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Have you considered making an attempt to articulate what actually is wrong with the IP edits? It doesn't seem that you've done that either here or at AIV. 128.164.177.55 (talk) 13:59, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I came here to request an independent assessment by an Administrator. I expect you've looked at the examples, given by other editors, in the warning templates they have placed on the IP's Talk page. I would have thought that edits such as this one would be pretty self explanatory. Furthermore, in the meantime, I see that User: Criticize seems to have rolled back the majority of the IP's edits. But if everyone else thinks there is no problem with edits like this, and no further action is required, I don't intend to waste any more of anyone's time on this. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:25, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I guess that's a "no" then. Let me suggest that, in the future, if you want someone to do something about a problem, it is helpful if you explain what the problem is instead of expecting people to agree with your unarticulated views. Lots of people know nothing about Jimmy Saville and whether his sexual abuse scandal would merit categories like Category:Royal scandals in the United Kingdom and Category:Margaret Thatcher; two or three sentences of context and explanation would vastly increase the clarity and potential audience of your message. 128.164.177.55 (talk) 14:41, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I glanced at a few edits — adding Category:Jimmy Savile to articles about shows and events in which he participated — and I'm tempted to agree with the IP's action. The only potential ground for disagreeing with them, in my mind, is whether his involvement were significant enough to warrant the category; it's definitely not a matter of vandalism. Nyttend (talk) 20:12, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't look at those ones; my comment was limited to the ones I glanced at, which were shows and events in which Savile participated. Putting the Thatcher template on the Savile scandal article goes against the idea (sorry, no link; I can't find it) that you shouldn't generally put navboxes on pages that aren't linked by the navbox, but such an edit isn't vandalism if nothing else happens. Nyttend (talk) 22:54, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
On the basis of the Admin advice above, I have now removed the level 4 warning for vandalism that I posted to the IP's Talk page. It seems that all of the warnings have had completely no effect anyway. Martinevans123 (talk) 16:29, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The user shows no interest in heeding the warnings given to them, has not responded in any way, nor even left any comments in their edit summaries, and is therefore clearly being disruptive. Xexerss (talk) 15:51, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have concerns over this recent edit [1]. They added categories for a manga/anime and an internet meme to a short article about food - neither are mentioned at all in the article itself and I fail to see the connection.
Yes, I'm the same person, sometimes I edit from one place and sometimes I edit from another. Shocking, that! Meanwhile, your astonishingly thin skin and complete lack of concern about generating a positive outcome (to the extent of actively driving the thread off-topic when someone else tries to do what you should have done in the first place) are a wonderful source of entertainment, so thanks for that! 173.79.19.248 (talk) 00:35, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This venue seems to be a great source of entertainment for you. The contents of your Talk pages are enlightening. I wonder how many other IP addresses you might use, just to keep yourself entertained. Martinevans123 (talk) 08:23, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Still 100% committed to undermining any attempt by anyone to actually make anything happen. Plus baseless aspersions, I see! And some incoherent attempts at wit, I guess not surprising. 173.79.19.248 (talk) 11:46, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
BFDI and Object Shows have been blocked on Wikipedia for a long time, due to BFDI not having "correct sources or something like that." Battle For Dream Island and many other Object Shows have been on news sources, and BFDI is also getting an episode in theaters.
Until those news sources are provided and clearly demonstrate that the subject meets WP:GNG, it is highly unlikely that the article will be unblocked. I recommend you review WP:BFDI, as this has been a surprisingly contentious topic. ThadeusOfNazereth(he/him)Talk to Me!00:19, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is nothing preventing you from writing a draft, if you believe that the sources exist to make the subject now. The fact that people have gone to the troule of writing WP:BFDI should give you pause, and you should read that first, but if you genuinely think that the sourcing has improved then go for it - write a draft and submit it to AfC. Just be aware that you might be wasting your time, and other people's, if you haven't first established that there are sources that are independent, secondary, reliable and which give the subject significant depth of coverage. GirthSummit (blether)04:13, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, wow - sorry, I didn't realise that even the draft was salted. I guess that someone could draft something in a sandbox, but absent any new and significantly improved sources they might be better advised to spend their time... well, doing anything at all. GirthSummit (blether)04:30, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It really does baffle me. One of those cases of everyone just pressing the bigger, scarier button each time the previous button doesn't work, without any consideration of whether that still accomplishes our goals. What exactly happens if we let people write the draft? A crappy draft exists? Most drafts are crappy. Most have a lower chance of becoming notable than BFDI. Most have a higher risk of hosting spam or BLP violations. Versus the status quo of constantly having to field questions from people who, reasonably, want to know why they can't even do the initial step toward creating an article. We could always have a big notice at the top saying like, "Current consensus is that BFDI is not notable. This draft may not be submitted to AfC without a consensus on the talk page that that has changed" or something like that. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|🤷) 04:59, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That seems an uncharitable assessment of previous admin actions. Looking through the history, what seems to have happened was that the draft existing led to disruption elsewhere, amid wider regular BFDI-related issues which if I recall at one point included admin conduct issues. Looking into it, apparently salting can be temporary like other protections, which could be another tool in the box, but the concept is rare enough that I can't recall ever seeing it discussed anywhere. CMD (talk) 05:30, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't mean to criticize the admin actions in themselves. The deletion and salting were reasonable implementations of community consensus, and other things stemmed from there. It's the community consensus that I think has been wrong and should change. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|🤷) 05:34, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not actually sure how community consensus works here. There was consensus against whatever draft repeatedly got recreated, but that is not necessarily a consensus against any draft ever, and non-admins can't really assess that at any rate. WP:BFDI says only that "drafts about BFDI have often been deleted", not that there is consensus against any existing. Half a decade on, I suspect an admin could boldly unsalt the draftspace unilaterally, so long as they were prepared to resalt if "drafts being submitted for review and declined over and over again" issues emerge again. CMD (talk) 05:42, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at WP:BFDI, it appears to me that what happend was that the community completely ran out of patience after repeated pushing over and over and over completely poisoned the well for anything related to BFDI, largely because of...well, what started this thread was a very mild example, but it's an example nontheless - "the sources totally exist bro for this totally notable thing that Wikipedia must have an article about". Was salting the draft overkill? Maybe, but take a look at Wikipedia:Why is BFDI not on Wikipedia?#List of deletion nominations - especially that footnote "d". If there really is new sourcing that evidences notability, somebody can request the draft page be unsalted - but Wikipedia:Source assessment/Battle for Dream Island, which includes references to this movie-theater screened episode, is telling reading. - The BushrangerOne ping only07:55, 26 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Realistically, all the blacklistings do is prevent creation at a page named after "Battle for Dream Island" or "BFDI" or "Object Show" or several other variants. It doesn't do anything about individual users' sandboxes like User:Example/sandbox.Probably the way to go forward, if we want to unsalt something, would be to have an administrator create a single page like Draft:Battle for Dream Island leaving all the other protections and blacklistings in place, and have people work on it there. It's not worth the disruption to try unprotection or unblacklisting in general. I do think it likely that anyone who does take us up on it and work on it there is wasting their time because of the continued sourcing issue, but so long as it's confined to one page, it's wasting only the minimum amount possible of everyone else's. —Cryptic00:55, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Vinthepro7v, writing a new Wikipedia article isn't easy. You need solid sources, and the lack of those is the reason why the article (and draft, which is very rare) was salted. What I'm about to say is not going to be nice, but I think it's important that someone says this to you before you waste a whole load of your own time, and a little of other people's. Further up this thread, you suggest that a random Twitter/X account is a possible source for this new article - that suggestion leads me to think that you have not read WP:RS at all. You also mention dubious sources like Business Insider and Bubbleblabber. I don't really know what the other sources you mention are. If you are serious about this undertaking, you are going to have to do some proper research into the sources you hope to cite, and convince people that they comply with the reliable sourcing requirements. That needs to happen before you start work on the draft. So far, you have made only 13 edits, most of which have been deleted for various reasons. I hope you don't think it would be unkind or unfair of me to suggest that you don't really know how to go about writing an article. Starting your editing career with a subject like this is, perhaps, foolhardy. If you want to contribute here, kick it off with a few articles about obviously notable subjects first, learn the lay of the land, and once you're up to speed you will be in a better position to judge whether or not this article is one that you want to try to write. GirthSummit (blether)03:49, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'll also point out that every Wikipedia article is more work for the community to maintain when the creator inevitably stops editing it, and it will most likely start out as an orphan article. Orphan articles attract a lot of attention from people like me, and there are lots of WikiHunters there looking for an easy target. GrinningIodize (talk) 22:30, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I strongly oppose loosening any of the protections or blacklistings here; I think the current situation, in which we simply don't allow attempts to create an article or draft on this subject, is correct, and am astonished that this AN thread was given any daylight at all rather than being shot down on sight. * Pppery *it has begun...03:22, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I have a few thoughts that are not entirely consistent. First, the community did not salt the title in draft space. The community deleted the draft article, because the proponents of the draft were being disruptive. There were two more disruptive recreations of the draft, at which point an administrator protected the title to prevent continued disruption.
Second, now that ECP-Protect is available, I am not sure that admin-salting a title in draft space is ever a good idea. Admin-salting a title in draft space almost always leads to changing the spelling or capitalization of the title in draft space, requiring more vigilance to prevent versions of the article from being sneaked into article space. Maybe in retrospect the title should have been admin-salted in draft space for two or three months, rather than indefinitely.
Third, I have two conflicting opinions as to whether Battle for Dream Island should have its protection downgraded to ECP at this time. On the one hand, I think it has been fully protected for about five years too long. On the other hand, I am not sure that this is the time for a downgrade. A request to unlock the title, but with the usual unreliable sources, makes me wonder whether there is off-wiki coordination at this time. So maybe it would be in order to fully protect the title in draft space for a month, so that it will expire in a month, and that then it can be allowed to be used as a draft.
Fourth, the state of BFDI in Wikipedia (no article, no draft, multiple rings of protection to prevent article) is very much the fault of its ultras, overly enthusiastic fans. In their eagerness to get an article into the encyclopedia, they tried various sorts of gaming of titles and other sorts of gaming. This has also happened with other subjects, especially actors and entertainers with cult followings.
Robert McClenon (talk) 01:55, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A request to unlock the title, but with the usual unreliable sources, makes me wonder whether there is off-wiki coordination at this time.
I don't think so, just some new editors excited about the in-theater screening and relatively unfamiliar with what makes something notable here. While I'm not sure Vin is the best person to start this draft, I think they're here in good faith. StarMississippi03:12, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Admin-salting a title in draft space almost always leads to changing the spelling or capitalization of the title in draft space, requiring more vigilance to prevent versions of the article from being sneaked into article This is why we have title blacklisting, which was used here. And as a general principle I find that style of argument ludicrous - for the rare situations where we really want to even prevent a draft from being created, of course we should signal it by admin salting - "but it might not work" isn't an argument at all, just a futile plea. * Pppery *it has begun...03:20, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Calling it "admin salting" gives the implication that non-admins can salt pages, and that when a non-admin salts a page, the salting has a different effect because the salter isn't an administrator. – MrPersonHumanGuy (talk) 13:08, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I could probably source an article on this topic so as to be facially over WP:GNG, at least in the sense that "there are newspapers that aren't deprecated on WP:RSN that have stories about it". I'm thinking particularly of this.
The issue here is appears that the BFDI fanbase managed to majorly annoy the Wikipedia community such that any new article is going to get the extra-special-audit approach that it may well not pass. Lots of things that we presently have articles on would not withstand this approach, which is of course not a reason not to disagree with that assessment. Had they not done this, we would probably have a stub article about it somewhere and no-one would care.
Writing entire 2.5k-word essays about why we don't have an article on this and tables of how only one source yet reaches GNG (TBH I think another might be argued, but don't care enough to do so) is probably not the best use of editor time.
I favour unsalting this and just letting people get on with it. I think we're eventually going to have an article on it, once another link on the sources table turns green all along. FOARP (talk) 10:07, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry. I completely missed that while I was reading the source assessment. It's probably right, but it would be even better if someone could confirm it with a source. Phil Bridger (talk) 12:56, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's independent. It's not great as a source in general as it's for a niche purpose (advising Christian parents on what they should let their kids watch). Like I said, if I cared a stub article could probably be written that would be a WP:GNG pass. The extra-special-audit approach might nuke it, but then it would nuke a lot of things, and why would we apply it?
My view is as documented at WP:DEEPER: " If somebody finds reliable sources that establish notability for this topic, they should request unsalting a draft page at WP:RFPP and provide these sources there." It seems to me from Wikipedia:Source assessment/Battle for Dream Island that the GNG requrements are not yet met, but I have not examined the sources myself. We should not unsalt anything unless there are experienced Wikipedians capable and willing to write a properly sourced stub at least. Sandstein 09:24, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Now, again I'm going to emphasise that I'm not invested in the existence of this article and if you want to speedy it right now, you can. I think it's only a squeaking-pass of our guidelines, but I think there is nothing wrong with having an EC-protected draft page that people can work on. FOARP (talk) 10:47, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at history, one would never have expected a rail tunnel run by France and England, or a space station run by Russia and America, or a notability proposal endorsed by FOARP and JPxG, and yet here we are.
