User talk:HJ Mitchell/Archive 85

Archive 80

←

Archive 83

Archive 84

Archive 85

Archive 86

Archive 87

→

Archive 90

DYK for Project Guardian

 — Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:02, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

DYK for HMS Richmond helicopter crash

 — Crisco 1492 (talk) 12:03, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Rollback

Thank you for your message, please let me know if you notice any mistakes on my behalf. Yamaguchi先生 23:06, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

@Yamaguchi先生: You're welcome. I've seen you around a bit and actioned a few of your AIV reports. I think oyu're doing a pretty good job. Keep it up. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:06, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

DYK update

We have more preps, but are back to preps full and queues empty. Can you promote a prep area? We have until Big Ben strikes twelve. Thanks. Hawkeye7 (talk) 03:04, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I was waiting for another admin to promote prep 5 because two of my articles were in there. Crisco seems to have sorted it now! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:08, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Thefederalist.com

Thank you for unprotecting the article. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 04:55, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

You're welcome. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:11, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Extend PC time for...

...Dentures, Hema Malini, Hey, Cytus, and Chronic fatigue syndrome? --George Ho (talk) 06:37, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks again! I've extended the first four for a year and the last to indef. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:18, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

I don't see extension on Hey; let it go then? --Gh87 in the public computer (talk) 20:24, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Must have missed that one. I've extended it to indef. Best, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:30, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Your Block of Walterruss Comment

Hi HJ,
I noticed your indefinite block of Walterruss (talk · contribs). While I agree that his RfC was very silly and outlandish, don't you think an indefinite block with no email, account creation, or talk page access might have been a bit of an "overkill"? After all, that's usually reserved the the very worst vandals, and even they are usually given one or two warnings before they're indef blocked (and even then, they still usually have talk page/email access). However, it doesn't seem like this user got any chances at all (he wasn't even notified). At the very least, I think it would be fair to grant talk page or email access.
Best Regards,
--Writing Enthusiast ^☎ 02:34, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi, they're pretty obviously a sockpuppet and a troll. No genuinely new editor comes to Wikipedia and straightaway starts an RfC on Jimbo Wales' talk page proposing to get rid of him, much as I'd support such a proposal if we didn't all have more important things to worry about. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 11:34, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

DYK for Rona Fairhead

—HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:05, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Missing credit in Queue 2

The prep builder forgot to add the credit for the Jella Haase hook. Can you add it?--Skr15081997 (talk) 13:01, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Well spotted. Done. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:22, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

July to September 2014 MilHist reviews

		Military history reviewers' award
		By order of the Military History WikiProject coordinators, for your work on the WikiProject's Peer, Good Article, A-Class and Featured Article Candidate reviews for the period July to September 2014, I am delighted to award you this Wikistripe. Without reviewers it would be very difficult for our writers to achieve their goals of creating high quality content, so your efforts are greatly appreciated. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:26, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Macho

I think Mucho Macho Man at TFA may have set a record for drawing anon IP vandals who wanted to insert the word "gay" every three lines. Thanks for blocking that one particularly annoying IP. What is it about horses that draws this sort of nonsense? (Sigh). Montanabw^(talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Any time! I know what TFA day is like! I think I once said it's both a huge honour and a massive pain in the arse. It is interesting that some articles get it worse than others, though, isn't it? Perhaps they think it's funny. Or do they just not realise how easy it is to revert and block them? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:55, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

We got real world shoutouts from the horse though ;-) He tweets and has a facebook page! [1] and [2] Montanabw^(talk) 00:28, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Ha! A horse tweeting! Now I have seen everything! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 11:20, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Yes, and their fans chat with "them" quite a bit. They also "flirt" with each other, notably [3] Beholder (horse) with [4] Goldencents and [5] Princess of Sylmar with [6] Palace Malice. Oh, there is quite the drama in horse land! (LOL!) Montanabw^(talk) 20:24, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

