User talk:Fritzpoll/Archive 3

Hey fritzpoll. I was justwondering If you wanted to help out with huggle on the google code project. Gurch has half left again and some help would be really nice :). ·Add§hore· ^Talk/_Cont 16:33, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

YEah, sure. Development will be slow at the moment, as my dev machine is still out of commission (causing me no end of problems) but I'll go dig out where you told me how to join, and I'll sign up. I can probably code suring my lunch breaks at the office. Fritzpoll (talk) 08:48, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Well me and reedy are doing quite allot also :). Send me an email with your google account name / email address. Thanks again. ·Add§hore· ^Talk/_Cont 09:33, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

??? - I was removing the vandalism.... —Giggy 09:55, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I was reverting him, and you beat me to it - unfortunately, it reverted you. A timing issue, obviously - sorry about that! Fritzpoll (talk) 09:56, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

No worries - btw. is RFK still at FAC? —Giggy 09:59, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I have no idea how long it takes for these to finish, but some of the current candidates have been around for months. Blofeld and I have been talking about a spin-out article to cover the conspiracy theories more thoroughly (balanced, of course), but I want to wait until the result is in. Fritzpoll (talk) 10:08, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

just realised it's on my watchlist still - was wondering at the lack of activity. The solution, of course, is to review more! :-) —Giggy 10:22, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Catch you on the mentoring page tomorrow :) Gazimoff 21:16, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I've been trying to figure out what happened with the AN/I report that led to a topic ban for WW. Normally, when the community makes a decision that requires admin tools to implement or enforce, there is a closing administrator. I've reviewed the report and have summarized it at User:Abd/Will ANI incident (at this point, this is a long summary, not a short one, I will prepare a short version if it's later needed.) And I just realized that there never was a close to that report, which explains why WW wasn't informed, that would normally be a task undertaken by a closing admin. Now, you later described the report as a consensus to topic ban, and you did inform WW, but you reported it passively, as if it had not been your decision, you were just the messenger.

I easily understand how it happened, and assume nothing but good faith on your part, but there was a fundamental error here. The community does not make decisions by vote. Rather, it uses agents, public servants, who make decisions after review of community comment, but the servants are responsible for reviewing the arguments, and vote count isn't the issue except as a very rough guide, and I've seen many decisions, made by highly competent administrators, which ran directly contrary to a large majority of votes, based on a review of the arguments.

So I'm asking you if you did this. Did you review the arguments and decide that they were cogent and that a topic ban was in the best interests of the project. If you did not, would you do so now and "close," i.e., take personal responsibility for the decision? In which case you could then inform us as to the length of the ban, or any other conditions imposed. And there would then be, if another administrator wishes to lift the ban, a responsible admin to contact?

I will tell you that my now much more detailed review of the facts leads me to the conclusion that a ban wasn't justified at all, there was no disruption at DYK from Wilhelmina Will, and there was very minor misbehavior elsewhere which only gets connected with DYK because of her presumed motive. A general conclusion from those who understand DYK seems to be that there is nothing wrong with the motive, and that what WW did was simply some minor foolishness, of a kind that would normally pass almost unnoticed, and which she has not continued. So, in spite of her seeming disregard of warnings, she clearly hasn't disregarded them, she just quietly complied. Yes, she should learn to respond, it would help. But I have never seen a response to a warning as being a condition for not blocking. The procedure is Warn. Wait for repeated offense. Block if repeated. Not Warn. Wait for promise to comply. Block if no promise.

There were several issues raised:

1. Mesodermochelys misbehavior: short term, over one or two days, 2 improper reverts to preserve word count. 3 edit summaries that express her personal reaction to Blechnic -- which, after reviewing what he had done, I fully understand and sympathize with. She was foolish to make those edit summaries, but it wasn't disruptive, and it wasn't personal attack within the meaning given at WP:NPA, whereas she was under repeated PA within that meaning: an attempt to damage her reputation.
2. Copyright violations. Evidence was requested at ANI, but none was provided, links were given by Blechnic that showed nothing of the kind. He is now attempting to build a case on his Talk page -- he now refers to all of her edits as crap, later amended to vandalism -- and what he cited was a sentence in a seven-month-old article which, it turns out, she had noticed in the Sandbox and asked an admin if she could use it, and she failed to check for copyvio. The sentence was a direct copy. Maybe. Or was it that a web site later took the sentence from Wikipedia? I certainly don't know. Easy to fix. No pattern shown.
3. Incivility. But the example given, as far as I recall, was always back to the Mesodermochelys incident. And then reference was made to her lying about it, claiming that her leetspeak comment was really a note to herself about something else. This was a clumsy excuse that simply shows that she is naive. And which was harmless, except to her own reputation.
4. Accuracy of her articles. She has made mistakes. However, what I've seen with WW articles on scientific subjects is that, particularly if they are DYK nominated, whatever errors are in them are rapidly fixed. The articles aren't an obstacle to the creation of accurate content, rather they facilitate it, particularly by being DYK nominated. In other words, if there is, in fact, a problem here, DYK is part of the solution, not part of the problem. But, in fact, her articles are much better than the average new article on Wikipedia.

Thanks for your attention to this. You could confirm the ban, reverse it, or decline, in which case I would consider that the AN/I report was moot, no decision was made, and the ban doesn't exist. Whatever you decide, I trust we can then proceed to improve the situation. --Abd (talk) 21:05, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi Abd, thanks for your message. I am unwilling to go back and close the debate since it has been archived, and I would not want to edit an archived topic. However, as the admin who informed WW of the ban, I think it is reasonable to say that I acted as the closing admin, and am therefore the point of contact to remove the topic ban - I will adopt this responsibility.

As to the decision itself, I did not count votes, obviously, but examined the arguments. The general argument was that WW was introducing copyright-violating material (despite repeated requests not to do so), and reducing the quality of articles in order to achieve a DYK nomination. As such, I interpreted the situation as a threat to the quality and integrity of the encyclopedia. In this context the community consensus for a DYK topic ban was justified.

In all honesty, although I believe you're nitpicking a little bit over the edit summary attacks of Blechnic, I didn't consider them that important in the context of a topic ban since such matters are generally dealt with by preventative blocks, and given the time between the end of discussion and the supposed personal attack, the notion that it was preventative would have been laughable.

As to the length of such a ban, I did not interpret consensus to say that such a topic ban should be indefinite. In fact, this would probably be to the detriment of the encyclopedia and demoralising to WW, who has the potential to be a productive editor. She needs, however, to remain banned until she sees that this isn't a game where whoever collects "5000 DYK noms" (paraphrasing her comments here) wins. If you are getting this through to her, good. After she has written some articles which conform to community norms, over a suitable period of time (fairly arbitrary, but don't come racing to me tomorrow! :) ) then come by here again, and we'll go over her contribs. I will then happily propose unlifting the community's ban in the appropriate venue. Alternatively, you are of course free to do this at any time, but I think it would be easier with some backup.

I hope this explains things, and if you don't agree, I am of course happy for you to discuss this elsewhere, citing the diff of this statement as the closing summary of the community discussion. All I ask is that you let me know when you do. Happy to engage in any further discussion on this. Best wishes Fritzpoll (talk) 09:32, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for acknowledging the responsibility, being one of the options I suggested, which makes it clear how to proceed. I will research your claims regarding her copyvio behavior further. I will note, however, that, in spite of it being requested, the copyvio problem, which you now assert as the most serious matter, was not documented in the AN/I report, with many !voters apparently simply believing the charges, including irrelevant ones, and voting accordingly. I am concerned that a number of editors defined and described her work as poor, on the one hand, while presenting themselves as supportive, "let me help you," and it is now clear that this includes yourself. I have occasionally attempted to help, quite sincerely, editors whose behavior I considered problematic, including User:Allemandtando, who was blocked as a sock puppet of Fredrick day based on an RFCU that I filed, and, let's say that it is not surprising that he angrily rejected it, and I would never hold this against him. When you warned her that she had been topic banned, you deflected responsibility from yourself,[1]. I do not believe that a ban against her will be supported by the community if I go back to AN/I after preparation and report what happened in this affair. It would waste a great deal of editor time there, and this could be avoided if you will either (1) document the copyvio problem and show that this is a serious and ongoing danger, more serious than is normal for Wikipedia editors, (2) that DYK participation for her harms the project more than it helps, or, alternatively, that you simply lift the ban, considering that she has been adequately warned with regard to any offenses, which it would then be moot to pour over. Please consider the welfare of the project. This is an editor with 28 DYK articles, and all those articles, presumably, met Wikipedia standards, so we know that she can meet such standards. Unless a major pattern of copyvio can be shown, there is no basis for the ban. The goal of 5000 DYK noms is a red herring, and your analysis of that is seriously defective. It's a noble goal, albeit quite difficult. She can't do it by producing junk articles, and she knows that. Thanks for considering this. --Abd (talk) 12:49, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll go dig out the old AN/I report documenting the copyvios - give me 10 mins and I'll see what I can drag out as it is somewhere in the AN/I archives. My comment about 5000 noms doesn't mean she shouldn't aim for it, just not at all costs, as I felt was clear from my statement. Back in a little while... Fritzpoll (talk) 12:54, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Alternatively, prove to me your comment that "She can't do it by producing junk articles, and she knows that" and I'll go get it taken down at the Village Pump myself Fritzpoll (talk) 12:56, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

The appropriate AN/I thread is [here] from the archives, and youy may want to follow through the links here - I imagine that many contributors to the topic ban discussion (as AN/I regulars) will have remembered the discussion, hence their commentary. I am willing to go to the appropriate venue as the "responsible" admin and request unbanning if you can show that she won't persist in this behaviour. Regards Fritzpoll (talk) 13:08, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

(ec-I'll look at the above later, gotta go) Thanks for looking into it. I tried to follow up Blechnic's diffs purporting to show copyvio in the AN/I report, but found that, quite simply, there wasn't anything there but his own claims. He's been searching for copyvio on his Talk page, you could look there. I'm not denying that she made mistakes, but, quite simply, I haven't seen that there was enough of that to warrant anything more than a gentle warning. Remember, this is an environment where her work has been called "crap" and "vandalism," by Blechnic. I already know that Blechnic won't respond to a warning from me, though I might still do it for procedural reasons; I'd rather see a warning from someone he doesn't already identify as an enemy. She knows it because she is obviously intelligent, she didn't continue improper behavior, and WP:AGF is still a guideline even though demoted from policy. If she continued copyvio after warning, she could be blocked, and if she is plagiarizing, DYK would be the stupidest thing she could do, since articles there are often checked for copyvio, I've seen it mentioned. --Abd (talk) 13:16, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

A few points

• Yes, Blechnic has used some bad language referring to this work, and should this problem persist, I don't doubt he will be warned
• As per the AN/I archive I linked for you, copyright violations or fundamental mistakes resulting from repeatedly rushing through articles for creation were found
• You were told specifically by a DYK contributor at the talk page where you started a discussion that they often don't check for copyvio
• I would appreciate you not putting words in my mouth regarding my opinions, of which you know absolutely nothing, as you are doing at WW's talkpage.

Fritzpoll (talk) 13:23, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Can you be specific about the words I was allegedly "putting in [your] mouth"? I used quote marks for a summary, i.e., it was as if you had said what I quoted, and I already apologized for the possible incorrect assumption of exact quote that might be found there, but I'd stand by it as a summary of what you had done, and I see nothing offensive in that quote, in itself, so ... I fail to understand why you consider this important enough to insert this in a discussion of WW's ban. Now, as to the substance:

This is a user with a huge number of contributions and 28 DYK's plus another today. And another under nomination. For such a user to never make mistakes would be astonishing. So vague charges of copyvio and "rushing" are not adequate to support a ban, which would require examining a balance. And she isn't banned from the alleged offense -- rushing and thus, presumably, cutting corners by copying text (which, by the way, is an error that I've made, and that others make; we are putting an article or section together and copy some text, intending to reword it later, then simply forget to do it) -- but from nominations, which increase the probability of detection of copyvios, they do not reduce it. Absolutely, the articles aren't always checked. But that is generally true for all articles on Wikipedia! DYK articles, and especially articles, now, by WW, are more thoroughly checked. She was warned about copyvio, and, by the way, the responsibility isn't on the editor to correct errors that the editor makes, it is on the community. We, then, become concerned when an editor makes so many errors that the work of correction starts to exceed the productive labor that the editor has contributed. What I'm finding is that, in this whole affair, there has been a fundamental error in understanding of how Wikipedia editorial process works. Unless the damage becomes massive, we do not sanction editors for making mistakes that cease upon warning, and we never require editors to do anything. Fixing errors is a community responsibility, not an individual one. --Abd (talk) 16:37, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay, Fritzpoll, I've gone over the AN/I report that you cite.[2] This is very sloppy, Fritzpoll. There were no specific copyvio charges there, only general ones. This text is in the report, possibly unsigned:

(Edit conflict.) They all appear to be largely copied from various sources, although cleverly so, and some will debate me on this issue. Still there is enough copied to find which page she copies from with a simple and quick search. She does copy lists in their entirety, such as a huge list from IMDb. However, the bigger problem, as with CS, is that her use of technical literature is wrong. For example on the sea turtle article, Ctenochelys, she reads the abstract and says it "is considered to be a crown-group sea turtle," but the source she used is an article about it no longer being considered to be a crown group sea turtle, and in fact, it's not considered in the extant sea turtles where she plops it in her first sentence. She includes spam links.[3] Nothing about the one reference in this article says anything about him being the director of all the soap operas. And her single sources are usually personal blogs of the person the article is about.[4] It appears every article of hers that I have looked at has deep problems. I am tired of looking. Maybe she can clean them up herself.

Note: no copyvio diffs or articles. The writer was apparently aware that the claims being made were debatable; for example, sometimes blogs of notable individuals can be used as sources for their opinions, depends. But this is a quite different problem than copyvio, and improper sources are commonly challenged at DYK, and if not there, when the article actually appears, when thousands of people read it. If the goal is good articles, then, we want interesting articles on their face to be at DYK, and this is why I've concluded that DYK is one of the best tools we have for improving Wikipedia content, and it could be made even better.

The editor who put the above comment in was Blechnic. This is an editor who has, for quite some time, been searching for copyvios of hers, and who has come up with one from many months ago. (See it on his Talk page, and she isn't the one who plagiarized, exactly, and she asked an admin about using the material before going ahead, and she was not warned about copyvio and she apparently didn't check for it.) I must conclude that your opinion about copyvio was induced by an inappropriate combination of various opinions you held from other evidence, not disclosed. Now that you have clearly stated that copyvio was the problem, and now that it is clear that copyvio evidence was not before the community (none), your effective closure is defective and may be challenged, simply, without getting into a lot of irrelevant detail, such as editor motives, alleged personal attacks, etc. So, thanks for your attention and response. It's appreciated, and, please understand, I do not have any question about your good faith, only the wisdom of your action.--Abd (talk) 17:24, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

No offence, Abd, but I'm not reading all of that. Since I can't overturn a community topic ban on my own even if I wanted to (you'd be amazed at the talk page messages I'd receive if I tried), go and find another administrator to decide on the closing arguments. You give my opinions of WW to her, without knowing what they are - that is putting words in my mouth, and I explained on her talk page what I was referring to - you clearly believe that the topic ban is inappropriate, so go and do something that will help the situation. That venue is not here. Fritzpoll (talk) 08:20, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

But before you do, you might need to review her deleted contributions - or at least the deletion logs - since I remember having to delete portions of Tierra Redonda Mountain as copyright back on the 16th July. Still, as I told you before, all Wilhelmina had to do was come herself to me, promise that she understood the community's concerns and I'd go propose the ban be unlifted myself. Alas, she doesn't seem that keen on community engagement, and I would have hoped that you could have used your influence to remedy this problem Fritzpoll (talk) 08:26, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

• Comment After being asked (as a member of the community) to review this matter, by request from Fritzpoll at AN#Wilhelmina Will..., I concluded that the consensus to topic ban was apparent and that Fritzpoll properly concluded the subsequent discussion once WW was properly informed. It seems that Abd is of the opinion that the communities conclusions were based upon incorrect sources or unsubstantiated allegations. It would therefore be more appropriate for Abd to address the community to resolve these issues, and have the consensus overturned, than to task the closing admin with that responsibility - either reversing the topic ban directly or taking it to the community. In short, Abd should make representations to the community to reverse WW's topic ban and not continue to use this page for that purpose. Fritzpoll has, in my opinion, been more than helpful in dealing with this and need not be the focus of Abd's "campaign". LessHeard vanU (talk) 10:45, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

It isn't really a dispute; me, RedThunder and the other WUPDATE people don't really care, but StewieGriffin doesn't seem to want to let it go; he even nominated the WUPDATE page for deletion (Although I think you've already seen that). Ironholds 11:07, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

I know, but I don't really want to take sides in the argument. I mostly wanted to make sure that warning doesn't come round to haunt you if people review your history. Fritzpoll (talk) 11:31, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Ah, ok; yeah, I saw your edit summary just after I posted. I'm going to leave a message with SG asking him to leave us alone and vice-versa; hopefully that'll calm things down. Ironholds 11:45, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Any developments with the bot programming? Will it be possible to generate those lists do you think?
♦ Dr. Blofeld ♦ ^"Talk"? 21:10, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

That's exactly what I was thinking. We have made absolutely no progress since "the village pump". Any way to speed the process up? --I'm an Editorofthewiki^{[citation needed]} 14:13, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Extend the length of a day by 3 hours, and supply me with more programmers. Otherwise, I'll be a little while longer, I fear... Fritzpoll (talk) 14:16, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi Fritz I know you haven't sorted the bot to generate lists yet but do you think you'd be able to download some data from 2001 Nepal census? It looks as if it has population and basic details on every settlement in Nepal. Given that the bot initially was all set to start the articles, if you uploaded and processed this data, it shouldn't impossible to a run for a few countries which have information on top of what it had before. ♦ Dr. Blofeld ♦ ^"Talk"? 20:54, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

I responded to the concerns about RFK images addressed by another user. I believe that my explanations should validate each image used. I can further pursue the matter and add any changes if Sandy believes it is necessary. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:04, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks very much for that, Ottava, but I believe the other editor is disagreeing. My understanding of image policy is sketchy at best, and I didn't upload any of these images, so don't really know what's going on! Fritzpoll (talk) 18:07, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to work things out, see what happens at the Commons. If some are removed from the commons, they should be historical enough to justify them under fair use. Ottava Rima (talk) 18:59, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Please respond. :) Ottava Rima (talk) 20:38, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Wow, I don't know if you took a look at this page, but this guy has done a lot of work in geography. The copyright is pretty open, and you can download his whole database. --NickPenguin_(contribs) 23:15, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll look at it over the weekend - thanks, Nick. Fritzpoll (talk) 08:15, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi there. I noticed your user page was "in the middle of an expansion or major revamping", and was wondering what you were planning to do with it. You see, I'm part of WP:UPH (specifically WP:TRADE), and I assist others in designing their user pages, and I was wondering if you needed assistance in designing yours, or whatever reason you have the {{underconstruction}} tag on it. Cheers, RyRy (talk) 10:04, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

You're a good admin, doing a good job. Yes, you are the single attack point - let's not mince words. It's deplorable nobody seems to be preventing that happening. Just enjoy yourself and don't worry about it - end of the day, it's just the internet and you're far better than the tendentious editor causing you problems. Minkythecat (talk) 11:27, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Heh, just caught me on the way out - thanks fot the kind words. And the fact that it is "just the internet" (per my RfA) is why I'm leaving this place for now. Happy editing! Fritzpoll (talk) 11:28, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Please come back soon. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:35, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm looking forward to seeing you around again, this place needs more people like you. :) --Conti|✉ 13:41, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

• This is unfortunate, but not surprising. It's difficult to deal with that type of continued accusatory posts. You're doing a fine job as an administrator, including on the WW topic ban matter. Come back soon. ^S._D.Jameson 13:46, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Fritzpoll, I criticized your administrative action. Then, when you did not respond adequately, in my view, to your action, and filed an unnecessary AN/I report that showed, to me, that you did not understand the issue, you seem to have taken this as seriously disturbing. I'd hope that you can realize that it is an essential part of Wikipedia process that administrative actions -- and, sometimes, administrative competence -- be open to question, but I have never considered or suspected anything other than good faith from you, nor have I called into question your editorial competence, and my judgment of your administrative competence is around a single, possibly subtle, issue that may require ArbComm resolution, ultimately. I would not be my intention to make you the center of that. You really had nothing you needed to do, unless you wanted to continue argument, which you had no obligation to do, the ban stands until reversed, and argument doesn't reverse it. Most administrators, when a close action is questioned, simply respond, either accepting the criticism and modifying their action accordingly, or rejecting it, and then move on. They do not involve themselves in further process except where their testimony is necessary. So I hope that there is something you can learn from this, and that you can return and continue to function as an excellent editor and, quite possibly, an excellent administrator. Everyone makes mistakes, so, even if I'm totally right, this would not indict your general behavior. I have seen no other action from you that I have had occasion to question, and I was surprised, in fact, that you acted as you did in this case. From the support shown for you, so far, I'd have to consider your action within the normal range, even though I consider it seriously in error; in a situation like this, ArbComm would never de-sysop unless you continued to defend what was later found to be an error, see the ArbComm proceedings for User:Physchim62, desysopped, not for his error, but for continuing to defend it even after it became clear that the community and ArbComm were ultimately rejecting the action for very good cause -- later confirmed in other cases --, the community was practically begging him to apologize. Why? So that it could be confident that he'd not repeat the error. We do not punish, we only protect.

