User talk:Scott MacDonald

We really need a "Enough is Enough" barnstar

Or, maybe we can call it the Enough is Too Much barnstar. Well done, I was watching the discussion and wishing everyone would just disengage, as was hoped. SirFozzie (talk) 09:48, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Hopefully that was a peacemaking hatting. Although now I'm wondering how to deal with this horrific nonsense without stirring more drama.--Scott Mac 09:53, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Sheesh. I've spoken to both the user and on the MFD. Inflammatory to the max. SirFozzie (talk) 10:11, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Deleting redirects

If you're going to delete a redirect, can you please fix any incoming links first to avoid any unnecessary disruption? Thanks. PC78 (talk) 18:27, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you

For [1] & 2. Ncmvocalist (talk) 14:09, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Me too! Your deep well of commonsense is an inspiration to me. --TS 19:20, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Off2riorob closure

I request you re-open the Off2riorob closure. Only the most recent block had to do with climate. We do see a lot of climatedrama(tm) on AN, but this is largely unrelated. Thus the proposed "stay away from climate change" solution will do little good. Many thanks, --TeaDrinker (talk) 18:05, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Is there a need for urgent admin action? Otherwise wouldn't a clam userpage discussion be best, and a user RFC is that doesn't reach a conclusion?--Scott Mac 19:09, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I can see you and I think very much alike. That would be my approach as well, in general. However in this case the user has a fairly lengthy history of accepting limits, agreeing to fix the problems, and then returning to disruptive editing. I tried to bring that out, perhaps unsuccessfully, in my list of disruptions. The goal was as much documenting the disruptions themselves (which are more numerous) as focusing on those where a solution was attempted, agreed to, and then failed. Since my block was my first interaction with the user, I had to spend some time investigating his edit history. I felt a project-wide 1RR was the next step, since previous attempts at more negotiated sanctions (including a self-imposed 1RR restriction) had failed. Thoughts? --TeaDrinker (talk) 19:29, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Firstly, I think bringing the whole thing to the user's attention, and getting some folk (like yourself) who don't have an axe to grind to discuss it with him. If that fails, then an RFC. I notice, however, at least one person who is asking for the thread to be reopened is in a content dispute and an editwar with Robb, and is also inflaming matters with by templating him.--Scott Mac 19:40, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm about as involved in this matter as it gets but I think this is an excellent outcome. There are obviously going to be people in the wings with an axe to grind but we shouldn't let that stop us finding the best outcome for the encyclopedia, and it seems that Off2riorob is or can be a net benefit to Wikipedia.

In future, should Off2riorob show signs of being disruptive in any way, do contact me and (especially if it relates to BLP) Doc, and I'm sure we'd be prepared to certify a RFC or endorse some other proposal if it has a chance of making things better. --TS 20:11, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

@Scott MacDonald: Thanks again for your work on this. I thought about an RFC/U, but was under the impression they are not binding and felt it was time for a binding solution. It seems to have become heavily mixed up in this climate change business, which to my mind is only tangentially related. I certainly appreciate your opinion that such sanctions are premature, but I'm afraid I have to disagree. Since a number of other people seem to be of a similar mind, I would suggest perhaps we should continue the AN discussion. Your thoughts are very much appreciated. --TeaDrinker (talk) 21:25, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Scott -- Thanks for noticing that mere hours after I left an October 24 comment at the AN supporting the sanctions others had suggested for Off2RioRob, he started that edit war with me at Geim.[2][3] Given the number of articles that exist on Wikipedia, that I had just had (as was evident from a dispute at Geim hours earlier the then-most-recent-posting on my talk page) on the very issue that Off2 edit-warred with me over, and that Off2 had never edited Geim before but mysteriously suddenly appeared to edit war, it is perhaps of some slight note-worthiness. If you note the timing, it is more than slightly disturbing.

