User talk:Coren/Archives/2011/May

EMBARC

I received a notice on my talk page about this article I just created. The content was sourced from the two listed references, rather than from the listed web site. In fact the web site is about an entirely different subject that just happens to have a coincidental name match. I'm not sure why a copyright issue was raised. Thanks. Regards, RJH (talk) 14:30, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

suppression request

I'm not sure to whom or how to report this but I've recently reverted vandalism on the page The Bean Trees and it contained the full name and place of work of someone. I believe that this should be brought to your attention and, if you feel it warrents it, take action. Thank you. Chris (talk) 00:55, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Done. For the record, asking one of us works though its generally best to email the team at oversight-en-wpwikipedia.org since it's most likely to get a swift response and doesn't attract attention on-wiki. — Coren ^(talk) 01:00, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

recent block

Hello Coren, Is there a recent edit that would clue me in about your recent block of HP? I'm guessing from the response in the log that this must be RHE? I had checked at SPI and didn't see anything. Cheers,
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 04:02, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

You are correct. He was recognized, brought to our attention, and blocked once confirmed — there really isn't any point in making a public case of this in those cases. — Coren ^(talk) 04:09, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I suppose Wiki-addiction is hard to cure.
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► ((⊕)) 04:56, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Just wondering, was it because of the thread on Wikipedia Review? Silverseren^C 05:32, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

I haven't been anywhere near WR in well over a year. Given the level of obsessive-compulsive behavior over there, it often happens that they spot returning editors faster than anyone else when it's someone they are "interested" in, though. Most other people have better things to do than scrutinize contributions of every new user "just in case". — Coren ^(talk) 12:04, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

True, true. Probably though, the person who brought it to your attention first read it on there. Makes me wonder if he would have been found out if they hadn't made a thread about it. Silverseren^C 19:36, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Ah, looks like I was right. John Vandenberg read about it on the thread and did all the rest himself. Silverseren^C 20:17, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Motion 3

Hi Coren, I was reading the Arb/Clarifications page and considered this motion you proposed. I was struck by this wording: "or unsuccessful appeals of this restriction". Did you really intend to introduce the idea of punishing editors for using the only method they are allowed? That seems to presuppose that unsuccessful appeals were ipso facto made frivolously or in bad faith. Franamax (talk) 00:44, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Well, it's taken from the Everyking motion where repeated appeals were definitely more of an issue than they are now. The objective is to encourage dropping the issue entirely until the restriction lapse, but I can see how that can be construed as discouragement from normal appeals — though I doubt it's a serious issue for three months. Certainly, if it ended up being an obstacle I would reword this away. — Coren ^(talk) 01:59, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Any appeal of a sanction that has a lifespan of three months is almost certain to be unsuccessful, because it is inconceivable that enough could change in 2–3 months to make an appeal successful. This provision therefore, at best, has no purpose, and, at worst, is designed to punish any attempt at appeal with a quadrupling of the sanction lifespan. Writing this into the motion is to belch before the deaf. AGK [•] 21:08, 12 May 2011 (UTC)

Minor oddities from the Bot

Two today - Anti change was tagged as a copyvio of http://www.anti-change.com - which consists of a page declaring it has no content (and doesn't - not even words in paper colour). And Gregzilla was tagged as a vio of http://www.gregzilla.com which is a domain for sale page and contains no text relevant to the article other than the name. I've noticed a couple more recently that looked a bit unlikely - text that was only remotely related to that in the article - but I can't remember what they were, Sorry. Just thought I'd better let you know about these. Peridon (talk) 18:33, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Board Elections and ArbCom

Hi Coren. Just one question for you: if you win election onto the Board of Trustees, do you intend to continue on as an Arbitrator? NW (Talk) 04:12, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

It's an interesting question. I've already (briefly) discussed with my colleagues, and nobody seems to think that causes an intrinsic conflict^{Or perhaps not, see below.}, although it's possible the board would feel better if I did not have such an involved position on a project. I wouldn't mind finishing my ArbCom term.