Good luck. Enjoy whatever break you decide to take, and return whenever you feel ready. I do not consider you an enemy of any kind. --Abd (talk) 15:56, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi Abd, and to all those watching my talkpage to see if I've gone completely bananas over all of this.
I believe in Wikipedia as a great, community-driven adventure - we don't really "do" rules in my utopic eyes, because the consensus of the community counts above all. In reality, there always have to be rules or guidance to help any community function, which we exemplify in our guidelines and policies.
This is the attitude with which I approached your request that I "procedurally" (for want of a better word) formalise the closure of Wilhelmina's topic ban. Now, this ban is something that you disagree with: I respected that, and still do. Per common sense, I accepted that you had a grievance, and offered you several means to remedy it. Specifically, I suggested finding another administrator to check over the facts, come to me and essentially overturn the ban. From your contributions on-wiki, you don't seem to have done this.
Since you said that it was certain WW had understood the lesson the community wanted her to learn, I asked you to prove this, and that I would then move to overturn the ban myself. From your contributions on-wiki, you don't seem to have done this.
Finally, I suggested that you counsel WW to discuss with me or the community the actions that the community was unhappy with. From your contributions on-wiki, you don't seem to have done this
So that was me, happy to receive criticism, happy to be overturned. Instead of discussing these options with me, your diatribes, albeit lengthy, seem in essence to be summarised as "Agree with me, or perish!", the latter clause being more firmly implied by your dire threat on your talkpage that my "administrative future" might depend on reading your 11KB post.
To be honest, Abd, admins aren't that special. We're human beings, with real lives beyond Wikipedia, who are as able to edit the encyclopaedia as you, with the addition of a few buttons that the community entrusts us with. These buttons are very dull, and should you succeed in your next RfA, you will tire of them quickly. I'm actually here to edit, and want to make/keep the encyclopaedia a nice environment for all. Unfortunately, you refuse to actually engage with me on my suggestions, instead deciding on a course of escalating (albeit impotent) threats of RfC's, arbcomm's, etc. I have limited time in a day to edit Wikipedia - I work hard, and like to use this for a bit of an unwind. Instead, I found myself dreading logging in, waiting for the next tome that I was meant to read, knowing that nothing I could write would satisfy you.
"Sod it", says I, "I don't need stress in my free time as well as in my work time", and so on went the template. The more indefinite nature of my absence is strengthened by todays posts to WP:AN, where you say I'm not neutral, out-of-order (as if such order existed) in posting there, and that I still "don't get it", when honestly, I do. Your post to your talkpage was the final straw, and so off I go. Merely indefinitely - which means I don't know how long I'll be.
Good luck trying to reform Wikipedia, Abd - you'll lose a lot of editors on the way. Best wishes Fritzpoll (talk) 16:58, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Dude hang in there. People forget what matters most on here most of the time and in doing so can drive people away in their insensitity. Many people forget that none of us are under any obligation to do a frickin thing for this site. People expect admins to not have feelings or be super civil or patient (this is partly why I wouldn't want a mop and brush, it really isn't anything special). Just remember that the people that count consider you one of the friendliest and helpful people on here who remains far more civil than most people would be when faced with abuse. BUt equally remember that "when the going gets tough, the tough get going!!" You shouldn't let anybody like this make you feel like you have to leave but it seems you find it hard to take criticism, much like myself. Just take a day or two off, go to work, come home watch the olympics or something like I have and watch the Chinese win more gold medals!! Then return safe in the knowledge that the vast majority of people respect you on here and certainly don't believe you have been grossly offensive. ♦ Dr. Blofeld ♦ ^"Talk"? 17:12, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Feel free to email me or at least respond to me. Best ♦ Dr. Blofeld ♦ ^"Talk"? 17:36, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi Fritzpoll. Apologies if my posts have increased the stress. I think I understand the sort of thing Abd is getting at. I would be prepared to act as a buffer between you two if that would help. Ideally, Abd can carry on saying things to me and others, and I'll try and pass on the gist of it, and you can carry on with the stuff you do. Would that be acceptable? Carcharoth (talk) 18:02, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

It would be fine, but I think you'll need to follow Abd's request for a checkuser, since he is now convinced that I am someone called "Fredrick Day", who I note is a banned sockpuppeteer (see his posts at WP:AN). I'm not sure you need me for the issue at hand, to be honest. I trust the community to sort it all out - just be aware that I had no opinion, and was merely enacting consensus as I determined it. Happy to chat otherwise Fritzpoll (talk) 18:04, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

It would not be approved. We can't run checkuser without evidence.   CheckUser is not for fishing, nor for proving innocence. Jehochman ^Talk 18:32, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Hmm...true. Well, does it help if I say definitively that I am not Fredrick Day? :) Gotta laugh at my wiki-day, haven't you? Fritzpoll (talk) 18:45, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

To be honest, I kind of feel bad for Abd. He has been dogged, for months, by F.Day. Everything starts to look suspicious when the attacks keep coming. You happened to mention the need for a long break after "dealing with Abd", not the first or last editor to come to that conclusion. An IP, one that follows Abd around from place to place, throws a right-hook in there, knowing how it would set off Abd (I'm sure he checks every IP against the F-day list at this point, he has been harangued so much). This latest flail of Abd's though, is over the top, and so baseless that I'm actually chuckling at it. Deflection at it's finest. I'm not Fredrick Day either, even thought the IP, and I, have both referenced "fishing" today in different posts to Abd. Maybe I should be part of the RFCU as well. My IP from 6000 miles away should help clear my name :-) Keeper ǀ 76 19:07, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually that's not true (about me harassing him for months) - there was a gap of three months between fredrick day and my last account (Allemandtando) who pretty much just got on with editing - but since he looks for me everywhere, he got the account CU'd and that was that. I tried to run a good bluff on it but it failed. Since I've used pretty much every major ISP in the UK - he can point to literally any IP he encounters and keep me blocked forever - that's how it went down last time I went for an unblock - he just pointed to some vague IP edits that he could claim were me. I posted to AN because I'm familiar with his methods of dealing with people - the vague threats, the attempts to get over people to give warnings to people he is in dispute with etc. Sorry I forget the quote marks and dropped a bucket of additional shit on Fitzpoll's head. --87.114.149.224 (talk) 19:27, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I have no idea what to do with this? If I remove it or retain it, it could be my IP... Fritzpoll (talk) 19:30, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Leave it there, because I'm about to reply to the IP...Keeper ǀ 76 19:31, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

IP, (or F-day, or allemantando, or whatev), I'm sorry if you feel I've misrepresented or overgeneralized anything. My only point was in fact, that you and Abd don't get along. He sees you around every corner. To claim some sort of "I tried to hide, but he found me, therefore I'm innocent and he's guilty" is also a bit of a stretch, wouldn't you agree? I don't dispute that you've made positive contribs to Wikipedia articles (and neither does Abd for that matter). But then, you pop up, as an IP, with a blindside right hook. How exactly has your actions on ANI today helped either Fritzpoll, Abd, or the situation? It has damaged both Abd's (already shaky) reputation, and brought into question Fritzpoll's. I'm sure he apprecaites your apology, I kindly ask that you completely refrain and restrain yourself from commenting further here, there, or anywhere. A kind request. Keeper ǀ 76 19:35, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Though, for what it's worth, I'm going to assume good faith on the apology, and accept it. Now, move on... :) Fritzpoll (talk) 19:37, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I must admit, I'm eating a pizza, swigging a coke and reading my watchlist in a mixture of bewilderment and fascination. I am a little disconcerted that the accusation is hanging there unretracted, but provided noone else believes it, right? Fritzpoll (talk) 19:09, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

It's like watching a car crash. I knew you couldn't look away. Where's Gwynand been by the way, you hear much out of him or did that baby take away his free time? Keeper ǀ 76 19:14, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I think Fritz was the grassy knoll assassin, and I demand a CU with User:Lee Harvey Oswald. Tan ǀ 39 19:14, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

You know, now that you say that, it brings a huge COI problem to front with his current FAC....very troubling indeed...Keeper ǀ 76 19:17, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

(e/c - a sure sign that things are going wrong!) He never replied to my e-mail where I chucked a couple of sources at him for the JD article (I have a uni access to journals that documented JD) and I've not seen him around. I'm guessing a combo of baby (mostly) from the last message I got from him and maybe a bit of a downer from the RfA. And Tan, Oswald was in the book depository - you'd need to know my real name the name of the supposed second gunman for a CU Fritzpoll (talk) 19:18, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Keeper- why use 20-ish words in your above post when you can use 1000 or more? All of us here have been told we're deeply flawed and inept, we can only hope to understand if it's in essay form. It's ok- I know on some level you must regret the mistakes you made in your post. Write the extra 1000 words your reply needs-- there's no hurry. Try and get it right this time. You don't want to end up at Arbcom;) Sticky Parkin 21:25, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Are you interested in natural science topics? Jehochman ^Talk 01:25, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Physics graduate, if that helps... Fritzpoll (talk) 01:27, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Could you drop User:AGK a note? There is a mentorship project where he is looking for a collaborator with such experience. Jehochman ^Talk 01:29, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, I know you're quasi wikibreaking and are dealing with ridiculous (and unwarranted) drama right now, but I just wanted to stop by and congratulate you on RFK assasination getting promoted to FA. (I've had it watchlisted since I helped out on the image upload.) It's a great article and you did an amazing job on it. Forget the wiki-drama: we're here to write an encyclopedia. Congrats again on the FA! Vickser (talk) 13:03, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
...(jaw drops) How did I miss that? (scours watchlist with a sense of triumph) Does that mean I can place some ridiculous icon on my userpage now? :) Fritzpoll (talk) 13:18, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Brilliant! Robert F. Kennedy assassination  . If you have time, maybe you could look at gamma ray burst  ? I'm not sure I understand astrophysics well enough to go any further with this article. Jehochman ^Talk 13:36, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations on the FA which I supported. Treasure it. Do you still have any plans for some sub articles as we discussed or plans to develop other articles to GA or FA? ♦ Dr. Blofeld ♦ ^"Talk"? 20:56, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Well done sir! Blnguyen (bananabucket) 06:44, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

When I mentioned the "appreciation" of my work or rather lack of it, this was exactly what I was talking about when you log in and find not one but two deletion proposals. If they expect me to kick up a huge resistance I really couldn't care less. Nothing is safe on wikipedia. ♦ Dr. Blofeld ♦ ^"Talk"? 11:32, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I have learnt over the past few days the value in being succinct, so here is my summary:

• I have returned - RFK assassination is an FA, and that does remind me what's important
• Still the closing admin on the WW affair, but have deferred responsibility back to the community
• Apologies for the apparent drama - the circumstances were a little extreme
• Thanks to all those supportive messages
• Let us never speak of this again, and instead celebrate by the adding of chocolate to milk...

Now, anyone wanting to help me on my next writing projects can join me at either Beer or, for a controversy-filled rollercoaster, Robert F. Kennedy....any takers?

Fritzpoll (talk) 13:36, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Check out my message to Jonathan, which is also directed to you. Let me know if a multi-person email thread is okay for you. Best, Anthøny 22:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Hello mr fritzpol, you busy man you!

ignoring your apparent drama days, can I ask a favour please? you managed to fix my user page and talk page menu not so long ago. Will you be able to do the same with my user page? I want the featured image (futuroscope) to auto centre and resize to fit appropriate resolutions. Is that possible? also, my project user boxes at the bottom of the page are messy and on smaller resolutions over run the blue border. can you help?

also, shall we start to overhaul the apprentice articles? Many thanks, δ²_(Talk) 05:15, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I proposed the following to Carcharoth on his talk page, and he requested that I also propose it here.

In the interests of bringing some sort of closure to the current WP:AN thread on this issue, and in consideration of the fact that (unfortunately for the two of you) both you and User:Carcharoth are already viewed as being the primary administrative reviewers on this issue, might I propose the following course of action:

1. You consult with User:Carcharoth and come to some sort of a joint decision as to whether there is, or is not, an existing DYK topic ban in place for WW based on your joint assessment of the entire discussion, any actual evidence which has been provided in terms of diffs, and any subsequent analysis thereof.
2. If you decide that such a ban is warranted and appropriate in light of that assessment, that you provide a clear description of exactly what the ban covers (i.e. self-nomination and/or nomination by others) along with a statement of the terms and conditions under which the ban might be lifted.
3. If you are uncomfortable making any binding decision on your own (jointly) that you then open a new straw poll to assess community consensus on whether a ban is appropriate, or not, based on the discussion and analysis which has occurred subsequent to the original vote.
4. Finally, based on the results of this latest vote that one of the two of you declare a final result and, if a ban is still supported, that you record it at Wikipedia:Editing restrictions and declare the matter settled.

Thoughts? --GoRight (talk) 18:20, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

This is a flying visit, as I'm at a wedding this weekend - but I will look at this tomorrow evening. Your suggestion seems a sensible one. Fritzpoll (talk) 20:01, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

There are many words, and things, that I wish to scream right now, and I know exactly which talkpages I'd like to scream them. But I won't. And I respect you for also containing what I have a hunch you'd like to scream yourself. Cheers, and great work once again with the Robert F. Kennedy assassination article. And the other things. I'm infinitely jealous right now that you in your timezone. If it were closing in on evening where I lived, I'd be building a tab, probably on Round 3 or 4 right now....Keeper ǀ 76 19:35, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Standard British reserve has been engaged and diet coke laced with Captain Morgan's rum to handle this. Blofeld and I were talking about a spin-off article about the conspiracy theories themselves, which might be a bit of fun. I wish Gwyn were here - he'd love all of this, I'm sure. Fritzpoll (talk) 20:12, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

If I could lift my knee, I'd do a Morgan pose. (strained a calf muscle on Sat). Man, I'm thirsty. I'm gonna pop over to Gwyn's talk, I hope he's alright. As for British reserve, that's literally and figuratively foreign to me. I'm a gunslingin' American midwesterner. Shoot first, ask questions never. Perhaps one day we'll both realize that Mr. Gwynand really is the smartest one of this trio...Keeper ǀ 76 20:27, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

With the amount of repression we Brits are meant to do, I'm surprised we don't have more therapists. And if by your comment about Gwyn you mean because he's spending more time away from here, then maybe that's true :) Fritzpoll (talk) 20:47, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

This is as close as I've yet come to breaking my barnstar ban. If I gave barnstars, you would have one from me now, my friend. If anyone ever deserved accolade for admin work on the wiki, you did for the patience you displayed during the WW saga. You've had your judgment questioned, been threated with ANI/Arbcom, and generally underwent a sustained level of mayhem all predicated by a simple act of consensus divination that was completely non-controversial. Your work (and demeanor) here was beyond outstanding. Keep it up. Best regards, ^S._D.D.J.Jameson 11:51, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time and interest to work through the entire WW saga and for taking the initiative to drive it to its final conclusion. --GoRight (talk) 16:32, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

That's alright - thanks for your cool-headedness and clarity. Fritzpoll (talk) 17:07, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll add my thanks, as well. In your closing of the AN report, you mentioned further examination of what happened in my user space. That examination, so far, is limited to my block for harassment of you, and whether or not the topic ban was legitimate will not be an issue, in itself, at least not at first. I've stated before that your actions were reasonable, but not correct. Administrators don't have to be correct, because most of what they do can be fixed later, if it isn't correct. All we want is good faith and proper care, and I never questioned your good faith, at any point. The problem of the topic ban and how it came about, etc., is now moot as far as any urgency is concerned, and, as you wrote, it will soon be forgotten, unless the community somehow comes to reconsider it. If it does reconsider it, as far as I'm concerned, the focus would only be on how to avoid such situations in the future, not who made the mistakes, if there were any. Ultimately, if there was a mistake made, it was the community that made it and that is responsible for it. Your participation in my own RfC at User:Abd/RfC is specially invited, though there isn't anything there yet of substance, just some process outlines. Suppose, for example, it is found that I did not harass you, but you felt harassed. Quite clearly, then, I might possibly have done what I did in a better way, so that it wouldn't cause those feelings. I'd not only like to find out what happened, in detail and in substance, but I actually need to know, in order to prevent future disruption. Thanks for any attention you can give it. --Abd (talk) 18:12, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll add my thanks also. I think you got stuck in a difficult position when the much of the evidence against WW started to erode after a clear consensus has emerge, and WW herself was reluctant to discuss the issue herself. But despite the obstacles you got the issue resolved appropriately in a reasonable amount of time. Rlendog (talk) 02:07, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Are you still leading this project? Or has Sir Blofield taken it over? In any case, if one of you would be interested in the materials I gathered for Ethiopia, email me & I will respond with the files I have created. (They could stand some further cleaning up before fed to a bot, but still useful for that project.) Otherwise, see ya. -- llywrch (talk) 22:31, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Llywrch. man can you please unlock your talk page so I can speak to you!!! The Bald One ^{White cat} 14:22, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Your Baldness, just email me. That still works. (And if you need to keep the location of your headquarters a secret, just set up a gmail account.) -- llywrch (talk) 05:36, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I really hope you are still up for it Fritz. I know you have said about the difficulties and time, but if not, please suggest somebody else who can run the bot so we can start making some progress. In a way the requirements and pressures of adminship seems to take up much of your time these days, and if you want to pass the buck I completely understand!! I'm just concerned that we will get to Christmas and still have not started when initially we had planned to have half a million on here!! We've got adequate information on a number of countries such as Ethiopia, American Samoa, Nepal etc which I'm certain the bot could be useful for. It would a shame to have a bot authorised and to have gone through all we went through and not to make a start at least on something. Not to mention the effort made to set up a wiki project which yet has yielded nothing. Could we think about compiling data for one country as Llywrch suggested? If you are occupied with other stuff could you point us to another bot operator? The Bald One ^{White cat} 10:23, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Tell you what, I have a free weekend coming up for the first time in months, and as it is a bank holiday, I get 4 days off work. Can you wait until then, boss? Fritzpoll (talk) 09:30, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Sounds great to me. I wanna unleash the bot!! LOL. Aargh I'm it diffuclt to understand where Damien is coming from with his mass deletion of fair use images. If he continues I will be forced to report him The Bald One ^{White cat} 14:56, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi Damien - can you stop tagging images for deletion just for the mo? Your interpretation of the NFCC is essentially under dispute, and flooding the IfD page with deletion requests that all amount to the same thing is not getting us anywhere. Can you hold off until some kind of consensus is reached, then you can tag merrily away knowing what the prevailing opinion is? Cheers Fritzpoll (talk) 16:11, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Where is this discussion taking place? As far as I know, it's not disputed whether NFCC allows the free use of images from news agencies. There is, indeed, ignorance about the policy and about the basic principles of fair use (like the notion of transformative use, or the common misguided idea that non-commercial/educational use is always allowed).