I'm not greatly opposed to allowing one BFDI draft to exist so interested people can work on it, similar to Draft:CaseOh and for several years Raegan Revord. Drafts beyond that can be nuked IMO. There might be a lot of submissions, but a "no changes since last submission" decline is easy to do, I think. Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 09:31, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the ping, I somehow turned off notifications on the thread.
@FOARP you're an established editor, I trust your judgement to do whatever feels appropriate especially together with the source conversation from @Gråbergs Gråa Sång. I'm mostly offline these coming weeks, feel free to undo any of my protections related to BFDI. StarMississippi12:13, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Bah. I'm not going to try to stand up against the consensus people came to here, but I still think allowing complaints of this sort to succeed even as much as this one has makes a mockery of the way Wikipedia's decision-making processes are supposed to work, and we should have just said "no". * Pppery *it has begun...15:36, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see why the draft should continue to be salted. What's the point of draft space if the same standards as main space are used? Of course, if there is disruption, salting can be reinstated. Any draft written would still have to get through AfC before it gets into main space and once there, like any other article, it could be taken to AfD. Phil Bridger (talk) 09:44, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Revoking autopatrolled right from Sarefo for undisclosed LLM-generated articles
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Apologies if I am in the wrong place - this is my first (hopefully last) time coming to AN. I am writing here to request that @Sarefo's autopatrolled right (granted in 2011 by @Acalamari) in light of discussion at their talk page and the NSPECIES guideline talk page (the latter is a long discussion that only partially pertains to this user). Sarefo has been creating articles on South African spiders (see xtools) using Claude Sonnet 4.1 without disclosing that the content was generated by a LLM and, being autopatrolled, these articles bypassed new page patrol. This was seemingly only discovered because obvious LLM tells and hallucinated statements were noticed in the articles. I don't believe that any admin would grant autopatrolled to a user knowing that they intended to use an LLM to automate the mass creation of articles, hence my request that the right be revoked. AI generated text requires extra scrutiny from editors, not less, and these articles should not be automatically reviewed, and significant use of LLMs should be disclosed.
If you read the linked talk page discussion, Sarefo has been asking Claude to write articles, based on specific sources; he saves the AI-written content, reviews it to ensure that it's accurate, and then mass-creates articles when convenient. The basic workflow is not problematic. The rate of upload does not necessarily represent the rate of creating. I'm sometimes batching uploads that were prepared earlier, so doing them in batches is fine. Also note a comment at the bottom of the guideline talk page: I wouldn't be using claude 4 as part of my toolkit for this. Perhaps the quality of reviewing Claude's content is sufficient to revoke autopatrolled, but since Sarefo won't continue to use Claude here, there's no reason to revoke autopatrolled. Nyttend (talk) 02:43, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think you have misunderstood the linked discussions, I would suggest reading both threads in full. When Sarefo says I wouldn't be using claude 4 as part of my toolkit for this, they are referring to not using Claude 4, which is not the same as Claude Sonnet 4.1 (though I must note I think they made a mistake referring to the model they're using as Sonnet - I think they meant to say Claude Opus 4.1, but I am using Sonnet here as that's what they've said on their talk), because they feel Claude 4 is worse at this task than Claude Sonnet 4.1. They are giving an example of a model they think would be particularly unsuitable for the task, not saying that they will not continue use LLMs to create articles. Unless Sarefo wants to correct me now (and I am very happy to be corrected!), they have given no indication that they plan to stop generating articles with Claude. On the NSPECIES talk they say that they have around 500 more articles to complete the species in the existing SANSA guide and I'm happy to slow down to around 50 per day. Again, I am happy to be corrected if Sarefo intends to create these pages manually and/or seek WP:MASSCREATE permission, but I do not see any evidence that that is the case. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 03:30, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
hi! trying to clarify as much as I can, if anything unclear let me know.
some context. I'm a biologist (Masters' in genetics/bioinformatics, but big fan of biodiversity, especially spiders). I built the framework for wikipedia's spider section (WikiProject Spiders, doesn't seem very active nowadays) around 2006, using mostly scripting. I've been very active on iNaturalist the past decade or so (my user name is portioid there, if you're interested). I recently realized that Ansie Dippenaar-Schoeman (ADS), SA's most prominent arachnologist, uploaded thousands of the late Peter Webb's high-quality spider photos to iNaturalist under an open license, and also creates quite good guides for all the spider families in the area. So I'm bringing these together to build the SA spider section on wikipedia. these are photos of wild specimens that were then caught and dissected, meaning that we'll have scientifically determined high-quality photos of about 500 species, which is awesome. the spider guides are of rather good quality IMO, and my personal assessment was that these are essentially a collection of pre-written short wikipedia starter pages already that just need to be transferred. I call it Project Spider Webb. if you think it would make sense to create a project page for it, let me know.
to achieve this, I'm using a combination of manual work, python scripting and claude sonnet 4 (now 4.5). at the moment, my sources are WSC (world spider catalog, world authority on spider systematics) and ADS' guides. I have been using claude extensively for coding for the last year or so, so am generally aware of its strengths and weaknesses. the use of claude in this project is mostly to make existing passages flow better, as the original guides are sometimes written in shorthand. I proofread everything it outputs, and tweak it to a varying extent.
I don't fully understand in what way you're both misreading my earlier posts ;), but I'm referring to claude sonnet 4 (now 4.5). I mistyped when I mentioned sonnet 4.1, there's no such thing (I was working with claude opus 4.1 for programming earlier, hence the mixup). 4.5 is very new (it came out today) and allegedly markedly better, but I will have to test this more to have details, especially regarding fabulations. as I mentioned elsewhere, I'm using claude essentially as a glorified text processor as part of my pipeline. it is my impression that this is legitimate under wikipedia's current guidelines.
I am currently in the process of mass uploading the photos to Commons, and creating categories etc. Once that is done, I intend to complete adding SA spider species pages. as mentioned, there are a few hundred left I think.
I was made aware of some mistakes that slipped in, for which I am very thankful. this showed that I did not check the output as closely as I thought I had. at some point, I had gotten a bit careless in the rush of things. I improved parts of my scripts (including the part where claude is involved), and how I proofread the pages. I have been closely reading through hundreds of these since, and found very few mistakes. these mostly happen with claude 4 when it is expecting some input, but I did not give that input.
some people have worried about the short-term frequency of article uploading ("every two minutes", etc.). this may be an artifact of batch uploading previously generated works. I sometimes generate and proofread a batch of articles, then upload them in one go. so the upload rate is not necessarily an indication of creation speed. also, some of the shorter pages are much easier and hence faster to check than more complicated ones. this eg. depends on which spider family I'm currently working on.
my personal suggestion would be to let me finish this project using my current workflow, adding the remaining pages. then I will revisit the earlier additions to make sure they are up to the standard of the later ones. SA spiders are not a highly visited topic (yet!) I assume, so there should be no immediate rush I guess ;) any help is encouraged and appreciated, but not required. I'm happy for anyone joining in with the effort, but am equally happy to bring this to a level everyone can live with by myself.
I am comparing my output with average content on wikipedia, which as you all know is a mixed bag. I think it's better than much content that nobody has contested for years, but not as great as that of some of the great contributors here. I can live with that. it's a first version, and wikipedia is meant to be iterated on. I've experienced in the last week(s) that my content is held to a much higher standard of perfection, which I find only partly justified (because of the amount).
most of the feedback I was given did not actually involve problems resulting from LLM use. again, my suggestion would be to extend to me a certain level of trust that I'm trying to build something of value here. I'm not some random jerk poisoning the waters with hallucinated AI slop.
pain points I'm personally aware of with my past output:
half-sentence additions here and there that while not factually wrong, are not actually explicitly mentioned in the source. this happens much less in newer content, but I don't think it's a drastic problem in earlier content either. after being made aware of two of these, and very thoroughly checking around a hundred articles, I spotted around two of these in my output at the time.
due to the way claude internally processes the content I feed it (WSC + respective ADS guide), it sometimes will give the wrong reference (WSC for ADS content or vice versa). when proofreading, I did not thoroughly check for this. that's not great, but hopefully tolerable. now that I'm aware of it, I'm keeping an eye on it.
regarding fabulations, I can't fully vouch for the earliest articles I created, and hence will revisit them in the coming weeks. there might be a phase where my diligence waned for a bit after initial scrutiny, until I was made aware of some flaws I had overlooked. I don't fully remember when I started using claude. I started doing this manually, and at some point tried claude sonnet 4, and found it to be a valuable tool for part of the creation process.
to summarize. my plan:
finish adding pages using ADS' spider guides content (cc-by)
start adding Peter Webb's photos
revisit earlier pages in this project, to weed out beginner's problems that probably exist in these
take a good rest, because this project is amazing but also exhausting. I have no plans on adding any other mass content to wikipedia for the foreseeable future. I'll be updating WSC data from time to time (using python scripting).
thanks for taking the time, and for keeping this friendly and factual! as I mentioned in the other thread, we all have essentially the same goal, and I'm confident we can find a path to there that brings a smile on all of our faces. Sarefo (talk) 04:36, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Expectations around mass creation were not created due to the need to respond to "random jerk"s, they were created due to good faith editors moving too fast and too far and creating cleanup work for others. For example, you are mass-uploading images on Commons calling the author Peter Webb and put in the category "Photos by Peter Webb". However the author of every one of a random sample of your 50 most recent uploads appears based on the source website to be someone called Ansie Dippenaar-Schoeman (eg). This is technically a violation of the licence, and while it can be fixed it's a lot of cleanup. CMD (talk) 05:23, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
On the subject of accusing people of typing without reading, here is what they said in the second paragraph of their comment:
I recently realized that Ansie Dippenaar-Schoeman (ADS), SA's most prominent arachnologist, uploaded thousands of the late Peter Webb's high-quality spider photos to iNaturalist under an open license, and also creates quite good guides for all the spider families in the area.
Thank you for the clarifications (you has me more than a bit confused with Sonnet 4.1, but I figured it was a safe bet you meant either Opus 4.1 or Sonnet 4.5, and not some secret Claude version I was unaware of), though I must ask again that you clarify the scope of your use of automation in regards to which/how many articles are affected, as these will need substantial clean-up if they resemble your recently created articles.
I don't necessarily have a problem with you using automation in this process but, while I can tell you are acting in good faith, creating such a large volume of articles with a LLM without disclosing this and without going through the normal page review process seems like a serious lapse of judgement. Mass-created articles and articles generated by LLMs are two categories of article that require extra scrutiny, not less than is expected for the average article by an extended confirmed user, and you've combined these two methods at higher risk of error into a single project while entirely bypassing the safety net of new page patrol. You've started a large-scale automated article creation process without disclosing the level of automation or putting any checks and balances in place besides your own personal review, which is not enough when producing such large amounts of content. It seems like the only reason the errors in these articles have come to light is because @Novedevo noticed Claude saying "here's the article you requested" and flagged it on your talk page, which led other users to investigate the rest of your articles for further errors. I am certainly seeing issues that others have not flagged that need addressing and seem to be common across the board with your recent articles.
I appreciate that you've paused creating new articles since becoming involved in this discussion and would kindly request you continuing to keep this on hold for the moment until this is resolved. This is a project with a lofty goal but I am really deeply disappointed by the failure to disclose the use of automation so other editors can ensure the quality of these articles, and I maintain that you have not held to the high standards expected from an experienced autopatrolled user. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 06:05, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
this wasn't really a problem when I auto-created lots of articles in 2006 IIRC. I've been working on iNaturalist for the last years, and I was generally met with a wall of silence on its forum when trying to talk about projects, so that was the mindset I was in. build this, make sure it's of good quality. as I mentioned earlier, should I create a project page for this, so we can discuss improvements in a central place? or any other suggestions to centralize this? Sarefo (talk) 21:15, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A lot of things have changed in Wikipedia since 2006. I used a lot of really poor sources then, and created some very iffy articles. We have tightened up our standards for sources, articles, and the pace of creating articles since then. My personal advice is to slow down the rate of creating new articles and spend more time expanding each article before taking it to main space. Even better, spend part of your time expanding existing stubs. I spend as much time on major expansions of existing articles as I do on creating articles. Donald Albury22:09, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We can assume good faith on the part of the relevant editor here. I don't think the details of how LLMs were used in this case are particularly relevant. The crux of the issue is that the autopatrolled right is completely unnecessary for article creation. It has no impact whatsoever on this editor's capacity to create more articles, and one hopes he will continue to do so. The purpose of autopatrolled is to remove works created by trusted editors from the NPP log, so as to reduce the overall burden on new page patrollers. In a case where an editor has used, and plans to continue to use LLMs for article creation, and where numerous errors have been identified in his past creations, it does not make any sense to treat that editor as trusted, and allow him to continue to retain the autopatrolled right. For the encyclopaedia, it is imperative that a second pair of eyes be drawn to any content resulting from LLM-based editing before it is indexed. In fact, this benefits the editor, because the patrollers may pick up on phenomena he did not detect. Given this, I must support the stripping of this editor's autopatrolled right, with no prejudice against his past and continued contributions to the encyclopaedia. Yours, &c.RGloucester — ☎06:06, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
[triple edit conflict] Sarefo, as far as mass addition — just slow down and add some of these articles more gradually, like one or two per day, and people won't object to the quantity. (Imagine that you were doing all the work manually, and upload them at this rate.) Obviously once they're written, it won't take much work at all; just log in for a couple minutes and copy/paste from your offline saved information. Or better yet, mass-create them in userspace (User:Sarefo/Spider species 1, User:Sarefo/Spider species 2, etc.), wait a while, and move them into mainspace at your convenience. As far as files — as Chipmunkdavis notes, the linked image does need to be attributed to "Ansie Dippenaar-Schoeman", even if it were a Webb creation, because the source specifies Dippenaar-Schoeman as the required attribution. Be sure that you're complying with the source when attributing copyrighted-but-freely-licenced images. If you have good reason to say that they're Webb creations, you can note this in the file description page, and you can still use the Webb category.
