and I would personally be happy to make the draft into an article. However, assessing it in terms of Wikipedia standards, rather than my personal opinion, I thought it did not satisfy the notability guidelines, as the coverage in the cited sources was not directly about him; it was largely about issues on which he had commented or in which he was involved, and although some of the cited sources refer extensively to what he has said in particular cases, but they do not talk at length about him as a person. Referring again to my personal opinion, I think that a sufficiently large number of sources giving substantial coverage of what he has done adds up to as valid an indication of notability as a smaller number of sources covering him personally, but that is not the generally accepted view, and I have seen many articles fall foul of deletion discussions for that reason.
Having got that far, I was rather on the fence as to whether to say "the draft does not satisfy the notability guidelines, so it can't be accepted" or "perhaps a strict reading of the notability guidelines says this doesn't make it, but I think it does; I'm willing to move it out as an article; however, I should warn you that there's a risk others will disagree with me, and it won't survive".
However, I then saw the deletion discussion. I am sure you know what was said in that discussion, but I will just take two quotations from it: (1) "Searching for "Baskut Tuncak", one must admit that Tuncak has been quoted very often, look at Gnews hits. But can anybody find any sources that talk about Tuncak?" (2) "Existing sourcing is mostly just examples of subject being quoted as is WP:ROUTINE" Basically, those two quotations are describing exactly the problem which I, independently and not having read that discussion, thought might lead to objections if the draft became an article. It is one thing to say "there potentially could be such and such an objection, but I'll take a chance on that and make it into an article", but another thing altogether to make an article where you know full well that such and such an objection has already been the reason for deletion at AfD and is still just as valid as ever; that would be knowingly acting against consensus.
The conclusion of all that is that I really don't think posting the page back as an article could be justified. Consensus at the discussion was that there was no evidence of satisfying the notability guidelines, and the reasons given then still apply now. Obviously that assessment will be very unwelcome to you, as you have clearly put a good deal of work into improving the draft, and in my opinion have improved it significantly. However, as was rightly pointed out in the deletion discussion, a special rapporteur is unlikely to pass Wikipedia's notability guidelines, and the fact that even with the amount of work you have put in you have failed to show that Baskut Tuncak is an exception in that respect makes it seem unlikely that he does. That being so, I'm afraid my advice has to be that putting more effort and time into trying to get the article accepted is likely to be throwing away effort and time that you could better use on other contributions, so you would be better off cutting your losses, and leaving it. Of course that is just my advice, and you are free to take it or not, but that is how I see it.
As must be clear from what I have said above, this involves a particular aspect of Wikipedia's notability standards where I personally don't entirely agree with the general consensus, but the whole point of Wikipedia's consensus concept is that individuals have to accept consensus, even if they don't personally like it. JBW (talk) 21:06, 29 February 2020 (UTC)
Hello again JBW. Thank you for putting your time on my article. I appreciate your sense of responsibility. upon your suggestion I leave this article and won’t work on it any more.As a matter of fact, besides history, most of my articles are related to human rights and that is the reason I created articles about UN rapporteurs. Myself, I owe it to my friends, with whom I spent time in the past, but now they are in Iranian regime’s prisons, and I owe it to all victims of human rights violations. In fact, I may not agree with some of Wikipedia standards but I have to accept consensus.Thanks you, I am actually motivated to carry on with your advice, and if there is no problem I may discuss should I need advice in the future. Alex-h (talk) 14:13, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Regarding Solution to Quintic polynomial.

R/Sir/Madam

You have mentioned that [Obviously any quintic which can be factorised into the product of a quadratic and a cubic can be solved by separately solving the quadratic and the cubic, by methods known since the 16th century.] , but I have not found not found any solution to quintic on any social platform. Even in your site has no such mater. If you know such methods kindly refer link or the mater. Yes there are some quintic polynomial that can be solved but not all as given in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quintic_function.

Thanking for your kind reply. Amarkdas (talk) 06:46, 4 March 2020 (UTC) Amarendra kumar das

@Amarkdas: I am not surprised that you have not found much of use on "any social platform". In my experience discussions of mathematical topics on social medium platforms are usually dominated by people affected by the Dunning-Kruger effect, who think they know more about mathematics than they do, and rarely is there much of any value to be seen there.
It is not clear to me what you have in mind when you say that you "not found any solution to quintic". What exactly do you mean by a "solution"? There are numerical methods which will find solutions of any algebraic equation to any required precision, and they apply just as much to quintic equations as to equations of any other degree. Such methods are not difficult to find; for example, there is some information on the topic at Root-finding algorithm#Roots of polynomials. As you know, there can be no general method of expressing the solutions in terms of rational operations together with radicals, so there is no point in searching for one. If neither of those is what you mean by a "solution", then I don't know what you do have in mind. Since all equations of degree less than five can be solved by radicals, it is obvious that any equation which can be expressed in terms of factors of those degrees can be solved by radicals, simply by solving in turn for each of the factors; that is all that your solution does, for the special case where the original polynomial is of degree five and its factors are of degrees two and three. (I have not checked to see whether your solution for the factors is correct, but that makes no difference at all to what I have said.) JBW (talk) 14:52, 4 March 2020 (UTC)