Oh, nowhere except under some of the existing noms. I have no big thing one way or the other on the subject, but it is a more efficient use of everyone's time to resolve the issue first, given that your argument is basically the same. Otherwise you'll all end up fighting the same battle 1000 times in the few days it takes to process the IfDs - it's mostly to limit general frustration Fritzpoll (talk) 16:20, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the advice, but I'm pretty much confident that the nominations are non-controversial, in the sense that it think it's very unlikely a knowledged admin would keep one of those image. (I'm actually skipping the controversial cases). --Damiens.rf 16:36, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

You know that MBisanz is an admin, right? And he's one of the guys disagreeing with you? You might want to slow up for the moment. Fritzpoll (talk) 16:38, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I haven't noticed that. Thanks for pointing out. I find it sad that Wikipedia:Requests for adminship is more of a popularity contest than a policy-knowledge test. It worries me that, for instance, he believes we can freely use an image by bbc just because it shows a deceased women. --Damiens.rf 16:48, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Well, I know this may be difficult to understand, but given the age of the images, the length of service by MBisanz (who even stood for election to the Foundation board) and everything, is it just possible that your interpretation is the non-standard one? Doesn't make it right or wrong, but it does make it different, so a discussion on a "test case" is probably more appropriate. Fritzpoll (talk) 16:51, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

I confirm that my freenode nick is Fritzpoll Fritzpoll (talk) 16:35, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi, this User:Damiens.rf has tagged both of the images which i have uploaded, Image:GasparePulizzi.jpg and Image:AnthonyProvenzano.jpg. Both of these images are copyrighted, but are being used under fair use terms in their respective articles. I have added appropriate Fair use Rationale's for both of these images and i dont see any problem with them. However, he claims that the description for both these images are vague and describe no important events. Both of these images depict the individuals under arrest by the police and i believe they are important events with regards to the individuals. Moreover, there are no free alternative anywhere in the internet which would adequately give the same information and these are iconic images of the individuals. Could you please share your thoughts and position on Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion/2008 August 22? I would be greatful if you did. Thanks. Joyson Noel (talk) 14:35, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I am assuming that you are online. So could you please take the time to do as i have requested? The user has unfairly added the Ifd tag. Joyson Noel (talk) 16:09, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm in a mad rush at the mo, but I'll get round to it ASAP Fritzpoll (talk) 16:54, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

...your work in the signpost. Congrats again for your work with RFK! Keeper ǀ 76 16:17, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Hehe - I hadn't noticed that. (grins broadly) Fritzpoll (talk) 17:00, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Emailed The Bald One ^{White cat} 20:36, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Confirming private conversation. MBisanz ^talk 22:07, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Could you help with this FAC? Thanks, --I'm an Editorofthewiki^{[citation needed]} 01:59, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Perfect example. I logged in earlier with the intention to spend a fewminutes on here and I seean image deleted with a clear consensus to keep. and that Bulgarian Center for Not-For-Profit Law had been speedied as a non notable bio. It however was restored but now faces an AFD. The Bald One ^{White cat} 13:09, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I figured you were asleep from your last time stamp so I went to AN, but you surprised me. Happy editing. MBisanz ^talk 14:04, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Just being a bit quiet on-wiki at the mo (small wikibreak) - saw the AN thread, and agree with the various assessments there. I'm not going to a popular chap Fritzpoll (talk) 14:06, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Told you so. Synergy 14:49, 27 August 2008 (UTC) Well no, but sorta.

I don't know much about computer programming or bots on WP, but I have an idea that shouldn't be too hard to do (given what you've done so far). Is it possible to write a bot that will take 2 inputs and redirect one to the other, so a sample list would be:

• Dzhindyrly, Abadkend
• Abaskand, Abaskənd
• Abaskend, Abaskənd
• Abasaly, Abazally
• Abas-Abad, Abbasabad
• Abas Abad, Abbasabad
• Abas-Ali, Abbasally
• Abas Ali, Abbasally
• Abasbeyli, Abbasbeyli
• Abbasbeyli, Abbasbəyli
• Abbasbayli, Abbasbəyli
• Abbasbeyli, Abbasbəyli
• Abbasly, Abbaslı
• Abbasli, Abbaslı
• Abbaskullar, Abbasqulular
• Abdally, Abdal
• Abdalinlu, Abdalanly
• Abdally, Abdallı
• Avdally, Abdallı
• Abdalli, Abdallı
• Abdunly, Abdınlı
• Abdynly, Abdınlı
• Abdinli, Abdınlı

If the page in column one already exists, it is skipped and an exceptions report is made. I have added about 5000 places in Armenia and Azerbaijan, and plan to do many more until your bot comes online, but redirecting the alternate names and the titles without diacritics takes 3x longer than creating the articles. Any thoughts? Carlossuarez46 (talk) 19:24, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

I realise that you're on a Wikibreak, but I thought that as you are an active participant to the project, you may want to participate in the discussion here. Dalejenkins | 20:33, 1 September 2008 (UTC)

Good to see you're back in the saddle. Shout if there's anything I can do to help! Gazimoff 14:02, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Gaz - I'll be poking around some article work shortly. Fritzpoll (talk) 14:04, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Yep good to see you back. If you want to go ahead with that article seems a good idea, I can help you copyedit it or even work on it when I have a moment although as you know I have multiple time-consuming projects on the go. Regards The Bald One ^{White cat} 15:16, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Leaving a message to inform you Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#MZMcBride, which may concern you. MBisanz ^talk 18:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

One of the arbitrators has asked that every admin who is arguably involved in the events at Sarah Palin be notified of an arbitration case covering it. I therefore draw your attention to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#MZMcBride. GRBerry 18:49, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks - I acknowledge your note, and will head on over there now Fritzpoll (talk) 08:32, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Leaving a message to inform you Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#MZMcBride, which may concern you. MBisanz ^talk 18:37, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

One of the arbitrators has asked that every admin who is arguably involved in the events at Sarah Palin be notified of an arbitration case covering it. I therefore draw your attention to Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#MZMcBride. GRBerry 18:49, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks - I acknowledge your note, and will head on over there now Fritzpoll (talk) 08:32, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

The Sarah Palin wheel war arbitration case, on which you have commented, is now open.

• Evidence for the arbitrators may be submitted at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Sarah Palin protection wheel war/Evidence. Evidence should be submitted within one week, if possible.
• Your contributions are also welcome at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Sarah Palin protection wheel war/Workshop.

For the Arbitration Committee, Anthøny ✉ 21:12, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

Because the user in question has made a friendly comment on your Talk, I'm hoping that you might be able to intercede effectively to mediate a content dispute. While he's been blocked for edit warring before, he's clearly willing to edit war again, with respect to Cooper Brown, and his behavior there seems possibly to be a WP:POINT violation. He apparently objected to the removal of unsourced or improperly sourced claims that Cooper Brown is a spoof, not a real person (which is probably true, but we don't have source we can use for it), but then to the stubbing of the article by me (because very little, if anything, could be verified, unless attributed, and it wasn't) (I.e., by "attribution" I mean, "according to the column"). And now he's removed what little was left of interest, that actually supports the idea that it's a spoof without saying so, and that was clearly sourced and attributed to the column. Given his activities elsewhere, I'd start to consider this harassment, but the first issue is simply the article. If you could look it over and give him (or me) some advice, it would be appreciated. This is an attempt to pursue WP:DR, earlier than usual, because he's disinvited me from his "litter box" -- the most blatantly uncivil user Talk page introduction I've seen. Thanks in advance, please let me know (here) if you choose not to help. --Abd (talk) 19:53, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

This may not be immediately necessary, it looks like he's bailed.[5] You are still welcome to comment, of course, but if this sticks, there isn't an edit war. --Abd (talk) 20:09, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm in a rush - but I will look at this first thing in the morning Fritzpoll (talk) 20:14, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

No problem. I imagine all three of us will survive until then. (Myself, Minky, and Wikipedia.) Thanks. --Abd (talk) 20:44, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Well, my little pussy cat ears are burning, so... "clearly willing to edit war" - nice to see Abd has telepathy. The fact is, it's a funny article for Wiki. Why? The column is a clear satire - need to be deaf dumb and blind not to realise that. It's a spoof writer - and someone "in the know" has given me a clear name as to the real writer, obviously not a reliable source so I've not used it. Clearly, you're not getting an reliable, verifiable sources as to the identity. So, it clearly can't be a BLP. Equally, the article isn't about the column - it's about the fictional columnist. With so few sources, all there stands is an external ref to a list of Cooper Brown articles. Oh, and self-referential sources, such as Abd has used to post the columnist has allegedly been sent to Guantanemo -which is *only* sourced through the column. See the problem? If the article was changed to be about the column - not the fictitious columnist, it would read better - but then, the identity would by necessity be a big part of that... The Guantanemo part is only referenced by the column and anybody with a sense of humour can clearly see that the sourcing is flawed because it's a satirical article - so is information in a spoof article a reliable source? Difficult call. And yeah, my view has changed the more I looked into it.

As for Abd, he was asked not to write to my talk page mainly as his diatribes make pages take longer to load... :p

As for "litter box" - ooooh, uncivil. Hello, I'm a cat! "Litter box" sounds quite like "letter box", a nice analogy... more humour over Abd's head, sadly :( I'm now an unhappy moggy. Still, least he's not accused me of being suspiciously like (but not) a sock yet :p ( humour, honest... ) Minkythecat (talk) 21:34, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

(1) "clearly willing to edit war." Because he did (low-level).[6],[7] But he stopped. Because he had written, "Do what you want," I assumed consent and reverted again, and wrote what was above about bailing, i.e., about stopping edit warring, and, while he protested about the consent part, he has, so far, left the article alone. My restoration incorporated Protonk's emendation and reworded to make it even more clear that the "facts" were what was in the column, not confirmed or assumed as true.

(2) Yes, the column is a satire. Some satires are based, perhaps loosely, on fact, some not. Given that I and others, including Minky, have been unable to verify anything about Cooper Brown, so far, he probably does not exist under that name. However, absent some reliable source clearly stating that as a fact and taking responsibility for it (as distinct from the hints we have from two other columnists in another newspaper), we can't state it as a fact.

(3) There is a real question re notability, but we address that through AfD. The article exists, for now, and, as long as it exists, it should be accurate and, preferably, interesting. There used to be a boatload of stuff from the article there, see the history, and it was left there by Fredrick day (who took substantial interest in this article, and who normally has been a stickler for removing unsourced fact). I removed it, and Minky objected that this left little to the article. Yes, it's a stub. However, we can have whatever is verifiable there, and it is verifiable what I put in. The last column which has appeared was presented as written by Victoria Brown, allegedly his wife. It is headlined with a reference to Mexico, but the text has Guantanamo Bay as the place Brown was allegedly taken. It's a nice piece to include, because it shows the nature of the spoof; it also shows that the newspaper, for sure, isn't fact-checking. One doesn't have to fact-check a spoof, it's supposed to be not true, or exaggerated. But, to my knowledge, the paper has not admitted or presented the column as a spoof, and the column has quite a loyal readership (which mostly, I'd assume, does realize it's a spoof.) An AfD could be ... kind of a mess. Not my problem; it's currently being explored in Talk:Cooper Brown.

(4) It's not just me, look over, if it matters to you, Minky's Talk page history. You know, quite well, how I can write tomes. However, he reverted my first and only post to his Talk,[8] a civil and relatively brief "friendly suggestion" that was really a civility warning, but not titled or summaried as such because I was trying to make the point that I wasn't going to try to get him blocked, warnings are sometimes more effective if they aren't seen as threats. This was based on charge of "vandalism, again, again, before the block, and further edits after.mild, about me, [9], WP:DICK in edit summary,[10], and more not related to Routemaster.

(The edit war over Routemaster began with a relatively innocent-looking edit by Oxyman42,[11], reverted by MickMackNee.[12]. From 20:56, 15 July 2008 to 19:15, 18 July 2008 I count 6 reverts by MickMackNee, 14 reverts by Oxyman42, and 9 reverts by Minkythecat. Reverts in the 24-hour period before they were blocked were Oxyman 13, MickMackNee 4, and Minky, all 9. These were the first edits Minky had made to the article, he dove in and started edit warring.)

All three editors involved in the edit warring were blocked.

Minky's response to my suggestion was curt and explicit.[13] The only history -- I thought, this may not be the case -- we had was with Routemaster; this was shortly after he was blocked for edit warring on that article.block log,notice of block. The unblock was declined by Sandstein, confirmed by admin Ultraexactzz, but Minky continued to insist on his right to revert "vandalism." Admin David Levy again pointed out the problem, and Minky's only response was to delete it all, followed up with [14], [15], which don't show much promise, I'd say. There is more I could write, but, preparing this, I've seen enough that I need to go do some research.

I began this section here thinking that you might be able to intervene to help Minky become less disruptive, more civil. In researching just the above, I'm seeing, perhaps, a darker picture. Minky actively fomented the dispute over Routemaster, leading both Oxyman42 and MickMacNee into a 3RR trap, claiming on MickMacNee's talk that they were immune to 3RR, but Oxyman42 would get blocked.[16] I don't expect you to unravel this, Fritzpoll, but what I thought might be pretty simple gets more involved the more I look at it. You can still try to help, maybe it will work. If you need more information about the current situation, I can provide it. I got distracted, perhaps, by the history. There is no urgency as far as I know.--Abd (talk) 01:48, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Good grief; tl;dr ( well, didn't read most of it ). Abd came into the Routemaster article, ended up claiming myself and Mick were bullying oxyman; as usual, good old Abd assumes good faith with regards to finding an underdog to champion to feel good WP:OR... now, oxyman had 3RR pointed out to him and was persisting; under my interpretation of the rule, 3RR doesn't count towards vandalism, and I'd thought once somebody exceeds 3RR it becomes vandalism. I was wrong, fair enough. Now, I clear my user talk regularly, which is hardly disruptive. Oh wait, there's a darker picture! Well, he's not accused me of being a Fred Day sock I suppose. Maybe I'm the anti-christ or something... I seriously give up with regards to Abd. he clearly sees himself as some guru, spreading soft fluffy love and care across the wiki whilst using lengthy screeds to, well, bore anyone else into giving up... eh, whatever. Worrying about what he says or does isn't worth the time - it's just amusing his uber reliance upon AGF meant he didn't spot the Cooper Brown article was a clear spoof.

To answer Abd's points :-

1) "Do what you want". Means I'm out of that article, totally care less how Abd messes it up. That doesn't mean consent is given - or more accurately, my leaving that page due to Abd should not count as tacit approval for an attempted "consensus".

2) It can't be stated as a fake. Equally, there's no reliable sourcing he exists! So... by that logic, the article shouldn't exist, only an article about the column - not the fictional columnist. And then, all you can say is the column exists - if anything can give say dates of when the article started, great.

3) Sorry, but Abd has gone from *believing* he was real and sent to Guantanemo to now believing it's a nice example of a spoof. Hmm. Based upon that, assuming good faith to abd that it's an example, there have been numerous other examples that would suit far better than one with a reference to Guantanemo which could cause offence to some people... and again, that's for me, in my view which is no better or worse than Abd's, self-referential.

4) Covered above; I would say that whilst Abd attempts to be friendly, his text and tone comes across as highly patronising. That, funnily enough, rubs people up the wrong way. A lot, as evidenced by numerous pages.