As far as the bulk of the content — since you're reviewing and modifying the AI-generated text, it's not a fundamental problem, but if your output contains errors, yes this will be a problem. I don't want to deter you from this work, but supplying erroneous information is disruptive, so you need to be careful not to disrupt things; you've been around here long enough that you know that people get sanctions of various sorts if they keep disrupting things. And this applies both to the text of the article ("Spider A lives in America" when it really lives in Europe) and to the citations (citing a statement to a source that doesn't say so), so yes be careful to keep a very close eye on it.
South Africa, I believe Sarefo is in contact with some of the researchers and managed to secure image release in a compatible licence. CMD (talk) 06:36, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
the observations on iNaturalist also say these are observations and photos by Peter Webb, so I don't think there will a problem here?
any work that is actually done will contain errors. the point is to minimize errors as much as possible. I'm doing this. I think the output is of pretty good quality. I don't think holding me to a 100% perfection standard is fair. I'm also happy to run a bot over this set of articles, eg. removing the status information (IUCN etc.) which I scripted in, but ethmo told me recently under wrong assumptions. I really don't think I'll be putting any unnecessary burden on others.
South African spiders :) Peter Webb was a colleague of Ansie Dippenaar-Schoeman, SA's most prominent spider scientist. he died recently, so she spoke with the family, and they granted open rights to make these fantastic photos accessible. she uploaded most of them to iNaturalist, that's how I noticed it. Sarefo (talk) 21:25, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is just about my exact sentiment, but you put it into words much better than I did! I don't want Sarefo to stop creating articles, but this is not an appropriate use of the autopatrolled right. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 06:15, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It is worth noting that, since last year, autopatrollers can unpatrol their own creations. I wrote the current rough guidance on this—Use cases for this include where most of the page's content was written by someone else who is not autopatrolled, where the user has a conflict of interest, or where the user is unfamiliar with the topic area or otherwise thinks the page would benefit from an outside review—and I think it would make sense to add "where the page's creation involved generative AI" to that list. @Sarefo: Would you be willing to self-unpatrol any AI-created articles you publish in the future? There should be a button in the tools menu saying "Add to the New Pages Feed". -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|🤷) 09:18, 30 September 2025 (UTC), ed. 10:14, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The link is called "Mark this page as unreviewed" but as Tamzin says, this does exist as a feature since last year. I've attached screenshots of how it should look for folks with autopatrolled. This is how the link looks like in Vector22which then opens up this dialogSohom (talk) 12:18, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
With all respect, offering that option does not seem appropriate to me. I want these articles to be generated, and I'm sure Sarefo has the best intentions (and good material). However, what the autopatrolled right comes down to in the final analysis is "does the community think this user has sufficient judgement to not require oversight". I'd suggest that the flaws discussed so far, and the discussion had here, show that this judgement isn't quite there. Jank autopatrolled. It's not a collectible hat, and this only places them back on the same level as the vast majority of valued and productive users. --Elmidae (talk · contribs) 13:31, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Speaking as a patroller, I'm not entirely sure whether it would do anyone any good for NPP to be flooded with articles about spiders: NPP is backlogged enough as it is. It therefore doesn't strike me as a very good idea either to revoke autopatrolled or to ask Sarefo to tag the articles as unpatrolled. In my view, if editors are going to create huge numbers of semi-automated articles, this should be on the understanding that they will check them rigorously for themselves and not publish them in mainspace until after they are properly checked: I mean, I'm not sure if any editor should be mass-creating articles at all unless they are autopatrolled and check their articles in the thorough manner that that user right presupposes.
So I wonder whether it might be better to ask Sarefo to create these articles in draftspace and move them to mainspace only after the whole process of creating and checking has been completed. Dionysodorus (talk) 16:09, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm also putting a lot of personal effort into it. My fingers hurt. I'm seeing spiders the moment I close my eyes. I'm essentially reduced to working on this and sleeping for the last weeks.[2]
As there is no time limit on getting every spider in South Africa added to the encyclopedia, I think it would be better all around for them to slow down. A problem with these kinds of mass creations (LLM, scripted, or human written) is the break in feedback. One missed error becomes 50 missed errors when you are publishing 50 articles at once, and one is much more likely to miss errors when working flat-out every day. REAL_MOUSE_IRLtalk18:14, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm also fine with this. As I keep mentioning, while I highly appreciate any input on how to improve this dataset, I'm also very happy to work on it by myself to bring it up to a level everybody is happy with. I don't want to put a burden on anyone.
I also think that the recent pages are totally good enough to stay in mainspace while I improve on them.
You'll also have to consider that I have a life outside of this project (soon, hopefully). I still think if you let me do this my way, while I incorporate input I get to improve, is the best way to go for everyone. Everyone does things differently. In the end, it's the result that counts. Sarefo (talk) 21:32, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If I am reading correctly, they aren't hooking the model directly up to the editing box, they are using it as part of a workflow which they manually review prior to posting any articles. jp×g🗯️01:35, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
that is correct. it is also correct that I improved my workflow in the process of doing this, also due to feedback from here. that's why I want to revisit older articles once I'm finished to clean up what I might have missed. again, as it's not a highly frequented area anyway, I think the easiest thing would be to just let me wrap this up in mainspace and clean up whatever might be necessary as the next step. I don't think there is anything dramatic there. here and there a sentence that while not wrong is not written as such in the source. very rarely some fabrications I might have missed. it took me a few days to adapt from reviewing the model's coding output to using it for text processing. Sarefo (talk) 04:55, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sarefo came to my attention while following up on reports at CopyPatrol. Substantial portions of the text of articles created matched texts at the websites discussed above, which triggered a red flag. The text was cited, and IIRC, Sarefo felt that was sufficient, not realizing that an attribution template was required. Sarefo accepted this observation, immediately modified their workflow, and subsequent articles created included the proper attribution. I backfilled the attribution on approximately 250 articles. While understanding that my focus was on the copyright issues, I did peruse some of the content, and what I looked at seemed fine. It's my understanding that Sarefo is not using an LLM create content ab initio, but mainly for organization of material already created. I'm aware that the community has serious concerns about the use of LLM's, but this strikes me as a perfectly acceptable use case.S Philbrick(Talk)13:18, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There is no mechanical distinction between organizing content and creating content ab initio, all an llm does is absorb the prompts it is given into its mathematical formulas and produces an output that it converts into words. You get a sliding scale of 'ab initio' content depending on how controlled the prompts are, but the underlying mechanism is the same and reorganization can (and in this case has) produce 'hallucinations'. CMD (talk) 04:26, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
With all due respect, I understand how Sarefo is creating their articles. This is a discussion about whether or not this is an appropriate use of the autopatrolled user right, not about what is and is not acceptable LLM use. Sarefo is not violating any policies by using Claude to generate articles and I am not trying to stop them from doing so, only raising my concerns about oversight because I believe it will improve the quality of their articles. Not to single you out in replying to your comment, Sphilbrick, (yours is just the latest and makes the most sense to reply to) but it feels like about half of the people who've commented on this discussion so far have done so not to address my actual concern but to instead have a completely separate discussion about the ethics of LLM use, as if talking past me. Absolutely no offence intended, but I would desperately like to steer this discussion back to the specific topic of whether or not large numbers of articles mass-created by LLMs should be autopatrolled. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 10:31, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't historically been active in either granting or removing autopatrolled rights, so I decided to re-review Wikipedia:Autopatrolled. Much of the content was straightforward but I was somewhat surprised to see so little content in guidelines for revocation. It's short so I will repeat the content in full:
If an autopatrolled user hasn't edited for three or more years, their right may be revoked.
I don't view this as exhaustive — if an editor is granted the right and generates some new articles that, in retrospect, ought to have been subject to review, it may be appropriate to remove the right.
If the discussion is not about the use of LLM, then I would see the decision turning on whether this editor has recently created multiple examples of articles that would've been flagged by new page patrollers as problematic. I am aware that there may have been some examples early in the process but how many examples can you provide from, say, the last month? S Philbrick(Talk)14:58, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies for the late reply, real life has been very busy lately. Yes, I also noticed that the guidelines for revocation were severely lacking... This is something I would really like to see expanded. I am autopatrolled, and it's a privilege that I work hard to show that I deserve and will use with responsibility - if I were to stop being so diligent, it's only right that I should not be afforded such a privilege. We need to develop a guideline that explains what behaviour is and is not acceptable for autopatrolled users. I note that the admins responding to requests at Wikipedia:Requests for permissions/Autopatrolled are quite thorough in vetting users requesting the right, and I think that kind of thorough scrutiny should continue throughout a user's editing career.
RE: examples of issues - I must quickly point out that when you say there may have been some examples early in the process but how many examples can you provide from, say, the last month?, the earliest issue I'm aware of being flagged was by @Novodevo on Sarefo's talk page on 21 September, so well within the last month (not sure when Sarefo began creating these articles). A non-exhaustive list of issues I and others have noticed:
Including Claude's response to the prompt ("Here's a short distribution section for the genus *Amaurobioides* article:") at Amaurobioides (flagged in user talk discussion by Novodevo)
The article for Apochinomma deceptum (the valid name of the species) was referred to by the incorrectly formed basionym Apochinomma decepta within the article body despite being located at the correct article name - this is an error stemming from prompting Claude to draw primarily from a source which used the incorrect name (flagged in user talk discussion by @Jlwoodwa)
Also on the article for Apochinomma deceptum, Claude referred to two ant genera as species, and refers to a genus "Streblognatha", which does not exist (I believe it to be a misspelling of Streblognathus) - these may be a result of Claude closely paraphrasing the source text, however, I cannot check this as it absolutely refuses to load in my browser and consistently fails to download - if someone can confirm/disprove this I would appreciate it. The article also seemed to claim that the species was present in three particular protected areas (Ndumo Game Reserve, Tembe Elephant Park, and Kruger National Park) which are not actually stated in the source text and appear to have been mere guesses by Claude (incorrect use of the word species and hallucinated park occurrences flagged in user talk discussion by @Chipmunkdavis and Sarefo respectively, possible misspelling noticed by myself just now)
Almost all articles incorrectly use the |status= parameter in the Speciesbox - this is something I have manually fixed on around 40 pages and notified Sarefo about. This comes in two forms or error: articles that incorrectly assign a IUCN conservation status in the Speciesbox when the species in question has not actually been assessed for the Red List, and articles that incorrectly assign a Red List of South African Plants status to spider species. This is an issue arising from the authors of the text Claude is primarily drawing from assigning statuses based on similar criteria to the Red List, but which are not the same as an actual assessment - South Africa has its own special system for this which is similar to but distinct from the IUCN Red List (flagged in user talk discussion by Chipmunkdavis - this was something that immediately stood out to me as a frequent user of the |status= param who knows about SANBI's weird independent system)
Some articles make reasonable but unsourced claims about the etymology of specific epithets, eg. Olios lacticolor claiming that The species name lacticolor derives from Latin, meaning "milk-colored" but providing no source - this seems to just be the LLM just making an assumption rather than drawing from a source. In the example of O. lacticolor, I checked all three sources in the article to make sure it wasn't just a failure to correctly attribute the information, but no, none of them give an etymology (noticed by myself while cleaning up some of these articles, I have flagged the ones I saw as needing citation)
This is relatively minor compared to factual inaccuracies, but many articles have general issues with formatting, prose quality, and not following WP:MOS. I think many articles would benefit from a cleanup template like Template:Tone or Template:Copyedit. A near universal example of this is that common nouns are capitalised - this seems to stem directly from the primary source the LLM is drawing from also using this sort of weird capitalisation (eg. Savannah and Thicket biomes in Olios lacticolor). Another very common example is that sentences discussing taxonomy attempt to attribute the description of a species to an author, but only provide a last name (eg. Olios zulu was described by Simon in 1880 in Olios zulu - I know which Simon this is referring to because I'm a nerd - it's the French scientist Eugène Simon, who had a huge impact on arachnology - but to an average reader this is obviously not helpful). The author is usually linked in the |authority= param in the Speciesbox, but how many readers will know to look for that?