If it turns out to be required, or if the demands of one prevent me from doing a good job on the other, I'd leave the ArbCom seat. The committee isn't short-handed at this time, and I didn't intend to run for a third term anyways. — Coren ^(talk) 04:49, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, OK. I personally think it would be somewhat strange to have you continue on, but I don't think that's your fault—I can't think of any Board member in recent years who has remained a highly active editor on the English Wikipedia. Can you? NW (Talk) 05:38, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I can't, but I wouldn't try to guess where the cause and effect lie. It may simply be that the demands on one's time and energy are just too much and there is no choice to phase out one in order to not do a half-assed job on the other. — Coren ^(talk) 13:23, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

(Put another way, in my years as an Arb I've yet to see a single instance where something the board did had any bearing on the committee's work, or vice-versa. The probability of a conflict seems nil, so the only reason I can think of why someone couldn't do both jobs right is lack of time). — Coren ^(talk) 14:27, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Coren's stint on Arbcom, as well as his ongoing activity as an editor, give him a broad awareness of the day-to-day functioning of the English Wikipedia and a good dose of clue. Empirical observation suggests that he is thereby disqualified from membership on the Board. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 15:32, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

I admit that this is part of the reason why I'm running. We're not in 2003 anymore, and trying to play it like we still are is silly.

I actually agree strongly that outreach to the non-anglo-european world is critical for our ultimate objective; and we need to work in that direction. But the fact that the demographics of editors is changing as the project moves from infancy to maturity shouldn't have come as a surprise — let alone one that seemingly threw the board and sideline pundits in a panicked frenzy!

We need to start thinking quality, reliability, and long term governance. Well, actually, we needed to have started this years ago but better late than never. — Coren ^(talk) 16:02, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Well then I hope you are elected, and if elected that you can have some influence. The common opinion is that the Board may as well be a bunch of wind-up toys for all the real authority they have -- it's Jimbo's project, always will be. (That's not meant as a slight against Jimbo.) But I wish you well, sincerely. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 16:07, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

It turns out that I may have overinterpreted at least one of my colleague's support for running. Obviously, I would resign my committee seat if I get elected and the committee isn't comfortable with my finishing my term. — Coren ^(talk) 18:59, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Looking backwards as a guide for anticipating the future

Do you pull back from the points of view you expressed before ArbCom elections in 2008 here? --Tenmei (talk) 01:51, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

No, but in retrospect it's clear that while ArbCom is the best line of defense, it's not the right platform for lasting change. — Coren ^(talk) 03:43, 16 May 2011 (UTC)

CorenSearchBot whitelist?

While I appreciate why CorenSearchBot can be useful, I must say I am getting pretty sick of its false positive notifications to articles I write (the most recent being Achille Pierre Dionis du Séjour translated from French Wikipedia). Given that we are trying to retain editors these days, I wonder if it might be worthwhile to create a whitelist for contributors who do things like work on short articles or who have demonstrated that they understand copyright issues? The way we treat newly-created articles needs to be handled with extra sensitivity, because new editors often spend a lot of time writing them. When they get threatening messages from other editors, especially bots, it can't be a good thing for their opinion of the project. Let me know your thoughts. Jokestress (talk) 18:18, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

There is: User:CorenSearchBot/allies. Generally, I've only added people there who do regular work that runs into CSBot to avoid it being a maintenance nightmare, but anyone who has demonstrated understanding of how we handle copyright issues is a reasonable addition there. — Coren ^(talk) 18:45, 15 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia mirror

Your bot has tagged Reimerswaal (municipality) as being a potential copyvio of http://www.associatepublisher.com/e/r/re/reimerswaal.htm. That site however appears to be a slightly broken mirror of Wikipedia articles taken from About.com. You probably want to add it to whatever list of mirrors you use. Thryduulf (talk) 07:57, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) While it is a mirror site it is a slow mirror, and so not prone to false positives. Most of what it catches are cut/paste moves which need to be fixed - or as in this case attributed splits. VernoWhitney (talk) 12:38, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Yep. What he said. :-) — Coren ^(talk) 16:34, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Garry Haire

Hi there, CorenSearchBot has just tagged Garry Haire as a copyvio when it's not, just letting you know. Thanks, GiantSnowman 15:50, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

CorenSearchBot bug report: The Suspects

Not even close to being copyvio. Duplicator report: [1]. Cheers, ErikHaugen (talk | contribs) 18:46, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

copyright notice on newly created wikipedia page on the NOAA Arctic Report Card.

The text in question is public domain text that describes the Report Card, from the About section of the Arctic Report Card. It is in the public domain because it belongs to NOAA. I can not see how it violates any copyright to use this text in multiple places. Nancy Soreide, nancy.n.soreide@noaa.gov —Preceding unsigned comment added by Nns (talk • contribs) 21:41, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Don't know where to leave this comment...

