Mayhem ensues as the mass-deletion of unwatched, unsourced BLPs gets underway, thanks to the enigmatic* Rdm2376 (T-C-L-K-R-D)

For more drama, plus much tearing out of (each other's) hair, see Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#User:Rdm2376 starting mass deletions



(* - yes, it's User:Kevin )

I was already balding before this thread thank you very much.

Exchange of the day:

So...how does this discussion turn out?

A. Kevin is desysopped
B. All articles are script-undeleted
C. The thread dies and nothing more happens for a couple months, whereupon the mess starts again
D. Some combination of the above
E. Progress actually gets made.

Is it too cynical to say that the most likely thing to happen is a mixture of A and B?

Isn't someone supposed to by this person a drink now?

I believe Kelly Martin made that promise.

Maybe we could send him an Applebee's gift card, from the "emergency fund"?

I checked some of these names on Bing and Google, and many of them appear to be complete non-entities - "Summer Abunaja," for example, seems to exist only in the form of a Facebook page, members-only. "Massimo Citi" is a little more substantial, but all the "ghits" in English are scrapes, and the only non-scrape I found in the first few pages of results was this forum which has no posts in it whatsoever. He has a blog, but it's in Italian.

It looks like they lose nothing by deleting these articles except a potential ongoing maintenance headache, in the unlikely event that someone were to actually read one of them.

That doesn't keep some of these people from revealing that they actually have hoarding disorder.

You know those crazy cat ladies who end up in a house filled to the brim with sorted plastic milk containers, tin cans, newspapers, filled catboxes, folded catfood bags, dead rodents, and whatnot, with several feet of paper and catshit underneath? I've seen one of these with my own eyes. In a 3400 sq ft house, the lady was finally reduced to sleeping in one small place near the door, as everyplace else was impassable, or at least not something you dared lay on. It had taken 30 years. She was the original owner.

Well, it's not just crazy old cat ladies. There's some of these people on Wikipedia.

Condemnation and cat trapping leads to much whining. But WP is the Augean stables by comparison.

Kevin, we have another pile over here.....

I'm also the owner of a shiny dome, much to the amusement of my children, who caused it in the first place.

If you simply replaced the word "animal" with "article" in the WP article on Animal hoarding (T-H-L-K-D), you'd have yourself a completely valid WP article:

My rule is that the number of cats should never exceed {square footage of home}/20, so if you live in a home with only 1,000 square feet, you should have no more than 5 cats, though personally I prefer to just have one, two at the most.

Most people would still call me "crazy," regardless.


Well, perhaps it serves you right for giving them all electric razors and cans of depilatory cream for Christmas?

Anyway, I like the cut of your jib, Mr. Kevin. You've got moxy, no question about it! Based on what I've seen, I figure they'll probably tolerate you on WP for maybe 4 or 5 more days, 10 tops.

Can we maybe get more admins involved to do the dirty-work? It's not fair that Spartacus Kevin has to do it all ....

Ooh - cool WikiProject idea

Sadly, you may be right, but there might be enough momentum to keep a precipitate reaction from happening too quickly. In my observation, opposition to anything new or interesting on WP tends to build for 24-48 hours, then, barring new developments, decays along something like an inverse square law. If no actual countervailing action gets taken during that period, the action has a chance of holding.

This, of course, presumes ArbCom doesn't take it up: they're the undead zombies of drama-mongering.

GeorgeWilliamHerbert is asking for at least 2 days for a consensus to emerge on these deletions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...oldid=338906273

This looks like its going to be a fail then. George will likely block Kevin if he does not comply.

Sooooo predictable! At this point, assuming Kevin doesn't wish to go down in the flames of wiki-martyrdom, the ideal solution would be for other admins (I'm looking at you Alison, MzM, MBisanz, NW, and others) to take up the cudgel and start deleting them as well. They could desysop Kevin, but they would never desysop six or seven admins all doing the same thing. Perhaps we'll get a real count of the cahones de laton out there!

Exactly. Same disorder, different name. These are the people you see on Animal Cops. Animals "rescued" to straight to pound where they are euthanized. Viewers pretend not to know this.

I have many, many more (exact number 5th ammendment ). Way outside zoning code However, they are diffused through the house, under the house, in the garage, about the yard under bushes and behind fences, and (in good weather) on roofs. Neighbors don't know they exist, except for the few that collect in the front yard at around the time I'm due home, waiting for homecoming treat (which serves as roll call).

It's not hoarding. It's just that after years of cat rescue, you tend to accumulate what one can politely term "clinkers" that are unadoptable. Feral cats. Cats with chronic nose discharge. The lame, the halt, the half-blind. The black. A cat with a cleft palate, one eye, and a sneer that is is damned ugly, and stinks of anaerobes. Sweet cat, though.

I'm saved by the fact that they're all spayed and neutered, so they don't proliferate. I know them all. They also get the best food and good vet care (I do most myself), so they're in good shape, save for the unfixable problems. I've had most of them for years. In a quiet neighborhood with little traffic and no coyotes, they last and last, alas, alas.