R/Sir

Sir, I want to let you know that my work is means "solution", it means find the roots of polynomial of degree 5 can be solve by radicals of coefficients of the polynomial. Kindly look at the equation at page no-4, by finding the value of q' you can find the value of p and q and hence can find the roots of polynomial by solving both quadratic, and cubic polynomial, which I not mention the common formula(Let me do). You have mention that " There are numerical methods which will find solutions of any algebraic equation to any required precision, and they apply just as much to quintic equations as to equations of any other degree. Such methods are not difficult to find; for example, there is some information on the topic at Root-finding algorithm#Roots of polynomials. " 

 These are all approximation methods not by radical of coefficients. If my work is wrong then Ferrari’s method for Quartic Functions by radical also wrong.

Pls go through the https://cpb-us-w2.wpmucdn.com/blog.nus.edu.sg/dist/c/10889/files/2018/11/SOLVING-POLYNOMIAL-EQUATIONS-BY-RADICALS31a-2arw35y.pdf


Thanking for your kind reply. Amarkdas (talk) 03:17, 5 March 2020 (UTC) Amarendra Kumar Das


@Amarkdas: For goodness sake, your method works only for those quintics which can be factorised into a quadratic and a cubic. Get it now? JBW (talk) 11:10, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
  I am not satisfied with your answer.
  You have mentioned "your method works only for those quintics which can be factorised into a quadratic and a cubic." Ok, can you kindly give me some examples that can't be solved by by factorised into a quadratic and a cubic. Let me try to solve it by my work. Let me know whether I am wrong or right.


Thanking for your kind reply. Amarkdas (talk) 16:28, 5 March 2020 (UTC) Amarendra Kumar das

Well no, of course you aren't satisfied with my answer. People who have a fragmentary amateur knowledge of some bits of mathematics but little grasp of the concept of proof and think they know better than the combined consensus of innumerable professional mathematicians never are satisfied with answers which suggest that their fallacious "proofs" are wrong. Years ago I used to patiently try to explain to such people what the problems were with their ideas, but it never even once made any difference; they always persisted with their belief that they knew better than people with professional knowledge of the subject completely unshaken, so I gave up. As for thinking up examples of quintics that can't be factorised into a quadratic and a cubic, I have really got hundreds of more useful things to do with my time, but if you really want to see some I suggest you look in any elementary text book on Galois theory. However, why on earth would you want to waste your time on trying to see if your method works on them? Your method starts out with the quintic factorised in that form, so how can it possibly work on a quintic that can't be factorised in that form? And if you still don't understand after reading that, then perhaps you would like to read up about the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Oh, and by the way, please don't start a new section of a talk page every time you add a new comment on an existing topic. JBW (talk) 20:56, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Request on 21:27:06, 8 March 2020 for assistance on AfC submission by Goshinkwai - Official


I want to write a page about the history of the martial art that I practice, it's an interesting story in the world of mainly eastern origins as it was created in South Wales. I wasn't doing it instead of a website, even though I wouldn't know how to. Please advise me where to go next?

Regards

Gareth Powell


Goshinkwai - Official (talk) 21:27, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

@Goshinkwai - Official: Hi, Gareth. I understand what you are saying, and it is natural that you would like to make this unusual martial art better known. However, Wikipedia does not aim to have articles on just any subject, but only on those that satisfy certain notability guidelines. In my opinion there are far too many of those guidelines, and each one of them is far longer and more detailed than I think it needs to be, making it confusing and difficult for new editors to know what is what, but in your case I think the only notability guideline that is relevant is the general notability guideline. The essential point of that guideline is that a subject is not considered notable enough to be the topic of a Wikipedia article unless it has been the subject of substantial coverage in multiple independent reliable published sources. I have searched for information about the martial art you mentioned, and what I found does not come anywhere remotely near to the amount of coverage. That being so, I thin it only fair to warn you that any work you put into writing about the subject on Wikipedia is likely to be wasted, as it is not likely to be accepted as an article. As I said on your user page, you are very welcome to start contributing to Wikipedia in other ways, but I'm afraid Wikipedia is not the right place to choose if you want to make Goshinkwai Yawara Remmei self defence system better known. JBW (talk) 22:06, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Revdel

I'm thinking maybe this edit should be revision deleted - [9]. Stating that the subject practices predatory lending is likely libelous. Hog Farm (talk) 02:20, 10 March 2020 (UTC)

Raagi and Räägi

because of [10]. Compare et:Raagi and et:Räägi + sources there--Estopedist1 (talk) 12:37, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

@Estopedist1: OK, I've moved the article. JBW (talk) 20:41, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

Revision delete request

Hi,

A user made a potentially libelous edit comment here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Coronavirus&diff=prev&oldid=946904927

I thought it might be something we should see expunged.

