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Arbitration Committee marginalising community

At Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Arbitration enforcement 2 the community is being marginalised by the committee.

1. Almost all contributions to the case have been ghettoised on to the talk page.
2. No workshop will take place.
3. No threaded discussions are allowed.

It is ironic that this is taking place on a case which is largely a result of the Committee's own previous actions in the Gamergate, Gender Gap, Gun Contol, Lightbreather and AE1 cases, as well as their severely misjudged de-sysop of Yngvadottir.

We have elections coming up, it is true. But can we hold these people to account? They seem to be a law unto themselves, happy to act outside their competence and jurisdiction, and happy to ignore consensus.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 05:14, 8 November 2015 (UTC).

Nominations are open for 9 out of 15 Committee spots so there's plenty of opportunity for accountability. I've not seen any evidence of Committee members acting in bad faith, even if you or I (or anyone else) happen to disagree with specific outcomes or processes. And as I've a few times now, I encourage anyone who really wants to bring new ideas or approaches to Arbcom to stand for election and see how they go. -- Euryalus (talk) 05:51, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Done All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:23, 8 November 2015 (UTC).

It would be much easier to hold them accountable if they were required to deliberate on-wiki, and I think we'd get more reasonable decisions from a transparent ArbCom. Everyking (talk) 07:38, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, there is a problem with the community having to, in effect, read tea leaves in order to figure out what is happening off-wiki. It is difficult to know which members to re-elect, and which not to re-elect, when so much of the decision-making is presented as a fait accompli, without really knowing which Arbitrator supported or opposed what. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:44, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

I wouldn't frame it as "marginalizing the community" - but it is clear that they are acting in a manner which threatens their already tenuous position as being respected voices representing the community. One would have thought that after the many fiascoes they have presided over and effectuated this past year, they would be learning and trying to get better, but it seems as if they are deliberately trying to get worse! (which, I would have thought to be an impossible challenge, but one that they seem to be quite capable of achieving.) -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 18:12, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

I certainly don't think it is deliberate. It is a result of "panting themselves into a corner" on more than one occasion. And it is not this particular incarnation of the committee alone that has done such things, but "emergency measures" tend to become standard (unthreaded talk-page discussion, for example).

And by increments the divide between Arbs and normal editors is increased: Arbs may make threaded comments on the unthreaded discussions.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:56, 8 November 2015 (UTC).

In my opinion, much of the problem lies in the structure of how the committee works. For example, the email system creates a situation where, simultaneously, the community feels like decisions are being made in secret and the arbs themselves are made to feel besieged. See, for example: [1], [2], [3]. It's mind-boggling. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:13, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

That level of emails needs a systematic approach. I'm not certain though if that is the level the gatekeepers see, or the level actually to make it onto the list. I suspect the former. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:31, 8 November 2015 (UTC).

• Hundreds of emails a day is unthinkable. This is a crisis. The system is beyond broken, and needs to fixed quickly. Jusdafax 06:44, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, User:Jusdafax, it is unthinkable. And luckily that doesn't actually happen (generally not even including the spam that some of us for our sins have to deal with as part of letting legitimate email through). We do get a lot of email but then we are on a number of lists. There's our own list, there's the clerks' list which can be very busy, there's Functionaries which varies a lot - Orangemoody did generate a lot of emails, as have other individual incidents. Checkuser isn't terribly busy but there are several a day, Oversight less. Appeals can be busy and time-consuming and neither Wikipedia:Requests for comment/BASC reform 2014 nor Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Ban appeals reform 2015 came to any conclusion so we are stuck with that until another effort succeeds. So a lot of the email is not about cases. And quite a bit of our own email is trivia - who's going to be around, when something should be done, reminders/nags, requests for help/advice, etc, and email is the most appropriate place for that. Cases certainly take up or should take up most of our time as most require a lot of reading. As for deliberating on-Wiki, I'd say we do a lot of that already. You can usually see us disagreeing over cases during the PD for instance as well as during the case request. Those are real debates. I'm not sure what decisions are made without the Arbs being named - I do recall one where that might have happened but I actually posted it to the appropriate location with the votes. Doug Weller (talk) 13:04, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