Anyhoo, that's this little pussy cat over and out - I have zero else to say here about Abd or the situation. I'm sure admins at the moment have enough on their plate with a situation that can't be named - even Abd couldn't smooth that one over! ( joke. ) Minkythecat (talk) 05:52, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

This is already way longer than I intended. It takes a few words to present a deceptive picture, it takes quite a few more to present the truth. Minky has mentioned Fredrick day. Fred is a master at tossing mud. You saw a very brief example; his "hobby" is fomenting disruption. He creates socks that register and dive into arcane process, but he also varies the pattern. He uses IP edits to raise suspicion. Here is a hint at his program, in what may be one of his most honest edits: [17]. Fd has an admin account (at least one), I believe I know one, but I'm nailing down the evidence before revealing it, privately, to a checkuser and ArbComm. Minky is matching the sock pattern, behaviorally, but that doesn't prove he is Fd. He's colocated, I suspect. It's possible, for example, that he's a pal of Fd. Or he could simply be one more person who behaves like Day, Day has no patent on it. One of Fred's traits is to wave a big red flag saying "I'm Fredrick day," seeing how long it takes for the community to notice. Minky hinted several times, and above escalated the hints. Does that mean he's Fredrick day? Certainly not. For the moment, this is a huge red herring. The issue is account behavior, not who the account is. He claims a "patronizing" attitude. I've certainly heard that before. It might come from the fact that I have seven children, five grandchildren, and I'm more than twice the age of most editors who actively participate. And I have a lot to say. Minky dropped into Routemasters and tossed gasoline on what was already smouldering. I arrived and interrupted the incivility, with "friendly suggestions," backed up with a clear intention that I'd escalate if necessary. It worked. Oxyman42 stopped editing, not from me, reason unknown. MickMackNee seems to be doing fine. And Minky returned to his very much Fredrick-day-like favorite activity, speedy deletions accompanied with incivility. Which I left him to, until he, apparently, decided to follow me around and harass, for reasons unknown. --Abd (talk) 11:32, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Per the reasons for your last block, be careful tossing around implicit accusations (yes, they're indirect, but they're there) of sockpuppetry. The best tool for that is WP:SSP and/or checkuser if you have enough evidence. As to following you around, Minky has only edited three of the articles that you have. And when in a dispute with someone, it is not uncommon to look at their history. My friendly advice, anyway Fritzpoll (talk) 11:52, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Ok, this looks like a case of vast misunderstandings perpetuated by a misinterpretation of what I might call, without intention of offence, Abd's verboseness as a patronising diatribe. It is true that the column exists - I myself read it - and it has also been documented as a spoof written by Dom Joly ( see our very own article for the sources, which I have accessed ).

From the point of view of the article, having read the well-reasoned arguments at the talkpage, I suspect there isn't enough notability for the subject of the column as a fictional character. Given the lack of reliable sources, it would seem that the article cannot be improved upon and this should probably be nominated for deletion at some point soon. If the sources exist, I'm certain that someone will be able to find them over the course of five days. This, however, doesn't seem to be why this has been brought up...

So to the behavioural points:

• Minky reverting comments on his talkpage: perfectly legitimate, as I know you are aware. Just as you recently undid Xp54321's friendly advice on your talkpage describing it as "useless", Minky seemed not to react well to your "friendly warning".
• Edit warring and accusations of vandalism: Minky seems to accept that the 3RR vandalism assertion was mistaken, but on Wikipedia, the word "vandalism" is all too often used as a catch-all, which means "that which you have done, which pisses me off" :) I'd recommend finding some synonyms, or perhaps a more descriptive way of describing it - less likely to "rub people up the wrong way", to borrow Minky's phrase.
• "Friendly warnings": This is to you, Abd. The internet, as you doubtless are aware, is entirely cursed. It is cursed by one thing, namely the proliferation of text as the medium of communication. The reason Wikipedia needs policies like WP:AGF is because people tend to write as they speak, and the tone required to show the friendly intent of the writing gets lost by the time it is read by the recipient. When you start a post with "I didn't title this as a warning because..." (paraphrasing from memory), the word that leaps out at someone scanning your post is warning - my piece of friendly advice to you is not to use that word unless you are actually warning someone. Although people might be expected to assume good faith, even the most stoic amongst us are only human beings and our interpretation of words is tainted by our emotional state at the time, which in Minky's case appears to have been one of frustration. This leads me to my final point, and one which I tend to stick to....
• It's only the internet - Wikipedia is a wonderful thing, but the second it or an editor within it starts to stress you out, just navigate away, go and have tea, play in the park, or whatever. Just do something else. If someone reverts you, big deal. There's always tomorrow to put it back in, and there are bigger issues in this world that what the article of a fictional author of a fairly unmemorable column on an obscure page of a vast website says for a few extra hours. Following this advice will lead to better, more constructive dialogue and the resulting better encyclopaedia. That advice is for both of you.

Happy to answer questions on this, but that is pretty much all I have to say having read all connected talks, and done some digging of my own. Best wishes to you both, Fritzpoll (talk) 11:48, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I can only take on board what you say, Fritz, and endorse your comments. The only thing I'd add is that too much time staring into the abyss of Mr Day may sadly have caused Abd to view things in an incorrect manner. I've had no contact in my life with Mr Day. Colocated? Well, maybe, maybe not - geolocate with IPs in the nation I live isn't particularly useful. I'd very much doubt it. Maybe the best advice for Abd is just to serenely ignore anything Mr Day does; vandalism, let others revert. Let others deal with socks, if you suspect someone follow the correct channels. Too much time hunting for a boogeyman will naturally lead to false assumptions, regardless of the good intentions. Minkythecat (talk) 12:06, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad you like the advice, Minky. Abd has legitimate reason to be perturbed by Fredrick Day - my last smidge of suggestion to you is to steer clear, and try to avoid referring to Day yourself, since it leads, rightly or wrongly, to suspicion on Abd's part. We can all do without the ensuing lack of cordiality Fritzpoll (talk) 12:35, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

You guys should form a band "people wrongly accused by the sockmaster general". Abd, you need to take a break, you see me everwhere and you are shredding what's left of your credibility. Here's a clue for you - User: Jimbo Wales isn't a sock of mine. --87.115.28.102 (talk) 12:39, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

It would be a tad awkward if I thought so, wouldn't it, Fred? As to the hordes of people "wrongly accused," I've not often been wrong when I actually accused of sock puppetry. I didn't raise this one, Minky did, and it's a shame that it dominated so much of your response, Fritzpoll, given that accusations of sock puppetry had nothing to do with why I came here. There was no sock discussion until Minky raised it here, rather forcefully. He'd raised it elsewhere with less force, not so directly. In other words, he did a good Fredrick day imitation, and the "lack of cordiality" long preceded it. As to actual accusations, I've filed a number of SSP reports. None have been considered abusive or harassment, though two (total) didn't result in clear sock ID. Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Fredrick day (3rd) and Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Fredrick day (4th). I do not comment on sock suspicion as a ploy in a content or other dispute. Yes, my discussion of you in the context of Fredrick day's edit to AN, which was greatly complicated by your associated "retirement," did lead to my block, but it was totally unrelated to the dispute that existed between us at that time (though I really didn't have an active dispute with you, I'd thought we were done as far as direct communication). To my knowledge, our relationship never became uncivil; I was critical of your administrative action, but I was careful, continually, to refrain from any assumptions of bad faith, and, indeed, repeated many times that I considered you were acting within your rights as an administrator, in good faith. In any case, thanks for looking at this, I'm aware of how much effort it takes, and it is appreciated. --Abd (talk) 14:21, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

My original response, the "counsel" to you both, doesn't mention this at all. My references to socking are all made after you and Minky brought it up on my page, which was after I made my response having reviewed your problems together. Fritzpoll (talk) 14:26, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

That's correct. My memory can play tricks on me. Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.... --Abd (talk) 14:33, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Copying this to all admins who applied or extended protection on the Sarah Palin article.

To date there's been plenty of evidence pointing to discussions and otherwise offering commentary on the admin actions taken, but there's been little covering the circumstances prior to admin actions, namely the edits that the admins concerned based protection on. Newyorkbrad has put a question to the parties on this basis, but it seems to be only non-parties that have noticed that so far, so I'm putting this question to those involved directly.

Rootology has made a start here, and GRBerry has started drafting in his userspace. Ye might like to assist them in their efforts, or add a section of your own. This evidence will be vital in assisting the Committee's understanding of not only what happened and when, but why it happened. --bainer (talk) 14:01, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Sure, thanks. --Abd (talk) 13:28, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Hey Fritzpoll, hope you and your family are alive and well. Miss you, and Tanthalas, and Gwynand, who've all seemed to disappear. I may not be far behind. Keeper ǀ 76 21:14, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Still here - just went on a very refreshing holiday - hang in there until tomorrow when I get editing again, and we'll chat, yeah? Fritzpoll (talk) 18:42, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Nice holiday? Do you feel up to running the bot yet? The Bald One ^{White cat} 12:06, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Are you back or what?? The Bald One ^{White cat} 16:33, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes, just lightly editing today - holidays are simultaneously refreshing and tiring. I'm not going to think about the bot tonight, but I'll be programming it more over lunch tomorrow. Fritzpoll (talk) 17:57, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes my sister came back from a 7 week tour of South America just a few weeks ago and said she needed another holidat to recover! The Bald One ^{White cat} 19:15, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

We should be able to fit the list all on one page. Its not like the others with the list of thousands of villages with coordinates. These are villages and their surrounding municipalities known as "Village Development COmmittees. The Bald One ^{White cat} 12:57, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Very difficult to write general code for a variety of possible layouts - I need the code to stick to one layout. As I said to others - code is not very intelligent! :) Fritzpoll (talk) 13:23, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

It should be a standard layout as in the example I showed you. Just needs to extract and relay the correct data thats all. I;m in the process of copying the VDCs into the list. Once done, they will be bulletted and red linked and then dabbed accordingly. ANy help you can give would be more than welcome! The Bald One ^{White cat} 13:29, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I assumed that you wanted the bot to do this for you..... bit confused...Fritzpoll (talk) 13:31, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh no probs compiling the missing list, they need to be dabbed manually anyway. Really need the services of the bot though to start the articles in the form User:Fritzpoll/Nepal. Remember every VDC in every district follows the same documenation in the infobox and categories etc expect it just needs to switch data off each one. This is why I thought it would be bot suitable The Bald One ^{White cat} 13:55, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I was still talking about creating the lists. The location you've placed in my userspace wouldn't satisfy the notability criteria - I thought we'd come to an agreement on the GEOBOT page that "List of settlements in XXX" articles would do for now, and that we could develop articles once we had more notable things to say about them. Creating articles en masse like this would distinctly be against the original consensus. Fritzpoll (talk) 14:00, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Or did you intend listing the information on this page? The Bald One ^{White cat} 14:00, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Why wouldn't they meet the notability criteria? Government sources, clearly assertion of existance and notbailty on United Nations maps. How many people do you think wouldn't think this is notable? We agreed not to create sub stubs. These are not sub stubs and have demographic data from government sources. Basically your're saying I;m wasting my time creating them and any other geo articles I start because we haven't paragraphs full of text. Did you expect them to be created with 20kb of history on them or something? The Bald One ^{White cat} 14:01, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, for one thing, everyone who said "geographic places aren't inherently notable" at the village pump discussion. Find the criteria in the guidelines first. Verifiability is not the same as notability Fritzpoll (talk) 14:05, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

And please watch your tone - you know that people aren't going to recognise these articles as notable; that's exactly why we've had these vast discussions about lists etc. Fritzpoll (talk) 14:06, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

The village pump discussion was about computer generated sub stubs on villages on google maps without any government sources or any additional information. These are municipalities of a country, which most of our editors believe very much fit the criteria for notability. Ask anybody. These ar enot the hamlets or tiny villages that were being discussed at the village pump but administrative regions of Nepal which have adequate basic details with official government sources and UN maps to boot. I'll start another village pump discussion if you think people don't want this, but I sick and tired of having to do everything by myself. The Bald One ^{White cat} 14:09, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Look, I appreciate your frustration - I really do. But I'm not willing to even give the appearance of breaking the consensus. I will create lists, as we discussed, and I will create articles when the notability criteria are met. User:Sam said that he trusted that his trust wasn't misplaced, and I assured him that it wasn't. So go and get a new consensus, point me to the line in the notability criteria, or explain where the assertion of notability is. I'm sorry, but that's the way it is. Fritzpoll (talk) 14:18, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we should ask User:Sam if adminstrative regions of a country are notablw The Bald One ^{White cat} 14:19, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Could do. The problem is that everyone who says that geography is notable describes it as "inherently notable", but there's no guideline to this, and the existing guidelines would exclude them without a reason for explicit notability. What became of the proposed guideline...can't remember the page name. Fritzpoll (talk) 14:23, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Mmm I don't know. There is a common conception that anywhere and everywhere is inherently notable, I tend to disagree in part although I know encyclopedic information could be written just about anywhere. But these are adminstrative areas which definately meet general wikipedia guidelines. All I remember is that there were over 100 people willing to see sub stubs, I'd imagine a lot more would be happy to see something started with goverment sources and some demo data. Well we can discuss it, if not I guarentee there would be enough information to start the Mexican municipalities and nobody would object to it, particularly as they can be expanded immediately The Bald One ^{White cat} 14:28, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I'm happy to do this: I just want to keep the work legitimate. Compiling lists on hamlets, villages and towns sounded worthwhile (particularly with red-linked names to encourage article writing) and this does too. I'd just rather avoid another mass hysteria, as I'm sure you can appreciate Fritzpoll (talk) 14:32, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

OK, I understand given the fuss kicked up before. The thing is that overblown debate seems to have strongly affected your view on what is acceptable to the general community or what meets general guidelines because of the ones who opposed initially. Now I don;t fully believe "Everywhere" is inherently notable either although consistenly every article at AFAD is kept however stubby because mor epeople believe they are, but if an article uses government sources, has reliable and valid information on location and demographics which affect the way of life in that place, this has always met wikipedia guidleines and ther eis a far greater majority who think this does also rather than the lesser amount of people who believe they don't. It was always an objection against the "creation of zillions of sub stubs with no information whatsoever or lack of government sources that was the problem. It was more the hysteria about the miillions that turned some people of the idea. If for instance I was to propose that the bot starts the municipalities of Mexico for instance which should have been started five years ago, hell areas of 5,000 km2 are still missing just over the Texan border the repsonse would be rather different. Because it uses government sources and would be started beyond a sub stubs and it is guantanteed the article could be fully expanded within minutes manually if people are willing to do so. The Bald One ^{White cat} 14:47, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I wonder how many people would object to the existence of articles like Sandhikharka? There is an increase in Nepalese users on here so its not impossible that they will develop using information within Nepal too. If somebody told you Vale of Glamorgan is not notable enough for wikipedia you'd question it The Bald One ^{White cat} 15:52, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not arguing with that. I just "want it in writing" as it were. Thus far, consensus at WP:Notability (Geographic locations) is against inherent notability Fritzpoll (talk) 15:54, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

And Wikipedia:Notability (geography) leans largely towards it. First point is

Populated, legally-recognized places are, by a very large consensus, considered notable, even if the population is very low. It is important though, when notability is challenged, to reliably document that a place is legally recognized in some way. Examples include government recognition of the place as a municipality or region, or recognition by a government agency such as the United States Census Bureau as a place (in this specific case, it would be called a census-designated place). AFDs of articles where no one disputes that the place legally exists are almost always closed early by overwhelming consensus to keep. The Bald One ^{White cat} 15:55, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

But that's an essay edited by three people. Fritzpoll (talk) 15:58, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

And you think the first one reflects the views of the whole community? It is the point of view of a few The Bald One ^{White cat} 16:00, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

No, but my point is that in every discussion I've witnessed where a consensus was sought, no consensus has existed for the inherent notability of geographical locations. That's why I'm arguing against individual articles - can you find me a consensus on this topic? Fritzpoll (talk) 16:02, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

How many examples can you think of on wikipedia where everybody completed agrees with the proposal or event or whatever? The debate was if "every location is inherently notable" regardless of government sources or content. I remember the discussion about maps and atlases, can't recall where the discussion was. The Bald One ^{White cat} 16:05, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Consensus is not the same as complete agreement. Just look at what happened with the FritzpollBot proposal Fritzpoll (talk) 16:06, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Well there were equally as many if not more who were not as enthusiastic by your second proposal because it was too conservative. Because many people thought the bot was a brilliant idea, they didn't mind so long as the bot went into operation. I thought the second one was an excellent proposal by you, providing that the criteria of "notability" was within reason i.e government sources, data on demographics, and a settlement with over 1000 people and not a sub stub. I have no idea what you think would be suitable or would be approved by consensus. The Bald One ^{White cat} 16:13, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

OK I've asked Phlegm for some input givne that he was one of the writers of the against inherent notability article and objected to the fritzpollbot proposal intially. Quire rightly you are concerned about being attacked again as we were before so lets see what they think. The Bald One ^{White cat} 16:33, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Good thinking - hope we're not falling out over this? Fritzpoll (talk) 16:44, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Not at all. See email, oh I think I sent to the seperate email address. The Bald One ^{White cat} 17:01, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

On second thoughts seeing Mcgee.... The Bald One ^{White cat} 17:16, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

FYI every single Nepal stub I created had over 1,000 inhabitants, so that really shouldn't be a problem. You can add Economic Activity Literacy Marital Status Religion Population (total pop and number of houses) Population (in 5-year divisions) and School Status for each VDC per the government source. Most could be expanded even more (see Sandhikharka for an example). Sub stubs just make the job easier to expand upon. the editorofthewiki (talk/contribs/editor review) 19:46, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi. just thought I'd give my 2 cents about notability. There are many different views on notability and there is no fixed consensus about this. As this is a wiki, it is incumbent on those that think things are not notable to nominate them for deletion. If there is precedent for deleting many similar articles, a guideline can be created to help prevent wasted effort in creating articles that will eventually be deleted. Many things survive without being discussed or nominated for deletion. Tacit approval covers the majority of things that are created. So perhaps you can use this as a model for deciding which articles to create and which to leave as lists.

• For every region, when you create a list, you can also create a sample article or two that covers a typical inhabited place in the list.
• There should be a central listing for what has been created by the bot. It could record the lists created, the sample articles for regions where you are proposing more articles, and the regions that have already been fully populated with articles.
• Publicize what you are doing at the Village Pump and elsewhere. You could also have a link to the central listing from every article created by bot.
• Allow several months to elapse after creating sample articles. If they do not get nominated for deletion, or if they survive AFD, you could then put the bot to work creating the rest of the set.

Essentially, this is the same process that determines the notability of any article whether created by bot or not. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 01:54, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Not a problem in the slightest! We must have zoomed by each other while I was reporting to AIV. Thanks for fixing my page, cheers! Prince of Canada ^{t | c} 11:14, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I am not using your bot's data - you can keep that. Your comment at ANI is so out of line, I can no longer support your bot or the project for which it is (was?) intended. This is a job for editors not bots. Carlossuarez46 (talk) 14:23, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

What comment would that be? I said that it wasn't FritzpollBot, alluded to a comment made earlier in the conversation that you seemed to be using the old data (I'm glad that you aren't). The "against consensus" is my interpretation (not binding) that geographical locations are not inherently notable, as was discussed previously. Quite why my comments on this matter would alter your objective opinion about the usefulness of a bot in this task is unclear to me? Fritzpoll (talk) 14:26, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I completely disagree with Carlos's comment that "this is job for editors not bots". This is contrary to what we discussed previously. The idea was that we compile data using the most reliable sources, e.g government sources and start the articles at a standard as high as possible and as quickly as possible which potentially would be done for more efficiently than any human editor could start. Then at a later date it is for editors to try to expand what has been created. Anyway have a good day all. The Bald One ^{White cat} 15:08, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't object to using bots to create geographic articles, provided the following criteria are met:

• We have enough information available that the bot can create articles more substantial than substubs.
• We don't resort to speculation about anything we lack data on - for example referring to all places in a country as "villages" simply because we don't have information on what type of settlement each place actually is.
• We work with country or region specific WikiProjects beforehand to make sure that we are aware of unique geographic terminology, political issues (recent border changes or border-disputes with other countries for example), and what information sources are available.