Best, BrxBrx(talk)(please reply with {{SUBST:re|BrxBrx}}) 02:39, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

(talk page watcher)​ Taken care of — JJMC89 (T·C) 03:06, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Keep deleting my pages

Yo, so I'm aware that there are guidelines but my pages had true information on them. I was having fun with those pages and they took HOURS to make. Why did you delete them? That was uncool and I am upset. All the information on that page was true! Kim Koya (talk) 02:35, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

@Kim Koya:
  1. No it wasn't.
  2. Even if it were true, that wouldn't justify posting it to Wikipedia. There are many things which don't belong in Wikipedia.
As for why I deleted the pages, I have already told you that. JBW (talk) 23:11, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your help

Thank you very much for taking the time to check my first article attempt, I will do everything you suggested, thank you very much, blessings. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Elior Terapia Educativa (talk • contribs) 21:18, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

David Edwards (basketball)

Would you mind undeleting David Edwards (basketball) to draft? He has died recently and I think a decent article could be written about him. ~EDDY (talk/contribs)~ 19:13, 30 March 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – April 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (March 2020).

Guideline and policy news

  • There is an ongoing request for comment to streamline the source deprecation and blacklisting process.

Technical news

Arbitration

Miscellaneous

  • The WMF has begun a pilot report of the pages most visited through various social media platforms to help with anti-vandalism and anti-disinformation efforts. The report is updated daily and will be available through the end of May.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 07:00, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

self-block request

Hi, I've seen you on the list of self-blocking admin. I'm requesting an indefinitely block as I intend to stop editing after being blocked. Thank You. Dfdooger (talk) 07:15, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Use of talk page as a forum

Hey, It's AsmrSasquatch, thanks for the post, I was just wondering why it's a rule to not ask general questions about a subject on its talk page? thanks for letting me know though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AsmrSasquatch (talk • contribs) 23:20, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

@AsmrSasquatch: I had no part in creating that policy, but as I see it is the situation is more or less as follows. (1) Wikipedia is a project to build an encyclopaedia. If we were to start allowing people to use the Wikipedia servers for other purposes, such as using user talk pages as blogs, article talk pages as general discussion forums, user space pages as free web storage space for personal web pages or promotional pages for businesses, bands, clubs, etc etc, then Wikipedia would become swamped by such uses. It would become largely indistinguishable from all the personal blogging sites, web forums, fan sites, and so on that are out there, and most of which are full of junk. Wikipedia would lose its position as something different, and lose the special status which makes it more respected than those sites. It would lose much of its credibility, and that might be the beginning of the end. (2) Running Wikipedia costs a huge amount of money, which is provided by voluntary donations. Allowing all those additional uses would certainly increase the cost, so that more money would be needed, and it would also very probably reduce the amount of money that people would donate. Many people who are willing to give money to support a free encyclopaedia serving anyone who wishes to find out information would be far less likely to be so generous if they saw that what they were funding was largely just a duplication of all the blogs, forums, and so on that are already there, and which serve mainly the personal interests of the people who post there. Very simply, Wikipedia serves one purpose, other web sites serve other purposes, and allowing Wikipedia to try to serve all those other purposes would be to the detriment of serving the one purpose which it was created to serve. JBW (talk) 19:56, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

Hey JBW, is AsmrSasquatch, so, just a question, name the sites you're talking about and comparing to Wikipedia. oh and are you referring to me as using wiki as a blog, or the people who were planning to answer my question. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AsmrSasquatch (talk • contribs) 20:29, 10 April 2020 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

I hope you find it cute!


ParkerSaxon (talk) 20:37, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Thanks :)

Let's see what happens. Perhaps you've been right. 🙂 After this debacle, I reconsidered my approach to such situations. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:18, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

@ToBeFree: When I first became active on Wikipedia, more than a decade ago, I used to pride myself on being welcoming to new editors, and being more willing than most to carefully explain when they did things out of line with accepted practice, rather than jumping in with warnings of blocks and the like. What is more, I was not the only one who had that opinion of my approach, as a number of people commented favourably on it at my RFA. However, as the years have gone by I have to a significant extent gradually slipped away from that. I don't think I've completely lost the approach I used in those early days, but I am much less good at it than I was. It is helpful when someone else reminds me to give a new editor acting in good faith as many chances as possible, as you have done here. The editor may or may not eventually have to be blocked, but there is no reason not to give him another chance, and your sympathetic explanation, as opposed to templated warnings, and worse still blocks, may turn out to be just what was needed. It's certainly right to give it a try. JBW (talk) 20:39, 14 April 2020 (UTC)
Wow, that reads like a description of my feelings after the linked situation. Just the frequency of the process is higher here, but I guess even that's not unusual, and the process repeats with lower frequency over time. Thank you very much for the valuable insight; reading this had an unusually deep effect. I'm stunned, somehow. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:49, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Message by আশরাফুল ইসলাম মুন্না

Can i complain against one regional Administrator? If the answer is yes how can i do it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by আশরাফুল ইসলাম মুন্না (talk • contribs) 00:43, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

information Note: User is checkuser-blocked on bn.wikipedia.org, talk page access enabled. The unblock template is https://bn.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E0%A6%9F%E0%A7%87%E0%A6%AE%E0%A6%AA%E0%A7%8D%E0%A6%B2%E0%A7%87%E0%A6%9F:%E0%A6%AC%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%A7%E0%A6%BE_%E0%A6%85%E0%A6%AA%E0%A6%B8%E0%A6%BE%E0%A6%B0%E0%A6%A3 and needs to be placed on bn:Special:MyTalk. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 03:50, 15 April 2020 (UTC)
@আশরাফুল ইসলাম মুন্না: By "regional Administrator" do you mean an administrator on another language Wikipedia? If you do then you will have to ask there. JBW (talk) 20:21, 15 April 2020 (UTC)

Could you consider unprotecting 977?