86.218.51.15

I noticed your block of User:86.218.51.15 on en.wikipedia.org. Who could block that ip address on ty.wikipedia.org (if it's not already blocked). It's commenting out pages, see http://ty.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spécial:Contributions/86.218.51.15 Faolin42 (talk) 02:51, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi, you'll have to find an admin on tywiki or go to Meta and ask for help from a steward or a global sysop. m:Steward requests/Global might be your best bet. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:34, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

72.10.156.114 and 24.114.106.217

Hi HJ

Thank you for protecting the Nostradamus article until November. However, the user concerned (who posts both from 72.10.156.114 and 24.114.106.217) is now going completely wild on the associated Talk Page. It's complete chaos there! What seems to be needed is a complete block on both addresses until further notice. Of course, it won't stop him mounting new personal attacks from a new address (he's that wild!), but we can but try. Talk about destructive editing! Any chance of applying a block? Thanks in advance. --PL (talk) 18:51, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi. They're both blocked at the moment. I've just upped them both to a week. We'll have to see if that has any effect. If it doesn't, we can look at longer blocks and/or semi-protection. Best, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:58, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

User rename

Hello. FYI. -- zzuuzz ^(talk) 06:48, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Wonderful. Thanks, Zzuuzz. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:01, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Re: 114.204.202.95

Hey HJ, appreciate the message. I ususally leave them one more warning before heading to AIV, depending on the type of vandalism; sometimes if they realise they're still being watched they disappear without the need for further blocks, which means less work for everyone. Cheers, NiciVampireHeart 08:28, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

Fair enough. I usually just re-block them for longer if it's clearly the same person but perhaps I'm just a cynic! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:03, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 01 October 2014

• From the editor: The Signpost needs your help

• Dispatches: Let's get serious about plagiarism

• News and notes: Wikipedia article published in peer-reviewed journal; Wikipedia in education

• WikiProject report: Animals, farms, forests, USDA? It must be WikiProject Agriculture

• Traffic report: Shanah Tovah

• Featured content: Brothers at War

• Read this Signpost in full
• Single-page
• Unsubscribe
• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:25, 4 October 2014 (UTC)

It's-a me, Mario!

	Mario Emblem
	For being a hero of the List of programs broadcast by Teletoon Retro article. _|/\CKED 14 (talk) 00:37, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! Happy to help. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:45, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Perms

Hello! Recently, I requested permissions for Reviewer and Rollback but they were both denied by you. Could you give me some advice as to how long to wait and/or what to do to request these again? Cheers :) st170e^talk 16:58, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Tell you what, I've given you reviewer. If you come back in a fortnight or so, I'll look at how you're getting on with that and think about giving you rollback. Does that seem reasonable? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:53, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

That's superb, thank you very much! st170e^talk 18:03, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for granting me permission for rollback rights on Wikipedia. Also special thanks for providing me some important links that has provided me vital information about the feature. I will try to make best use of it in an efficient manner. Owais khursheed (talk) 08:17, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

You're welcome. Keep up the good work. As long as you're sensible, you should be fine. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:22, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

"Full protection" means...?

At 20:23, 3 October 2014 you fully protected Thefederalist.com‎. I understand this means it can only be edited by admins, but I'd like some clarification as to what that means. I understand that (a) admins can do housekeeping edits, (b) make edits required by policy (e.g., remove actual BLP vios) or (c) make non-controversial edits requested on the Talk page. But does the admin bit mean an admin is free to (d) work on a protected page as if it were not protected? Andyvphil (talk) 07:09, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi, (d) is definitely out, and even (a) can be controversial. Adminship is about enacting (and sometimes enforcing) consensus and, by extension, policy (which is a codification of policy). Admins shouldn't act unilaterally, and they have to respect full protection like anyone else. So they can make edits requested on the talk page that have consensus or are uncontroversial (eg typo fixes), and they can remove serious policy violations (copyvios, I would say it would have to be a serious BLP violation, vandalism, and other serious issues), but they shouldn't just edit through protection as though it wasn't there, even though they have the technical ability. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:18, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