... So I'm just going to use your talk page :). You said "any mass action that raises a good faith concern needs to be paused and discussed," I'm intrigued why you would say this, seeing as this matter has been under discussion for months on end already. Do you think that if it's already been discussed to the extent it has and we've decided what to do, we really need to stop every time a new person raises a concern? - Kingpin¹³ (talk) 16:42, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, to a point. I mean, most cases the pause would be just long enough to give an explanation or point at the relevant discussion, but anyone doing any mass change needs to be extra crispy careful about being responsive to concerns. Forging along blindly is poor practice even if the end result ends up being the same. — Coren ^(talk) 22:09, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

BLP and flagged revisions case

I would like to ask you to re-read the comments at the "BLP and flagged revisions" case and reconsider your decision to decline. In particular, I would draw your attention to:

Statement by SlimVirgin

Comment by Sjakkalle

Comment by Eraserhead1

Comment by Guy Macon

...and if you don't re-read anything else, please at least carefully consider the points made in:

Comment by TotientDragooned

Statement by Will Beback

Thanks! Guy Macon (talk) 08:03, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

I did, and I have. I don't believe a case would help solve a problem or prevent a future one. Two admins lost their cool over a volatile issue, there is a stopgap in place to minimize the impact of the underlying dispute until things can be reexamined with cooler heads, and there is no longterm issue to forestall (removing flagged protection from articles because the test has ended is a one time event that will be over soon).

This isn't an issue part of an ongoing pattern, it's two very emotional issues (BLPs and flagged protection) that collided violently. — Coren ^(talk) 16:00, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough. Thanks for your time. Guy Macon (talk) 21:58, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Seriously, Coren, if you can indicate a point where I "lost my cool", I'd appreciate a pointer to it. People say that about me at times, and I honestly don't see it. No profanities, no insults, no attacks ... I've been very careful to keep any anger I might feel over this strictly on my side of the keyboard. I didn't rush through a list of articles in a rage or anything of the sort: I plodded through a list of articles in precisely the same fashion aned roughly the same rate as Wizardman, NuclearWarfare, Dabomb87, JaGa, and Joe Decker did at roughly the same time. Yet, I'm being perceived as a hothead, and I genuinely do not understand why.—Kww(talk) 01:02, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

The West Timorese disambiguation page that I created, is intended to be a separate disambiguation page.

The West Timorese disambiguation page that I created, is intended to be a separate disambiguation page. It is not a copy of another disambiguation page.

I just added an internal link in the Timorese and East Timorese disambiguation pages to the West Timorese disambiguation page I created and vice versa. These are all separate disambiguation pages, but nevertheless are related to each other in some areas, but not in all.

I do not think that I violated any procedure.

Menikure —Preceding undated comment added 00:16, 24 May 2011 (UTC).

My intention was to create a disambiguation page for "West Timorese" - separate from those of the Timorese and East Timorese disambiguation pages. I will be glad if you clarify me further, so no uncertanties on this issue remains and so I do no have any question marks and be 100% sure that I have not (unknowingly) violated something.

Menikure —Preceding undated comment added 00:24, 24 May 2011 (UTC).

Have any suggestions to help me track this down?

I'm trying to track down a possible copyvio at FOUR Score (Coma Scale), claimed by the editor to be in error :

CorenSearchBot is in error: the text is a hyperlink to another site, which has been included as an external link in the article. There are no copyright issues.

I tried clicking on the link, but get a blank page. One possibility is that the link is to an academic article, for which you have access rights, but I do not.

Another possibility is that I didn't do something right. I've provided generally positive feedback to the editor, so I would like to make sure that there really are no copyright issues. Do I need to track down someone with JSTOR rights?--SPhilbrickT 22:16, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

I'll look into it to see if I can dredge something up, but I wouldn't worry overmuch. Pages which return apparent blank content despite having given a search engine hit tends to confuse the bot into giving a much higher rate of false positives (It's a bug, but I haven't managed to reproduce it under controlled conditions). — Coren ^(talk) 23:55, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

No problem. If you got a blank page when you clicked on it, then yes, it's a false positive which you can address someday in the future, or just ignore. If you got actual content, I thought it might be because you had access rights, and I did not. If that were the case, I can track someone else down with access rights and determine whether there is a real problem. I haven't received a response for the editor yet, and I suspect the editor will have access.--SPhilbrickT 13:24, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Bot tagged Blumenthal (surname) as possible copyvio