I was browsing Wikipedia recently and I saw that you protected this page back in 2016 due to persistent spamming of the site "977 News". I don't believe this semi-protection is appropriate anymore, as when I tried to visit the URL of the site that was being spammed it 404'd. Chess (talk) (please WP:PING when replying) 04:17, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

@Chess:  Done Thanks for drawing this to my attention. JBW (talk) 11:06, 21 April 2020 (UTC)

Unblock request

Hi there. Regarding your block at User_talk:Yosemiter#Block_for_edit-warring, would you be amendable to a reduction of the 48-hr block to say 24–31? It was a 1st-time offense and involved a long-time disruptive editor. Are there other factors? Regards?—Bagumba (talk) 12:26, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

@Bagumba: Unfortunately I had already posted a message on the editor's talk page before seeing this message from you. I say "unfortunately" because if I had seen your message first I would have considered it before writing to the blocked editor, and what I wrote might have been significantly different. However, going forward from where we are, here are my thoughts.
  • I certainly agree with you that the edit-war was asymmetrical, with the other participant being a long-time disruptive editor, which is why I blocked Yosemiter for two days and the other editor for a month.
  • This is a first time block for Yosemiter, but not a first time offense. She or he has edit-warred before, been warned about it, and even used the "yes I know I edit-warred, but I was right and the other editor was wrong" line of defence. That is what led me to a 48 hour block rather than (say) 24 hours. My experience over the years is that an editor who has repeatedly got away with doing something which they know is against policy but which they think is "right" will continue to do the same, and a short token block is all too likely to convey a message closer to "see: even in the unlikely event that you get sanctioned for infringing policy, it will only be a minor sanction which doesn't hurt much" than "see: even though you have been allowed to get away with it for years, you can't assume you will continue to be allowed to". Of course that is a gross simplification, but it is intended to convey the general spirit of the matter, rather than to define it accurately.
  • Despite that, I will meet you part way by reducing the block to 36 hours, and if Yosemiter is willing to agree not to edit-war again even if they believe they are in the right, I will have no objection whatever to an immediate unblock, let alone a reduction to 24 or 31 hours. I will post a message to that effect to the talk page, and give credit to you for encouraging me to reconsider. JBW (talk) 20:57, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

Message from NDFB

I don't know what that stuff was. I just responded to an email from you and said yes I am affiliated. Delete my content. Delete my account. Sorry — Preceding unsigned comment added by NDFB (talk • contribs) 19:55, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

@NDFB: I haven't sent you any email. My guess is that you have your preferences set to give you an email notification whenever a post is made to your talk page, in which case it was an automated email, and any reply to it won't come to me. Since you have said "Delete my content" I'll delete the page you created, but please do feel welcome to post here again if you have anything else you would like to ask about. I see that DeltaQuad has blocked your account from editing, but she has not stopped you from creating a new account if you wish to. JBW (talk) 21:47, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

You've got mail

Hello, JBW. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.Skussmann (talk) 20:29, 28 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi James I sent you an e-mail regarding the recent deletion of my draft page titled BIO RAW. I am not affiliated with the business in any way and tried to make the article natural and non-promotional. Please advise.

Answered at User talk:Skussmann. JBW (talk) 22:00, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – May 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (April 2020).

Administrator changes

removed Gnangarra • Kaisershatner • Malcolmxl5

CheckUser changes

readded Callanecc

Oversight changes

readded HJ Mitchell

Guideline and policy news

Technical news

Miscellaneous

Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:19, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

IP block

Thanks for blocking that IP just now. Would you mind also blocking 82.71.12.76 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) as well and revdelling their edits? They are clearly either same person as the previous IP or working with them. Thanks, SpicyMilkBoy (talk) 22:14, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

@SpicyMilkBoy: Before seeing your message here, I had already come to the same conclusion, and blocked the other IP address too. However, Wikipedia:Revision deletion is pretty strict about what edits can be subject to revdel, and I don't see anything in any of the criteria that this case fits, so unless you can point out a reason I have missed we will just have to settle for ordinary reversion of editing. JBW (talk) 22:20, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
Well, some of their edits were calling a (presumably) living person a "cuckold" - I thought that might qualify. If not, all is well. Thanks for the block. SpicyMilkBoy (talk) 22:24, 7 May 2020 (UTC)

