Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents

Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents
This page is for urgent incidents or chronic, intractable behavioral problems. Before posting: Read these tips for dealing with incivility If the issue concerns a specific user, try discussing it with them on their talk page Try dispute resolution Just want an admin? Contact a recently active admin directly. Be brief and include diffs demonstrating the problem Do not report breaches of personal information on this highly visible page – instead go to Requests for oversight. When starting a discussion about an editor, you must leave a notice on their talk page; pinging is not enough. You may use {{subst:ANI-notice}} ~~~~ to do so. Closed discussions are usually not archived for at least 24 hours. Routine matters might be archived more quickly; complex or controversial matters should remain longer. Sections inactive for 72 hours are archived automatically by Lowercase sigmabot III. Editors unable to edit here are sent to the /Non-autoconfirmed posts subpage. (archives, search)
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Wikipedia:Verifiability

Discussion moved to /WP:V RFC. Timestamp changed to future until the discussion is over. Alexandria (talk) 15:50, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

• Well, this move was made just after I made a comment that I intended to be on ANI. I hope, at least, that those who are paying attention will continue to watch the new page. --Tryptofish (talk) 15:58, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Closing the RfC at WP:V (a preemptive request)

OK... we are now at 30 days (remember, October had 31 days)... we don't have to close yet, but we could close today if we want to. I could close it myself (as the initiator of the RfC), except that I have certainly been heavily involved (far more than Sarek was) and I don't want give anyone (on either side of the debate) grounds to object to the closure when it happens and cause more unneeded drama. Given the tensions and general bad faith that has permeated the discussion recently, I think we need the closer to be someone who not only is neutral, but also has the appearance of neutrality. That means someone who has not commented at all. So... I thought I would ask...who is going to close it? I would like to announce who it will be, so we don't get a drama fest of closures and unclosures and counter closures when it happens. Blueboar (talk) 01:57, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• Looks messy! 115.64.182.73 (talk) 08:28, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
• You need 3 closers to reach an agreed outcome to avoid further drama. Not me.. :-) Spartaz ^Humbug! 07:34, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

  Valid idea... although I don't think anyone involved would insist on 3 closers. The point is, a) the closer(s) should be someone who has not yet commented, b) have the clout that comes with admin status so the decision (what ever it may be) is accepted, and c) we need to inform those who have commented who the closer(s) will be (along with a polite request that those involved not add to the drama by closing it themselves). So... could we get some volunteers please. Blueboar (talk) 12:59, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

  I assume you didn't read ANI recently, as we have an ANI subpage devoted to this now. Over there at least 3 admins have volunteered to close it: User:HJ Mitchell, User:Newyorkbrad and User:Black Kite. I personally think a triumvirate closure, like recently on the China RFC is a good idea, but I will leave it to the admins in question to work this out amongst themselfs. I am curious where you got the idea that the an iniator of an RFC should close it? The iniator is by definition heavily involved, so that is always a bad idea. Yoenit (talk) 15:41, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Yoenit. That is all I needed to know (I too am happy to leave the rest up to the admins in question). I got the idea that an initiator could close from reading the instructions at WP:RFC. Perhaps I have misunderstood. Doesn't really matter since I was not planning on doing so in any case. Blueboar (talk) 15:53, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

User talk:Ludwigs2 on Talk:Muhammad/images

A little background: Talk:Muhammad/images is a special talk page created to deal with the large number of editors who come to complain about showing depictions of Muhammad on the Muhammad article, due mostly to religious considerations. Consensus has been decided on multiple occasions that images of Muhammad are acceptable on the page, this has been truly exhaustively discussed in the past as you can tell by the large disclaimer on the top of the talk page, and by reading the archives. This does not mean that consensus cannot change, but it's unlikely and doesn't seem to be happening now.

Furthermore, WP:NOTCENSORED is unambiguous when it states "Any rules that forbid members of a given organization, fraternity, or religion to show a name or image do not apply to Wikipedia because Wikipedia is not a member of those organizations."

User talk:Ludwigs2 has made it goal recently to strip the article of images of Muhammad on the basis that it offends Muslims. It is true that some sects of Islam consider it unethical to depict Muhammad as I'm sure most people here know.

It has been explained ad nauseum to Ludwig that policy does not allow us to consider religious beliefs when writing this encyclopedia and his response is that we should invoke WP:IAR. I explained to him that IAR still needs to be determined by a consensus and that he cannot unilaterally invoke it to force a POV into the article. His response was that other editors are abusing the rules by enforcing them and if we stop abusing the rules then he will stop IAR.

This conversation has been going back and forth with the same points being explained by several editors many times, and it has now crossed the WP:TE line - the entire page is one large WP:BATTLEGROUND at this point, with several WP:IDHT, WP:NPA and WP:AGF issues such as accusing all the other editors opposing removal (which as far as I can tell is all other editors, though there are editors who would like less images for various reasons) of WP:OWN and expressing disbelief that the people he's dealing with can think the way they do and still be normal adults.

I'm asking that an uninvolved admin assess the situation and determine if Lugwigs2 requires some kind of a warning or if I'm being overly dramatic, and I thank you in advance for reading the talk page thread because it is a bit long.

The relevant thread is here. I'm not posting diffs because the entire thread demonstrates the points I am attempting to illustrate, as it's not a single comment that is at issue here. There are other threads involved in this discussion, but this is the most recent and best highlights my complaint.

N^oformation ^Talk 01:11, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

This was bound to hit the AN/I fan sooner or later, just one massive Facepalm. If I may offer a pre-rebuttal to what Ludwigs2 is like about to touch on here, neither I nor IMO anyone else asserts ownership of the Muhammad article. I have said "images will not be removed this article" as a simple acknowledgement of the slim-to-none chance that it would ever actually happen. It's like saying "Ron Paul will never be President" or "the Bills will never win the Super Bowl". One is not staking out an aggressive posture against either scenario taking place, but is rather acknowledging the likelihood of occurrence, or lack thereof. It has also been endlessly frustrating to deal with a user who demands existing policy be bent in an absolutely wrong direction to accommodate someone's religious beliefs. And not even a specific someone, all of this is in defense of nebulous "some people out there don't like this article" sensibilities. Tarc (talk) 01:34, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I have said similar and have elaborated in the same way. The article can certainly change if a consensus to do so is formed, but it will not be done based on religious considerations and the chances of the article being depiction free are slim. This is not asserting ownership. N^oformation ^Talk 01:37, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I believe the term you're looking for is "Slim to none, and Slim left town". - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 01:43, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

A very very tiny portion of the diffs of behavior related to this can be found here[1] (this was for an AN/I or RfC/U I planned on filing but am still working on organizing and moving the diffs over from an offline copy). Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 01:42, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Just noting that I am aware of this thread, and to clarify some misperceptions in Nofo's presentation. beyond that I will allow administrtors to review the material before commenting further.

comments on Nofo's summary:

• I am not trying to "strip the article of images of Muhammad on the basis that it offends Muslims." As I have said repeatedly on the talk page, I want to undertake a frank evaluation of the value of these images to the article to see if keeping them is worth all the immense amounts of trouble that they cause. as Nofo noted, there is a special subpage (with 16 archives) all focused on these images; one would expect the images to be of vital importance to the page for all of that conflict, yet as far as I can tell they are at best decorative illustrations. That struck me as nonsensical - why cause this much trouble over eye-candy?
• Nofo and Tarc have (understandably) downplayed the extent of wp:page ownership. I have had at least four editors (including one admin) tell me bald-face that the images will not be removed under any circumstances, and that any discussion of the matter is unacceptable (two most reacent examples [2],[3], though there are dozens) I have consequently been forced to turn to wp:IAR simply to get any sort of discussion going.
  • The IAR justification, incidentally, is over the misuse of NOTCENSORED: the policy is being used to retain images that have no particular value to the article but are highly controversial - effectively offending a significant population of our readers and damaging the project's reputation without any overriding encyclopedic reason.

please review the talk page at your leisure; happy to answer any questions. Hopefully this can be resolved without further drama on the page. --Ludwigs2 01:44, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

P.s. this has been cast as being about me, but there are at least two other editors in the discussion making similar arguments to mine who have not been notified. I will leave notices in their talk (I don't want to involve them unless they choose to participate here). --Ludwigs2 01:52, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

That is so very not true, and I can provide faaaar more diffs to prove it's not than the tiny handful in the link I posted above. Shall I? ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 01:49, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I very clearly said "without a consensus for your position, these images will not be removed" in that diff, I seriously doubt anyone will read that as ownership. N^oformation ^Talk 01:52, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia editors insist on calling the Bible stories fairy tales, without concern for offense to Jewish and Christian believers. What's so special about Muslims, that they should be catered to? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 01:50, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Fairy tales? In mainspace? Do we? --FormerIP (talk) 01:55, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Yes. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:19, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Example? I rather think we tolerate highly biased articles making out that Jesus' existence is uncontested historical fact and stuff like that. Not that this supports Ludwigs2's case. --FormerIP (talk) 02:23, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Bugs: when it comes right down to it, I don't really care who gets offended, so long as the project has a valid, encyclopedic reason to do the offending. If we need controversial material, we use controversial material, but do we really want to be throwing controversial material in our readers' faces for no reason whatsoever? see the recent foundation resolution on controversial content. --Ludwigs2 02:00, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• Wow, at AN/I, you actually decided to make such a claim, even though diffs to prove your true motivations and feelings on this matter are right here for all to see? (to everyone else) This is why I think nothing short of a topic ban is going to stop the tendentiousness, disruptiveness and editing in bad faith (not to mention erroneous claims of being attacked while attacking others). In my opinion, that entire comment shows a bad faith response as can be noted from over a dozen diffs showing (in his own words) it is not his true motivations. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 05:47, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Considering that depictions of Muhammed are usually verboten, their mere presence is of major educational benefit here. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 02:19, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

That's a ridiculous argument, Bugs. Here's a gratuitous and excessive counterexample of something that is offensive but we have no educational mission to include. The concept that we should include offensive material just because no one else will host it is jaw-droppingly silly. SDY (talk) 03:07, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

And that's a ridiculously, jaw-droppingly silly, and thoroughly bogus comparison. Unless you're aware of some American law restricting depictions of Muhammed. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:10, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

In other words, you think we should include kiddie porn if the laws of Florida didn't say no? Maybe we should include the goatse.cx image for its "educational value"? Including gratuitous offensive images is tasteless and crude: if they have clear educational value that should be easy to defend. Including them for the sake of some twisted sense of entitlement about freedom from censorship is not writing an encyclopedia. SDY (talk) 03:17, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

For quite some time we did include the goatse.cx image, first the image itself, and then a screenshot of the website with the image clearly visible. The arguments for the inclusion of that image were much better than those for the Muhammad images, and it didn't get finally removed before Jimbo got involved. Hans Adler 07:46, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

If there's an alternate universe where kiddie porn isn't universally condemned as wrong and depraved, and is instead accepted, and if there's a wikipedia in that universe, they'd probably have kiddie porn in their article. The comparison is way too weak because of all the fundamentally unique issues that apply to child pornography that don't apply to almost anything else. Interestingly, I don't particularily think that a category exists whose members are "child porn, goatse.cx and the religious prophet Muhammad". N^oformation ^Talk 03:20, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Images that might be taken as extremely offensive, perhaps? The complete cultural blindness of this site is shocking sometimes. We have very different ideas about encyclopedias. Regardless, this isn't the place for this conversation. SDY (talk) 03:31, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Re: "cultural blindess" - good thing too, if it weren't culturally blind, it would be a very shitty encyclopedia, especially with all the various interests that have tried subverting article after article. My time here at RC has proven that to me. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 05:52, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• Comment. There's no way I'm reading through all the material here, major case of tl;dr, but I would suggest to Ludwig that his reasoning is dubious when he argues that a possibly valid reason to remove images from said article is simply because they are causing more trouble than they are worth, when it is he who is causing most of the trouble. I agree with the original poster that an uninvolved admin might perhaps need to have a chat with Ludwig and possibly issue a warning. This discussion has truly been done to death at a variety of locations on wikipedia, and I really think it's time for Ludwig to let this issue go. Basalisk ^{inspect damage}⁄_berate 02:07, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I had a read through of the entire section myself to get to grips with the situation. Wrt to the point raised re ownership, I didn't see any particular signs of it. I read the various "these pictures will never be removed" comments as "these pictures will never be removed based on the position you are taking". Frankly speaking, all I read was the same argument repeated over and over again until it was escalated into heel digging and declarations of applying IAR ad nauseam until the pictures were removed for the sake of the sensibilities of religious hysterics. --Blackmane (talk) 02:17, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I cannot believe this was brought here. Ludwigs2 is not just repeating the same arguments over and over again. The most recent round of discussion was kicked off by the resolution recently passed by the WMF on controversial content. Raising the issue here on Wikipedia with what are very easily our most "controversial images" was fully acceptable. In response, Ludwigs has been met with abuse and vitriol. Ludwigs eventually decided to pursue an RfC (supported by myself, Anthonyhcole, and others); a number of regular editors (Tarc is the worst, but also Robertmfromli) have made strong attempts to stop the RfC. When a group of editors attempt to assert that their understanding of policy is so obviously correct and their opponents are so obviously wrong that we shouldn't even ask for the community's input, that is the very definition of ownership. Now, I will admit that Ludwigs2 is on the extreme end, and the chances of his preferred outcome (i.e., no pictorial images whatsoever) is essentially a no-go, but Anthonyhcole has done a very good job of pointing out that there is a middle ground here that needs to be considered (i.e., that by including so many images from a very narrow time period and fairly narrow interpretation of Islam we are in fact violating WP:UNDUE). WP:CENSORSHIP is fine, but it is being used as a bludgeon on that page, as if its very existence means that anyone who even considers removal of any images there is nothing other than a Sunni apologist. My opinion is, once we settle on a wording, we need to let the RfC run. If it turns out (as is likely) to support the extremist "all images are good position", then fine--of course, Ludwigs2 and any other editor must be free to pursue further dispute resolution. That has really been my position all along: that a group of editors are essentially trying to prevent dispute resolution due to their sense of their own unerring interpretation of policy. Qwyrxian (talk) 04:35, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• Qwyrxian: Me? I tried stopping the RfC? Are you truly serious? I kindly ask you to review the page history. I was willing to give up[4][5] because of Ludwigs2's actions, but I *NEVER* tried stopping it. The exact opposite is true. *I* restarted it THREE times[6][7][8] and *I* made the only proposal that had any chance at getting any images removed (other than you tacking virtually the same proposal onto proposal #5). So, would you like to retract that claim that I tried stopping the RfC? And apologies for the bolded text, but your claim is so vastly different than what really happened. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 06:05, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
• Qwyrxian: Apologies for any tone you may read into that. That page is a massive mess, and I am sure you simply missed the things I pointed out above. I am upset about such a claim being made against me, but I know (from seeing you around for a long time) that it's nothing more than not having gotten a handle on that massive walls-o-text talk page. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 06:14, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

This AN/I is about Ludwig's behavior, not the content discussion. There may be a middle ground and that's fine but in the meantime Ludwig has made personal attacks, assigned motives to other editors and yes, has repeated the same argument regarding offending Muslims over and over again to the point of WP:TE. He is yet to make a policy based argument against WP:NOTCENSORED, which specifically rules out using religious belief as a valid criteria of building the pedia. Instead he invokes IAR, which he would not need to do if policy was on his side. Yes there have been edits by editors who share my view on the images that made me cringe, I didn't find their behavior bad enough to take to AN/I, but if you do then by all means open up a case. However, in what you wrote above all you did was point to the behavior of others and not that of Ludwigs. Please see some of the diffs below. N^oformation ^Talk 04:44, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Just to add to this, I have absolutely no problem with an RFC nor do I oppose changes to the way images in the article are handled, and I don't think other editors do either. The problem people have is that we cannot make a case based on Ludwig's reasoning that it offends religious beliefs. Other arguments are fine. I brought this thread here so that an uninvolved admin can step in and calm the waters - not to stifle discussion or stop DR. N^oformation ^Talk 04:49, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I find Ludwigs2's arguments quite sensible, and am more inclined to the view that there are a number of editors opposing Ludwigs2 who are overinvolved on that page, and who are turning this into a battleground over principle. I am still trying to get up to speed with the subject matter, but as far as I can make out, pictorial representations of Muhammad have never been as common and widespread in Muslim traditions as pictorial representations of Christ in the Christian tradition, for example; so the basic situation is a completely different one. We should focus on the most common types of representation (calligraphy etc.), just as we focus on the most typical depictions of Jesus in his article. Even among such pictorial depictions of Muhammad as did exist, the majority showed him as a flame, or veiled; yet most of the pictures we feature are those of the rarer naturalistic type – so they are both unrepresentative and more likely to cause offence. If we keep in mind that we should balance educational value and potential offence, the only reasonable conclusion is that we have far too many naturalistic images of Muhammad in the article. Perhaps one veiled one, and one showing him as a flame, might be reasonable, because these are the common styles. It might also make sense to look at how other encyclopaedias are handling this; Britannica for example does not include any images of Muhammad at all, as far as I can see; neither in the Micropaedia and Macropaedia articles on Muhammad, nor in the Macropaedia article on Islamic art (which is mostly non-pictorial). We'll probably need an RfC on the content issue at some point, and that should be well-prepared, and underpinned by serious research. --JN466 05:07, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

There are many arguments to be made on the article's talk page, but one of them is not that it's against Islamic tradition. And again, this is about Ludwig's behavior, not the content dispute. N^oformation ^Talk 05:13, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, as someone who has only happened on this page this past week, I see lots of "I didn't hear that" and aspersions from the other side as well, rather than an effort to seek compromise and consensus. I think everybody on that page needs a cooling-off period. (By the way, note WP:NAUSEUM.) And to address the point of tradition, I think we can agree that naturalistic depictions of Muhammad are rare, and nowhere near representative of how Muhammad is represented in Islamic tradition. --JN466 05:27, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

A small portion of Ludwigs2 behavior and comments

• Engages community in attempt to remove images based on Foundation resolution[9]
• Very next post, claims (in edit summary) "the astonishment is general, not a function or religion"[10] yet the only known objection is religious beliefs.
• One justification repeatedly trumped out is "[...]and since none of the images of the prophet presented on the page are factual[...]"[11] (one of many diffs) - yet refuses to believe that such would apply to pictures of Euro-Jesus - while admitting it is because people aren't (religiously) offended by such.[12] thus indicating (again and again) the real issue is one of religious offense and not whether the images are "factual".
• Earlier admits his motivations are religious in nature[13] - continues to do so, such as[14]
• VERY early on, starts accusing those who he disagrees with of having a prejudicial tone[15] - they cite policy and it's uniform use, he calls their tone "prejudicial"
• He suggests an RfC[16], which gets given actual attention and yet two days later tries end runs around an RfC that obviously won't remove every image of Muhammad by attempting to remove one editor using WQA[17], and an attempted an end run at ArbCom hinting at our behavior (with diffs) while claiming that isn't part of it[18] (diff to final post on proposed ArbCom case so entire thread can be viewed). During this ArbCom end run attempt, he tries pointing out a "deep ideological divide in the community" by pointing out a Village Pump proposal that shows the exact opposite.[19]
• (Also) DURING the attempt to formulate an RfC to address such concerns, those with opposing viewpoints and vastly different understanding of policy than him are labeled (by him) as showing or having a bias, not AGF, incivility, anti-Muslim sentiments, personal attacks (against him), etc,[20][21][22]
• Advises he will continue[23] to bring up what amounts to policy changes in the wrong venue. Advised he should go to the right venue[24]. Obviously refuses by actions (see talk page) and again repeats (after being told by multiple editors that it's getting tendentious (and disruptive))[25][26][27]^{(and plenty more)} that he will continue to do so anyway, even after acknowledging the correct venue (and even responding with "tenacious" once in response to claims of his "tendentious"ness) [28][29]