That was my impression, but then I encountered this edit: [7]. It seems it may be related to the edit war currently going on at List of Wikipedia controversies, though I didn't find out about that until later. There was another one a few days ago on the Neil deGrasse Tyson page, but in that case the admin (Mastcell, iirc) who took sides in the ongoing edit war there by deleting contested material from a fully protected page at least alleged a BLP vio, though I find that contention dubious. But in this case the edit was simply to add scare quotes, which hardly seems to address a "serious BLP violation, vandalism, [or] other serious issue". What do you think? Andyvphil (talk) 16:52, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Ah, yes, here's the MastCell edit, through full protection:[8]. IMHO, the Weekly Standard is perfectly adequate sourcing. I would have preferred it be explicitly credited in the text as the origin for the not terribly incendiary claim (which turned out to be true) that "no evidence exists..." but the fact that it's cited for that claim would seem to obviate any necessity for the edit. Andyvphil (talk) 17:04, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

I can just about excuse MastCell's edit (a statement like that should have unimpeachable sourcing), although I'm sorely tempted to haul the next admin who does that to ArbCom. People are relying far too much on BLP to edit-war over things that aren't libel and it gets on my nerves. Drmies' edit, though, was quite plainly against the letter and the spirit of policy and I've asked him to self-revert (I won't revert it myself because admins edit-warring through full protection makes a mockery of the whole process). HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 17:49, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Dispute resolution?

Hello,

Yesterday I made a request for a temporary semi-protection of Virtual In-Stanity due to chronic disruptive editing by new accounts, which you closed for being a matter you felt would be better handled by dispute resolution? I'm sorry - how is dispute resolution going to put an end to this? The edit "in dispute" was resolved by a consensus made on the main talk page of American Dad!, and a hidden note was posted on every affected article explaining this consensus and that any disagreements can be brought up there. Unless I'm missing something valuable here, I still think this page needs semi-protection, so I would appreciate a small explanation from you on this. Davejohnsan (talk) 14:41, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

The template is a bit silly really (I have to use a template so the bot knows to archive the request), but in essence the issue is a content dispute, not vandalism or other deliberate disruption. Frankly, the whole thing strikes me as a bit daft—I'm sure people could find a middle ground if they tried, rather than just reverting all the time. It's obviously a source of confusion to readers, and semi'ing the article is not going to resolve the confusion; people would just start changing it again when the protection expired, or people would make their ten edits to get autoconfirmed so they could change it. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:02, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Dispute resolution wouldn't necessarily solve this issue, I don't think; multiple IP addresses and accounts (mostly new ones, two of which I suspect are sockpuppets, but that is a totally separate issue that I won't bother mentioning anymore here) are involved in this matter that was resolved by consensus. The episode pages in which I (and any other editors involved in this matter) have made multiple reverts of this type of edit have had a hidden note that I personally wrote to address the matter and to encourage anyone who has an issue with this website's consensus on the matter to discuss it on the appropriate talk page rather than editing an individual episode. Multiple people, no matter how many times I revert and leave a note on their talk pages, continue doing this. Given that this dispute involves me and an unknown number of editors (IP and registered), how exactly am I supposed to curb this problem? Davejohnsan (talk) 18:14, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Dispute resolution in the sense of discussing the issue with transient IPs and accounts probably wouldn't help, but trying to resolve the confusion might. This isn't just some vandal trying to disrupt things fro the lulz, you've got multiple people who genuinely think you're wrong. Imagine if consensus on Wikipedia said the sky was turquoise. You'd have new accounts changing it to blue left, right, and centre. You could, for example, at least acknowledge that it's a point of controversy instead of just insisting that it's part of season 8 and reverting everybody who sees it on their season 7 DVD box set. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:33, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

I revised the hidden note here to put more emphasis on the fact that it is a disputed matter, but I honestly don't know what else to do here. Not sure if I mentioned this before, but the dispute is also acknowledged on American Dad!. I don't want people to think that this matter is set in stone--sometime down the line, a new discussion may be opened and the consensus on this issue may once again be changed--but I wish people would pay attention! Thanks for your time. Davejohnsan (talk) 18:39, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Ever considered an RfB?