A recent example, the functionary changes motion was proposed and voted on in private (although names were given after the decision) where there wasn't especially in this instance a reason to have deliberations secret. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 21:50, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

We could have done that, although it was pretty much a formality. Yunshui announced his retirement from not just ArbCom but Wikipedia to the list. We responded with our regrets and asked him if he wanted to keep the permissions. He said no, to keep it formal we voted on it, and then it was announced. So yes, we could have done it on-Wiki. We weren't trying to keep it a secret. It would take longer on-Wiki and I think take up more of our, email is always faster for something like this, and it wasn't contentious. Personally I'd rather save our time by doing this sort of thing on the list, but I'm open to being persuaded otherwise. It doesn't save a huge amount of time doing it on the list of course, but it all adds up. Doug Weller (talk) 11:32, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

I have a suggestion as to how the Committee could make the community feel less marginalized. There should be a place somewhere on-Wiki, and it doesn't have to be anything conspicuous or subject to endless discussion, where the roll call of off-Wiki votes gets posted after the fact. In other words, there are discussions that the Arbs should best do by email instead of in public, but once a decision is made, there can be a public record of who voted how, and who did not vote. Obviously, there are things on the list that must be treated as confidential, and I can see how it could interfere with frank discussions among Arbs if every initial opinion expressed during discussion was made public, but once a decision has been agreed to, there really isn't anything that is properly private about how members finally voted. Releasing this in public would make the community more trusting of the Committee. And I keep seeing clues that indicate that some Arbs are frustrated by other Arbs not pulling their weight, but the community never finds out the details. If the community sees a record of who fails to vote, that is useful information at election time, and would tend to motivate better functioning of the Committee. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:24, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

• This case has been a botch from the beginning, and is a paradigmatic example of why ArbCom should state the general issues it intends to address at the beginning of a case. It is grossly disrespectful to the community to expect them to work on the matter in the dark, then dismiss their evidence based on undisclosed criteria as to the scope of the case. ArbCom should not be promoting the waste of contributors' time and efforts. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 18:42, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
• The GMO case is also going pretty badly. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:14, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
  • I daren't look. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 17:49, 17 November 2015 (UTC).
    
    • I wish that I never had. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:50, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
• ArbCom faces a whole host of problems with itself. It continues to operate against the community, rather than as a partner with it. Too many times I've seen them violate the policies that the community voted in as a construct on their operations. Too many times I've seen them wantonly ignore their own procedures. Too many times I've seen them operate with impunity in ways that dramatically affect the community. There is no oversight, no control, and no way to correct it. I don't view any given arbitrator as the problem (though there are certain candidates in the current election that terrify me), but rather the system we have put in place as failed. As noted by others above, it is very difficult to evaluate the conduct of any one arbitrator, as so much of what they do is behind the scenes. This makes elections a farce, and a useless tool for reform. The issues ArbCom face are insurmountable and they eschew reform attempts. The community is powerless to do anything to correct the problems. The only way I see us getting out of this quagmire is marginalizing ArbCom. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:40, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Signing the unsigned mass posting from June

Can someone with AWB or some other tool, go around and datestamp the unsigned mass posting [4] made in June 2015 by Another Believer (talk · contribs) ? There are tens or hundreds of WikiProjects that were mass posted to, but all those with automated archival cannot archive that section because it doesn't have a datestamp. This problem can be seen at WT:SPORTS[5], where successive archivebot runs fail to archive this mass posting an event that has since expired. Newer sections have already been archived, yet this message remains [6][7][8]. This occurs in several WikiProjects, so all should have datestamps attached that haven't already had datestamps added or been manually archived or deleted.

-- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 08:23, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

You may try WP:BOTREQUEST as I think would AWB would be terrible since I couldn't see the actual time and date for each post and would have to manually put it in. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:52, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

There's no need to have the actual time and date for each post. You could paste the same timestamp into each of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:19, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

The 3 categories Economies, Economic systems and Economics

Regarding the categories Economies, Economic systems and Economics: the 1st is subcategory of the 2nd, the 2nd is subcategory of the 3rd and the 3rd is subcategory of the 1st. Is this phenomenon acceptable?SoSivr (talk) 17:00, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

It's... economical. Praemonitus (talk) 17:10, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

In terms of graph theory: the category graph of Wikipedia is currently not acyclic.SoSivr (talk) 17:52, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Categorization#Subcategorization (shortcut: WP:SUBCAT) says: "Category chains formed by parent–child relationships should never form closed loops; that is, no category should be contained as a subcategory of one of its own subcategories."

—Wavelength (talk) 19:23, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip, SoSivr. Fixed, by taking Economics out of Economies. (The first is a mode of study or analysis, the second a set of examples, cases, and related lingo. The first is not a subcategory of the second generally.) Please feel free to sharpen your taxonomic claws further by figuring out what the category Society belongs inside or outside of. :) -- econterms (talk) 18:51, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

@Econterms: hi, what exactly do you mean with the expression "belongs inside or outside of"?SoSivr (talk) 10:45, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

By "inside of" I meant "is a page or subcategory in the category of," and by "outside of" I meant "isn't in the category of." Above I took the view that Category:Economics doesn't belong in the Category:Economies. If we look above Category:Economies, to see what it's categorized in, we see it's in Category:Society ... which is plausible ... but Category:Society is a subcategory of Category:Humans and Category:World which look like mistakes to me. (Society isn't just a human or a group of humans, and need not be made up of humans at all, and a society need not be global nor on this or any world.) But do I want to be editing Category:Fundamental categories, or do I want to let people inclined toward philosophy and set theory and linguistics do it? Hmmmm. I invite you to act on it and if not ... maybe I will ... -- econterms (talk) 22:37, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

As far as I know, economics is a science. Economies refers to specific economies or economic sectors, although some economy systems are included too. --NaBUru38 (talk) 19:12, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

100 articles after ten years

In November of 2005, I randomly selected 100 pages for a totally non-scientific survey of article quality. Ten years and 23,000 edits later, I've re-visited those pages to see how they've changed. Twelve of the original 100 have been deleted, while another four have been turned into redirects, leaving 77 articles, 6 disambiguation pages, and one list.

There have been two big success stories in the past decade.

First, sourcing: in November of 2005, only 15% of the articles I examined had sources. Today, footnotes have sprouted all over the place, and 86% of the articles have at least one source of some sort. Not everyone gets the reliable sources policy, though, with one article sourced almost entirely to comic book issues, and another to Baidu Baike.

Second, images with free-content licenses. In 2005, only 24 articles had images, and non-free and unsourced images were almost as common as freely-licensed ones. Today, 57 of the articles are illustrated. The number of free images has increased more than eight-fold, while the number of non-free images has dropped slightly.

Article quality has followed a generally upward trend: of the original articles, 44 were stubs and 20 were one-line substubs. Today, only two of the substubs remain, and almost half of the stubs have been expanded. There seems to be a ceiling to quality, though: in 2005, I did not rank any of the articles as being of "high quality"; today, there still aren't any that I would consider to be of high quality, even by the relaxed standards of 2005. By current standards, none of the original articles ranks above "B-class", and most are rated "C-class" or below.

As I found in the last three times I re-examined these pages, there's no correlation between number of edits and change in quality. The most-edited article (Midfielder, at about 3150 edits since the last check) is largely unchanged in quality, while one of the most-improved (Lichen planus) saw only 429.

And finally, all three Digimon articles in the original set are gone, either deleted or turned into redirects. --Carnildo (talk) 11:15, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Very interesting: thanks for this! ‑‑Yodin^T 13:19, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

• Yes, thanks. Drmies (talk) 15:38, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

I can think of at least two possible interpretations of this result.

