Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests

Arbitration Committee proceedings

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Case requests

Currently, there are no requests for arbitration.

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Open cases

Case name	Links	Evidence due	Prop. Dec. due
Palestine-Israel articles 5	(t) (ev / t) (ws / t) (pd / t)	21 Dec 2024	11 Jan 2025

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Recently closed cases (Past cases)

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Clarification and Amendment requests

Currently, no requests for clarification or amendment are open.

Arbitrator motions

Motion name	Date posted
Arbitrator workflow motions	1 December 2024

The last step of dispute resolution is a request for arbitration. Please review other avenues you should take. If you do not follow any of these routes, it is highly likely that your request will be rejected. If all other steps have failed, and you see no reasonable chance that the matter can be resolved in another manner, you may request that it be decided by the Arbitration Committee.

The procedure for accepting requests is described in the Arbitration policy. If you are going to make a request here, you must be brief and cite supporting diffs. New requests to the top, please. You are required to place a notice on the user talk page of each person you lodge a complaint against.

This is not a page for discussion, and arbitrators may summarily remove discussion without comment.

• Arbitration policy
• Administrator enforcement requested (shortcut WP:RFAr/AER)
• Developer help needed
• Arbitration template
• Wikipedia:Arbitration policy/Precedents

Template

Involved parties

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

If not, then explain why that would be fruitless

Statement by party 1

Please limit your statement to 500 words

Statement by party 2

Please limit your statement to 500 words

Climate change dispute

JonGwynne

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

[1]

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

This is a continuation of an earlier case, and I see no indication that JG has moderated his behaviour since then.

This is not a continuation of another case, but simply another attempt by WMC to silence those who would challenge his extreme POV which undermines the credibility of the wikipedia articles on climate-change. Instead of being an objective discussion of the facts, they are simply IPCC propaganda. --JonGwynne 18:49, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Statement by William M. Connolley

User:JonGwynne already has an arbcomm judgement against him, limiting him to one revert per day. This is helpful, but I'd like to ask for it to be tightened up, based on his totally unhelpful editing pattern. As per Mavs comment [2] I request that this be folded into the case Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/William M. Connolley and Cortonin.

Since his most recent ban (he gets lots of 3RR bans, since he can never accept them [3]), he has:

• deleted useful text from Medieval warm period [4] (nb this *after* SEW and I had settled our differences there)

• re-inserted POV language into LobbyWatch [5]

• re-inserted POV language into Union of Concerned Scientists [6]

• made biased deletions of material from Ross McKitrick [7] on spurious grounds (the ref he leaves to techrev is not peer-rev either)

and thats just recently. I've reverted these, but its a waste of productive time. Despite his earlier arbcomm judgement, he shows no interest in reforming and becoming a NPOV editor: he just keeps pushing POV, which accordingly gets reverted. I believe that he deserves a ban, with some sort of extension clause if he returns after to his POV-pushing again.

(William M. Connolley 17:27, 22 May 2005 (UTC))

Statement by party 2

Actually a handful of the 3RR bans I've gotten have been legitimate and I accepted those without protest. The majority have not - many of which have been the result of outright deception practiced by those whose extreme POVs I challenge here. --JonGwynne 18:46, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

I was simply attempting to remove WMC's persistent efforts to inject long discussions of the IPCC into everything. In this case, the information is not only discussed in detail elsewhere, there is an entire article devoted to the subject (MWP and LIA in IPCC reports) which is referenced the MWP article. Therefore, a massive and unwieldy paragraph in the summary of the article is not only inappropriate but completely redundant. It is simply an attempt by WMC to push his POV. Of course he objects to it and gets hostile in doing so because he cannot support his position with rational argument. WMC's actions are not unusual for a propagandist. --JonGwynne 18:46, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

It isn't POV - it is an accurate and objective description of the organization. They are a far-left group. They take only those positions consistent with far-left idealogy and actively oppose those identified as right-wing. You had the opportunity to demonstrate a single example of them supporting a right-wing cause but failed to do so. As an example, the article on The Nation describes it as a leftist publication. So, not only have you failed to support your position, I have fact and precedent to support mine - which you might have learned if you'd bothered to investigate the issue instead of engaging in your typical knee-jerk reversions. --JonGwynne 18:46, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