Creating articles right the first time is a lot better than rushing to make lots of substubs and having to clean-up issues later, IMO. Kaldari (talk) 19:11, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I agree completely and these articles are of course in the process of being created anyway and could be done in more depth and more efficiently by the bot. Thats what I thought the consensus was initially when the bot was finally approved. We weren't to create empty articles but try to make them as resourceful as possible given the sources available and try to compile government sources as much a spossible. I think the Nepal articles are above the sub stubs and fit general guidelines for starting articles on places because a]it has government sources b]it is officially recognized as an adminstrative division of Nepal by the government c]it has international recognition on United Nations documents d] it has information not only on population but on demographics which in part relay some information about the livelihoods of people within that area e] The vast majority have a population over 2,500 people living in them. I believe this meets the criteria for inclusion in wikipedia and also would not be detrimental to the consensu agreed at Fritzpoll vilage pump discussion in the summmer. If anybody would like to gain a wider consensus at the village pump to be on the safe side let me know. Thanks for your input Kaldari. The Bald One ^{White cat} 19:17, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

I have to agree with Fritzpoll, however, that there has never been clear consensus that geographic locations are inherently notable. It is possible, however, to work around this issue completely if you just use better sources for bot-generating a given set of articles. If you have 2 or 3 decent sources, or even just 1 very high-quality source that you can use for all the articles, inherent notability won't be an issue. People only get riled up on this issue when we're talking about making articles based solely on Falling Rain, GeoNames, or some other "list of place names", which are low-quality (but arguably reliable) sources. No one (that I know of) ever objected to Rambot creating thousands of articles on podunk towns in the US, even though he only used one source (census bureau). The reason is that his initial articles had lots of solid information, not just "This is a place located in another place." I guarantee that if your initial articles are half as good as Rambot's were, no one will raise a peep against your efforts. Kaldari (talk) 19:46, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Well I think we can all safely say there are some people who would be against it as with any proposal but there would be a far greater number of people willing to see these articles created than not, particularly as "sources" like fallingrain and some of the other dreadful computer generated sites have gone to hell, well in our GEOBOT project anyway as a primary reference although I will retrieve coordinates from one of them in the future if I require coordinates. Using government sources seems fine to me and they are above the sub stubs originally planned. And might I say I thought RamBot did an excellent task regsrdless of the attacks or "mistake" it was labelled as recently. I've lost count how many times I've clikced a blue link and come across a rambot created article which gives me valid information. Its not our fault if so many people are lazy and haven't expanded many of the articles it created. The Bald One ^{White cat} 19:53, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Time for a new village pump discussion? The Bald One ^{White cat} 16:40, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Would anybody object to using the bot to add infoboxes to the articles we are going through withWikipedia:WikiProject French communes/Status by copying them from French wikipedia and to save us months of work? The infoboxes can be copied directly from french wikipedia and inserte dinto here. All it needs is a slight wiki link alteration. Any likelihood that this can be done? If as you say you still intend using the bot which has the full seal of approval it mioght not be a bad way to start by gaining the communities trust of it by improving existing articles in such a way first. Having the ability to write and run a bot is a gift and it should be put to some use. The Bald One ^{White cat} 14:49, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

No mandate to improve existing articles, but if we can work out what it is I'm meant to do, I can ask the bot group for approval quickly. Fritzpoll (talk) 14:41, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Hello. For example visit Yèvres-le-Petit, Now click the "francais" French wikipedia link. and click modifier at the top. Now copy and paste the infobox commune at the top. Now go back to the english article and copy and paste it in and save it. Thats basically all that needs doing as we have the infobox documentation sorted to read the french into english, except one or two of the wikidied links in the infobox need adjusting in the same way every time e.g removing a [[]] from the canton and the arrondisement parameter. Its extremely easy and we have a large backlog of articles to do manually. What we need is a bot to read the infobox on french wikipedia for each article and to place every one onto english wikipedia.

For instance see here, Basically the infobox is copied directly from French wikipedia but the canton and arrondisement is delinked and the intercommunality is also delinked and shortened. Compare it to the one now on french wikipedia for that commune and see how virtually the same the box is except those slight alterations. It is basically exactly the same process every time. Could this be coded? The Bald One ^{White cat} 18:19, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Any thoughts? The Bald One ^{White cat} 14:33, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Could you please run replace.py for articles such as Kalika, Baglung to replace town with VDC (village development committee) or village? Thank you.--Eukesh (talk) 21:30, 6 October 2008 (UTC)

No idea how to do that :) And unfortunately, my bot isn't authorised for that, and I wouldn't have the first idea what I' be doing. Might I suggest the bot requests page? Fritzpoll (talk) 14:40, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

See the diffs. I'll work on fixing these today. the editorofthewiki (talk/contribs/editor review) 20:14, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Could you have a look at User talk:ScienceApologist and see if you can help with incivility problems that the user may be having? Thanks. Jehochman ^Talk 03:12, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Its leapt to a page from the 30th April. Will talk to you about this Fritzpoll (talk) 10:51, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Please add your name to clerk team OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 16:38, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry Fritz, but I'm pretty disappointed with the result of the much awaited GEOBOT project. Surely you can remember how enthusiastic many were back in the summer about the potential massive development of working with the GEOBOT and yourself to create good quality new articles with government sources. What happened?? You have wonderful abilities which this project could advance massively if you could use them and it is a shame you are not willing to give evne a glimmer of what you are clearly capable of because you are afraid of what one or two may think of you. I've spent a lot of time with you and I have much enjoyed your friendship on here independently of the bot, but I have also done my best to work with you and helped you out during difficult times. I've made a major effort to try to get the project up and running and have equally spent a lot of time suggesting where we can start (three valid proposals in three days) but it seems my attempts and those of others have all been wasted. It can't work if one editor, is not willing to do a single thing to help. When it becomes evident that there is no major problem with running the bot for a task you either make up a reason that implies you think everybody who uses wikipedia would somehow hate you for helping in a task which had a great deal of support and start to stress out, or you become pretty unresponsive like you have the last few days or go on a wikibreak. You've mislead us since May that you intended fulfilling your promises and while I always believed you because of difficulties you have been experiencing I've been as patient as I possibly can in the hope that someday we could do something and save a number of us weeks od manual work on here. Even if we completely put starting articles on the backburner there shouldn't be any problem whatsoever why the bot couldn't be used to cleanup and improve existing articles. A lot of expectancy would have been saved by being straight with me and the stranded GEOBOT project after that village pump discussion. Naturally there is no obligation that you have to edit a thing on here, but you did state on many occasions that you intended taking your words into action and I believed you. I feel you have let me down, particularly when many of us have spent a great deal of time in discussing the proposals in good faith (and 30 people signed up for the project to help you) that at least a few countries would be worked through on here, evne if it was far more low key than the original proposal and only one or two countries rather than the world as planned. The Bald One ^{White cat} 16:38, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

(sigh) I told you that I would happily create the lists that we discussed before the chaos that occurred over the summer. I am still happy to do that provided I am told where to begin - those lists could be uploaded tomorrow with ease if I'm told what to do. Instead, every time I say "let's get going", I'm asked to do something different, like cleanup articles, or create new stubs on places where the notability is unclear. If you ask me to do things outside of policy (running bot tasks not specifically approved is a violation of policy) then we're going to have disagreements. If you let me create the lists in that beautiful table format that we fiddled with all that time ago, then we will cover the world: maybe not by individual articles, but by lists which can be manually and lovingly checked and confirmed. There was talk of starting with American Samoa as a small place, but this came to nothing. And as I say, all my efforts since then have resulted in my being asked to do something different!

Quite aside from potentially violating policy and consensus, these suggestions are not easy. The reason being that to perform a different task, I have to sit down and write, essentially, a new bot from scratch. Computers are stupid - they cannot change task willy-nilly without considerable effort. Some of the proposals (replacements) are actually tricky to do well, and would require extensive testing, which is why I suggested offloading them to a separate bot, or using AWB.

Give me a country to process, open the new subpage per the procedures described at WP:GEOBOT (including the template subst), give me a source or two that seem viable, and I will process it into our subpages tomorrow in the table format ready for dabbing, checking and formatting. I can't work outside that remit without going back to bot approvals and recoding a new bit of code. It isn't as simple as some people seem to thing it is Fritzpoll (talk) 16:50, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

I accept your feelings that some people may object and you don't want a repeat of before, I understand this. If however we were to scrap the idea of bot generating individual articles on places (at least until the bot gains trust), however notable they may seem, and concentrate either on drawing up those lists, or cleaning up existing articles such as French communes by copying infoboxes straight from French wikipedia into the empty articles such as Yèvres-le-Petit I am certain we wouldn't get anybody who would be against it providing it runs smoothly as it is advacning the information quality of the articles rather than starting them. We can make another bot request (with BAG) if you feel that this in anyway violates the original approval. I'm sorry to seem like one of those stressful people we encounter on here the last few days, but I just want to see it fulfill some of its potential, however different to the original proposal. I hope you understand this and appreciate my honesty The Bald One ^{White cat} 17:02, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

The individual article idea is also fine, but it requires the notability factor. Our discussions last week on this point have not amounted to a great deal of progress, since there is no guidance. The lists would allow a two-fold solution:

• • They would allow us to gather the information into a checking format, where dabbing and manual fact-checking could take place. This could then provide a framework around which notable entries are discovered (I could append a web link to google searches)
  • These lists could, after fact-checking, be converted into articles ("List of villages in X district of Y") meaning full representation of all geographic locations in the world. The bot could then generate redirects from the dabbed links into the "List of..." article, which would allow people to eventually expand the articles as and when information arises.

How would that be? Fritzpoll (talk) 17:11, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

The lists were always the best option in reality as groundwork about places and would avoid any of the concerns about individual article notability. Dabbing work would need to be done for the redirects, until we later scout for sources to start the more resoureful ones individually. As for the reason why I think it might be straightforward to programme the frenchc ommune bot is that all that needs doing is copying the infobox directly from the French wikipedia equivalent. Please see Yèvres-le-Petit. All that needs doing for each article is cutting and pasting the infobox from French wiki into every article which must be bot compatible. So for Yèvres-le-Petit all it requires is pasting the infobox into it from here. Please can you look into it? The Bald One ^{White cat} 17:17, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Dabbing would be useful as it would let me build the redirects with the bot. If all you want is copying from one wiki into another, I can code that up and put in a request for a second bot, but that won't be until next week. The lists, however, can start around tomorrow lunchtime (UK time) if you can pick a country and some sources of coordinate data for me... Fritzpoll (talk) 17:22, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

If we were to address the drawing up of the lists, we could also gain consensus over the possibility of removing some of our existing "perma-stubs" by redirecting to lists (e,g like Afghanistan). If people thought it would make wikipedia more concise by housing existing info in table format even those wiki cynics would see the benefit. If you feel under pressure because of the "FritzpollBot" naming, I would have no problems if you wer eto rename it BlofeldBot or rather GEOBOT and allow me to take primary responsibility to avoid your name being associated with it or for it to become a project tool rather than purely assigned to yourself. This way it would ease any potential comments directed to yourself. Would you feel more comfortable if we renamed it User:GEOBOT to become a shared project responsibility? The Bald One ^{White cat} 17:17, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

If we were to pick Afghanistan we could even redirect some of those stubs which were created before into tabled lists by province. Afghanistan has been dabbed already, it just needs representing by redirecting to lists rather than individual articles. The Bald One ^{White cat} 17:27, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

No problems with the name of the bot - conforms to guidelines anyway. If you want us to go with this one, I can convert the existing AFghan data over tomorrow for checking? Fritzpoll (talk) 18:22, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good. I decided against the altitude column given that there are rarely reliable sources for the figures at present. Wheb done it would basically be a move from the directory into a table format with the coordinates showing on the maps. Content can be built gradually in filling in the "description" and forms a regulator for when to start a seperate article, once it becomes to full. Native name column too, is for Arabic or native language types. It may not be needed for anglosphere areas which don't have "funny" writing systems but that can be sorted easily as we go along I'd imagine. The Bald One ^{White cat} 18:28, 9 October 2008 (UTC) Diz u on line? The Bald One ^{White cat} 11:08, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes, and damn, damn, damn, damn, damn! I left the bot code on a USB key in my PC at home, about 20 miles away!!! I'll have to do the run when I get home (going to skive out of work a bit early to get back). Bugger!! Fritzpoll (talk) 11:32, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Eesh. Take it easy. I;m just going through the Vietnamese cities and adding infoboxes. The articles are one of the worst sets I;ve seen. Most of the provincial capitals (cities with hundreds of thousands even a million) are one liners. It would be like us having one line unreferenced stubs on cities like Birmingham, Bristol or Leicester or something. Best

Oh that reminds me, we'll need to file a rename request ti rename to bot to User:GEOBOT. Shall we ask MBisanz? The Bald One ^{White cat} 12:48, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I have no problem with it being called FritzpollBot, and guidelines indicate that the bot name should reflect its operator. Let's just leave it as it is. Fritzpoll (talk) 13:08, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Can I move to bald district? I am on a secret mission to meet mr Ernst Stavro Blofeld. Name's Bond, James Bond. Shaken, not stirred. Ooh, wrong queue. :) (don't ask why I'm stalking your talk page and adding absolutely nothing to the conversation. ) ~one of many editorofthewikis ^{(talk/contribs/editor review)}~ 00:32, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Personally I'd rather live on Monte Baldo but each to his own folically challenged dwelling.

Did you find the coding afterwards? When would you like to start? The Bald One ^{White cat} 10:02, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Found it, but won't run the conversion until Monday lunchtime, because I am preoccupied over the weekend with household tasks of a non-computer nature :( Fritzpoll (talk) 18:07, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Let me know when you're ready then The Bald One ^{White cat} 09:08, 13 October 2008 (UTC) OK its now 1.30. I do hope your're not baling out of doing what you said. I always try to keep my word and I expect other people to treat me as I treat others The Bald One ^{White cat} 12:29, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. In fact, the same information had been added a few days prior to today's actions by an anonymous editor in an almost identical form (see my talk page, and [[User talk:Tharkuncoll] where MidnightBlue has dragged my name into the matter there). It is odd that MidnightBlueMan is (a) a newly created editor who seems to know so much about editing, (b) accused of editwarring in section 4.1 of Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Arbitration enforcement, in which (c) I commented, implicitly including him/her in the critcism, and should then seek out some edits I have made an attempt to question the legitimacy of my actions in another area.  DDStretch  (talk) 21:58, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

User_talk:Fritzpoll/Archive_2#Bot_question_2 :) Enigma ^message 05:13, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

When you delete an article i think its best to hide the content, especially when its an attack page like Ghut was. Thank You 220.239.56.131 (talk) 11:07, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

The content is hidden by deletion - no personal details were disclosed, so I don't believe that oversight, that is, the process by which even administrators cannot view the material, is necessary in this case. If, however, you have reason to believe that I am wrong, please drop me another line and I will look into it. Best wishes Fritzpoll (talk) 11:09, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I think he means the deletion log, Fritz. Garden. 12:22, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

How will that be problematic - the content within the article isn't visible...unless....hang on, did I screw up the delete and leave a "Content was..." message? I'll check now Fritzpoll (talk) 13:28, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Bugger - I did. Not sure how I can fix that, since re-deleting will not wipe out the log. Anything I've missed that I can do? Fritzpoll (talk) 13:30, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Its lunch time? The Bald One ^{White cat} 11:29, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Afternoon - sorry for the delay: had to go and have lunch with my supervisor and have a lengthy chat about my work, its direction, etc. All of which meant, given especially that it was impromptu, that I couldn't sit in front of my computer and facilitate the conversion. I didn't give my word that it would be done today, but I do promise that I will run the bot tomorrow (my supervisor is away!) Sorry if you feel upset, but Wikipedia won't pay the bills....we admins should get paid! Fritzpoll (talk) 13:16, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I know what you mean. The main contributors equally should be paid!! Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 13:24, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Probably more! Fritzpoll (talk) 13:28, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Excellent. Funnily enough I had forgotten about it. My mind was engrossed in Xalapa which I've been developing this morning. My aim (although not really a reality given the scale of it) is to have a decent article on every municipality in Latin America like Rionegro which I also translated the other day. There is a lot of info about in Spanish so.. If we could take care of world places in list format, a huge weight would be lifted in trying to create stubs, meaning that I can begin to concentrate more on quality and writing the articles which have info available at present. At least if the places are recognised in lists, it won't seem like a huge proportion of the world is being ignored. See ya in a mo Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 12:53, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

OK, I'm ready . Give me a buzz when its ready Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 13:10, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Ugh - it's taking longer than I expected to parse the text correctly within the code. Argh!! I may have to give up until this evening, lest my boss find me doing this! stupid bot! Fritzpoll (talk) 13:42, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

How we doing? Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 12:52, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

The code jammed on me last night, and I was struggling to parse the table correctly - seem to have screwed up the coord template parsing. Fortunately, my better half is off out tonight, so I'll have more fiddling time then Fritzpoll (talk) 13:28, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Why must you have a bot which empties your page every day? Its not as if you are Keeper76. You've now lost all my preceding messages and table suggestions. Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 14:06, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Tis all saved in my archives. Fritzpoll (talk) 14:13, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Check out the resemblance of Juliana of the Netherlands to Mrs Doubtfire.Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 14:47, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

So that's what Robin Williams has been up to! Fritzpoll (talk) 14:49, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Hehehe, I wanted to see if it would work :D It didn't, obviously, but still funny :P Garden. 11:28, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

lol - In honour of your effort, I shall use "chicken" as my next boolean variable in the code I'm writing for work... Fritzpoll (talk) 13:31, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but you're wrong. Yes, he was blocked for sockpuppetry, however, this recent unblock request has to do with his most recent block, if you checked his block log, you would see that it states: 18:09, October 7, 2008 Gwen Gale (Talk | contribs) blocked Fclass (Talk | contribs) (account creation blocked) with an expiry time of indefinite ‎ (Disruptive editing: after lifting of indefinite block and many warnings). Hence, your review is wrong, in that Fclass was asked by another admin if he could see what he had done wrong, and so he placed the unblock request on the page after seeing what he had done wrong. Therefore, I am undoing it back the the original unblock request so it can be properly reviewed.— Dædαlus ^Contribs /_Improve 19:36, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Your assessment is wrong, please review the user's block log.— Dædαlus ^Contribs /_Improve 20:01, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Your assessment would have been right if the block review was directed towards the block for sockpuppetry, however, it was not, and was directed towards the disruption block.— Dædαlus ^Contribs /_Improve 20:02, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

The unblock has now been denied by another admin, so I don't need to. Regardless of the correctness of my review, do not remove unblock reviews. A user can always request an unblock again Fritzpoll (talk) 20:04, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

I shall have to ask the opinion of others on the matter, however, I still believe that I am in the right, in that the user asked that a specific block be reviewed, the most recent, and you declined, based upon an old block(a matter which in fact had been previously settled). The question was never answered, and the user was led to believe that despite the fact that he had learned what he did wrong, and had possibly agreed to mentorship, that his request was still denied based upon old information, and so the user(this is an assumption) basically blanked the page, having given up hope. Hence, I reverted so that the user may see that there was still hope, lest his case be reviewed properly.