Hi HJ,
I've noticed that you do a lot of work on WP:RPE. Since changing user rights is the primary function of a bureaucrat, I've been wondering if you would ever think about filing an RfB. I'm sure you would be a great 'crat. :) --Writing Enthusiast ^☎ 22:42, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Ha! Thank you, WritingEnthusiast, you just made my day! But I'd make a lousy 'crat. I was never interested in user renaming (and 'crats don't do that any more anyway), I don't know anything about bots, and I prefer to !vote at RfA (not that they come around very often these days), so I wouldn't be much use. Besides, I prefer working in the trenches; I'm happier whacking vandals and granting rollback than I ever would be doing 'crat stuff. But thank you for the thought—I do appreciate it! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:10, 6 October 2014 (UTC)

Loeb's (department store)

I am not completely sure what is going on there, they seem to mostly be constructive edits but it concerns me that they seem to all be single purpose accounts and a similar naming habit. So I thought I would leave a note with the recent name violation to have another set of eyes looking at with a bit more powers to investigate. - McMatter ^(talk)/_(contrib) 01:29, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Block and unblock

Thank you for undoing your block. I take it seriously, and will leave it to others to edit the article for at least a few days, though I'll continue to discuss it.Jeppiz (talk) 16:48, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Well, hopefully we'll meet again in pleasanter circumstances. I hope there aren't too many hard feelings. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:54, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

OTRS Userright

Per this, Can I request the OTRS userright be applied to my account please? I work in the permissions queues ocassionally and have answered questions about it in the past. Thanks much! ~ Matthewrbowker ^{Poke me} 20:52, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Certainly. Done. :) HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:01, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you so very much! :) ~ Matthewrbowker ^{Poke me} 21:03, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Jeppiz

Looking again at the edits of Jeppiz I think he did only make 2 actual reverts, and the third series of edits were a new edit, and not a revert. In this context, I think he should probably be unblocked. Under the circumstances, would you object to an unblock? PhilKnight (talk) 16:29, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

I've unblocked. I trust your judgement, and if you think the third wasn't a revert, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt since they don't seem to have a history of edit-warring. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:44, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

No hard feelings at all. I didn't violate any rule, but I most certainly didn't keep as calm as I should have. Feeling a bit embarrassed by it all and will not repeat it. Jeppiz (talk) 21:19, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

another vandal

Hi, HJ - saw where you blocked User talk:Lab2000g for vandalizing American paddlefish, but wasn't sure if you noticed User_talk:69.163.90.6 also vandalized the article and needs to be blocked. Is this behavior normal during a DYK feature, or FA nom? Thank you kindly for catching the 1st vandal. Hope you can do something about the 2nd one as well. Atsme☯^Consult 22:52, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi, they only made one edit, eight hours ago, and that was their only edit for months, so a block wouldn't do any good. A little bit of unwanted attention is to be expected for the top article on DYK. If you get it to FA, you'll get to experience the attention the day's feature article gets on its day in the sun! Hint: call in every favour you're owed from all your Wikipedian friends and get them o watch it like hawks! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:01, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

User block

Do you really think that blocking User talk:66.250.191.193 for a month is enough? I call this user the Brian Thompson Vandal. He started up this nonsense in August. Nyth83 (talk) 23:07, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Well, I guess the obvious answer is we'll see in a month. Their talk page on my watchlist, so if they start again after the block expires, I'll gladly re-block them for longer, but it is a shared IP address, so we should exercise just a little bit of caution. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:13, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Second Opinion

I have a couple User pages I am looking at but not sure if they classify as adverts, can you please provide your opinion User:AaronPugh1 and User:Kaboom Houston. - McMatter ^(talk)/_(contrib) 23:15, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

They're both borderline... My inclination would be to leave them for a few days and see what their owners do—if the creation of those pages turns out to be their one and only edit, we can delete them under U5 (very handy criterion, that! Kudos to whover proposed it!) rather than debate whether they meet G11. Best, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:21, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