Messages from Coolmichael12

Hello JBW, thank you for your tip in May 2020. I hope you have a good future. (CoolMichael12) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Coolmichael12 (talk • contribs) 19:40, 14 May 2020 (UTC) Hello again JBW, I need help on inserting a userbox. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Coolmichael12 (talk • contribs) 20:48, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Coolmichael12 I'm probably not the best person to ask about that, as I have much less experience of user boxes than many editors, and what experience I have was many years ago, so that I've probably forgotten most of what I knew. However, if you tell me exactly what it is that you want to do, I'll help if I can. However, I will be going offline soon, so any message you post here may have to wait quite a while before it gets answered. Another thing that may be worth trying is posting a message on your talk page, and put {{helpme}} above it. That will add your talk page to a list of pages with requests for help, and if you are lucky someone who can help you will see it and answer you. JBW (talk) 21:04, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback JBW! I need help to add a userbox to my sandbox page, what would I need to type in order to insert the sandbox. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Coolmichael12 (talk • contribs) 22:05, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

@Coolmichael12: I'm not sure what you mean by "insert the sandbox". Do you mean insert a user box into the sandbox, or do you mean insert the sandbox into your user page? However, either way, what you want to do is to get a copy of one page to show up in another page. That is called "transclusion", and the way you do it is to put the name of the page you want a copy of inside {{ }} brackets in the page where you want it to show. For example, if you want the user box that says "This user is a native speaker of the English language" to show up, that user box is at Template:User en, so you would type {{User en}}. If you want a copy of the page User:Coolmichael12/CoolMichael12 to show up in your user page User:Coolmichael12, then you need to type {{User:Coolmichael12/CoolMichael12}} in your user page. (If a page that you want to transclude is a template, you don't have to include "Template", so you can write just {{User en}} instead of {{Template:User en}}, but for other pages you need the whole of the page name, for example you need to include ''User:'' for a user page.)
I hope that tells you what you want to know.
One other point. Whenever you post a message on a talk page or any kind of discussion page (but not in an article) you should finish your message with four tildes, in other words ~~~~. That will automatically be converted to a signature, which, as well as showing who wrote the message, will also contain links to your user page and talk page, which can be helpful to other editors if they want to contact you. JBW (talk) 22:37, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Ok, Thanks!!!Coolmichael12 (talk) 23:14, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Deletion review for David Edwards (basketball)

An editor has asked for a deletion review of David Edwards (basketball). Because you closed the deletion discussion for this page, speedily deleted it, or otherwise were interested in the page, you might want to participate in the deletion review. ~EDDY (talk/contribs)~ 20:13, 23 May 2020 (UTC)

Info Box at American Revolutionary War

Hey. I've recently been engaging in some wiki-fencing with Canadian editors at American Revolutionary War. I regret that I began with a pretty dismissive attitude. I've now taken to read the Canadian-supplied RS, embracing them, and applying them in discussion at Talk. Unfortunately, they are not applied in some of the the answers to me in the discussion.

After reviewing thirty Canadian-supplied RS, there is only one that presumes an “imperial American Revolution” that led to the extinction of indigenous Australian civilization: Lockwood, Matthew. To Begin the War Over Again: How the American Revolution Devastated the Globe. Various authors represented as RS do NOT include Gibraltar or Mysore in the ARW. Piers Mackesy, in The War for America: 1775-1783 says in his introduction, “This, then, is not a history of the War of Independence, but a study of British strategy and leadership in a world war, the last in which the enemy were the Bourbons [the kings of France and Spain].”

There are several items that need remediation as wp:errors. The first relates to the practice of sourcing contributions with other Wikipedia articles. To begin the first one, in the Info Box, France is said to be a belligerent, noted by link to a Wikipedia article. Better would be, "[flag] France by defensive treaty" in the Info Box, then [Note:] The Treaty of Alliance between France and the US provides in Article I: If, during the “present war between the US and England”, were a war to break out between France and Great Britain – in the event the [[Anglo-French War (1778) – France and the US will militarily aid one another; Article II: in a defensive alliance with "the direct and essential end" to maintain the independence of the US and its sovereignty in North America. See Library of Congress archives, Treaty of Alliance with France 1778, page 6 and 8. [/note]

p.s. *** and NOT a US treaty for imperialistic jingo Americans to expand French colonial empire in worldwide joint-expeditions, including around Mysore, as per some AWR Talk posts ***

If you think that extending my list here, with more alternatives and their sourcing would be useful, I would be happy to elaborate with Canadian-supplied RS that have considerably widened my understanding over the past three weeks. Thanks in advance. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 12:41, 24 May 2020 (UTC)

Articles for Creation: List of reviewers by subject notice

Hi JBW, you are receiving this notice because you are listed as an active Articles for Creation reviewer.

Recently a list of reviewers by area of expertise was created. This notice is being sent out to alert you to the existence of that list, and to encourage you to add your name to it. If you or other reviewers come across articles in the queue where an acceptance/decline hinges on specialist knowledge, this list should serve to facilitate contact with a fellow reviewer.

To end on a positive note, the backlog has dropped below 1,500, so thanks for all of the hard work some of you have been putting into the AfC process!

Sent to all Articles for Creation reviewers as a one-time notice. To opt-out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page. Regards, Sam-2727 (talk)

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:35, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

Trying to create a new article

Hi. I'm responding to a note you left on my talk page after deleting a new article I had been trying to publish. The article I'm referring to is about Leonard Elschenbroich, a classical cellist. He is a client of mine (I'm a graphic designer and web developer) and he asked me to create the article for him, since he found his public presence to justify an article on Wikipedia.