These are just what I'm aware of thanks to the work of others and my own viewing of around 50 of the LLM-generated articles, but I think they are enough to illustrate that these articles suffer from a pattern of poor quality control owing to the inherent flaws of LLMs, Sarefo only being a single person not able to catch every possible issue, and the lack of any further oversight from the review process to catch the issues slipping through. FOARP has also raised the issue of WP:MASSCREATE below which I think is highly relevant here. Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 02:50, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If we are discussing Apochinomma deceptum, a significant example was the sentence "Adult females have been collected during February, May, and November, while males were collected in April, July, and October" was apparently completely made up from nothing (ie. not even a mangling of the source). This was only found after I spent substantial time checking through the article. CMD (talk) 03:22, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Revoke autopatrolled until the Sarefo can show again that they should be entitled to have it - Using LLM-generated text without sufficient review is a perfectly good reason to do this. Even if done in good faith, this is a WP:CIR issue. I take the point about NPP being flooded, but in that case the author needs to slow down and do more checking, and NPP reviewers can flag that up to them if they are finding a lot of spider articles jamming the feed. Sarefo also needs to go through WP:MASSCREATE for mass-creation of articles using automated or semi-automated tools (which is what using an LLM is). FOARP (talk) 09:34, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hello. I respectfully ask the community to reconsider my ban.
I understand now why I was banned: I created edit wars because I did not follow the rules to start discussions on the talk pages and wait for other opinions. Some of my words also sounded uncivil in English. I am sorry for this, and I have learned from it. I will not repeat that behavior.
For the future, I will not edit existing articles about Freemasonry anymore. I know that this was the wrong way and it only created conflicts.
But I would like to be allowed to finish my own article draft about the contradictions of Freemasonry (I will rename it to that – because I also renamed it in my German article). This was the reason why I came to en-WP in the first place. I started that draft already before my ban (see: User:Wikiprediger/Freemasonry criticism). It is based on facts and reliable sources, and I want to translate it step by step.
See also the actual German version of this article: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benutzer:Wikiprediger/Widerspr%C3%BCche_in_der_Freimaurerei.
This is the Google-Translator Version (english): https://de-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/Benutzer:Wikiprediger/Widerspr%C3%BCche_in_der_Freimaurerei?_x_tr_sl=de&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp
I want to remark that I am on de-WP since January 2014 and had never any conflicts until my edits on Freemasonry in 2024.
I understand that topics like Freemasonry are sensitive, and that is why I started a separate draft long ago – after I recognized the intensity of the conflicts – but the idea unfortunately came too late. My aim is not to attack, but to write a fact-based article that highlights contradictions and critical perspectives, supported by reliable sources.
I promise to be very patient: first completing the German version, then waiting for review and discussion there. Only after that I will create an English version. I will follow all rules, respond to discussions, and start a review before publishing. My only goal is to contribute to Wikipedia and i think such an article is missing here.
Please unblock me with the condition that I stay away from existing Freemasonry articles, but that I may continue to work on my own draft. I believe this would be a fair compromise. If I make mistakes, they can always be corrected or discussed.
Thank you very much. Wikiprediger (talk) 14:16, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'll note that while I'm glad Wikiprediger is willing to take a TBAN, I did suggest that they not ask for the exemption for their draft. I would also support a TBAN from freemasonry, broadly construed, without the exception for the draft. voorts (talk/contributions) 22:55, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I still don't think this should have been a CBAN, but now I don't think Wikiprediger should be unblocked because it's clear that they only want to use Wikipedia writ large to POV-push their views on freemasonry. voorts (talk/contributions) 23:28, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at Wikiprediger’s edits at de.WP, I am concerned that he is a bit of an SPA, focused on Freemasonry (from a negative POV). This was the topic area that resulted in his being blocked in the first place. Suggest a topic ban (broadly construed) if he is to return. This would include not working on his desired draft. Blueboar (talk) 21:55, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Blueboar: I understand the concern, but in Wikipedia we should not be judged by personal opinion, only by how we use good sources.
There should not be a problem with my perspective on Freemasonry, as long as I use reliable sources and remain neutral.
There will not be an Edit-War again. We can discuss it on the talk page and ask for third opinions or reviews.
@Wikiprediger: it's not censorship. A TBAN (which I thought you agreed with based on your unblock request) is used to avoid disruptive editing. You were banned by the community for being disruptive in that topic area, and you have indicated that you would like to continue editing in it. If you can edit productively for a significant amount of time (at least 6 months, preferably longer), you can come to the community and ask to have the restriction lifted. voorts (talk/contributions) 01:58, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think I would support this unless other issues that have not been mentioned come up but I don't see any way to enforce a topic ban EXCEPT for in the editor's sandbox. I think if this is the plan, it would be better for the editor to work on the English language verion of this article on the German Wikipedia and after appealing the topic ban here after a few months, then moving that article to this Wikipedia if that appeal is granted and the topic ban is lifted. However, this proposal might not get wide approval among other editors since the focus of this editor's work is still the subject that originally got them into this mess in the first place. LizRead!Talk!21:45, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Liz: Thank you for your comment. I can accept working in my sandbox if that is the best way.
It will take some time anyway. First the German article surely will be discussed and maybe improved, then I can translate it step by step in the sandbox.
It would be best to do this in en:WP, so I can ask for review here. Also we can use the talk-page for discussions. I am used to finish articles as draft. When we have reached a consensus, the draft can then be moved into the article namespace. Wikiprediger (talk) 01:46, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Comment from Blocking Admin I implemented the consensus of the discussion and have not been able to follow the recent discussions on @Wikiprediger's Talk and will not have the on wiki time to do so. I support whatever consensus the community comes to on the unblock and potential topic bans. StarMississippi02:48, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Concerned. This doesn't feel right. Typically, editors who have experienced problems in a specific topic area but who want to contribute to the overall project will be happy to accept a topic ban from that specific area in order to be unblocked. Here we have someone who has never shown any interest in editing other subject areas, but who promises not to edit existing articles in their favoured topic area, and only wants to write their own article about the subject. I am concerned that this is, in a sense, setting them up for failure - this is a collaborative project, nobody gets to write their own article about any subject, and when they discover that the 'I won't edit existing articles on the subject' firewall is not a two-way street I fear that we will be in for a lot more drama down the line. I would be happy to support an unblock with a topic ban on the subject of freemasonry, broadly construed, which could be appealed after six months of constructive editing in other subject areas while they learn the ropes. Six months of editing in the walled garden of their sandbox will not help them develop as a collaborative editor. GirthSummit (blether)03:34, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In light of their recent comments (referenced below by jpgordon and others), I would no longer support an unblock with TBan in place. Oppose any unblock at this time. GirthSummit (blether)00:28, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I took a peek at the de-WP draft.[3] This is IMO the kind of article that will often contain a lot of WP:SYNTH and WP:OR. For example, we have under the heading "Ethical understanding of well-known members of Freemasonry" (I'm using google translate, I don't speak german) the sentence "Harry S. Truman ordered the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" with two cites. That is uncontroversial enough, but the cites makes no mention that this has any connection to Truman's FM, and is contradictory to it. An en-WP article about "Contradictions in Freemasonry", is supposed to be a summary of WP:RS that discuss that subject, not a list of selected examples the WP-editor finds "contradictory". Gråbergs Gråa Sång (talk) 05:44, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose unban I speak fluent German, and had a thorough look at the draft over there. The title of the draft itself has already an npov-tilt, and we already are, at least in part, in OR, but more so in WP:SYNTH territory. A TBAN from freemasonry, broadly construed, including the draft would work imo. Lectonar (talk) 09:46, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just want to add that even if an article was accepted in DE-Wikipedia, it would not mean that it would be automatically accepted here. The rules for sourcing and notability are not identical. Lectonar (talk) 09:48, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose any unban not accompanied by a complete TBAN for at least a year. And after that, only lift the TBAN if Wikiprediger has done significant useful work on other topics. It seems entirely evident (see e.g. the comment about 'censorship' above) that Wikiprediger wishes to continue with the same POV-pushing that led to sanctions in the first place. We don't need that. And nor do we need synth-ridden POV forks padded out with random stuff that seems to have little to do with the supposed topic. Even if such nonsense is acceptable on de.wikipedia (which would surprise me), it won't be here. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:36, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support unblock only with a broadly-construed topic ban to freemasonry definitely including the draft I think it would be unwise to allow a person who was cbanned for edit-warring over freemasonry to make what appears to be a WP:COATRACK article. Simonm223 (talk) 14:26, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support unblock, but only with a topic ban on freemasonry, with no exception for any current drafts. If we trust this editor to write about freemasonry, there's no reason to prevent them from writing about freemasonry. And if we don't trust this editor to write about freemasonry (I'm in this camp), then there's no reason to allow any edits about freemasonry. I am explicitly against any sort of St. Augustine "Lord, give me a topic ban on freemasonry, but not yet!" nonsense. There's nothing preventing this editor from saving their draft on their own device and working on it offline, but allowing them to work on this topic on Wikipedia is a terrible idea.CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 18:55, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose unban after seeing the latest comment on their talk page that is referenced below. The veiled threats in order to exert leverage over the community in order to get to edit this article make me seriously question if the problems collaborating of others would be limited to the freemasonry topic. CoffeeCrumbs (talk) 23:16, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose unban I was planning on staying out of this discussion, since I started the one that got him cbanned in the first place, but after reading his last comment, where he seems to claim we'll damage public trust in Wikipedia by not letting him edit on the topic, I don't think an unblock is appropriate at this time. --SarekOfVulcan (talk)19:24, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose unban. Just wow: I cannot accept being told I am not allowed to work on this subject...If it is blocked here, I will always note on my user pages that the ban in en:WP feels like censorship. I will also try to find other solutions to be allowed to speak... A ban on me may not prevent the subject from appearing sooner or later — it can only prevent that I take part in the discussion. I don't see how this person's attitude aligns with Wikipedia's policies and polity. --jpgordon𝄢𝄆𝄐𝄇00:19, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict)Oppose unban in its entiretyThis says it all: I cannot accept being told I am not allowed to work on this subject. This is the reason I came to en:WP, and I want to continue to translate this article into other language versions (French, Italian,...). If it is blocked here, I will always note on my user pages that the ban in en:WP feels like censorship., If en:WP is not prepared to allow critical discussion of certain topics, it may have a clear effect on how the project is perceived from outside. In the end, it may be the en:WP community that is questioned for this decision., andI will also publish the article in other languages step by step, so that all major Wikipedias will eventually cover this topic. If readers are then told that such an article cannot exist on the English Wikipedia because of a ban related to conflicts about Freemasonry more than a year ago, it will naturally raise questions and may reflect poorly on Wikipedia. makes it very clear that this is a user who is not here to help build an encyclopedia. They have no interest in editing topics other than their pet hobbyhorse, and speaking frankly if they were to be unbanned with a topic ban I can't help but have a feeling they would try to build a good reputation, get the topic ban lifted, and immediately push that POV. - The BushrangerOne ping only00:24, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose any unban. I just don't see any indication that this person actually wants to edit constructively on other topics. At best, I think we'd get the situation Bushranger described, but I don't even think they'd get that far given their comments. ♠PMC♠ (talk)00:48, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Moving them all to draftspace would be an admin action and I want to make sure I'm doing the right thing. I think it would be the right thing, but then I've seen other admins get in to trouble to going in without discussing at all first. FOARP (talk) 18:50, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
having failed to get the desired result at afd, it turned into a bizarre proposal about the hypothetical creation of already created articles at vpp, and here it is coming to fruition as a strange end-run around the deletion process. If you want to delete or draftify, at minimum you need consensus... on a question about deleting or draftifying. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 19:27, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I understood it that way. You said explicitly "This RFC isn't about deletion" (which would then follow it wasn't about draftificaiton) in the RfC. Please see User talk:JoelleJay#Our mutual friend.