Scott/Tea: What can be done about that? Can the AN discussion be expanded to include this new, directly related event?--Epeefleche (talk) 08:01, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Scott -- I'm not sure why you haven't responded, but perhaps I haven't provided sufficient alternatives, and I should lay out some possible approaches. Would it, in your view, be better to have this issue vetted at the AN (as it relates to it), or opened in a separate AN/I? I expect that it could always be part of an RFC/U, but I think it best to approach the behavior issue in an iterative fashion. This of course is outside the scope of "we've heard enough about climate change issues", and fall squarely under Off2 behavioral issues.--Epeefleche (talk) 19:31, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

My advice is that a RFC/U is the way to go. I'd suggest, however, that since you are in a content dispute with this user, that your making allegations about his conduct might cause some people to wonder. I can't stop you opening another thread on AN, or reverting my closure. I acted boldly once, and it would be for others to decide what to do.--Scott Mac 19:37, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for responding. The "content dispute" that you refer to is one that Off2 started. By, hours after I supported his being sanctioned at the AN that you closed, editing (for the first time ever) an article that I was in a content dispute on (as indicated by the then-most recent entry on my talk page). On the very issue mentioned on my talk page. Taking the opposite position, and edit warring with me over it.

That is precisely the sort of behavior that prompts requests for admin and/or community action. And of course the aggrieved party is the logical party to raise the issue. It's not, as you seem to have first thought perhaps(?), that I was in an edit war before I commented at the AN. Or that I began the edit war at Geim -- quite the opposite. (And, I should note, I was not at all involved in the climate change edit warring for which Off2 was sanctioned, and which was discussed at the AN).

As to going to RFC/U, isn't it correct that I should start first by mentioning this at a lower level, such as AN or AN/I, rather than go directly to RFC/U? I recognize that his behavior could well push up to the arb level, and they did in fact address similar edit warring behavior quite directly just this past year, but I believe we try to address this at the lower levels first, in iterative fashion.--Epeefleche (talk) 19:44, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Andre Geim

Hello Scott MacDonald. I know there's been some edit-warring but I don't think it's been too extensive. I'm trying to improve the article and haven't been part of the edit-warring. I don't really like articles being protected, and I wonder if you would unprotect it and issue warnings/block to people who are edit-warring instead? Christopher Connor (talk) 19:48, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I'm sympathetic to your request, and have posted to the article's talkpage to try to gauge the likely result. If people are reasonable it might work.--Scott Mac 19:59, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Hopefully they'll stop warring and engage on the talk page. Christopher Connor (talk) 20:03, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

• Agree w/Chris. Furthermore, Scott -- "Knock it off" is not a civil way to address people. I would suggest that you redact that. In addition, you just closed a thread re Off2 that was wholly against consensus. You now follow that up with an uncivil note to me about templating regulars suggesting that that is not productive. In fact, when you have a regular who is removing an RS-referenced sourced statement without legitimate reason, it is completely productive. It is something that can be pointed to to explain, at the regular's next block, that he had been properly warned. Here, we have an editor who has been blocked as many as six times in the past year and a half, for as long as three weeks, as recently as this week. You are entitled to your opinions, of course, but not to close threads against consensus (per wp:admin), and your message to me was not only incorrect IMHO but uncivil. We expect admins to model appropriate behavior, per wp:admin.--Epeefleche (talk) 23:22, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Favour needed

You've got excellent judgement and a strong distaste for the mess that editing in the climate change topic has done. Could you please take a look at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Marknutley ([4]) and, as a neutral administrator, make a suggestion as to how to move forward? I filed this thing 9 hours ago and it's been filling up with topic-banned editors ever since. If we can't tell them to stop obsessing about the subject on pain of blocking I don't know what we can do so I'll concentrate on other things. Your move. This is a test case. If it works, I'll file other cases to stop other breaches of the ban. --TS 21:30, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Its Sunday night, and now having to work tomorrow I've just shared two bottles of wine with my wife, so you'll excuse me if I suspect my "excellent judgement" may not be quite up to this tonight.--Scott Mac 22:39, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, everybody suddenly gets a life on Sunday. What's all that about? :@) --TS 22:41, 24 October 2010 (UTC)

I didn't realise you Scientologists are tea-total[5]. ;) I'll try to look at this later - pretty hectic work-wise today.--Scott Mac 12:13, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

