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Notice to posters: Let's try to keep two-way conversations readable. If you post to my talk page, I will just reply here. If I posted recently to another talk page, including your talk page, then that means I have it on my watchlist and will just read responses there. I may also refactor discussions to your talk page for the same reason. Thanks. Xenophrenic ( Talk)
  • Incivility: I reserve the right to remove uncivil or disruptive comments and/or threads from this talk page.
  • Spam: I also reserve the right to delete any bulk messages that I regard as spamming.

Helen Caldicott

I was just wondering where the February 20th came from in the reference you added. I don't see that date on the webpage and the retrieval date in any case would be today. Thanks in advance for your response. -- Daffydavid ( talk) 01:26, 16 July 2014 (UTC) reply

Hi, David. The Feb. 20 date isn't a retrieval date, which I didn't add. It's just one of several "page-updated" dates provided by tools (domain origin, website archiving, Google page cache indexing...) indicating the existance of that "advisory-council" information at that date. I was unfortunately unable to find the exact date the webpage was created, or the earliest date when Caldicott was added to the webpage. She has certainly been on their Advisory Council since before February 2014. Here's a 2012 video of her, for example, which describes her in the info-tab as a member of their Advisory Council. If you can find more specific information, please don't hesitate to add it. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 17:13, 16 July 2014 (UTC) reply

Ian Stevenson

Hi there, regarding this: indeed, I had misread the text. The article says that Huxley was known for the advocacy, not Stevenson. Sorry, thanks and cheers. - DVdm ( talk) 13:00, 4 September 2014 (UTC) reply

No apologies necessary; and thanks for the attention to detail! Xenophrenic ( talk) 17:02, 17 September 2014 (UTC) reply

Jane Fonda

Note that although footnote 48, the Plebe Summer ... Procedures, is a dead link, there's a valid archive available at Wayback confirming that "Good Night Jane Fonda" calls are expressly prohibited. While the military is often criticized for unnecessary paperwork, it seems unlikely that even they would trouble to so specifically prohibit something that had no significant history of occurring. 2600:1006:B10A:9AF1:5AD:4287:E314:1B02 ( talk) 06:58, 7 November 2014 (UTC) reply

That's a very valid point, and is just one of several reasons I left the content in the article. Another reason is that although the source is "anonymous", Burke knows who the source is and apparently trusts it enough to repeat the story. BTW, thanks for the header edit. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 07:45, 7 November 2014 (UTC) reply

Have you tried WP:BLPN ?

The choice of WP:ANI was a reasonable one to report the IP, but the biographies of living persons noticeboard is probably a better place for issues about defamatory posts. However, I think that, in the specific case, the best option is semi-protection of the article, which I will request in a few minutes. Robert McClenon ( talk) 03:33, 10 February 2015 (UTC) reply

By the way, I think that the editor in question has four edits, not six, because I think that the 'banana' vandal was someone else. However, that is not important. We need to prevent the insertion of questionable defamatory material. Robert McClenon ( talk) 03:33, 10 February 2015 (UTC) reply

I trust

you now understand my consistent positions on BLPs even if sometimes it means "bad guys" don't get buckets of s*** piled into articles? Heck I even edited Kim Jong-un. Cheers. Collect ( talk) 23:08, 20 February 2015 (UTC) reply

Salutations, Collect! You and I have recently been in agreement on several different BLP articles; it must surely be a sign of the end times. Do pigs now fly, and hath Hell frozen over as well?
You need not clarify your positions on BLPs with me. To the contrary, I have told you how I admire your generally conservative approach in upholding our BLP policies about disparagement of living people in our articles. The only inconsistency I've observed is that you do not appear to have the same regard for the living people who edit Wikipedia. I've raised this issue with you before regarding your piling of buckets of unsubstantiated s*** upon me here and here, yet you showed no willingness to rectify the situation. "No animus", indeed.
How is it, Collect, that you can be remarkably astute at carefully examining cited sources in a BLP and recognize "No, the sources do not say that", yet you can so carelessly assemble a collection of diffs and comments and wrongly conclude about an editor, "He seeks to make sure that people know how evil the Tea Party movement is, that it is racist, bigoted, homophobic etc."? You came here concerned that I not misunderstand your positions on BLPs; has it occurred to you that other editors may also be concerned that their positions not be misunderstood or mischaracterized? If you have (correctly) sensed a certain curtness and restrained congeniality in our interactions, please know that it is this inconsistency at the root of it. Eighteen months ago, I suggested that we address your misunderstanding and attempt to take advantage of an "opportunity for bridge rebuilding"; that never came to pass, but the offer doesn't come with an expiration date. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 18:42, 22 February 2015 (UTC) reply
On the TPm material - I saw patterns from some editors which I still do not feel in concord with Wikipedia policies - we shall simply disagree at times, but please note that I have never had any sort of "enemies list" at all. I note you point to a NYP section where one editor enters with ""a bunch of damn bullshit" as his commentary, which I found a tad more dismissive that any language I had ever used. Indeed, I found a few of your comments to be an inch less than civil, and a few of your positions which impacted living persons to fall outside the bounds of WP:BLP and I ask that you recognize I could reasonably so view some of your edits. Cheers. Collect ( talk) 18:57, 22 February 2015 (UTC) reply
You speak of "some editors"; I can't really comment on them, nor of any "enemy lists" — my concern here was specifically about you and me in the situation I linked above. In short, you levelled seriously inaccurate charges about me back in 2013, then after you were shown that your comments about me were completely unsubstantiated — and in some cases completely opposite to reality — you chose to let the false statements stand unrectified. Granted, I may not have chosen the best venue in which to approach you about correcting your misstatements, as another editor's remarks already had you on the defensive, but I don't see that as justification since you mentioned me there first. You ask that I "recognize you could reasonably view some of my edits as outside the bounds of WP:BLP"? I've rechecked the edits you posted on your Talk page back in September 2013, as well as the couple edits you posted with your RfC/U entry, and no reasonable person could view any of those as violating our BLP policy. If you are thinking of some other edit of mine, perhaps you could remind me of it? Xenophrenic ( talk) 20:40, 18 July 2015 (UTC) reply
[1] I think is the diff at issue? I regret the misunderstanding -- the IP however sure was showing a decided POV inconsonant with WP:BLP as I am sure you agree. Cheers. Collect ( talk) 19:03, 22 February 2015 (UTC) reply
As that diff shows, it was the IP making the case "There are many media reports clearly showing that the Tea Partiers are racist", while I had to remind the IP editor that it was wrong to label TPers as racist. I reasonably and accurately observed that there was "significant enough reliably sourced information to explore the frequently heard allegations of a racist component", which we are required to do as editors when facing such voluminous reliable sources — as any reasonable editor would agree. Anyway, having one's motivations and actions mischaracterized is no fun, as I'm sure you can attest. Since your comments about me were made so long ago, I'll accept your "I regret the misunderstanding" and pretend you meant it to apply to all of the similar misstatements from that same episode — and we'll consider the matter done. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 20:40, 18 July 2015 (UTC) reply

PNAC

You might look at Project for the New American Century moreover - I know we are apt at times to disagree, but I think you might find the discussions interesting. Collect ( talk) 09:32, 2 March 2015 (UTC) reply

I took a look. I count myself lucky that I didn't jump into that mess right away, as reports, blocks and a lot of drama followed soon after. Rather happy I missed it. Xenophrenic ( talk) 20:40, 18 July 2015 (UTC) reply

new essay

The ArbCom case against me is vexatious indeed - I shall not contend against those who taste blood. The main complaint even includes my essays - so I wrote one which I hope you will appreciate WP:Wikipedia and shipwrights. It would be fun to see how others react, indeed. Warm regards, Collect ( talk) 04:25, 20 March 2015 (UTC) reply

Thanks for bringing that essay to my attention. Generally good overall, and an interesting read. I must admit I found myself taking your 'shipwrights' analogy further in my mind, imagining the roles and impact of various other unmentioned, but equally important, people involved in making the "craft which will sail straight and true on the oceans and rivers of the world". The foremen, tasked with keeping the shipwrights working together productively; the suppliers, from whom the shipwrights obtain their raw materials; the dock workers, who try to keep the shipyard uncluttered and free from debris, etc. I'm tempted to play with that in a sandbox somewhere. As for the ArbCom case(s), it appears one particular colleague had both of us in his sights. I'm fortunate that he was only shooting blanks when he took aim at me, and I was therefore never named as a party. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 20:40, 18 July 2015 (UTC) reply

Hiya

Copied here to facilitate continuation of the discussion.
Hi, MavsFan28 - it's been a while since we chatted. I hope you've been well. I know you left a comment on the Tom Smith article Talk page, and I do plan to respond to you there, but this is about a different (but related) issue not appropriate for that Talk page. I figured you and IP:100.14.57.197 were the same editor. You made this edit while logged in and as the IP you made the identical edit, and you've edit warred to keep that edit as both. Not logging in isn't a big problem in itself, but when you left a comment with an edit summary stating (See talk page before either of you revert), you implied that the IP user isn't you. If the IP is you, then you have violated Wikipedia's policy regarding abusive WP:sockpuppetry. Perhaps you were unaware of that policy? If so, please let me know, and we can just overlook it this time. If you tell me that the IP isn't yours, however, I'll be obliged to file a WP:SPI report as a routine matter. It's a tedious process, so I should apologize for it in advance, but I'd be very interested to know how it could be coincidental that at least 21 of the 30 articles edited by the IP are also edited by you. I see you edit many articles about Pennsylvania politics and sports subjects, and the IP geolocates to Pennsylvania, so I'm sure you can understand my reasoning. Seeing the IP make edits just hours after the MavsFan28 account in obscure areas like the Ken Ham Talk page RfC just further emphasizes the point. Anyway, your input in this matter would be appreciated. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 04:58, 12 November 2015 (UTC) reply

Hi there! I'm aware of the policy. I make plenty of edits logged in and out without violating the policy. I didn't think the other edit where the sentence was removed in full was appropriate as well as the other edit on the first sentence hence the "both." In regards to some of the edits you speak of though, we have a shared college dorm where our IPs all get bounced around and therefore they are constantly changing and I wouldn't even know all the IPs I have edited under would be. If you think I did something that violated the policy, feel free to file the report. However, please when you have a chance, do respond at that talk page about how the current lead does not fall properly in line with almost all wiki politican's articles or how it doesn't go with WP:LeadSentence. Thanks 50.196.53.209 ( talk) 14:47, 12 November 2015 (UTC) Also MavsFan28 ( talk) 14:48, 12 November 2015 (UTC) reply
I (personally) have no problem with you editing both while logged in and logged out. Just so long as you aren't doing so to intentionally deceive, or to circumvent Wikipedia policy (i.e.; WP:3RR). That's why I brought it up. Editing while logged into a registered account is probably the best way to avoid the problems caused by shared college dorm-mates. I've left comments on the article Talk page for you, and I see that you have joined me there. Hopefully, we can resolve any outstanding issues. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 18:24, 12 November 2015 (UTC) reply
I know what you mean. But I wouldn't use one of many random IPs that I access to sockpuppet in anyway, otherwise I would have done that in our discussion on the talk page. :) Understand your point though. On that article though, what's the next step? Obviously we aren't agreeing on this, so do we get someone else to bring their opinion? MavsFan28 ( talk) 01:22, 13 November 2015 (UTC) reply
Think on that discussion, we'll have to agree to disagree, and go with the lead you suggested for now. I thought it could be solved by at least one other person jumping in on the discussion, but no one has seemed to notice or care. Anyway, I'm fine with that change being made. Thanks MavsFan28 ( talk) 02:14, 15 November 2015 (UTC) reply
Alright, I'll implement the change. It's a low-traffic article; even more so now that the subject is deceased, so the lack of participation is not surprising. I agree that more participation would have been a good thing. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 17:33, 15 November 2015 (UTC) reply

Iraq Veterans Against the War

Heyo Xenophrenic. I added the content per this AfD discussion as a possibly searchable term. If not entirely, do mention Ricky Clousing briefly. Cheers, Ya sh ! 17:44, 22 November 2015 (UTC) reply

Hi, Yash! I reviewed that deletion discussion (and the previous one) before reverting your edit. I also looked at the one cited source which mentions IVAW, and saw that it does not support the content that "Clousing is a member of IVAW." It appears that the editors in that deletion discussion automatically assumed that the content was properly sourced; it was not. According to reliable sources, several groups agreed with, "stood behind" or supported Clousing's actions, but he is not described as a member of any of the groups. If his Wikipedia article is to be merged into another article, an appropriate target article needs to be found. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 18:31, 22 November 2015 (UTC) reply
My apologies, Xenophrenic. I should have checked. I will see if it can be merged somewhere else. Thank you for your time. Regards, Ya sh ! 18:34, 22 November 2015 (UTC) reply

Tea Party

You might want to note the similarities in the arguments made by Efliv23 and those of Catsmeow8989. Just something I noticed. GAB Hello! 18:45, 19 December 2015 (UTC) reply

Oh, I've definitely noticed. They are the same person, or equally bad: congenitally joined meatpuppet twins. Seriously considering enlisting assistance at WP:ANI. Xenophrenic ( talk) 19:05, 19 December 2015 (UTC) reply
Keep me posted -- I'll gladly help out if needed. GAB Hello! 19:17, 19 December 2015 (UTC) reply
I am taking this to SPI as I speak. Hoping for the best... Link is here. If you have any more evidence, feel free to share it there. GAB Hello! 17:06, 20 December 2015 (UTC) reply
Thanks for that, GAB. I added a little to the report, but it appears that you covered it well enough. I hope the holidays are finding you in good spirits! Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 19:06, 20 December 2015 (UTC) reply
Anytime -- you, too! GAB Hello! 00:00, 21 December 2015 (UTC) reply
Holy smokes! I just checked the SPI, and I never expected a world of sleepers. Gotta love CU. GAB Hello! 00:02, 21 December 2015 (UTC) reply
Yeah, that kind of investment in spare sock accounts was unexpected, and makes me suspect that it won't be very long before he visits us again. Thanks again for the assistance. (BTW - I clicked on that YouTube link out of curiosity, and put on some headphones to briefly see what it was. An hour later I realized I was still listening to it...) Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 16:38, 22 December 2015 (UTC) reply
(A new convert! Success!) GAB Hello! 22:07, 23 December 2015 (UTC) reply

College degrees and biographic infoboxes

Greetings. I noticed that you had undid my edits on Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, specifically the ones that had included their respective degrees. I've since reverted them, but I'm opening discussion here, in case there's disagreement.

I had felt that the inclusion of the degrees was consistent with that of quite a few other notables ( Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Colin Powell, James Baker, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Ben Carson, the list could go on). Perhaps you may think otherwise?

Looking forward to your thoughts. GabeIglesia ( talk) 14:06, 23 December 2015 (UTC) reply

Seasons Greetings, GabeIglesia! Inclusion of education degrees (and fields of study; and institution names; and alma mater) in the infoboxes is certainly useful, as long as the info is placed in the correct fields. I hope you would agree. We wouldn't expect to see that a person's spouse=Harvard University, or that a person's alma mater=Bachelor of Arts. I understand the problem isn't as obviously apparent when we're talking about misplacing degree information in the alma mater field, as the two are tangentially related — but it is still a problem. You certainly aren't the first to make this mistake (as evidenced by the many examples you provided). On the Kerry example alone, the problem is frequent. See here, and before that here, here, and here. User:Swagger14 and User:Spark1498 are responsible for many of the misplacements (including in your examples above).
The issue of what should appear in the alma_mater|= field (and the related "how many institutions should be allowed in the field" issue) is not new, and has been discussed at length. Here is one such discussion on this issue in which I participated. The central concern is standardization, since there are apparently search tools and databases which access our infobox fields and expect the data to be parsed and formatted somewhat consistently. I hope that explanation helps. Best regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 17:46, 23 December 2015 (UTC) reply
Noted. Thanks for the explanation! GabeIglesia ( talk) 03:33, 25 December 2015 (UTC) reply

Happy New Year!

Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. Quis separabit? 17:50, 31 December 2015 (UTC) reply

RE: CREW

What did I do? What is the difference between these two edits ( [2], [3])? And there is nothing about CREW that is not partisan, btw. Quis separabit? 22:24, 22 January 2016 (UTC) reply

Howdy Robert. First, thank you for the 'Happy New Year' greeting, and please know that I wish the same for you. Sorry I'm so late in returning the sentiments. Thank you, also, for your contributions to Wikipedia — an impressive volume of work indeed (sometimes I wonder if you are a machine, rather than a living being). Second, regarding your opinion that "there is nothing about CREW that is not partisan" — I've heard that before, it's a popular meme. Unfortunately, it's a meme not supported by facts. CREW has criticized all parties; launched legal action against all parties, investigated all parties - so by definition, it is absolutely not partisan ("beholden to a single party"). Perhaps you meant to say that CREW has acted against people associated with the Republican Party more than those associated with the Democratic Party? That assertion would at least be supported by the facts; and while that doesn't equate to partisanship, it might be indicative of some bias, right? That's another popular meme, but at least it is plausible. Detractors of CREW cry bias, while defenders of CREW claim one of two reasons why Republicans get slammed more than Democrats: a) because Republicans have been in power more than Democrats, with more opportunity to abuse that power, or b) when it comes to bending or breaking the rules and regulations of government, Republicans simply transgress a lot more than Democrats. My personal opinion is that a degree of all three elements are involved; I'm just not sure about the proportions.
On the matter of today's edits, you do realize that Daily Caller article is simply a clever way to prop Brock up as a Clinton patsy, right? The reality is that Brock wasn't involved with CREW back when it filed the FOIA, and Brock wasn't involved when the State Dept. closed the request, and Brock hasn't made any comment on the matter during the past two weeks since the IG report. An actual informative news source on the matter doesn't even mention him. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 00:40, 23 January 2016 (UTC) reply

Disruptive IP hopper near Lancaster

Hi. I've been dealing with that IP-hopping editor from Lancaster, PA for months and months. This guy acts in good faith but is still disruptive and has serious civility and competence issues. What do you think about resuming the semi-prot approach instead of going back to constant reversions? If there's one thing I've learned it's that he never stops. Like the energizer bunny, as soon as the semi-prot expires he's back to junking up articles and talk pages the next day. (P.S. I'm kind of intermittent on WP these days, so please be patient if I don't respond immediately.) -- Dr. Fleischman ( talk) 19:59, 1 February 2016 (UTC) reply