DYK for North Stafford Hotel

Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:03, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Cheers, Cas! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:42, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Unblock on hold

Hi, Harry. I have placed on hold an unblock request for a block you placed. The request is at User talk:Sarr X. The editor suddenly became a vandalism-only editor in April, after a previous history of constructive editing, and now he or she is claiming to regret the vandalism, and to wish to return to constructive editing. I am in favour of giving him or her another chance. Any opinion? The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 15:08, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi "James", thanks for the note. I'm soft, and it's easy enough to re-block if necessary, so I've unblocked them. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:12, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. In this situation I normally believe in unblocking. As you say, it's easy to re-block. The editor who uses the pseudonym "JamesBWatson" (talk) 15:15, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Bell hooks

Hello again, HJ. I have a request the page mentioned above is driving my crazy, we have the properly capitalized article redirecting to the incorrect one. Is there a place I can request the two be swapped? - McMatter ^(talk)/_(contrib) 16:09, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

There's WP:RM, but here works just as well. :) HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:15, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

That page has a long history of Talk page discussion about what capitalization should be used in its title. McMatter does not seem to have participated in that discussion and I see no clear consensus on the Talk page in favor of the move. I suggest that changing its capitalization therefore should have been considered potentially controversial, and therefore should not have been done without a formal WP:RM. —BarrelProof (talk) 16:52, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

I do apologize I came in after chasing some vandals and didn't even think to look at the talk page for a discussion on the capitalization of a proper noun. This was completely my fault for assuming. - McMatter ^(talk)/_(contrib) 16:55, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

It's a name is't it? And the lead of the article capitalises it as a proper noun, so it din't seem controversial to me. But there's nothing to stop it being moved back if there's actually a reason for it to be lowercase. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 16:59, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

The author apparently styles her pen name in lowercase, and that usage has been adopted by some (perhaps most) other sources that refer to her. I'm not saying I personally prefer the lowercase; all I'm saying is that there's a lot of history and discussion of that question that can be found in the Talk page history and the article's edit history, so a page move is a controversial action. —BarrelProof (talk) 18:11, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, that's definitely controversial. There was a lot of discussion around the issue, and it had been stable at bell hooks for over six years now. -- Irn (talk) 19:38, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Fair enough; I've self-reverted. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:03, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

User:Go sniff Yvette Fielding

Hi

Can we revoke talk page access on this one as well. The quacking is strong with this one looking at Amortias (T)(C) 21:34, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Done. Connormah (talk) 21:43, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Help on Kurdish Nationalism

Here is the diff between a Canadian-Arabic User and myself on the stated article: [9]

The map was added by an IP, so that further discredits the theory that the map is reliable and that the user, after I reverted the edit, had brought up the issue on my talk page: [10].

Not being an expert on the Kurdish matter, and due to the possible bias of the user due to his Arab origins ], and polarising views on his userpage, I reverted the edit, using Twinkle, AGF, on the article. I am now doubting the reversion I made and I am looking for help pertaining to whether or not I had done the right thing. I would like your view (or you TP Stalkers) on what I should do and whether the image in NPOV.

Additionally, the IP which added it; [11], seems to edit mostly ethnicity-related articles, similar to this article, and after a 'Geolocate, I traced it to Serbia.

Cheers, Luxure (talk) 06:08, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Hmm. I've no idea what to do there for the best; I don't know anything about Kurdish nationalism really. The caption seemed quite neutral in stating that the boundaries were one party's claim so you were probably right to restore it, but beyond that, I don't know. If the editor seems to be causing problems with an ulterior motive, it might be worth asking for more eyes at WP:ANI. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:51, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Range-blocked

Hi HJMitchell,

You’ve range-blocked my main ISP’s IP addresses. I cannot edit my talk page. My account is in good standing and I have not been account-blocked. I’m using my dial-up account on another ISP, from which I’m editing. This, however, is expensive and I don’t intend to make a habit of using this account unnecessarily.

I realise you’ve applied the range-block for a good reason. Can you please exempt my account from the range-block? If you cannot do this, please contact me using my wiki-only e-mail account;(Redacted). The block notice is:

“Your username or IP address has been blocked.