See above example. The UCS is also a leftist organization. --JonGwynne 18:46, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

The same could be said of you. You removed material on the grounds that it isn't published and then objected to the removal of your POV material on the same grounds. Why the double-standard? --JonGwynne 18:46, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Why? You haven't been banned for your repeated and unapologetically incivil behavior? --JonGwynne 18:46, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

See comments above. --JonGwynne 18:50, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Statement by auxiliary party

As I initially brought the RfA against William M. Connolley, I object to the merging of that case with this one. Since the start of the first case, WMC has been systematically trying to throw unrelated smoke into the air saying, "Look at that, that guy is worse than me or the same as me." This is serving only as a distraction, and has so far kept the arbitrators from focusing on WMC's negative behavior and violation of numerous Wikipedia policies. I object to adding further distraction, and encourage the arbitrators to focus on the evidence which has already been brought in the case, most of which has not yet been addressed. If the arbitrators decide to hear this case, I recommend it be considered as a separate case for the sake of reasonable focus on both cases. — Cortonin | Talk 19:54, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Indeed. It becomes all the more confusing when WMC engages in exactly the sort of behavior he is protesting in this RfA. Perhaps he should consider filing an RfA against himself. --JonGwynne 20:01, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

User:Jguk

Involved parties

1. User:Slrubenstein
2. User:MPerel (I am involving myself so as to make the statement below in protest of Jguk's actions)

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• 14:18, 22 May 2005

Notified Jguk [8]

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

I have not taken other steps because they would be pointless. Jguk is not merely arguing with editors over a partcular page; he is gong from page to page making the same change everywhere. He does not explain his change on the talk page, and he does not respond to comments on the talk page. I believe that his pattern of behavior does not reflect a conflict on one page that could be mediated, but the crudest form of POV warrioring.

All of this started on the Jesus page, when JimWae changed BC and AD to BCE and CE. Someone reverted him; I reverted back and explained why. A very legnthy debate involving many people ensued. At one point, a couple of people proposed a compromise: use both BCE/CE and BC/AD. I accepted this compromise but Jguk refused, see [[9] (it is from archived talk; the time was 16:10, 14 May 2005 (UTC)).

The situations in question are not over complex issues of wording or content, but the simple issue of: should this particular article use BCE/CE, or CE/AD. This is the kind of dispute that needs arbitration, not mediation.

Based on Jguk's comments on my proposal and in edit summaries, it seems clear that he can conceive of no circumstance under which Wikipedians could use BCE/CE, despite the fact that this is permitted by the style guidelines. Slrubenstein | Talk 15:06, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Statement by party 1

Everyone is well aware of the controversy concerning my proposal. Clearly, the community is divided, but most people disagree with me that BCE and CE should be the NPOV standard. But this is not the issue at hand. Now the question is, are we allowed to use BCE/CE at all? Since I forwarded my proposal, Jguk has been behaving in a very aggressive manner. I am not exactly sure what is happening, but have two theories;

• he is harassing me people he identifies with me (e.g. User: SouthernComfort), looking at articles we have edited and changing BCE to BC and CE to AD
• he is targeting articles of Jewish, Muslim, and Persian content — where BCE and CE are appropriate — and changing BCE to BC and CE to AD

Either way, the effect is to eliminate any usage of BCE/CE at Wikipedia. This violates the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers), which states that "Both the BCE/CE era names and the BC/AD era names are acceptable" (see [10])

Evidence The Bible article has used BCE/CE for a long time. On 23:03, 17 May 2005 I changed the date for the close of the Hebrew Bible canon from 100 CE to 200 CE [11]. Note: I did not change the dating system, I only changed the number. Jayjg disagreed with my change and explained why, ending the disagreement between me and Jayjg. It was at this time, however, that Jguk turned his attention to the Bible article, and changed BCE to BC and CE to AD. He has never explained his changes (all of which are to change BCE to BC and CE to AD) on the Talk: Bible page, although several other editors have explained why the article should use BCE and CE. See this discussion:[12].