Hi, Dr. Fleischman. I agree that his edits are disruptive, and he certainly has problems with civility and competence; he has long since forfeited any assumptions of good faith on my part. His latest edit, made just today, was to insert a link to a self-published YouTube video espousing some rather extreme points of view, and ending in a tirade about how Wikipedia and all news sources are "censoring" him. He posts phone numbers in edit summaries and claims to be a "paid Obama censor". As previously noted in previous discussions about this user, he has been repeatedly blocked and re-blocked by Admins NeilN and Bbb23, but he just hops to new IPs. HJ Mitchell has determined that it would be difficult to effectively range-block the IPs, so he tried semi-protecting some of the articles, but the guy has hopped to more than a dozen different articles now — some of them rather obscure. Should I assemble a list of all of the known target articles to date, and request to have them all semi'd? Xenophrenic ( talk) 23:52, 4 February 2016 (UTC) reply
That sounds like a good idea, thanks. Thus thread seems like a good starting point for putting together a list. I also wonder if we should include talk pages on the list. Clearly some of this guy's recent text dumps at Talk:Constitutional challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are counterproductive; however I'm uncomfortable preventing other IPs from providing input into articles. -- Dr. Fleischman ( talk) 04:52, 5 February 2016 (UTC) reply
Temporary notes to self - Frequented articles: David Yerushalmi - Robert Muise - Patrick Morrisey - Ron Johnson (U.S. politician) - David Zubik - Bob Casey, Jr. - David Barton (author) - Constitutional challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - United States House of Representatives v. Burwell - Thomas More Law Center
leaves note to HJ Mitchell, also calls specific editors idiots or alleges conspiracy,
Was at ANI here
Accuses several admins and editors mentioned above of "hijack of history" and a "conspiracy" to "censor" Wikipedia here
A couple editors discuss identical disruption a year and a half ago here
Disruptive IP complains and accuses here
Bbb23 tried to reason with, and talk sense to, the disruptive IP here, and later gets accused of being part of a conspiracy
Disruptive IP was prolific on this account for a while: 173.67.165.170
Also spammed Jimbo Wales Talk page here and 3 headers later here and yet again, 4 headers after that here
Stray outliers: 173.163.131.209 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.163.42.117 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.163.16.73 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 64.134.69.124 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 64.134.96.174 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 64.134.241.80 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 64.134.163.80 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 184.48.153.254 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS)
Recent: 40.131.15.234 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 50.107.50.51 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 50.107.50.58 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 50.76.207.102 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 50.77.104.17 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), IP:173.67.169.110, IP:173.67.160.197, IP:173.67.168.7, 173.67.164.84 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.159.59 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.167.142 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.165.239 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS) typical spamming into unrelated articles: IP:173.67.160.98
Rudolf Anderson disruption as well: IP:173.67.167.91, IP:173.67.168.235, IP:173.67.158.40, IP:173.67.167.51, IP:173.67.169.82, IP:173.67.166.205, IP:173.67.158.214, IP:173.67.159.231
(A few examples of block evasion: Sept 17, Sept 18, Sept 19, Sept 19)

173.67.158.36 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.158.40 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.158.194 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.158.214 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.159.70 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.159.134 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.159.216 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.160.12 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.160.28 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.160.86 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.160.92 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.160.98 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.160.197 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.161.72 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.161.128 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.162.28 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.162.58 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.162.60 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.162.92 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.162.145 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.162.239 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.163.16 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.163.45 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.163.81 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.163.147 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.163.154 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.164.23 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.164.155 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.164.173 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.164.225 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.165.9 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.165.72 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.165.120 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.165.170 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.165.192 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.166.95 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.166.151 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.166.160 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.166.205 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.167.51 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.167.65 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.167.91 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.167.102 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.167.211 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.168.7 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.168.64 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.168.235 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.169.82 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.169.110 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.169.111 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.169.117 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.169.135 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.169.136 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.169.214 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.169.250 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.171.66 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.171.218 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.172.92 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS),

IVAW and flag burning, IVAW sources.

Here is the photo that was taken of the person in question. This is regards to the edit you made on Sept 1st 2015 that removed all refferences to the flag burning. edit to article, image Here is the link that also references it from the IVAW website. The line quotes is listed on item number 7. This is the link to his resignation from IVAW. meeting minutes

I respectful request that the IVAW article to be amended to include this information. Thank you for your time. Articseahorse ( talk) 00:29, 24 March 2016 (UTC) reply

Hi, Articseahorse. Thank you for providing the links to that information. I see from that information that there was a brief demonstration at an ANSWER protest, and that "...there was no official endorsement of the message Matthis conveyed. Nor was official endorsement sought. Matthis represented his personal views which resonate with some but not all members." The information does not appear to be regarding an IVAW event, or regarding a IVAW-sanctioned demonstration, so I am unclear as to what, exactly, you were proposing to add to the IVAW article. (And resignations a half-year later do not appear to be related.) What information specifically about the IVAW were you hoping to convey to readers? Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 17:05, 24 March 2016 (UTC) reply
That this event lead up to a main board member (Matthis) being pushed into resigning from the IVAW. I think that it is related in the statement made on the IVAW meeting minutes PDF. "Matthis Chiroux resigned from the Board of Directors after careful consideration of an inability to sign the Director Agreement faithfully." The IVAW's Director Agreement can be found here in a word document. The part that I think is relevant is in the first statement. "Also, I recognize that others may view my personal conduct as representative of IVAW and I agree to hold myself to a high standard of conduct even while not representing IVAW. I understand that if the other Board members feel that my unofficial conduct jeopardizes IVAW that may be grounds for removal from the Board." This is the part of the document that he did not sign. That is why I think this is connected and included to addresss how his contact was viewed by the IVAW as a group and how their reaction to his actions as a board member. Thank you for your time. Articseahorse ( talk) 01:13, 25 March 2016 (UTC) reply
I still don't see any sources which connect the Matthis resignation to the protest 6 months earlier, and more importantly, all of this information appears to be about that person rather than about IVAW. Is there anything in reliable sources, such as published major newspapers or magazines, which cover this information and indicate why it is important? Xenophrenic ( talk) 01:46, 25 March 2016 (UTC) reply

Infobox person's religion parameter RfC

The RfC you suggested is now open, here.  —  SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  12:48, 24 March 2016 (UTC) reply

Wow

n/t

Anythingyouwant ( talk) 14:28, 26 March 2016 (UTC) reply

Anythingyouwant, I know, right?
By the way, I just realized I mentioned you in my discussions with the RfC closer (I even quoted you) when making my argument, without pinging you. Sorry about that oversight. I'm still watching with mixed feelings the ongoing RfC discussions about what to do with Religion and Ethnicity in infoboxes. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 20:40, 1 April 2016 (UTC) reply
No problem about the pinging. Cheers. Anythingyouwant ( talk) 20:51, 1 April 2016 (UTC) reply

Xenophrenic

I didn't wish to get into an edit war, but the individuals that are performing the editing, merely delete documented and factual evidence that has been evolving the past few days. As much as Katie Couric may or may not be a whipping post for the political right, it is newsworthy from a large number of left leaning media sources. I also cannot contact others, as they do not possess a talk page. My belief is that they will not allow any such information to be posted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jbusch8899 ( talkcontribs) 04:15, 26 May 2016 (UTC) reply

The information that was added to the Couric article was not supported by the cited sources (for example, saying Couric hadn't commented, when she clearly had). The content was added non-neutrally (for example, given its own header and section, which is a violation of our WP:DUE policy). The information is misplaced, as it is information about a film, and not Couric (who wasn't responsible for the editing). The addition contained bare URL links in the body of the text, which is against policy; and the addition cited sources which do not meet Wikipedia's reliable source requirements. The problematic content was also introduced and re-introduced repeatedly, without addressing the cited concerns; that is against our editing policy. The edits were also made by apparent sockpuppets, which is against our policies. The editing was wrong on so many levels. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 04:47, 26 May 2016 (UTC) reply

1. To the best of my knowledge, I was the only one that was editing the information to be inclusive of the controversy. 2. Couric had not, in fact, specifically responded to the accusations. However, a general statement by the film director and Epix was made public. 3. Couric was the Executive Producer, as well as the Creative Executive/Narrator of the Film. She might have not have physically done the editing, but she certainly had control over the editing. 4. What cited concerns? I wasn't able to locate why the information was being deleted. 5. If I made technical mistakes, why could they have not been communicated for me to correct? 6. The information now on the page, cites the film as a documentary. Clearly that classification is in dispute, by dozens of independent media sources. If such is allowed to stand, without mentioning the controversy surrounding such, then I would argue that such violates policy as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jbusch8899 ( talkcontribs) 15:03, 26 May 2016 (UTC) reply

Block Notice and block appeal/review

I have blocked your account for continued edit warring at Forced conversion. ( 1, 2, 3) This appears to be a continuation of the behavior highlighted at the 3RR report. ( 4, 5, 6, 7) Our edit warring policy is quite clear that consensus should be reached or dispute resolution sought instead of reverting to your preferred version. When the block expires, I would encourage you to continue further discussion before making further reverts. If you feel that the discussion is not progressing, I would encourage you to seek further input through dispute resolution or a request for comment. Mike VTalk 15:12, 23 July 2016 (UTC) reply

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

Xenophrenic ( block logactive blocksglobal blockscontribsdeleted contribsfilter logcreation logchange block settingsunblockcheckuser ( log))


Request reason:

As explained immediately below (my apologies, but this Unblock Template is giving me grief when I try to provide diffs within it).

Decline reason:

(1) Procedural decline: The block has expired. Vanjagenije (talk) 17:11, 28 July 2016 (UTC) (reinstated; at the suggestion of the blocking admin, this template may be left up pending the attention of another editor on the substance of the block) reply

(2) Firstly, you are no longer blocked, so an unblock isn't what you're asking for. Secondly, I don't see how your latest edits on that page, namely these, qualify as a self-reversion. You removed content from the page that you didn't agree with, despite objections on the talk page. Huon ( talk) 17:33, 31 July 2016 (UTC) reply


If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{ unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

I believe Admin Mike V has misunderstood the present situation and made this block in error. I have made only a single actual edit to the article in the past couple days, and only 3 edits total in the past 8 days (these are the 3 diffs Mike provided as evidence of edit warring): All 3 edits were simple reverts to the pre-dispute BRD article version — as suggested by the involved editors ( see Jobas, and Anupam, and per this agreement here), while our discussion is ongoing. Despite the contentious subject matter, we've actually done fairly well in discussing our concerns, with only those few instances during the past week of editors prematurely declaring they have consensus and reinserting problematic content.

I said Mike may be misunderstanding the situation, and here are some of the reasons why:

  • Mike warns me that consensus should be reached or dispute resolution sought instead of reverting to your preferred version, when I've actually been grudgingly reverting to the problematic version I've been arguing against (per my promise to Admin EdJohnston, and at the request of the other editors), and I've absolutely been discussing and trying to develop consensus. I opened the discussion; I was the last to comment in the discussion before this block; and I've been trying to keep the discussion productive and focused the whole time.
  • The 3RR report Mike cites says of my "highlighted behavior": doesn't reveal any egregious edit warring. And the vexatious report was declined, to boot. I am trying to continue my behavior of not engaging in any egregious edit warring.
  • Mike lists diffs to edits like this as somehow problematic, but I'm not seeing it. I temporarily moved problematic content cut-&-pasted from other Wikipedia articles without the required attribution (and worse, with 'Citation Needed' and 'Dubious' tags included), by this drive-by editor, to the article Talk page and opened discussions. I understood that to be best-practice procedure.
  • I did, however, also make a series of 20 temporary improvement edits to newly proposed content additions so that I could more easily refer and link to them during our discussions. But I immediately self-reverted every single edit of mine and returned the article to the pre-dispute state as previously requested by the other editors. It's possible Mike saw my string of 20 edits and misunderstood that as implementing "my preferred version", and that's partially on me for not more clearly explaining what I was doing, but I did say in my first of 20 edit summaries: "fixing the proposed version before reverting to pre-dispute version".

I am requesting that the block be lifted, and a brief notation be added to the log summary to indicate the mistaken entry. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 21:06, 23 July 2016 (UTC) reply

With the block due to expire within the hour, the part of my request to have the block lifted is now moot. The more important part of my request to have an edifying notation added to the block log, however, remains an important and active issue. Xenophrenic ( talk) 15:01, 26 July 2016 (UTC) reply

Regarding your comment here: you must know that the other party doesn't have to consent to your opening of an RfC. And that if an RfC is seen as reaching a consensus among those who do participate, it is likely to be treated as binding by administrators in case of a later edit war. EdJohnston ( talk) 14:09, 10 October 2016 (UTC) reply

Yes, Ed, RfCs do not require approval by another editor, and I am aware of that. If -I- had a content issue I wished to clarify through community input, crafting an RfC would be a simple matter. But I am not the editor with the content concern, Etsybetsy is, so I was attempting to craft an RfC that would address his concern appropriately. But as you saw at your now archived Talk page discussion, my attempts to represent his position in an RfC were met with accusations that I was misquoting or misrepresenting him. But when I asked him to reword it to his satisfaction, he refused. Hopefully now you more clearly see my dilemma. RfCs are easy, Ed, once you have a clear issue to present, but Etsy keeps redefining his issues on the fly. However, if he answers my last couple questions without his usual hand-wavy, nonspecific responses, I will have isolated an actual issue around which I can create a productive RfC. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 03:03, 11 October 2016 (UTC) reply

Hi Xenophrenic

Thank you for reverting the insertion of incorrect information about my father's holiday. While a claim was made that there was a Roman holiday by that name in Allen Salkin's tome, that 2005 book is the first time said claim has ever appeared anywhere in print, and in no list of Roman holidays will that name will be found. I appreciate the deletion: I find this incorrect claim very frustrating. I understand completely this was all done in good faith. Thank you for your time. Best, Dan O'Keefe — Preceding unsigned comment added by DanOKeefe ( talkcontribs) 06:25, 20 November 2016 (UTC) reply

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Xenophrenic. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC) reply

Yo Ho Ho

Nomination of Humanity & Society for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Humanity & Society is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Humanity & Society until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Onel5969 TT me 20:23, 29 December 2016 (UTC) reply

Eliko007

Hi Xenophrenic. I'll be honest, I didn't check Eliko007's facts, I merely objected to the original tone and presentation. He ask for guidance on my talk page, which is why I ran up the suggested alternative. Thanks for clarifying the facts. Regards, Martin of Sheffield ( talk) 17:14, 26 January 2017 (UTC) reply

Don't worry about it, Martin of Sheffield. You saw that his canvassing attempt was non-neutral in wording, and you notified him of it. I very much appreciated that. You can not possibly be expected to know all the little details and sordid history behind his assertions (even I had to do some digging to refresh my memory, and I'm involved!), and the fact that you took the extra step to help him improve it is admirable. No complaints here. Best regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 21:12, 26 January 2017 (UTC) reply
@ Martin of Sheffield: It seems he still doesn't get the idea that canvassing for input is not supposed to be coupled with demonizing participants in that discussion. Oh well. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 18:43, 3 February 2017 (UTC) reply
Well at least he didn't use the red triangle or "urgent". Other than that it seems to be word for word, including the accusations against you. If you want to take it further please feel free to quote my advice on his talk page and his response on mine. It's particularly annoying when he says "As I'm a bit new here, would you be able to suggest an alternative wording?" and then completely ignores the advice. Regards, Martin of Sheffield ( talk) 23:07, 3 February 2017 (UTC) reply

Problematic block

Blocked because an Admin didn't want me editing in "this topic or anything related to it" apparently for personal reasons, rather than for a legitimate blockable offense.

I have given both you and Jobas a block for edit warring. While so far no 3RR violation occurred on any individual article, the overall effect of the edit war between the two of you has the same effect. Your block is longer because of your previous block history for edit warring. Fram ( talk) 13:07, 14 February 2017 (UTC) reply