The block was made by HJ Mitchell. The reason given is Block evasion.

   * Start of block: 22:19, 8 October 2014
   * Expiry of block: 22:19, 22 October 2014
   * Intended blockee: 188.29.96.0/20

You can contact HJ Mitchell or another administrator to discuss the block. You cannot use the "email this user" feature unless a valid email address is specified in your account preferences and you have not been blocked from using it. Your current IP address is xxxxx (variable), and the block ID is #5214475. Please include all above details in any queries you make.”

Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 02:53, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Can you please help Baffle gab1978 with this issue? He is a valuable member of the Guild of Copy Editors on Wikipedia, and a most constructive contributor. Thank you, — Cirt (talk) 03:13, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Sorry about that, Baffle gab1978. The rangeblock was aimed at a particularly nasty vandal and serial sockpuppeteer (I spent about an hour last night deleting their obscene vandalism). I've changed the block so that blocked editors can edit their talk pages (though I have a feeling that will mean more obscene vandalism to clean up), and I've granted you IP block exemption, so you should be bale to edit unaffected, but please give that page a read, because it contains some things you should be aware of. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:40, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Much appreciated; thank you. I fully understand the need for these blocks. I'll read the page later tonight. Cheers, Baffle gab1978 (talk) 17:52, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

DYK: Winton Square

Just a courtesy to let you know that I've just reviewed Template:Did you know nominations/Winton Square — looks good to go. —Tom Morris (talk) 20:53, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Tom, much appreciated. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:55, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Out of curiosity how long does it generally take for a DYK to be reviewed? I submitted my first ever DYK (since joining Wikipedia in 2011) on 5 October , and I'm a little nervous as to which way it will go. DYK is new territory for me, so I thought I'd be brave and have finally submit one. Wes Mouse 22:08, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

It an be minutes or weeks. Sometimes somebody will review it quickly for an easy QPQ, sometimes somebody will want to include it in a particular set and review it, and sometimes it ends up on the list of oldest nominations on WT:DYK. If you want to give me a lin I can have a look at for you if you like. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:20, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Ah, I hadn't realised that reviews can be sporadic (for choice of phrase). Here is the link Template:Did you know nominations/Eurovision Young Musicians 1982. Thank you for answering my query and for offering to review too, ever so kind and appreciated. Wes Mouse 22:28, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Hey, that's some nice work you've done there, Wes. I've reviewed it and it and it looks fine to me; it'll probably end up on the main page in a few day or a week. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:57, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the review HJ. I suppose I owe thanks to a vandal too, it was their vandalising of similar articles that got me looking backwards and before I knew it, I had re-written the entire thing. Whack-a-vandal does work after all. Haha. Wes Mouse 23:11, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Ha! A vandal doing us a favour! Just when you think you've seen everything! It's always nice when you stumble across something interesting and you're able to improve it like that—sort of puts paid to the notion that Wikipedia's "finished"! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:16, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

NPA warning

Considering that you are an admin and should know better, I can't be bothered to go through the 1-to-3 sequence of warnings. For this edit you fully deserve the following (despite DTTR). Fram (talk) 18:24, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

You may be blocked from editing without further warning the next time you make personal attacks on other people. Comment on content, not on fellow editors.

I am sure that a thoughtful consideration of the situation will lead to the conclusion that HJ accidentally typed "you're an arsehole" when he intended to type "your recent edits are indistinguishable from the sort of edits one expects from someone who is an arsehole". (It doesn't matter that this does not make sense in the context, there's bound to be a way.) Such trivial errors in wording happen to us all from time to time. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 21:09, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Y'know what, Fram, why don't you fuck off and go and write an article or something instead of engaging in wankery and bullying good-faith contributors on talk pages? Personally, I though "arsehole" was quite a mild response to your repeated refusal to accept that human beings make mistakes and that thy are much more likely to appreciate those mistakes being brought to their attention in a constructive manner. I see your attitude as a direct threat to the retention of good editors who actually contribute to the encyclopaedia when they're not busy being harangued in project space, so I will continue to call a spade a spade until treat other editors with respect (you can exclude me if it makes you fell better). HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:54, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