Added by ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 01:51, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

We need to limit this discussion to Ludwigs2's behavior. We *really* don't want to hash out the image controversy here as it's one that will never achieve consensus anyway. Rklawton (talk) 02:29, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

It achieved consensus long ago (that a few images stay) and has had it ever since. What it will never achieve is universal agreement, but that's not the same thing. Johnbod (talk) 04:25, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed, I was just about to post the same thing. N^oformation ^Talk 02:33, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed as well, but in fairness to Ludwigs, we need to limit it to everyone's behaviour, even if I echo others in believing that he himself is responsible for nearly all of the conflict. Now, onto the point, I won't repeat everything RobertM has said, but I have a collection of links myself that echos those. The one I will leave is typical of his behaviour on that talk page: "...the extravagant effort I see dumped into defending these trivial images is only explainable by deep-seated anti-Islamic prejudice." This was from last weekend, but he has made several similar accusations of bigotry and racism, the most recent of which I saw was from yesterday. That is pretty much his MO. We need to remove images of "the prophet" because some Muslims are offended, and therefore anyone who does not support his goal of censoring the article must be a bigot. He has been tendentious in the extreme and routinely makes bad-faith arguments against his opponents. Resolute 03:53, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Cannot but agree that Ludwigs has been speculating on the motives of editors at that page and he should stop. Ludwigs2 is by no means the only offender. I would very much appreciate it if all the editors on that page would apply WP:TALK. It is extremely tedious trying to engage in rational argument when every fifth paragraph seems to be about editor behaviour or speculations about motive, from every direction. It draws out the process and just makes people dig in their heels. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 04:29, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree. The whole recent discussion on that page seems to have degenerated into battleground mode. I would not want to lay the responsibility for that at any one individual editor's doorstep. --JN466 05:22, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I believe we are on our 5th attempt at an RfC (which ironically he proposed and tried to circumvent). I even proposed an RfC that actually had a chance of getting an image or three removed (the "all or none" ones we know wouldn't change anything, and Ludwigs' written or implied as "none or none" ones weren't going to happen). If that's not a compromise, I don't know what is. Worse yet, there isn't anything else that can be compromised on in that venue. The rest require policy changes or policy addendums - where, on well over a dozen occasions, Ludwigs2 was suggested to go. We can't change nor ignore WP:CENSOR. At least 4 times, a viable compromise in the form of an RfC that may have removed some images was proposed.

And finally, the rest of us don't really need to cool off. We just don't need tendentiousness and every RfC attempt turned into a circus of repeated IAR claims and repeated claims of (grossly paraphrased) "ooh, you attacked me again!" I disagree with various of your points, yet you and I are going back and forth in good faith with points and counter-points and listening to each other. Same with other editors.

Yes, it's been difficult for us to ignore Ludwigs2, and I think all of us have tried, and most of us have failed... but ignoring him doesn't work either. And I've got pages of history in the talk page archives - plus the current page - to prove that. Simply responding to each other (as you and I have been doing) results in walls of the "Policy Whack A Mole" game, accusations towards other editors, single purpose IAR rants, and so on. I'll gladly do no more than provide a link to the Village Pump each time from now on, so the rest of us can discuss... but, at this point, the number of accusations and attacks on editors from him has gotten ridiculous, as has the tendentiousness and disruptiveness. I personally think he's long overdue for a topic ban. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 05:42, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Rob, this is a complex issue. It will take time for calm rational discussion to arrive at an idea of the best way forward, if indeed anything needs to be done. There is no hurry. The only problem I see at that page is a tendency for many editors, of every persuasion, to allow themselves to be sidetracked into ad hominem. You can ignore ad hominem. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 05:52, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Anthony, you are correct. And my apologies, if my frustrations at others ever got misplaced and misdirected at you or anyone else. Best, Rob ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 06:14, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

My OPINION: Summary of this whole event

This was intended to be part of the AN/I I held off filing and was to go with the diffs I provided above and below. It has been modified to note the two locations of the diffs, as I never finished moving them from off-Wiki to my userspace)

(diffs representative of most or all of this are already posted here) When it comes to removal of the images, whether one or all or something inbetween, there are two camps involved:

1. One camp which wishes to discuss the merit (historic, educational and artistic value to the article) of each image (or the images as a whole).
2. One editor (Ludwigs2) who wishes to see them all removed based on religious objections to them. It seems that if those in "Camp #1" make what he perceives are compelling arguments, he tries that road for a short period of time. Everyone else starts discussing such with them in good faith, but as soon as it looks like there is pressure against any part of any such proposal, he tends to revert to various policy Whack A Mole type arguments based on religious objections to the images for summary removal of all of them, including suggesting an RfC that asked or implied (paraphrased) "remove all for this reason, or remove all for this reason".

It is at that point where things continue to spiral out of control. Multiple attempts have been made to restart discussions, but the end result is always the same. I can provide diffs to various such conversations where those at odds with Ludwigs2's actions were working in good faith with those in "Camp #1" - and where he sidetracked things for his single minded objective. Due to his preliminary support of some of these (before he reverts to his true objective), a person only giving the page a quick read may come to a grossly wrong conclusion about his objectives as he himself (diff below in response to Anthony, many more available) had admitted is his goal.

This is just my perceptions of the matter, with diffs in the section above I created, as well as below to support my interpretation. Your's may vary (or not). Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 08:20, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

My take on this whole thing is that Ludwigs2 wants a clear interpretation of the ArbCom resolution reflected in Wikipedia's existing policies. As a precisionist Wikipedian myself, this is something I agree with. The problem is that Ludwigs2 picked the wrong venue, perhaps to use as a test case, but nevertheless it's the wrong place to build a consensus regarding fundamental interpretations of policy.

At this point, after the same arguments have been stated over and over again, I would agree that Ludwigs2's persistence in the wrong venue has crossed the line into tendentiousness. ~Amatulić (talk) 14:08, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I took the fact that the resolution was already incorporated into WP:CENSOR with the religious censorship section left intact as the community's interpretation. I'd gladly see through such an endeavor for clarity, if you believe such is really needed. On the other side of the coin though, Ludwigs2 (I have the diffs, and can provide them later if you would like) started out at that article by removing images, caused drawn out debates about removing images, tried policy Whack-A-Mole to remove images, tried RfC attempts to remove images, tried a Village Pump proposal to remove images (was that one another end run attempt at an ongoing RfC?), and when pushed, repeatedly admits it's religious based objections at the core of his argument - hence my interpretation of his motives is different. Even with the very very unamibguous wording that was left in WP:CENSOR, it seemed more Policy-Whack-A-Mole time again. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 15:20, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

After re-reading much of the discussion (there's a good chunk of my life I'll sadly never get back), I have to concur with RobertMfromLI's summary--Ludwigs2 does keep reverting back to the same argument over and over. If Ludwigs2 wants to use that argument in the upcoming RfC, that is fine; however, there's no point in continuing to bring it up over and over again when xe knows that the current local consensus is opposed to that position. Right now, Ludwigs2 should be focused only on helping phrase the RfC itself, then xe can add whatever additional points xe wants to it. Qwyrxian (talk) 02:57, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Quick question (sorry it is my first AN/I) should we continue to report any behavioral problems or should we let the matter lie while people look things up? Since I have noticed several times since we started this that personal attacks are continuing. Tivanir2 (talk) 22:26, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Topic Ban Proposal

• Topic ban? Ludwigs2 seems to be behaving no differently on this article than he has on astrology, pregnancy and acupuncture. (On Men's rights, it seems that his presence provides a useful counterfoil to some of the newly arrived editor-activists.) Almost all his contributions to the discussion on the image subpage appear to be outside wikipedia policy; and he still has not succeeded in finding a way to engage with other users who do not share his opinions, without causing offense. In this case, he has been shifting between several different lines of argument in a way which makes it very hard to see whether he has any coherent objections beyond WP:IDONTLIKETHAT. My suggestion is that, since he seems intent on producing more heat than light and at the same time causing offense, his presence on that talk page is purely disruptive and not a net positive for the project. Perhaps the best way foward is for Ludwigs2 to be topic banned from all discussions of images on wikipedia for a preliminary period of six months. (On astrology, he was topic-banned for six months.) Mathsci (talk) 06:02, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• Sadly, Support VERY VERY STRONG SUPPORT I tried avoiding going to this forum for quite some time (hence I never even finished adding diffs to the report I started in my userspace), but I think we are at the point this is the only viable option. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 06:14, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• After a bad faith RfC just created today,[30] I am now inclined to change my "Sadly, Support" to "VERY STRONG SUPPORT" - as pointed out by another editor, the RfC is biased to the point it is worded similar to "When did you stop beating your wife?" This needs to stop. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 03:40, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. Ludwigs2 is needed to balance the POV of that article. It is striking how the illustrations of our article on Jesus are fully consistent with and celebratory of Christian tradition, while the illustrations in our article on Muhammad are not only inconsistent with Islamic tradition, but actually offensive to many muslim readers. That should give anyone just a moment's pause for thought about the neutrality that this project aspires to, and the extent to which we have achieved that lofty aim. --JN466 06:44, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• As a brief aside, I've paused for a moment, and come to the conclusion that we're not necessarily hearing from a representative portion of the Muslim community, since we tend not to hear from Muslims who actually like the images there; kind of a "planes that crash" problem. I won't try to bring the discussion at Talk:Muhammad/images here, but to briefly state; I know many Muslims personally who feel it's a personal choice whether or not to be offended by pictures of Muhammad, and that a secular encyclopedia should show depictions of him because that will lend itself to better understanding of the subject. To the topic at hand here, I'm not making a decision on whether I want to see an editor topic banned at 3 in the morning, so I'll weigh in later on. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 07:01, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Blade, the point is that we should pick typical, traditional representations of Muhammad, that a muslim would recognise as typical representations, just as we do in the article on Jesus. We simply don't do that. Ludwigs2 is aware of that, but he is being stonewalled, and unreasonably so. --JN466 07:30, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• • • Jayden, Ludwig wants to remove all images of Muhammad because some Muslims find them offensive. He doesn't want some, or one, he wants none. I don't think a single other editor is opposed to removing or changes images in general, it's just that we're not willing to have no images. N^oformation ^Talk 07:37, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
    • (edit conflict)Actually, Ludwigs has repeatedly stated his true intent is to get all the images removed - that is why various of us are working in good faith with those discussing what you are talking about above - they don't want summary removal. Big difference. Does he make a few good points? Yes, and I've given him credit for them. But he then returns each conversation to efforts to simply summarily remove all images. Would you like diffs? If so, how many? Five? A dozen? That page is a convoluted mess, but you'll see (if you spend an hour or four reading it) that the rest of us are discussing every such issue in good faith, whether for or against the images. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 07:42, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
    • Actually, he has signed up to this

1. No one would object to pictures of Muhammad illustrating Muhammad#Depictions of Muhammad (if it ever gets written)
2. No one objects to pictures of Muhammad illustrating Depictions of Muhammad
3. We believe the artists' impressions of historical events in this article have no educational value for the topic of this article - or, if they do, not enough to justify the space they take up.

so he's happy to have images that add real educational value. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 07:52, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• • • • Sorry, Anthony, that is not a true representation of events. He himself admits "as I have said several times, I currently believe all images should be removed"[31] - but then follows that with "but I'm open minded[...]". Though he proposes things to be discussed that have some merit, he keeps returning the conversation to one of removing ALL images (how many diffs would you like?) - and then admits he will continue to push the issue until it happens (buncha diffs above). That's editing in bad faith. One cannot say they are open minded (and even get off to a good start on some topics) then try to turn it back to that singular motivation. That is what numerous of us are upset about. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 08:02, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• I think he agrees with me and many others that none of the images of Muhammad presently adorning the article are appropriate, due to their lack of relevant educational value, so they should all go, but is OK with images of Muhammad in a (yet-to-be-created) section on images of Muhammad. That's my reading. I know you and others read his position differently. I've been assuming you're misunderstanding his position. Time will tell. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• No Anthony, here is his reasons: religious offense[32], religious offense[33], religious offense[34], religious offense[35]... (pretend I posted about 10 more - or I simply can if you like). Every time he is pushed for justifications, he reverts to the religious offense argument - with a massive dab of WP:IAR thrown on top to ignore WP:CENSOR's section on religious beliefs. You've had to have seen those arguments. That is when things fall apart again. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 08:49, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oh yes. He believes since they're offensive to many readers, we should withhold our usual tolerance for educationally valueless images in this case. We tolerate images that breach WP:IUP like that on articles like Jesus because they're pretty, but, if I understand him correctly, he argues that images that add nothing to the readers' understanding and offend many people should go. But he's open to using images of Muhammad where they have some didactic purpose. It's not contradictory to argue against gratuitous offensiveness but go along with offensiveness when it's the inevitable byproduct of a greater good. The doctrine of double effect applies here. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:14, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• This is not really the place to discuss content. The concern here is about conduct. An ArbCom case on images, proposed by Ludwigs2, was recently rejected by arbitrators. Ludwigs2 does not appear to have dropped the idea. [36][37] [38] Mathsci (talk) 07:14, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
  • It was rejected as a content rather than conduct issue, but I recall that several arbitrators went out of their way to state that a wider community discussion about the general topic of controversial content was necessary. --JN466 07:30, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• (correct venue) Suggested and ignored numerous times. Some of the diffs above, 10-15 more if you like. I'd even help with it. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 07:42, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose I haven't followed Ludwigs' behaviour at Astrology so can't speak to that. We are in different camps on Acupuncture, and his argument there could be better focused, but we certainly don't need to be protected from him there. At Pregnancy, he is arguing for a view that, the last time I looked, was in the ascendancy. At Muhammad, his behaviour would be fine if he could just learn to not speculate about others' motives or respond to ad hominem.

You're right, Mathsci, he does have several lines of argument, and one of them is that we should not use controversial images in an article when (a) they have little real educational value or (b) an uncontroversial picture would do just as well. I agree with this line, and believe that (a) applies in this case, but believe it represents a novel position, and is something that should win community approval elsewhere before it can sway a content decision. But he also argues that the images lack educational value, and so violate WP:IUP, and, on various grounds, that they violate WP:DUE. On these last two points of policy, there are many others, including me, who agree with him.

His failure to observe WP:TALK has been well and truly matched by many others who oppose him on that page. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 06:56, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

If uninvolved editors who have reviewed the WP:NOT RfC and recent threads at Talk:Muhammad/images decide on sanctions for all parties involved in ad hominem discussion, I'll change my vote. Banning only one editor in this situation would be highly unbalanced. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:35, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

• Support with reservation Outside of controversial pages Ludwigs is a great contributor, but he doesn't play nice with others and cannot accept when consensus is not in his favor. He acted this way on Astrology and was topic banned for six months so I don't know why it would be any different here. But long term what's the solution? Drama seems to follow him where he goes and simply topic banning every time he gets to this point is inefficient. Perhaps a third solution, such as mentorship, would be beneficial here. I don't want him topic banned, I just want him to accept that policy as written is not in his favor and to stop acting as though IAR will function without consensus, but if he is unwilling to stop then I reluctantly support he be topic banned from the Muhammad article in regards to images. I've seen other instances of him invoking IAR when consensus and interpretation of policy didn't agree with him and frankly it's annoying and unproductive. Honestly I jumped the gun in supporting a topic ban. Ludwigs' is a good editor and generally makes great contributes and it's not fair for me to condemn him so strongly. I think think admin intervention is necessary but this goes too far for the time being. N^oformation ^Talk 06:59, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

(to Noformation) Eh, it's only a topic ban (not a site ban). He can continue to be a great editor elsewhere. It's preventative (not punitive) in order to end the disruption to what are probably attempts at good faith proposals to review the images (and their value) one more time. I'm not sure what other administrator intervention is possible other than a topic ban? ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 19:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I just think it goes too far. If this AN/I was focused on behavior and not on content then I think Ludwigs behavior would have been more strongly rebuked and that he would back off from the WP:BATTLEGROUND and be willing to adjust. Unfortunately all the content is distracting from the issue. When I filed the report I made the mistake of asking people to read over the thread rather than providing diffs of specific NPA, AGF, etc, violations, which had the effect of getting people to take sides in the debate. I'm not sure where to go from here tbch. N^oformation ^Talk 19:54, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't particularly want to see a topic ban either, if it can be avoided (which is why I started and never completed my filing). But, perhaps like you, I cannot think of any remedy other than one. And rebukes don't seem to work well - I'm dealing with such an issue on two other articles, and multiple admins have stopped in with rebukes which end things for a few hours to maybe a day - then edit/revert warring begins anew. I think each article has passed six such edit/revert wars. Until it's made abundantly clear that such rebukes are serious by stopping one dead in its tracks with a temporary block, they are going to continue. I suspect the same will happen here. One of those editors (in my other "situation") is also involved in this article, btw. Though admirably not engaging in such behavior on it. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 20:01, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I imagine this will take a couple days to settle out and when it does I reserve the right to change back to support. I'm hoping that now that uninvolved editors are weighing in that it will be a bit of a wake up call. We'll see if anything changes on the talk page. N^oformation ^Talk 22:14, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• Oppose. Ludwigs2 has done the right thing on that page, and has been behaving far better than most of his opponents. While Noformation's behaviour on the page is definitely not the worst, it's bad enough (especially the ridiculous interpretation of boiler-plate language in WP:CENSOR as a strict rule that we may not ever consider religious offence internally for editorial decisions except to prevent legal action against Wikipedia), and it's mind-boggling that this editor has the extremely poor sense of reporting Ludwigs2. Hans Adler 08:08, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Watch where you point your finger. I have done my very best to be civil and follow talk page guidelines. If I have done something outside of policy please provide a diff or don't label me as "not the worst." NOTCENSORED is unambiguous in regards to religious considerations, it clearly states that Wikipedia is not part of any religious groups and thus we do not follow their customs - that's about as boiler plate as it gets. N^oformation ^Talk 08:18, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