1. The average article has gotten better.
2. Ten-year-old articles were better than newer articles in 2005 and this has not changed in 2015. What has changed is that the sample is now 100% ten-year-old articles.

--Guy Macon (talk) 17:07, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

There were no ten-year-old articles in 2005, because Wikipedia wasn't around in 1995. ~ ONUnicorn^{(Talk|Contribs)}problem solving 20:14, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

There were a number of 94-year-old articles in 2005, because a lot of articles were copied here from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica in the early days of Wikipedia. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:15, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

How did you select the original articles? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:43, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

The original articles were selected randomly - I presume by clicking "Random article" 100 times. bd2412 T 20:17, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

I selected the articles by 100 consecutive clicks on "Random page". --Carnildo (talk) 23:35, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

It might not have been you, but I remember someone doing that with the caveat that Rambot articles were skipped. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:55, 13 November 2015 (UTC).

That was someone else -- my set has two Rambot stubs. There were a number of random-article surveys done around the time, most in the ten- to twenty-article range. --Carnildo (talk) 03:28, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Ok, my impression is that a great many old articles lie fallow after creation, so I'd be curious if you did it a second time, with a random mix of old and new articles (given there were less than a million in 2005 it should mean the majority will be new) and compare quality then. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:16, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Same here. I wonder if you took 100 hits of "random article" today and looked back at each one over ten years, most wouldn't exist but it would be interesting. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:50, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Based on my own, unsystematic & occasional review of articles I wrote over 5 years ago (& one or two I wrote as long ago as 2003), except for cosmetic & minor changes many articles never see another edit. I don't know if it's because readers assume the content is complete & correct, or the material requires specialized knowledge or effort to improve upon, or no one has ever read them, let alone cares enough to improve on them. -- llywrch (talk) 22:50, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Most articles seem to be of such specialized interest that they will likely garner few looks and even fewer edits. When selecting random articles, I see very few that I'd want to bother to improve. That comes in part from knowing how difficult it would be just to find useful sources. Praemonitus (talk) 23:13, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

• @Llywrch: I had a look at your article creations from ten years ago. I think they're are being seen, based on this very small sample set of 5: [9][10][11][12][13]. Taking a completely wild and unsupportable statistical extrapolation to cover your 1498 article creations, the articles you have created are being viewed ~16k times a day. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:53, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Hello

Did Haystak really died? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.185.175.84 (talk) 17:34, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Our article says so, but there is no reliable source, Pastebin is not something to trust. And no news sites report it. I will be reverting this until there is better evidence of this. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:35, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Are active editors growing again?

I remember recently seeing a graphic or report showing active editors on the rise again. Can anyone help me find that again? It sure would be nice to shove in the faces of those continuing to talk about our "decline". Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 20:53, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't know what you saw but https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm has lots of data. Activity varies by time of year so comparing the same month in different years is more meaningful than consecutive months. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:07, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, that will do. I remember seeing a graph of this, but I can see from the chart that compared to a year ago, we're seeing an uptick in active editing. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 13:37, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

European hyperlink copyright protection threat to Wikipedia?

According to this Forbes article, an EU plan for copyright reform might make it possible that payment can be exacted from Wikipedia for displaying external links to content of European publishers, something we do in the References sections of countless articles. Is it as bad as it sounds? Do we need to act to keep this from becoming reality?  --Lambiam 11:07, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Looks like a scare piece. If it were to happen, though, publishers would be queueing up to waive their rights, certainly as far as Wikipedia is concerned. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 17:47, 17 November 2015 (UTC).

Two options:

1. We could cheerfully ignore it, Wikipedia servers are located in the US and subject to US law.
2. We could cheerfully accept it, and drop every link to Europe down a black hole.

I'm not sure which would be more cheerful. They're both delightful otpions. Alsee (talk) 05:15, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Cheerfully ignore it. If a country wants to block Wikipedia just let them. Wikipedia is not censored and just referring to something is not using it in a material way.