Thanks for deleting the article and alerting me to the mistakes I made when submitting it. The text was a blind copy of a document Leonard gave to me. I realize now that it was promotional in nature and not an objective representation of facts. I have since re-written the text and removed all promotional phrases and meanings. I also divided the text into proper sections.

The new article can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft:Leonard_Elschenbroich

Could you have a look and let me know whether this can now become an official article or whether we need to make further changes. I'd be grateful, I have newer worked with Wikipedia before and am still having trouble navigating through the process of submitting an article and having it published/not deleted.

Thanks :)

NOTE Regarding the validity of an article about Leonard here on Wikipedia, I'd also like to refer to two already existing articles that mention him by name:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicola_Benedetti https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sitkovetsky_Trio — Preceding unsigned comment added by Schmoll.Studio (talk • contribs) 06:03, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Question

Why is your userpage fully protected? 107.242.125.52 (talk) 17:46, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Because of frequent vandalism in the period just before I protected it. JBW (talk) 20:09, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

W. Somerset Maugham professional use

Seems to be W. Somerset Maugham on most first editions, W. S. Maugham on the rest. Never Somerset Maugham as far as I can see. DuncanHill (talk) 22:59, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

@DuncanHill: I once had a copy of "The Summing Up" which I think may have been a first edition, but it was a long time ago and I'm not sure, nor can I remember how his name was given on the title page. Other than that I've probably never seen one of his first editions, but I'll take your word for it. However, I can't see any reason, either in terms of Wikipedia's guidelines on article titles or in terms of common sense, why that should over-rule the fact that people talking about him always, and writing about him usually, call him "Somerset Maugham". Searching I have found a significant number of cases where the version with his first initial is used in a headline or title, and perhaps even in the opening sentence, but none where the writer continues to call him that in the text, and I doubt that I've ever in my life heard anyone call him "W. Somerset Maugham" in speech. "Somerset Maugham" is what he is normally called, and that is what the article about him should be called, both in view of what Wikipedia's guidelines say and in terms of what seems, to me at least, to be the natural way of referring to him. You mention the form of his name given in titles of first editions of books. That is not a major consideration; it is by no means rare, and at one time it was quite common, for titles to give a name in a more formal form than is then expected to be used normally. Here is just one illustrative example. Winston Churchill's published works gave their author's name as "Winston Spencer Churchill", or sometimes "Winston S. Churchill", but he was never called that in his life, whether personally or professionally, he is still not normally referred to in that way, and Wikipedia's article about him quite rightly is titled Winston Churchill. It is perhaps a little more equivocal in cases such as Bernard Shaw, because although that is what he was called in his lifetime, for some weird reason there has in latter years grown up a strange fashion for calling him "George Bernard Shaw", so one could perhaps argue that it has now become the common name, but in Somerset Maugham's case using his initial in the article title would, in my opinion, be justified only if it disambiguated him from one or more other Somerset Maughams, as with George H. W. Bush. However, in the scale of things I deal with on Wikipedia this is pretty trivial, probably not significant enough to justify even the time it has taken me to compose this message, let alone any more, so if you choose to revert my change I probably won't bother to fight over it. JBW (talk) 20:45, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – June 2020

News and updates for administrators from the past month (May 2020).

Administrator changes

added CaptainEek • Creffett • Cwmhiraeth
removed Anna Frodesiak • Buckshot06 • Ronhjones • SQL

CheckUser changes

removed SQL

Guideline and policy news

Arbitration

  • A motion was passed to enact a 500/30 restriction on articles related to the history of Jews and antisemitism in Poland during World War II (1933–45), including the Holocaust in Poland. Article talk pages where disruption occurs may also be managed with the stated restriction.
Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:27, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

Review my draft

Hi @JBW: I was submitted my draft for review but rejected (Because were not any sources), I developed the draft and added new reliable sources, can you review it again?

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Aflantwo (talk • contribs) 10:09, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

UTRS #30799

Thanks for getting back to me JBW. I understand the coincidence now you have pointed it out, In actual fact my surname is Nash and the P and R represent my first two initials in decending order. I have used the username elsewhere forever although I see your point when the initials are combined they appear to be the acronym of Public Relations, unfortunately, I didn't foresee the misrepresentation issue when creating the account. I'm still fumbling around trying to work the interface. Apologies for keep wasting admin time, i don't intend to keep submitting for review, I can assure you it's unintentional. I am determined to get to grips with it soon!

Best,

Ross


Here I see you left your comment to the blocked used as a green one using the "Add a comment to this appeal" box, but those comments are restricted for inter-admin discussion and all the user can see is "Access to comment is restricted". To send a message to the user (a blue one) you have to use the blue "Send a reply to the user" button. Oh, and you have to do it before you close the appeal - there's an option to close the appeal inside the message thing too. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 10:03, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

@Boing! said Zebedee: Thanks. Ihave very little experience of UTRS, and am confused by some aspects of the interface, so your explanation is very welcome. I did rather think I had probably done it wrong somehow. JBW (talk) 13:59, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

Would it be possible to switch Guy–Perkins High School to pending changes protection?