This is an absurd misreading of WP:CENSOR, and it can only be explained with your desire to insult or a severe reading comprehension problem. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a playground for fighting your cultural war against Islam, or religion in general, or whatever it is. Hans Adler 09:02, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Please provide a diff where it's demonstrated that I was uncivil or violated any policy. You have painted my conduct in a negative light, so back it up or strike your comments please. You are now ascribing motives to me when you have zero idea what I believe about Islam. I have done nothing to deserve such accusation aside from disagree with you. Expressing my interpretation of policy and my take on an issue is not a behavioral issue and is not against any policy. And again, not considering religious belief is not the same as deliberately insulting religion. All gay people offend a portion of Christians by virtue of being gay, that does not mean that they are obligated to hide their sexuality. In the same way, we are not obligated to consider people's personal beliefs and that is why not censored specifically says "Any rules that forbid members of a given organization, fraternity, or religion to show a name or image do not apply to Wikipedia because Wikipedia is not a member of those organizations." and "Wikipedia cannot guarantee that articles or images will always be acceptable to all readers, or that they will adhere to general social or religious norms." N^oformation ^Talk 09:11, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Hans Adler's statements seem to be at odds with the history of Islamic art, as presented for example on the website of the Islamic collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Even in Vienna, Hans Adler had the opportunity to see the al-Sabah collection from Kuwait in the Kunsthistorisches Museum this year including a page from the manuscript of Nizami’s “Khamsa” depicting the Prophet Mohammed’s night journey to Jerusalem.[39] Mathsci (talk) 23:09, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the that. I have found it odd that this has become such an issue when there hasn't exactly been a huge backlash against WP by the Muslim community - to me it seems like a solution in search of a problem. Personal experience wise, about half of my dad's side of the family is Muslim (the other half Hindu) and this subject never came up for me when I was growing up. I know the edict exists, but as far as I know it is not in the holy book, but it's rather a modern movement. In my personal opinion, I think that people in the mideast who flipped out about this a few years ago wrt the Danish cartoons were manipulated into doing so for political reasons. I also find that people in the west tend to misunderstand life in the East - I guarantee that this is a bigger deal to people on this talk page than it is to the majority of Muslims in my fatherland, but I suppose it's anecdotal and I could be wrong. N^oformation ^Talk 23:21, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Filling a page with undue weight images just because some Muslims are offended by them and you know you can get away with it is the really offensive thing here. This is what angers even the most liberal Muslims, who would not normally mind naturalistic depictions of Muhammad. In fact, it angers even me as an atheist living in a traditionally Christian country with many (mostly liberal) Muslims. It's absolutely despicable behaviour. Hans Adler 12:27, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

So now I'm not only anti-islamic but I also am the one who filled the page with images. Please provide diffs of me adding images to the article and please provide diffs substantiating your previous characterization of me as an editor - any WP:TALK, WP:NPA or WP:CIVIL diff will do. Never have I expressed a desire to offend anyone, I have only said that religious considerations should not be relevant, this is not the same thing and not everyone who disagrees with you is a bigot. Please stop attributing motives to me and strike your comments - you clearly do not have the diffs to back them up otherwise you would have posted them already. Your credibility goes down the drain when you make claims you cannot back and when you're unwilling to correct incorrect statements. N^oformation ^Talk 22:23, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Fully agree with Noformation. He's done nothing to warrant such claims. And I can provide over 4 dozen more diffs to show Ludwigs2's behavior that you think is "the right thing". Yes, I know you think my behavior is the worst (or is it Tarc's? someone else? who won?), but again.... dozens of diffs. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 08:30, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I haven't decided between you, Tarc and Kww. Hans Adler 09:02, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Hans, at no time has my behaviour been inappropriate or problematic. We disagree on things, but that doesn't provide reason for you to disparage my behaviour (or to refer to me as unethical and autistic, either). I don't bring up WP:NPA often, but you are getting there.—Kww(talk) 11:34, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Your massive IDHT behaviour and refusal to accept that there is a valid dispute has certainly been very inappropriate and problematic. Not sure if or when I referred to you personally as autistic, although there have been situations in this dispute where autism spectrum conditions are the only remaining explanation of an editor's behaviour that is compatible with good faith. Hans Adler 12:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Hans, you're as bad as he is with this repetitive IDHT quoting. I hear you both just fine, I just disagree. Strongly. The established consensus is that images of Mohammad are of encyclopedic value to the article, and that religious concerns cannot be taken into account when deciding to remove or retain images. Sooner or later, those who agitate for change again and again in the face of considerable opposition wind up like this. Ludwigs is heading down into ChildOfMidnight/Grundle2600 territory. Tarc (talk) 13:29, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I hear you, Hans. You believe that religious sensitivities should be taken into account in our editorial decisions. You are wrong, and no amount of listening to you will make you right. That doesn't mean that I don't hear you, it simply means that I believe that you are fundamentally and unalterably wrong. I assume that you can accept that someone can in good faith believe that you are wrong.—Kww(talk) 13:40, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Can I suggest that we, those of us involved on Muhammad, stop adding to this thread for a while. If we want uninvolved editors to offer their advice about this situation, the least we can do is cut down the amount of tangental reading. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:24, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• Support topic ban. A cursory glance at the scores or hundreds of posts by Ludwig on the image talk page indicates obsession with maintaining a minority position based upon IDONTLIKEITSOIGNOREALLRULES. This is a secular encyclopedia and we should not set the precedent of putting content into a fundamentalist religious straightjacket, as the majority have consistently argued. ArbCom has refused to hear the debate as a content dispute and at this point the disruption needs to be terminated. Ludwig on his User Talk page indicates he sees a ban as inevitable and thinks it's some sort of game. [It's on some other User talk page, factually correct but sourced wrong, nevermind.] Time to end the distraction with a rapid topic ban. Carrite (talk) 18:52, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support, as there comes a time when you gotta stop beating the dead horse. PS- This goes for all the editors who continue this 'delete images' campaign. GoodDay (talk) 19:18, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support topic ban from Muhammad and and all Islam-related image discussions. I see no alternative. The user keeps advocating a position incompatible with the mission of Wikipedia. We're not talking about removing some gory or porn-y pics here. He advocates removal of all human-like images Muhammad and replacing them with a flame [40]. (Note the bold font and all caps in the post, plus self-admittance that he's saying the same thing for about the 30th time.) ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 21:51, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support - If Ludwigs is never going to drop the stick (and I don't see any sign that he is), someone will have to take it away from him. His continuous declarations of the majority view as invalid or not reasonably argued by his personal standard are hallmarks of the most disruptive kind of tendentious editing. --Steven J. Anderson (talk) 22:39, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support - L2's continuing his behavior pattern after multiple discussions that have pointed out its disruptiveness, and his POV-oriented editing in general, justifies a topic ban. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:08, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support - Overall, this is a perennial topic that has never garnered wise support to change the status quo. Ludwigs2 tried and failed in March of this year, then came back to try again. Same result. He has said many many times that he will not stop bringing this up until he gets what he wants, so administrative action is necessary to do for Ludwigs what he is unable or unwilling to do for himself. Tarc (talk) 03:26, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support, sort of. A topic ban on article talk pages only might work best. I believe Ludwigs2 should be free to propose clarifications or changes to Wikipedia policy in more appropriate places such as the Village Pump. ~Amatulić (talk) 04:36, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support - from what I can see, his editing on the subject is tendentious. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 05:16, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
• Guys, you need to appreciate that our present article fails to show the typical representations of Muhammad, while showing six examples of a very rare type of illustration that also happens to be offensive to many who have grown up in the Islamic tradition. Muhammad is normally portrayed abstractly, and there is a very rich tradition of calligraphy, symbols and pictograms to do that – which we don't show. Examples: [41] [42] The effect of our present article is not unlike the effect the Jesus article would have on the reader if you showed them just one cathedral painting, plus 6 shock images of Christ like Piss Christ and Jesus on the electric chair (also shown in a cathedral, but hardly representative). You could argue NOTCENSORED there, but no one would go for it, because editors would realise that it would just be completely undue to focus on such exceptional images, while neglecting the mainstream depictions of Christ. The problem with Islam, unfortunately, is that our editorship is generally less familiar with it and doesn't pick up on such subtleties. [43] So I don't think Ludwigs2 is being tendentious here; it's his opponents who are, probably unwittingly so. --JN466 07:02, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose in the strongest possible way. As Anthony has pointed out at Talk:Pregnancy Ludwigs POV is increasingly gaining ground, and he was explicitly asking for compromise which seems to be happening now at last, despite the ideological absolutism of one or two editors. This Muhammad depiction issue is also astounding. I've known about it for some time but purposefully kept a distance. What I'm now reading is a sorry collection of some of the most ignorant arguments I've ever seen on Wikipedia. This is an area that could use some expert commentary because I see a lot of very confused arguments for keeping these images in the Muhammad article as general illustrations. You will find plenty Muslims in today's day and age who are not offended by these images, and plenty others who are. What you wont find are Muslims who find them normative in any way. You wont find Muslims with depictions like this hanging on their walls, filling pages of books in their libraries or hanging at their place of worship. Why? Because depictions of Muhammad are fringe within Islamic history. That's a very basic fact. Sure there are traditions within which he has been visually depicted, and we have an entire article to cover that fact Depictions of Muhammad. But in the main Muhammad entry these images are completely UNDUE and nonrepresentational of the mainstream tradition today and throughout history and across the globe. Outside of the offense issue this whole matter can be resolved by applying WP:UNDUE and WP:FRINGE. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 12:27, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Expert commentary that has been provided disagrees with your assertions above. See the comments from Johnbod, for example, in the current debate as well as the one from last March, concerning the prevalence of such images throughout history. ~Amatulić (talk) 14:38, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

What exactly is Johnbod an expert in? I'm a scholar of religion and I have taught Western Religion courses. My assertions are based on that. Also, please do not confuse assertions about the art history of the Depictions of Muhammad with the history of Islam. For instance all the "scholarly" evidence I've seen Mathsci produce has been 100% irrelevant to this question. Relevant to the depictions entry yes, or to Islamic art but we are not talking about those entries. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 17:18, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Your argument above seems entirely based on judgements of an art historical nature to do with the uses to which art is and historically has been put. I suggest you read the Gruber pdf below, where you will find much contrary evidence to your anecdotal OR. You obviously don't know the right Muslims, though I'd suggest some of them turn up now & then on your tv screen. Johnbod (talk) 19:00, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Maybe that is where the divide stems from? This is not an article on religion. It is a biography on a person. Why are we treating it like it's a religious article? We don't treat the Edison article like it's an article on lightbulbs. Related to the religion he started, yes. Included in that category because it is relevant to that religion, yes. About that religion, no. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 17:31, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Robert you couldn't be more wrong. I assume you also think that Jesus and Abraham are not religious topics, they are just biographies? The primary sources we have on Muhammad are religious. The secondary and tertiary sources the article is based on are written by, scholars of religion. I wont deny that there is biography here, but clearly it is religious biography, and clearly it is much more than that. This topic falls within the field of religion and history of religion, and history of Islam most specifically and most importantly. I'm perfectly willing to believe you made that assertion out of a genuine confusion of some kind, but if so please understand that you are sorely out of your depth here, and seem to completely misunderstand how the academic study of this topic is organized. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 18:18, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Not at all out of my depth. It is a biography, albeit about a religious figure. It is not an article about Islam that happens to mention a person. Of course, since his major notability is Islam, it will broadly cover those, including using sources of the appropriate nature. But it is still a biography. It is not Islam which is how it is being treated. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 18:27, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I stand by my last statement. Religious traditions include all kinds of things, like founding figures. They are part of that tradition, and when what we know about them comes from the tradition, when what people have cared to know about them is related to that tradition, and when scholars who study them are scholars of that religious tradition what we have is, above all, a religious subject. Saying you are not out of your depth only makes your comments seem that much more ignorant. Sorry.Griswaldo (talk) 18:37, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Griswaldo, stop harassing people who disagree with you. We do not treat religious figures with undue reverence in the Wikipedia. We write biographies, not hagiographies. If you don't know the difference between the two, then perhaps we should be talking about the depth of your understanding of the subject matter, or lack thereof. Tarc (talk) 00:47, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Griswaldo, stop harassing people who disagree with you. That's a very odd thing to say to someone responding to people who challenged his own comment. I explain why I oppose this and people challenge me on it and when I respond to them that's "harassment?" Tarc next time you mean to post something look over the conversation enough not to say something inane. As to the difference between a biography and a hagiography I'm well aware of it, but I'm not sure if you mean hagiography in a technical sense or in the now more common sense. I'm certainly not promoting an uncritical view of Muhammad (common sense) though I do recognize that the "biographical" source materials for Muhammad are mostly compiled by followers of his who, if this is the correct term to apply to Muhammad even, considered him a holy person (more technical sense). That said I quite clearly understand that he's not a Christian saint, and that we're not writing about him based on an actual tradition of hagiography (most technical sense). If you believe that historians of religion only tackle biography in terms of hagiography, or as Johnbod appears to believe only in terms of theology, then you're sadly mistaken. I'll point out to you once again that this entry is written from sources that are almost entirely historians of religion (specifically Islam). Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 12:37, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

• Absolutely oppose... and I don't even want to repeat the reasons. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 13:09, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose The fact that Ludwig's position may be in the minority doesn't mean he shouldn't be allowed to it and wikipedia operates by consensus rather then majority rules anyway. The Muhammad image issue is clearly far from a simple one with plenty of people repeating themselves. (I took part in a long ago RFC and I think I said then as others have said now on both sides that the parallels with other figures isn't simply since unlike with many other figures like Jesus, Buddha, in the modern era even people familiar with the subject will often have seen few depictions and not really have much of any preconceived idea about depictions of the person. As I grew up as a Christian in Malaysia, I can definitely attest to that. Therefore the issue of undue weight, historic vs current practice, readers expectations, making sure our use of images is sufficiently educational rather then simply offensive form a complicated mix and simply yelling 'notcensored' doesn't go anywhere particularly since most people including Ludwings aren't arguing for removing the images completely from wikipedia but how many and where they should be in Muhammad as opposed to other articles like depictions of Muhammad.) Having looked at the discussion, I agree with Seb, Griswaldo and others, cutting out Ludwigs will harm the discussion by removing an important counter-POV and I do not believe Ludwigs is being tendentious. Nil Einne (talk) 14:00, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• Please do not assign gross mischaracterizations to our motives as you appear to have (probably unintentionally) done in your first sentence. No one is asking for the removal of Wiqi55, Jayen, Anthonyhcole, Hans (yet), or various others who have similar views. It is the attacks against other editors, the bad faith proposals, the end runs around RfC attempts, the tendentiousness and disruptiveness (which he personally admits to continuing) and such that has dragged him here. A tiny handful of diffs are already included to support this. It would thus be greatly appreciated if you would correct or clarify your mischaracterization. Best, Rob ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 17:20, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

No I'm not changing my comment. As I've said, the issue of something being in a minority or majority is not particularly relevant since we operate by consensus yet it was brought up several times in this discussion as have related issues like how he continues to maintain a POV that all images should be removed or stuff about how editors advocating the deletion of images need to stop, this being a secular encyclopaedia, his view being incompatibile with wikipedia's mission etc. As I already said in my first comment, I've look at the discussion and I see no evidence he is being tendentious much more so then other people on all sides. He is not automatically tendentious because he continues to support a view that is in the 'minority' or mentions that view when relevant. I don't see any evidence he's operating in bad faith either. The fact that he retains a certain POV and continues to express it when relevant doesn't mean he isn't open minded, it may simply be arguments he's seen so far haven't sufficiently convinced him. As you yourself have acknowledged, he is willing to support and discuss alternative options even if they aren't his preference and he retains his preference. Ultimately there are plenty of areas on wikipedia where there is always going to be strong differing views and where any option is going to be opposed by a fair number of people and therefore the issue will keep coming up again and again. Achieving consensus may mean a compromise, but it doesn't mean people can't maintain or should never bring up their primary preference where relevant. As a case in point, I recently participated in a discussion on the move for Burma to Myanmar. I don't believe a consensus is going to be reached for the move, but either way, I don't expect this issue to be resolved any time soon (although I do think there will eventually be some resolution, at some stage the government is going to be accepted enough that whatever name they choose, most will follow and eventually only a few will try to argue for something else, like with Mumbai/Bombay for example). As for the RFC, it seems premature as there was existing, recent discussion which should have been used to guide an RFC, and it's obviously far better to work towards an agreed wording, so I agree it was a bad idea. That doesn't mean it was in bad faith. Nil Einne (talk) 15:10, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

• Support; mind you, it's not the fact that we fall on opposite sides of this argument that leads me to do this, nor is it the comments by the really involved editors in this dispute. However, I have a problem with being told I have some sort of prejudice against Islam by someone who's never met me based on one comment (it's in one of the numerous diffs above, I can bring it down if necessary; incidentally, people who know me know I've read Avicenna, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Taymiyya, and Malcolm X, to name just a few), which shows a serious lack of perspective on the issue (the fact that I don't agree on this issue doesn't make me anti-Muslim). Nor do I take kindly to the constant repetition of arguments that RobertMfromLI described a section above. And if anyone wants to get on me, I have PDD-NOS, so I stand guilty as charged of being on the spectrum; however, I don't see how that's germane to this particular topic. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 14:05, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• Support I am (as far as I can tell) totally uninvolved with this dispute, but after reading the associated talk pages, the horrendously worded RFC, and seeing the number of times this user has brought the same, somewhat disingenuous arguments about this issue, this seems like the appropriate step. Not to mention that, as gets pointed out repeatedly on the images talk page but has gone mostly unnoticed in the discussion of the images here: these images were created by Muslims, so the argument that these images are forbidden is on incredibly shaky ground. To keep using this argument warrants a suggestion that Ludwig drop the WP:STICK. eldamorie (talk) 16:10, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
  • The fact that these images were created by muslims to illustrate a certain type of book 500 or 800 years ago does not make them useful or obligatory illustrations in the Muhammad article. The fact is that if you want to show how Muhammad is portrayed in Islamic religious art, you need to be aware that "For practical purposes, representations are not found in [Islamic] religious art ... Instead there occurred very soon a replacement of imagery with calligraphy and the concomitant transformation of calligraphy into a major artistic medium." (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Islamic Arts, Macropaedia, Vol. 22, p. 76.) We are showing typical religious art in the article on Jesus, but you seem to be unaware of how untypical our illustrations in the article on Muhammad are. --JN466 17:48, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• or 800 years ago, 300, 200, etc and still today. While there is certainly far far less figurative art in Islamic art, there is a continuous tradition, including from the 13th century representations of Muhammad, though far less in the Arabic-speaking world than for example Persia and Turkey. There are better sources here than the EB (who anyway appear to be talking about the first centuries of Islam), for example this handy PDF from the leading specialist today, in the leading journal. Johnbod (talk) 18:48, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• John this line of reasoning wholly misses the point. The argument is not that depictions of Muhammad weren't being created continuously. The argument is that they have not been common within the Islamic tradition as a whole and throughout it's history, and indeed have been explicitly frowned upon more often than naught. Above Robert accuses me of confusing this entry with Islam, but I think that his accusation is backwards. It is you who are confusing this entry with Depictions of Muhammad or even Islamic art, both valuable entries in which depictions of Muhammad have their educational value. But again, the question isn't about banning these images completely from the encyclopedia it is with the use of them in the main entry on Islam's founding prophet, a figure who has been known 99% of the time without visual representation. I don't mean to make this into a turf war, but the fact that art historians work in this area is meaningless to the over arching issue. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 19:00, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• And how are questions about the commonness of a particular form of art not a question of art history? The history of religion may tell you what theologians said people ought to do or not do, but art history will tell you what they actually did, or do, something general religious historians are not qualified to pronounce on. Johnbod (talk) 19:41, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• You do not understand what the history of religions covers apparently and that is quite unfortunate. It includes the history of ideas (which doesn't mean only theology btw) but it also covers social history. Your art history sources merely attest to the fact that the traditions of depiction existed and that within realm of Islamic art more generally they were more or less common in certain periods. The fact is that depictions of Muhammad have a negligible influence on the perception of Muhammad that has formed historically inside and outside the Muslim world. This is where the difference between Muhammad and say Jesus or Buddha is immensely significant. The historical perception of those figures has been significantly influenced by physical depictions, which, again unlike with Muhammad, abound historically and cross-culturally. Now mainstream sources in the history of Islam, which are the main sources for this entry and for information about Muhammad are true to this fact. The way we present information about Muhammad should follow these sources, and should not be unduely weighted towards information that is of virtually fringe stature when it comes to the perception of this figure. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 21:13, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• I'm sorry, I was not aware that depictions of historic events, even made years after the fact, were against some policy or guideline. I guess we have a lot of articles to fix. Wanna give me a hand? As you noted, this is not about the depictions of Muhammad. As I noted, it is about Muhammad - which is a place where one (free from religious beliefs) would expect to find depictions of Muhammad, both singular subject (ie: just him) and event based (ie: in a historic setting). Or are you trying to state that since this image largely touches on Islam it should adhere to religious beliefs and religious actions (on types of depictions)? Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 19:16, 4 November 2011 (UTC)
  • It should simply show the most common and representative depictions, and they are abstract, not figurative. --JN466 21:51, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• Johnbod, I assure you the EB is talking about the defining characteristics of Islamic Art generally, and about the lasting impact Islam had on the artistic traditions of the peoples that embraced Islam. I really don't think the wording could be more emphatic: "For practical purposes, representations are not found in Islamic religious art". The images that do exist are appropriate in a curiosity cabinet like the dedicated article we have on them. --JN466 19:43, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Well then, here as elsewhere, EB is not the best source. It is a strange statement, as very many of the best-known Persian manuscripts contain at least one Mi'raj miniature. Johnbod (talk) 19:47, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