That being said, I have the capability to draftify all the List of Olympians articles myself and am willing to do that. Some care needs to be taken because I understand there are redirects with history (i.e. BLARed articles) that redirect to the list, and just draftifying the list pages would delete them. Ideally the by-sport list recommended would be created instead, and the redirects would be retargeted to rows in that list (or an arbitrary row e.g. for multi-sport athletes). --Habst (talk) 05:26, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your comment, from which I gather you're OK with drafting these articles. I've draftified all the articles. I think, given the result at VPP, you should make a trial version first in draft rather than just mainspace the lot. FOARP (talk) 15:32, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Are the redirects specific to an alphabetical listing of all Olympians? If so they are unlikely to be needed. Redirects are anyway cheap, and not a reason to block draftification whilst the issue identified in the VPP discussion are addressed, if doing so is otherwise acceptable. FOARP (talk) 15:49, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Per my comment, I'm talked about BLARed articles with page history, which are not WP:CHEAP. They are not specific to an alphabetical listing of all Olympians. --Habst (talk) 15:53, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's no rush to have these moved to draftspace. We can take our time to ensure proper care is given. FWIW, that proposal was so confusing ("is there support for creation of lists that already exist?") that I didn't really participate (aside from pointing out a few falsehoods), and probably others thought similar. BeanieFan11 (talk) 15:58, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm OK with taking time, so long as it does not simply become obstruction-through-technicalities. It would be good for you to explain what exactly you want to take time for, now that the VPP discussion already closed some days ago. FOARP (talk) 16:07, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
According to Habst, there are Olympians that redirect to some of those lists. We need to figure out what happens to them before moving the lists. BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:17, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The most obvious large-scale, reasonable sorting would be a "List of Olympics from <country>", which still likely would need to be sub-listed to some extent. I'm surprised I'm not quickly finding such lists to start with. Masem (t) 16:29, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm actually at the Wikipedia NYC hackathon right now and met some users who commented in the RfC IRL -- it was kind of surreal to have these types of conversations in person and has given me a new perspective. Please give us some time while the hackathon is ongoing, there is a plan for the future. But yes, there are Olympians that redirect to the lists. --Habst (talk) 16:20, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Habst, please undo your moves to mainspace. Speaking as someone genuinely undecided on a list of all Olympians, there is no way to read the VP discussion as anything other than a consensus against their existence in mainspace at this time, and so moving them back to mainspace is effectively ignoring community consensus, regardless of what your intentions might have been. Broken redirects are a triviality. We have tools to deal with them. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:24, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We can wait to figure out an appropriate solution for the redirects. Rushing and deleting redirects with important history is not appropriate. BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:27, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You realize you could draftify the redirects? Or ask for a refund, if they were deleted in the meantime? There's a ton of options here that don't involve ignoring an active consensus. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:37, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
OK, I will do that after the Wikimedia hackathon is over today. I did not move them all back to mainspace; only a few were moved at the time that FOARP said "I've draftified all the articles". Per an in person discussion I had, some care is needed because the existing tools to deal with broken redirects would delete them via bot or move them to draftspace, which would remove the Wikidata link. Doing a refund would not restore the Wikidata link. They are quite important. --Habst (talk) 16:39, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@FOARP, please give us until the end of the day here. We are at a Wikimedia hackathon and the contents of the lists are being used as part of a project about to be presented. Also, there are redirects that need to be retargeted. That's completely reasonable. --Habst (talk) 17:57, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As an admin, you should absolutely not be edit-warring and fully protecting the pages to get your way. What is unreasonable about asking for one day? Both of you need to stop it. BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:59, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Guys, this had already been explained to you, and not just by me. This is not me "getting my way". This is the consensus that these articles don't belong in mainspace being carried out. Vanamonde93 already explained to you what to do about the redirects. FOARP (talk) 18:09, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What should we do about the redirects? Also, this is being used in part for an in person project at the Wikipedia hackathon right now. Please give us until the end of the day. --Habst (talk) 18:11, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"You realize you could draftify the redirects? Or ask for a refund, if they were deleted in the meantime? There's a ton of options here that don't involve ignoring an active consensus."FOARP (talk) 18:15, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) Once again, you, as the main editor in this dispute, are not in a position that would make it appropriate to fully-protect the pages while refusing a polite request for a mere one day to look into the redirects further. What is unreasonable about the request? This is disappointing to see from an administrator. BeanieFan11 (talk) 18:16, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I responded to that -- draftifying would remove the Wikidata links which a refund would not restore, and the drafts would need to be decategorized. There is a plan to do this properly, I am busy at the Wikipedia hackathon right now. --Habst (talk) 18:18, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am not so fussed about the timeline as to suggest a sanction for a few additional hours. But I am assuming that what you have is a real plan to implement the VPP consensus; that is, a plan that ends with these pages in draftspace, soon. If this is merely a delaying tactic, I do think we will be looking at sanctions here. That said, FOARP, that's not a great protection. Vanamonde93 (talk) 00:25, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for assuming good faith. I have completed the archival of redirects and draftified the list articles per Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Olympics#Keeping the articles. My hackathon project won the "Best Game That Contributes Back to a Wiki" award and is relevant to these discussions we've been having; I look forward to improving it more and rolling it out to help bridge the gap between both sides on these issues. --Habst (talk) 01:20, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I closed the AfD in question, and in my closure recommended a community-wide RfC about the intersection of NOTDB and NOTDIR with lists of sportspeople. I also explicitly noted that there was no consensus on the existence of these lists, and that further discussion would be needed as to their inclusion or exclusion from Wikipedia. The RfC that was launched was much narrower, and I might perhaps have worded it differently, but I don't think it is reasonable to argue that it was out of process: it is the logical continuation of the dispute that did not conclude at AfD, and there is precedent for large-scale draftification or deletion following discussions at VPP. Vanamonde93 (talk) 19:44, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is my thinking on the matter, and also having discussed this with an experienced former admin (FRAM) their view as well. FOARP (talk) 18:41, 4 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Forwarding appeal on behalf of @Jack6754 for unblock request @ User talk: Jack6754. Their reformed request as suggested by @Yamla (the declining admin) and myself:
"Hello, I am requesting an unbanning from editing Wikipedia, as well as a lifting of the blocks imposed upon my account. I have reflected on my actions over the past few years and am apologetic about my previously disruptive and disrespectful behaviour. My previous account is subject to a community ban and indefinite block due to my past actions as an editor, and I regret being involved in those actions.
I accept that I have edit warred in the past and I am sorry for doing so, and will take pains to refrain from doing so in future. The article 'Black War' which I edit warred on is quite an emotional subject for me and I apologise for allowing that to cloud my judgement, an edit war was not an appropriate means to resolve the dispute of the way that dark historical topic ought to have been described by the opening lede of an article.
I am also sorry for my unproductive contributions to AfD years ago. I've matured in my approach to the site since then, and have gotten a little older. I'm confident that I am better equipped to participate as a productive article creator without getting bogged down in these kinds of procedural arguments that exist in the background.
I would like to resume contributing to the articles on this website. I love creating articles and would like to get back to being a productive editor. It has been over six months since I previously edited the site in any way, and I hope that my willingness to comply with my previous ban demonstrates that I have a newfound respect for the rules and have the ability to be a positive member of the community in the future.
I'm requesting that my account be unbanned 'standard offer' as I have complied with all these restrictions for six months. My intention upon being unbanned is to resume contributing; especially in relation to articles about Australian law, history, music, culture, and architecture.
I would be happy to have a 0RR restriction be imposed on my account as a way to show a willingness to comply with edit warring rules given that I have breached these rules in the past; especially if this restriction would give greater faith in my ability to contribute as an editor. Thank you for considering this request."
Support with the WP:0RR restriction. I think that's enough to minimise disruption and to give them the opportunity to demonstrate they can be constructive. --Yamla (talk) 21:21, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support with the WP:0RR restriction as a WP:LASTCHANCE (and I really mean last chance, next time is an indefinite block). They are currently topic banned from deletion discussions; being unblocked does not lift that topic ban and you are still not permitted to discuss AfDs on your talk page, even pointing out relevant policies and guidelines (which did happen previously). Before being sitewide blocked, Jack had indefinite pblocks from WP: and WT: space; those should be reinstated upon the lifting of the siteblock.
This is a laundry list of restrictions, and having reviewed Jack's previously unblock attempt I was left supremely unimpressed with the wikilawyering surrounding the standard offer and their topic ban they engaged in: see generally User talk:Jack4576#Unblock Request. (To Jack's credit, they were not the one engaging in most of the wikilawyering nor did they join the argument that they were permitted to criticize AFD nominations on their talk page.) That being said, I am persuaded that Jack now understands that they were disruptive, and that they can move forward carefully. I sincerely hope that Jack can contribute with fantastic edits and, in due time, appeal each sanction. HouseBlaster (talk • he/they)22:47, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support - I was involved in the page on at least one of the affected pages, but Jack is a content creator with some good work to show for it. I'd be inclined to accept under the Standard Offer. This support applies to lifting the block. If there are topic bans I am unaware of, I have no view on those at this time, but would remain supportive of a lift of the indef. Sirfurboy🏄 (talk) 06:24, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support Thanks for reflecting on your actions and taking the time to write this out, Jack. I see you can recognise where you may have gone wrong. I'm convinced you'll contribute constructively from now onwards. jolielover♥talk16:50, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support Thank you for apologising and recognising your fault I support your unblock request as I beleive you have recognised your fault and are willing to contribute productively now. GothicGolem29 (talk) 23:41, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I have been erroneously labeled a sockpuppet of WP:WIKINGER on the said page.
This stems from the aforementioned LTA creating sockpuppets with names similar to mine as trolling. I cannot edit the page due to insufficient permissions, this is important as I do not want to be labeled as a LTA. As you can see in my edit history, I am a genuine editor with significant activity (over 7000 edits) on Polish Wikipedia and engaged in reporting LTA sockpuppets. Jeż0216 (talk) 17:37, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A block for violations of the community ECR would be imposed and logged under WP:GS/KURD. However, if those ECR violations also violated CT conduct expectations (WP:CT#Editing a contentious topic) and you don't believe they are unaware of the CT designation (WP:CT#Awareness of contentious topics), it can instead be imposed as CT enforcement and logged at AEL. (Logging a sanction as both GS and CT would be potentially confusing (e.g., for appeals).) ~ Jenson (SilverLocust💬) 21:29, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am categorically opposed to TBANs from the entire BLP topic area; they're always either overkill (as in a narrower sanction would suffice) or underkill (as in the user should be sitebanned). For that reason, my baseline here is that I'd support a step-down restriction to "biographical material about living persons that Stuartyeates has any degree of personal connection to", which would cover the scenario that led to this TBAN's imposition. But that's mostly a procedural view, matching what I would say if the AN/I thread were to happen today. On the merits, I lean opposed to any lifting beyond that, because this appeal does not address the edits that led to the ban. -- Tamzin[cetacean needed] (they|xe|🤷) 08:14, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
While I agree with Tamzin in spirit, I think it would be difficult to manage narrowing the scope to people with whom appellant has a conflict of interest. How would we know? Having said that, perhaps @Stuartyeates: can more fully address the edits that led to the topic ban.---- Deepfriedokra (talk) 08:32, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In terms of the edits that lead to the TBAN: the last time I checked (immediately prior to my previous appeal), none of the articles I created had been deleted, the content of the edits were still on en.wiki supported by the same sources, although some had been moved to different pages, particularly a consolidation to Listener letter on science from BLPs, including newly minted ones. Creating a page on the issue was probably what I should have done to start off with, rather than repeating similar material on several BLPs. The social media posts which most of the original discussion centred on are long gone, since I'm no longer on twitter. I'm more careful about the perception of off wiki coordination, for example the draft I helped with at Draft:Blacksky (which I helped with based on social media mentions); I won't be making any decisions about promoting that to mainspace. I'm also being more selective about the sources I use in BLPs (more aggressively avoiding potentially ethnically partisan sources) and double-sourcing some claims. Stuartyeates (talk) 09:13, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We would know if Stuartyeates decided to disclose them. Or we can look at the persons they got banned over, note their similar qualities, and decrease the topic ban accordingly 178.246.132.152 (talk) 11:22, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If we were to decide that Tamzin's proposed narrowing is unenforceable but that narrowing the TBAN would be desirable in principle, would living New Zealand academics be a workable scope? It's easier for editors other than Stuart himself to identify the boundaries of, and seems to cover all of the articles in the precipitating incident. If that's too narrow, then we could have either living New Zealanders or living academics. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 15:32, 8 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support Appeal I've looked over the background material and far too much of it depends on people making inferences to off-wiki statements of opinion for my taste. My first preference would be to entirely lift the tban but I would also support tightening its scope if that's out of the question. Frankly nobody should be editing articles about people with whom they have a personal connection anyway. Simonm223 (talk) 13:40, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose lifting. Just above Stuartyeates writes If I had written it, Listener letter on science would 100% have been added to Category:racism in New Zealand. This indicates a failure to understand the problems that led to the sanction in the first place. That article contains nothing justifying addition to such a category except for a quote from a self-published blog post by Tina Ngata, and even that claim of racism receives pushback from other, stronger sources elsewhere in the article. This text was copied over from the boilerplate he added to individual BLPs that got him in trouble in the first place (e.g. [4]). Stuartyeates should know that this is a violation of WP:BLPSPS and that the category he supports adding is a violation of WP:POVCAT and BLP.