Fram - my first reflexive impulse was to post an unblock request, citing (1) I didn't breach 3RR, (2) *I* was the one initiating Talk page discussions at each article, (3) I had the "moral authority" after a community discussion determined that the category created by Jobas that I was removing was, at best, a product of "original research" and should be eliminated and replaced by a category backed by actual reliable sources. But despite all that, all I can muster up right now is a: "Good block, Fram." "Seriously, Fram?" I really shouldn't be editing at 4AM, methinks. I may petition for a reduction in the block duration, but not right now while I'm still seething. I'm going back to bed. Kind regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 13:55, 14 February 2017 (UTC) reply
You didn't breach 3RR at any single article, but had 43 reverts of the same category in a short time, sometimes multiple times at the same article. Starting the discussion after your first attempt has been reverted is not an excuse to continue the reverts at the same time (though it is at least better than continuing to revert without any discussion at all of course). And when you start a CfD which ends in no consensus with "The suggestion of Category:Religious persecution by secular governments given below is, I suggest, a good one. I suggest all editors who have commented here work towards moving this category to something approaching that one, because as given, the current title is frankly original research." as recommendation, then that doesn't give you the right to a blanket removal of the category. The least you could have done was replace it with the suggested one, so that you at least gave the appearance of accepting the CfD conclusion. But what you did now may have felt to you as if it was supported by the CfD, but to an uninvolved bystander looks as if you wanted to implement your preferred outcome of the CfD against the actual closure. Either start another CfD where you propose renaming the category to something along the lines of the CfD closure, or leave this well alone. Good night. Fram ( talk) 14:23, 14 February 2017 (UTC) reply
Fram, as an uninvolved bystander, you wouldn't be expected to know the actual details behind this matter, only how things "appear". So some things should be made clear at the outset:
→ I'd never use "starting a discussion" as an excuse to continue reverting. The reason I re-removed the category after the discussion was because there was no longer a reason not to.
→ I'd never cite that CfD as "giving me the right to a blanket removal of a category". If you'll look closer at my edit summaries, they stated: rvt insertion of unsourced; (and this article isn't being specifically discussed at the linked discussion). I removed the problematic categories because they were unsourced, in violation of WP:CAT, and specifically not because of that discussion.
→ I haven't "started" a CfD (Marcocapelle did), and it didn't end in "no consensus" -- it ended with: No consensus - with caveats.
I'm not sure what the significance of 40+ reverts in a short time is in your argument, Fram. The problematic nonsense category was pointedly created by Jobas on November 10, 2015, apparently as payback in his dispute with another editor who was tagging articles with Category:Persecution by Christians, and he tagged 40+ articles with it in under an hour. Those articles have subsequently had the category removed over time since it was completely unsourced in violation of Wikipedia policy, and by the time Marcocapelle initiated the CfD, the category was empty. I see that you have advised Jobas, "This doesn't mean that you can go to all the articles where you were edit warring and revert them to your version because he is still blocked." He didn't need to. As soon as I was blocked, his meatpuppets took care of that (see edits starting here where the problematic category was again re-inserted in 40+ articles in under 20 minutes). Is that also of significance? I suspect the answer to that has more to do with the preferences perceptions of the admin witnessing it than with the action itself.
Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 14:24, 15 February 2017 (UTC) reply
From "I never started a CFD", when you were actually the co-nominator of the CfD, to "I suspect the answer to that has more to do with the preferences of the admin witnessing it than with the action itself.", with most of your comments inbetween, actually gives me a lot more reason to simply extend the block to a month or indefinite than to actually unblock you. Fram ( talk) 14:34, 15 February 2017 (UTC) reply
That is a very harsh and unwarranted response, Fram. And it only emphasizes the point made above that there is a vast difference between how things appear and how things are. For example, I joined that ongoing CfD a day later as a "co-nominator" only to facilitate the adding of actual policy-based reasoning for deletion, which was omitted by the initiator. Read the discussion about it and you'll see that I actually "struck" any intention of mine to initiate such a deletion discussion. Marco actually forced the issue, while I was still in a research-mode trying to come up with solutions. As for the "I suspect the answer to that has more to do with the preferences of the admin", I misspoke when I said "preferences" (and your offense at that is justifiable). I meant "perceptions", as I was trying to illustrate the difference between acting on how things "appear" versus how they actually are.
The least you could have done was replace it with the suggested one... --Fram
Eventually, perhaps, but the suggested one doesn't exist yet. After removing the nonsense category from some articles because it's presence is completely unsourced (see WP:V), I'm not going to then insert a potentially equally unsourced substitute. (And that suggested category doesn't fit almost half of the examples anyway.) Everyone in that discussion agrees that "Religious persecution" of one form or another exists in most of those examples, and I was going to carefully add that ( Category:Religious persecution) to the articles as a start point. But the removal of the discussed problematic category was for Wikipedia policy reasons, not CfD reasons. Xenophrenic ( talk) 15:11, 15 February 2017 (UTC) reply
I just now saw your edit summary:
(All you do is providing arguments why your block should be made longer, not why it should be lifted) --Fram
Holy cow -- I'm doing neither, Fram. If I want to argue why your block on me should be lifted, I'll do so within an Unblock Request template, properly written to best encourage due consideration. And I'm certainly not providing arguments as to why your block on me should be made longer, much less "indefinite" (your word, not mine). You made some statements in your second comment here on my Talk page, so I was responding to them and engaging you in that discussion. I corrected a couple of your misperceptions (i.e.; what the actual close decision really said; what my actual reasoning was for removing the cats, per my actual edit summaries), and now I am hit with a "gives me a lot more reason to simply extend the block to a month or indefinite" narrative. "A lot more reason", really? As in you were already harboring unspoken "reasons" to block me indefinitely? That raises some very serious concerns.
I was hoping to hear your thoughts on the significance of Eliko007s spamming of those same 40+ articles with that category, right after you blocked Jobas and me on Feb 14. Or on the spamming of those same articles with that category by that same editor on Feb 10, just a few days earlier. Are WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:CATDEF able to be circumvented in those circumstances for reasons of which I am unaware? Xenophrenic ( talk) 22:28, 15 February 2017 (UTC) reply
If you want an unblock, you may request an unblock, which I'll let some other admin deal with. If not, I'm done here. By the way, saying something gives you more reason to do A than to do B doesn't mean that you had reason to do A (or B) earlier, only that now you have more reason, i.e. are more inclined to, do A than do B. "More reason" doesn't equal "additional reasons". No harboring unspoken reasons or preconceptions are included in my post, and no reason to have "very serious concerns" (back to your "perceptions", are we?). Fram ( talk) 07:41, 16 February 2017 (UTC) reply
Dictionaries disagree with you, Fram, which say that "more" is a comparative. You didn't say my comments gave you "a lot of reason to extend" the block, which is what you apparently meant to say. Instead, you said "a lot more reason to extend", inserting a comparative, which immediately and understandably raised the question in my mind: "compared to what other reasons?" You've now assured me that I should not be concerned, so I am relieved. Quibbling over semantics and dictionary definitions is a distraction and has me feeling a bit silly; it appears we are both capable of misspeaking.
I've asked you (twice now) for your take on the quick spamming of an "original research" category across 40+ articles on Feb 10 and again on Feb 14, in opposition to a CfD close decision, and in violation of Wikipedia's policy that categories be verifiable. You've remained curiously silent on that, and are now scrambling for the door (see: "I'm done here" & "final reply"). I'm not sure how to interpret your silence on that, and as shown above, I shouldn't be too quick to draw conclusions based solely on the perceptions you've left with me. But that is all you have left for me, so what recourse do I have but to push for clarification? I'm not asking you these questions just to make polite idle conversation. I'm simply trying to get a clear picture of the Administrator's perspective on exactly why these past events constituted disruptive edit-warring to a degree that warranted blocks. My goal is to not see this happen again down the road.
Given your now clearer understanding of what the close decision on the CfD really said; and now that you also understand that I was only removing the category from articles where it violated WP:V policy as unsourced (per my edit summary), and not because any close decision "gave me the right" to remove it, I ask you this:
  • Do you foresee any problems in the future if, should I discover that the category has been applied to an article without being verifiably sourced, I remove it? I would, of course, follow the best practice of clearly explaining in the edit summary the reason for the edit, and the reason would be based on Wikipedia policy and not my personal preference. I don't see why you, as an Admin, would object, but I'd like to hear it from you.
  • Then, if such an edit of mine were to be reverted for whatever reason, would you, from an Admin's perspective, foresee any problems if I then initiated a Talk page discussion which more clearly explained my edit, and, only after carefully checking and confirming that the Wikipedia policy violation (WP:V) was not addressed, re-remove the still unsourced category? I might also leave a brief note (being careful not to "template the regulars") on the reverting editor's Talk page suggesting that discussion would be better than reverting the problematic category into articles. I don't figure you'd have any problems with this either. (Possible exception: repeating the edit a second time in conjunction with initiating a discussion could be viewed as slightly aggressive, but only in fresh dispute cases. This dispute is not new, and these similar edits have already been discussed at length.)
  • And finally, if such an edit of mine were again reverted, would you foresee a problem with my undoing that edit if (1) the undo would not breach 3RR, and (2) applicable steps of dispute resolution (except ArbCom) have already been tried, and (3) the arguments given on the article Talk page to explain the re-adding of the category have already been deemed by a neutral Admin as not "compelling reasons", and that the category being re-added is actually "original research"? I didn't see why there would be an objection in such a situation, but obviously you objected -- and I need to be sure I understand why.
This shouldn't need to be said (again), but I'm going to mention it just in case. The afore-mentioned CfD was initiated by Marcocapelle as a "proposal to delete" the category from existence, and was not a discussion about deleting the category from articles. (It was already an empty category because of lack of citation to verifiable reliable sources.) You suggested above "The least you could have done was replace it...", which I agree needs to be done before deleting it; but it hadn't yet been deleted. All I was doing when you issued your blocks was removing it from articles where it was completely unsourced in violation of Wikipedia policy; the category still existed. Now if you are suggesting that simultaneously adding to qualified articles an alternative category -- which may have some of the functionality of the removed problematic OR category -- might reduce the reflexive revert responses I've been getting, I'm certainly willing to give that a try. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 23:01, 17 February 2017 (UTC) reply
TLDR, I stopped after you again tried to twist the "more" statement into something I never said. Your comments gave me more reason to extend the block than to unblock, that's a perfectly normal use of the comparative. "More reason to do A than to do B". I don't know whether you are unable to understand this, or simply unwilling, but if you can't even grasp something as simple as this, I see no point in discussing things with you. Fram ( talk) 16:21, 18 February 2017 (UTC) reply
...you said "a lot more reason to extend", inserting a comparative, which immediately and understandably raised the question in my mind: "compared to what other reasons?" You've now assured me that I should not be concerned, so I am relieved. Quibbling over semantics and dictionary definitions is a distraction... --Xenophrenic
Fram, I explained how I understood what you said, and that it caused me concern. You explained how I should understand what you said, and assured me there was no reason for concern. I accepted your explanation and was relieved. That tangential matter was done - ended - over. I had moved on to asking you a few very important questions (one of them for the 3rd time now), in an effort to fully understand this block situation so that it doesn't happen again. You read those questions and, for whatever reason, decided to resurrect the distraction topic instead of responding to them.
...if you can't even grasp something as simple as this, I see no point in discussing things with you. --Fram
I assure you I understand all too well. Will you now discuss things with me, please? Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 19:40, 18 February 2017 (UTC) reply
Feel free to discuss anything you want with other admins in an unblock request. I didn't "decided to resurrect the distraction topic", you started your previous post with "Dictionaries disagree with you, Fram, which say that "more" is a comparative." If you feel the need to start your defense with such a strawman, then you shouldn't be surprised that that gets a response, instead of the other things you raise. If you then claim that such a response is "resurrecting a topic", then it is once again an indication of how you seem incapable of taking any responsability for your own actions, and try to find blame everywhere but with yourself. Anyway, if you don't get what you are blocked for, then just play it safe, and leave this category and anything related to it alone, and leave Jobas alone. This is a huge encyclopedia, you shouldn't have any problem finding other topics to keep you busy. Fram ( talk) 21:42, 18 February 2017 (UTC) reply
Fram, it is apparent there is a growing disconnect in our discussion. Here is my understanding of what you are saying, please correct me if I have misunderstood:
If you want an unblock, you may request an unblock, which I'll let some other admin deal with. --Fram
Feel free to discuss anything you want with other admins in an unblock request. --Fram
The "unblock request" is for requesting that a block be lifted, not for discussing with the blocking Admin the specifics of that block and how to be sure it doesn't happen again in a similar situation. As I already noted above, I'm not at the stage of requesting an unblock, and frankly, you seem more in a hurry than me. As I said before, and I'll cut & paste repeat here: I'm simply trying to get a clear picture of the Administrator's perspective on exactly why these past events constituted disruptive edit-warring to a degree that warranted blocks. My goal is to not see this happen again down the road.
If you feel the need to start your defense with such a strawman, then you shouldn't be surprised that that gets a response, instead of the other things you raise. --Fram
My defense? Huh? I presented no defense. You said something that raised concerns → you then explained that I misunderstood you, and assured me there was no reason to be concerned → I then accepted that with relief. Fin. That should have been the end of it. Am I "surprised" you responded? Of course not. But I am surprised that you felt the need to respond yet again. And again. And just now, yet again. And the disturbing part is that you repeatedly raise and re-address that distraction "instead of the other things [I] raise" of actual importance here. Care to explain why?
...once again an indication of how you seem incapable of taking any responsibility for your own actions, and try to find blame everywhere but with yourself. --Fram
Very nice, Fram. I see what you did there. Of course I take responsibility for every action of mine, and always have -- which is made even more obvious by your complete failure to cite any occasion when I haven't.
...what you are blocked for, then just play it safe, and leave this category and anything related to it alone, and leave Jobas alone.
Am I understanding you correctly? Are you saying I was blocked for editing in relation to Category:Persecution by atheists and for interacting with Jobas, and risk being blocked again if I edit in that topic area or interact with that editor? Silly me, I thought this was about edit-warring. Every Admin should know that edits are deemed to be disruptive edit-warring completely irrespective of subject matter and participating editors. So what is it you are saying? I didn't pay much attention to your "or leave this well alone" comment earlier on, but it carries more meaning now.
This is a huge encyclopedia, you shouldn't have any problem finding other topics to keep you busy.
You are quite correct, Wikipedia is huge and I do indeed participate in many topics which keep me busy, and this is just one of them. But your comment appears to be telling me you do not want me participating in this particular topic for some reason, and I'd like to know why. Since my edits in this topic had nothing to do with the actual subject matter, but instead with a conflict between Wikipedia policy and the insertion of categories against that policy, what exactly are you saying? Xenophrenic ( talk) 22:25, 18 February 2017 (UTC) reply
CONCLUSION: Your reluctance to explain your block reasoning has left me to conclude that you imposed a block because you didn't want me editing in the "atheism" area for personal reasons known only to you, rather than to prevent disruption. When an editor spammed a policy-violating, disparaging category into 43 articles - and claimed it was under discussion, you apparently had no problem with it. But when I rolled back that spam when the cited discussion concluded, you issued a block for edit-warring. Facepalm Facepalm Then, when an editor spammed the policy-violating category back into the same articles yet again just hours later, you, tellingly, still had no problem with it.

Accidental Click

Good morning! My apologies for accidentally reverting your comment on Talk:Daniel Dennett. I have that page on my watchlist and my sensitive mouse clicked the "rollback" button. I hope you are doing well! With regards, Anupam Talk 15:48, 27 February 2017 (UTC) reply

Not a problem. You should see my editing before I've had my first pot of coffee! Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 07:48, 28 February 2017 (UTC) reply

Jobas

I've given Jobas a final warning about all the little edits. Man, sometimes I wonder why this project has so much patience with disruption, whether it's caused by WP:CIR or something else. Could you please let me know if you spot them doing it again, because I may well miss it? Thanks. Bishonen | talk 14:24, 16 April 2017 (UTC). reply

I think your words sank in, Bishonen. I've watched the edits for exactly a month now, and they don't seem to be flooding individual articles with dozens of tiny edits anymore. They have, however, found an alternate way of flooding their own account edit history with numerous tiny edits - which I suspect was probably their intent all along. But I'm not inclined to confront them about their current scheme, since the only disruption they are inflicting now is on people examining their edit history. Anyway, just wanted to thank you for nudging him a bit - I'm going to close this thread out. Kind regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 03:01, 18 May 2017 (UTC) reply
I see what you mean. Well, many people do that. It may be well-meant ('I'm not good at writing or sourcing, I'll just help the encyclopedia this way'), or in fact done in order to inflate their edit count for an RFA. I remember one such RFA, where a few people protested that bot-like edits were nothing to boast about, and the person's friends argued aggressively that 'an edit is an edit'. That person also, on their userpage, and at the RFA, listed the FAs that they had 'contributed' to, in the sense of made a couple of minor edits to. They squeaked through, to become a ton of trouble as admin. This is hardly for an RFA, though. Bishonen | talk 08:41, 18 May 2017 (UTC). reply

You are still engaged in an edit war on the article Michael Shermer. I am placing you on a restriction to not edit the categories on that page without getting full consensus on the talk page. Currently there is no consensus. Please get a consensus before editing categories on this page again. Failure to do so may result in your being blocked for edit warring and disruptive editing. Canterbury Tail talk 14:07, 17 June 2017 (UTC) reply

Hi, @ Canterbury Tail: ~
I am "engaged in an edit war" on every article I edit (with the exception of edits to create a brand-new article), and the Michael Shermer article is no exception. Every edit I make that adds to, removes from, or otherwise changes the existing wording left by other editors, anywhere, is technically edit warring, and frequently qualifies as a revert as well. So it's a given that all my edits are at some level "warring". What matters is whether my daily edit warring (going on almost 12 years now) veers from constructive to disruptive, and that is a matter subjectively decided by administrators. In this case, thank you for determining that my edit warring only warranted a quite minor request to obtain consensus before resuming. I intend to honor it.
I could, of course, have lodged a reasonable objection to that minor admonition - noting that I had already initiated talk page discussions on this matter, and that other editors had also reverted Apollo's problematic category removal, not just me. I might have also mentioned that Apollo followed me to that article just to revert me; an article he had never before visited. But whatever; your request was so easy to oblige, I figured why bother complaining. All I had to do was work it out with the only disagreeing person: Apollo.
But then he went and got himself blocked. So I decided I'd wait until he was back to editing before resuming our talk page discussions, as it wouldn't be fair to develop consensus without the only dissenting voice. But then he got blocked yet again, but not before escalating his hostilities toward me and admitting he was stalking my edits. He even filed a frivolous ANI report against me (which nearly boomeranged). And after his antics today, my patience with him has finally been exhausted.
I regret that I must petition you to put an end to his disruption. You placed Apollo under a 1RR restriction, which he immediately violated, earning him a 2-week block. Now fresh off his most recent block, he has resumed revert-warring. (See here and here for more 1RR violations.) If you'd prefer that I pursue enforcement at one of the drama boards, I can do that, but I felt it was appropriate to contact you first. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 23:00, 8 July 2017 (UTC) reply
@ Canterbury Tail:Xeno there is no "edit war". As you well know I have edited this topic before. Why are you so suprised that I might revert you if I disagree with your edits on pages I have edited in the past? How is that edit warring? I reverted you twice in two days and I initiated a talk page discussion. Xenophrenic had no intention of discussing it seriously on the talk page and started telling me how much fun he was having. So clearly he is in no position to complain. Also I did not admit I stalked your edits as you can clearly see from my last reply to Xeno on that talk page which he purposely left out. And yes I did break the 1RR but it was purely accidental. I am not use to abiding by it so forgive me if I slip up once or twice. Here is an example of me noticing I broke the 1RR and reverting myself. I would appreciate it if you see it from my perspective. Apollo The Logician ( talk) 08:54, 9 July 2017 (UTC) reply
Competence is required, Apollo. I'm not sure which is more frustrating, the lack of competence or the intentional deception. I'm not falling for it, and I doubt Canterbury Tail is either. You claim you reverted me "twice in two days", and I say you reverted me twice in 24 hours, on multiple articles - I'm sure Canterbury Tail can see which is reality. And you've already passed your "once or twice" slip ups, so how many more times do you plan on pulling that excuse? You admit to multiple reverts, but in the same breath you claim "there is no edit war" and ask "how is that edit warring"? I'll leave it to Canterbury to determine if that is gross ignorance or a simple lie. You also marked one of your reverts 'minor', when it completely reversed meanings. Maybe Canterbury can determine if that is mere cluelessness or deception. You assume bad intent and claim I "had no intention of discussing it seriously on the talk page"; really? You really don't think Canterbury will check the Talk page and see that I did indeed engage you seriously, provided the sources you requested, and resolved it per your "Fair enough" acknowledgement. Then you rambled on about the definition of atheism, which I also seriously engaged with, until the discussion strayed too long from actual article improvement. (And I did indeed find it fun, and even offered to continue that conversation in a more appropriate venue.) And yes you did admit to stalking my edits (see the link I provided), and I left out several replies, as did you. Are you talking about your reply where you retracted your admission that you were stalking my edits after I said I was taking it to ANI, and you claimed you found and reverted my edits by randomly "looking at the persecution and religion related articles and came across your edits" among more than 2600 articles? Are you really sure you want to go with that ridiculous story after you recanted again at your SPI page and admitted stalking my edits:
Stalking is not the right word. Looking at your edit history would be a better description. --Apollo The Logician 20:08, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
Following someone's edit history for the purposes of disruptively reverting their edits is the damn definition of STALKING. Now I highly suspect we are just being trolled. Xenophrenic ( talk) 13:47, 10 July 2017 (UTC) reply
Your input on this matter would be appreciated, @ Canterbury Tail:. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 13:50, 10 July 2017 (UTC) reply
I reverted you in two articles that I had edited in the past. How is that stalking? Why would I purposely break the 1RR when I knew I would get a hefty ban just like I did in the past?
How does that quote of mine contradict what I said? I found your edits and had one look at your edit history that is all. We have only crossed paths since then because of the two articles in question which I had already edited beforehand and they were on my watchlist. Apollo The Logician ( talk) 14:01, 10 July 2017 (UTC) reply

Canterbury Tail, you disregarded my pings and requests that you step in and help defuse the Apollo situation outlined just above, which was unfortunate, as it left me with no recourse but to seek assistance in a more draconian venue. Now I'm pinging you again regarding the restriction you placed upon me at the top of this discussion section. I intend to make an edit to the categories in the article you named, but you have required that I "get a consensus before editing". I've left a Talk page comment expressing my intent, but a few days have passed with no objections - no response at all, in fact. Would you mind giving me the green-light to edit, or more specifically explain your "get a consensus before editing" requirement? Thanks in advance, Xenophrenic ( talk) 00:15, 11 August 2017 (UTC) reply