I am replying here because I reply to message on the aforementioned user's talk page.— Dædαlus ^Contribs /_Improve 20:21, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Per what I have said on Gwen's page. I'm sorry.— Dædαlus ^Contribs /_Improve 20:37, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

No sweat - we're all here for the good of the wiki :) Fritzpoll (talk) 20:53, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Not me. I'm here out of pure-self interest. (Wallamoose (talk) 05:51, 18 October 2008 (UTC))

Strangely Kotbot has been approved and is creating very basic stubs like Leśniewice, Masovian Voivodeship at the rate of 10 a minute which the community don't want yet you can't programme your GEOBOT to copy infoboxes from french wikipedia which would be a massive help. A week ago I said for the reason why I think it might be straightforward to programme the french commune bot is that all that needs doing is copying the infobox directly from the French wikipedia equivalent. Please see Vulaines. All that needs doing for each article is cutting and pasting the infobox from French wiki into every article which must be bot compatible. So for Vulaines all it requires is pasting the infobox into it from here. At least if you can't programme the bot to create lists, can you please can you look into it? I don't want another week to go by and still nothing has been done. Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 11:34, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Bizarre - sounds like something that needs to be brought up - if that bot can create the stub articles, why can't we? I'll sort out the list code over the next few days, but as I say, it kind of corrupted the table format and screwed it up. I'll sort it out by Tuesday - as for the other task, I can code that up by Wednesday and get approval. But it is tasks not bots that see to ned approving under the bot policy. Fritzpoll (talk) 11:49, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

I know Fritz thats the thing, Kotbot has generated thousands of articles on Polish villages and hamlets some of them with a population of 15 or 24 people and many of them look infact less notable or more "perma-stubbish" than the majority anybody has proposed with GEOBOT. This is the Polish wiki equivalent of one of them. An empty article about a place with 48 people. There were one or two editors who were not happy and objected but most people supported him, giving him complete authorisation to continue providing he used an external link/reference. See the new pages in the last hourBlofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 12:06, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm amazed what his bot can do. It can even generate templates like Template:Gmina Mogielnica as well as adding sections to the main country/gmina articles. Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 12:54, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

Bring it up at the Village Pump? Fritzpoll (talk) 16:16, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

COuld you make a query about it, sort of a, how come this was approved when the Bot group were under the impression the community didn't want it sort of thing? I'll chip in. Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 17:59, 18 October 2008 (UTC)

You are horribly mistaken. That user didn;t tell you that this is his 4th or 5th "clean start" - also, this user has been subjecting me to harassment, which totally voids the "good faith" bit of it. --Rschen7754 (T C) 09:37, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Also, there is a specific reason why the practice is to contact the blocking admin before unblocking - to prevent stuff like this (the user lying to you) . Please do so in the future. --Rschen7754 (T C) 09:42, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

If this is the case, then I apologise - but there was just a templated "blocked as a sockpuppet of user:xyz" on the page. From all appearances, the block looked flawed in policy. There is no necessity to document these problems, but it would make it easier for other admins if the blocking admin explained the block fully. Where is the harrassment? What are the other users, and where is your proof of sockpuppetry? There is no requirement for consultation with the blocking admin, except in the case of a checkuser block, as it assumed the problems are documented on the userpage. Fritzpoll (talk) 10:47, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

That was my fault for not explaining the block in the blocking box, but unfortunately Rschen is quite right. The case is complicated, and I'll happily explain it in detail if you prefer, but in short, the user in question will revert all of Rschen's edits, move spaces in his userspace around without asking, and generally kick up a small sandstorm in US Highway-related articles. He has operated at least two accounts at the same time, retiring account A, then starting account B, then retiring account B and starting up A again. His contributions to the encyclopedia are never listed in a consolidated form, and comments and questions are left unanswered by {{retired}} accounts, when the appropriate alternative is to go on a wikibreak. User talk:Must eat worms has my suspicions listed on it. Although he's allowed a new account, "repeated switching of accounts is usually seen as a way of avoiding scrutiny and considered as a breach of this policy". I've updated the sockpuppet category, linked on his userpage, with as many of his previous accounts as I can remember. Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 14:44, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

Ok, I'm beginning to see the problem: presumably we can spot this by a pattern of behaviour, so perhaps what we need to do is block the account indef if/when it reoffends (harrassment is harrassment). When the next sock crops up, block for the harrassment and dump it on SSP to give us a central record, which will help avoid this. In fact, why not do this now, whilst the accounts are still fresh? Then there's a formal record of abusive behaviour, and we can re-block easily on sight, or by adding to the existing SSP report. Any thoughts? Fritzpoll (talk) 08:34, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

The sock that you unblocked needs to be reblocked immediately - I have already been harassed by it as the user has started wikistalking me again. This user has a long record of doing such - User:Rschen7754/Stuff has the gory details. How many chances does this guy get before he should be blocked for harassment? He's gotten away with it too many times - WP has given no official sanctions' for his behavior.

If you do not reblock, I will block him myself as I believe that I have a fundamental right to protect myself from such harassment. Of course, that move would probably be heavily criticized, so your reblocking him immediately would be the best option at this point. --Rschen7754 (T C) 16:03, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Rschen, I know you have strong feelings here, but Fritzpoll has got a damned good idea. If we leave the account unblocked for now, it might start stalking you again - in which case we can block it. If it doesn't, however, and a new sock appears, then that's sockpuppeting and we can block them both. I'll do an SSP now, but I'd strongly recommend against blocking the account yourself. Trust me on this one, I've not done you wrong in the past! Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry (talk) 16:55, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Well it just blatantly reverted all of TheCavalry's edits plus editing WA-129 (an article I just failed for GAN). Any further questions? My question is - how much more proof do you need? This editor is wasting my time and being provocative - how much more proof do you need? --Rschen7754 (T C) 23:49, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

There are a few points here: I understand why you are upset about this - I genuinely do. To you, the above is enough proof that he is stalking you, but it isn't for me. The real purpose of leaving the account unblocked is to try to establish a sufficiently large editing pattern to gather actual technical evidence, which will let us nip the problem in the bud in the longer term, which is ultimately better for you. To answer your question directly in terms of you, the user has made exactly 2 edits to WA-129 (from my exaxmination of the contribs) of which 1 was made since the unblock. That doesn't seem sufficient to me to reblock for stalking and harrassment. Other admins may disagree - to clarify, I will not reblock this account - sorry. Fritzpoll (talk) 08:52, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Okay, but that isn't the only stalkish edit he's made... it's edited SR 78, an article I brought to GA very recently, as well as other articles. In the past, this user has made some clearly provocative edits - did you look at User:Rschen7754/Stuff? --Rschen7754 (T C) 18:14, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

3 edits prior to blocking, 1 since. I will not oppose a reblocking by anyone other than you or The Cavalry (not that I imagine you would!) if you can convince them, but I'm not seeing cause to block here. I did read your list, but it largely seems to relate to other accounts. Fritzpoll (talk) 18:31, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Okay, but this is an admitted sock of AL2TB, and those other accounts have been confirmed socks of AL2TB... --Rschen7754 (T C) 20:30, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

[18] - you going to do anything about this? --Rschen7754 (T C) 23:37, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Checkuser needs some fresh editing in order to function. Leaving one account unblocked and closely watched is often a good strategy to discourage long term sock abuse. Fritzpoll, I have recently had a lengthy discussion with Arbitrator Charles Matthews about unblocks. There is confusion within the community. It is always best to contact the blocking admin first in cases of harassment and socking because these are cases where blocks might not be transparent for a good reason. If you email the admin, they should get back to you promptly with any confidential evidence. Jehochman ^Talk 17:06, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Jehochman - I will take this advice on board in the future. Fritzpoll (talk) 08:33, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your help. --Rschen7754 (T C) 15:47, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Dont forget! I was very disappointed at the lack of response from some of the other editors I asked so I'm counting on you! Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 12:19, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Ah yes, the french communes. Can't do it this very second - I shall have a go at coding and posting a task request tomorrow! Fritzpoll (talk) 13:22, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Did you get around to doing it afterwards? Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 18:17, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

See Stary Janin. Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 10:04, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I thought I said it doesn't matter about generating new articles, I understand the problems with that, evne with lists. Regardless of lack of contributors compiling reliable sources (if they exist anyway), I was "really" counting on your help with sorting out the French communes though and helping improve existing articles within minutes and I really thought it wouldn't be too demanding for you. After all this time was it so much to ask for you to do one task in five months? I had rather hoped you wouldn't turn out to be one of the admins who don't edit the mainspace and are only here to use the tools to make an occasional block/grant adminstratively. In that case, I ask you to delete any page which bears reference to GEOBOT or FritzpollBot and delete the wikiproject we started, and notify all the members of what is happening. I'm glad you've been honest, but I really would have liked to have seen the bot one even just once for a cleanup task which is pretty disappointing. BestBlofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 10:17, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

There is a problem with the request, which I have reiterated at the bot requests page. I can do bits of work on a case-by-case basis. I'm not doing the GEOBOT - I think you imagine that the bot is a single piece of code, but each task is a separate piece of code, and in my language (the world I move in) a "bot" is just a single piece of code. So whilst the code for GEOBOT will be placed in hibernation, the account and my expertise are available for small jobs Fritzpoll (talk) 10:42, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Fritz mate, I am am not completely dull in regards to how coding is programmed. If you think that I am under the impression that every bot runs under the same code you must think me highly unintelligent. Admittedly I have no idea how you go about writing it but I can obviously understand that every task requires different coding and some thought, perhaps I took for granted that it could be done relatively quickly and not require hours even days to do.

Then it should be clear that whilst the article creating part of the bot is "sleeping", I am perfectly happy to use the bot for cleanup tasks, which will not take as long to program. My problem in the past few days has been trying to do both! Fritzpoll (talk) 10:51, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I have known for a long time of course that the bot wouldn't be creating new pages, I even thought we could have forgotten about that idea and completely changed the focus of the bot project to cleaning up existing content, adding infoboxes, references which would seemingly require little hard thought which was partly what was promised with your second proposal. I do think your clear great talents could be used to edit the encyclopedia and it is a shame your time isn't spent editing actual content rather than dealing with the occasional melonhead or adminstratively. Obviously I am disappointed that you didn't use it once when seemingly it would not have been a big deal to do so, but I respect your decision although I think out of respect you should inform the project members of your decision and erase the project pages and references to it. All the best Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 10:43, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

When edit-conflicting, try reading what you've conflicted with (above), since it may take the wind out of your passages. I do want to edit the encyclopedia - in fact, I am collating sources at the moment to redo the article of my favourite sitcom, which is in a terrible state. Much like my other cleanups, I take my time getting ready so that I have a plan of attack. In the meantime, my work on here varies between administration and gnomishness, and waiting to be asked to do something with my bot! :) So don't presume to know what I am interested in doing, just because I don't create vast swathes of new articles Fritzpoll (talk) 10:48, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Creating vast swathes of new articles aside, thats the impression I got fromyour contribs which are highly stacked in non mainspace edits thats all. I wish you the best of luck in the sorting of the Frasier article and any editing you do in the future, sorry if I was mistaken. Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 10:53, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Oops sorry I didn't phrase that well. I know you are clearly interested in the content and wikipedia otherwise you wouldn't be here!!! Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 10:57, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry to imply that I am judging you, just want to see your genius in action man! Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 11:02, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Juts to be absolutely clear, I'm happy to undertake cleanup tasks on the geographical articles. I've posed a question at the Bot Requests page about the commune copying, which you might be able to help with. Fritzpoll (talk) 11:05, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Compare this to this. Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 11:12, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, that's the issue - in the french one, the infobox contains Arrondissement de Troyes, but we'd need to change that to Arrondissement of Troyes. The issue is how many other things like that would need changing. If we can fix that, great Fritzpoll (talk) 11:15, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Yep Communauté de communes du Pays d'Othe aixois needs delinking, the canton removing the "Canton de" and delinking and shortening the overly long coordinates to probably four digits. Even if the infoboxes were just copied directly this would be of great benefit if you are interested in smaller gnoming tasks rather than "taking on the world" Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 11:17, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

BTW in regards to gnoming have you seen the Maltesers advert with the garden gnomes on the wall!! LOL Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 11:12, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Provided I'm told what to fix, I can fix it - I can possibly work out a heuristic to change de to of, but not sure that would help particularly! And no! What ad? Fritzpoll (talk) 11:18, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

There are five changes:

• Changing Arrondissement de Troyes to Arrondissement of Troyes
• Communauté de communes du Pays d'Othe aixois -needs delinking and shortening to just Pays d'Othe aixois.
• the canton removing the "Canton de" and delinking
• Shortening the overly long coordinates to probably four digits.
• Removing the coordinates at the bottom of the page so they don't feature in double at the top

Thats actually sound more complicated than it needs to be but thats basically it. Even if you copied directly from French wiki without adjustments it would be a progess, I would be willing to help correct although its probably best its done in one edit. I think we should nuke the GEOBOT proposal entirely and forget about that, start a clean slate amd start something anew with gnoming tasks in a more relaxed fashion with no stress or unintended bitching on my part. Give us a chance to forget about the past proposals and start something on a different vein that is manageable with the time that we, and more importantly that you have and that is not overly elaborate a task, one which is semeingly more low key and not a controversial one. Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 11:27, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Ok! Let's have a go. I'll need to request an additional approval for tasks on my bot account, but that shouldn't be problematic once I get going. Fritzpoll (talk) 11:39, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

LOL the Maltesers advert there are these two girls in a garden hiding behind the garden wall and they have placed two gnomes, a male and female engaged in conversation on the top where they are providing the sqeaky voices and they are taunting this geeky looking guy next door who is trying to mow the lawn. LOL Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 11:22, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

hehe Fritzpoll (talk) 11:39, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

When you have moment spare, it might be a good idea to wipe out the original bot reated pages and start something rather more low key in coordination with the new requests on your bot account. Just so everybody is clear, I'd feel a lot happier if we did that and cleared all the pages referring to it, kind of like a stress release. I don't see why the task force couldn't still be used though, evne if only to propose new gnoming cleanup tasks the bot could run and to plan how it could be done. For France you can see what or what hasn't been done hereBlofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 11:48, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

I;ve removed much of the content which bore reference to your bot creating new articles, but I'd appreciate it if you notified the other project members and make any adjustments which you think are necessary, if indeed you intend following up with the gnoming tasks. If you don't feel like you can accomplish even these gnoming tasks, please be open and we'll delete the project framework. Thanks Blofeld of SPECTRE (talk) 13:30, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Aye, I'll look into doing that - I'll do some work on the French commune gnoming this evening, and hopefully slamdunk a request to BRFA later tonight. Chatted to MBisanz about it already Fritzpoll (talk) 13:35, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

I have replied to your query at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_permissions/Rollback#User:Antivenin Antivenin (talk) 09:33, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Nice to see. Granted rollback Fritzpoll (talk) 09:38, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you very much. =D Antivenin (talk) 09:42, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Depends who you think it is - he's tagged now, anyway. Sarcasticidealist (talk) 11:51, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

I assumed it was a Fredrick Day sock again, to be honest. His socks have otherwise been noticeably absent. Fritzpoll (talk) 11:52, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know! Was having problems with the renames the past week. The template is now fixed, and I've renamed the user. =Nichalp «Talk»= 12:01, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Grand - thanks very much for that! :) Fritzpoll (talk) 12:10, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Nutiketaiel (talk) 19:29, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

lol - you're welcome Fritzpoll (talk) 19:30, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for giving me rollback. I have learned from my mistake. :-) iJon (talk) 19:38, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Cool - just be careful with it Fritzpoll (talk) 19:41, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Per your request in IRC, I ran a checkuser comparison between JoeTimko and Wallamoose. In my opinion, the match between the two is conclusive - they are sockpuppets. Raul654 (talk) 23:52, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Many thanks, Raul Fritzpoll (talk) 08:50, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I also filed a checkuser on Wallamoose, hehe..— Dædαlus ^Contribs /_Improve 09:09, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

SO two checkusers, same result. I'd have been worried otherwise, lol :-) Fritzpoll (talk) 09:12, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi how did the coding go? I can't seem to find your BAG proposal? Dr. Blofeld 12:18, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

It's only half done. I'm currently working a contract at a company, which ends today. The job involves a lot of programming, and I had to get something finished by the time I left or I'd have been slaughtered in subsequent references - the code took a back seat, because if I had time to code, I had time to be working on this. E-mail me for more details, but I won't reveal a lot on-wiki. Next week, a better service will be started. Sorry. Fritzpoll (talk) 11:42, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I trust you mate but its followed the same pattern for months that you would do it next week or tomorrow, its come to a point when I find it hard to believe your word. Given the time you;ve spent blocking lemons I thought you'd have made a proposal even if you hadn't sorted the coding yet. I don't doubt for a second you have committments which are far more important than wikipedia, dude I;m surprised you can even access wikipedia at work, I think thats amazing! So I am going to lay off and see if you can do it in your own time. As it is though, I don't think there is a need for a wikiproject even if you were still up for running small tasks and am therefore closing it down. I've notified the members of its closure and that there is a clear reason why it didn't go ahead as planned. Namely this is partly due to the problems with compiling decent data to an acceptable level to create, vile and cynical people like Mick McGee around, problems with bot programming and the committments and restrictions that you have in operating it. I can see you don't really have the time to do it, which I appreciate as wiki can be very time consuming, particularly when your job entails programming too . My dad was a computer operator and programmer and when he got home from work wanted to stay well away from PCs!. I'm still open if you feel up to accomplishing the task in your own time if you mean it, but as I say I'll lay off and quit bothering you on a wiki-subject level but would still be happy to email you and keep in contact as an amigo. Sorry to be a pest, I was just hoping for a way to save time doing monotonous tasks! Now watch out for eggs later tonight! Best Dr. Blofeld (talk) 12:19, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