For those unaware, the Listener letter controversy is over whether ethnic 'traditional knowledge' should be of equal status with science. There appears to have been a large political push for this in New Zealand but this idea is quite controversial internationally. The idea that traditional knowledge is equal to science led to the introduction of the debunked pseudoscientific concept of vitalism into New Zealand's chemistry curriculum, later largely removed thankfully after the controversy arose [5]. There are serious WP:FRINGE concerns around this topic and I see no recognition of how wrong it is tar people as racist for questioning things like vitalism; indeed he just said above he would still label the controversy as about racism. Crossroads-talk-20:34, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That article contains nothing justifying addition to such a category except for a quote from a self-published blog post by Tina Ngata, ... ? The article (which was created after I stopped editing in this area) contains two mentions of racism in direct quotes and one use of the word outside quotes. There are many other uses in a wide variety of related sources, which I can look up if you would like me to. Tina Ngata has previously held a fixed-term anti-racism role at a New Zealand university, this is their field of expertise. I 100% agree that there are issues with WP:FRINGE here. I disagree with the above characterisation of Mātauranga Māori. As an encyclopedia and tertiary source it's not up to us to 'tar' people for their views, it's up to us to report what reliable independent third party sources say on the matter. Stuartyeates (talk) 21:16, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Those other uses of the word are from sources talking about science's alleged "ongoing role in perpetuating scientific racism" and defending the authors of the Listener letter from accusations of racism. Neither support the claim that the Listener letter is itself an instance of racism, and even if there were reliable sources with that as an attributed POV, that category is still a violation of POVCAT and BLP. Defending the use of Ngata's blog post as a source (the only source with the inflammatory accusation of racism) doesn't bode well either. Crossroads-talk-01:40, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
After a motion, arbitration enforcement page protections no longer need to be logged in the AELOG. A bot now automatically posts protections at WP:AELOG/P. To facilitate this bot, protection summaries must include a link to the relevant CT page (e.g. [[WP:CT/BLP]]), and you will receive talk page reminders if you forget to specify the contentious topic but otherwise indicate it is an AE action.
yeah thanks for doing that for me. maybe its because he/she is like so serious and like sharp and, y'know, cuz we were talking about something about caption of image, in there, the way he/she answered me was like kinda y'know, like, this in User talk:AirshipJungleman29#a question: I don't think you do know what clockwise is, is the problem. & Clear as day if you know what clockwise is and in answering me when i told him/her like my edit u undid was improvement he/she just dropped clockwise article link. like y'know, he/she is so cold. Aquifer3001 (talk) 13:31, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If you truly understood what clockwise meant, you wouldn't be arguing about the order of the captions of the images. AirshipJungleman29 is correct; you are not. Jauerbackdude?/dude.15:34, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A content dispute is taking place on the article for Mahavira and within the discussion, I am seeing concerning behaviour from several editor. One editor @Pawapuri Winds has stated here([6]) that "deadlock wont end until all Buddhist terminate editing this page indefinitely" essentially saying that he does not want anyone he deems to be a Buddhist to edit the article.
On another occasion, @Starry Pine is accusing me of being the leader of some supposed "Buddhist group" ([7]). These types of aspersions being caste against me as well as the constant edit warring clearly show the dispute isn't going anywhere but obviously I think the gatekeeping behaviour of stopping editors they deem to be of other religions from editing needs to be looked at by admins. Ixudi (talk) 20:42, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
These two editors are deeply problematic; just scroll through Talk:Mahavira and their personal talkpages. The low point, so far: mass-reverts because they object to scholarly explanations on Mahavira's dates. Really absurd: this mass-revert diffdo not add proto Jain again after repeated explanations at Talk:Mahavira#Proto-Jain that this term is reasonably sourced, meanwhile reverting a whole lot of other stuff while ignoring Talk:Mahavira#Edits giving undue weight to one viewpoint/Arbitrary header#2, in which in detail was explained what's wrong with this mass-revert. On top of that, the gotspe to issue these warnings diff. WP:NOTHERE, both of them. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk!21:06, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We are perceived as “problematic” only by editors who appear to be advocating a particular viewpoint. Separately, a supporter of @Joshua Jonathan (or a possible sock/meatpuppet) posted a message on the Talk:Mahavira a death threat (threatening to burn us alive).
The key content issue remains: the sources cited do not explain how Jainism is said to have evolved from “proto-Jainism,” nor do they specify how Parshva’s community differed from Mahavira’s. This question has not been answered. Unless reliable secondary sources provide that explanation, with the secondary sources themselves citing primary sources, the term should not appear in the lead. They have already put a note and I believe that is more than enough. Regarding mass revert, it is been done by Buddhist extremist accounts and not by me. I already mentioned to @Avantiputra7 on their talk page to treat each topics seperately. Pawapuri Winds (talk) 21:50, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Their own homepage and the sources they entered suggest that they are Buddhist. Nothing bad with that, I might have studied more Buddhism than them, but pov pushing is still unfair. Interesting that you are more focused on WP:ASPERSIONS than the root cause. If the inner circle didn't want our views, it would have been better that you locked the article to admin level access, would have saved our time. Favoritism will only impact the platform's credibility. Pawapuri Winds (talk) 22:38, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Their own homepage and the sources they entered suggest that they are Buddhist. Which does not make them "extemist". We do not bar people from editing based on their religion. You need to strike your aspersions or face sanctions for them. - The BushrangerOne ping only01:21, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I wanted you to please look once at the Mahavira article's revision history. this 3 users -@Joshua Jonathan, @Ixudi, and @Avantiputra7 have been repeatedly adding only the Buddhist perspective to the page and citing only one scholar, “Dundas.” However, the Jain community does not agree with this view - they believe Mahavira lived between 599 BCE – 527 BCE, which is also supported by several scholars and widely accepted among Jains.
These users are also dividing content based on Digambara and Svetambara sects, while ignoring that other scholars have clearly mentioned the 599-527 BCE dates, which are more widely accepted.
Another point: these editors are adding statements like “historians believe Buddha’s dates are earlier by a century, so Mahavira’s dates should also be earlier.”
But I explained that such research is based on Buddha - not on Mahavira — and if they believe Buddha’s dates are earlier, that belongs on the Buddha page, not on Mahavira. Jain and other schoalr sources consistently place Mahavira in the 6th–5th century BCE, and that should be respected.
They freely add Buddhist perspectives to Mahavira, but do not allow other editors to add other religions perspectives to Buddhist-related pages. This makes the article appear non-neutral, almost like an advertisement for Buddhism. If multiple views are allowed on Mahavira, then other pages should also allow balance — not one-sided editing.
They also added that “Mahavira revived or reformed an earlier proto-Jain community.” This is again a Buddhist view. The Jain community does not accept this idea. Including it in the lead section (without attribution) creates doubts about Mahavira’s historicity, which is misleading and not neutral.
Admin, I am really frustrated — it has been more than a week of ongoing conflict over this article. It would be better if you could review and help neutralize the entire article once and for all.
Also, please check the Mahavira page’s revision history ([8]) — the user @Ixudi has removed a lot of sourced material and pushed content to one side when no one else was active to oppose. I joined later and restored those neutral, sourced edits.
If you look at their contributions, you'll see they revert or block other users good faith contributions’ neutral edits, as if they are guarding the page to keep only their perspective and These three users have edited and bent many articles in a one-sided manner, pushing only their preferred point of view.
The users (@Joshua Jonathan, @Ixudi, and @Avantiputra7) appear to have edited several articles in the same biased manner. Based on their editing patterns, it appears possible that these accounts might be sockpuppets or coordinated editors, though I’m not certain — I'm only requesting that you please take a closer look.
You can see in the diffs that when I restored neutral content, @Joshua Jonathan again restored their biased version. I warned them politely, asking: “Please don’t add non-neutral content. First gain consensus and wait for others’ opinions. Add it only when everyone agrees.”
But they again restored the same version see- [9]. So I warned them once more that if they continue, I will have to issue a Level 4 warning. See User talk:Joshua Jonathan
Then, instead of @Joshua Jonathan, the user @Avantiputra7 entered and again restored that same non-neutral content see -[10]— clearly protecting the earlier version. You can check this in the diffs — it seems like a coordinated attempt, possibly using multiple accounts to revert to their preferred version.
Another issue: in the Mahavira talk page, a users (through IP or VPN) has been posting “threatening to burn us alive”,etc. morever calling us Noobs See-([11])
This could be coming from a sock or puppet account, using IP's (likely VPNs). This behavior is highly disruptive and intimidating.
If editors are behaving like this, how are we supposed to handle such situations Admin?, please share your opinion and help resolve this issue. I also wanted to make you aware that these three accounts might be related. I’m not completely sure, but you must check it once.
Already mentioned above, Talk:Mahavira#Edits giving undue weight to one viewpoint. This editor is edit-warring to push a one-sided sectarian narrative based on WP:PRIMARY sources. Regarding citing only one scholar, “Dundas.”, as explained at that talkpage-thread, multiple scholars are referenced, which this editor has repeatedly removed with a mass-revert (same behavior appears at Pārśvanātha). Regarding possibly using multiple accounts to revert to their preferred version and it appears possible that these accounts might be sockpuppets or coordinated editors: casting WP:ASPERSIONs; these two authors are themselves suspected of sockpuppetry, and have repeatedly been mentioned at SPI's. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk!10:27, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This seems to be based on a content dispute, but, as with so many of those, it has spilt over into a behavioural one. Editors should discuss the content dispute in good faith and without regard to the religion (or none) of the people they are discussing with. If they are unable to do this then they should be rendered unable to edit Wikipedia. Any reasonable suspicions of sockpuppetry should be taken to WP:SPI rather than aspersions be cast. Phil Bridger (talk) 13:55, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Admins, I would like to bring to your attention that @Joshua Jonathan has removed long-standing, well-sourced traditional content from the Mahavira article. The removed section included references to Bheda-vijnan, a core philosophical principle of Mahavira as described in the Samayasara text — which holds a position in Jainism comparable to the "Bible in Christianity". Just as teachings attributed to Christ are central to understanding Christianity, Samayasara is fundamental to understanding Mahavira’s philosophy.
By removing this content, the user has significantly weakened the representation of Jain philosophy in the article. The article has already been weakened over time through similar removals by this user and edits that create unnecessary doubt or confusion. The content in question had been part of the stable version for a long time and was supported by reliable sources. The edit appears to have been made without discussion or consensus, and the justification provided does not align with Wikipedia’s policies on neutrality and verifiability.
It also appears that the removal may have been done because the user who originally expanded the section is currently blocked; however, this does not justify deleting verifiable content added in good faith.
I respectfully request administrators to review this matter. It is concerning that an experienced editor with over 10 years of activity would repeatedly remove sourced and traditionally important material, particularly on Jain-related pages. Such actions diminish the balance and integrity of the Mahavira article and affect readers’ understanding of Jain philosophy and history. ~~ Starry Pine (talk) 19:15, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Starry Pine, Joshua Jonathan appears to have discussed their proposed changes to that section at Talk:Mahavira#Bhedvijñān. The complaint concerning this removal of content seems to still be at the level of a content dispute, which you should take up on the Mahavira talk page, rather than making an end-run assertion that they're egregiously violating NPOV here. If you are correct, you should be able to demonstrate the POV concerns on said talk page and reach a consensus. signed, Rosguilltalk19:31, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The administrators are not here to help with content disputes unless they turn disruptive e.g. edit wars. If you have an issue with an edit, you need to discuss it on the talk page of the concerned article. Ixudi (talk) 19:31, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Responded at user talk:Joshua Jonathan#October 2025, where SP issued a completely misplaced level 4 warning. As explained at my talkpage, and at Talk:Mahavira#Bhedvijñān, the text, the basis of which was started by blocked sock-puppet Livingstonshr diff and expanded by now-blocked editor Pawapuri Winds diff, has no relevant references; the attribution to Mahavira was unsourced, and no references were provided, despite repeated requests. Repeated searches by myself revealed that noWP:RS treat this topic, not on itself, even less in relation to Mahavira. Slow edit-warring and deeply WP:DISRUPTIVE non-collaborative editing.
There is evidence of coordinated behavior between these three users: repeated aspersions; see above, it seems like a coordinated attempt, possibly using multiple accounts, to which User:Phil Bridger already responded Any reasonable suspicions of sockpuppetry should be taken to WP:SPI rather than aspersions be cast. How often is an editor allowed to repeat such accusatins, without providing evidence?
Admin, I understand your concern, but please note that the warnings were not intended as harassment. If you review the Mahavira article's edit history, you'll see that the user repeatedly removed well-sourced and neutral material and restored the same disputed content multiple times, even though no consensus had been reached on the talk page.
The content being restored removes core philosophical information about Mahavira which was tradditionally very important information, I issued a higher-level warning only after repeated removals of sourced and balanced content -the user has been editing the article aggressively, and it's unclear what their goal is.
In addition, whenever I restored the sourced version, another user @Ixudi and Avantiputra7 immediately re-added the same material, which gives the impression of coordinated editing. These three users consistently support each other's edits in talk discussions and have shifted the article toward one side. If this kind of editing continues unchecked, how can such situations be handled fairly Admin?
Admin, I request that you take a closer look at the Mahavira article's revision history and talk page discussions it will help clarify why these warnings were issued. I’ll refrain from further warnings on @Joshua Jonathan talk page for the time being, but I do ask you to please review their editing pattern once. ~~
Admin, I would also like to note that once again, @Ixudi has re-added the same biased content while removing the traditional core philosophical information about Mahavira, which is a very important part of Jain tradition.
The content being added - such as terms like “proto-Jain” - represents a Buddhist perspective that Jain tradition does not accept.