I think Germany and Portugal already do something like this and Google have just dropped any references to a whole bunch of publishing houses in those countries and they are really hurting but for some reason some publishers are still pushing for this. Copyright has gone mad and I would not totally discount them passing this even if it is totally stupid. Dmcq (talk) 13:54, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

It was Germany and Spain - not Portugal - as described at [14]. The US probably does need to strengthen its law though to allow copyright action where someone uses content from another site by framing it in their own pages rather than having them click to go to the other site. As well as robots.txt completely stopping robots I think the default should be to only allow links and fair use and need a special robots.txt command to say use as a resource is allowed - e.g. where a site says you can use a pictures or scripts from their website in your own pages. The whole copyright business about life plus 70 years just makes me want to destroy the whole business though - it is just wrong. Only trademarks should last that long and they possibly should have stronger protection and I'd count Mickey Mouse as a trademark so other people couldn't set up films with him - but the old cartoons would be out of copyright. Dmcq (talk) 14:31, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

The US is party to the Berne convention, so Wikimedia's servers being located in the US does not automatically render us exempt. The risk is not a matter of countries blocking access to Wikipedia, but of private parties suing Wikimedia, which they can do in US civil courts. Pre-Alphabet Google took the German and Spanish precursors quite seriously; today there is no more Google News in Spain – and not merely as a demonstrative move.  --Lambiam 16:01, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Servers in the US renders us "exempt" in that US courts would throw this claim out on its ass. The US tends to be very aggressive on parts of copyright law, but there are also firmly held limitations. The King of Randomistan could declare that typing his name is copyright infringement, but US courts will ignore that novel interpretation. Google probably delisted Spanish publications 50% to avoid getting sued *in* Spain, and probably 50% because mass-delisting for the country is such an appropriate way to combat that kind of legislation. Stuff like this is why it's good to avoid setting up a multi-national presence. If you have offices in a dozen countries you are subject to lawsuits in a dozen incompatible court systems. Alsee (talk) 22:05, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

I would argue that if this even comes close to passing, we engage with WMF legal to determine what to do, similar to how they engaged with the UK National Portrait Gallery issue. I would guess based on the NPG case that WMF would say "as long as it's valid under US law..." but I can't read their minds. --MASEM (t) 16:46, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Yearly appeal

I got an email this morning, supposedly from Jimmy Wales, asking for a donation.

My email client highlighted it as a possible scam, presumable because links that superficially appeared to go to wikimedia.com actually direct to wikimedia.mkt4477.com.

However, the email addressed me by name and knew how much I donated last year.

On the other hand, there is nothing on the front page about the appeal.

If this is a scam, there needs to be a prominent warning on the front page.

If it isn't a scam there needs to be something obvious on the front page to show that the yearly appeal is in progress. PRL42 (talk) 10:19, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Based on phab:T114010 this seems authentic, but in my opinion a very bad idea likely to deter donors. Does it really appear to go to wikimedia.com or do you mean wikimedia.org? The former redirects but would create extra confusion for donors. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:16, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

It goes to links.wikimedia.mkt4477.com. I have now ascertained that this is, indeed, genuine, because the ultimate donation page has the same initial url :"https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:FundraiserLandingPage&country=GB&uselang=en". (It varies after that because there is referrer information for either email or direct access.) It really should not have been sent unless/until there is front page confirmation that the appeal is taking place. And a far better scheme would be if the email simply asked you to go to wikipedia (without a link) and follow donation links from there. PRL42 (talk) 13:15, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I've left a note on the phab page about this, it seems they've been aware the domain is an issue for a while. Sam Walton (talk) 13:17, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for reporting this, PRL42, and Sam Walton for the ping on phab. It is a priority for us to get this fixed as soon as possible as the full December campaign is just around the corner. If you don't mind my asking, can you tell me what email client you use? Thanks again --CCogdill (WMF) (talk) 13:58, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I use Thunderbird. I presume it's the link that appears as "https://donate.wikimedia.org" that is causing the problem because Thunderbird can see that something that is displaying as a URL does not go (directly) to the displayed site. PRL42 (talk) 16:39, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. We'll follow up, and are hoping to have a fix for the domain issue within a couple of weeks.--CCogdill (WMF) (talk) 11:18, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Eyes at Princeton Theological Seminary please