They trigger and ride my Roomba. They bang the door when they want in. They come to me and demand me to turn on the sink. They make things move in the house like I have poletergeists. They ignore the dogs and the dogs ignore them.

They're mostly no problem save for hair and litterbox granules that Roomba takes care of. House is clean. Litter boxes are necessary both inside the house and out, but that's 20 minutes a day. Dry catfood bills are relatively small even with the best brands-- I spend the most money on canned food treats for roll call and the few cats with few teeth.

Waking up in the AM with four cats on you and as many on your spouse is a common experience during cold nights (where I am that's 40 F, enough to make southwestern wusspusses fluff up like porcupines). And these are the socialized ones.

I have a passion for plants, animals, biology. Coral reefs are heaven. Yard is jungle; wouldn't have it any other way.

The animal hoarders are sad. You can find 40-50 animals, in all kinds of poor shape. Blind, sometimes feral, disease ridden, sometimes malnourished, having kittens that die, pneumonia. House has so much ammonia your eyes water. Inbreeding problems. You do what you can, triage, Haitian style. But it's better than the pound would do, especially in these times.

Did you know they're a "hoarders' anonymous?" Volunteers, they go to hoarder homes, help, and ease the psych shock. Most of these hoarder people are NOT schizophrenic. The lady I talked to had been a banker, and is totally compos mentis. Located all her financial and loan documents, no probable, as easily as I would have. She just doen't "see" the problem. Or didn't until they foreclosed on her. She may beat the deadine yet, with a bit of help from a losely organized anarchic relief effort.

Offer remains good, but the individual will have to (a) convince me of his bona fides and (b) come to me in person to collect it.

So long as we see some of E I don't care too much. I think B is in progress now but so long as sources are added it's a net plus. Whatever, the sequel starts tomorrow am (my time).

I like cats, possibly more than dogs - though I waver each way. That said, I have grown up with Burmese cats. People who have had both say that once you have had Burmese nothing else is quite the same. (British style mind you) Two kittens at hom at the moment, absolute terrors.

Ummm, how about some common sense here? People are getting "pointy" all over the place, from the initial experiment to the over reaction by some admins and arbs. And then everyone starts mainlinin' the drama (and yes WR folks like their drama as much as the rest).

So The Kosher identified a very significant problem and attempted (or threatened) a very dramatic way of making it known. He was ... "facilitated" in that endeavor by one of Wikipedia Review's regulars. And then folks took sides. And now it's about who's going to get banned or whether there'll be an ArbCom case or policy this or policy that. It's more important whether some faction wins or looses or some Wiki-enemy or Wiki-friend is in trouble, then whether the actual articles get sourced (if they should be) or deleted (if needed). And Kevin went and tried to do something about which was perhaps drastic, perhaps useful but ... definitely pointy. Very very pointy.
... the poor unsourced and unwatched BLPs have become a simple political football in all this. Take some of the effort you've put into the debate and look up some sources instead.

I know people've taken this as an opportunity to rag on Roger in all this, but somewhere along this line I think he's the only person who made a practical suggestion; to start a Project or a task force that will actually tackle those 50,000 articles. Hand out barnstars, give kudos, make sourcing BLPs a noteworthy recognized endeavor on Wiki. Make it "chain gang labor" for topic banned users who want to work off some time (a totally self serving suggestion). That kind of BLP project just needs a bit of initiative and a few Wiki-celebrities (like perhaps an arbcom or two) and soon you'll have all the wanna-be admin kids doing it for that little bit of Wikipedia street cred that looks good in their RfAs. It's for the wrong reasons, but the outcome's right.

You need both in a way. But let's see some initiative from the "this can be handled with existing procedures" upstanding Wikipedia folks now ... start the "let's source these mothers or delete them where appropriate" project.

As a fine example of not getting the point, that was a great answer.

If Wikipedia was a functional, well managed project, it would have identified the problem many moons ago and evolved a means of dealing with it.

Bleating about the wrong people going about doing it wrong, when the problem has existed for some time and could have been resolved, simply fails to grasp the fundamental problem: Wikipedia has no functional management system capable of resolving its own problems.

I think it is a wonderful testimony that the hated and dysfunctional WR is the source of good ideas to fix things on Wikipedia. Sort of tells you something is missing in the project somewhere - and I don't think it is some software to provide a discussion forum, it is attitude and insight - something that Wikipedia has the wrong sort of the former and as a community completely lacks the latter.

Get thee back to the project, Satan.

Don't you people ever sleep?

Jon

I did take up the cudgel, on my own, with protecting Sarah Palin, remember? And I got slapped around for it. No, I'll wait for the eventual arb case (against Kevin for deletion, against someone else for restoring the articles or blocking him) to see which way things will tip and then decide what to do.

Sign #26 that you may be a Wikipediot:

You think my screen name is "The Kosher".

You're such a ham, Greg.