Hey there. Sorry been distracted a lot lately. I've responded on the article talk page, seems like a reasonable edit. Canterbury Tail talk 11:45, 11 August 2017 (UTC) reply

Conspiracy theory

Jeez, you've been dealing with a lot. Keep up the good fight. – Roscelese ( talkcontribs) 18:47, 28 June 2017 (UTC) reply

The Original Research category of Persecution by atheists

Stop removing this cat from articles without consensus. You have continually done this over a long period. Please gain a consensus for these removals. If you continue edit warring I will take this to ANI and request a topic ban. Apollo The Logician ( talk) 14:26, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply

Hi, Apollo. I haven't removed any cats without consensus. If you could be more specific as to what you are talking about, we can discuss it. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 14:34, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply
Don't play stupid. I have done some investigating and have discovered that on pretty much every article that you have removed this cat from you have done so despite the consensus obviously being against you or you simply lacking a consensus. You previously tried to get this cat deleted and when there was no consensus you cleared the cat out because you couldn't get it deleted. You have been banned for this this exact same thing in the past. Apollo The Logician ( talk) 14:39, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply
You'll have to be more specific about what edit(s) you are speaking about. Would you mind providing a diff? Also, please keep in mind: this discussion, and you'll probably also find this policy helpful: The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content. (And no, I've never "been banned for this this exact same thing in the past".) Xenophrenic ( talk) 14:49, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply
I am talking about all those edits were you wiped the category clean after you couldn't get your way, that is called gaming the system. The discussion you are referencing ended in no consensus, I have no idea why you are bringing that up. You were the one trying to get the cat removed (challenging the long-standing version) from those articles therefore the onus was on you to get a consensus to remove them which you lack. Are you sure you haven't been banned for this before? Well then how do you explain this --> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Xenophrenic#/talk/26 Apollo The Logician ( talk) 14:57, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply
The link you've provided doesn't show a ban. And I've never 'wiped a category clean', sorry. I have removed inapplicable categories, and also nonsensical categories after lengthy community discussion determined them to be original research. Is that the source of your concern? I'm still waiting for the diff(s) of what we are discussing. Xenophrenic ( talk) 15:08, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply
The link shows you are appealing your ban which the admin put in place due to edit warring on this cat. Please explain why every page that was in this cat has been removed by you if you didn't wipe the cat clean. I am not the only editor who noticed you wiped it clean. User:Jobas did as well. There was no "lengthy community discussion determined them to be original research.". Your own link for God's sake says the discussion ended in no consensus! Don't worry about the diffs as if I am forced to take this to the ANI and request a topic ban you will see all the diffs you want. Apollo The Logician ( talk) 15:14, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply
Incorrect; the link shows no appeal, and no ban. The nonsensical cat has been removed by many editors, not just me - and I typically replaced the nonsense cat with one supported by the article. Explain why, you ask? Did you not read the discussion I linked? The manufactured category is nonsensical, and was determined to be original research. And the discussion was not closed as "no consensus"; keep reading. It was actually closed as:
No consensus - with caveats. I came very close to closing this as Delete. I cannot see that any of the Keep votes have given any compelling reasons why the category should stay "as-is". Indeed, the majority of the Keep votes were very poor indeed in regards to policy. There is something of a consensus for keeping a similar category, but not named as such. The suggestion of Category:Religious persecution by secular governments given below is, I suggest, a good one. I suggest all editors who have commented here work towards moving this category to something approaching that one, because as given, the current title is frankly original research.
Hopefully that helps clear things up for you. Xenophrenic ( talk) 15:26, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply
( talk page stalker) The CfD was closed as "no consensus - with caveats". So the next step is unclear, but, as the closer said "he current title is frankly original research" and "I cannot see that any of the Keep votes have given any compelling reasons why the category should stay "as-is"." Now, it's frustrating and complicating that the closing admin has opted not to talk about this close on the many occasions he was asked to clarify (at least that I've seen/pinged -- apologies if I missed one), so all we have is the words of the close, which do not come to a full stop after "no consensus". — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:30, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply

To Xenophrenic and the other editor: It's just the editor's personal opinion about the cat inter alia, nothing about the cat being determined via consensus that it is OR. Apollo The Logician ( talk) 15:33, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply

I think I will be taking this to ANI since no progress has been made. Apollo The Logician ( talk) 15:43, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply

( talk page watcher) @ Apollo The Logician: Just to clarify, Xenophric has never been banned- what you are referring to was a block -see WP:BANBLOCKDIFF. Take care, — fortuna velut luna 14:11, 10 July 2017 (UTC) reply

About your usermessage

Two things about your user message at the top of this page:

  1. Why not a user talk edit notice? You don't have to be an admin to create and place one on your user page or user talk page. While I haven't gotten around to creating one, you already have something similar. Nothing wrong with how it is, but I'm just suggesting.
  2. Said usermessage contains a link to Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#How_to_keep_a_two-way_conversation_readable. I followed it to the top of the page, but not any section or anchor. I have no idea what you were trying to link to. It might just be an issue on my end, but it may actually be the result of either a renamed section or a broken anchor. You may want to fix that by adding an anchor.

Just letting you know. —  Mr. Guye ( talk) ( contribs)  01:14, 16 July 2017 (UTC) reply

Thanks for the info. I may create an actual Edit Notice eventually; in the mean time, I've fixed the link in the current note so that it actually goes somewhere. I swiped parts of that message from another user over 10 years ago, so I don't recall exactly where that link was supposed to point. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 00:36, 17 July 2017 (UTC) reply

ANI notice regarding your recent conduct.

Information icon There is currently a discussion regarding your recent conduct at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Conduct of User:Xenophrenic with respect to Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 July 4. bd2412 T 20:11, 22 August 2017 (UTC) reply

Account block - August 2017

Stop icon with clock
You have been blocked from editing for a period of 2 weeks for edit warring and disruptive editing. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions. If you think there are good reasons why you should be unblocked, you may request an unblock by first reading the guide to appealing blocks, then adding the following text to the bottom of your talk page: {{ unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}.   Swarm 20:41, 22 August 2017 (UTC) reply
Hi, Swarm ~
Well, I certainly wasn't expecting this when I returned home and sat down at my computer. Thank you for taking a full 26 minutes of time out of your schedule to carefully review BD2412's four paragraphs of allegations, three lengthy community discussions regarding two problematic categories, several article and sub-category pages and the presently ongoing discussions on their respective Talk pages, their edit histories, as well as my own 11-year edit history and block log, before concluding that I am "on a mission", "highly invested", "edit warring", "tendentious editing", and have "underlying WP:Right-Great-Wrong issues". My only hope is that you will give my version of the same story equal, if not more, careful consideration. BD2412 has painted as bleak a picture as he could of what has recently transpired, in support of his request that I be topic banned: "a break from this topic for a few months." I suspected he might be upset after I publicly questioned his close decision with a Deletion Review, and then I put him in an untenable position by pressuring him to finally produce the reliable sources to support his assertions. (He still hasn't.) But this stunt is a rather sneaky way for BD2412 to try to avoid that responsibility.
  • Tendentious? No. - BD2412 opens by trying to portray me as dominating the discussions, challenging every objector, making "unpleasant" remarks, and "accusing editors who disagree with [me] of having an anti-atheist agenda". Xenophrenic made 64 posts in the discussion regarding Category:Persecution by atheists, he says, adding that in the Deletion Review, a discussion with only about a dozen participants, Xenophrenic made 28. If you'll bother to fact-check that string of embellishments, you will see a very different picture. The full history of that Review shows that I posted exactly 17 times, as did BD2412, while ThePromenader posted 41 times and 1990'sguy posted 12 times. The full history of the first Category discussion (there were two, you know) shows me posting only 41 times, while Lovemonkey posted 45 times, Jobas posted 63 times and ThePromenader posted 71 times. The full history of the second Category discussion shows me posting 37 times, and 1990'sguy close behind at 30 times. It's true that I am always one of the more active participants; I try to respond to every comment or question to me, and I certainly "challenge" editors to produce substantiation when they make dubious assertions - I make no apologies for that. Any "unpleasant" remarks I've made were measured and appropriate responses to provocative comments, as BD2412 admitted, but there were far more caustic comments than mine in those conversations. I also do not accuse editors of "having an anti-atheist agenda", so BD2412 is either confusing me with another editor, or he misunderstands my responses to Jobas and Desmay, who have self-declared their anti-atheist agenda. Contrary to BD2412's "tendentious bull loose in a china shop" characterization of me at the Deletion Review discussion, I'm actually very deliberative and collaborative in my actions. He won't mention, because it doesn't fit his narrative, that I engaged only during the first half of the 7-day Deletion Review, and that I sat quietly and only watched during the last 3.5 days so that others could have their say. Once the 7 days elapsed, almost to the minute, I posted my final remarks and a comment for the closing admin. Can you please verify the information I've provided, and reconsider your "tendentious" comments?
  • Highly invested & "On a mission" to WP:RGW? No. - The only "mission" I'm on is the same one I've been on for 11 years: Contribute to, and improve, Wikipedia. The deletion discussions and subsequent Review were about whether a problematic category should exist (it's gone now), and whether an Admin had the right to make a new category (the closer said yes). The discussions did not conclude that the new category can be applied just anywhere in violation of WP:CATVER, so of course it was being removed. And as an Admin, you should support its removal. (BTW - BD2412 has later alleged "when he disagreed with the outcome of the previous debate on this category, he went ahead and removed that category from every article to which it had been added", which is a lie, and he knows it - I agreed with the outcome.) Since you are citing WP:RGW repeatedly here, I must assume you've read where it says: Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought or original research. Wikipedia doesn't lead, we follow – let reliable sources make the novel connections and statements and find WP:NPOV ways of presenting them. The newly created category is a synthesized product of original research, and according to policy, that category shouldn't exist in the first place. BD2412 says, Xenophrenic's rationale continues to be the belief that the category should not exist at all, which is rubbish - I don't write Wikipedia policies. Perhaps you'd rather not get involved in the contentious details surrounding this mess, I wouldn't blame you, but I'm requesting that you wade into it just far enough to review the situation with a little more care and perhaps reconsider your comments. (Or if it was just a hasty comment made during the excitement of the ill-conceived witch hunt.)
  • Edit warring? - BD2412 says, he has, for example, removed the category from the subcategory eight times. Clearly Xenophrenic knows to time his reversions to avoid the letter of 3RR, but not the spirit of it. This is the kind of unsubstantiated assertion I've grown accustomed to hearing from BD2412. Did you bother to examine his claim? Of course I didn't breach 3RR, and not because I timed it. Look again. I also never breached 2RR, so there goes the "clearly knows to time it" bullshit. Keep looking. I almost didn't break 1RR, and my 7 removals (not 8 like he claimed) were over a period greater than 2 weeks. And I wasn't the only person removing the problematic category. The "spirit" of the policy is that editors should discuss instead of revert-war, so I initiated a Talk page discussion the same day I removed the problematic category the very first time. Surely BD4212 would meet me at Talk and explain his addition of the category to the article. Nope, look again. I guess he just wasn't feeling the "spirit". And you say I was edit warring? Sometimes I left the problematic category in the article, against policy, for several days while there was nothing but crickets on the Talk page, so then I'd remove the category again. Apparently, no one feels the need to discuss the concerns raised on the Talk page as long as their problematic edits are still in the article. Spirit, indeed. BD2412 inserted his category yet again, never having visited the discussion. Did BD2412 ever make an appearance at the Talk page discussion? Once, unproductively, just hours before filing his ANI drama last night - 2 weeks since I opened the discussion. Did he mention that I had already stopped removing his problematic category the moment the Deletion Review was closed? No, why would he. That wouldn't fit the narrative he constructed. I'm requesting that you please review in more depth your assertion of "edit warring", and perhaps reconsider whether it actually rose to the level of "disruptive edit warring" on my part that would justify a 2 week block.
Thank you for taking the time to hear me out, Swarm. I intend to use the Unblock template, but not before I have a more firmly grounded understanding of the basis for the block. The above note, by the way, is not for transclusion to noticeboards. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 17:59, 23 August 2017 (UTC) reply
@ Swarm: Just making sure this 'ping' utility works. I've heard that it isn't always reliable.
I just now came across this comment of yours about me at ANI: "This would be a typical block for continued edit warring, without factoring in the strong POV-pushing associated with this user's behavior. This aggravating factor was handily present." I cannot engage with you at ANI regarding this, as you have prevented me from doing so. Apparently, we won't be discussing this matter here on this Talk page either, as it has been almost 2 days since I attempted to converse with you, with no response (I see you have been been editing as recently as two hours ago). If you will not be commenting further, or if you are simply still reviewing the matter, may I at least request the courtesy of being informed of that? Regarding your "strong POV-pushing" comment, may I please see the (required) diffs that inspired and support such a pejorative comment? Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 08:06, 25 August 2017 (UTC) reply
This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

Xenophrenic ( block logactive blocksglobal blockscontribsdeleted contribsfilter logcreation logchange block settingsunblockcheckuser ( log))


Request reason:

(1) Because the block lacked the required substantiation. The only explanation given in my block log was "Edit warring, disruptive and tendentious editing; see ANI report." I've checked that ANI report, and the required "good reasons only, based upon reviewable evidence and reasonable judgment" is not present. I do see where the filer of the report states, "For the record, I did not propose a block."
(2) The block is punitive instead of preventative. There was no "disruptive and tendentious editing" at all, and the only diffs provided in support of alleged "edit warring" instead show deliberative editing in conjunction with WP:BRD discussion, policy compliance and a good-faith reading of Talk page consensus, supported by sound arguments from multiple editors.
(3) The blocking Admin appears to have washed his hands of the matter. It is my understanding that " Administrators are expected to respond promptly and civilly to queries about their Wikipedia-related conduct and administrator actions and to justify them when needed." So I provided additional information for him to consider, and asked if he would then please review his admin action with me. All I got was silence. So I pinged him again and asked if he would at least give me the courtesy of informing me that he has received my communication. More silence, yet he continues with his other activities on Wikipedia. (I have much more to say about that disturbing behavior, but not in an Unblock Template.)
(4) Because it is preventing me from editing Wikipedia. The improper block serves no purpose, and after 100% radio silence during the several days I patiently waited for the blocking admin, it is time to remove it. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 03:51, 27 August 2017 (UTC) reply

Decline reason:

Procedural decline. The block has run out, there's nothing to be reviewed any more. If you want to argue that the admin who blocked you abused their powers, the appropriate place to raise the issue is WP:AN. I'm sorry we didn't get to reviewing the block earlier, but at this point the {{ unblock}} template is no longer appropriate, it's only for blocked users. Huon ( talk) 20:23, 7 September 2017 (UTC) reply


If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{ unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

Is there a secret or unpublished method to having an Admin explain an administrative action, or to having a Block Review request addressed? Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 19:18, 29 August 2017 (UTC) reply

No. I assume Swarm considers the explanations they gave at AN/I sufficient. The unblock request queue unfortunately is heavily backlogged at the moment, and properly evaluating this case will take quite some time and effort; I apologize for the delay. Huon ( talk) 21:37, 29 August 2017 (UTC) reply
Thank you for taking the time to respond, User:Huon. I cannot make the same assumption, because just above I pinged Swarm and made what I feel is a perfectly reasonable request: If you will not be commenting further, or if you are simply still reviewing the matter, may I at least request the courtesy of being informed of that? I've looked at some of his comments elsewhere on the project, and he does not strike me as either rude or clueless, so the silence is bewildering. As also noted above, Swarm never did give a substantiated explanation at ANI. I'm left to assume something else is at play here. I appreciate the info about the backlog, however. Kind regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 22:05, 29 August 2017 (UTC) reply

Notes to people

I just learned that the "Thank" option no longer appears as an option when you are blocked. I do, however, still wish to thank a few astute editors for their comments:

Socks and stuff

Your note at ANI unintentionally created a privacy issue, so I quietly removed it. Obviously there was no ill-intent from your end! Feel free to blank this once read.-- Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots 22:15, 11 August 2017 (UTC) reply

Sorry about that, Ponyo. I've seen IPs listed in SPI reports, so I just assumed there wouldn't be an issue. I'll keep that in mind in the future. Regarding recent additions to this report, I think the User:Mormon7 and User:Mormon077 and User:Theisticevolutoniser throw-away accounts were overlooked. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 05:17, 10 September 2017 (UTC) reply

Discussion at AN

I have started a discussion at AN regarding our recent interactions on my user talk page. GoldenRing ( talk) 09:43, 10 October 2017 (UTC) reply

What`s to be done with "```spam```"?

Good day, I`m new, and not extremely technically-minded. I cannot determine whether or not ```persistent spammer``` (or wikipedia contributors) IPs are to be referred to DNS, and if so, who is the "Responsible Person". It is odd, methinks, ignoring certifiable records, by calling it ```unverifiable```, compiling lists of IPs to be sent to a Responsible person to creat verifiability on the very DNS that is being portrayed as unverifiable. Dunno if that makes sense. There is talk on the DNS TTL, if that helps. Ta 126.209.0.225 ( talk) 20:56, 20 October 2017 (UTC) reply

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Hello, Xenophrenic. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

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Atheism

Hi. I removed a paragraph your recently inserted at the Positive and Negative atheism article because there was no source. Can you provide one? Thanks. Paddy Plunkett ( talk) 21:00, 13 January 2018 (UTC) reply

I've just blocked this editor as a sock of Apollo the Logician. Doug Weller talk 19:21, 14 January 2018 (UTC) reply

Taíno

That was my fault, sorry. The editor who added it created articles and added to other articles by adding various chunks from other articles without attribution. Warnings didn't work and they're temporarily blocked. They've created quite a mess, including copying text with refs whose detail wasn't brought over so you can't figure out what they are. I'm hoping they'll clear it up but I'm pretty sure they no longer know where they got it all from. Doug Weller talk 16:22, 14 May 2018 (UTC) reply

Disambiguation link notification for June 15

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Trevor Potter, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Republican ( check to confirm |  fix with Dab solver).

( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 09:05, 15 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I notice you have contributed to the Edward S. Herman page. Would it be possible for you to help build a POV consensus on the page? There is currently an NPOV dispute. Prop9 ( talk) 19:27, 14 July 2018 (UTC) reply

I was going to revert because the quote was about USAID and Soros, not about OSF at all. But thanks for reverting. I'll warn the editor. Doug Weller talk 11:37, 13 August 2018 (UTC) reply

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The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

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Notice

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Notice to posters: Let's try to keep two-way conversations readable. If you post to my talk page, I will just reply here. If I posted recently to another talk page, including your talk page, then that means I have it on my watchlist and will just read responses there. I may also refactor discussions to your talk page for the same reason. Thanks. Xenophrenic ( Talk)
  • Incivility: I reserve the right to remove uncivil or disruptive comments and/or threads from this talk page.
  • Spam: I also reserve the right to delete any bulk messages that I regard as spamming.