I have discussed this with some senior editors, and am hearing some strong feedback that DYK continues to be a locus of dispute and disruption just as bad, and in fact worse, than it was a few years ago. Perhaps an arbcom case is needed. Certainly any editors who have been engaged in wankery or bullying related to DYK should expect their behaviour to be reviewed in such an arbcom case, since both wankery and bullying are disruptive by definition. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:22, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

I treat all editors with the respect they deserve. If you would look at what I actually wrote, instead of acting all defensive when you got pinged, you would have noticed that my note on the incorrect previous hook was constructive, but that your reaction to it was ridiculous hyperbole. That you don't like being called out on such faulty reasoning is not the same as a "repeated refsusal to accept that human beings make mistakes", something I never refused to accept. But of course, if you a priori believe that more diligence isn't needed and that it is no problem that errors appear in the queues and the main page with such regularity, then there is a problem and I don't think your work at DYK is helpful, as you don't contribute to a higher quality. Calling diligence and fact-checking "wankery" is a nice illustration of that problematic attitude, and losing your temper when you run out of arguments (rather soon, apparently) doesn't help. If you continue to use personal attacks then you'll have to face the consequences of course, admins are not excepted from the NPA policy. Fram (talk) 04:35, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

I'm not referring to your diligence and fact-checking when using terms like "wankery", but the way you raise your concerns. Your concerns are valid and I share them (the latest two examples I don't think can be blamed on anybody and required more than due diligence to spot, but I entirely agree that they were problematic and should have been pulled), but I find that if you point out somebody's mistake politely and ask them to be me careful in future, you get a much more constructive response. Whereas if you just berate them and tell them they shouldn't be reviewing DYKs, they're only going to get defensive—it's human nature. To give you a real world example, at this year's Wikimania, I spent the conference looking after ~200 volunteers who were helping to keep things running smoothly. Of course the occasional mistake was made, but the conference went without a hitch, largely because of those volunteers; there's no way I could sit here and say that had I dealt with every mistake somebody made the way you deal with errors at DYK. If your tone was more constructive when you raised your concerns, not only would you get a more constructive response, but you would have my full support (and probably that of many other people), and you might actually achieve you stated objective of improving quality control at DYK. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 13:45, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

In my latest pulled hook, I ended my statement with "Please, if you have a hook that is based on a 1876 book and which makes a rather remarkable claim (not impossible, but unlikely nevertheless), go the extra mile and try to find out whether this is still supported in more recent sources." I didn't suggest that people should stop checking or work on something else. I didn't attack any editors. I gave a suggestion on what to do to avoid these things. It was only in response to your rather ill-thought out statements about "This is DYK, not FAC." that I replied more harshly. So no, it doesn't look as if a polite request to be more careful in the future gets a constructive response, at least not from you in that instance. Look, I'm willing to let this just slide in the past, but please recheck what I wrote in my opening post of that section, and compare it with your suggestions on how I should handle this. Could I have reacted differently to your post? Probably, but you could have responded differently to my post as well. Escalation is usually two-sided, but I don't think that claiming that my original statement was not constructive is correct. Fram (talk) 14:05, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

Fine, let's move on and agree to take a more constructive approach in future. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:17, 10 October 2014 (UTC)

The Signpost: 08 October 2014

• In the media: Opposition research firm blocked; Australian bushfires

• Featured content: From a wordless novel to a coat of arms via New York City

• Traffic report: Panic and denial

• Technology report: HHVM is the greatest thing since sliced bread

• Read this Signpost in full
• Single-page
• Unsubscribe
• MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 00:42, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: September 2014