I notice the article hasn't been edited much in a while and it is semi-protected. As you're the protecting admin, would it be possible for you to downgrade the semi-protection to pending changes? It's probably not necessary to have full-on semiprotection at this point. Chess (talk) (please use {{ping|Chess}} on reply) 01:11, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

I'd endorse that....actually I think you could probably clear the protection completely. The SPA is long gone, and it's been quite a while since anyone has edited the article. John from Idegon (talk) 01:21, 21 June 2020 (UTC)
@Chess and John from Idegon: I agree with John; I'll remove protection altogether. I think nowadays I would be far less likely to protect indefinitely than back in the day when I protected that article. If the problem returns maybe pending changes will be good enough, but we can hope it won't. JBW (talk) 07:18, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

A rare visit here during these strange times and I find an IP-hopping vandal

Their WHOIS gives a range of 177.177.64.0/18; the most recent iterations have been blocked but there are more from earlier this month. –Skywatcher68 (talk) 04:40, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi, Skywatcher68. Yes indeed, a rare visit compared to how things were. Another rare thing is finding so large an IPv4 range so completely dominated by one troublesome editor. Usually it's difficult to do much about an editor who IP-hops over so large a range, because of the amount of collateral damage blocking the whole range would cause, but in this case a block of the whole range for a few weeks would probably not do a lot of damage. Even better, though, looking closer I found that 100% of this person's editing is from the much smaller range 177.177.104.0/21 and nobody else has edited from that range for over 6 months, so even a block for 2 or 3 months would have almost no collateral risk. However, since the problem has not been going on that long I have blocked for one month. Very likely that will be enough, but of course if it isn't we can consider a longer block when necessary. Hope all is OK with you. JBW (talk) 09:30, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Happy...

Wishing JBW a very happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Birthday Committee! Best wishes! CommanderWaterford (talk) 06:59, 21 June 2020 (UTC)

Yes. I am amazed to have spent 10 years as an administrator, especially since when I signed up I expected never to do any more than a few trivial corrections if I noticed them while reading articles. (The first edit I made with this account was removing a mistaken apostrophe that I happened to notice, and that was about the level at which I expected to work.) It didn't so much as cross my mind that I might ever become a regular editor, let alone one of the more active administrators on the project. JBW (talk) 09:44, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

And I bet you never expected to become one of our best admins either ;-) Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:04, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
@Boing! said Zebedee: No, but I expect it would be nice. You must tell me what it's like. JBW (talk) 11:23, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
Hehe, there's my smooth talking turned back on me :-) Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 11:57, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
@Boing! said Zebedee: Thanks for the comment. Joking aside, from you it is a worthwhile compliment. JBW (talk) 12:01, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Appeal to my partial block.

Hello JBW. I read that you declined my appeal saying "If you really honestly think that you were blocked for asking a question, then you have no understanding of what the problems with your editing have been".

I want to bring to your attention that in the same comment chain I actually expressed regret over my mistake saying: "it was not my intention [to hurt] (WP:Assume good faith). Nonetheless, I genuinely apologize for my words being open to such interpretations and context. I also want to apologize to anyone who regarded my reply on my own talk page as a personal attack. English is not my native language, so I also apologize for any mistake arise from that. I hope everyone involved can forgive me and continuing together through constructive dialogue as exemplary Wikipedians." I didn't wrote this in the unblock appeal (the blue box.) Which may have been overlooked by you. Also, afters EL C's warning on my talkpage and before my reply to that which caused the partial block, you can even find my reaction on the page I was blocked for that shows I wasn't anymore engaging in a way that could be considered problematic. I hope that my partial ban at least could be changed from "indefinite" to "one year". --Randam (talk) 20:55, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