You can find the same sorts of statements all over the place. [44][45]. It's not like the Encyclopaedia Britannica is at variance here with the rest of the literature by stating a well-known fact about Islamic religious art. Yes, there have been limited traditions of depictions of Muhammad, especially in Persia about 800 years ago, but that is all it is. However interesting it may be, I am sure you don't wish to argue that it is anywhere close to being the mainstream form of artistic expression with respect to Muhammad in the overall body of Islamic art. That's calligraphy, hilyes etc. --JN466 21:39, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I gave you Muqarnas (below) & you respond with "well-known facts" from Islam for Dummies!!! Puuurleeease! The idea behind "especially in Persia about 800 years ago" for example, is nonsense. The various depictions of M from the few remains of that period receive a lot of academic attention, as from the founding period of the Islamic period, but there were probably more depictions in Persia from 600-400 years ago, or Turkey in the same period (certainly far more survive), and there are definately way more in Iran today. Johnbod (talk) 23:02, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

It's not going to work, Johnbod. I also gave you Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Encyclopaedia of Islam and the Muslim World. And just for reference, Islam for Dummies is published by John Wiley & Sons, and written by a professor of religion. There is academic interest in the depictions of Muhammad, but it is a small specialist academic niche compared to the general field. Here is a bit more on the difference between Islam's and Christianity's approaches: [46], [47]. --JN466 01:46, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Please stop - I wrote most of Aniconism in Islam. Your comments are still misleading, and have only a highly tangential bearing on the issue here. If you think you have some "well-known facts" to share with the wiki-world, take it to the appropriate pages. Johnbod (talk) 02:45, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Strange indeed that Aniconism in Islam did not contain any aniconic art, but only exceptions to the rule. --JN466 20:08, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

John, the article appears to be filled with original research or otherwise unreferenced text. Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 21:03, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Also, your statement (I wrote most of Aniconism in Islam) appears to be false unless you edited under a different name formerly. The edit history shows you merely significantly expanding one or two sections while making other copy and style edits. I did find it an odd claim given how unsourced much of the entry is, though those sections appear to have been in place before you started editing to your credit.Griswaldo (talk) 21:25, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

• Support - this is the same atrocious behaviour from Ludwigs that he exhibited at Talk:Pregnancy. Enough is enough. → ROUX ₪ 19:53, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• Support. The biased wording of Ludwigs' RfC on the matter is the tipping point. As I note above, I clearly feel that he is a disruptive force on this topic, but I wanted to give him a chance to participate in an RfC on the matter when it was created. However, he can't even manage to maintain NPOV when formulating an RfC question, which coupled with numerous other examples of problematic behaviour strongly argues that he is not capable of discussing this matter in a non-disruptive fashion. Resolute 22:42, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

• Support. I don't particularly care about the content arguments, nor have I edited anything Islam-related. However, this is the same behavior that L2 displayed at Astrology, Pregnancy, and a multitude of fringe science articles. The general pattern is that he stakes out a ostensibly reasonable but unpopular policy position and proceeds to accuse those who disagree of ignorance and/or unsophistication and/or bad faith and/or cabalism and/or POV-pushing (list is not exhaustive). Ad hominem rhetoric and textbook IDHT follows. Just yesterday he insinuated that an editor whom he disagreed with was a sociopath.[48] He's been topic banned from astrology.[49] He was warned numerous times for his behavior at Talk:Pregnancy.[50][51][52][53] He was even cautioned by Arbcom to "avoid drama-creating rhetoric" in a recent case.[54] This needs to stop. This is a problem of poor behavior, not content. Skinwalker (talk) 20:45, 5 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose Unconvincing, a user is topic banned for serious disruption or to avoid an indef. I see none of that here, the user holds a minority opinion and engaged in legitimate procedures (talk, RFC) as opposed to other illegitimate alternatives. Nobody can be blamed for that; the proposal reads like "This user is shouting to loud and it annoys us" Well calmly engage in discussion or ignore. Tachfin (talk) 23:03, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

• I'm sorry, but I must ask, even by your rationale, may I ask you how many personal attacks and racial/religious type slurs/attacks is the quota that was needed? Lemme know, and I'll change my !vote. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 00:19, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

• Support The only time I have had interactions with this editor was when he was complaining that no one was listening to him. When I pointed out that all of his concerns had been listened to, and had subsequently been rejected, he went on to attack me by calling my comment unintelligent. I gave up after that, thinking that there was absolutely nothing anyone could say to this guy, to get him to stop. He will never stop unless he is topic banned, plain and simple.--JOJ ^Hutton 20:45, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
• Support While editing may be a bonus from all users the constant regressions into personal attacks and policy whack a mole do not lead to constructive editing. Even when called out on personal attacks he makes no attempt to either apologize to the target or refrains from doing so again. In one case he even called out someone else as using a personal attack and then soundly proceeded to do the same within the same post. Since that point he continues with the attacks. If someone needs diffs I will learn that piece and post them to show the multitude of attacks I have seen but I don't think that is necessary. Tivanir2 (talk) 23:01, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Support ban. It looks like he bounces from one article to the next causing disruption wherever he goes. Raul654 (talk) 20:48, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

• Support ban - dead horse. I'd also support an indef block for causing more trouble than he's worth. Rklawton (talk) 03:20, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
• Oppose ban All you idiots need to go away and stop waving "OMG NOTCENSORED" in everyone's faces. Thank you. --cc 11:50, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
  • The user casting the above !vote was indef blocked today. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 16:22, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
• support ban. Ludwigs has been extremely disruptive and never quotes wikipedia policy and wastes valuable time. Pass a Method talk 19:13, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Re: "shouting to loud and it annoys us"

• This user was topic banned from astrology for poisoning-the-well comments, including comparing people who disagree with him with the KKK. See Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive99#Ludwigs2. On the Muhammad issue, we see a repeat of the same behavior, albeit with minor reduction in intensity. Besides the overuse of caps lock and bold in his posts (see diff above for that):
  • He writes about someone disagreeing with him that "people (like you) keep talking crap about me"
  • He writes that until people agree with him (to remove depictions of Muhammad) Wikipedia is a Jerry Springer show [55].
  • He writes in a edit summary "except, Robert, no other policies matter to you"
  • Writes about another user "You are not using ethical reasoning - that is a demonstrable fact"
  • He writes about someone who disagreed with him "what you just said was patently idiotic nonsense. I swear..."
  • He tells the same user: "keep your grubby little fingers out of my psyche"
  • He even admits, after redacting another passage (not one of the above), that "I just can't control my tongue."

These are just the examples that struck me, there are probably more. There are other editors who agree with Ludwigs2 on the subject matter, including Jayen466 and Griswaldo, but these guys seem able to disagree without being so disagreeable. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 15:18, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Please close the topic-ban subthread

Can an uninvolved admin please close this subthread now? The only people who have commented here, myself included, have strongly held opinions about the content dispute(s) that precipitated the thread. Almost all, if not all the people who want him topic banned, for instance, have diametrically opposed POVs to his. Clearly we are not about to enact a topic ban based on those voices. So have we had enough of this? Cheers.Griswaldo (talk) 13:15, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with his views. It has to do with DOZENS of personal attacks and tendentiously using the incorrect venue to try to implement policy change to remove the secular mandate in the last paragraph of WP:CENSOR. Your implication, as I perceive it, that this is about the content dispute may hold true to your !vote, but I can assure you, there are numerous others of us that it does not apply to - including the numerous editors who !voted (on either side of this) who were not engaged in this situation at all. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 15:57, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I see no reason to close this subtread, when !votes and comments are still being posted, with policy-based supports (14) and opposes (6). Let the process play out, please. Beyond My Ken (talk) 19:00, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

The supports and opposes are not policy-based, they are based on subjective evaluations of Ludwigs2's behaviour on the page in question. Almost all these subjective evaluations happen to be aligned with editors' attitudes to the underlying conflict. This makes them essentially worthless. Hans Adler 20:15, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I wonder whether at this time of year Hans Adler's usually impeccable logic might not be a little clouded by premature doses of Martinigansl ^{please don't click here if you are a vegetarian}. Mathsci (talk) 22:09, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

@Hans Adler: Whether the !votes are policy-based are not is something for the closing admin to evaluate. Beyond My Ken (talk) 23:21, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Therein may lie the objections from some to keeping things open until an uninvolved admin does such. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 20:46, 6 November 2011 (UTC)

18/7/1 (on just count)... soon may be the time to end this? ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 08:56, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps a reasonable compromise?

All the participants in the talk page discussion have come here and are basically continuing the same sorts and styles of arguments, it's all just looping. Perhaps I might suggest a compromising position. Someone start an RFC and contact, neutrally mind you, some of the relevant wikiprojects to participate. To prevent a rehash of the talk page, the opposing sides in this debate should state their positions and refrain from substantially trying to sway other participants. Having re-read the discussion, and being totally uninvolved, I can see the arguments of both sides. Run the RCC< don't just talk about it. --Blackmane (talk) 09:39, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs has been asked, many times, to follow the dispute resolution process if he thinks he has a case to make. This user tried out this argument that WP:NOTCENSORED does not protect the image usage in the article, a view that received little support in March of this year. Now he's back again, twisting a foundation resolution that has no applicability to the situation, an incessant 3-week drumbeat.

Those editors who support hosting a Wikipedia article free of religious censorship have no need to initiate an RfC, as the status quo is just fine. Ludwigs will get no relief and will make no headway in regurgitating the same arguments over and over at the article talk page. The ball is squarely in his court to follow dispute resolution if he will not accept the consensus at the article talk. Tarc (talk) 13:08, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Therein lies the rub. There is no consensus, nor will there ever be. There are two camps each with a large number of adherents. One camp favors no censorship, the other favors censorship as a special case. We hear from new members of the latter group almost daily on the main article's talk page generally representing Muslims around the world. Rklawton (talk) 13:30, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Oh, but there is consensus. Yes, we see periodic posts that inform us Islam forbids such images. Someone replies with the argument that we are not an Islamic project, often linking to the methods by which individuals can respect their own beliefs by hiding the images for themselves, and they move on. But the "remove all images" camp has no policy backed argument, only the complaint that "I am offended". Simple numbers do not create a no-consensus situation. Otherwise, there would be no consensus on the argument that many athletes are "gay" because fans of rival teams often edit to say so. Resolute 13:55, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. If you look at the overall commentary on the talk page, the status quo is generally favoured. There is one single regular editor there (Ludwigs2) who supports censorship on religious grounds, and another (Anthonyhcole) who has attempted in good faith to formulate an RfC proposal. Then there is Hans Adler, who shows up from time to time, accuses editors he disagrees with of bad faith (as he has above in this very discussion) then disappears. Pretty much everyone else supports the current situation. Ludwigs has been advised it is up to him to initiate DR, because the rest of us don't see a need. Instead, he chooses to waste a great deal of time for numerous editors by forcing discussion back into circular arguments. Granted, the rest of us keep responding, though I have tried to step back involvement overall. I won't vote on the topic ban proposal, but I will say this: the problem would disappear if Ludwigs were to be placed under one. The "dispute" is that one-sided. Resolute 13:42, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

No there are other editors, such as Wiki55. Unfortunately all these named editors persist in making grossly inaccurate statements about the images actually in the article, such as (above here) "..."that by including so many images from a very narrow time period and fairly narrow interpretation of Islam we are in fact violating WP:UNDUE)." by Qwyrxian. For the record (and yet again) the 5 Islamic images come from a period of over 500 years (and we don't have a contemporary one available), include at least 2 Sunni ones (possibly all 5 are actually Sunni) and come from Persia (2), Turkey (2), and Kashmir. A very similar spread, if not wider, to the sort of (almost always Catholic) old master painters we use to illustrate Jesus and other Christian articles, ignoring the many Protestants who still regard these as idolatrous. Some editors have been putting time in over a long period pushing the line that all the images are Persian and Shia, and by implication can therefore be dismissed. There is a considerable intra-Islamic component to this dispute, & its a pity that people who ought to know better, like Hans Adler and Anthonyhcole have accepted this line without much examination. Johnbod (talk) 14:30, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Just for the record, would you please link to an instance of me making grossly inaccurate statements about the images actually in the article? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 09:33, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Blackmane: I'd agree that an RfC would be a good starting point, but even trying to determine the proper language for an RfC becomes a major point of strife. For instance, every RfC approach I've suggested starts from my perception of the problem - that the images have no appreciable value which justifies the offense they cause to our readers - but any such wording is instantly nixed by Tarc, Robert, and Resolute as being against NOTCENSORED. I could start an RfC on my own (and I will if that's what you suggest), but the RfC will most likely devolve into more of the same dispute as the editors opposed to change dispute its validity (in fact, at least a couple of threads currently on the page show exactly that devolution as we've tried to discuss proper wording for the RfC).

As far as I can see, the page is locked down in such a way that any discussion about removing the images is declared to be against policy. I don't know how to get past that obstruction except to keep trying to talk through it. --Ludwigs2 14:45, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I have posted what I am coming to believe is the only reasonable thing, which will show good faith on the parts of those who wish the images removed and properly adhere to policy uniformly instead of (yet again) special case for this article only. It's on the article's talk page in a new section.[56] Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 14:54, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

The first item is the "gotcha", i.e. that there's no valid encyclopedic reason to remove the artists' conceptions of Muhammed if you're going to retain artists' conceptions of Jesus, etc. The second item is the "yeh, but" option, which opens a huge can of worms that would abolish the "I don't like it" barrier and turn wikipedia into even more of a free-for-all. So why does anyone think Muslim readers deserve special treatment, while Christian readers can go "freak" themselves? Well, there's no logical reason, so it must be driven by fear. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:03, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• In the current circumstances, I'm not sure that the recent extensive rewriting of WP:CONSENSUS by Ludwigs2 was timely.[57] It now reads a bit like a personal essay.

• (Off-topic for ANI) In 2002 Yale University Press published the book "Peerless Images: Persian Painting and its Sources" by Eleanor Sims, Boris Marshak and Ernst Grube, academics who have curated the Islamic art collections in the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Hermitage, St Petersburg. It contains several images of the Prophet Muhammad. Looking at the book and its detailed commentary, it is hard to understand how images of this sort could be considered uninformative or without educational value. As the New York Times has reported just recently,[58] the Metropolitan Museum of Art has just reopened its Islamic collection after 8 years of remodeling. On display are Persian illuminated manuscripts, including images of the Prophet Muhammad, visible in the NYT link and here on the Museum's own website [59] (the short NYT audio link for "illuminated manuscripts" is interesting). It is also on commons here and has been used several times on fa.wikipedia.org. Mathsci (talk) 15:23, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) (to Bugs) Bingo. I treat EVERY article the same, regardless of my personal beliefs or feelings of offense. And there is not a single mainstream religion or irreligion or spirituality that is not on my WatchList (along with hundreds of sub topic articles).

Thus, all I ask is the same from everyone else - judge every article and article content equally. No more, no less. Which seems to fit with those weird things we have here called policies, guidelines and editing in good faith. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 15:26, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

The importance of the Muhammed depictions is actually the same as the importance of the many Jesus images. Whether they look like their subject is not the issue, that's a red herring. What's important is that it reflects how the followers of those faiths saw their spiritual leader. It provides a window on styles of artistic portrayals in various times and places. If that ain't educational, I don't know what is. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 15:48, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Bugs: re your "What's important is that it reflects how the followers of those faiths saw their spiritual leader". This is precisely the problem: The followers of Islam do not generally depict their spiritual leader, and when they do it's usually symbolically, as a flame or a veiled figure. full-face images of muhammad are a rarity, mostly restricted to a couple of historical periods. I absolutely agree with your statement, but your statement implies we should remove images of the prophet and use the symbolic forms that Muslims themselves use. --Ludwigs2 15:58, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

"Saw", as in past tense. You're describing the present. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:07, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not just describing the present, but the most prevalent view, historically and currently. Full-face depictions are not common. It's funny: I even offered a compromise on the talk page where we would create a section specifically about the historical depiction of Muhammad in which to put images of this sort (they would be appropriate there, in a section that discusses the controversy of depictions of the prophet), but that got shot down for some reason I never understood. If we go by standards of common usage, full face images are excluded as a distinct minority style; if we go by conventional ethics full-face images are excluded because they offend people for no gain to the encyclopedia. There's no reason I can think of to keep the images (though I'm open to suggestions), so why are they on the article in the first place? Remember, these are simply works of art - there are no known depictions of what Muhammad actually looked like.--Ludwigs2 16:27, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Actually, that proposal flies in the face of what has deemed to be the standard (per policy and guideline interpretation) on every other such article on Wikipedia. Thus, what you proposed is not a compromise, but a special case exception. Biographies have images or depictions of their subject (and their subject in historical event settings) prominently placed throughout the article. This article already is chock full of special case exceptions that are not warranted, such as (on the talk pages) the massive disclaimers, the FAQ, the instructions on how not to view the images, the removal of all images of Muhammad in the top 1/3 of the article, the explanations of policy on the talk page and so on. I am against adding one more special case exception. Doing so will eventually lead (as you desire) to there being no images of Muhammad on this or any other article. I would bet good money that if (by some remote chance) all images were removed from this article, that you would move on to the other articles next. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 17:00, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

(Besides the fact that each time you claim you are willing to travel this road, you still end up on your "remove all, they offend" road instead). ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 17:10, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

So you keep saying, but (again) I question this reasoning. It all comes back to the simple problem that Wikipedia is offending millions of people for no real reason. As I keep saying, If you show these images have non-trivial value to justify the problems they cause, then obviously they would be protected. However, every time I say that, you decline to show that they have value and instead asset that it's a violation of policy to consider that.