I need another set of eyes at Princeton Theological Seminary please. An editor representing the Princeton Theological Review began attempting to place non-neutral, conflict of interest edits onto the page. I've reverted twice, notified the editor, and reported the account the UAA. Post this, another new account is now trying to push the same information plus more onto the article. I've reverted twice on that page already, and so I'm walking away from it. Other eyes, please. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:23, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I took a look. Five edits over 18 minutes, two of which were trivial formatting fixes. Setting aside COI concerns, the two links per se look legitimate. The new account did a much better job on NPOV for the link descriptions, if it's the same editor then at least they are improving constructively. I polished it up a bit more. IMO all this needs is for at least one editor to glance in over the next several days. I'll put it on my list for a while, but no promises on how attentive I'll be. Alsee (talk) 18:28, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

hr.wikipedia.org

This very very very very inappropriate behavior there. I was blocked merely because of my nationality. I just cleaned up my talk page and that was a reason for a block. Note that there was a Serbo-Croatian war during the 1990s. But there is no reason for this kind of nationalistic behavior.

As you can see here https://hr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Razgovor_sa_suradnikom:VS6507&action=history this admin user on hr wiki is harassing me because of the nationality. Whom should I ask for help? Alex (talk) 16:38, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

• They deactivated their ArbCom ~5 years ago, so I think your best options are either (a) contact the blocking admin or (b) try to get a message to their version of WP:AN/I. This isn't something we can address here. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:49, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

• Alex, Croatian Wiki has a history of severe dysfunction, and the broader community had to step in with extraordinary steps to revoke abusive admins and their checkuser. The meta discussion can be seen m:Requests_for_comment/2013_issues_on_Croatian_Wikipedia. It's also covered in our article on Croatian Wikipedia. I do not know whether the Croatian administrator community has recovered, or whether it continues to be dysfunctional. The first step is to carefully examine the reason given for your block, carefully examine the Wiki policies to see if there is any remotely reasonable basis for it. If not, then there should be some process in place to request that the block be reviewed by other administrators. If that fails, you probably just have to wait out the block. There is one more possibility, but I do not list it lightly. I do not know what is going on at Croatian wiki. *IF* you do an extensive investigation, *IF* you find substantial solid evidence of systematic abuses, it may be possible to open a new process at meta resembling m:Requests_for_comment/2013_issues_on_Croatian_Wikipedia. That would involve a lot of work, evidence of systematic abuses and dysfunction. Your block is a "local matter" and we can't directly intervene on that. The only outside intervention would be if the adminship of the wiki as a whole were (again) shown to be grossly dysfunctional. Alsee (talk) 19:41, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, I see. I was pretty abused by an admin, Kubura. When I told him that I didn't like the tone he was talking to me, he said that I was violating some nonexistent rule. And when I deleted that "message" I was blocked for a month. Every single edit that I made was monitored for typing mistakes, and when I said I don't want to get any more messages, they didn't care... Alex (talk) 23:18, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Alsee, and for example their "rule" says "no nationality symbols", and their front page has Ustaše logo. I don't know about you, but I think that's horrible. Alex (talk) 23:47, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Are you talking about the little bubble icon with the red and white checkerboard, about 1 cm in diameter at the top of the page? I suppose that readers familiar with Croatia might associate "chequy Argent and Gules" with the Coat of arms of Croatia, but I'm not really sure why you say that it is both the symbol of a fascist movement from the 1930s and 1940s and an nationality symbol. Or perhaps you were talking about some other item on the main page? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:53, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