We haven't yet reached consensus on these points, yet these edits keep being pushed into the article. Such wording directly affects the neutrality and historic representation of Jainism and Mahavira’s life.
Since the page was already fully protected, I request that the admins please restore the traditional sourced content that was removed, and for now, remove the “proto-Jain” line until proper consensus is achieved. These repeated edits are undermining the balance and neutrality of the article. ~~
The content being restored removes core philosophical information about Mahavira - diffs please and an explanation: which information was restored, which information was removed?;
@Ixudi has re-added the same biased content - that is, "proto-Jain," well-sourced, consensus, repeated removal by Starry Pine despite consensus;
removing the traditional core philosophical information about Mahavira, which is a very important part of Jain tradition - bedvijnana; as already explained here and in edit-summaries and at Talk:Mahavira#Bhedvijñān: not a shred of evidence that this was taught by Mahavira. Worse: no WP:RS whatsoever mentions the term;
whenever I restored the sourced version - which sourced version? Starry Pine repeatedly removed sourced information, as already explained;
which gives the impression of coordinated editing -ttanslation: Starry Pine keeps editing against consensus, ignoring WP:RS, and tries the blunt and non-coperative ways to preserve his preferred non-Encyclopedic text;
The content being added - such as terms like “proto-Jain” - represents a Buddhist perspective - what was Pawapuri Winds blocked for?
We haven't yet reached consensus on these points - yes, we have, but Starry Pine keeps warring against it.
Warning issued on @Ixudi's talk page not on your's, because the user has been reverting content aggressively even though consensus has not yet been reached. ~ Starry Pine (talk) 07:32, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You asked for the diff - could you please explain why you removed this content? [12]
You mentioned that "Proto-Jain' was sourced content. While that may be true, adding such material without balance represents a one-sided view.
Per the Buddhist perspective, it may be considered "Proto-Jain,", but from the Jain perspective it is completely rejected.
Moreover, the line is highly controversial. Are you adding it intentionally despite knowing its disputed nature?
Manay sourced also claims that the Buddha is the 9th avatar of Vishnu. per Hindu prospective, that claim exists, but from the Buddhist perspective it is completely rejected.
This is precisely the kind of parallel issue we face here - the statement “Proto-Jain” is similarly controversial from the Jain side.
So how is it fair to include a one-sided or religiously sensitive claim in Jain-related articles while similar claims (like "Buddha as Vishnu’s avatar") would not be allowed on Buddhist pages? Consistency and neutrality should apply equally to all religious topics.
If you believe it is fair to add such statements like "Proto-Jain," then by the same logic, it should also be fair to add that "the Buddha is the ninth avatar of Vishnu," ~~ Starry Pine (talk) 08:08, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What is it you don't understand (WP:DONTGETIT) about Bhedvijnāna: moved to Moksha (Jainism); not a shred of evidence that this was taught by Mahavira? Regarding proto-Jain versus ninth avatar: proto-Jain is a scholarly statement, not a Buddhist belief; ninth avatar is a Hindu-belief, not a scholarly statement. Wikipedia summarizes scholarly publications; it's not the place to defend religious convictions. Joshua Jonathan - Let's talk!08:26, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Blocked. Starry Pine, ignoring my warning here, as well as Phil Bridger's advice that "Any reasonable suspicions of sockpuppetry should be taken to WP:SPI rather than aspersions be cast", you have continued to attack Joshua Jonathan and others above with vague and general accusations (with very few diffs), and to broadly hint that three opponents of yours are coordinating or perhaps socking (instead of drawing the conclusion that several people disagree with you, and that they consequently are the ones who have consensus). I will quote a comment from Joshua Jonathan, a highly experienced editor who you could learn a lot from if you were open to it: " Wikipedia summarizes scholarly publications; it's not the place to defend religious convictions". I have blocked you for 60 hours for persistently uncollaborative editing, assumptions of bad faith, and misuse of sources (frequently removing good sources). Considering the situation, I regard this as a short block. Bishonen | tålk10:06, 12 October 2025 (UTC).[reply]
I just got a pop-up asking me to enable Gemini in Chrome. According to the pop-up, Your page content is shared for more relevant answers. When you use this feature, page content and URLs are sent to Google. I don't know exactly what the means, but it sounds like if I just view a page, the content of that page will be snarfed. This is of particular concern to admins, since we often view material which is private such as deleted or oversighted revisions. Various entities (arbcom, ombuds, U4C, checkusers, etc) maintain their own private wikis which contain highly confidential data. VRTS agents have access to private data. A plain reading of the feature description would lead me to believe that any or all of these will be subject to being ingested by Gemini simply by viewing a page. A frightening concept.
I strongly urge people to not enable this on their browsers. I tend not to be an alarmist about security, but his may be the thing that finally gets me to switch over to Firefox. RoySmith(talk)22:19, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The last time I had done more research into this, Firefox's (ill-conceived as they are) "AI" integrations have been local device only and their off-device stuff required much more than just agreeing to a pop-up. Skynxnex (talk) 00:03, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not only are Apple behind in the AI race (or deliberately taking things slowly), they have their whole marketing schtick about being comparatively better for privacy, so automatically uploading web content to chatbot servers would cause some outrage. ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · email · global) 09:29, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It would be helpful if a couple of WP:UNINVOLVED could get involved at User:Larry Sanger/Nine Theses/User talk:Larry Sanger/Nine Theses. There has been ongoing edit warring about whether or not to include certain information (namely around Yahweh and the list of the names of Arbs/CU/Crats) though consensus seems to be leaning (or perhaps even reached) towards not including either of that disputed content. There is now dispute about whether to include a box noting that this information has been removed and which links to to Sanger's external site which houses the original unmodified version. The essay itself has been full protected a couple of times by a couple of admins, and I have attempted to consolidate discussion about the disputed sections, and also to be clear that there has been no OUTING. While Sanger can't make me INVOLVED in the dispute merely by including my name on a list it would be great if a couple of admin who feel they are well positioned to help guide editors on this essay which has produced a lot of strong feelings helped editors have a productive conversation about the topics and to find consensus about disputed pieces. Thanks and best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:10, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Is SineBot actually a net positive? Its past 500 edits goes back ten days, so about 50 edits a day. Of those 500 edits, 90 have been reverted, which is a time when it's removed the ability to rollback vandalism or unconstructive editing. Of the edits that weren't reverted there are a lot like this. There's also some deleted contribs that admins can see, and a few times SineBot's summary and edit have had to be revdelled. Maybe it's because I spend a lot of time vandal patrolling so close to the only times I see SineBot are when the bot is adding time to removing vandalism or hiding vandalism on my watchlist, but I think the drawbacks outweigh the benefits. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 15:46, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You're brave! I am kind of on the fence with SineBot. I too come across a lot of vandalism 'masking' and obviously, it creates more work when reverting.
I think it is useful for noticeboards where, new users in particularly, forget to sign comments.
I err towards it being a net negative, especially as there are templates to add signatures.
I wonder if these changes would alleviate some of that:
A longer duration between the addition of a comment and the bot signing it (15 minutes? 30? WP:NORUSH), so recent changes patrollers are able to revert/rollback even if they arrive a while after the edit
Not including the unsigned user's username in the edit summary
90 reverted for 500 edits is an atrocious ratio but I'd be interested in seeing if that first change in particular makes a marked difference before binning it altogether. --tony15:55, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This seems like it could address the issue? Alternatively, would it be possible to adjust rollback's functionality so that it can roll through bot edits (or SineBot in particular)? signed, Rosguilltalk15:57, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@TonySt a delay might be better? I would be interested in the opinions of non-vandal fighters as I'm aware that this is a particular annoyance for us but SineBot is helpful in other instances. Knitsey (talk) 16:16, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Is SineBot really required? As Knitesy says, there are templates for signatures. And as for vandalism—n.b. I'm not a vandal hunter, but going by what I see on my watchlist and occasionally encounter—ClueBot NG seems to do a lot more work quite a bit better. [Just checked:] Looking at CB-NGs edits, its last 500 go back less than 24 hours, and at least 300 of them are the latest (unreverted) also reversions (and of the ~20 of those that had been reverted, all had been themselves subsequently reverted by a human editor). —Fortuna, imperatrix16:06, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It is certainly annoying for reverting vandalism (I have encountered issues where it creates more work), but I don't think its a net negative; the 80% of time that it doesn't create issues for vandal hunters, it makes it so another editor doesn't have to place the template on themselves, which I have found to be annoying to do. 45dogs (they/them) (talk page)16:18, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
On the other hand, that's 1.6 million edits that were signed rather benignly (though of course the reverted tag is fairly new so who knows if it's more - I'd wager that a ratio of 80% is about right for non-vandalism even before its introduction). Izno (talk) 17:15, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
WP:BOTN is for discussion on bots and technical implementations, and this seems fixable with a few technical fixes. WP:BOTN (where folks are more accustomed with dealing with bots) also typically asks you to discuss the problem with the bot author (in this case Slackr) before bringing it to a noticeboard (unless it is a urgent matter), which does not appear to have happened here. I think you've jumped the gun here a bit by bringing it to WP:AN. Sohom (talk) 16:41, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
With my WP:BAG hat on, chances are it's better here than WP:BOTN anyway. A discussion at WP:BOTN would be more suited to whether the bot is operating within the terms of its approval and existing consensus, rather than establishing whether consensus exists for a change. OTOH, I appreciate the notification there pointing here. Anomie⚔19:42, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Before mw:Extension:DiscussionTools was implemented, the amount of unsigned comments left by users would have been much higher - if you go back to October 2021, Sinebot seems to have been averaging about 200 edits a day. And going back even further to October 2018 seems to show an average of about 250-300 edits a day. Perhaps Sinebot may not be *as* useful nowadays as it was back then, but I'm not 100% convinced that we'd be better off getting rid of the bot completely. 88.97.192.42 (talk) 16:23, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding it making rollbacks harder, note that Twinkle's vandalism rollback button detects if it's being invoked on trusted bots – which includes SineBot – and actually rolls back the edits of the preceding user in addition to the bot edit. – SD0001 (talk) 16:39, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Do we lose any desirable functionality by telling the bot not to include usernames and the edit-summary of the previous edit in its own edit-summary? Makes revdel/OS accidents far less likely. Vanamonde93 (talk) 16:54, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes! If, like me, you've got a large enough watchlist that you have to disable "Expand watchlist to show all changes, not just the most recent" to fit more than the last few hours onto it, then having an edit by Sinebot pop up saying "(Signing comment by Some random vandal - "Something that needs to revdelled and mailed to oversight right away")" means you'll see it and revdel it and mail it to oversight right away. If it's just "(Signing comment)", and it's on a page that I only intermittently pay attention to, then I may or may not click on the history link at all, let alone promptly. —Cryptic17:42, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've joked about SineBot being a "revdel-nightmare bastard" before, but yes, it does add extra steps when dealing with talk page vandalism that requires revdel. It's not common, but when it does happen it requires extra page history hunting to ensure that SineBot's edits get included. Changing the bot's edit summary to exclude the heading and username of the signed comments would only help if the only revdellable content was the edit summary; more often, the inappropriate content is in the edit itself, meaning the edits from both the initiating user and SineBot need to be revdelled anyway, so there are no real time savings from changing the bot's edit summary.