Well, you chrome-dome characters are wasting your hairless time here. Let's get Alison in Deborah Kerr's dress and one of you in Yul Brynner's red robes (let's have Kevin as the King and MBisanz as his understudy):

NeilN must not realize that Wikipedia Review basically is the Wikipedia community. In fact, there's probably a higher percentage of non-kool-aid-drinkers there than there is here.

Kool aid makes people louder, as any parent can attest.

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_tal...oposed_deletion

"Yes, because "being unreferenced" has no correlation whatsover with "being problematic". --Cyclopiatalk 15:55, 20 January 2010 (UTC) "

"Makes sense, though I still say there is no backlog, and despite the fuss people make about it, this isn't necessarily the Most Important Thing.--Kotniski (talk) 11:46, 20 January 2010 (UTC) "

"So... essentially, what I'm hearing between the lines (somewhere, not just you) is that you are pointing to the general disclaimer. That could probably be the strongest argument here... Let me start a new section... Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 > haneʼ 13:18, 20 January 2010 (UTC)"

"I have seen zero evidence of major BLP problems. Ridernyc (talk) 16:35, 20 January 2010 (UTC)"

Why do we even bother?

He didn't really get too far, did he?

I suggest Anna and the King, with Everyking playing Balat. Ashlee Simpson as Tuptim. Ah, forbidden love.

Of course you know what happens to this pair in the later film.

No, no, I get the point. Wikipedia sucks in many ways. And WR is or can be a source of good ideas to fix things.

But someone still has to get off their ass and fix those BLPs (and yes that's what Kevin was doing - the point is that more people should've tried something as well, and been less pointy about it).



Ah whatever. Have fun being petty.

It's beyond the point of fixing now. Clean the slate, start fresh if the subjects are indeed notable, and source right from the outset. Leaving crap around waiting for the slackjawed retards that comprise the vaunted "Article Rescue Squadron" to get around to them, someday, should not be an option on the table.

There was a third option besides being blocked or having his fingers fall off. No fire, no ice, the world just ends in paperwork and argument.

Actually I suspect after six months of arguing and posturing eventually a quasiconsensus will emerge and most, but not all, such articles will be deleted and new policy written. However, Kevin's personal career as a Wikipedia admin is effectively over; he will be hounded by the enemies he's made until he gives up, which I predict will happen within a year.

Wikipedia policy only advances when someone pulls off a visibly dramatic stunt like this, and usually the stuntpuller must sacrifice himself or herself for the cause. At least Kevin will (hopefully) be able tosleep better knowing that he probably bettered the world for thousands of marginally notable individuals.

To be fair, it takes one mouse click to initiate a batch delete, so his fingers wouldn't have fallen off. His internet connection might have timed out, but his fingers were safe I think.

Yeah, whatever yourself, Radek. In your spare time, check out the five -- count 'em -- five recent threads that I started in the BLP forum. Your encyclopedia is a failure. Always has been, and always will.

Then why do you insist on hanging around if you hate it so much?



He's already given up the bit multiple times in little huffs. This would be nothing new.

Look, I don't disagree with you in that this is a serious problem and you get kudos for making other peoples notice. But getting prissy about the fact that I misspelled your name is in fact petty. If I got my panties in a bunch every time my name got misspelled...

Of course if you're a notable Wikipedia member and an unsourced biography about you is introduced, it will be deleted as vandalism without a fuss by one of the hundreds of administrators who've "got your back".

Luckily it had a Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License attached to it and will live on for eternity in places such as http://www.wikiwak.com/wak/Ira_Matetsky .

Anybody who calls himself "The Kohser" is absolutely begging for a misspelling, even if it does relate to his name.

Yes, I agree. This is why it is best to choose a name that people are able to spell easily, without mixing letters up. For example, "Nerd" is one that is so simple that victim of censorship could probably manage to spell it without making any mistakes.

Not that criticizing people's spelling/grammar is a good way to argue a point, quite a weak one in fact.

I came for a non-profit encyclopedia project. I stayed for the mockery, once I saw that there is no non-profit encyclopedia stuff going on, just hypocrisy.

Sorry if mockery of hypocrites entertains me, but at least I don't do drugs, and I don't watch much reality TV.

You couldn't watch much "Reality TV" without doing drugs …

Jon

I've still got a sysop bit I'm willing to lose. Anyone want to point me at a list of long-term, unreferenced BLPs?

Glad I'm not the only one. There is a short list at User:Rdm2376/Unwatched

I've been prevented from continuing - blocked by Geni

Category:Unreferenced BLPs

expired now, no? - /me has his cup of tea and is trying to figure out what's happening. Was a bit busy here this morning - worth a little look if you're up for a smile ;-)

I think this already has the makings of a nice little press story. Put it together with Greg's comments on the WMF grand plan, it does rather make the management of Wikipedia look something of a liability. Where's WR's PR officer when you need him?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...=User%3ARdm2376

Unsupported by policy? Amazing. I thought the reactionary's problem was precisely that it WAS explicitly supported by policy. Alas, though, they WP:DIDNTLIKEIT.