Helen Caldicott

I was just wondering where the February 20th came from in the reference you added. I don't see that date on the webpage and the retrieval date in any case would be today. Thanks in advance for your response. -- Daffydavid ( talk) 01:26, 16 July 2014 (UTC) reply

Hi, David. The Feb. 20 date isn't a retrieval date, which I didn't add. It's just one of several "page-updated" dates provided by tools (domain origin, website archiving, Google page cache indexing...) indicating the existance of that "advisory-council" information at that date. I was unfortunately unable to find the exact date the webpage was created, or the earliest date when Caldicott was added to the webpage. She has certainly been on their Advisory Council since before February 2014. Here's a 2012 video of her, for example, which describes her in the info-tab as a member of their Advisory Council. If you can find more specific information, please don't hesitate to add it. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 17:13, 16 July 2014 (UTC) reply

Ian Stevenson

Hi there, regarding this: indeed, I had misread the text. The article says that Huxley was known for the advocacy, not Stevenson. Sorry, thanks and cheers. - DVdm ( talk) 13:00, 4 September 2014 (UTC) reply

No apologies necessary; and thanks for the attention to detail! Xenophrenic ( talk) 17:02, 17 September 2014 (UTC) reply

Jane Fonda

Note that although footnote 48, the Plebe Summer ... Procedures, is a dead link, there's a valid archive available at Wayback confirming that "Good Night Jane Fonda" calls are expressly prohibited. While the military is often criticized for unnecessary paperwork, it seems unlikely that even they would trouble to so specifically prohibit something that had no significant history of occurring. 2600:1006:B10A:9AF1:5AD:4287:E314:1B02 ( talk) 06:58, 7 November 2014 (UTC) reply

That's a very valid point, and is just one of several reasons I left the content in the article. Another reason is that although the source is "anonymous", Burke knows who the source is and apparently trusts it enough to repeat the story. BTW, thanks for the header edit. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 07:45, 7 November 2014 (UTC) reply

Have you tried WP:BLPN ?

The choice of WP:ANI was a reasonable one to report the IP, but the biographies of living persons noticeboard is probably a better place for issues about defamatory posts. However, I think that, in the specific case, the best option is semi-protection of the article, which I will request in a few minutes. Robert McClenon ( talk) 03:33, 10 February 2015 (UTC) reply

By the way, I think that the editor in question has four edits, not six, because I think that the 'banana' vandal was someone else. However, that is not important. We need to prevent the insertion of questionable defamatory material. Robert McClenon ( talk) 03:33, 10 February 2015 (UTC) reply

I trust

you now understand my consistent positions on BLPs even if sometimes it means "bad guys" don't get buckets of s*** piled into articles? Heck I even edited Kim Jong-un. Cheers. Collect ( talk) 23:08, 20 February 2015 (UTC) reply

Salutations, Collect! You and I have recently been in agreement on several different BLP articles; it must surely be a sign of the end times. Do pigs now fly, and hath Hell frozen over as well?
You need not clarify your positions on BLPs with me. To the contrary, I have told you how I admire your generally conservative approach in upholding our BLP policies about disparagement of living people in our articles. The only inconsistency I've observed is that you do not appear to have the same regard for the living people who edit Wikipedia. I've raised this issue with you before regarding your piling of buckets of unsubstantiated s*** upon me here and here, yet you showed no willingness to rectify the situation. "No animus", indeed.
How is it, Collect, that you can be remarkably astute at carefully examining cited sources in a BLP and recognize "No, the sources do not say that", yet you can so carelessly assemble a collection of diffs and comments and wrongly conclude about an editor, "He seeks to make sure that people know how evil the Tea Party movement is, that it is racist, bigoted, homophobic etc."? You came here concerned that I not misunderstand your positions on BLPs; has it occurred to you that other editors may also be concerned that their positions not be misunderstood or mischaracterized? If you have (correctly) sensed a certain curtness and restrained congeniality in our interactions, please know that it is this inconsistency at the root of it. Eighteen months ago, I suggested that we address your misunderstanding and attempt to take advantage of an "opportunity for bridge rebuilding"; that never came to pass, but the offer doesn't come with an expiration date. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 18:42, 22 February 2015 (UTC) reply
On the TPm material - I saw patterns from some editors which I still do not feel in concord with Wikipedia policies - we shall simply disagree at times, but please note that I have never had any sort of "enemies list" at all. I note you point to a NYP section where one editor enters with ""a bunch of damn bullshit" as his commentary, which I found a tad more dismissive that any language I had ever used. Indeed, I found a few of your comments to be an inch less than civil, and a few of your positions which impacted living persons to fall outside the bounds of WP:BLP and I ask that you recognize I could reasonably so view some of your edits. Cheers. Collect ( talk) 18:57, 22 February 2015 (UTC) reply
You speak of "some editors"; I can't really comment on them, nor of any "enemy lists" — my concern here was specifically about you and me in the situation I linked above. In short, you levelled seriously inaccurate charges about me back in 2013, then after you were shown that your comments about me were completely unsubstantiated — and in some cases completely opposite to reality — you chose to let the false statements stand unrectified. Granted, I may not have chosen the best venue in which to approach you about correcting your misstatements, as another editor's remarks already had you on the defensive, but I don't see that as justification since you mentioned me there first. You ask that I "recognize you could reasonably view some of my edits as outside the bounds of WP:BLP"? I've rechecked the edits you posted on your Talk page back in September 2013, as well as the couple edits you posted with your RfC/U entry, and no reasonable person could view any of those as violating our BLP policy. If you are thinking of some other edit of mine, perhaps you could remind me of it? Xenophrenic ( talk) 20:40, 18 July 2015 (UTC) reply
[1] I think is the diff at issue? I regret the misunderstanding -- the IP however sure was showing a decided POV inconsonant with WP:BLP as I am sure you agree. Cheers. Collect ( talk) 19:03, 22 February 2015 (UTC) reply
As that diff shows, it was the IP making the case "There are many media reports clearly showing that the Tea Partiers are racist", while I had to remind the IP editor that it was wrong to label TPers as racist. I reasonably and accurately observed that there was "significant enough reliably sourced information to explore the frequently heard allegations of a racist component", which we are required to do as editors when facing such voluminous reliable sources — as any reasonable editor would agree. Anyway, having one's motivations and actions mischaracterized is no fun, as I'm sure you can attest. Since your comments about me were made so long ago, I'll accept your "I regret the misunderstanding" and pretend you meant it to apply to all of the similar misstatements from that same episode — and we'll consider the matter done. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 20:40, 18 July 2015 (UTC) reply

PNAC

You might look at Project for the New American Century moreover - I know we are apt at times to disagree, but I think you might find the discussions interesting. Collect ( talk) 09:32, 2 March 2015 (UTC) reply

I took a look. I count myself lucky that I didn't jump into that mess right away, as reports, blocks and a lot of drama followed soon after. Rather happy I missed it. Xenophrenic ( talk) 20:40, 18 July 2015 (UTC) reply

new essay

The ArbCom case against me is vexatious indeed - I shall not contend against those who taste blood. The main complaint even includes my essays - so I wrote one which I hope you will appreciate WP:Wikipedia and shipwrights. It would be fun to see how others react, indeed. Warm regards, Collect ( talk) 04:25, 20 March 2015 (UTC) reply

Thanks for bringing that essay to my attention. Generally good overall, and an interesting read. I must admit I found myself taking your 'shipwrights' analogy further in my mind, imagining the roles and impact of various other unmentioned, but equally important, people involved in making the "craft which will sail straight and true on the oceans and rivers of the world". The foremen, tasked with keeping the shipwrights working together productively; the suppliers, from whom the shipwrights obtain their raw materials; the dock workers, who try to keep the shipyard uncluttered and free from debris, etc. I'm tempted to play with that in a sandbox somewhere. As for the ArbCom case(s), it appears one particular colleague had both of us in his sights. I'm fortunate that he was only shooting blanks when he took aim at me, and I was therefore never named as a party. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 20:40, 18 July 2015 (UTC) reply

Hiya

Copied here to facilitate continuation of the discussion.
Hi, MavsFan28 - it's been a while since we chatted. I hope you've been well. I know you left a comment on the Tom Smith article Talk page, and I do plan to respond to you there, but this is about a different (but related) issue not appropriate for that Talk page. I figured you and IP:100.14.57.197 were the same editor. You made this edit while logged in and as the IP you made the identical edit, and you've edit warred to keep that edit as both. Not logging in isn't a big problem in itself, but when you left a comment with an edit summary stating (See talk page before either of you revert), you implied that the IP user isn't you. If the IP is you, then you have violated Wikipedia's policy regarding abusive WP:sockpuppetry. Perhaps you were unaware of that policy? If so, please let me know, and we can just overlook it this time. If you tell me that the IP isn't yours, however, I'll be obliged to file a WP:SPI report as a routine matter. It's a tedious process, so I should apologize for it in advance, but I'd be very interested to know how it could be coincidental that at least 21 of the 30 articles edited by the IP are also edited by you. I see you edit many articles about Pennsylvania politics and sports subjects, and the IP geolocates to Pennsylvania, so I'm sure you can understand my reasoning. Seeing the IP make edits just hours after the MavsFan28 account in obscure areas like the Ken Ham Talk page RfC just further emphasizes the point. Anyway, your input in this matter would be appreciated. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 04:58, 12 November 2015 (UTC) reply

Hi there! I'm aware of the policy. I make plenty of edits logged in and out without violating the policy. I didn't think the other edit where the sentence was removed in full was appropriate as well as the other edit on the first sentence hence the "both." In regards to some of the edits you speak of though, we have a shared college dorm where our IPs all get bounced around and therefore they are constantly changing and I wouldn't even know all the IPs I have edited under would be. If you think I did something that violated the policy, feel free to file the report. However, please when you have a chance, do respond at that talk page about how the current lead does not fall properly in line with almost all wiki politican's articles or how it doesn't go with WP:LeadSentence. Thanks 50.196.53.209 ( talk) 14:47, 12 November 2015 (UTC) Also MavsFan28 ( talk) 14:48, 12 November 2015 (UTC) reply
I (personally) have no problem with you editing both while logged in and logged out. Just so long as you aren't doing so to intentionally deceive, or to circumvent Wikipedia policy (i.e.; WP:3RR). That's why I brought it up. Editing while logged into a registered account is probably the best way to avoid the problems caused by shared college dorm-mates. I've left comments on the article Talk page for you, and I see that you have joined me there. Hopefully, we can resolve any outstanding issues. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 18:24, 12 November 2015 (UTC) reply
I know what you mean. But I wouldn't use one of many random IPs that I access to sockpuppet in anyway, otherwise I would have done that in our discussion on the talk page. :) Understand your point though. On that article though, what's the next step? Obviously we aren't agreeing on this, so do we get someone else to bring their opinion? MavsFan28 ( talk) 01:22, 13 November 2015 (UTC) reply
Think on that discussion, we'll have to agree to disagree, and go with the lead you suggested for now. I thought it could be solved by at least one other person jumping in on the discussion, but no one has seemed to notice or care. Anyway, I'm fine with that change being made. Thanks MavsFan28 ( talk) 02:14, 15 November 2015 (UTC) reply
Alright, I'll implement the change. It's a low-traffic article; even more so now that the subject is deceased, so the lack of participation is not surprising. I agree that more participation would have been a good thing. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 17:33, 15 November 2015 (UTC) reply

Iraq Veterans Against the War

Heyo Xenophrenic. I added the content per this AfD discussion as a possibly searchable term. If not entirely, do mention Ricky Clousing briefly. Cheers, Ya sh ! 17:44, 22 November 2015 (UTC) reply

Hi, Yash! I reviewed that deletion discussion (and the previous one) before reverting your edit. I also looked at the one cited source which mentions IVAW, and saw that it does not support the content that "Clousing is a member of IVAW." It appears that the editors in that deletion discussion automatically assumed that the content was properly sourced; it was not. According to reliable sources, several groups agreed with, "stood behind" or supported Clousing's actions, but he is not described as a member of any of the groups. If his Wikipedia article is to be merged into another article, an appropriate target article needs to be found. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 18:31, 22 November 2015 (UTC) reply
My apologies, Xenophrenic. I should have checked. I will see if it can be merged somewhere else. Thank you for your time. Regards, Ya sh ! 18:34, 22 November 2015 (UTC) reply

Tea Party

You might want to note the similarities in the arguments made by Efliv23 and those of Catsmeow8989. Just something I noticed. GAB Hello! 18:45, 19 December 2015 (UTC) reply

Oh, I've definitely noticed. They are the same person, or equally bad: congenitally joined meatpuppet twins. Seriously considering enlisting assistance at WP:ANI. Xenophrenic ( talk) 19:05, 19 December 2015 (UTC) reply
Keep me posted -- I'll gladly help out if needed. GAB Hello! 19:17, 19 December 2015 (UTC) reply
I am taking this to SPI as I speak. Hoping for the best... Link is here. If you have any more evidence, feel free to share it there. GAB Hello! 17:06, 20 December 2015 (UTC) reply
Thanks for that, GAB. I added a little to the report, but it appears that you covered it well enough. I hope the holidays are finding you in good spirits! Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 19:06, 20 December 2015 (UTC) reply
Anytime -- you, too! GAB Hello! 00:00, 21 December 2015 (UTC) reply
Holy smokes! I just checked the SPI, and I never expected a world of sleepers. Gotta love CU. GAB Hello! 00:02, 21 December 2015 (UTC) reply
Yeah, that kind of investment in spare sock accounts was unexpected, and makes me suspect that it won't be very long before he visits us again. Thanks again for the assistance. (BTW - I clicked on that YouTube link out of curiosity, and put on some headphones to briefly see what it was. An hour later I realized I was still listening to it...) Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 16:38, 22 December 2015 (UTC) reply
(A new convert! Success!) GAB Hello! 22:07, 23 December 2015 (UTC) reply

College degrees and biographic infoboxes

Greetings. I noticed that you had undid my edits on Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, specifically the ones that had included their respective degrees. I've since reverted them, but I'm opening discussion here, in case there's disagreement.

I had felt that the inclusion of the degrees was consistent with that of quite a few other notables ( Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, John F. Kennedy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Colin Powell, James Baker, Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, Ben Carson, the list could go on). Perhaps you may think otherwise?

Looking forward to your thoughts. GabeIglesia ( talk) 14:06, 23 December 2015 (UTC) reply

Seasons Greetings, GabeIglesia! Inclusion of education degrees (and fields of study; and institution names; and alma mater) in the infoboxes is certainly useful, as long as the info is placed in the correct fields. I hope you would agree. We wouldn't expect to see that a person's spouse=Harvard University, or that a person's alma mater=Bachelor of Arts. I understand the problem isn't as obviously apparent when we're talking about misplacing degree information in the alma mater field, as the two are tangentially related — but it is still a problem. You certainly aren't the first to make this mistake (as evidenced by the many examples you provided). On the Kerry example alone, the problem is frequent. See here, and before that here, here, and here. User:Swagger14 and User:Spark1498 are responsible for many of the misplacements (including in your examples above).
The issue of what should appear in the alma_mater|= field (and the related "how many institutions should be allowed in the field" issue) is not new, and has been discussed at length. Here is one such discussion on this issue in which I participated. The central concern is standardization, since there are apparently search tools and databases which access our infobox fields and expect the data to be parsed and formatted somewhat consistently. I hope that explanation helps. Best regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 17:46, 23 December 2015 (UTC) reply
Noted. Thanks for the explanation! GabeIglesia ( talk) 03:33, 25 December 2015 (UTC) reply

Happy New Year!

Have a prosperous, productive and enjoyable New Year, and thanks for your contributions to Wikipedia. Quis separabit? 17:50, 31 December 2015 (UTC) reply

RE: CREW

What did I do? What is the difference between these two edits ( [2], [3])? And there is nothing about CREW that is not partisan, btw. Quis separabit? 22:24, 22 January 2016 (UTC) reply

Howdy Robert. First, thank you for the 'Happy New Year' greeting, and please know that I wish the same for you. Sorry I'm so late in returning the sentiments. Thank you, also, for your contributions to Wikipedia — an impressive volume of work indeed (sometimes I wonder if you are a machine, rather than a living being). Second, regarding your opinion that "there is nothing about CREW that is not partisan" — I've heard that before, it's a popular meme. Unfortunately, it's a meme not supported by facts. CREW has criticized all parties; launched legal action against all parties, investigated all parties - so by definition, it is absolutely not partisan ("beholden to a single party"). Perhaps you meant to say that CREW has acted against people associated with the Republican Party more than those associated with the Democratic Party? That assertion would at least be supported by the facts; and while that doesn't equate to partisanship, it might be indicative of some bias, right? That's another popular meme, but at least it is plausible. Detractors of CREW cry bias, while defenders of CREW claim one of two reasons why Republicans get slammed more than Democrats: a) because Republicans have been in power more than Democrats, with more opportunity to abuse that power, or b) when it comes to bending or breaking the rules and regulations of government, Republicans simply transgress a lot more than Democrats. My personal opinion is that a degree of all three elements are involved; I'm just not sure about the proportions.
On the matter of today's edits, you do realize that Daily Caller article is simply a clever way to prop Brock up as a Clinton patsy, right? The reality is that Brock wasn't involved with CREW back when it filed the FOIA, and Brock wasn't involved when the State Dept. closed the request, and Brock hasn't made any comment on the matter during the past two weeks since the IG report. An actual informative news source on the matter doesn't even mention him. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 00:40, 23 January 2016 (UTC) reply

Disruptive IP hopper near Lancaster

Hi. I've been dealing with that IP-hopping editor from Lancaster, PA for months and months. This guy acts in good faith but is still disruptive and has serious civility and competence issues. What do you think about resuming the semi-prot approach instead of going back to constant reversions? If there's one thing I've learned it's that he never stops. Like the energizer bunny, as soon as the semi-prot expires he's back to junking up articles and talk pages the next day. (P.S. I'm kind of intermittent on WP these days, so please be patient if I don't respond immediately.) -- Dr. Fleischman ( talk) 19:59, 1 February 2016 (UTC) reply