These past four months have been full of surprises for me - I expected several clear weeks of having nothing to do, and accordingly would intermittently promise to get something done. Then the boss or supervisor (depending on if I was at work or university) would walk in and tell me that I had to do X,Y, and Z, which took up all the free time. Blocking and unblocking lemons is easy, quick work, and means I can step away from the job for a few minutes in a day, and still also feel like I'm contributing here - work is quite small, so they don't have filters on the websites. Perhaps, with hindsight, I should have set myself less restrictive deadlines, but I was worried that I was seeming to fob you guys off. As I say, my work ends today, and I'll just be at the Uni full-time from now on - we'll see if we can get these maintenance tasks going over the next few weeks (all things being equal). Don't worry about interacting with me on-wiki; I won't take it as pestering, especially if you have ideas for more bot tasks Fritzpoll (talk) 12:30, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

OK amigo, I completely believe you that things came up which put you off, I've even seen some of them within the wiki let alone the real world. Rather perhaps you may have over estimated the time you would have to accomplish it. If it was to please us I fully respect this but I also appreciate it that if you had an inkling that something might distract you, that you inform us. We don't need a wiki project to run cleanup errands but I think they are possible tasks to achieve and a work/talk page in the forseeable future might be useful. If you still want to go ahead, then I'll fully support you, but as I say whenever you genuinely have time to do so. If you do have more time in the next few weeks great. The proposal still stands but with no pressure of expectations from a wikiproject. Saludos! Dr. Blofeld (talk) 12:40, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Guys, wht happened ? why such sudden decision to abandon WP:GEOBOT ? :( -- Tinu Cherian - 13:00, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

It is isn't a sudden decision. Its one that gradually became apparent that was difficult to achieve in the circumstances. First of all there was all the hoo-hah at village pump which was enough to put anybody off wanting to create new articles with a bot, then it was partly due to problems with compiling decent data to an acceptable level to create, vile and cynical people like Mick McGee around, problems with bot programming and the committments and restrictions that Fritz has in operating it. We hope the bot can still be used for GEO cleanup tasks in the foreseeable future though Dr. Blofeld (talk) 13:09, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Fritz, I'll keep keeping you in mind. :) Please do not abandon us. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 13:55, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I've just sent you an email. Cheers,—Ëzhiki (Igels Hérissonovich Ïzhakoff-Amursky) • (yo?); 14:17, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Hi. I've just found that UN maps are public domain with Template:PD-UN. Any idea how I could upload district maps of Nepal as at Sarlahi District to wikipedia. I;m not familiar with how to save PDF files and uploaded them to wiki. Could you upload one for me? Dr. Blofeld (talk) 17:54, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Having a look now... Fritzpoll (talk) 17:56, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

There are 75 districts of Nepal. See Image:Nepal districts.png. There should be 75 UN maps of each district and its VDCs. If I could figure out how to save and uplaod them I'd have Nepal nailed! Dr. Blofeld (talk) 18:02, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm just working on the conversion now - I'll upload it if I can get it converted. Keep watching this space... Fritzpoll (talk) 18:07, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Try this link - it might work [19] Fritzpoll (talk) 18:12, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I'll have a go Dr. Blofeld (talk) 18:13, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Any joy? Fritzpoll (talk) 18:16, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Hang on I'll have to retry I forgot to save it as a png file Dr. Blofeld (talk) 18:18, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

It worked, see Image:NepalSarlahiDistrictmap.png. However is there are way I can save it as twice the size. Idealy I want it around 800px standard and then when you click it it goes into full. It does that at present but defaultsize is too small to read. Any thoughts? Actually I might be able to resize it in photoshop. Mmm.Dr. Blofeld (talk) 18:23, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Hang on, I'll see what I can do Fritzpoll (talk) 18:25, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

try this one Fritzpoll (talk) 18:28, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Nope mine is set at 2700px in photoshop which is full and fine but I need it to display around 800px standard -double the size of how that map initially looks now.Dr. Blofeld (talk) 18:28, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

I'll have a look now !Dr. Blofeld (talk) 18:28, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Can't you just change the display size in the articles? Fritzpoll (talk) 18:30, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes but ideally I need it to fit in an infobox and still be able to make it out Dr. Blofeld (talk) 18:32, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Hmm I tried it in the article but it looked ugly in the infobox. The best thing would probably be to create maps highlighting the different VDCS with black or red using a paint package but that will take rather a long time me thinks. It would mean I'd have to create thousands of VDC locator maps which I won't do yet.Dr. Blofeld (talk) 18:44, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Without a doubt though we need to upload the 75 maps of each district likeImage:NepalSarlahiDistrictmap.png for encyclopedic purposes to use in the district articles and perhaps place them in the VDC articles rather than in the infoboxes. Could you help? Dr. Blofeld (talk) 18:46, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

Ideally now we need to upload the 75 district maps of Nepal to here. In due course could you provide me with the reconversion links so I can upload the lot of them for each of the Districts of Nepal. Doesn't have to be done in one go or in one day, a couple at a time (a zone) at a time if you like over the next week or so Dr. Blofeld (talk) 19:09, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

  Done - per your request at WP:PERM. I was really impressed by your appropriate use of good faith vs. vandlism reversions, by the way. Remember to read and apply WP:ROLLBACK if you intend to use it directly. Best wishes Fritzpoll (talk) 13:05, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks so much for your assistance. Eric-Wester (talk) 13:55, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

I Did not vandelize the page in the Joseph Spiess talk article. I was just saying I added a picture. Geez —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.173.88.17 (talk) 18:52, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

I reverted your revert on this one because it was blanked by the only person who had contributed any info in the article, ie: it was a good faith blanking by the article creator. I followed with a speedy request for the same article, under the assumption that since he blanked it, he wants it deleted. Just wanted to explain that. DENNIS BROWN (T) (C) 20:15, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

My bad - thanks for pointing this out Fritzpoll (talk) 22:42, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

User:92.10.73.127‎ is adding ban/block templates to userpages of users who have been banned/blocked, as far as I've been told, only admins may use those templates.— Dædαlus ^Contribs /_Improve 20:20, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

Not necessarily. I am watching the contribs though - thanks for pointing it out Fritzpoll (talk) 22:44, 7 November 2008 (UTC)

The three of you have accused me of "vandalism". Fine, that's your opinion, you can have it. But you cannot have your version of the facts Look at the comments that you three have left me:

When removing text, please specify a reason in the edit summary and discuss edits that are likely to be controversial on the article's talk page. Please do not remove content from pages without explanation, as you did with this edit to Poughkeepsie (city), New York. If you continue to do so, you will be blocked from editing.

Your allegations are provably FALSE. I NEVER FUCKING ONCE MADE AN EDIT WITHOUT EXPLANATION OR SPECIFYING A REASON. What is more, I made this point twice, and you CONTINUED to ignore me.

Is it too much to ask that you follow your own fucking advice and leave edit summarys (not those automated things) and even more importantly, READ the edit summaries of those whom your accusing of vandalism?

I read your edit summary, but it did not provide a substantive reason for the removal of material - I should also point out that my notice to your page did nopt say what you are suggesting it did. My first viewing of your edits to this page came when your edit summaries were simply invective against people who had reverted you previously. If in doubt, open discussion on the article talk pages rather than edit-warring. Best wishes Fritzpoll (talk) 23:30, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Okay, so maybe you didn't start it, but it came across as piling on, after those dicks said the things they did. Anyway, i'm cool now, I just don't like liars. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.234.45.208 (talk) 23:39, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Believe it or not, I can understand the frustration. I just saw you removing content without a reason, and reverted without looking at any back history. I do seriously recommend taking it to the article talk page - what is it you're trying to do? i.e why remove the content? Fritzpoll (talk) 23:41, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi,

I added that paragraph because I thought it might illuminate why Hughes was claiming that Bush does not use profanity. I have heard from other sources, particularly Texas journalists, that while Bush uses obscenity, he is careful to avoid profanity because of the Biblical Commandment against it. Carlson does not seem to be an evangelical, fundamentalist or born-again Christian, and therefore may not know the difference between saying, "God damn it" (which is profanity) and saying "Shit" (which is an obscenity). It is a common misunderstanding; see, e.g., http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/aponline/20000904/aponline220243_000.htm and http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/06/05/business/decency.php, where the headline refers to "profanity" when what actually is at issue is obscenity. The terms may be used interchangeably but such use is erroneous.

Afraid I don't know what you're referring to! I vaguely remember the edit I reverted, but not where. What you missed, if I recall correctly, was making an appropriate citation within the text to back up your assertion. I can help out more if you can refresh my memory. Fritzpoll (talk) 23:44, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for reverting the vandalism to my userpage earlier. It's greatly appreciated! Cheers! Apparition11 (talk) 00:15, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Not a problem!  :) Fritzpoll (talk) 00:16, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

for saving Extraterrestrial life from vandals.--Againme (talk) 18:03, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

There appears to be ongoing difficulty regarding IP user 71.139.23.95 and Ralph Nader-related articles. User appears to be engaged in POV edit-warring, as opposed to adhering to sources. Also, a sock puppet report had been filed. In the interests of maintaining WP:NPOV and benefitting the project I am uncertain how to proceed. Kindly requesting your help, possibly page protection. Thank you, EagleScout18 (talk) 10:13, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

I'm not seeing sufficient evidence of recent vandalism or edit-warring on Ralph Nader to justify page protection. I'm happy to look at any other pages you might be able to point to, but you might achieve a faster response at WP:RFPP if there is ongoing vandalism. I would wait for the result of the sockpuppet report, and we'll handle things from there. Best wishes, Fritzpoll (talk) 10:24, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Fritzpoll, we'll wait and see, EagleScout18 (talk) 18:57, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

My apologies, I just realized the link I needed to give you is Ralph Nader presidential campaign, 2008. You already issued a warning to IP user 71.139.23.95 on his talk page about this, as did another user. Thanks again, EagleScout18 (talk) 18:59, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Would you mind explaining why you're undoing my revisions? 68.37.78.9 (talk) 17:58, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I'd be happy to - can you point me to the reversions I've been making? Fritzpoll (talk) 18:16, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi

I've recently been trying to bring the Cal Schenkel page up to wiki project biog standards, by adding a small gallery of the images he created. But a fair use rationale bot has removed two of the images. I dont know much about images, but I've gone to the image page and indicated why I think the image is being used fairly on the artist's own page. I think it's ok if the image is being used on the page of the graphic artist himself, and its low res. and the work of the artist cant be illustrated in other ways? But I see you've just removed my image of Trout Mask Replica, so I guess I must be doing something wrong. Cal Schenkel is an album sleeve artist and is the artist who created the image for Trout Mask Replica and it's low res?Pamela Gardiner (talk) 18:06, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi there! Right, the only reason for my reversion was because it had been commented out by FairUseBot, and I percieved that to potentially be undoing a legitimate operation. My image policy knowledge is hazy at best. I will therefore point you in the direction of either User:Giggy or in the direction of administrator User:MBisanz who should be able to address your questions adequately. Sorry I can't be of more help, but perhaps they can be! Fritzpoll (talk) 18:15, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

• Thanks for your help. I'll ask them then. Cheers.Pamela Gardiner (talk) 18:22, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Lol - whilst I'm typing this, you can overtake me! Thanks for the barnstar :-) Fritzpoll (talk) 18:28, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

You have reverted my minor edit, to a version that doesn't make sense. The sentence now reads:-
In addition, many other animals have many for the worse, including rabbits and Barbary Sheep, or Aoudads, which have become a serious threat to endemic flora
"many other animals have many for the worse"?? Please explain why
Arjayay (talk) 18:29, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

I think I was trying to revert one piece of vandalism on an article, and inadvertantly moved onto La Palma beforehand. I have reverted myself and restored your correction - sorry for the mistake. Fritzpoll (talk) 18:33, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

No problem - I think the real problem was the previous revert was not taken far enough back.
Arjayay (talk) 18:38, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. :) - Cirt (talk) 12:33, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

And from me too - clearly some at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara is having a bad day... Bencherlite^Talk 12:38, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! YOWUZA Talk 2 me! 17:22, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Super duper? (will notw go and check block log in confusion!) Fritzpoll (talk) 18:34, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I remember now. Not a pleasant chap. You're most welcome Fritzpoll (talk) 18:41, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I have requested a lock for this page but no one seems to be doing anything about this. Wikipedia is currently being targeted by users of www.punknews.org and several pages have already needed to be locked because of it. This should be brought to the attention of several admins. DX927 (talk) 23:13, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I have semi-protected the article per your request, which means that anonymous and newly registered users cannot edit it. Please check to make sure it is an unvandalised version, as I haven't had time to do so. Fritzpoll (talk) 23:15, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. I just happened to be on their site and noticed them bragging about various vandalism and posting screen caps of it is why I knew to sit there and wait for each edit. DX927 (talk) 23:18, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Happy to help. If you can't raise an admin, you can always post a request to WP:RFPP - if you did this and we missed it, collective apologies! Fritzpoll (talk) 23:21, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

There's definitely one up there, this was just vandalism in action that wasn't going to stop so I made sure to let you know about it. They seem to be priding themselves on getting pages locked over there. I don't know how you deal with controlled attacks such as this but perhaps steps should be taken to prevent this from continuing. DX927 (talk) 23:27, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Not a lot we can do - wait for the vandalism and then WP:RBI Fritzpoll (talk) 23:28, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Out of interest, can you tell me where this is being organised from - e-mail me if you'd prefer? Fritzpoll (talk) 23:33, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I've also repaired vandalism on the Tom Gabel article by one of the individuals (User talk:76.31.12.23). I don't think it's "organized" per say, but the individuals are commenters on punknews.org[20]. Mtrolley (talk) 23:38, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I went there and can't see anything....maybe I'm being daft. Fritzpoll (talk) 23:39, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Look at the first comment on this story. That's what they've been doing. First time I noticed it was yesterday I believe, with the Tom Gabel incident. Mtrolley (talk) 23:42, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

It actually started with Max Bemis and Say Anything (band) but yes that's where they're talking about it currently but it's been going on for a while now. DX927 (talk) 23:43, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

I am sorry about the edits to Sean Paul. It was done by my sister when she was in town and I wasn't. I know this isn't an excuse, but I just thought I would at least let you know. Thanks, Jay. Jayharper2009 (talk) 19:22, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Hit random article > history > first editor to get here :)

Thought I'd give a random smile =]

Have a nice day!

Cabe6403 ^{(Talk•Sign!)} 01:23, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I am really, really trying to be productive today, but User:Flewis is reverting everything I do. One time I think he had a good point, but really he is trying to make it clear that whatever I do he can find a reason for reverting. Could you look at my edits over the last half-hour or forty-five minutes and what Flewis is doing to them? I think you can see that he is after me. What's the point of "reforming" if you get treated the same way when you are being good as when you are being bad? 74.234.45.208 (talk) 02:26, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

I think maybe he is trying to trick me into saying bad things to get blocked again. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.234.45.208 (talk) 02:28, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Below, find my response to this on Flewis' page. To sum up, you both need to try to WP:AGF and just steer clear of each other. Fritzpoll (talk) 08:11, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

(cross-posting)

Per the IP's request to my talkpage, I reviewed this situation. I think that the IP was making contributions in good faith, but most of those edits did deserve to be reverted for the reasons given. The only one that seems a little suspect is the removal of the trivia section, which could and should be removed per WP:V - the motivation behind an edit is not always important, provided that edit improves the encyclopedia. In your first revert, Flewis, you indicated that you reverted for unsourced information. The IP could then reasonably be assumed to have learnt, and simply applied this policy to the article. In fact, you'll notice that the next edit to the article actually removed the entire trivia section, and remains unreverted. Perhaps, if possible, you two should steer clear of each other - I know there's been some issues that resulted in the IP being blocked, so other people are watching the contributions. I'll be cross-posting this to a couple of pages Fritzpoll (talk) 08:11, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

In response, I appreciate the fact that the ip is attempting a reform of behaviour, and the reversion of his edits were by no means an reflection of 74.234.45.208 as an editor or a contributor. I've clearly stated the reasons behind my reverts, and mention once again, that I'll keep a close eye on 74.234.45.208 to ensure that s/he no longer engages in harassment or incivility [21][22][23][24]. Fritzpoll, thanks for mediating this issue, and on a separate note thanks for [25] - my usertalk page is in dire need of "watchlisting" due to the large amount of vandalism that passes through. Glad to see someone keeping an eye out --Flewis^(talk) 12:30, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Wasn't attributing blame to anyone for what it's worth - just trying to explain to the IP that you were acting in good faith. I'm amazed you get more vandalism than me! Fritzpoll (talk) 13:11, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Flewis gets vandalism because he seeks it out. His vandalism counter is a magnet for vandals. If a vandal makes an bad edit on a page, it goes away immediately and there is nothing left to prove that he [the vandal] did what he did. But with Flewis' "vandal counter", if a vandal vandalizes his page, then the vandal is rewarded because he gets to see that he is able to force someone else to do something ("ha, ha, I made Flewis change the number", he thinks), and there is a record of the vandal's actions that will be kept forever. It not only works for the vandal, it works for Flewis as well, because he can wear it on his sleeve as a badge of honour that "all these vandals keep attacking me, poor, poor me", yet at the same time, he appears to believe that by employing litotes ("only 64 times thus far") that he comes across as stoic. But of course, the effect is quite the opposite. By the way, I've seen other editors with edit counters, but User:Flewis is unique in that he appears to possess a much less mature attitude than most editors (See this edit summary, where the use of the exclamation point appears to me to indicate either joy or excitement about being able to chalk up another instance of vandalism, or this comment, where he practically sticks his tongue out and says "nanny, nanny, boo, boo" to the vandal). If what he cared about was ending vandalism and not making himself out to look like a martyr, he would take off the edit counter. But he won't, because he craves the sympathy. 70.153.230.165 (talk) 16:00, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

These counters are quite common throughout the project, including some of our most respected editors. I would stop trying to assume people's motivations if I were you - an equally valid contention would be that all editors who display this box are treating vandalism as the contemptible action that it is. Are you planning to steer clear of Flewis, or are there going to be further issues about this? Fritzpoll (talk) 16:10, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Have you ever noticed the resemblance between this and this. Hehe! Count Blofeld 14:47, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Only goes to prove that pub landlords have been around a very long time, lol! Fritzpoll (talk) 15:55, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

LOL. Chuckle chuckle. Its funny he reminds me of an old school teacher of mine. MASSIVE HEAD. Hehe Count Blofeld 16:27, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Some more images of amusement Count Blofeld 21:53, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Haha - hilarious! Fritzpoll (talk) 21:58, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