OK, let's ignore the details and go for the underlying issue. See WP:AN#Climate Change: enough is enough!--Scott Mac 14:59, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Targeting BLP pages

Okay, I have looked around and can't figure out where the **** we are up to with all the Pending Changes trial etc. I am ready to kick-start where to from here WRT targetting pages etc. Casliber (talk · contribs) 00:34, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I thought it was live now. I keep seeing the "pending changes" flag in my watchlist. Honestly this whole thing seems to have been "coming real soon now" since about four years ago. Why the fuck can't they just make it live? This isn't rocket science. --TS 01:06, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

After the two month trial we had a vote on four options on how to continue (or not), and my impression was that it is ...continuing...after a fashion until we figure out what to do next (????????) I just can't find the damn links...Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:27, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Let's see:

• 1. A vote.
• 2. More than two options.

And it's all unnecessary. We just need somebody with the guts to throw the switch. Those who don't want to use pending changes don't have to do so.

How on earth did we ever get semi-protection? Was a vote involved in that measure, too? --TS 01:34, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

(scratches head) dunno, was before my time that it came in. I just need to find the damn link and am busy doing more interesting things currently. Casliber (talk · contribs) 01:44, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I'd nearly forgotten myself. Semi-protection was proposed on English Wikipedia on 29 November 2005, passed and approved 17 December 2005 and presumably somewhere along the line somebody actually wrote the PHP code to make MediaWiki perform semi-protection. I was an admin at the time and remember the change in the way protection worked.

I can't remember when we first heard about pending changes (I'm sure it was under a different name). It seems like years, and probably is. This isn't healthy. --TS 02:12, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah yes, I had a look. Flagged revisions. The earliest version seems to have been proposed May 2007 as "the local implementation of Extension:FlaggedRevs". The FlaggedRevs extension was first documented in March of that year. This is slow stuff! --TS 02:25, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Actually I could go even further back with this, but perhaps that's enough. Suffice to say that what became Flagged Revisions originated as an idea for flagging certain revisions as good enough for external publication--printing, exporting, burning to DVD and so on. --TS 02:51, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Up for it?

See Fred Singer (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

Smart boy wanted, I think. --TS 01:08, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Enough is enough

Many thanks. Sorry I had to comment at the bottom of the page here. The telephone again.

I think I'll quietly walk away from that problem now that it looks as if it will get a proper community discussion. There is a point at which my constant harping at the problem, as an editor involved in climate change articles, becomes a problem in itself and I think I've reached that point. Everybody who wants to know what I think on the subject can see what I wrote on the arbitration enforcement request and on the request for clarification on the arbitration page. Less is more. Tasty monster (=TS ) 15:55, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I'd say that as someone who's involved from one side, your input into making sure our articles on climate sceptics are not prejudicial is particularly useful. You can't be accused of trying to whitewash for ideologue reasons when you object to negative coverage. Cedit to you for that.--Scott Mac 17:00, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

I was not referring to edits on say the Fred Singer article but rather the whole topic ban mess. That's what I've walked away from. It seems to be working out slowly but surely and now is not the time for me to keep pushing in my unsubtle way.

Actually I've been slowly increasing my climate change article editing now that the arbitration is finished and the situation is more settled. I'd all but given up in Spring and didn't really plan to go back, but i've been infected with optimism. There are new or returning editors who, once the rough edges get smoothed down, are already rejuvenating the editing on the articles. This is very promising. The worry about the topic ban being slowly eroded was that this might harm the work of rebuilding the collaborative atmosphere by prolonging or restarting ancient disputes that should now be forgotten. It's been worrying to see supposedly topic banned editors popping up in discussions everywhere. Tasty monster (=TS ) 17:21, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Scott, just out of interest, am I the only person on Wikipedia sick to bloody death of hearing about Climate Change? Anyone would think that one side or the other was personally responsible for curing/causing/inventing it? Ban the lot of them, delete the subject from Wikipedia and give the rest of us some peace and bloody quiet.  Giacomo  17:35, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Yup, we've on the same page. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:AN#Climate_Change:_enough_is_enough.21].--Scott Mac 17:38, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Oh I don't post there, if I can possibly help it, one meets the sort of people who have an opinion on every subject known to mankind, but sadly, seldom a knowledge to match the opinion.  Giacomo  17:54, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