One solution I can think of is to have the bot wait longer before signing comments. Currently, it waits one minute before signing, to give the user time to sign if they remembered after the fact. On a slow-moving talk page, waiting several more minutes isn't a big deal, and would increase the window of time for reversion and revdel should the need arises. The bot can still be configured to sign immediately on a page-by-page basis, as is currently done at User:SineBot/HighPriority. —k6ka🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 19:45, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm confused at how it helps at hiding vandalism? The edits by the vandal would still appear in recent changes, but clicking 'diff' would simply not show the latest edit that you can revert. For me, it's never been a big deal. Just go to the history and restore a version, simple as. Unless there's something here I'm missing. You can add the unsigned template manually, but let's face it, it is so much work. And how are you expected to find these unsigned comments?? jolielover♥talk03:18, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think people that have their watchlist set to 1) top revision only + 2) hide bot edits can't see the vandalism and therefore don't revert it. –Novem Linguae (talk) 03:23, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just want to go on record in support of SineBot. I've reverted a bunch myself, in a few cases because I forgot to sign and wanted to replace SineBot's with my own. I imagine that accounts for a non trivial number of such reverts. Even if not, however, the harm of 4 unsigned posts (not knowing where one comment begins/ends, throwing off bots/scripts that parse the page, the difficulty of tracking down who said what as time passes, etc.) is greater than the additional moment it takes to revert 1 vandal. It is not something we can reasonably use human labor to do manually. Definitely not opposed to tweaking the timing, though. One thing I don't love is that SineBot includes itself in the wikitext of the responses, which invites corrections. Just add a standard signature to the comment? — Rhododendritestalk \\ 17:10, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Coming to AN without even contacting the guidance in WP:BOTISSUE is rather premature. But since we're having a discussion here, rather than at User talk:Slakr or WP:BOTN, let's at least contact the bot own @Slakr:. As for my own opinion, I find Sinebot very useful, certainly more useful than annoying. Certainly adding missing signatures in discussions, a true pain in the ass, is more valuable than the minor inconvenience of disabling rollback (instead having to undo two edits, or restore a prior version) which remains easy to do manually. A tweak to the bot's behaviour therefore seems preferable to banning it. Whether that's a longuer delay before signing, or better heuritics, I leave to the bot op and others to figure out. Headbomb {t · c · p · b}17:15, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Between having SineBot doing its job, even if it makes non-Twinkle rollback a little harder, and having to manually add {{unsigned}} (even with a script), I'd rather have SineBot. I don't know whether an increased delay would help much; I do know that some have sometimes complained about AnomieBOT even for tasks where it waits some time before editing, but I don't know how many more would with a different delay. Anomie⚔19:51, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think this particular issue would be reasonably well addressed by young the default delay to 10 minutes. Most of the time that this becomes an issue the reverts are fairly quick. If we also drop the edit summaries that fixes part of the other problem. ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 21:12, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think somewhere in the 5-10 minutes range would be a reasonable delay, excluding the exceptions at the high priority list. Anything longer than that timeframe would likely be too slow, and anything smaller risks not being a drastic enough change. Either that or we somehow get all people doing counter vandalism to realize that Twinkle can rollback through bots (which almost certainly can't happen). 45dogs (they/them) (talk page)21:34, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I remember what it was like before we had SineBot (and its predecessor HagermanBot, IIRC that was the first signing bot). People did forget to sign quite often so humans had to history-hunt and use {{subst:unsigned2}} or friends. The bots generally make life more convenient for most users, even if vandalism can get slightly harder to deal with. Experimenting with the delay might be beneficial, but I don't think we should fundamentally re-evaluate the signing bots. —Kusma (talk) 21:34, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
banter aside, in summary: 1) the bot is preferred over manually adding the sign (with the template), by looking for original author, and timestamp in the history. 2) add default delay (other than the control page) before signing the comment. 3) don't include username, and edit summary of the unsigned comment in bot's edit summary. Is there something else? —usernamekiran (talk)22:38, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would support 1,2 not sure about 3 since it (imo) will make harder to scan watchlists for offending material. But to answer the original question, no I don't think you have missed anything. Sohom (talk) 22:55, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's my opinion that SineBot is a net positive. Whenever I see an unsigned comment, I go through the page history and hover over each diff using MediaWiki:Gadget-popups.js until I find the right author, then I go manually add {{subst:Unsigned|Author}}. If SineBot were turned off, I'd be doing this way more often, wasting time that I could be spending on other things. Keep SineBot running, please. –Novem Linguae (talk) 02:26, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It would be helpful to better understand where SineBot has been activated. What percentage of usages is on user talk pages? (Those are presumably activated by the user in question, and we shouldn't be messing around with what they've activated on their talk page without extremely good reason. They put it there for a reason.) How many article talk pages? Wikipedia space talk pages? Are these exceedingly busy pages where the proposed 5-minute delay would create issues? What's the net effect of not including the username in the signature, and why does it make a difference? Let's get a few more facts into the mix before making decisions. Risker (talk) 02:45, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I can easily answer "where" (as could anyone with xtools), and sort of answer how often it's a problem by looking at how many revdeletions and suppressions were performed. quarry:query/97967. I'd have to give more thought on how to determine busy-ness. —Cryptic08:35, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"easily" is a bit more difficult given how xtools won't run on SineBot due to its large edit count (2,566,981 as of this writing!). I pulled a list of the last 5000 edits SineBot made, and here are the namespace counts:
3181 are from mainspace talk pages
1003 are from user talk pages
591 are from the Wikipedia (Project) namespace
5 from Category talk
11 from Draft talk
16 from File talk
10 from Help talk
5 from MediaWiki talk
5 from Portal talk
29 from Template talk
129 from Wikipedia talk (Project talk)
The remaining 15 pages are in the Draft, Template, and mainspace, seemingly there because the initial pages were drafted in a talk namespace by an inexperienced user, which was then later moved into the correct namespace.
@Risker:What percentage of usages is on user talk pages? (Those are presumably activated by the user in question, and we shouldn't be messing around with what they've activated on their talk page without extremely good reason. They put it there for a reason.) Could you clarify what you meant by this? To my understanding, SineBot watches all talk pages, including user talk pages, by default; users don't opt-in to the bot unless they have over 800 edits. —k6ka🍁 (Talk · Contributions) 13:52, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oh. Whoops. Obviously I didn't actually try xtools with SineBot. The query I linked also has total edits by namespace, and percentages, for its sample of the bot's last 51227 edits.I'm not able to do any analysis of the time between SineBot's edits and the next one on the same page. I've tried several approaches, but haven't been able to find one where the optimizer uses the right indices; and since I only have access to the public views on the replicas, I can't force it to. —Cryptic00:57, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Kusma and also remember well the time before automatic signing bots. Unsigned comments are one of my pet peeves on here. Not only do they make attribution more difficult, they also interfere with talk page archiving by Lowercase sigmabot III. Disabling SineBot would make it more likely that I'd have to make edits like this. Graham87 (talk) 12:16, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly, I'm interested in why/how folks are leaving unsigned comments especially when DiscussionTools autosigns comments anyway. Sohom (talk) 12:41, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Whenever people edit a section on a talk page without DiscussionTools (for example because DiscussionTools does not work on that page), they need to remember to sign manually. As the reply tool signs automatically, many people forget that they need to sign, so I would expect that the proportion of unsigned comments among non-DT contributions is actually increasing. —Kusma (talk) 18:21, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Pages by convention using lists for discussion are notably unable to use DT for top level items. XFD and most kinds of RFC are notable examples. IznoPublic (talk) 14:31, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Wild thought - adding {{Unsigned}} correctly is certainly tedious, so is there any way Twinkle or some gadget could put an option for it in the revision history or diff display? NebY (talk) 12:29, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
1. I was in a mood to make Wikipedia, back then, an interconnected place, by linking related articles or videos (of which some are still up too this day: Aftermath (2010 TV series)), without realizing the dumb implications, which I took as personal attack, which in hindsight is dumb.
2. I had a notion of thinking, I was making Wikipedia more interconnected to itself, which I made useless edit links. I was and am wrong. As my edit debacle in Native American genocide notes. (I dropped my edit war, when we reached a favorable compromise)
3. I’ve learned to leave / back off from overzealous liking & to be careful with what I link, and decided to switch to formatting, and allow other more experienced editors, do the actual proper writing. KaijuEditor (talk) 03:06, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
While it would have been better to get a direct admission of sockpuppetry in the unblock request, I'm inclined to look past that given that they never made any effort to hide being a sockpuppet account, and that it's been nearly a decade since the initial incident. While I do take some pause at the recent edit warring, I think this unblock request does a good job of reflecting on past edits, and would thus support unblocking. signed, Rosguilltalk17:20, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd also support unblocking. It's been almost 10 years now, people change, and they seem to be sincere. They can always be imediately reblocked if they misbehave. — The Anome (talk) 17:25, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Support If the admins who have interacted with this editor in the past are arguing to give them more ROPE, I'll support their reasoning as well. LizRead!Talk!21:38, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I did the checkuserblock (Special:Block/God's_Godzilla), and I'm fine with this provided they keep their promise to edit constructively in good faith in future. In particular, they should pick a single account and stick to it; further sockpuppeting is not acceptable. I'll unblock them now. KaijuEditor: welcome back to Wikipedia. — The Anome (talk) 07:45, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Deleting request for Andrew Lowe (scientist) and Andrew Lowe (astronomer)
Wow tha is a double redirect! I don't think either should be deleted but the one with the (scientist) disambiguator needs to not point to the one with (astronomer) 212.70.111.8 (talk) 06:38, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Following these incidents, the user has been covertly inserting Original Research into passages previously written by other users with proper sources.
[13][14][15][16]
You haven't even been an editor for one day and you are already bringing editors up on charges at WP:AN. What previous accounts have you used to edit this project? It is very unusual behavior for a day old account to even be familiar with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Please provide some context for understanding your case here because I doubt you stumbled upon this IP editor on your first day editing Wikpedia. LizRead!Talk!23:30, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Since I am from a foreign language Wikipedia, I am familiar with Wikipedia policies. I registered with a separate account to conceal my nationality/origin. Does the English Wikipedia have a guideline stating that users from other language Wikipedias must use the same account? Aren't different-language Wikipedias treated as separate sites? I question whether there is any reason I should have to disclose my nationality. The English Wikipedia's content influences other language Wikipedias. However, I have not cited any guidelines from a foreign-language Wikipedia on the English Wikipedia. Could you please show me which policy or guideline I might have violated? Otyuso23 (talk) 13:00, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If I have not violated any guidelines, I would like to ask the administrator the following questions:
Is the English Wikipedia considered the superordinate authority over other language Wikipedias?
Is a user from another language Wikipedia required to report their membership or activity to the English Wikipedia administrators upon joining?
Must users disclose their country of origin to English Wikipedia administrators when registering an account here?
User 116.49.190.96 is accessing Wikipedia from Hong Kong, not the United States. Furthermore, this is simply one non-English speaking user filing a report against another non-English speaking user. I have not filed a report against an American user. Otyuso23 (talk) 13:33, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Otyuso23, what steps did you take to resolve the issue before coming here? The answers to your questions are no, no, no and no, but they seem totally irrelevant, as does any talk of Hong Kong and the United States. The US is just one country where English is spoken; others include Hong Kong and, well, England. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:55, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Procedural concern about SPI closure handled by a CheckUser
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Dear colleagues,
I’d like to raise a procedural concern about the handling of my SPI request related to User:Incall, which was closed by a CheckUser.
The case was closed with this note:
"Closing without action. There is absolutely no way that Incall and 10gok are related. The comparison is so unlikely that I am declining to investigate any of the others. Please do not use ChatGPT to write SPI reports."
I think that the way the request was handled may not have followed the standard procedure under WP:SPI and WP:CHECKUSER.
No CheckUser review was performed — the decision was made solely on a behavioural assessment, even though WP:CHECKUSER allows declines only when there is clearly insufficient behavioural evidence.
I was specifically asked by CoffeeCrumbs to provide more diffs, but before I could add them, the SPI page was protected. WP:SPI says editors should have a fair opportunity to provide evidence before a case is closed.
The phrasing “absolutely no way” comes across as a personal judgment rather than a procedural determination.
I understand that CheckUsers have to make quick calls, but in this case, it appears the process may have skipped a few expected steps.
I would appreciate if could take a look and confirm whether this closure was consistent with established SPI procedures.
To begin with, you don't know whether CU review was performed, or any behavioural review in addition to your evidence. As for your quote, it both does not exist on your linked page, and is plainly wrong. As written in Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/SPI/Guide to filing cases, "Ultimate discretion to use or not use the tool in any matter... remains solely with individual CheckUsers." A policy-violating check is not excused by "someone asked me to".
SPI clerks and CheckUsers have plenary power over WP:SPI. As mentioned in the log, asilvering protected the page to rein in the arguing between yourself and the reportee. Personally I would have given both of you final warnings, but asilvering is well within their right.
That's subjective. I didn't read it as such.
Asilvering looked at the SPI, determined there was no indication of sockpuppetry, and closed the case. I don't see anything wrong with that. I find the allegations of tagteaming in your post scriptum here and at AN/I inappropriate, as well as the aspersions against Incall. DatGuyTalkContribs10:51, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If I was more available to answer questions, I would have just blocked you for a week for dragging personal disputes into SPI and wasting people's time with a vendetta, but I'm not. Maybe another admin will. Right now, you are just forum shopping, and clearly your actions have become disruptive. Dennis Brown - 2¢11:17, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's AI output again, and it hallucinated strange alleged requirements for declining checkuser requests. This is why Gocturk had been asked multiple times, in the quoted message and on their talk page, to stop relying on AI in this way. I have now blocked them from editing, and they can probably return if they manage to write an unblock request explaining an understanding of the problem in their own words. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 13:25, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
(edit conflict) Neither. "Free content" refers to the ability to use, reuse, and distribute the content minimal legal or technological restriction. It doesn't mean free of cost ("free beer"), but it also doesn't mean freedom of expression ("free speech"). That said, the "free" part in both "free content" and "free speech" is more similar, both being more libre rather than the gratis of "free beer". But that doesn't mean "free content" and "free speech" are the same, and trying to describe them that way because of the shared libre concept would be misleading. Anomie⚔14:10, 12 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The Arbitration Committee received a report relating to acute and long-term wikihounding and harassment by Rager7 (talk·contribs) towards Knightoftheswords281 (talk·contribs), which included private information as part of the contextual evidence presented.
Following the completion of an investigation into the report and the public and private evidence provided, the Committee has passed the following motion:
Sections inactive for over seven days are archived by Lowercase sigmabot III.(archives, search)
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You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals) § RFC: Should we equalize/remove the difference in autoconfirmed time between non-Tor and Tor users, which is within the scope of this WikiProject. Sohom (talk) 17:43, 12 October 2025 (UTC)