Hi, Dr. Fleischman. I agree that his edits are disruptive, and he certainly has problems with civility and competence; he has long since forfeited any assumptions of good faith on my part. His latest edit, made just today, was to insert a link to a self-published YouTube video espousing some rather extreme points of view, and ending in a tirade about how Wikipedia and all news sources are "censoring" him. He posts phone numbers in edit summaries and claims to be a "paid Obama censor". As previously noted in previous discussions about this user, he has been repeatedly blocked and re-blocked by Admins NeilN and Bbb23, but he just hops to new IPs. HJ Mitchell has determined that it would be difficult to effectively range-block the IPs, so he tried semi-protecting some of the articles, but the guy has hopped to more than a dozen different articles now — some of them rather obscure. Should I assemble a list of all of the known target articles to date, and request to have them all semi'd? Xenophrenic ( talk) 23:52, 4 February 2016 (UTC) reply
That sounds like a good idea, thanks. Thus thread seems like a good starting point for putting together a list. I also wonder if we should include talk pages on the list. Clearly some of this guy's recent text dumps at Talk:Constitutional challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are counterproductive; however I'm uncomfortable preventing other IPs from providing input into articles. -- Dr. Fleischman ( talk) 04:52, 5 February 2016 (UTC) reply
Temporary notes to self - Frequented articles: David Yerushalmi - Robert Muise - Patrick Morrisey - Ron Johnson (U.S. politician) - David Zubik - Bob Casey, Jr. - David Barton (author) - Constitutional challenges to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act - United States House of Representatives v. Burwell - Thomas More Law Center
leaves note to HJ Mitchell, also calls specific editors idiots or alleges conspiracy,
Was at ANI here
Accuses several admins and editors mentioned above of "hijack of history" and a "conspiracy" to "censor" Wikipedia here
A couple editors discuss identical disruption a year and a half ago here
Disruptive IP complains and accuses here
Bbb23 tried to reason with, and talk sense to, the disruptive IP here, and later gets accused of being part of a conspiracy
Disruptive IP was prolific on this account for a while: 173.67.165.170
Also spammed Jimbo Wales Talk page here and 3 headers later here and yet again, 4 headers after that here
Stray outliers: 173.163.131.209 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.163.42.117 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.163.16.73 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 64.134.69.124 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 64.134.96.174 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 64.134.241.80 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 64.134.163.80 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 184.48.153.254 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS)
Recent: 40.131.15.234 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 50.107.50.51 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 50.107.50.58 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 50.76.207.102 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 50.77.104.17 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), IP:173.67.169.110, IP:173.67.160.197, IP:173.67.168.7, 173.67.164.84 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.159.59 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.167.142 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.165.239 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS) typical spamming into unrelated articles: IP:173.67.160.98
Rudolf Anderson disruption as well: IP:173.67.167.91, IP:173.67.168.235, IP:173.67.158.40, IP:173.67.167.51, IP:173.67.169.82, IP:173.67.166.205, IP:173.67.158.214, IP:173.67.159.231
(A few examples of block evasion: Sept 17, Sept 18, Sept 19, Sept 19)

173.67.158.36 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.158.40 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.158.194 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.158.214 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.159.70 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.159.134 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.159.216 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.160.12 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.160.28 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.160.86 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.160.92 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.160.98 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.160.197 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.161.72 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.161.128 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.162.28 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.162.58 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.162.60 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.162.92 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.162.145 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.162.239 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.163.16 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.163.45 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.163.81 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.163.147 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.163.154 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.164.23 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.164.155 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.164.173 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.164.225 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.165.9 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.165.72 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.165.120 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.165.170 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.165.192 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.166.95 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.166.151 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.166.160 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.166.205 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.167.51 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.167.65 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.167.91 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.167.102 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.167.211 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.168.7 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.168.64 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.168.235 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.169.82 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.169.110 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.169.111 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.169.117 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.169.135 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.169.136 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.169.214 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.169.250 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.171.66 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.171.218 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS), 173.67.172.92 ( talk · contribs · WHOIS),

IVAW and flag burning, IVAW sources.

Here is the photo that was taken of the person in question. This is regards to the edit you made on Sept 1st 2015 that removed all refferences to the flag burning. edit to article, image Here is the link that also references it from the IVAW website. The line quotes is listed on item number 7. This is the link to his resignation from IVAW. meeting minutes

I respectful request that the IVAW article to be amended to include this information. Thank you for your time. Articseahorse ( talk) 00:29, 24 March 2016 (UTC) reply

Hi, Articseahorse. Thank you for providing the links to that information. I see from that information that there was a brief demonstration at an ANSWER protest, and that "...there was no official endorsement of the message Matthis conveyed. Nor was official endorsement sought. Matthis represented his personal views which resonate with some but not all members." The information does not appear to be regarding an IVAW event, or regarding a IVAW-sanctioned demonstration, so I am unclear as to what, exactly, you were proposing to add to the IVAW article. (And resignations a half-year later do not appear to be related.) What information specifically about the IVAW were you hoping to convey to readers? Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 17:05, 24 March 2016 (UTC) reply
That this event lead up to a main board member (Matthis) being pushed into resigning from the IVAW. I think that it is related in the statement made on the IVAW meeting minutes PDF. "Matthis Chiroux resigned from the Board of Directors after careful consideration of an inability to sign the Director Agreement faithfully." The IVAW's Director Agreement can be found here in a word document. The part that I think is relevant is in the first statement. "Also, I recognize that others may view my personal conduct as representative of IVAW and I agree to hold myself to a high standard of conduct even while not representing IVAW. I understand that if the other Board members feel that my unofficial conduct jeopardizes IVAW that may be grounds for removal from the Board." This is the part of the document that he did not sign. That is why I think this is connected and included to addresss how his contact was viewed by the IVAW as a group and how their reaction to his actions as a board member. Thank you for your time. Articseahorse ( talk) 01:13, 25 March 2016 (UTC) reply
I still don't see any sources which connect the Matthis resignation to the protest 6 months earlier, and more importantly, all of this information appears to be about that person rather than about IVAW. Is there anything in reliable sources, such as published major newspapers or magazines, which cover this information and indicate why it is important? Xenophrenic ( talk) 01:46, 25 March 2016 (UTC) reply

Infobox person's religion parameter RfC

The RfC you suggested is now open, here.  —  SMcCandlish ¢ ≽ʌⱷ҅ʌ≼  12:48, 24 March 2016 (UTC) reply

Wow

n/t

Anythingyouwant ( talk) 14:28, 26 March 2016 (UTC) reply

Anythingyouwant, I know, right?
By the way, I just realized I mentioned you in my discussions with the RfC closer (I even quoted you) when making my argument, without pinging you. Sorry about that oversight. I'm still watching with mixed feelings the ongoing RfC discussions about what to do with Religion and Ethnicity in infoboxes. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 20:40, 1 April 2016 (UTC) reply
No problem about the pinging. Cheers. Anythingyouwant ( talk) 20:51, 1 April 2016 (UTC) reply

Xenophrenic

I didn't wish to get into an edit war, but the individuals that are performing the editing, merely delete documented and factual evidence that has been evolving the past few days. As much as Katie Couric may or may not be a whipping post for the political right, it is newsworthy from a large number of left leaning media sources. I also cannot contact others, as they do not possess a talk page. My belief is that they will not allow any such information to be posted. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jbusch8899 ( talkcontribs) 04:15, 26 May 2016 (UTC) reply

The information that was added to the Couric article was not supported by the cited sources (for example, saying Couric hadn't commented, when she clearly had). The content was added non-neutrally (for example, given its own header and section, which is a violation of our WP:DUE policy). The information is misplaced, as it is information about a film, and not Couric (who wasn't responsible for the editing). The addition contained bare URL links in the body of the text, which is against policy; and the addition cited sources which do not meet Wikipedia's reliable source requirements. The problematic content was also introduced and re-introduced repeatedly, without addressing the cited concerns; that is against our editing policy. The edits were also made by apparent sockpuppets, which is against our policies. The editing was wrong on so many levels. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 04:47, 26 May 2016 (UTC) reply

1. To the best of my knowledge, I was the only one that was editing the information to be inclusive of the controversy. 2. Couric had not, in fact, specifically responded to the accusations. However, a general statement by the film director and Epix was made public. 3. Couric was the Executive Producer, as well as the Creative Executive/Narrator of the Film. She might have not have physically done the editing, but she certainly had control over the editing. 4. What cited concerns? I wasn't able to locate why the information was being deleted. 5. If I made technical mistakes, why could they have not been communicated for me to correct? 6. The information now on the page, cites the film as a documentary. Clearly that classification is in dispute, by dozens of independent media sources. If such is allowed to stand, without mentioning the controversy surrounding such, then I would argue that such violates policy as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jbusch8899 ( talkcontribs) 15:03, 26 May 2016 (UTC) reply

Block Notice and block appeal/review

I have blocked your account for continued edit warring at Forced conversion. ( 1, 2, 3) This appears to be a continuation of the behavior highlighted at the 3RR report. ( 4, 5, 6, 7) Our edit warring policy is quite clear that consensus should be reached or dispute resolution sought instead of reverting to your preferred version. When the block expires, I would encourage you to continue further discussion before making further reverts. If you feel that the discussion is not progressing, I would encourage you to seek further input through dispute resolution or a request for comment. Mike VTalk 15:12, 23 July 2016 (UTC) reply

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

Xenophrenic ( block logactive blocksglobal blockscontribsdeleted contribsfilter logcreation logchange block settingsunblockcheckuser ( log))


Request reason:

As explained immediately below (my apologies, but this Unblock Template is giving me grief when I try to provide diffs within it).

Decline reason:

(1) Procedural decline: The block has expired. Vanjagenije (talk) 17:11, 28 July 2016 (UTC) (reinstated; at the suggestion of the blocking admin, this template may be left up pending the attention of another editor on the substance of the block) reply

(2) Firstly, you are no longer blocked, so an unblock isn't what you're asking for. Secondly, I don't see how your latest edits on that page, namely these, qualify as a self-reversion. You removed content from the page that you didn't agree with, despite objections on the talk page. Huon ( talk) 17:33, 31 July 2016 (UTC) reply


If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{ unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

I believe Admin Mike V has misunderstood the present situation and made this block in error. I have made only a single actual edit to the article in the past couple days, and only 3 edits total in the past 8 days (these are the 3 diffs Mike provided as evidence of edit warring): All 3 edits were simple reverts to the pre-dispute BRD article version — as suggested by the involved editors ( see Jobas, and Anupam, and per this agreement here), while our discussion is ongoing. Despite the contentious subject matter, we've actually done fairly well in discussing our concerns, with only those few instances during the past week of editors prematurely declaring they have consensus and reinserting problematic content.

I said Mike may be misunderstanding the situation, and here are some of the reasons why:

  • Mike warns me that consensus should be reached or dispute resolution sought instead of reverting to your preferred version, when I've actually been grudgingly reverting to the problematic version I've been arguing against (per my promise to Admin EdJohnston, and at the request of the other editors), and I've absolutely been discussing and trying to develop consensus. I opened the discussion; I was the last to comment in the discussion before this block; and I've been trying to keep the discussion productive and focused the whole time.
  • The 3RR report Mike cites says of my "highlighted behavior": doesn't reveal any egregious edit warring. And the vexatious report was declined, to boot. I am trying to continue my behavior of not engaging in any egregious edit warring.
  • Mike lists diffs to edits like this as somehow problematic, but I'm not seeing it. I temporarily moved problematic content cut-&-pasted from other Wikipedia articles without the required attribution (and worse, with 'Citation Needed' and 'Dubious' tags included), by this drive-by editor, to the article Talk page and opened discussions. I understood that to be best-practice procedure.
  • I did, however, also make a series of 20 temporary improvement edits to newly proposed content additions so that I could more easily refer and link to them during our discussions. But I immediately self-reverted every single edit of mine and returned the article to the pre-dispute state as previously requested by the other editors. It's possible Mike saw my string of 20 edits and misunderstood that as implementing "my preferred version", and that's partially on me for not more clearly explaining what I was doing, but I did say in my first of 20 edit summaries: "fixing the proposed version before reverting to pre-dispute version".

I am requesting that the block be lifted, and a brief notation be added to the log summary to indicate the mistaken entry. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 21:06, 23 July 2016 (UTC) reply

With the block due to expire within the hour, the part of my request to have the block lifted is now moot. The more important part of my request to have an edifying notation added to the block log, however, remains an important and active issue. Xenophrenic ( talk) 15:01, 26 July 2016 (UTC) reply

Regarding your comment here: you must know that the other party doesn't have to consent to your opening of an RfC. And that if an RfC is seen as reaching a consensus among those who do participate, it is likely to be treated as binding by administrators in case of a later edit war. EdJohnston ( talk) 14:09, 10 October 2016 (UTC) reply

Yes, Ed, RfCs do not require approval by another editor, and I am aware of that. If -I- had a content issue I wished to clarify through community input, crafting an RfC would be a simple matter. But I am not the editor with the content concern, Etsybetsy is, so I was attempting to craft an RfC that would address his concern appropriately. But as you saw at your now archived Talk page discussion, my attempts to represent his position in an RfC were met with accusations that I was misquoting or misrepresenting him. But when I asked him to reword it to his satisfaction, he refused. Hopefully now you more clearly see my dilemma. RfCs are easy, Ed, once you have a clear issue to present, but Etsy keeps redefining his issues on the fly. However, if he answers my last couple questions without his usual hand-wavy, nonspecific responses, I will have isolated an actual issue around which I can create a productive RfC. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 03:03, 11 October 2016 (UTC) reply

Hi Xenophrenic

Thank you for reverting the insertion of incorrect information about my father's holiday. While a claim was made that there was a Roman holiday by that name in Allen Salkin's tome, that 2005 book is the first time said claim has ever appeared anywhere in print, and in no list of Roman holidays will that name will be found. I appreciate the deletion: I find this incorrect claim very frustrating. I understand completely this was all done in good faith. Thank you for your time. Best, Dan O'Keefe — Preceding unsigned comment added by DanOKeefe ( talkcontribs) 06:25, 20 November 2016 (UTC) reply

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Xenophrenic. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC) reply

Yo Ho Ho

Nomination of Humanity & Society for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Humanity & Society is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Humanity & Society until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. Onel5969 TT me 20:23, 29 December 2016 (UTC) reply

Eliko007

Hi Xenophrenic. I'll be honest, I didn't check Eliko007's facts, I merely objected to the original tone and presentation. He ask for guidance on my talk page, which is why I ran up the suggested alternative. Thanks for clarifying the facts. Regards, Martin of Sheffield ( talk) 17:14, 26 January 2017 (UTC) reply

Don't worry about it, Martin of Sheffield. You saw that his canvassing attempt was non-neutral in wording, and you notified him of it. I very much appreciated that. You can not possibly be expected to know all the little details and sordid history behind his assertions (even I had to do some digging to refresh my memory, and I'm involved!), and the fact that you took the extra step to help him improve it is admirable. No complaints here. Best regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 21:12, 26 January 2017 (UTC) reply
@ Martin of Sheffield: It seems he still doesn't get the idea that canvassing for input is not supposed to be coupled with demonizing participants in that discussion. Oh well. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 18:43, 3 February 2017 (UTC) reply
Well at least he didn't use the red triangle or "urgent". Other than that it seems to be word for word, including the accusations against you. If you want to take it further please feel free to quote my advice on his talk page and his response on mine. It's particularly annoying when he says "As I'm a bit new here, would you be able to suggest an alternative wording?" and then completely ignores the advice. Regards, Martin of Sheffield ( talk) 23:07, 3 February 2017 (UTC) reply

Problematic block

Blocked because an Admin didn't want me editing in "this topic or anything related to it" apparently for personal reasons, rather than for a legitimate blockable offense.

I have given both you and Jobas a block for edit warring. While so far no 3RR violation occurred on any individual article, the overall effect of the edit war between the two of you has the same effect. Your block is longer because of your previous block history for edit warring. Fram ( talk) 13:07, 14 February 2017 (UTC) reply