@Randam: I will try to address what seem to me to be the most central points of what you have said. Unfortunately, I don't know whether doing so will help, as in the past you seem to have sometimes missed the point of much of what has been said to you, but I will try, in the hope that it may help.
  • Yes, I did read all of what you have pointed out here before deciding what to do, and I do accept that you may not have intended things you did to be seen in the way they were seen. However, a fundamental problem is precisely that you do seem to be sincere in saying that you did not intend it, and sincere in indicating that you don't understand why you were blocked. If you did understand, you might be able to change, but as long as you really honestly can't see what the problems are, you are unlikely to be able to do so. In the unblock request which I declined you said "I got banned for asking a question. All I did was ask about advice on certain people, followed by an explanation on how these people operate." That is not "all" that you did, and asking a question is not what you got partially blocked for.
  • There is another point which I didn't regard as very important when I reviewed your unblock request, but since you have now brought it up here in your defence it takes on a new significance. You say that you "actually expressed regret" over what you did, and that you "want to apologize to anyone who regarded [your] reply on [your] own talk page as a personal attack." Well, that looks to me like about as much of a non-apology apology as I have seen for a long time. You don't apologise for the personal attacks you made, you merely apologise for the fact that other people have "regarded" them as personal attacks. If that is your sincere idea of apologising and "express[ing] regret" for what you have done, then that is just further confirmation that you don't get it. And that evidence of your failure to accept responsibility for your own actions, is what you give in your defence, evidently unable to see that it is evidence against you, not for you.
  • You are making a mistake in repeatedly appearing to think that you were blocked for one comment (whether it was because it was a question, as you keep saying, or for some other reason). That one incident was the last detail, which finally led to the block being imposed, but the block was for a combination of reasons which had been building up for some time.
  • "Indefinite" doesn't mean "for ever". It just means that no end time has been fixed in advance. My advice is that you continue to edit in other areas, trying to make sure that you avoid the problems which led to this partial block, and when you have done that for quite a while, make another unblock request, pointing out that you have managed to edit for some time without similar problems occurring again. If you can do that I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be unblocked. (How much is "quite a while"? Impossible to give a definite answer, as it depends on many things, including how you handle it. I would suggest at least a few months, though.)
I really do hope that you will eventually be able to have the block lifted and to then carry on editing without similar problems, which is why I have put some time into writing these comments. As I said above, I can't know whether what I have said will be helpful to you, but i hope at least some of it will. JBW (talk) 21:41, 22 June 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for your elobrate reply. This made me feel understand the situation better. Thanks for showing me a path. For what it's worth it, I now do regret those personal attack. Maybe this won't be regarded as sincere enough, but the blame is on me. When multiple users are rebuking me on my comments, I should have seen my misbehaviour earlier than now. -Randam (talk) 11:04, 23 June 2020 (UTC)

Please take a look at this blocked editor's (Aristiderazu's) talk page access

You blocked this editor in March 2018. They just posted 1,415,712kb on their talk page, looks like they're using their talk page to host content. Shearonink (talk) 21:57, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

@Shearonink: Yep. Talk page access removed. JBW (talk) 22:41, 28 June 2020 (UTC)

Your submission at Articles for creation: Carlos Cipa (June 27)

Your recent article submission to Articles for Creation has been reviewed! Unfortunately, it has not been accepted at this time. The reason left by AugusteBlanqui was:
The article contains too much material taken directly from this source: https://15questions.net/interview/fifteen-questions-interview-carlos-cipa/page-1/
Please check the submission for any additional comments left by the reviewer. You are encouraged to edit the submission to address the issues raised and resubmit when they have been resolved.
AugusteBlanqui (talk) 09:59, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
Teahouse logo
Hello, JBW! Having an article declined at Articles for Creation can be disappointing. If you are wondering why your article submission was declined, please post a question at the Articles for creation help desk. If you have any other questions about your editing experience, we'd love to help you at the Teahouse, a friendly space on Wikipedia where experienced editors lend a hand to help new editors like yourself! See you there! AugusteBlanqui (talk) 09:59, 27 June 2020 (UTC)
@AugusteBlanqui: It wasn't actually my submission. All I did was correct a misformatted attempt to use the submission template. I was careful to put the original editor's user name in the template, not mine, but, as you may know, for some reason that I have never understood, substitution of the AfC template has a habit of causing a second copy of the template to appear on the page, and that second copy had my name in it. Consequently the above message came to this page, instead of to User talk:Neverendingfall, where it should be. Would you like to copy the message over to there? I would do it myself, but after the problem caused by my attempt to correct that editor's submission error, I would prefer not to risk causing further confusion by putting a post on that user's talk page with your signature but my name in the editing history. JBW (talk) 21:57, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
Sorry about that JBW JBW!! Yes, as you point out, this template placement was automated to here. I should have double-checked that it was going to the right editor. I'll try to move the message over there but wikitext is not one of my strengths. AugusteBlanqui (talk) 09:43, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

You've got mail

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

Some1 (talk) 02:43, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi JBW, I know it's way too soon for me to ask, but did you get a chance to read through my email? (I also sent a second one with additional information a few minutes ago). Thank you, Some1 (talk) 16:49, 29 June 2020 (UTC)
Answered by email. JBW (talk) 20:30, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Vandal and socks ?

Hi there. This 'TheBookworm05' looks like they are here only to vandalize the project, admitted here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:TheBookworm05. This operator looks like it may well be a sock of 'Eliott200622', here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Contributions/Eliott200622. Both have vandalized the same article, one giving support to the other, and both were set up within 5 hours yesterday. Thanks. Acabashi (talk) 14:12, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Hi, Acabashi. In view of the talk page comment, I would have blocked TheBookworm05 indefinitely, and if you see even one more unacceptable edit when the block is over, please feel welcome to let me know, and I'll consider whether to do that. As for the sockpuppetry, I think you are right. To me, the most suspicious thing is Eliott200622 addressing TheBookworm05 as "Elliot". A fairly common mistake of sockpuppeteers is forgetting which account they are using, which would explain that otherwise rather strange mistake. However, the evidence so far is a bit weak for a block, especially considering that Eliott200622's editing all took place two days ago, but again, if you see any more from the same account please let me know and I'll reconsider it. JBW (talk) 22:22, 28 June 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply. I see now that GorillaWarfare has blocked Bookworm indefinitely. I shall certainly keep an ongoing eye on Eliott200622, and on the articles that both have vandalized. Acabashi (talk) 19:14, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
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