The web page that Blumenthal (surname) supposedly copies is at dbpedia. Dbpedia say it is "a community effort to extract structured information from Wikipedia and to make this information available on the Web". That being the case, can it be added to the list of sites not considered issues? --Auntof6 (talk) 17:30, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Maybe. Any information that's there which is derived from what they took here is necessarily under an appropriate license, but any changes they may have done might not be. What's important, is which license they use to republish the derived work. I'll look into it once I get home tonight. — Coren ^(talk) 18:17, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

False positive at Norman Davis (academic)

CorenSearchBot flagged this article as a possible copyright violation, despite the report failing to substantiate the bot's actions. Meph^talk 18:44, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

The case of the two Paul Dorians

I need your help with a subject I got involved in... An article was created by some editor named Rainman at the start of this month after a man named Paul Dorian from the US who is a CEO for some company. It showed some notability... namely Dorian being honored by a national magazine on an annual list on 40 people under the age of 40. Yet it just was not enough to keep as an article and was deleted based on wp:too soon by the consensus of two. Myself among others believed it made some good points but we didn't get involved in the discussion. After it was deleted I began checking into the subject and found allot of information on Paul Dorian as a well known Canadian doctor, I assumed it was related but it turned out not to be. According to the policies here I transferred the notable parts of the deleted articles to relevant subject pages and created a new article on the Canadian Doctor Paul Dorian. I used the older article version as a template design to create the new article, yet this led several of the people who deleted the old article to think it was some kind of re-posting of the old article. One particular editor User:Mtking seems to have been involved in this subject since the creation of the other Paul Dorian article. He attempted to get the article on the doctor Paul Dorian speedy deleted, after it was rejected by two separate administrators, he tried to get me and the other creator of the previous article blocked as some kind of puppets and incited his others to help it get done, but was ultimately disproved. I'm asking that you please give User:Mtking as serious warning about his lack of good faith actions, and take a look at the current discussion on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Paul Dorian before they delete this obviously notable article through meat puppet consensus based their personal bias toward its creator. One editor even states that this subject is notable but still wanted it deleted just because of the way it was created. I'm only one person and I need help against people who don't seem to be following any of the policies that I read.NanaRobins (talk) 18:52, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi Coren, the suspicion is NanaRobins is User:Rainman64 who previously brought Mtking to AN/i, where it was determined Rainman64 needs to learn more about policies. This account (NanaRobins) was created a few days after the AN/I incident[2], thus creating Mtking's suspicion due to the similar behavior, edit summaries, etc of a brand new account. I havent dug too deeply into it, but the more I do, I am leaning towards SPI - as well as a belief that neither editor (clarify: nr and rm) is as inexperienced as previously believed. Best, ROBERTMFROMLI | ^TK/_CN 23:01, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

From a student of Modern Convent School (section heading added)

Sir,

I am a student of Modern Convent School and I want you to please pass this page. I am just making this page for other people's need. It will provide information to others in many ways. I just want you to make sure that I am and will not use this page in any offensive manner.

Your's Sincerely, Niharika Bisht — Preceding unsigned comment added by Niharika Bisht (talk • contribs) 19:03, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Help compile Objective Data about the Candidates

Posted to all candidates talk page:

To aid in the fair evaluation of all the candidates, especially those not active on EnWiki, verifiable data about the candidates is being compiled. Anyone is invited to help compile the data since it is all publicly available on-wiki.

But since the people best qualified to help are the candidates themselves, it seems reasonable to ask:

• Which languages do you speak? (voter statement)
• Which projects do you contribute to?
  • For each, when was your first edit?
  • For each, how many total edits? (exact figures not need)
• Which projects are you an admin on?
• Are you a bureaucrat? which projects? when?
• Are you a CheckUser? Which projects? When did you start??
• Are you a steward? If so when were you made one?
• Have you served in a verifiable leadership role on a project? (e.g. Like EnWiki's Founder or Arbcom member)
• Have you served in a verifiable leadership role on at the Chapter or Foundation level? (Trustee, etc)

Are there any objectively verifiable facts that should be included in this guide but aren't?

(Incidentally, this document won't reflect my own personal values or wikipolitical opinions. Ideally it will come to exist outside of my userspace in some neutral, visible location. -- Alecmconroy)

Are you aware that all of those questions (except the vague-ish "leadership role") are answered trivially and in a pretty table format with the SUL tool? E.g.: my numbers.

As for that last question, I've been a member of the English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee since 2009. — Coren ^(talk) 23:46, 31 May 2011 (UTC)