The problem is that Coat of Arms is a washed out nazi movement symbol, chosen by hard line nationalist Tudjman, who prosecuted more than 200,000 people from Croatia. Vs⁶ ₅⁰⁷ 04:45, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

• Is there a possibility to ask for help or start a discussion of the problems at hr.wikipedia over at meta? I noticed that there's This discussion on Meta about similar problems at a different Wikipedia. Perhaps they could help you there? This is the main page to start discussions on cross-wiki issues. --Jayron32 19:03, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

• Note: this discussion is copied to https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Hard_line_nationalism_on_the_Croatian_Wikipedia Vs⁶ ₅⁰⁷ 04:51, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Notice of RFC regarding List of massacres in Yugoslavia

RFC located here. Quis separabit? 16:38, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

I have taken down the RFC template. The question was extremely unclear and non-neutral. It would easily be challenged and invalidated on that basis as soon as the opposing-side saw it. I pointed the editor to instructions at WP:Writing_requests_for_comment. I invited them to start a new and improved RFC, hopefully with agreement from both sides on what the question would be. P.S. The article is under full protection. Alsee (talk) 18:42, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Redirects belonging to Category:Redirects from synonyms

Many of them should be moved to Category:Redirects from alternative scientific names, since they are not linguistic synonyms but taxonomic synonyms, e.g. Arctus pygmaeus, and the alternative scientific name category refers to taxonomic synonyms. I want to move these redirects to the taxonomic synonym category, but I can't do this without your help because they are too many and I don't have much time, so please help me.--RekishiEJ (talk) 08:53, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

RfC: Should the heavy metal music article include a band image in the infobox

There is an RfC on whether the heavy metal music article should include an image of a metal band in the infobox. Please contribute your views at the RfC located here.OnBeyondZebrax • TALK 15:27, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

What happened to the WikiProject brochures

A lot of work went into creating brochures about various WikiProjects for Wikimania 2014, then they disappeared. I think the brochures should be available to be used by the projects for other promotional occasions - using them only once is a waste of effort. Where are the brochures now and what needs to be done to make them available for reuse by the respective projects? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:53, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

RfC: Anti-Israel Boycott - Roger Waters in Eagles of Death Metal article

Notice of RfC on Eagles of Death Metal talk page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Eagles_of_Death_Metal#RfC:_Anti-Israel_Boycott_-_Roger_Waters  :

Is the conflict between Eagles and Death Metal and and the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) activists (eg Roger Waters) over their performances in Israel, and the band's strong public confrontational statements against BDS and support for Israel relevant. and should be mentioned in the history section? Should the following below be added to this article? prepared by --Moxy (talk) 19:54, 20 November 2015 (UTC) as per Ronreisman previous attempt in wrong location

The band performed at the Barby Club in Tel Aviv, Israel, in spite of pressure from anti-Israeli Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activists. Roger Waters sent a letter to the band which reportedly demanded that they boycott Israel. Hughes publicly commented on Waters' letter at the Tel Aviv concert, saying "I would never boycott a place like this ... You know what I wrote back? Two words ... Never waste your time worrying about what an asshole thinks about you.” Hughes repeated the obvious two-word profanity to the cheering crowd. During the show he said “I’ve never felt more at home in my life”

"Concert review: The Eagles of Death Metal". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved July 12, 2015.

"Paris attacks: Eagles of Death Metal defied pro-Palestine boycott movement and Roger Waters to play Israel". Retrieved November 20, 2015.

Jesse Hughes, Eagles Of Death Metal Tell BDS And Roger Waters Where To Go, Israel July 12th" youtube.

— User:Ronreisman

Previous talks can bee seen above at Talk:Eagles of Death Metal#Threats to bataclan wording and at Talk:Roger Waters#Conflict with VIctims of November 2015 Paris attacks

Ronreisman (talk) 16:54, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I took the liberty of correcting the links in the above post Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:06, 22 November 2015 (UTC)