Fram - my first reflexive impulse was to post an unblock request, citing (1) I didn't breach 3RR, (2) *I* was the one initiating Talk page discussions at each article, (3) I had the "moral authority" after a community discussion determined that the category created by Jobas that I was removing was, at best, a product of "original research" and should be eliminated and replaced by a category backed by actual reliable sources. But despite all that, all I can muster up right now is a: "Good block, Fram." "Seriously, Fram?" I really shouldn't be editing at 4AM, methinks. I may petition for a reduction in the block duration, but not right now while I'm still seething. I'm going back to bed. Kind regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 13:55, 14 February 2017 (UTC) reply
You didn't breach 3RR at any single article, but had 43 reverts of the same category in a short time, sometimes multiple times at the same article. Starting the discussion after your first attempt has been reverted is not an excuse to continue the reverts at the same time (though it is at least better than continuing to revert without any discussion at all of course). And when you start a CfD which ends in no consensus with "The suggestion of Category:Religious persecution by secular governments given below is, I suggest, a good one. I suggest all editors who have commented here work towards moving this category to something approaching that one, because as given, the current title is frankly original research." as recommendation, then that doesn't give you the right to a blanket removal of the category. The least you could have done was replace it with the suggested one, so that you at least gave the appearance of accepting the CfD conclusion. But what you did now may have felt to you as if it was supported by the CfD, but to an uninvolved bystander looks as if you wanted to implement your preferred outcome of the CfD against the actual closure. Either start another CfD where you propose renaming the category to something along the lines of the CfD closure, or leave this well alone. Good night. Fram ( talk) 14:23, 14 February 2017 (UTC) reply
Fram, as an uninvolved bystander, you wouldn't be expected to know the actual details behind this matter, only how things "appear". So some things should be made clear at the outset:
→ I'd never use "starting a discussion" as an excuse to continue reverting. The reason I re-removed the category after the discussion was because there was no longer a reason not to.
→ I'd never cite that CfD as "giving me the right to a blanket removal of a category". If you'll look closer at my edit summaries, they stated: rvt insertion of unsourced; (and this article isn't being specifically discussed at the linked discussion). I removed the problematic categories because they were unsourced, in violation of WP:CAT, and specifically not because of that discussion.
→ I haven't "started" a CfD (Marcocapelle did), and it didn't end in "no consensus" -- it ended with: No consensus - with caveats.
I'm not sure what the significance of 40+ reverts in a short time is in your argument, Fram. The problematic nonsense category was pointedly created by Jobas on November 10, 2015, apparently as payback in his dispute with another editor who was tagging articles with Category:Persecution by Christians, and he tagged 40+ articles with it in under an hour. Those articles have subsequently had the category removed over time since it was completely unsourced in violation of Wikipedia policy, and by the time Marcocapelle initiated the CfD, the category was empty. I see that you have advised Jobas, "This doesn't mean that you can go to all the articles where you were edit warring and revert them to your version because he is still blocked." He didn't need to. As soon as I was blocked, his meatpuppets took care of that (see edits starting here where the problematic category was again re-inserted in 40+ articles in under 20 minutes). Is that also of significance? I suspect the answer to that has more to do with the preferences perceptions of the admin witnessing it than with the action itself.
Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 14:24, 15 February 2017 (UTC) reply
From "I never started a CFD", when you were actually the co-nominator of the CfD, to "I suspect the answer to that has more to do with the preferences of the admin witnessing it than with the action itself.", with most of your comments inbetween, actually gives me a lot more reason to simply extend the block to a month or indefinite than to actually unblock you. Fram ( talk) 14:34, 15 February 2017 (UTC) reply
That is a very harsh and unwarranted response, Fram. And it only emphasizes the point made above that there is a vast difference between how things appear and how things are. For example, I joined that ongoing CfD a day later as a "co-nominator" only to facilitate the adding of actual policy-based reasoning for deletion, which was omitted by the initiator. Read the discussion about it and you'll see that I actually "struck" any intention of mine to initiate such a deletion discussion. Marco actually forced the issue, while I was still in a research-mode trying to come up with solutions. As for the "I suspect the answer to that has more to do with the preferences of the admin", I misspoke when I said "preferences" (and your offense at that is justifiable). I meant "perceptions", as I was trying to illustrate the difference between acting on how things "appear" versus how they actually are.
The least you could have done was replace it with the suggested one... --Fram
Eventually, perhaps, but the suggested one doesn't exist yet. After removing the nonsense category from some articles because it's presence is completely unsourced (see WP:V), I'm not going to then insert a potentially equally unsourced substitute. (And that suggested category doesn't fit almost half of the examples anyway.) Everyone in that discussion agrees that "Religious persecution" of one form or another exists in most of those examples, and I was going to carefully add that ( Category:Religious persecution) to the articles as a start point. But the removal of the discussed problematic category was for Wikipedia policy reasons, not CfD reasons. Xenophrenic ( talk) 15:11, 15 February 2017 (UTC) reply
I just now saw your edit summary:
(All you do is providing arguments why your block should be made longer, not why it should be lifted) --Fram
Holy cow -- I'm doing neither, Fram. If I want to argue why your block on me should be lifted, I'll do so within an Unblock Request template, properly written to best encourage due consideration. And I'm certainly not providing arguments as to why your block on me should be made longer, much less "indefinite" (your word, not mine). You made some statements in your second comment here on my Talk page, so I was responding to them and engaging you in that discussion. I corrected a couple of your misperceptions (i.e.; what the actual close decision really said; what my actual reasoning was for removing the cats, per my actual edit summaries), and now I am hit with a "gives me a lot more reason to simply extend the block to a month or indefinite" narrative. "A lot more reason", really? As in you were already harboring unspoken "reasons" to block me indefinitely? That raises some very serious concerns.
I was hoping to hear your thoughts on the significance of Eliko007s spamming of those same 40+ articles with that category, right after you blocked Jobas and me on Feb 14. Or on the spamming of those same articles with that category by that same editor on Feb 10, just a few days earlier. Are WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:CATDEF able to be circumvented in those circumstances for reasons of which I am unaware? Xenophrenic ( talk) 22:28, 15 February 2017 (UTC) reply
If you want an unblock, you may request an unblock, which I'll let some other admin deal with. If not, I'm done here. By the way, saying something gives you more reason to do A than to do B doesn't mean that you had reason to do A (or B) earlier, only that now you have more reason, i.e. are more inclined to, do A than do B. "More reason" doesn't equal "additional reasons". No harboring unspoken reasons or preconceptions are included in my post, and no reason to have "very serious concerns" (back to your "perceptions", are we?). Fram ( talk) 07:41, 16 February 2017 (UTC) reply
Dictionaries disagree with you, Fram, which say that "more" is a comparative. You didn't say my comments gave you "a lot of reason to extend" the block, which is what you apparently meant to say. Instead, you said "a lot more reason to extend", inserting a comparative, which immediately and understandably raised the question in my mind: "compared to what other reasons?" You've now assured me that I should not be concerned, so I am relieved. Quibbling over semantics and dictionary definitions is a distraction and has me feeling a bit silly; it appears we are both capable of misspeaking.
I've asked you (twice now) for your take on the quick spamming of an "original research" category across 40+ articles on Feb 10 and again on Feb 14, in opposition to a CfD close decision, and in violation of Wikipedia's policy that categories be verifiable. You've remained curiously silent on that, and are now scrambling for the door (see: "I'm done here" & "final reply"). I'm not sure how to interpret your silence on that, and as shown above, I shouldn't be too quick to draw conclusions based solely on the perceptions you've left with me. But that is all you have left for me, so what recourse do I have but to push for clarification? I'm not asking you these questions just to make polite idle conversation. I'm simply trying to get a clear picture of the Administrator's perspective on exactly why these past events constituted disruptive edit-warring to a degree that warranted blocks. My goal is to not see this happen again down the road.
Given your now clearer understanding of what the close decision on the CfD really said; and now that you also understand that I was only removing the category from articles where it violated WP:V policy as unsourced (per my edit summary), and not because any close decision "gave me the right" to remove it, I ask you this:
  • Do you foresee any problems in the future if, should I discover that the category has been applied to an article without being verifiably sourced, I remove it? I would, of course, follow the best practice of clearly explaining in the edit summary the reason for the edit, and the reason would be based on Wikipedia policy and not my personal preference. I don't see why you, as an Admin, would object, but I'd like to hear it from you.
  • Then, if such an edit of mine were to be reverted for whatever reason, would you, from an Admin's perspective, foresee any problems if I then initiated a Talk page discussion which more clearly explained my edit, and, only after carefully checking and confirming that the Wikipedia policy violation (WP:V) was not addressed, re-remove the still unsourced category? I might also leave a brief note (being careful not to "template the regulars") on the reverting editor's Talk page suggesting that discussion would be better than reverting the problematic category into articles. I don't figure you'd have any problems with this either. (Possible exception: repeating the edit a second time in conjunction with initiating a discussion could be viewed as slightly aggressive, but only in fresh dispute cases. This dispute is not new, and these similar edits have already been discussed at length.)
  • And finally, if such an edit of mine were again reverted, would you foresee a problem with my undoing that edit if (1) the undo would not breach 3RR, and (2) applicable steps of dispute resolution (except ArbCom) have already been tried, and (3) the arguments given on the article Talk page to explain the re-adding of the category have already been deemed by a neutral Admin as not "compelling reasons", and that the category being re-added is actually "original research"? I didn't see why there would be an objection in such a situation, but obviously you objected -- and I need to be sure I understand why.
This shouldn't need to be said (again), but I'm going to mention it just in case. The afore-mentioned CfD was initiated by Marcocapelle as a "proposal to delete" the category from existence, and was not a discussion about deleting the category from articles. (It was already an empty category because of lack of citation to verifiable reliable sources.) You suggested above "The least you could have done was replace it...", which I agree needs to be done before deleting it; but it hadn't yet been deleted. All I was doing when you issued your blocks was removing it from articles where it was completely unsourced in violation of Wikipedia policy; the category still existed. Now if you are suggesting that simultaneously adding to qualified articles an alternative category -- which may have some of the functionality of the removed problematic OR category -- might reduce the reflexive revert responses I've been getting, I'm certainly willing to give that a try. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 23:01, 17 February 2017 (UTC) reply
TLDR, I stopped after you again tried to twist the "more" statement into something I never said. Your comments gave me more reason to extend the block than to unblock, that's a perfectly normal use of the comparative. "More reason to do A than to do B". I don't know whether you are unable to understand this, or simply unwilling, but if you can't even grasp something as simple as this, I see no point in discussing things with you. Fram ( talk) 16:21, 18 February 2017 (UTC) reply
...you said "a lot more reason to extend", inserting a comparative, which immediately and understandably raised the question in my mind: "compared to what other reasons?" You've now assured me that I should not be concerned, so I am relieved. Quibbling over semantics and dictionary definitions is a distraction... --Xenophrenic
Fram, I explained how I understood what you said, and that it caused me concern. You explained how I should understand what you said, and assured me there was no reason for concern. I accepted your explanation and was relieved. That tangential matter was done - ended - over. I had moved on to asking you a few very important questions (one of them for the 3rd time now), in an effort to fully understand this block situation so that it doesn't happen again. You read those questions and, for whatever reason, decided to resurrect the distraction topic instead of responding to them.
...if you can't even grasp something as simple as this, I see no point in discussing things with you. --Fram
I assure you I understand all too well. Will you now discuss things with me, please? Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 19:40, 18 February 2017 (UTC) reply
Feel free to discuss anything you want with other admins in an unblock request. I didn't "decided to resurrect the distraction topic", you started your previous post with "Dictionaries disagree with you, Fram, which say that "more" is a comparative." If you feel the need to start your defense with such a strawman, then you shouldn't be surprised that that gets a response, instead of the other things you raise. If you then claim that such a response is "resurrecting a topic", then it is once again an indication of how you seem incapable of taking any responsability for your own actions, and try to find blame everywhere but with yourself. Anyway, if you don't get what you are blocked for, then just play it safe, and leave this category and anything related to it alone, and leave Jobas alone. This is a huge encyclopedia, you shouldn't have any problem finding other topics to keep you busy. Fram ( talk) 21:42, 18 February 2017 (UTC) reply
Fram, it is apparent there is a growing disconnect in our discussion. Here is my understanding of what you are saying, please correct me if I have misunderstood:
If you want an unblock, you may request an unblock, which I'll let some other admin deal with. --Fram
Feel free to discuss anything you want with other admins in an unblock request. --Fram
The "unblock request" is for requesting that a block be lifted, not for discussing with the blocking Admin the specifics of that block and how to be sure it doesn't happen again in a similar situation. As I already noted above, I'm not at the stage of requesting an unblock, and frankly, you seem more in a hurry than me. As I said before, and I'll cut & paste repeat here: I'm simply trying to get a clear picture of the Administrator's perspective on exactly why these past events constituted disruptive edit-warring to a degree that warranted blocks. My goal is to not see this happen again down the road.
If you feel the need to start your defense with such a strawman, then you shouldn't be surprised that that gets a response, instead of the other things you raise. --Fram
My defense? Huh? I presented no defense. You said something that raised concerns → you then explained that I misunderstood you, and assured me there was no reason to be concerned → I then accepted that with relief. Fin. That should have been the end of it. Am I "surprised" you responded? Of course not. But I am surprised that you felt the need to respond yet again. And again. And just now, yet again. And the disturbing part is that you repeatedly raise and re-address that distraction "instead of the other things [I] raise" of actual importance here. Care to explain why?
...once again an indication of how you seem incapable of taking any responsibility for your own actions, and try to find blame everywhere but with yourself. --Fram
Very nice, Fram. I see what you did there. Of course I take responsibility for every action of mine, and always have -- which is made even more obvious by your complete failure to cite any occasion when I haven't.
...what you are blocked for, then just play it safe, and leave this category and anything related to it alone, and leave Jobas alone.
Am I understanding you correctly? Are you saying I was blocked for editing in relation to Category:Persecution by atheists and for interacting with Jobas, and risk being blocked again if I edit in that topic area or interact with that editor? Silly me, I thought this was about edit-warring. Every Admin should know that edits are deemed to be disruptive edit-warring completely irrespective of subject matter and participating editors. So what is it you are saying? I didn't pay much attention to your "or leave this well alone" comment earlier on, but it carries more meaning now.
This is a huge encyclopedia, you shouldn't have any problem finding other topics to keep you busy.
You are quite correct, Wikipedia is huge and I do indeed participate in many topics which keep me busy, and this is just one of them. But your comment appears to be telling me you do not want me participating in this particular topic for some reason, and I'd like to know why. Since my edits in this topic had nothing to do with the actual subject matter, but instead with a conflict between Wikipedia policy and the insertion of categories against that policy, what exactly are you saying? Xenophrenic ( talk) 22:25, 18 February 2017 (UTC) reply
CONCLUSION: Your reluctance to explain your block reasoning has left me to conclude that you imposed a block because you didn't want me editing in the "atheism" area for personal reasons known only to you, rather than to prevent disruption. When an editor spammed a policy-violating, disparaging category into 43 articles - and claimed it was under discussion, you apparently had no problem with it. But when I rolled back that spam when the cited discussion concluded, you issued a block for edit-warring. Facepalm Facepalm Then, when an editor spammed the policy-violating category back into the same articles yet again just hours later, you, tellingly, still had no problem with it.

Accidental Click

Good morning! My apologies for accidentally reverting your comment on Talk:Daniel Dennett. I have that page on my watchlist and my sensitive mouse clicked the "rollback" button. I hope you are doing well! With regards, Anupam Talk 15:48, 27 February 2017 (UTC) reply

Not a problem. You should see my editing before I've had my first pot of coffee! Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 07:48, 28 February 2017 (UTC) reply

Jobas

I've given Jobas a final warning about all the little edits. Man, sometimes I wonder why this project has so much patience with disruption, whether it's caused by WP:CIR or something else. Could you please let me know if you spot them doing it again, because I may well miss it? Thanks. Bishonen | talk 14:24, 16 April 2017 (UTC). reply

I think your words sank in, Bishonen. I've watched the edits for exactly a month now, and they don't seem to be flooding individual articles with dozens of tiny edits anymore. They have, however, found an alternate way of flooding their own account edit history with numerous tiny edits - which I suspect was probably their intent all along. But I'm not inclined to confront them about their current scheme, since the only disruption they are inflicting now is on people examining their edit history. Anyway, just wanted to thank you for nudging him a bit - I'm going to close this thread out. Kind regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 03:01, 18 May 2017 (UTC) reply
I see what you mean. Well, many people do that. It may be well-meant ('I'm not good at writing or sourcing, I'll just help the encyclopedia this way'), or in fact done in order to inflate their edit count for an RFA. I remember one such RFA, where a few people protested that bot-like edits were nothing to boast about, and the person's friends argued aggressively that 'an edit is an edit'. That person also, on their userpage, and at the RFA, listed the FAs that they had 'contributed' to, in the sense of made a couple of minor edits to. They squeaked through, to become a ton of trouble as admin. This is hardly for an RFA, though. Bishonen | talk 08:41, 18 May 2017 (UTC). reply

You are still engaged in an edit war on the article Michael Shermer. I am placing you on a restriction to not edit the categories on that page without getting full consensus on the talk page. Currently there is no consensus. Please get a consensus before editing categories on this page again. Failure to do so may result in your being blocked for edit warring and disruptive editing. Canterbury Tail talk 14:07, 17 June 2017 (UTC) reply

Hi, @ Canterbury Tail: ~
I am "engaged in an edit war" on every article I edit (with the exception of edits to create a brand-new article), and the Michael Shermer article is no exception. Every edit I make that adds to, removes from, or otherwise changes the existing wording left by other editors, anywhere, is technically edit warring, and frequently qualifies as a revert as well. So it's a given that all my edits are at some level "warring". What matters is whether my daily edit warring (going on almost 12 years now) veers from constructive to disruptive, and that is a matter subjectively decided by administrators. In this case, thank you for determining that my edit warring only warranted a quite minor request to obtain consensus before resuming. I intend to honor it.
I could, of course, have lodged a reasonable objection to that minor admonition - noting that I had already initiated talk page discussions on this matter, and that other editors had also reverted Apollo's problematic category removal, not just me. I might have also mentioned that Apollo followed me to that article just to revert me; an article he had never before visited. But whatever; your request was so easy to oblige, I figured why bother complaining. All I had to do was work it out with the only disagreeing person: Apollo.
But then he went and got himself blocked. So I decided I'd wait until he was back to editing before resuming our talk page discussions, as it wouldn't be fair to develop consensus without the only dissenting voice. But then he got blocked yet again, but not before escalating his hostilities toward me and admitting he was stalking my edits. He even filed a frivolous ANI report against me (which nearly boomeranged). And after his antics today, my patience with him has finally been exhausted.
I regret that I must petition you to put an end to his disruption. You placed Apollo under a 1RR restriction, which he immediately violated, earning him a 2-week block. Now fresh off his most recent block, he has resumed revert-warring. (See here and here for more 1RR violations.) If you'd prefer that I pursue enforcement at one of the drama boards, I can do that, but I felt it was appropriate to contact you first. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 23:00, 8 July 2017 (UTC) reply
@ Canterbury Tail:Xeno there is no "edit war". As you well know I have edited this topic before. Why are you so suprised that I might revert you if I disagree with your edits on pages I have edited in the past? How is that edit warring? I reverted you twice in two days and I initiated a talk page discussion. Xenophrenic had no intention of discussing it seriously on the talk page and started telling me how much fun he was having. So clearly he is in no position to complain. Also I did not admit I stalked your edits as you can clearly see from my last reply to Xeno on that talk page which he purposely left out. And yes I did break the 1RR but it was purely accidental. I am not use to abiding by it so forgive me if I slip up once or twice. Here is an example of me noticing I broke the 1RR and reverting myself. I would appreciate it if you see it from my perspective. Apollo The Logician ( talk) 08:54, 9 July 2017 (UTC) reply
Competence is required, Apollo. I'm not sure which is more frustrating, the lack of competence or the intentional deception. I'm not falling for it, and I doubt Canterbury Tail is either. You claim you reverted me "twice in two days", and I say you reverted me twice in 24 hours, on multiple articles - I'm sure Canterbury Tail can see which is reality. And you've already passed your "once or twice" slip ups, so how many more times do you plan on pulling that excuse? You admit to multiple reverts, but in the same breath you claim "there is no edit war" and ask "how is that edit warring"? I'll leave it to Canterbury to determine if that is gross ignorance or a simple lie. You also marked one of your reverts 'minor', when it completely reversed meanings. Maybe Canterbury can determine if that is mere cluelessness or deception. You assume bad intent and claim I "had no intention of discussing it seriously on the talk page"; really? You really don't think Canterbury will check the Talk page and see that I did indeed engage you seriously, provided the sources you requested, and resolved it per your "Fair enough" acknowledgement. Then you rambled on about the definition of atheism, which I also seriously engaged with, until the discussion strayed too long from actual article improvement. (And I did indeed find it fun, and even offered to continue that conversation in a more appropriate venue.) And yes you did admit to stalking my edits (see the link I provided), and I left out several replies, as did you. Are you talking about your reply where you retracted your admission that you were stalking my edits after I said I was taking it to ANI, and you claimed you found and reverted my edits by randomly "looking at the persecution and religion related articles and came across your edits" among more than 2600 articles? Are you really sure you want to go with that ridiculous story after you recanted again at your SPI page and admitted stalking my edits:
Stalking is not the right word. Looking at your edit history would be a better description. --Apollo The Logician 20:08, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
Following someone's edit history for the purposes of disruptively reverting their edits is the damn definition of STALKING. Now I highly suspect we are just being trolled. Xenophrenic ( talk) 13:47, 10 July 2017 (UTC) reply
Your input on this matter would be appreciated, @ Canterbury Tail:. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 13:50, 10 July 2017 (UTC) reply
I reverted you in two articles that I had edited in the past. How is that stalking? Why would I purposely break the 1RR when I knew I would get a hefty ban just like I did in the past?
How does that quote of mine contradict what I said? I found your edits and had one look at your edit history that is all. We have only crossed paths since then because of the two articles in question which I had already edited beforehand and they were on my watchlist. Apollo The Logician ( talk) 14:01, 10 July 2017 (UTC) reply

Canterbury Tail, you disregarded my pings and requests that you step in and help defuse the Apollo situation outlined just above, which was unfortunate, as it left me with no recourse but to seek assistance in a more draconian venue. Now I'm pinging you again regarding the restriction you placed upon me at the top of this discussion section. I intend to make an edit to the categories in the article you named, but you have required that I "get a consensus before editing". I've left a Talk page comment expressing my intent, but a few days have passed with no objections - no response at all, in fact. Would you mind giving me the green-light to edit, or more specifically explain your "get a consensus before editing" requirement? Thanks in advance, Xenophrenic ( talk) 00:15, 11 August 2017 (UTC) reply