This Month in GLAM – Volume IV, Issue IX, September 2014 Headlines From the team: GLAMout global Africa report: Uganda Museum Austria report: Open Science aboard the MS Wissenschaft in Vienna Belgium report: Wiki Loves Monuments in Belgium & Luxembourg France report: National archives upload Germany report: World Café; GLAM on Tour; Museum für Naturkunde releases 15 million insect items; MS Wissenschaft Italy report: A new Wikipedian in Residence; Lyon Declaration Mexico report: 50 hours of art in Wikipedia Netherlands report: Atlas Ortelius Norway report: The National Library of Oslo Spain report: Edit-a-thon at Biblioteca Nacional; Wiki Loves Monuments Sweden report: From industrial sound to books and libraries UK report: September, a month for the Arts USA report: News from Philadelphia & New York City Special story: Identifying images from Commons found in the wild Open Access report: Open Access Reader; New Topic Page; Open Access File of the Day suspended Calendar: October's GLAM events Read this edition in full • Single-page To assist with preparing the newsletter, please visit the newsroom. Past editions may be viewed here.

Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · Romaine 17:31, 11 October 2014 (UTC)

Pulling hooks

Hello HJ, thanks for handling this. Just a reminder, do be sure to pull the credit template as well, otherwise the nomination/creator ends up with a credit for a hook that didn't run. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:58, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi Nikki, thanks for the note. I'm not used to pulling hooks, but I'll try to remember that for next time! Best, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 01:36, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Viaducts

Hi, about this edit summary - I'm not convinced that the Broadbottom Viaduct is notable enough for its own article, which is why I haven't created one already. Do you think it has notability? Maybe it could redirect to Dinting, as they are similar with lots of shared history. Rcsprinter₁₂₃ (interact) @ 08:22, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi, it's got a relatively long write-up in Biddle (longer than Dinting's, oddly), and it's a listed building. I reckon there's enough for an article based on that (and the Victoria County History might have more, especially since it crosses the county boundary); probably not huge one, but a few paragraphs is still useful to the reader. Most viaducts that old and that big will probably have enough written about them to satisfy WP's notability guidelines. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:46, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

DYK running late

Sorry to be a pest, but if you're online between now and midnight (your time), someone needs to promote a DYK queue. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:14, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Sure, I'll have a look in a moment. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:19, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

Done. I moved all but prep 5 into the queue because they've all been there for roughly 24 hours or more; prep 5 has only had a few hours, so I'll leave it til tomorrow unless somebody gets there first. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:44, 12 October 2014 (UTC)

DYK for Winton Square

Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:03, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 used to be semiprotected indefinitely. On October 5, you raised the protection level to full protection, for a period of 4 days. When it lapsed, you did not restore semiprotection. I'm wondering whether you just forgot to restore the semiprotection after 4 days of protection, or if you actually did intend to reverse the semiprotection and leave the article with no protection at all (which I don't think is a good idea, given the heavy level of edit conflict by numerous editors on the page). If the former, could you please restore the indefinite semiprotection that was on the page? Thanks. —Lowellian (reply) 08:15, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

There is no way to add full protection on top of an existing semi-protection, so all protection is lost when the full protection expires. I've restored the semi, but put an expiry of six months on it because indefinite semi-protection too often lingers for years longer than it's needed. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 11:57, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you. —Lowellian (reply) 19:31, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Page protection

Hi, as you provided the protection could you remove it from my User page please. Looks like things have died down. Amortias (T)(C) 19:34, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

@Amortias: I won't keep it protected against your will, but I'd rather leave it protected—frankly, I think the effort that goes into reverting vandalism to userpages is a drain on resources that should be going towards the mainspace, so I tend to have a hair trigger when it comes to protecting frequently vandalised userpages (including my own) when the need arises. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:50, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Fair enough, I seem to have a particular sock who goes after my page instead of anyone elses (hes seems to have taken my page on at the minute after I picked up a slew of his socks) I see it more as a damage limitation exercise drawing the fire off the main space and more visited editors talkpages. Hes acused me of all sorts of wonderfull things but I get worse at work so it doesnt bother me. Thanks for the heads up though. Amortias (T)(C) 20:59, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Different perspectives, I guess. Anyway, I've unprotected it, and you know where I am if you need it protected again. :) HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:28, 13 October 2014 (UTC)