The arguments you've given in your post above break down as follows:

• my proposal - that we use the most common imagery used by muslims - "flies in the face of" policy (not true; that is actually exactly what NPOV asks of us)
• that other articles show images (irrelevant, since other articles do not have to consider a well-known religious proscription)
• that the ability for individuals to censor the images themselves justifies Wikipedia using the images (patently ridiculous)
• that removing images from this article will lead to removal of all images everywhere (hyperbolic and nonsensical)
• that I somehow personally desire the removal of all images everywhere (hyperbolic, nonsensical, contrary to what I've said in talk, and a bad-faith personal attack to boot)

Really, please… --Ludwigs2 17:38, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

The claim that "Wikipedia is offending millions of people for no real reason" is your personally-held opinion that you repeatedly put there as some sort of immutable fact that us dumb heathens cannot understand. This is really the heart of your problem Ludwigs, and the reason why many are beginning to dismiss your actions as tendentious and disruptive. Tarc (talk) 17:44, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Uh… Tarc:

• it's a proscription in a faith with something like a billion followers. even if we only restrict ourselves to the most fundamentalist groups (the ones most likely to take offense) that's still millions or tens of millions of people
• There are 16 archives of heated debate solely over this issue on the article - really, you made a subpage just to handle the volume of complaints, and that subpage has 16 archives

That's a whoooole lot of evidence, Tarc: How do you justify calling this my 'personally held opinion'? --Ludwigs2 17:57, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

• "it's a proscription in a faith with something like a billion followers". No it is not. You don't help your case by typing in false statements. It may be that a few current adherents of the religion believe there is such a proscription, but even if there is, it applies to the adherents, not to us. I think a fair number of people have been mislead into thinking there is a broad proscription, and I think they are wrong, but it is not useful to debate how many people (correctly or incorrectly) believe in the proscription, it is only relevant to ask whether a proscription of a religious group has any force on non members of the group. If you answer yes, please explain why, as that conclusion leads to madness.--SPhilbrickT 22:46, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Oh gosh, we're back to the "religious offense - must honor religious beliefs" rationale. That means WP:IAR is probably soon to follow. :-/ ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 18:06, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Ludwigs, another claim I attacked you? And then another false claim about my actions? I've posted, numerous times, multiple reasons the images have value. Here is a tiny sampling of diffs to prove it.[60][61][62][63][64][65] It is not I who is ignoring anything. And this is exactly the type of thing you do on the article's image talk page. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 18:03, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Also I would like to point out that the neutral point of view doesn't argue your claim. "Editing from a neutral point of view (NPOV) means representing fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias, all significant views that have been published by reliable sources" would be useful if you were also trying to include modern (what you describe as common) images of muhammad but isn't a basis to remove current pictures because they were a significant view of what the islamic community was allowed to do. And since the minority of the religion still believes its acceptable to view pictures (you know that 15% of the billion which also falls into millions and millions of people) it would be purposefully ignoring that POV as well. Tivanir2 (talk) 18:15, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs, let's look at the phrase again, this time with crystal-clear highlighting; "Wikipedia is offending millions of people for no real reason" THAT part is your opinion, opinion you keep trying to pass off as fact. That a group of people are offended is fact, yes. That we are including the images in the article "for no real reason" is opinion. Are we settled now? Tarc (talk) 18:17, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

The 'for no real reason' part is something that is open for discussion - as I keep saying, if you can demonstrate that the images have a reasonable value to offset the problems they cause, then the images can stay. However, using policy to prevent wp:Consensus discussion on this issue is the troubling point. --Ludwigs2 19:33, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

That's the point; it was open for discussion, and your position was rejected. We don't need to demonstrate what you are asking for. End of story. Tarc (talk) 19:48, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

"if you can demonstrate that the images have a reasonable value to offset the problems they cause, then the images can stay." This isn't the appropriate metric. Do the images cause some problems? Absolutely, they do, as a lot of ill-informed people request removal, and it is a problem dealing with them. But I'm not interested in assessing the value of the images to the encyclopedia and comparing it to the problems caused, I'm interested in the damage that would be caused to the encyclopedia if we sent a message that raising a ruckus is a good way to impose your will. Neither you nor anyone else has demonstrated why Wikipedia should pervert its own guideless simply because they are in conflict with someone else's desires. If claiming offense works here, what is to stop a temperance group from insisting that WP not have any articles about alcohol, or a child decency group from insisting that pictures of nudes should be removed. There are all kinds of groups who request removal of blocks of material. We politely decline all such requests (except when the material might be in violation of law). If we grant one groups request, we have to grant all group's request, or you have to explain why this request is unique. I don't think it is unique. SPhilbrickT 18:54, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

To Ludwigs2: did I need to provide more diffs to my own postings of reasons? Should I have included the numerous times other editors have posited reasons as well? You keep acting like we haven't stated reasons (reasons considered valid all across Wikipedia) - but we have. While perhaps seemingly numerous, the number of diffs above is probably in the 15-20% range of what I could provide to prove we have made such points. C'mon... the page is linked to in this AN/I, you know others are bound to figure out that you are incorrect in repeating your claims that we haven't done such. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 20:14, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

This argument belongs elswhere, not at ANI. GoodDay (talk) 19:37, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Oh, how we've tried so many times to point that out to the one who has the biggest issue with this. Even some of those who support some level of image removal have suggested or leaned towards such. :-/ ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 19:51, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Small note: I've struck RobertMfromLI's name from my earlier post. Only one time did Robert ever imply an RfC wasn't necessary, and he did in fact try to restart the RfC several times. I don't know what made me think that he was one of the people trying to derail process in this case; my apologies. Qwyrxian (talk) 23:42, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Brass tacks straw poll

This poll is not an administrator issue. Feel free to move this to a more appropriate venue, but this page is already becoming cluttered with irrelevent issues. Please keep the discussions on this page relevent to issues which need administrators to protect articles/delete articles/block a user. Admin noticeboards are not for general discussions of either policy or content issues. Let me suggest WP:VPP. --Jayron32 16:59, 3 November 2011 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
I think we should take this opportunity and address the core issue that is gumming up the works here. Dispense with the following question it will likely end this dispute (one way or another); either it will obviate my grounds for wanting to remove the images or it will obviate the sole argument used to retain the images. The question: Granting that NOTCENSORED necessarily protects controversial content which makes an unambiguous contribution to an article, does NOTCENSORED also protect images that have trivial value to the article? In other words, NOTCENSORED clearly protects images of penises or vaginas on their namesake pages, or the cartoons of Muhammad on Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy); does it also protect page decorations, artistic illustrations, unneeded explications, or other material of negligible content value to the article? I will bracket the above question as a policy RfC a bit later, unless someone suggests that's innapropriate. --Ludwigs2 15:53, 3 November 2011 (UTC) This is again a biased question (just like your similar RfC proposal). You imply as fact that the images have trivial (even emphasized by you) value (and then go into detail about how trivial they are), thus pushing the conversation to summary deletion of all the images. Once again, in my opinion, this is a proposal in bad faith as it directs only one answer since you already established as "fact" that the images are trivial. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 16:20, 3 November 2011 (UTC) The argument hasn't been about protection of trivial images. It has been about images marked trivial. Also this is the incorrect forum for this question since it should be addressed at the village pump. The actual argument that the images are trivial should be occurring at the muhammad page not here. Effectively this is derailing the entire purpose behind this AN/I. Tivanir2 (talk) 16:48, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Comment. (edit conflict) I don't think this covers the issue, Ludwigs2. NOTCENSORED does not protect trivial material from deletion, but I don't believe the material in question counts as trivial. The amount of fuss over it certainly indicates that some editors believe it to be non-trivial. --FormerIP (talk) 16:20, 3 November 2011 (UTC) FormerIP: if we clear up this issue, then we can actually sit down on the talk page and discuss whether or not the images have trivial value. Right now we cannot even have that discussion, because every time I suggest evaluating the worth of the images with respect to the offense they cause, two or three editors tell me that any such evaluation is against policy. NOTCENSORED is the One Ring on that page; until we clear up this issue the page is stuck. --Ludwigs2 16:34, 3 November 2011 (UTC) NOTCENSORED does not protect trivial material Support: Allowing NOTCENSORED to cover trivial material creates up an difficult-to-resolve opportunity for violating NPOV: controversial images can be put on a page merely to attack a perspective non-verbally, and held there by using NOTCENSORED to squelch discussion. This sets up the editing environment as a long-term BATTLEGROUND, where multiple editors try to address the issue and run into an endless wall of bureaucratic policy assertions. Wikipedia should not offend its readers with non-contributive controversial material (see wmf:Resolution:Controversial content). We offend where we have to, because we have to, not merely because we want to use that material. --Ludwigs2 15:53, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Support. Wikipedia does not seek to include as much offensive material as possible merely because offensive material is permitted in appropriate contexts. Especially with respect to images, editors frequently need to choose between alternatives with varying degrees of potential offensiveness. When multiple options are equally effective at portraying a concept, Wikipedia does not retain the most offensive options merely to "show off" its ability to include possibly offensive materials. Images containing offensive material that is extraneous, unnecessary, irrelevant, or gratuitous are not protected in the name of opposing censorship. --JN466 16:44, 3 November 2011 (UTC) NOTCENSORED does protects trivial material Support, but this doesn't shield against other arguments. All NOTCENSORED requires is that arguments for deletion be framed in formats relevant to an encyclopedia, and religious arguments are not relevant to encyclopedias. We don't keep images because they offend religious groups, but we don't delete them because they do. Images have to be examined from a purely secular perspective.—Kww(talk) 16:46, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Irrelevant to this discussion due to bias ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 16:50, 3 November 2011 (UTC) This poll is excessively and unduly biased by stating opinions (trivial worth) as fact wrt images on Muhammad) I posit that this poll, as it is specifically directed at this issue (or grossly in the wrong venue) is biased by implying opinion as fact to imply the only answer is to remove the images at Muhammad as all being (implied as fact above) trivial. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 16:52, 3 November 2011 (UTC) Support - one should not bias such polls (or RfCs) by using their opinion as fact to ensure one specific POV outcome. ROBERTMFROMLI | TK/CN 16:47, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

For anyone who wants a discussion of NOTCENSORED, I've just started one at Wikipedia talk:What Wikipedia is not#What WP:NOTCENSORED is not. Robofish (talk) 18:02, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

* Notice: I've decided I'm going to copy this RfC over to wp:NOT, and wait for a result to be reached there before re-entering the discussion at talk:Muhammad/Images. that should end the discussion there for for a while (at least as far as I'm concerned). It also likely resolves this thread, though I'll leave that up to you. I'll post the link to the RfC here after I've made it. --Ludwigs2 00:11, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

This thread is not resolved as long as there is an open question of a possible topic ban for Ludwigs2. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:12, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

suit yourself - If you want to spend your time trying to find a punishment in a non-current situation, that's your business. Here's the link to the RfC. --Ludwigs2 01:20, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs has said on his talk page that for the time being he will stay away from the page, I think this is a good faith proposition and would say that we should give him a chance to make his case in the correct venue before topic banning him. N^oformation ^Talk 01:43, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't aware of his comment. Still, this is not his first time on the merry-go-round, when this blows over it's likely he'll exhibit the same behavior elsewhere. AGF is often in conflict with common sense. Beyond My Ken (talk) 03:46, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

What he said and what he is doing are counter to each other. He has proposed a very biased RfC that basically states the images are worthless, so shouldn't we remove them? He's simply using another venue to get the images removed and ignore countless consensus. Let's see now. RfC last Spring - runs to Village Pump: both RfC and end run fail (him). Proposes RfC this time around, not going the way he wants (removal of ALL images), tries end runs to WQA and ArbCom, disrupts attempts to create an UNBIASED RfC, gets dragged here and uses the distraction to file a BIASED RfC even in light of the fact that the rest of us were trying (through HIS disruptions) to create an unbiased one. (IMHO) This needs to stop. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 03:59, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

ArbCom declined the case because it was formulated as a request to rule on content (policies). Perhaps a new case request focused on the behavior of the editors involved would be more appropriate? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 13:09, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Not too sure about that. I'm at over a hundred diffs and counting of bad faith, disruption and more (and I'm not even really trying). Ludwigs cannot come even remotely close, even combining diffs of such stuff for every editor "opposed" to him. Virtually all of the rest of us, on any side of the fence (or even sitting on it) want a resolution to this. Most of us are tired of the dead-horse-ad-infinitum-ad-nauseum responses with a bunch of accusations thrown on top. I'd rather see this resolved than a topic ban. But every good faith effort results in disruption or an end run attempt. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 19:02, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Comments on ongoing conduct of Ludwigs2

Despite having given assurances that he has reformed, Ludwigs2 has recently continued to ridicule and belittle those editors disagreeing with him. One of the difficulties is that he is being extremely slippery about why he is objecting to the images of Muhammad. It would appear that he believes, for whatever reason, that the courtly images of the Prophet Muhammad produced in illuminated manuscripts of the Ottoman Empire, Persia and elsewhere cause offense to some parts of the international Muslim community for religious reasons. However, when pressed on the subject by Kww, he has accused those repeating this statement of "making up cheap lies". In a conversation on his user talk page with Kww he wrote: [66]

"They are cheap lies. maybe you believe them (in which case they are cheap lies you are telling yourself, rather than cheap lies you're telling to others), but from my perspective there's not a whole lot of difference. keep your grubby little fingers out of my psyche, and deal with what I am saying to you as I say it (not filtered through the twists and turns of your own perspective)."

It is an example of Ludwigs2 deliberately misunderstanding other users and switching from one argument to another. Already on User talk:Jimbo wales, he wrote of thise disagreeing with him:[67]

"What's happened here is that some editors have recognized a particular and real threat against the project - censorship by religious groups trying to enforce their particular worldview - and reacted to it in an extreme and uncompromising manner. They are insisting that these images remain on the article solely and precisely because they are offensive - not because they want to offend, mind you, but because they are engrossed in battling censorship and have lost the ability to discriminate censorship from normal editing. Nor is this problem restricted to this article (you can see it play out in multiple areas of the project: fringe articles, political articles, cult-related articles). It's depressing."

These statements are not accurate and are indeed a highly inflammatory way of describing other editors. It creates an impasse for any future discussion. (I personally have not voted in any image discussions but have located commentaries in WP:RS on the historical use of images of the Prophet, written by Islamic scholars from the East and the West.) On the same user talk page, Ludwigs2 later made this personal attack on Tarc, [68]

"Yes, Tarc, and I've been reading this kind of post from you for the same amount of time, and I have to say it hasn't been particularly pleasant. It's just as I said above: all you need is a willing flamingo and a few hedgehogs to fill out your role as the Queen of Hearts. "

These remarks were later redacted by Ludwigs2 after Short Brigade Harvester Boris criticized them.

Ludwigs2's conduct has not reformed and these personal attacks seem completely counterproductive at this stage. Mathsci (talk) 07:03, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I am, obviously, fed up with the ad hominem these discussions are steeped in. They make reasonable discussion very difficult. But I would urge editors unfamiliar with this situation to not just rely on spoon-fed quotes in forming a view. The current negative tone of these discussions is set by more than one editor. If you feel like chiming in, at least read through the latest threads at Talk:Muhammad/images. That will give you a good feel for the general behaviour of the Dramatis personæ. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 08:04, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

I hope that Ludwigs2 will get the message sooner rather than later.[69] Mathsci (talk) 17:40, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

Nothing is improving. [70] [71] Mathsci (talk) 13:59, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Not sure, but he seems a wee bit more moderate than in the examples from the past week. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 15:23, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs2 has not stopped.[72] "We can have a decent discussion over whether Wikipedia needs/wants to offend the religious beliefs of all these people, but please stop trying to make the fact that we are offending their religious beliefs 'go away'. That kind of intellectual dishonesty gets in the way of a reasonable discussion." As usual these personal attacks ("intellectual dishonesty") are embedded in a longer discursive screed. Even if Ludwigs2 turned out to be a so-far unidentified world expert on the history of Islamic art (all signs are very much to the contrary), his conduct at the moment seems to be little more than flame-warring. Mathsci (talk) 20:44, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Ludwigs2 has the uncanny ability to phrase personal attacks in a way that skirts the direct wording of our WP:NPA policy. The basic construct is: "If you disagree with me (and I know you do, but don't say it in this sentence), then you are part of a despicable group, such as: the KKK / the intellectually dishonest / the Jerry Springer audience / those not using ethical reasoning / those uttering patently idiotic nonsense / etc." ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 16:19, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Comments by Chzz

Sheesh, that's long.

Forgive me collapsing it.

The arguments on what is/is not 'appropriate' re. certain images on certain pages will go on forever. There's some non-collegiate behaviour on the part of several editors, but that'd be better handled via an RFC/U or whatever. I can't see any admin action as appropriate at this time. If I'm wrong, can someone cut out the tl;dr and just say "X should be blocked for Y and Z". Otherwise, feel free to continue the eternal arguments on the article talks.