The return of Alphonse Persico

In December 2009, you deleted this article due to BLP issues. I would like to write a brand new article that would be well-sourced and non-slanderous to any living person who is mentioned (the subject himself has been dead for about 20 years). Can you lift the protection on this article or do I need to take another step? Thanks for your assistance.Rogermx (talk) 17:57, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

The deleted article did contain information about living people too. I can't recall the specifics. I have lifted the protection which technically will allow you to recreate the article. Given the problems with this in the past, I urge you to make sure all your sourcing is solid and reliable, especially concerning living people mentioned. Note, that allowing recreation does not mean I think there should be an article here, but we can make judgement when we see what you have. If the article is sourced and accurate, then anyone seeing deletion can take it to the proper place for that debate. Wikipedia has many articles on unimportant criminals who, in my opinion, are of dubious notability.--Scott Mac 18:09, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks Scott. I agree that many of these Cosa Nostra subjects do not meet the Wiki notability criteria, and that many of these articles are too long and inadequately sourced. I have been making a humble effort to improve some of them. I do believe that Alphonse Persico achieved a certain level of notoriety in New York and played a role in the history of the Colombo family. I welcome discussion and feedback on the suitability of the article itself as well as on its content. Also, I definitely want to avoid further BLP issues on this. Rogermx (talk) 19:22, 25 October 2010 (UTC)

ArbCom Election RFC courtesy notice

A request for comment that may interest you is currently in progress at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/2010 ArbCom election voting procedure. If you have already participated, then please disregard this notice and my apologies. A Horse called Man 21:42, 25 October 2010 (UTC)
You received this message because you participated in the earlier ArbCom voting system RFC.

ANI re BLPN

Thanks for responding [6]. It's hard to tell what you're referring to. Would you mind reviewing a few comments? : Dougweller made a similar comment to which I responded [7]. There's been no follow up to these comments other than to ignore or dismiss them. I object the the edit itself: We don't assess the reliability of a source by drawing from unreliable, extremist sources. Nor do we attack the author while assessing the source. In the larger context, it appears to be just slow escalation of efforts to discredit a source without regard to the applicable policies, guidelines, and prior consensus. I'm fully open to discussing the matter further as noted twice here. --Ronz (talk) 19:43, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I think this is best discussed on the noticeboards.--Scott Mac 21:29, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I agree. If you have a suggestion how to proceed on BLPN, I'm all ears. --Ronz (talk) 21:36, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Double checking

I notice you quoted '30k unsourced BLPs' both here and here, however the current number is 25k. Are you taking the information from somewhere other than [[Category:Unreferenced BLPs]]? --Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 15:45, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Ah, thanks for the update. Someone had a graph somewhere, I may have misread.--Scott Mac 15:47, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

No worries, your number just didn't match the category count. I was concerned that there was an additional 5k articles not being captured at . --Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 15:50, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

It is actually closer to 23.4k. This is the counter we generally use.The-Pope (talk) 17:36, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

You're right of course; I had reversed 23.5k and 25.3k --Jezebel'sPonyo^{bons mots} 17:48, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Anita Bryant

A much better route to improving the article is to actually improve it instead of nearly blanking it. Why not rewrite the article with full citations? --Moni3 (talk) 20:44, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

I have no interest in writing an article on that subject. You've obviously had it on your watchlist for many months, can I ask, if you value it so much, why you never removed the outrageous BLP violations on it? Not what I'd expect from a careful admin.--Scott Mac 20:45, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

I hadn't seen that article, but it is pretty important. If time allows i'll do what I can to improve it. The Wordsmith^Communicate 20:53, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