Hey there. Sorry been distracted a lot lately. I've responded on the article talk page, seems like a reasonable edit. Canterbury Tail talk 11:45, 11 August 2017 (UTC) reply

Conspiracy theory

Jeez, you've been dealing with a lot. Keep up the good fight. – Roscelese ( talkcontribs) 18:47, 28 June 2017 (UTC) reply

The Original Research category of Persecution by atheists

Stop removing this cat from articles without consensus. You have continually done this over a long period. Please gain a consensus for these removals. If you continue edit warring I will take this to ANI and request a topic ban. Apollo The Logician ( talk) 14:26, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply

Hi, Apollo. I haven't removed any cats without consensus. If you could be more specific as to what you are talking about, we can discuss it. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 14:34, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply
Don't play stupid. I have done some investigating and have discovered that on pretty much every article that you have removed this cat from you have done so despite the consensus obviously being against you or you simply lacking a consensus. You previously tried to get this cat deleted and when there was no consensus you cleared the cat out because you couldn't get it deleted. You have been banned for this this exact same thing in the past. Apollo The Logician ( talk) 14:39, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply
You'll have to be more specific about what edit(s) you are speaking about. Would you mind providing a diff? Also, please keep in mind: this discussion, and you'll probably also find this policy helpful: The onus to achieve consensus for inclusion is on those seeking to include disputed content. (And no, I've never "been banned for this this exact same thing in the past".) Xenophrenic ( talk) 14:49, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply
I am talking about all those edits were you wiped the category clean after you couldn't get your way, that is called gaming the system. The discussion you are referencing ended in no consensus, I have no idea why you are bringing that up. You were the one trying to get the cat removed (challenging the long-standing version) from those articles therefore the onus was on you to get a consensus to remove them which you lack. Are you sure you haven't been banned for this before? Well then how do you explain this --> https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Xenophrenic#/talk/26 Apollo The Logician ( talk) 14:57, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply
The link you've provided doesn't show a ban. And I've never 'wiped a category clean', sorry. I have removed inapplicable categories, and also nonsensical categories after lengthy community discussion determined them to be original research. Is that the source of your concern? I'm still waiting for the diff(s) of what we are discussing. Xenophrenic ( talk) 15:08, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply
The link shows you are appealing your ban which the admin put in place due to edit warring on this cat. Please explain why every page that was in this cat has been removed by you if you didn't wipe the cat clean. I am not the only editor who noticed you wiped it clean. User:Jobas did as well. There was no "lengthy community discussion determined them to be original research.". Your own link for God's sake says the discussion ended in no consensus! Don't worry about the diffs as if I am forced to take this to the ANI and request a topic ban you will see all the diffs you want. Apollo The Logician ( talk) 15:14, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply
Incorrect; the link shows no appeal, and no ban. The nonsensical cat has been removed by many editors, not just me - and I typically replaced the nonsense cat with one supported by the article. Explain why, you ask? Did you not read the discussion I linked? The manufactured category is nonsensical, and was determined to be original research. And the discussion was not closed as "no consensus"; keep reading. It was actually closed as:
No consensus - with caveats. I came very close to closing this as Delete. I cannot see that any of the Keep votes have given any compelling reasons why the category should stay "as-is". Indeed, the majority of the Keep votes were very poor indeed in regards to policy. There is something of a consensus for keeping a similar category, but not named as such. The suggestion of Category:Religious persecution by secular governments given below is, I suggest, a good one. I suggest all editors who have commented here work towards moving this category to something approaching that one, because as given, the current title is frankly original research.
Hopefully that helps clear things up for you. Xenophrenic ( talk) 15:26, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply
( talk page stalker) The CfD was closed as "no consensus - with caveats". So the next step is unclear, but, as the closer said "he current title is frankly original research" and "I cannot see that any of the Keep votes have given any compelling reasons why the category should stay "as-is"." Now, it's frustrating and complicating that the closing admin has opted not to talk about this close on the many occasions he was asked to clarify (at least that I've seen/pinged -- apologies if I missed one), so all we have is the words of the close, which do not come to a full stop after "no consensus". — Rhododendrites talk \\ 15:30, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply

To Xenophrenic and the other editor: It's just the editor's personal opinion about the cat inter alia, nothing about the cat being determined via consensus that it is OR. Apollo The Logician ( talk) 15:33, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply

I think I will be taking this to ANI since no progress has been made. Apollo The Logician ( talk) 15:43, 2 July 2017 (UTC) reply

( talk page watcher) @ Apollo The Logician: Just to clarify, Xenophric has never been banned- what you are referring to was a block -see WP:BANBLOCKDIFF. Take care, — fortuna velut luna 14:11, 10 July 2017 (UTC) reply

About your usermessage

Two things about your user message at the top of this page:

  1. Why not a user talk edit notice? You don't have to be an admin to create and place one on your user page or user talk page. While I haven't gotten around to creating one, you already have something similar. Nothing wrong with how it is, but I'm just suggesting.
  2. Said usermessage contains a link to Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#How_to_keep_a_two-way_conversation_readable. I followed it to the top of the page, but not any section or anchor. I have no idea what you were trying to link to. It might just be an issue on my end, but it may actually be the result of either a renamed section or a broken anchor. You may want to fix that by adding an anchor.

Just letting you know. —  Mr. Guye ( talk) ( contribs)  01:14, 16 July 2017 (UTC) reply

Thanks for the info. I may create an actual Edit Notice eventually; in the mean time, I've fixed the link in the current note so that it actually goes somewhere. I swiped parts of that message from another user over 10 years ago, so I don't recall exactly where that link was supposed to point. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 00:36, 17 July 2017 (UTC) reply

ANI notice regarding your recent conduct.

Information icon There is currently a discussion regarding your recent conduct at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Conduct of User:Xenophrenic with respect to Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2017 July 4. bd2412 T 20:11, 22 August 2017 (UTC) reply

Account block - August 2017

Stop icon with clock
You have been blocked from editing for a period of 2 weeks for edit warring and disruptive editing. Once the block has expired, you are welcome to make useful contributions. If you think there are good reasons why you should be unblocked, you may request an unblock by first reading the guide to appealing blocks, then adding the following text to the bottom of your talk page: {{ unblock|reason=Your reason here ~~~~}}.   Swarm 20:41, 22 August 2017 (UTC) reply
Hi, Swarm ~
Well, I certainly wasn't expecting this when I returned home and sat down at my computer. Thank you for taking a full 26 minutes of time out of your schedule to carefully review BD2412's four paragraphs of allegations, three lengthy community discussions regarding two problematic categories, several article and sub-category pages and the presently ongoing discussions on their respective Talk pages, their edit histories, as well as my own 11-year edit history and block log, before concluding that I am "on a mission", "highly invested", "edit warring", "tendentious editing", and have "underlying WP:Right-Great-Wrong issues". My only hope is that you will give my version of the same story equal, if not more, careful consideration. BD2412 has painted as bleak a picture as he could of what has recently transpired, in support of his request that I be topic banned: "a break from this topic for a few months." I suspected he might be upset after I publicly questioned his close decision with a Deletion Review, and then I put him in an untenable position by pressuring him to finally produce the reliable sources to support his assertions. (He still hasn't.) But this stunt is a rather sneaky way for BD2412 to try to avoid that responsibility.
  • Tendentious? No. - BD2412 opens by trying to portray me as dominating the discussions, challenging every objector, making "unpleasant" remarks, and "accusing editors who disagree with [me] of having an anti-atheist agenda". Xenophrenic made 64 posts in the discussion regarding Category:Persecution by atheists, he says, adding that in the Deletion Review, a discussion with only about a dozen participants, Xenophrenic made 28. If you'll bother to fact-check that string of embellishments, you will see a very different picture. The full history of that Review shows that I posted exactly 17 times, as did BD2412, while ThePromenader posted 41 times and 1990'sguy posted 12 times. The full history of the first Category discussion (there were two, you know) shows me posting only 41 times, while Lovemonkey posted 45 times, Jobas posted 63 times and ThePromenader posted 71 times. The full history of the second Category discussion shows me posting 37 times, and 1990'sguy close behind at 30 times. It's true that I am always one of the more active participants; I try to respond to every comment or question to me, and I certainly "challenge" editors to produce substantiation when they make dubious assertions - I make no apologies for that. Any "unpleasant" remarks I've made were measured and appropriate responses to provocative comments, as BD2412 admitted, but there were far more caustic comments than mine in those conversations. I also do not accuse editors of "having an anti-atheist agenda", so BD2412 is either confusing me with another editor, or he misunderstands my responses to Jobas and Desmay, who have self-declared their anti-atheist agenda. Contrary to BD2412's "tendentious bull loose in a china shop" characterization of me at the Deletion Review discussion, I'm actually very deliberative and collaborative in my actions. He won't mention, because it doesn't fit his narrative, that I engaged only during the first half of the 7-day Deletion Review, and that I sat quietly and only watched during the last 3.5 days so that others could have their say. Once the 7 days elapsed, almost to the minute, I posted my final remarks and a comment for the closing admin. Can you please verify the information I've provided, and reconsider your "tendentious" comments?
  • Highly invested & "On a mission" to WP:RGW? No. - The only "mission" I'm on is the same one I've been on for 11 years: Contribute to, and improve, Wikipedia. The deletion discussions and subsequent Review were about whether a problematic category should exist (it's gone now), and whether an Admin had the right to make a new category (the closer said yes). The discussions did not conclude that the new category can be applied just anywhere in violation of WP:CATVER, so of course it was being removed. And as an Admin, you should support its removal. (BTW - BD2412 has later alleged "when he disagreed with the outcome of the previous debate on this category, he went ahead and removed that category from every article to which it had been added", which is a lie, and he knows it - I agreed with the outcome.) Since you are citing WP:RGW repeatedly here, I must assume you've read where it says: Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought or original research. Wikipedia doesn't lead, we follow – let reliable sources make the novel connections and statements and find WP:NPOV ways of presenting them. The newly created category is a synthesized product of original research, and according to policy, that category shouldn't exist in the first place. BD2412 says, Xenophrenic's rationale continues to be the belief that the category should not exist at all, which is rubbish - I don't write Wikipedia policies. Perhaps you'd rather not get involved in the contentious details surrounding this mess, I wouldn't blame you, but I'm requesting that you wade into it just far enough to review the situation with a little more care and perhaps reconsider your comments. (Or if it was just a hasty comment made during the excitement of the ill-conceived witch hunt.)
  • Edit warring? - BD2412 says, he has, for example, removed the category from the subcategory eight times. Clearly Xenophrenic knows to time his reversions to avoid the letter of 3RR, but not the spirit of it. This is the kind of unsubstantiated assertion I've grown accustomed to hearing from BD2412. Did you bother to examine his claim? Of course I didn't breach 3RR, and not because I timed it. Look again. I also never breached 2RR, so there goes the "clearly knows to time it" bullshit. Keep looking. I almost didn't break 1RR, and my 7 removals (not 8 like he claimed) were over a period greater than 2 weeks. And I wasn't the only person removing the problematic category. The "spirit" of the policy is that editors should discuss instead of revert-war, so I initiated a Talk page discussion the same day I removed the problematic category the very first time. Surely BD4212 would meet me at Talk and explain his addition of the category to the article. Nope, look again. I guess he just wasn't feeling the "spirit". And you say I was edit warring? Sometimes I left the problematic category in the article, against policy, for several days while there was nothing but crickets on the Talk page, so then I'd remove the category again. Apparently, no one feels the need to discuss the concerns raised on the Talk page as long as their problematic edits are still in the article. Spirit, indeed. BD2412 inserted his category yet again, never having visited the discussion. Did BD2412 ever make an appearance at the Talk page discussion? Once, unproductively, just hours before filing his ANI drama last night - 2 weeks since I opened the discussion. Did he mention that I had already stopped removing his problematic category the moment the Deletion Review was closed? No, why would he. That wouldn't fit the narrative he constructed. I'm requesting that you please review in more depth your assertion of "edit warring", and perhaps reconsider whether it actually rose to the level of "disruptive edit warring" on my part that would justify a 2 week block.
Thank you for taking the time to hear me out, Swarm. I intend to use the Unblock template, but not before I have a more firmly grounded understanding of the basis for the block. The above note, by the way, is not for transclusion to noticeboards. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 17:59, 23 August 2017 (UTC) reply
@ Swarm: Just making sure this 'ping' utility works. I've heard that it isn't always reliable.
I just now came across this comment of yours about me at ANI: "This would be a typical block for continued edit warring, without factoring in the strong POV-pushing associated with this user's behavior. This aggravating factor was handily present." I cannot engage with you at ANI regarding this, as you have prevented me from doing so. Apparently, we won't be discussing this matter here on this Talk page either, as it has been almost 2 days since I attempted to converse with you, with no response (I see you have been been editing as recently as two hours ago). If you will not be commenting further, or if you are simply still reviewing the matter, may I at least request the courtesy of being informed of that? Regarding your "strong POV-pushing" comment, may I please see the (required) diffs that inspired and support such a pejorative comment? Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 08:06, 25 August 2017 (UTC) reply
This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

Xenophrenic ( block logactive blocksglobal blockscontribsdeleted contribsfilter logcreation logchange block settingsunblockcheckuser ( log))


Request reason:

(1) Because the block lacked the required substantiation. The only explanation given in my block log was "Edit warring, disruptive and tendentious editing; see ANI report." I've checked that ANI report, and the required "good reasons only, based upon reviewable evidence and reasonable judgment" is not present. I do see where the filer of the report states, "For the record, I did not propose a block."
(2) The block is punitive instead of preventative. There was no "disruptive and tendentious editing" at all, and the only diffs provided in support of alleged "edit warring" instead show deliberative editing in conjunction with WP:BRD discussion, policy compliance and a good-faith reading of Talk page consensus, supported by sound arguments from multiple editors.
(3) The blocking Admin appears to have washed his hands of the matter. It is my understanding that " Administrators are expected to respond promptly and civilly to queries about their Wikipedia-related conduct and administrator actions and to justify them when needed." So I provided additional information for him to consider, and asked if he would then please review his admin action with me. All I got was silence. So I pinged him again and asked if he would at least give me the courtesy of informing me that he has received my communication. More silence, yet he continues with his other activities on Wikipedia. (I have much more to say about that disturbing behavior, but not in an Unblock Template.)
(4) Because it is preventing me from editing Wikipedia. The improper block serves no purpose, and after 100% radio silence during the several days I patiently waited for the blocking admin, it is time to remove it. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 03:51, 27 August 2017 (UTC) reply

Decline reason:

Procedural decline. The block has run out, there's nothing to be reviewed any more. If you want to argue that the admin who blocked you abused their powers, the appropriate place to raise the issue is WP:AN. I'm sorry we didn't get to reviewing the block earlier, but at this point the {{ unblock}} template is no longer appropriate, it's only for blocked users. Huon ( talk) 20:23, 7 September 2017 (UTC) reply


If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{ unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

Is there a secret or unpublished method to having an Admin explain an administrative action, or to having a Block Review request addressed? Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 19:18, 29 August 2017 (UTC) reply

No. I assume Swarm considers the explanations they gave at AN/I sufficient. The unblock request queue unfortunately is heavily backlogged at the moment, and properly evaluating this case will take quite some time and effort; I apologize for the delay. Huon ( talk) 21:37, 29 August 2017 (UTC) reply
Thank you for taking the time to respond, User:Huon. I cannot make the same assumption, because just above I pinged Swarm and made what I feel is a perfectly reasonable request: If you will not be commenting further, or if you are simply still reviewing the matter, may I at least request the courtesy of being informed of that? I've looked at some of his comments elsewhere on the project, and he does not strike me as either rude or clueless, so the silence is bewildering. As also noted above, Swarm never did give a substantiated explanation at ANI. I'm left to assume something else is at play here. I appreciate the info about the backlog, however. Kind regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 22:05, 29 August 2017 (UTC) reply

Notes to people

I just learned that the "Thank" option no longer appears as an option when you are blocked. I do, however, still wish to thank a few astute editors for their comments:

Socks and stuff

Your note at ANI unintentionally created a privacy issue, so I quietly removed it. Obviously there was no ill-intent from your end! Feel free to blank this once read.-- Jezebel's Ponyo bons mots 22:15, 11 August 2017 (UTC) reply

Sorry about that, Ponyo. I've seen IPs listed in SPI reports, so I just assumed there wouldn't be an issue. I'll keep that in mind in the future. Regarding recent additions to this report, I think the User:Mormon7 and User:Mormon077 and User:Theisticevolutoniser throw-away accounts were overlooked. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 05:17, 10 September 2017 (UTC) reply

Discussion at AN

I have started a discussion at AN regarding our recent interactions on my user talk page. GoldenRing ( talk) 09:43, 10 October 2017 (UTC) reply

What`s to be done with "```spam```"?

Good day, I`m new, and not extremely technically-minded. I cannot determine whether or not ```persistent spammer``` (or wikipedia contributors) IPs are to be referred to DNS, and if so, who is the "Responsible Person". It is odd, methinks, ignoring certifiable records, by calling it ```unverifiable```, compiling lists of IPs to be sent to a Responsible person to creat verifiability on the very DNS that is being portrayed as unverifiable. Dunno if that makes sense. There is talk on the DNS TTL, if that helps. Ta 126.209.0.225 ( talk) 20:56, 20 October 2017 (UTC) reply

ArbCom 2017 election voter message

Hello, Xenophrenic. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2017 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery ( talk) 18:42, 3 December 2017 (UTC) reply

Atheism

Hi. I removed a paragraph your recently inserted at the Positive and Negative atheism article because there was no source. Can you provide one? Thanks. Paddy Plunkett ( talk) 21:00, 13 January 2018 (UTC) reply

I've just blocked this editor as a sock of Apollo the Logician. Doug Weller talk 19:21, 14 January 2018 (UTC) reply

Taíno

That was my fault, sorry. The editor who added it created articles and added to other articles by adding various chunks from other articles without attribution. Warnings didn't work and they're temporarily blocked. They've created quite a mess, including copying text with refs whose detail wasn't brought over so you can't figure out what they are. I'm hoping they'll clear it up but I'm pretty sure they no longer know where they got it all from. Doug Weller talk 16:22, 14 May 2018 (UTC) reply

Disambiguation link notification for June 15

An automated process has detected that when you recently edited Trevor Potter, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Republican ( check to confirm |  fix with Dab solver).

( Opt-out instructions.) -- DPL bot ( talk) 09:05, 15 June 2018 (UTC) reply

I notice you have contributed to the Edward S. Herman page. Would it be possible for you to help build a POV consensus on the page? There is currently an NPOV dispute. Prop9 ( talk) 19:27, 14 July 2018 (UTC) reply

I was going to revert because the quote was about USAID and Soros, not about OSF at all. But thanks for reverting. I'll warn the editor. Doug Weller talk 11:37, 13 August 2018 (UTC) reply

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The article Shareholder Protection Act has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Notability not established for failed bill that did not advance

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