ANI is not the right place to discuss content/consensus. Nor is it the right place to discuss vague ongoing concerns with user conduct; if you can present a WP:DIFF/diffs, showing "XE did THIS which was WRONG according to THIS policy, please do so. Thanks,  Chzz  ►  01:25, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I have uncollapsed it following discussion on Chzz's talk page. This thread contains a proposal for a topic ban in an area not covered by discretionary sanctions, thus the topic ban requires community consensus, and cannot be enacted by a single admin. Also, conduct diffs have been provided in the discussion above, e.g. in this subsection. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 03:08, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, so: This page is for reporting and discussing incidents on the English Wikipedia that require the intervention of administrators [...] Please include diffs to help us find the problem you are reporting. - thanks.  Chzz  ►  04:16, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

What is contained here and here should be enough to judge whether a sanction is warranted or not, IMO. Tarc (talk) 04:22, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I see no evidence that the conduct by Ludwigs2 breaches any policies or guidelines - that's the key point here. The discussions re those images will no doubt go on forever, and of course anyone disrespecting prior consensus might present problems; however here/now, I see no evidence of that.  Chzz  ►  06:13, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Have you ever heard of WP:CIVIL? ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 16:48, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Chzz, per Tarc above. I stopped at 142 diffs (and only posted a tiny portion of them). Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 20:05, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Community Topic bans should indeed be discussed at WP:AN, not at ANI (here), according to the letter of the policy on community bans. But it wasn't me who started it here. If an admin deems it necessary, I have no objection to the thread being moved to WP:AN. ASCIIn2Bme (talk) 01:02, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

The general practice has been that if a topic ban discussion arises from an ANI thread, it's left on ANI, but one started here from scratch should be moved to AN, where topic ban discussions are generally held. Beyond My Ken (talk) 02:25, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Query

Is it reasonable to say

Discussion of images should be posted to the subpage Talk:Muhammad/images. Removal of pictures without discussion will be reverted.

An then on the sub page:

• If you have come here to protest against the presence of images depicting Muhammad, please don't post here. Such objections have been raised before, and been given our consideration.
• If you have come here to protest against how people are trying to remove images of Muhammad from Wikipedia, please don't post here. That is not new either.

I understand that people don't wish to rehash the same arguments again and again, however consensus does change (See GNAA AfDs for example), and singling out this issue as one that shall never be discussed seems both counter to Wiki-philosophy and likely to be effective only in stopping more thoughtful folk from discussing the issues. Rich Farmbrough, 11:43, 10 November 2011 (UTC).

I fully empathise with the sentiment motivating those diktats but also have deep qualms about the way it's expressed. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 17:27, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Rich, I never saw local consensus on this particular issue to matter in even the slightest. CENSOR has been very clear on this for quite some time. No "should not" adhere to religious... - a specific "will not". Thus, it's a matter of incorrect venue. No local consensus is going to suddenly change things to "hey, other than on the article of Muhammad, we act secularly". Thus, if you note, in that same infobox, it is noted where the proper place is to propose policy changes. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 22:28, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Side note, I think that box was hashed out during a few other non-secular concessions that never should have happened (till policy was changed to allow such - which it still hasn't been). Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 22:30, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

There is no contradiction. 1) directs image discussions to the sub-page as it tends to overwhelm discussion on the main talk page. 2) seeks to weed out the insipid "remove the images they offend me!!!" messages from IPs and WP:SPAs.

Summation "Bring image-related discussions to the sub-page but don't waste our time with rote removal demands, come here with something intelligent to say". Tarc (talk) 22:45, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Well spotted :)) Of course it's not reasonable to say that. Basically, we are telling people, If you want to post about this, don't do it here, but "over there", and "over there" we say, If you want to post about this, don't do it here. This reminds me of certain customer service phone conversations I've had the pleasure of having, where each department says their hands are tied, and swears it's the other department that's responsible for fixing the problem. --JN466 10:50, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Jayen, that is so very not true. Though a particular editor DID make such a claim, that claim was a boldface lie. That editor did use the correct venue (Village Pump), made the proposal, it was deemed the proper place, it was !voted on, and simply put, he lost and then made up that ridiculous claim. Village Pump, or RfC then (with enough support) Village Pump. Worked before, working now. But not the article's talk page, where we cannot change policy. Don't believe everything you read - I didnt, and thus checked it out to find that the correct venues (as noted in the warning box on that talk page) do indeed work properly. ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 16:34, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

The only comment i have read on this issue is what Rich wrote above, and the wordings he quotes are correct. I had never really registered them, until he pointed it out. It seems quite extraordinary to me. There is even a STOP! sign in Arabic (and a "Don't feed the trolls" message assigning everyone wishing to complain to that category). --JN466 17:31, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Yes, but it is out of context, as it does not include the rest of the message that follows with instructions on where to address such concerns: "Suggestions for an adaptation of standing guidelines are offtopic on this page and belong on Wikipedia talk:No disclaimers in articles or Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)." (both are linked on original). Thus, it is all covered with the proper way to deal with things. Let's say we wanted to blatantly ignore copyvio for the article on John Doe - would we (a) simply do so (or demand it done) or (b) suggest a policy change? What would be the correct venue for dealing with the needed policy change? (a) the article's talk page, or (b) Village Pump? While the snippet above doesn't accurately portray the whole meaning of that box, I'd posit that going to that page and reading it will indeed show that the box does address everything, including pointing people to the correct venue, where such issues (including for that article) have been properly addressed in the past, all sans "no, go back there" as a response. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 17:39, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Tarc has it right. The message isn't intended to stop all discussion (the MB of text we've spent on it over the last few weeks should make that patently obvious), but to point out that messages like "Please remove the images, they offend me" will not be given much consideration. To the present day, even after all of these discussions on at least a half dozen forums, I would suggest that that remains the consensus view. Resolute 16:55, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

The key word here is "protest". If someone wants to mount a reasoned argument that amounts to something more than a slogan rooted, then there would be grounds for discussion. But if it is mere "protest", then it's fine to let people know that it's not likely to go anywhere. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 18:52, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Large backlog cleared but may need repopulating

After finding a copyvio that wasn't picked up in the article wizard creation review process, I raised it with the reviewer (User:Wilhelmina Will) on their talk page and during that discussion realised that they had cleared thousands of articles from various 'new articles created via the Article Wizard' categories. About 7000 apparently. There are at least two where problems were not picked up (see user's talk page) and there are likely more as the reviewer explicitly stated that they 'didn't realize you're supposed to check for copyright when reviewing these pages'. I suggested that the articles be placed back in the queue for reviewing, but the reviewer wants to do it themselves. I think the articles (a list could be generated from the reviewer's contributions) should be placed back in the backlog queue for proper reviewing, as I think 7000 is too much for one person to attempt to do on their own (I realise this is in part because CorenSearchBot has been down for some time). What is the best thing to do here? The discussion so far is here (version at time of writing). Further additions to that user talk page discussion are here (will get archived at some point). I'm posting here, as I think urgent action is needed to at the least have a tag on these articles that didn't get reviewed for potential copyright problems. The article creation review backlogs cleared by Wilhelmina Will can be seen at Wikipedia:Contribution Team/Backlogs/Participants and progress. Carcharoth (talk) 07:21, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Update: I edit conflicted with Wilhelmina Will here while replying and notifying about this thread. She now agrees that it is better to put those articles back in a review queue. Could someone help out from here with what is needed? Carcharoth (talk) 07:41, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Judging by the item that drew my attention to this, articles cleared by this editor need to be checked not just for copyvio but for issues like promotional tone and notability. I guess putting them back in the queue will achieve that, but they shouldn't be treated as a special case to be checked for copyvio only. JohnCD (talk) 10:28, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Going through her deleted contributions, she also reviewed article that were subsequently speedy deleted as (from a short check) G4 (repost), G10 (attack page), many A7s, and even an A1 for an article that had as text "KASSIM BAHALI is " and a number of external links. How that one could ever get reviewed is far beyond me. I have to admit that I deleted Brendan Monaghan as a copyvio last month, but forgot to follow this up then, which could have given this problem more attention sooner. Anyway, from what I see, it seems as if she is not suited to be an article reviewer and should cease doing this, at least for a while, until a firmer graps of our policies is shown. Fram (talk) 10:39, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

As some tools automatically mark as reviewed any article nominated for deletion, in your examples, were they marked reviewed and then later tagged for deletion by someone else? Monty₈₄₅ 16:50, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

In all these examples, this involves Wilhelmina Will removing the "new unreviewed article" template, either with or without the edit summary "reviewed", and without nominating it for deletion. Kassim Bahali, Brian O'Kelly (a BLPPROD which she reviewed(!), William J. Gladden (another unsourced BLP she reviewed), ... Articles that still remain and that never should have been tagged as reviewed include e.g. Ricardo Melendez. Fram (talk) 17:21, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

A couple of points:

• (1) By 'review' I am referring to the manual removal of the 'needs review' tags put on articles created through the Article Creation Wizard. I'm not referring to patrolling or anything related to the (auto)reviewer/patroller right.
• (2) My initial post here was to try and get some sense of urgency injected into identifying and tagging these articles that were incompletely reviewed. It wasn't intended to say anything about reviewing competency - if someone wants to raise that as a related or separate issue (and given some of the examples above, it might be needed), then please re-notify Wilhelmina Will on her user talk page, as her agreeing that these articles need re-reviewing means she might not be following this thread any more.
• (3) It seems some of the articles reviewed have and are being caught, but it would probably be best if all the articles cleared from those categories (or rather, the ones that still exist) were put back there. Is there a way to identify and re-tag those articles?

A good starting point would be to work out when Wilhelmina Will started to clear these categories (her entry here would be the logical starting point for working that out). I think this edit from March 2011 marks the start of work being done on that backlog. So that is 7000+ articles reviewed in around 8 months. Do the examples above fall towards the end of this period or throughout? As I asked above, is it possible to identify the articles that had their review tags removed during this period by Wilhelmina Will, and put the review tags back? Or do we just have to hope that any problems not yet noticed will eventually be corrected? Carcharoth (talk) 01:37, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

The ones I mentioned are mostly from October and November, I haven't looked at the older ones yet. I don't know if there is an easy to set all this articles back up for review. Fram (talk) 09:16, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm afraid the problem is not just recent. Looking at Wilhelmina's deleted contributions for the first half of May, for edits which removed the "new unreviewed article" template, I see two subsequently deleted as copyvio, two as G11, and eight PRODded, some with reasons like "non-notable student production, can find no sources establishing notability" or "Advertisement for a non-notable behind the scenes business. Article is written entirely in deliberately uninformative sales patter."

If Wilhelmina can tell us when she began reviewing articles, the easiest solution would be for a bot to scan all her edits since then, replacing any "unreviewed" templates she removed. I don't know whether that is too complex a task for a bot.

(I have asked at WP:VPT#Could a bot do this? whether this is possible. JohnCD (talk) 23:09, 10 November 2011 (UTC))

If it is not possible, I don't think it would be unreasonable to to ask Wilhelmina to do this herself - not to re-review the articles, just to replace the templates to put them back in the queue.

A third alternative would be to set up a special page, on the lines of a CCI investigation, to track the problem and progress towards clearing it, either by re-reviewing pages or replacing the template. JohnCD (talk) 14:44, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

If you want to know when I started reviewing the pages in the unreviewed categories, the best I can give is that it was around March - mid to late. I don't remember when exactly, nor can I recall doing it any earlier than that. I hope this helps. Wilhelmina Will (talk) 01:44, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Δ (talk) says that the bot solution "would require a little elbow grease, but doable." Are we agreed that to have a bot replace these "unreviewed" tags is the best way forward? JohnCD (talk) 14:57, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Ethnic insults?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Closing this as not requiring any admin action. While all users are reminded of the need to be sensitive in working with the potentially controversial topic of Balkan ethnicity, demands for retractions and apologies usually cause more disruption than the initial unfortunate comment. Trouts all around but no blocks, bans, protection, formal warnings, or other administrative resolution. Eluchil404 (talk) 02:08, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

---

On Talk:Nikola Tesla, a user made a general comment that "Too much is being made of Tesla's background", commenting on conflict between Serbs and Croats on that article. User:Rklawton responded with [73]

"Get used to it. It's an ethnic pride thing (they don't have much else to brag about), so this will remain a lightning rod for the next hundred years or more."

In response to "Your comments are extremely inappropriate, please apologize" Rklawton wrote[74]

"Judging by your block history for edit warring, herr DIREKTOR, I can see why you'd be offended."

So to elaborate, in User:Rklawton's respected opinion, several nations of Europe like to brag about Nikola Tesla - because they do not have much to brag about. And "judging by my history" it seems I'm exactly the type of "Balkans person" he was aiming at with his racial comments. Requesting a brief block. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 18:21, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, this did seem like a wrong word by Rklawton, but i don't think that block is necessarily? Maybe just apology, with promise that PA will not happen again. Rklawton should comment on content, not on the contributor, and should not say bad things about entire nations. Apology is necessary. --WhiteWriter ^speaks 18:31, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I was not involved in this but I must say this report is unwarranted. I belong to one of the nations of Europe Rklawton "offended" and I don't feel particularly insulted by his comment. As for "ethnic insults", see this comment about Americans posted by DIREKTOR. Timbouctou (talk) 18:35, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

User:Timbouctou is an editor who's hostility towards me personally has been noted on numerous occasions [75] [76]. His comments on this thread should be taken with a grain of salt and with that in mind. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 18:51, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I, at least, found your comment about Americans offensive, and it would be so regardless of who reported it here. Quite honestly, you're not helping your case. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 19:39, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

There is a certain precedent for this exact emotion. The main difference seems to be that NYB expressed his frustration as sadness, but the motivation seems quite similar. --GRuban (talk) 19:07, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

@WhiteWriter. My sentiments exaclty. So I asked for an apology - and got attacked myself with comments on my editing history.

Also please note the Nikola Tesla troubles thread by User:Djathinkimacowboy on User talk:DVdm

"Oh, please come over and see the talk page. It has erupted due to the harassment by user DIREKTOR, who I understand is a troublemaker. Good thing it's protected! This stuff on the talk page is frankly garbage. Now two editors are over there dancing round the issue like crazy people."

Now, likely mislead by the offensive post above, User:DVdm is lobbying to for the full protection of Talk:Nikola Tesla [77] - even though there is very little or no conflict on Talk:Nikola Tesla. I am frankly shocked all this is happening - I expected a quick apology for such obvious ethnic insults, certainly not this sort of "counter-offensive". --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 19:09, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikiquette assistance seems the more correct place for issues for such as this. Off2riorob (talk) 19:16, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. And I resent being reported here for trying to stop edit disruptions at Nikola Tesla. Djathinkimacowboy 19:19, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't think you have been reported. User:Rklawton has been reported and a small block requested by User:DIREKTOR, but I am not seeing anything worthy of a block, a bit of slightly heated tit for tat only. Perhaps a discussion at Wikipedia:Wikiquette assistance would reduce the tension between you guys. Off2riorob (talk) 19:24, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Agreed. It was pretty pathetic of Rklawton to impugn two entire nations on the basis of a trivial dispute on a website, but let's face it, previous experience between editors of those same two nations aren't exactly a poster child for collegial editing. Black Kite (t) 19:28, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Much appreciated, and I agree with you on technical points. But I did get the required warning post from editor DIREKTOR - and all I have done is either enquire or list a few interesting facts on the talk page! Etiquette suggestions really should be made to the other editors. I have requested at the talk page that they please not start anything there. Djathinkimacowboy 19:45, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Can we all just settle down and have a nice cup of tea? Seriously. If you're grasping for things to say during a content dispute and the thought jumps into your head of making jabs at another editor, reconsider. m.o.p 19:56, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

The amazing thing is - there is NO content dispute, there wasn't even a dispute of any kind, I just could not believe what Rklawton wrote on a Wikipedia talkpage and requested he apologized for it. That was our first interaction. The whole purpose of that entire thread seemed to be to satisfy User:Djathinkimacowboy's need to criticize various European nations for engaging in disputes on an article about "his" "American" scientist. I am not involved there in any kind of content dispute and did not even edit the article. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 20:59, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

"The whole purpose of that entire thread seemed to be to satisfy User:Djathinkimacowboy's need to criticize various European nations for engaging in disputes on an article about "his" "American" scientist" - so says user DIREKTOR, but he is starting an edit war on the talk page. Furthermore, this is the 2nd or 3rd time I have been mentioned here. I wish for this to be addressed. DIREKTOR ought to be blocked for this trolling activity. Djathinkimacowboy 22:47, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Of course you do. You've been here 6 days and posted a total of 30 edits, but you're perfectly happy to go around calling other users names like "troublemaker", "crazy person", and making offensive and baseless accusations of "disruption", "harassment", "trolling" and what not. I advise you to read WP:CIVIL, WP:NPA, WP:TROLL, WP:DE, etc. etc. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 23:28, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Ok, this is really getting out of control, now I'm being harassed on my talkpage by User:Djathinkimacowboy. First he templates for "disruption" for requesting an apology [78], and after being reverted he's posted this thing on my talk ("You are being extremely erratic and disruptive. I tried to tell you I understand your feelings, but you are simply out of control. I sincerely hope you are blocked.") --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 20:37, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

I have an easy solution. Focus on content. Everyone involved in this thread needs to stop talking about the actions of others. Here's a helpful guide for how not to piss off other people.

Example: "Hey, Master of Puppets: I think your editing of Foo is inappropriate because it isn't properly sourced. I can see why, given your utter ineptitude when it comes to Wikipedia."

• Does your edit's message come across the same way with the pointy material stricken?

"Hey, Master of Puppets: I think your editing of Foo is inappropriate because it isn't properly sourced.I can see why, given your utter ineptitude when it comes to Wikipedia."

• Yes? Awesome. Then don't put the pointy material in. If your message does not make sense with pointy material removed, that's a key indicator that it was too antagonistic to begin with.

This isn't aimed at one person in particular. Rather, everybody who's posted above - if somebody's commenting on you, and not the content at hand, just come and tell me. Or another administrator. Don't start bickering about it on ANI. At the same time, make sure you're ignoring their prodding - if you retaliate in kind, you're not helping your case.

To sum things up, everybody should drop these silly grudges and move on with their lives. I don't want to hear anybody say "but he/she started it" in reply to this edit. If you have any concerns, raise them with me on my talk page. m.o.p 21:42, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Wow, so I can insult someone's entire nation and, if I get reported, I can expect the folks on ANI will recommend that he "focus on content"? *sigh*.. I agree with you, MoP, of course we should focus on content, the whole issue here is that Rklawton didn't. And this isn't about a grudge, I never even saw the user before I asked him to apologize for his offensive statements. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 22:08, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

• This whole ANI is being used in completely the wrong ways IMO. First off, Direktor, for someone drumming up a jab at the Balkans as racism it is hypocritical to be making remarks like this:

!!! Seriously, what is wrong with you people? Have a look at the Intelligent design or Occupy Wall Street articles, just for starters, and get off your high horse. According to Gallup, 40% of Americans (the majority!) believe they were magically poofed into existence [3]. Judging by Tesla, you'd be better off if we all started packing our bags

After making a statement like this do you expect another editor whom you are currently engaged in a dispute with not to look a bit incredulously at your asking for an apology? And after his response on the article's talkpage you left a remark just saying "Reported" with a link to this thread(where's the dispute resolution?). Cowboy posted a comment to all of this stating, "Please, please! Don't start anything here again ... hasn't there been enough trouble here?" to which you replied exceedingly rudely with:

@Djathinkimacowboy. Please stop playing the "peacemaker" - this entire thread of yours seems to have been posted for no other reason than to satisfy your need to criticize various Balkan nations.