LOL. Your 3D mapping sounds interesting. I was eventually hoping for something like Microsoft Virtual Earth adapted for the wiki but even a solid 2D map atlas would be a good idea, the Wikimini Atlas is far less developed than it could be. Count Blofeld 22:51, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Can you delete Wikipedia:WikiProject Geography/Bot/Country List/nepal. I've merged it into Village Development Committee (Nepal) Nearly done. Count Blofeld 15:21, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi could you please recreate the contents of this page and all its subpages at my sandbox? ~the editorofthewiki ^{(talk/contribs/editor review)}~ 23:44, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for supporting my successful Rfa! Hope to work with you more in the future!--Aervanath lives in the Orphanage 19:47, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi Fritz. Can you please speak to Mr. IP. He keeps reverting the Clint Eastwood article so it shows deleted images in the text. See here for example where he has removed the free images i have uploaded and replaced them with red links which don't exist. Count Blofeld 19:26, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

design by neurolysis | to add this barnstar to your awards page, simply copy and paste {{subst:User:Neurolysis/THOBS}} and remove this bottom text | if you don't like thankspam, please accept my sincere apologies

Thanks for believing that I was ready for adminship already, and for telling me to go for this RfA, if it wasn't for your final bit, I'd probably still be waiting for the right moment for RfA. :) The Helpful One 22:30, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Congratulations! And it's always a delight to be proven right! Try not to delete the main page (not that it's technically possible anyway, but it's a traditional comment) Fritzpoll (talk) 07:57, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

I gather you didn't have the time afterwards to consider Wikipedia:WikiProject French communes/Status? Also what happened about that Robert Kennedy sister article? Count Blofeld 10:26, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

I've been busy at work, so my on-wiki activity has slumped. I should probably have knocked a template up at the top to warn you - I have a deadline for next Friday, but after that I'm basically on holiday, so might get some time for programming. If you look in my userspace, you'll see I have the old content from the RFK article divided up by conspiracy theory. I'm just trying to track down some sources, but all I can get to practically are journal articles, not textbooks. Any ideas (I remember you saying you were interested in helping, so feel free to hack away at the files in my userspace)  ? I also have some sources for Frasier, but need the time to write them up. I hate theses - so awkward to write up Fritzpoll (talk) 11:05, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes I've noticed you seem to have been quiet of late. Keep the RFK article in mind anyway and take care Count Blofeld 11:24, 28 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I appreciate your indication that you will reconsider. When you have time, please take a look at User:Jayvdb/AA involvement, the unanswered question at the bottom of User_talk:Nishkid64#AA and then Special:Contributions/Samir. --John Vandenberg ^(chat) 11:30, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

I honestly promise to do so and will update my vote as and when I do Fritzpoll (talk) 12:27, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

This is now being covered in more detail at WP:AN#Possible ethnic block voting in ArbCom elections?. --John Vandenberg ^(chat) 08:44, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the time to re-evaluate. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 13:44, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

LOL Count Blofeld 20:07, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

Lol - the hair on his head appears to have slipped underneath his nose! JUst passing through. Hope you're ok - saw your name up at Arbcom - anything serious? Fritzpoll (talk) 21:08, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

How are you? Oh its still the same nonsense with Elonka and PHG related to Central Asian topics. I'v commented once and as I've said I think they've taken the situation completely out of hand and are wasting time in doing so. Admittedly I try to stay well away from anything which doesn't resemble what we are here for. Best Count Blofeld 10:43, 8 December 2008 (UTC)

I thought it was Blofeld himself for a minute there - wearing a fake moustache. Fritzpoll, person of wonderful geographic bots, I've been wondering about this page Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/Places/cambodia. It intrigues me, what is/was it for? I'd like to help, Cambodian geography is one of my favourite topics. To top things off Missing articles was the first Wikiproject that I joined ages ago. What can/should I do with those pages? Cheers, Paxse (talk) 16:57, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Catherine was killed by sex with a horse. This is a historically known fact. Help me put that into the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.56.63.154 (talk) 17:44, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Libel only applies if something is said in deciet that is known to be false by the person who said it. If it's really sensitive, mabye we should give it to Wikinews and have them break the story as a short or something. We at Wikipedia stil have an obligation to state the facts. I think if we don't say it as neutral facts, some biased blog will disclose it soon enough.--Ipatrol (talk) 20:08, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi - it appears this user has chosen to ignore your reverts (and the warnings of others), and is continuing to re-add the same junk data. There was recent trouble with 69.122.210.59 abusing multiple accounts, to add similar data (including plugs for Handley's book), and I wonder if there's a connection? Could this be Handley, back for another round? (I would roll back the new edits myself, but I don't want to be accused of "owning" the articles in question. Even if I did create most of them.) Zephyrad (talk) 04:21, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

I created and have been working on (with some help from others passing through, though not as many people as I would like!) the article Port of Albany-Rensselaer. I noticed you worked on Bristol Harbor and its nomination for GA status. I feel the lack of a large enough number of people working on this port's article has stalled it and would love some feedback or suggestions if you have time to put your thoughts on its talk page. I personally think it could make it to GA status with just a little more help, but I've grown biased I believe!Camelbinky (talk) 22:08, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd love to help - would you mind if I look it over tomorrow morning (I'm on UTC time) - also, drop me a line about anythin specific you want me to focus on? Fritzpoll (talk) 22:54, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

If you don't mind checking for style and consistancy with Wikipedia rules, things like that. I've checked the article against all the GA criteria and that it complies with the manual of style guidelines, but as I said working on an article so much sometimes makes a person blind to areas that may not make sense to others. A second opinion being critical is always appreciated.Camelbinky (talk) 17:30, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Just got back from holiday over the weekend - will attend to this in the morning Fritzpoll (talk) 22:13, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh hi,

I'm a casual wikipedian, and recently I stumbled upon a page that needed a rollback (4-7 vandal edits, pain to revert one by one; maybe I'm just not adequately accustomed to the undo tool?)... So I thought it'd be useful to have something like that. I guess it used to be commonly available some time ago...

You can look at my edits, there should be nothing too indiscriminate there; I usually fix typos and vague or bad expressions to the best of my skill. I typically touch math articles and such. If there's something I should do in turn... mm, I could promise to clean up my user and talk pages if I get the rollback thing >_> not that this should be some kind of bargaining.

k, well, hope you find this request a reasonable one. Good day. --Sigmundur (talk) 19:58, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

   Hello. This time the lovely Sue Barker and Matt Dawson dressed up in a spacesuit from A Question of Sport have come to visit you. Hahah Matt Dawson. Looks like him doesn't it! The Bald One ^{White cat} 22:35, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Haha, yes - these visitors are most delightful, dear Doctor. Fritzpoll (talk) 22:14, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Happy holidays! _David^WS _(contribs) 19:39, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi. I just heard about FritzpollBot (I know, WAY behind the curve here) and but was unable to find a conclusive ending to the discussion. Is it still ongoing? If so, where could I get involved? Thanks, ErikTheBikeMan (talk) 22:40, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi Erik - you can have a look at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/FritzpollBot where a conclusion was reached. The project stalled for a while because I was busy at work, and then a bit poorly. The problem has always been the notability issue: the community were a little ambiguous on whether places were inherently notable, and one of the reasons for pausing was to give them time to come to some consensus on the issue, which they have yet to do (I sense a Village Pump post coming on....). I am happy to create lists of settlements, divided by any particular partition (Like "Lists of settlements in Gloucestershire" or equivalent) with lots of info in a table, but such a request has to be accompanied by reliable sources that I can use. In the absence of this, the centralised project has been removed for the present, until a request is made to me. See the Village Pump in a few minutes from this, and we'll see what chaos I can bring. Fritzpoll (talk) 08:17, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

This should interest you. Comments and suggestions are welcome -- Tinu Cherian - 07:36, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I've responded but my response may surprise you. The Bald One ^{White cat} 11:54, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

It did, actually, but it was a pleasant surprise, dear Doctor. I've been having similar thoughts over the past few weeks. I'm definitely of the mind that what we need to be focussing on for the moment is improving the quality of what we have rather than expanding ourselves to the point where that becomes an impossible task. If you like Frasier, do you want to collaborate on getting it to FA? Fritzpoll (talk) 11:59, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Well I could create a sub stub article for every place in Africa for instance and how long do you think it would take for editors to expand all of them (given the time frame and amount of info available) or how many editors would be remotely interested in them? I guarantee a vast proportion of them would be sitting around unedited for a long long time, hell even stubs on cities in countries like Guinea with 300,000 have remained unedited since like 2004 until I came along. so when we talk about "covering the world" in reality creating hundreds of thousands of one liners empty of content and unlikely all to be expanded for years we are not reality achieving this, rather we are creating vast spaces of emptiness and are kidding ourselves if we think this is covering the world. Most editors who come along would click a few in the categories at random and be quite apalled by the lack of content and evne those who tried to expand them would google search and find nothing but a bunch of computer generated sites showing location only. You have to kind of weigh up the odds, in reason how long will it take editors to attend to articles created and expand them? So for Africa anyway, content I now create has some resourceful information on French wikipedia, Senegal notably, or at least stands a chance of being expanded. If plentiful informtion is available and abundant at present then it is worth creating them. SO in a few days I will be starting and eventually completing Mexico only because I know that they could be fully expanded within minutes with the information we have on them in the "Enciclopedia de Mexico" so while a lot of them will be stubby for a long time at least we know they could be expanded immediately by anybody interested. Hopefully by the time I've finished some countries which have a lot of info at present, more info will be put online for the others. The Bald One ^{White cat} 12:19, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Wow you're not kidding, the Frasier article is extremely lacking compared to what it should be. Most of the article is just a list. Needs large chunks of nicely referenced text. Well make a start on it and I'll be sure to chip in on the way. The Bald One ^{White cat} 12:34, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Ok - my lunch break is over, but I'll make a start on it tonight Fritzpoll (talk) 12:35, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

If I was going to start the Indian ones I'd start them like Andoorkonam. But thats my two cents. Compare this to this. That little bit goes a long way I think The Bald One ^{White cat} 13:48, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Fritz if you could participate in the Indian notice discussion. I've suggested that a bot is used to compile the coordinates of places that exist first. Howveer they seem to be under the impression it would have to be done manually. Could you post some input. Cheers The Bald One ^{White cat} 12:26, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I'll have a look, Blofeld, but I can't guarantee that they aren't right, since spelling and accuracy issues in our usual suspects for geo-coordinates make automation extremely difficult. I actually think that what is being proposed there is an extremely bad idea, and I really wish they'd seek more input for the community at large before trying to dump 200,000 one-line stubs on them when they clearly don't want them Fritzpoll (talk) 13:43, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes indeed, as you can see from my own input on the matter. Well naturally the bot will have to pass BAG anyway. If we could auto generate them like Andoorkonam (bare minimum standard), this would be a better foundation I think. I would like to see India covered well as much as Tinu but if anything I would sort out existing articles first and then aim towards creating them with a bit more flesh as a start. I dare say some of them will be expanded but given the time scale and number of active editors we know most of them will remain untouched for a long time. The Bald One ^{White cat} 16:43, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

I'll be registering severe objections there if it gets that far - thus far, Tinu is just ignoring everything I say to him. Fritzpoll (talk) 16:44, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

One thing though, remember that Sam reviewed the summer proposal as a consensus to create ather than not to create. I guess its the ones who strongly opposed it that leave a more lasting impression. See Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/FritzpollBot. However in hindsight I think some of them had some valid objections in regards to potential problems it might create on a large scale The Bald One ^{White cat} 21:18, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Hi Fritz, I think you have misunderstood me :(. Tell me one suggestion that I have ignored you. Had I not wanted the community consenus and constructive feedback before the big task, I would not have come to WT:INB or never left a msg at each of your talk pages, in the first place. Neither habe I proceed with the task unilateraly but still waiting on the community suggestions on improving this. We are all here to build the encycolpedia with good intentions. Ask Blofeld, how I have improved my initial article stubs ( that are manually created) based on each of his suggestions. See some of the initial articles in {{Thiruvananthapuram district}}. I would say Karavaram has more information User:Fritzpoll/GeoBot/Example. Geo-coordinates is one thing I am working on to improve it.It may not practically to initially build the co-ordinates entirely for the half a million articles but I am here to constructively work with all of you how to improve them. It is sad that the initial proposer of idea is himself blindly opposing the task than trying to help to improve them :( -- Tinu Cherian - 01:27, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

(sigh) It isn't blind opposition - part of it is to do with the consensus Sam made at FritzpollBot. That was that the model described by me in the original proposal (which is not visible on the page, but is in the history) had consensus on the grounds that it rendered the notability issue of creating stubs moot. That was because the proposal said I wouldn't create stubs unless notability was established in some way by gathering many sources together in one place - what I am trying to emphasise to you, and what I have actually offered to do for you, is that creating tabled lists by district and setting up a series of redirects to the list will probably meet this notability argument. What I'm seeing in response to that kind of suggestion (which may not be clear) is an apparent stubborn insistence on the part of others that creating the stubs is automatically acceptable, to the point where the technical details of how to do it are being discussed. It's not necessarily about you - perhaps my messages are lost in the clamour of approval. But I've been there, done that, and found that the consensus was that stubbing was a bad idea.

If you want lists, however, I can do that for you relatively fast and with no extra BRFA on your part - just give me the data to work from. I hope that clears it up - if my tone seemed confrontational earlier, I apologise - but it is frustrating when noone replies to what you feel are legitimate concerns. Fritzpoll (talk) 08:13, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Here is the relevant portion of he consensus that everyone keeps citing as reasons to let your bot go ahead and create stubs:

"Places are not inherently notable". I would say that this is the most convincing argument against running the bot. The community expends quite a bit of effort arguing about notability. It seems to have different meanings to different people. It is important to have standards for notability so that Wikipedia does not devolve into facebook. In this regard, notability is a way that we judge the verifiability of information. I don't think anyone is proposing creating articles about places who's existence is unverifiable. I find that Fritzpoll with the input of the larger community has made a concerted effort to limit the bot to creating articles of places that the community deems notable. With these limitations, the notability argument is moot.

You can't use this to make stubs unless you can show they meet the notability guideline. And there is far from consensus that places do meet that guideline. Fritzpoll (talk) 08:37, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

How do you judge a settlement in India as notable ? Especially when you cannot have the same standards and expectations for places in third world countries as in first world ....You can find the primary census data here. You may need to create an account to access data.I have no problem whether it is you , me or anyone else creating them. I share the dream of Blofled, All I want is places in every part of the world should be on WP. -- Tinu Cherian - 08:51, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

The notability question is not one I can answer - only the communit as a whole can do that. But at present, the concept of inherent notability of locations is not one that has any kind of consensus, I fear. I too, would like to see the whole world covered, but we have to be practical and try to convince others of this. If you come round to my thinking that it probably isn't profitable to ask the community to decide this at this time, then I shall get to work on the list articles Fritzpoll (talk) 10:33, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the cookie :) Though I partly understand your concerns, let us do what is best for Wikipedia :D As far as consensus of the community, Verfiable settlments are inherently notable is the status quo. -- Tinu Cherian - 10:56, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Where did you get that last sentence from? And by that I mean, in what policy/guideline does it appear? Because discussions at the Village Pump have always indicated that the consensus is against inherent notability... Fritzpoll (talk) 10:59, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it is really a question of notability in all fairness with these places intended to be started. It is more an argument of content and article stub resourcefulness and originality in reality. From what I;ve seen a high proportion of these villages have a population of anywhere in between 5,000 and 40,000 people, town population size in Europe which would pass the notability test easily for settlements. The main concern is not whether they are notable to me, the main concern is the result of creating 200,000 sub stubs without full coordinates and even basic demographic details or just article empty of any real content. It says ... is a village in ... district. As of ... population of ..... 200,000 articles will be created like this and the concern is that they don't contain any information to explain why the place is notable, other than existing and population figure. I know I create and have created a lot of stubs with little initial information but population and location and will continue to do, but please note I only do so when I know the article can be expanded very soon and the number of articles we are dealing with is just within management, French communes was pushing it to the max, and that only had 35,000 articles and we are still working hard to build them from sub stubs. Please see Category:Cities, towns and villages in Azerbaijan for example. Is this what we really want with 40 times as many? This is the problem with creating a high number of articles. I fully agree with building wikipedia brick by brick but 200,000 articles is a hell of a lot of articles to deal with, seriously. I'm not disputing that some will be expanded and I would love to see 200,000 fuller articles for sure but I'm thinking within restriction of human editing afterwards on wikipedia and I don't know how helpful one line 200,000 articles with just a population figure may be, certainly withint the next 5 years. Sure as I said people may come across the article and kindly expand it but I guarantee this will be a very small proportion compared to what exists. Therefore my concern is about initial content that needs to have some information to begin with as a solid foundation. Also please note that Sam's decision of consensus was indeed to Fritz's proposal to create meatier stub articles, verigng on start class if possible compiling resources to make the best start possible. Otherwise the decision was to create lists until they can be expanded. Am I right Mr. Poll? The Bald One ^{White cat} 11:42, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Exactly, Dr. B. Fritzpoll (talk) 12:57, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Cool, check out my new map for Porkeri and Eiði. All of the places in the Faore Islands should now be formatted like this. I loved Nordic lands, the houses look like they are made from lego! Actually over the next few months the number of articles I create on places except the remaining Mexico municipalities will be quite low, All of Latin America, Mexico down to Chile needs cleaning up first, especially countries like Colombia, Venezuela and Brazil and don't get me started on Spain, which is diabolical. Countries like Czech Republic, Bulgaria and Cambodia I have in mind to start later but a lot of them are smaller villages and some of the cities and smaller towns elsewhere need cleaning up first! The Bald One ^{White cat} 14:39, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Nice work! If you need any automated cleanup jobs, Christmas is a particularly good time for me! Let me know? Fritzpoll (talk) 15:20, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Well I'm working my way down from US -Mexican border with infobox/maps down to Tierra del Fuego! There are still a large number of Mexican municipalities missing (which actually covers thousands of sq km's most of them) so that will take first priority. Oh I have a stub job to do on China too setting up the districts by province which all have like 500,000 people in them! I know there are people at WP:China expanding them so if I can get that done I can leave it to them to translate from Chinese. I;ve drawn up templates at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mexico/State templates and so far have reached Durango. I did Belize the other day and am about 3/4 through El Salvador. Honduras or Guatemala will be next, most of the facts will be extracted from Dutch wikipedia for Hondruas which has referenced material on them. The most important ones though in terms of size and cleanup will undoubtedly be Colombia and Brazil after Mexico is done. Without a doubt I could use some help with standardising articles for these countries. The sort of crap we have at present are empty articles like San Pablo, Bolívar The Bald One ^{White cat} 15:59, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Sure, I'm a little occupied with another American article that was below par at the moment though, Michael Crichton. I wonder if you can tell which parts of the article I've edited? If you saw the article before you'd know what I mean! Yes I think he was quite special, very very intelligent indeed. See the diff The Bald One ^{White cat} 17:12, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

The Bald One ^{White cat} 17:06, 18 December 2008 (UTC) Takes the biscuit when the articles on just the character Frasier Crane is many times better than the main article. C'mon get editing then! The Bald One ^{White cat} 17:32, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Couple more days to allow final input - you know how destructive one of my clean-ups can be in terms of the original format! Fritzpoll (talk) 18:44, 18 December 2008 (UTC)