I don't understand the action you took. How do you know the information was inaccurate? Did you check any sources? I understand the need for citations, but I'm having difficulty not thinking you merely blanked the material because you don't wish to do the work necessary to make the article respectable. Bryant's article will return in various forms and you will have to either rewrite it or vigilantly watch to ensure her article is not constructed pretty much the same way as many other BLPs. Nearly blanking the article is inefficient and ineffective; it does not improve material and only sets up future arguments at various talk pages and ANI venues. If you're truly serious about BLP issues, rewrite the article. It's well worth it. She's fascinating. --Moni3 (talk) 20:54, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

I am not interested in writing BLPs. I am interested in making sure we don't have libels on this site. One way of enforcing quality control is ensuring that articles have references and therefore we have an absolute ban on unreferenced negative material. I ask again, why didn't you remove (or reference) the negative stuff? That is the minimum standard I would expect of an admin.--Scott Mac 20:57, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

The information in Bryant's article that you removed was mostly accurate. I wrote Save Our Children, which is why I won't write Bryant's article. That's too much of one editor's opinion on what is important about Bryant. It should be done by someone else. The article should be written by someone else. Your way of enforcing quality control, in your own words, suggests that you should be adding citations and reliably sourced information to her article. I'm not defending the crap state the article was in, but your nearly blanking the page is no better. I find entirely too much of this kind of drive-by action that suggests laziness rather than a concern about quality material. --Moni3 (talk) 21:02, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

No, I spend hours removing BLP violations. If I stopped to reference an article, then I would have less time to remove other violation. I am not lazy, I'm just utterly disinterested in writing, re-writing, or referencing BLP material. Same as I'm uninterested in writing articles about wild flowers. I'm shocked by your admission. You knew an article to be negative and unreferenced (and thus breaching policy) but you also knew it to be partly inaccurate and took no action? You really ought not to be an admin if that's correct?--Scott Mac 21:06, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

This is an interesting cross of values here. I've overhauled a couple dozen articles. Each one takes weeks or months to do. Some of them are FAs that go on the main page. Others attract a certain amount of attention, vandalism, poorly cited or written insertions, and each one is a battle to maintain the integrity of the article. I do most of this alone. I get accused of owning articles fairly regularly by maintaining their high quality. It's not as if I can rewrite an article and let it stand without further maintenance or expect that other Wikipedians might back me up. That happens quite rarely. So every article rewrite I take on in an indefinite commitment. And I don't drive-by to fix a paragraph or sentence; if I don't get myself up to expert speed on a topic, I don't edit the article. I try not to write related articles because that means I shape the information about a topic by myself. This is why I won't write Bryant's article. I have only removed vandalism from it and protected it.

We might just have a despise-off contest to see whose opinions are stronger. Not that that will do any good. As for Bryant's article being negative, I don't find it egregiously so. It actually follows the amount of source material about her, and the majority of it concentrates on her political activism and the fallout from it. What would do some good is for you (or someone) to write her article. That would solve the BLP problems nicely and improve the encyclopedia. What you have done, I'm afraid, really does neither. --Moni3 (talk) 21:28, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

What I did did more to enforce policy and reduce the chance of subject harm than what you didn't do. Any yet who is on whose talk page complaining?--Scott Mac 21:31, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

What do you expect to happen to the article now? Will you watch it to ensure that all the additions to it are accurate? Will you back up whoever rewrites it when they get into edit wars about the content and quality of writing? Do the next steps in how the article forms enter into your consideration when you blank the page? --Moni3 (talk) 21:49, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Queen Anne requested move

Can you have a look at the Talk:Queen Anne#Requested move again, or provide more detailed reasoning for your endorsement? The consensus in the discussion seems to be for a move to a different name, Anne, Queen of Great Britain, as summarised in the new RM just opened below it. Thanks,--JohnBlackburne^words_deeds 21:36, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Uncle G's comment

I would be interested to hear your thoughts on Uncle G's idea. It is something that might have to be enforced via revert/block, unfortunately, but it sounds like a somewhat more efficient process than gradual prodding/deletion. NW (Talk) 21:48, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

The game is afoot!

• Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification#Request_for_clarification:_Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration.2FBadlydrawnjeff.

(Temporary link, permalink here). --TS 22:01, 27 October 2010 (UTC)