Honestly there is clearly nothing actionable here on RKLawton and certainly you need to work towards improving the tone of the discussion as well. Try not to be offended by remarks like these which aren't made with actual ill intent, and if you are still personally offended then express how you feel, do not tell an editor to "consider yourself formally warned" for making "racist or hate-mongering comments", totally inappropriate way to handle this whole situation, completely unnecessary escalation. Recommending an admin close this before WP:DRAMA as there's no admin action to be done.AerobicFox (talk) 06:51, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I fully agree with AerobicFox directly above. There is no need for admin action here and this thread should be closed. Eluchil404 (talk) 21:32, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Mick Hucknell

Resolved

 – Following more problem edits, it's been semi-protected for 24h [79], and I'm sure several people are now watching it too.  Chzz  ►  00:51, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Can you protect his page please? There's an internet rumour going round that he's died. [80] - that page has a link to the offending aarticle but the Wiki spam filter means I can't post it. 86.133.210.78 (talk) 12:07, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

We rarely preemptively protect an article before a problem has actually occurred on it, so I'd suggest just watching it (I'll add it to my watch list), and only consider protection if such a problem happens repeatedly -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 12:31, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Okay thanks. I'd already reverted one set of edits before coming here and hopefully there won't be any more. 86.133.210.78 (talk) 12:37, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

IP 24.23.161.104

Resolved

 – hosiery back in basket--Elen of the Roads (talk) 15:57, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

24.23.161.104 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

This anonynous user keeps spreading his/her "unconventional" original research on hundreds of articles: mostly just re-categorizing and re-classifying politicians, political groups and parties as some sorts of socialist, left-wing, liberal or whatever. It would not be a great deal if he/she would not do it on dozens of pages every day, none of their edits explained or sourced at all (and not self-explanatory either). His/her talk page is full of good advice, warnings and "final warnings" from several other users (starting back in October), but the user has never reacted to any of them, and is obviously not accessible to argumentation. Instead he/she has rather intensified the disruptive editing. More than 90% of their contributions get reverted for being unsourced and/or blatant OR. Serious consequences are necessary. Kind regards --RJFF (talk) 20:23, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Briefly reviewing the edits, it looks like the IP is changing a lot of things that weren't cited anyway. The described behavior (not engaging on talk) is definitely problematic, but it should be said that replacing OR with OR is a problem better addressed by finding sources for the disputed content. causa sui (talk) 20:40, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

In many cases you are right, but he/she does not have a problem with removing refs where they stand against his/her personal perceptions and analysis [81], [82] and blanking half articles [83]. And still, the problem how to get this user to reacting on community communication and discussion is not resolved. Like this, it is impossible to co-operate with this user. --RJFF (talk) 20:52, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

P.S.: Warring, too [84] --RJFF (talk) 20:58, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

This is very reminiscent of the behaviour of Greekboy12345er6. I suggest an SPI could be in order here. RolandR (talk) 22:26, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

All right. It's a stretch but the cited diffs may be good faith and they may actually be constructive. But that is impossible to determine if the user won't communicate, so making edits like that and not discussing them is not acceptable. Some short and escalating blocks may be in order. causa sui (talk) 22:37, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Roland's diagnosis of the profile of Greekboy12345er6, notably

• mis-spellings and weird capitalizations (both improved somewhat from those of previous accounts) and
• obsessive categorization of political figures as members of a leftwing political tradition (often erroneous)
• lack of edit summaries (which declined from irregular to absent) and failure to discuss edits with anybody.

These similarities suggest that a check-user search/Sock-Puppet Investigation would be reasonable.

I just reverted his edit-warring on Max Shachtman, whom he again categorized as a social democrat, despite being reverted before. This IP categorized Shachtman as a member of an organization formed in late December (1972) after Shachtman's November (1972) death.

I would ask that he be given a topic ban from categorizing political figures directly. He should have to propose such categorizations on talk pages and wait at least one week (without hearing any objections) before making any changes. He should be given notice that he needs to discuss his edits with other editors; if he edit wars again or continues to ignore requests for clarifications/discussions, then he should be blocked until he agrees to be mentored.

 Kiefer.Wolfowitz 10:27, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

If, as I suspect, this is a sock of an indefinitely blocked disruptive serial puppeteer, this account should not receive a topic ban; it should be blocked entirely. Despite the concerns raised here, and at SPI, this editor continues to make numerous unsourced POV edits, and refuses to respond on talk pages or noticeboards. RolandR (talk) 13:38, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Soaring ever higher in her eagle path, Elen of the Roads justly blocked this user as a sock-puppet.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 16:04, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

User: Snowded/GoodNight

I was willing to let this Rfc sandbox continue. But the last complaint added to it - is a blatent breach of AGF. It has pushed me to bring my concerns here - per WP:HARASSMENT. -- GoodDay (talk) 20:53, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

GoodDay has a long term pattern of minor disruption and his behaviour has been brought here before. Given that an RfC is the most likely route if the pattern continues I created a page to collect material. I thought it best to do this where it was visible to GoodDay and others, rather than just keep it off wiki. --Snowded ^TALK 21:05, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

You have been keeping your list about GoodDay for three months now - enough is enough - either s**t or get off the pot. Off2riorob (talk) 21:09, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Long term to my mind is more than three month, especially with minor disruption. But its not surprising to see you here --Snowded ^TALK 21:13, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

The last 2 claims of disruption (#10 & #11) at the sandbox, were really OTT. The IP claims weren't much better. It was getting to the point, where I was beginng to think if I said hello to anyone - the post would end up at the sandbox. GoodDay (talk) 21:20, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Re #11 that GoodDay was trolling was endorsed by an Admin. Daicaregos (talk) 21:39, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

An adminstrator who disagrees with me, over usage/non-usage of diacritics on English Wikipedia. Thus a non-neutral administrator, in this case. GoodDay (talk) 21:41, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

@User Snowded - when are you opening the RFC user? Or is your list speculative and open ended? Off2riorob (talk) 21:26, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

A further request. I wish editors would stop commenting on me and/or my motives, at main space talkpages. GoodDay (talk) 21:32, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

• I'm reminded of the scene in Rain Man where Raymond pulls out a logbook of every time someone was mean to him since 1958... typically, the way we do this is (a) notice a short-term pattern of bad behavior by a user we're not familiar with, (b) go through contribs to see if it's a long term problem, (c) if it is, build such a narrative retro-actively and file an RFC/U. Following someone around in real-time and keeping an ongoing log on-wiki is alienating stalking behavior and anyone subjected to that kind of deliberate public shaming - right or wrong - is in the right to feel attacked. Keeping such lists off-wiki until you're ready to actually file may be a better way of doing this. causa sui (talk) 21:35, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

GoodDay is involved in long-term low-level disruption over several different genres. Consequently, different editors are involved. Should any of the cases noted turn out to be spurious that would be in GoodDay's favour. Daicaregos (talk) 21:45, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Daicaregos is involved in long-term low-level harrassment of GoodDay. But, we'll let the Wiki-community decide on such things. GoodDay (talk) 21:49, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

This is non sequitur. Another way of saying "multiple users are doing the documenting" is "GoodDay is being stalked by a gang of hostile editors". Your complaints may or may not be well-founded but harassment and stalking is not a productive way of reaching a resolution in either case: we have RFC/U process for this. File an RFC, have everyone who is involved in the dispute certify it, and then submit your statements for comment by the community. causa sui (talk) 22:04, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

In my opionion there are two valid concerns here:

• My impression of GoodDay is that he is mostly fooling around, often pouring flammable liquids into open fires, persistently. I first saw him doing that in the Anglo-Irish conflict, where he had no substantial input except for a strong opinion, which he kept repeating. I have since seen him engage in the same behaviour in other conflicts. The behaviour is of a type that is very hard to address. It's not blatant enough to result in any consequences for GoodDay, so the damage is going on and on.
• It is well established though not universally known that we don't allow pages such as the one that Snowded is keeping, except for a very specific legitimate purpose (tick) and for a very short period of time (fail). I believe the rationale for the prohibition is that we can't police whether evidence collected on such a page is sufficiently valid without partially anticipating the very purpose of the page, and it is only natural if the target feels stalked, whether the concerns are valid or not.

Unfortunately there seems to be nothing we can do immediately about the first problem, but based on my prior experience with Snowded I am confident that he will simply keep his list offline from now on until the matter is ripe for RfC/U. Hans Adler 22:07, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

I'll share your confidence on the second bit when he agrees and tags the page for WP:CSD#U1. causa sui (talk) 22:23, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

With no comment on the underlying dispute, such pages aren't generally allowed on-wiki for more time then is needed to put together a case (2-3 weeks in general). Either move it off wiki or start an RfC/U would be my strong advice. Hobit (talk) 22:31, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Concur with Hobit here. This page, given the length of time it has existed, clearly violates WP:POLEMIC. It appears to be serving the purpose of documenting ongoing objections to GoodDay's editing, which is clearly not allowed in the userspace. Either it becomes an RFC/U post haste or it should be deleted. --Jayron32 05:07, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Even the name of the sandbox ("GoodNight") is bad taste. GoodDay (talk) 23:17, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Shame on any editor who saw the page and did not request its deletion. Shame on any editor who defends its existence based on the editor on the recieving end maybe deserving it. I could spend 10 minutes detailing how snowded makes a habit of attacking those that disagree with him. I could spend another 5 discussing how poor form it is that his first comment here backed that up. I will instead spend a few seconds requesting deletion of the page. Note that your computer has some sort of program to save text, Snowded. If you have enough evidence to warrant the start of collecting evidence then you have enough evidence to file an RfC already. Cptnono (talk) 05:38, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I agree and "voted" there accordingly. I've dealt with both of these editors in the past and have no problems with either of them in my experience. But this page either has to go away or be formed into some sort of report. Doc talk 06:27, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

As I said before it seems to me more honest to keep the page where anyone (including GoodDay) to see it. With long term disruption the evidence will have to be gathered over a longer period of time than a few weeks. However, if someone can show me the policy which says this sort of thing is not allowed then I will happily take it off line and notify interested editors. And as a side note, Off2riorob and Cptnono, would you please get over the fact that the community did not support your views on the UAF article, or at least have the honesty to admit that you are "involved" editors in any issue involving me. --Snowded ^TALK 06:41, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I understand that your intend wasn't to harrass me & I do appreciate that fact. However, the sandbox has morphed into a place for any editors who have a beef with me, to place their complaint. GoodDay (talk) 06:50, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

"Involved" can really only be invoked as a possible issue with admins - not non-admins. If GoodDay is not a banned/blocked editor who is allowed to edit here freely and objects to the sub-page: the decision is a no-brainer. Off-wiki or RfC/U. Doc talk 06:49, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

If it goes off wiki the same editors will be involved but GoodDay will not have sight of it. Happy to do that if he wants as this is now becoming a drama. Regardless of what happens I would still like to see policy here Doc9871, you are asserting a position, without that reference its just your opinion. Otherwise I am fully entitled to note that two of the editors making the strongest comments here have a long running dispute with me over their failure to change one article. --Snowded ^TALK 06:56, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

From the British Isles naming fiasco I remember the both of you: remember that fun? Snowded, I've created similar evidence pages and currently maintain one for a prolific vandal: but these pages are to be addressed appropriately should they be actually challenged in their existence. No offense to either of you at all, and I hope it is worked out amicably. Doc talk 07:08, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

• List is now at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Snowded/GoodNight — Preceding unsigned comment added by [[User:{{{1}}}|{{{1}}}]] ([[User talk:{{{1}}}#top|talk]] • [[Special:Contributions/{{{1}}}|contribs]])

Probably unrelated except through Snowded, but while we are here: Can an admin please indef this idiot for the overt off-wiki threat ("it stands to reason that you will not be getting any contract renewed")? Hans Adler 12:29, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Done. That was well beyond the pale. Elen of the Roads (talk) 12:40, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Activity at Teen Mania Ministries, again

In the last day, there have been 5 edits, each deleting criticism, to Teen Mania Ministries from 12.37.33.3 (talk · contribs). That address, according to its talk page, is assigned to Teen Mania Ministries. It was last blocked for one month from August 22, 2011. See User talk:12.37.33.3 for background.

The recent activity seems to stem from a critical MSNBC documentary on the organization aired last Sunday, and subsequent attempts by the organization at spin control. Wikipedia is on the sidelines in this; the article hasn't changed much in recent months, other than deletions and reverts. Another moderate-term block and/or semi-protection may be indicated. --John Nagle (talk) 21:59, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

The article was semi'd for 1 year by Bwilkins (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA). causa sui (talk) 22:58, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Block review

• BruceWHain (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

With the patience and kindness of a whack of editors/admins, we have tried to teach User:BruceWHain simple concepts .. like the WP:5P, not to WP:REFACTOR, WP:NPA, and a whole bunch of other things. He continues to refactor comments (for example, recently adding his own comment in the middle of mine, then berating me for removing his insertion).

I have indef-blocked him. This is not a block based on that action, this is a general WP:COMPETENCE and WP:BATTLE block that is readily apparent both on his main article of interest, and on his usertalk. I had considered locking his talkpage to start - knowing where this will plunge to.

This all said, I welcome a review of my block. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 22:03, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Good block. Ranting diatribes by the user on his talk page tell the story; he doesn't understand how we do things, can't grasp why we do them the way we do, and has no interest in listening or learning. Any efforts to reform his behavior should be done on his talk page and while he's unable to cause further damage elsewhere. causa sui (talk) 22:19, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Ugh, necessary block. Some people just aren't cut for WP. N^oformation ^Talk 22:35, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

• Agh, sad to see someone who clearly has enthusiasm and ability being so wholly incapable of editing in a collegial manner and steadfastly refusing to listen, but the Talk page makes it abundantly clear that is the case. So with regret, I have to support the block. -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 23:08, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
• Ditto the above. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 23:11, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
• Unless/until the light comes on with this editor, I think there's not a lot else to be done. Elen of the Roads (talk) 01:46, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
• Strong opposition This looks heavy handed. He should be blocked for 1 year. After a year, people mature. Otherwise, you will be branding him a criminal with a life sentence. Jack Paterno (talk) 02:31, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

  The above account was created a mere 30+ minutes ago. How would it he/she know about ANI? GoodDay (talk) 02:34, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

You are being very nasty calling me an it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jack Paterno (talk • contribs) 02:38, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I have been reading Wikipedia for years. I know it is a Wikipedia tradition. Call the newbie a sock and then ban user Bruce! Very juvenile. Step back and think. Give the guy an incentive to act productively. Just ban him for a year. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jack Paterno (talk • contribs) 02:36, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

He's not banned, he's indefinitely blocked. If he showed any sign of clue he could be unblocked tomorrow. And don't put unblock templates on anyone's pages but your own. Elen of the Roads (talk) 02:45, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Exactly what Elen said. Nobody's called for him to be banned. An indefinite block is, as it says, a block without a definite length. It could be a year, a month, a decade, or a day. To an extent, the blocked user determines the length of the block: if he can demonstrate that he understands why he was blocked, agrees not the repeat the actions in question, and is willing to edit constructively going forward, then he's likely to get unblocked. If he stubbornly repeats the same behaviour, that's when the block run a chance of turning, explicitly or implicitly, into a ban. —C.Fred (talk) 03:00, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

• Good block. The editor is either extraordinarily dense, or is just a troll. Either way, see ya. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 03:54, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I just noticed that no one had notified the editor; I've done so now, and indicated that we would copy or link to any new comments directly relevant to this discussion. And I had earlier notified the user that at this point, he can use his talk page to discuss the block, and that's it--no more demands for recantations, reversions, or obeisances. Any further ranting should result in a talk page being removed. Also, the user currently has a sandbox copy of his preferred version of the article, which should be deleted if the block is upheld (might as well wait a day or two just to be sure). Qwyrxian (talk) 04:35, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Now he's practically begging to have his talk page privilege revoked. It would only be polite to accommodate him. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 07:05, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

If it's not trolling -- and it seems much too complicated for that -- I'm afraid there's a maasive WP:COMPETENCE problem with this user, and that, for whatever reason, he is incapable of understanding how Wikipedia works. Beyond My Ken (talk) 07:35, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Per this diff, in which the user explicitly says that he is making a legal threat, I have removed talk page access ("accommodated him", as Baseball Bugs says). He can send Arbcom or the Foundation or whoever he wants his legal threats demanding we remove his content. Qwyrxian (talk) 12:29, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Shame it had to come to it, but clearly the right decision -- Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 15:18, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Also, Elen of the Roads deleted his sandbox version of the article. Beyond My Ken (talk) 18:31, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Brunodam

His latest incarnation (that I've noticed) seems to be User:6alban, and his latest article is Rocca Pietro. Judging by the fact that he's active, there are likely more "Brunodams" lurking in the woodwork. --DIREKTOR ^(TALK) 22:42, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Again? Keep doing the same, DIREKTOR....go on, go on....but at the end: WHO CARES? Sorry, but in the long run there it is nothing you (and your friends) can do against the truth about Italians in Venezia Giulia & Dalmazia. If you are REALLY clever, you should understand this simple reality (ah, finally allow me to remember that until now no one of my friends in Italy has started to support my articles in wikipedia, but I'd like to see how you and your group will label them as "vandals" and erase their writings only because they like to write about that thuth ...).

Furthermore, if you want to see all the articles erased by your group last month, be my guest and go to e-notes (an internet company in little part owned by myself): you'll find -for example- the Italian irredentism in Dalmatia at http://www.enotes.com/topic/Italian_irredentism_in_Dalmatia , or the Italian irredentism in Istria at http://www.enotes.com/topic/Italian_irredentism_in_Istria

So, DIREKTOR, please don't go on with the same....remember my advice of last month about your possible heart problems if you keep going on and on fighting against nearly everybody in the en.wiki.....Wikipedia should be a hobby! Allow others to participate with their writings in a friendly way, even if their opinions are different than yours!!!!! Remember: Wikipedia is not a Balkan or WWII battleground. For me is only a hobby, B.D. --6alban (talk) 02:16, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

The above editor is clearly a sock of a banned user. Can someone please block and run a checkuser for the rest of the sock drawer? Night Ranger (talk) 02:44, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and blocked indefinitely as xe basically admits here that he is the same editor. However, I recommend that someone else with more time open up an SPI just to check for sleepers, given the history of sockpuppetry. Qwyrxian (talk) 03:02, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Brunodam has really overstepped the mark (again) with what amounts to personal threats here and here. I personally have had enough of dealing with this mentally disturbed person, and I'm sure that DIREKTOR and many other editors feel the same. In view of Brunodam's past and present actions, I now demand more radical action to make it harder for him to interfere with Wikipedia. If possible, block all the IPs from Brunodam's home range and semi-protect all the articles affected by his sockpuppets. Something must be done, Brunodam is the one to be alienated, not the regular editors trying to do a good job. The mayor of Yurp (talk) 12:53, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

As a banned user, his edits can be reverted by any editor without worrying about 3rr. Socks should be reported here or to WP:SPI. --Blackmane (talk) 13:28, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

No other socks found, blocked some IPs. TNXMan 15:14, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Help needed

Could someone please protect my user-page? I think it is Grawp who sends me loving messages about "Your skull will be crushed by an aluminum bat, fascist swine!:" Cheers, Huldra (talk) 01:23, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

 Done talk page protected 24 hrs & nonsense revdel'd Skier Dude (talk) 01:33, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

A big thank you! (And I wouldn´t mind if people kept an eye on my talk-page; I seem to have come to Jarles attention lately. ust a few days ago I had to disable my email after being spammed with "loving" messages from him. Anyway; thanks again! And back to work. Huldra (talk) 01:40, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

According to Page History, these edits and the summaries were redacted. However, they still appeared on Huldra's talk page. I deleted them, but they are still available through page history. Perhaps someone could redcat them properly. RolandR (talk) 09:32, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

 Done Bencherlite^Talk 13:10, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Michael Jackson

There is an editor that is insistent on the Michael Jackson article on changing the legal name of Jackson, based on some 'film'(?) called 'Alive! Is Michael Jackson Really Dead?'. The user seems to even uploaded some image from the film here. I don't know enough about these conspiracies, but I'm pretty sure the death certificate issued by the LA County Health Department cites Jackson's real name. In any case, looking at this editors contributions, it seems as if he/she is here only to cause disruption. The 2nd edit from this account requested the users page be protected 'to prevent spam'. The account then went on to make the same requests on several different articles.(1,2,3,4), then made some odd edits(1,2,3) before completely stopping any edits for several months when he started editing the Jackson page. Something is going on, and I suspect the editor is here only for disruption purposes, and could be related to another account who recently vandalized the Jackson article. Help? Dave Dial (talk) 01:47, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, I've deleted the drivers license file (it's got to be a copyvio, surely) and the bizarre Talk:Wikipedia Improve Center. I think it's more cluelessness than malevolence, but if he posts the same change to Michael Jackson again, he is over 3RR --Elen of the Roads (talk) 02:00, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Yea, I saw that page too. Definitely strange. Perhaps you're right about the 'cluelessness', but the edits being made seem strange. I stopped reverting his changes because I didn't want to get into an edit war. So I will let someone else change it back. Thanks for the response and help, Elen. Dave Dial (talk) 02:10, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

There is another edit war going on concerning whether Jackson "died" or "was manslaughtered" (a term I've never even heard of). One editor is on the verge of a 3RR violation, which I commented on on their Talk page, and which they somehow claim that I'm being pointy, when I am not even involved in the editing. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 19:00, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

User:Sabarikarthik1991

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Hi, please block this user indefinitely, and erase his edit summaries to the Captivity of Mangalorean Catholics at Seringapatam article. He has injected crude insults against the Mangalorean Catholics. See this. Joyson Noel ^{Holla at me!} 09:31, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Joyson. I've notified the user of this discussion - you need to do this when you post at ANI. This, however, is not an ANI issue; it's simple vandalism, and should be dealt with by reverting (as you have done) and placing a warning template on the user's talkpage (which I have done for you). If he persists, take it to WP:AIV before coming here. Yunshui 雲‍水 10:15, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, so abusing an entire community is not an ANI issue. At least, delete the edit summaries. Joyson Noel ^{Holla at me!} 10:23, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

They have never used any edit summaries, there's nothing to delete ... and they did not abuse an entire community, they inserted childish vandalism (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 10:28, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I meant, delete his revisions! Inserting that the Mangalorean Christians delivered women to the English is not abusing an entire community? Were he to say something similar about your particular ethnicity, you wouldn't be insulted by it? And he also inserted nonsense like the Mangalorean Catholics got banged by the English during Hyder Ali's reign. Delete these revisions. These are verbal use! Plus, it was one fellow. There is no they. Why are you arguing if you haven't even bothered to look into it properly? Joyson Noel ^{Holla at me!} 10:30, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

His edits have been reverted; you did that yourself. Do you mean that you want them suppressed from the edit history? I don't think Oversight are likely to do that; for one thing, if he continues to vandalise then those edits will be needed as evidence for a future block. He vandalised a page, you reverted him, I warned him, he hasn't vandalised since. This happens thousands of times every single day on Wikipedia. Let it go. Yunshui 雲‍水 10:43, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

They won't be WP:REVDEL'd either; as Yunshui says, this exact kind of childish vandalism happens by the minute on Wikipedia, and how Joyson has handled (up until the ANI request) it is how it gets handled thousands of times a day. If it happens more, then there will be additional steps. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 10:47, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Just answer this one question. Are childish insults to bios, or community related articles subject to revision deletion or not? Joyson Noel ^{Holla at me!} 10:51, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

This type? No, not usually. Oh, by the way, you neither advised the other editor of this ANI filing (already done by Yunshui) nor provided them a list of the rules via a Welcome template (done by me) (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 10:54, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I didn't feel the need to. I assumed that such an action deserves an indefinite block, and so i reported it here. Joyson Noel ^{Holla at me!} 11:02, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Obviously Joyson belongs to the community and feels hurt. Can we not suppress the edits as we sometimes do on talk pages? 92.241.168.146 (talk) 11:04, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Joyson: advising them of the ANI filing is a necessity, no matter what - you cannot miss that warning. The statements, although puerile, do not appear to meet the criteria threshold. I have had both my faith community AND my ethnicity insulted billions of times - what you're asking to have REVDEL'd is extremely minor in the grand scheme of things. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 11:09, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

In other words, who cares? Joyson Noel ^{Holla at me!} 13:16, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

• Joyson is quite justifiably upset - this vandalism is quite a bit nastier than just replacing every third word with 'penis', and does appear to be intended to insult the subjects of the article. I'm not sure why quite so much good faith is being extended to the vandal, and quite so little to Joyson. Elen of the Roads (talk) 13:09, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't doubt the justification of him being upset. That said, historically, the exact actions that are being inserted into the article (although currently unsourced) were the actions that were required of the aggrieved group, and enforced by aggressors. The negative being added in the article are actually against the English aggressors, and not suggesting that the Mangalorean Christians were doing this voluntarily. (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 13:32, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Any proof that members of the aggrieved group were supposed to supply women to the British soldiers, who by the way, mostly tended to be Indian sepoys? If not, then i suggest that you better shut up! Perhaps, your ancestors supplied women to the British soldiers or the Yankees, but not ours. Joyson Noel ^{Holla at me!} 13:47, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Joyson, enough! Bwilkins, you have genuinely misread the vandal edits. The vandal is having a go at the Mangalorean Christians. Whether he's just a mindless troll or has an agenda I don't know, it could be either.Elen of the Roads (talk) 13:54, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Let me add to this! These are 'genuine' edits:

• This was led by a native major named Francis Pinto who let the English shove their tiny thing into his huge hole for the defense of the fort. brave defence of the fort. He also refers to these troops as the "Native Christian Bastards".
• During Hyder's regime, Roman Catholicism in Mangalore and the Mangalorean Catholic community continued to get banged by the English.

"Historically, the exact actions that are being inserted into the article (although currently unsourced) were the actions that were required of the aggrieved group, and enforced by aggressors." You have seriously lost all credibility. Joyson Noel ^{Holla at me!} 14:18, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Joyson, pack it in! Bwilkins misunderstood the edits, you appear to have misunderstood what both he and I said, and are certainly failing to agree any good faith with me, who was on your side up to this point. I am going to hat this off, before it descends any further.Elen of the Roads (talk) 15:31, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Probable unauthorised bot, relatively new editor; other contrib looks like machine-translation (bad combination!)

The contributions for new user (registered 6th October 2011) User:NotWith first contribs; are highly suggestive of an unauthorised bot. I came across one of his new pages whilst on NPP, which also looks suspiciously like a machine-translation (and probably copyvio, therefore). The idea of a user who combines an unauthorised bot with producing machine-translation copyvios makes me shudder! Pesky (talk …stalk!) 10:27, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

...which contributions are you referring to? I see a lot of disambiguation edits, but not much else. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 12:28, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Oh, you mean the disambiguation edits? Humans can do those pretty quick. Also, there are loads of random edits thrown in there, exactly as a human edits (always getting sidetracked!). - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 12:30, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

He does appear that he's using WP:AWB or something to add/fix wikilinks. He has created some bizarre disambigs that simply re-link to another disambig (and I removed a bunch as G8). (talk→ BWilkins ←track) 12:34, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Not listed as an authorised user of AWB. Confirming the creation of dabs that link to other dabs., and appears to be able to do this at a rate of up to 2 a minute (I can't do that - perhaps I'm not human). Creates maps too that look suspiciously from Google maps, but I'm not a copyright expert on imags. Appears to be taking random book, comic, and place names from articles concerned with northern France and/or Belgium/Holland and creating redirects for them. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:01, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

He's now movingLast month he moved dozens of pages like this: (moved Diadora (genus) to Diadora (beetle). i know nothing about taxonomy, but I'm sure this,isn't right. I suggest an emergency block until he has explained what he's doing. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:06, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not seeing a discussion of this on his talkpage, just a one liner about some page move that he did. Someone suggested he try writing an article instead, which he seems to have done --Elen of the Roads (talk) 13:18, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

My real concerns began when I looked at his earliest contributions; within two days of registering, he then did hundreds of search-and-replace type edits on particular keywords. The keyword changes seem to take him two minutes before he's back on changing around one page per minute, in the hundreds. This simply doesn't leave a human being the time to go and search for and open the next tabs for those changes. He can't have hundreds of tabs all open at the same time. Something isn't right here. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 13:25, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I have asked him how it was done! Elen, on On 8th October, for instance, (two days after registering with us), he opened, edited and re-saved nearly 200 pages between 08:02 and 14:28, for the most part at the rate of around one a minute, with apparently no breaks. That's six and a half hours without even a loo break. Adding: I can;t believe that a single human being is capable of this; this leaves us with either a bot or multiple users on one account. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 13:39, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I see nothing nefarious, just a misunderstanding of dabs and a lot of relatively unnecessary redirects. I'm not sure about the taxonomic moves.187 redirects, 61 pages created most of which are dabs (some of which are actually quite good), the rest are 1-line stubs about insects. Other edits are normal clean ups. We have other users that work at this rate for very short stubs and have created nearly 1 mio pages. You just create a basic model on your computer with all the page elements and paste it and change a few words. Easy enough if they are all about the same thing. I suggest we wait until he responds on his talk page or makes edits again. Nothing to worry about. I think we can close this. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:16, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Not to assume bad faith, but this reminds me somewhat of what User:TigreTiger (later found to be a sockpuppet of Tobias Conradi) did within a few days of the account's existence, although that was with geographic issues instead. Not sure if that warrants looking into. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:56, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Well there's a response on the talk page, to which I've responded. I'm trying to think of a way to explain my gut feelings here, and having trouble. To do all that as an experienced editor, and to say "That's the basic job of correcting links that point to disambiguation pages. I think plenty of people know that!" as an experienced editor, is fine. But to do all that disambig/redirect work within two days of registering, just doesn't feel right. And the response itself has left me with even more concerns in respect of the article Instituto de Resseguros do Brasil. On the talk page, we have an editor who is clearly fluent. But the article isn't, it reads like a machine translation. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 17:32, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Adding: that early stuff was all changing / making wikilinks, not new stub creation. Pesky (talk …stalk!) 18:07, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Personal information on Talk page

Resolved

 – Material removed, editor reblocked, other measures in hand. Bencherlite^Talk 13:02, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I removed this table from a users talk page: User_talk:Unscgess#List_of_the_oldest_students_in_Campbellton_Middle_School_of_2010-2011._That_I_know_of_so_far._Only_for_me_to_look_at.This_list_will_never_be_completed In my opinion it contains information about minors which should never be in the public domain. The user has put the information back. Could someone please review this and if you agree then ensure the information is permanently removed. Thanks. Vrenator ^talk 12:21, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Surely it should be nuked under WP:NOTAWEBHOST - it's not ecyclopedic content, it's never going to be encyclopedic content and it does not add in user or community communication. --Cameron Scott (talk) 12:50, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks to those who removed the content and blocked the (already blocked)user from editing his own talkpage.Vrenator ^talk 12:59, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't have revdel so have had to delete and selectively restore the page, but I've got rid of those edits from the page history. fish&karate 13:06, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Inappropriate block of Joe Circus

Jayjg has blocked Joe Circus for civility and harassment while in a debate with him on Circumcision. Whether the block was warranted or not Jayjg should not be the one blocking Joe per WP:INVOLVED. Garycompugeek (talk) 15:09, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

• I disagree with imposing a hard and fast rule. Some cases are so obvious, I wouldn't want an admin to waste our time here. Rklawton (talk) 15:17, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
• I'd say this particular case clearly warranted a short block [85][86] Rklawton (talk) 15:21, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
• I'd say this comes under the "any reasonable admin would probably have done the same thing" exception.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:41, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
• I'm not saying that a block wouldn't have been warranted, although I wasn't seeing anything major. It is disturbing that it was done by an involved admin. This could have been handled much better.--JOJ ^Hutton 15:50, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
• There could have been a tidier way of implementing the block, but it was still warranted. Note that there is also an SPI case for Joe Circus too. From a general technical perspective, it seems quite likely that he's been abusing multiple accounts since the block. WilliamH (talk) 16:02, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
  • Other admins who should have been called on to implement the block in such a case, so it does not have the appearance in any sense of an admin using the buttons to win in content disputes or other disagreements. Edison (talk) 16:15, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Definitely. WilliamH (talk) 16:28, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

That wasn't a content dispute, that was extended trolling. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:12, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

• Good block. Obvious troll. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:25, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I haven't had any content disputes with that editor, and his actions are part of an off-wikipedia harrasment campaign against a longstanding Wikipedia editor. Those who wish to know more can e-mail me for the details. Since his block, he has socked in various ways. If he continues this harrasment if and when he returns, I intend to block him for a month. Jayjg ^(talk) 17:47, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

• Seems reasonable as a trolling block. The user is able to discuss and realize his issues on his talkpage - Checkuser although not conclusive , talks about proxies and possible/likely connections to multiple accounts. Off2riorob (talk) 17:55, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
  • I've blocked California Mom, Aussie1947 and EditTalk indefinitely, check the SPI case for my comments. From my perspective, I'm willing to say: yep, Joe Circus is abusing multiple accounts. Off-wiki-gal is worth keeping an eye on too. WilliamH (talk) 19:11, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

If the OP's posting here is what triggered the ISP, then the OP should be awarded an honorary boomerang. :) ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 19:47, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

If he's abusing multiple accounts, then we should extend his block. Rklawton (talk) 19:49, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

The SPI was filed a day before this. Other than being punitive, I don't see what extending the block will do - if anything, it'd act as even more reason to continue socking. But if the disruptive behaviour (including socking) continues after the block expires, he will definitely be sanctioned accordingly. WilliamH (talk) 20:47, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Persistent edit war over Alexander Misharin

Recently there was another report on the case. Edit war was stopped for a time, but now it continues. --ssr (talk) 16:20, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

The initiator of edit war is Mr Rublev (user:ssr) who is employed by Alexander Misharin as his "blog secretary". He is payed for attempts of political censorship in Wikipedia. Mr Rublev goal is "to remove his writings and not to allow him to write" (about user Gritzko who is claimed by Mr Rublev as another conflict of interest party). Mr Rublev wrote an article praising his employer - Russian Governor of Sverdlovsk Oblast Alexander Misharin - and reverts any attempt to add information about corruption scandals. This information is backed up by federal and local press publications but obviously Mr Rublev will never be satisfied and is going to guard his version of the article on behalf of his employer.--217.118.91.104 (talk) 17:16, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Original research edit war at Maxwell's demon

A new user, AlanS333 (talk · contribs), is edit warring at Maxwell's demon to include content sourced to his own Facebook page. He claims it can also be found in the archives at the University of Arizona but does not provide sufficient evidence that it qualifies under WP:RS. Since I am probably considered involved at this point, could someone else please take a look? Thank you. Wknight94 ^talk 18:46, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Reverted his addition, left him a note, and I'll block the account for a bit if he re-adds the material. Hopefully it won't come to that. --Floquenbeam (talk) 18:57, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

He should understand what he did. Now an admin blocked him for a period of time. --Mohamed Aden Ighe (talk) 19:14, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

What? No, he hasn't been blocked. --Floquenbeam (talk) 19:17, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Is this an outing/attempted outting of someone's IP?

I saw this while keeping an eye on a somewhat problematic editor. Is it what I think it is? I thought we weren't even supposed to ask, especially someone without bad edits. - Jack Sebastian (talk) 20:02, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

User:Mark Marino was blocked for socking in 2009, so no, I don't think it's an outing attempt. --Elen of the Roads (talk) 20:24, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Disruptive editing, legal threats

Proofplus (talk · contribs · count · api · block log)

CueCat (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

See here for some background.

Despite some editors' attempts to educate Proofplus (I gave up), she continues to disruptively - and often incoherently - edit the CueCat article and Talk pages, including removal of sourced material she doesn't like and insertion of unsourced material. In my view, she is not an asset to Wikipedia and should be blocked. In addition, she has made at least one legal threat in her edit summary, which independently merits a block. She has also accused me and User:Cullen328 of sockpuppetry here.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:27, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I've been watching the situation on the article for a time. She is a bit of a problematic editor, probably moreso with not yet understanding how Wikipedia works. I don't think she made a legal threat there, but she is in the territory of personal attacks for some of her comments to Bbb23 and Cullen238. —C.Fred (talk) 20:35, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I think Fred is being kind. I don't see how the phrase "Liable is at issue here WARNING Kbb23" can be construed as anything but a legal threat. She misspelled libel or intended to mean that I would be "liable", and she is warning me (she often calls me Kbb23 instead of Bbb23). I personally don't think she will ever understand how Wikipedia works (or wants to, although she sometimes claims she does, but she is clearly passive-aggressive in many of her comments), but even if that were a possibility, she should not be permitted to edit until she shows some sign of having learned.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:43, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

More evidence of legal threats: "and yes I say Kbb23 Cullens accusations, but I just warned them of liable with the words they attributed to an author, but was with that said" ([87]).--Bbb23 (talk) 21:03, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

SORRY Bbb23 I have a child on my knee, feeding them while I try to work and be mommy at the same time. That is not against the rules. I simply pointed out the RULES on wiki about the statementDIRECTLY FROM WIKI that you cannot post inflamatory statments about living persons and the stuff you posted was really offensive and not part of the reference link. You simply cannot attack a living individual on wiki that way, and BESIDES the record is about a DEVICE not a person. YOU NEED TO COOL ITProofPlus Professional Researcher 21:15, 11 November 2011 (UTC) ProofPlus Professional Researcher 21:15, 11 November 2011 (UTC) (ProofPlus Professional Researcher 21:15, 11 November 2011 (UTC))

Known troll posing as a real person

Please see the edits today by Peter Wynne-Thomas (talk⁺ · tag · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log · CA · CheckUser(log) · investigate · cuwiki) who claims to be the real Peter Wynne-Thomas. The user has been referred to SPI under Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Richard Daft per WP:DUCK.

Aside from the duck test/SPI issue, does this imposture contravene WP:BLP or other policies in place to safeguard the integrity and reputation of living persons? ----Jack | ^{talk page} 21:00, 11 November 2011 (UTC)