• 12:29, 19 May 2005

[13]

• 19:33, 19 May 2005

[14]

• 06:46, 20 May 2005

[15]

• 15:41, 20 May 2005

[16]

• 08:07, 21 May 2005

[17]

• 09:01, 22 May 2005

[18]

He has not limited himself to Jewish topics:

Islam related pages: [19]

User:SouthernComfort has been putting a lot of work into Persia-related artcles. Since Persia/Iran are non-Christian countries, BCE and CE are entirely appropriate. Jguk's actions in my opinion can be interpreted only as a pattern of harassment. He has gone to almost every article User:SouthernComfort has worked on, to change BCE to BC and CE to AD: [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26]

On some articles, there has been the kind of edit-war that occured on the Bible page:

Khuzestan

• 08:16, 22 May 2005

[27]

• 08:42, 22 May 2005

[28]

List of kings of Persia

• 08:43, 22 May 2005

[29]

• 08:14, 22 May 2005

[30]

• 11:46, 19 May 2005

[31]

• 19:23, 28 Feb 2005

[32]

Jguk seems to know something about cricket. But he is not a historian and has expressed no knowledge whatesoever of Judaism and Jewish history, Islam and Islamic history, Persia and Persian history. His POV is that Wikipedia must not use "BCE and CE" and he is imposing his POV on these articles. Aside from POV warring, it is forcing good editors to wast a lot of time. The only solution I can see is banning him from articles on Jewish, Muslim, and Persian-related topics. Slrubenstein | Talk 14:55, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Response to Jguk's comment

Jguk writes, "Slrubenstein recently made a proposal to replace all instances of BC/AD in WP with BCE/CE." This is clearly not so.

My proposal in short, was this (emphasis in original):

I want Wikipedia to accept a general policy that BC ("Before Christ") and AD ("Anno Domini", "In the year of the Lord") represent a Christian Point of View and should be used only when they are appropriate, that is, in the context of expressing or providing an account of a Christian point of view. In other contexts, I argue that they violate our NPOV policy and we should use BCE (Before the Common Era) and CE (Common Era) instead. Slrubenstein | Talk 22:13, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

It is clear that there are places where I think AD and BC must be used. Jguk's statement is just another example of his campaign to misrepresent me.

Be that as it may, the fact that my proposal has not been adopted does not mean that "BCE and CE" are banned from Wikipedia. The style manual permits it, and clearly there must be some places where its use is appropriate. Clearly, the people who have contributed most to articles on Jewish and Persian themes agree that BCE and CE are appropriate in these specific contexts. No one is implimenting a non-existing policy. Many articles already use BCE and CE. It is Jguk who wants to impose a non-existing proposal, that BCE and CE be banned from Wikipedia.

Jguk is either a POV warrior, or harassing me and SouthernComfort.

Statement by party 2

Slrubenstein recently made a proposal to replace all instances of BC/AD in WP with BCE/CE. That proposal failed (and there was a lot of acrimonious discussion surrounding it). Unfortunately a small number of editors do not accept the failure of the proposal and are trying to implement it on a small number of articles. Since I have been at WP, we have followed the rule not to change an article that consistently uses BC/AD notation to BCE/CE notation and vice versa. All I have done is reverted recent changes from BC/AD notation to BCE/CE notation in line with current practice.

I suggest ArbCom reminds Slrubenstein and other users that when a proposed policy has had a full airing and does not reach consensus then it should not be implemented, and all users have the right to revert any such edits on sight.

Kind regards, jguk 16:30, 22 May 2005 (UTC)

Statement by MPerel

When Slrubenstein proposed to make BCE/CE the Wikipedia standard, editors were basically split nearly evenly 73-90 last count. While most editors in general demonstrated a preference for BCE/CE as the academic standard, many of these same editors voted against the proposed policy as they did not want to completely eliminate BC/AD as an option. Those rejecting Slrubenstein's systemwide proposal for the most part were not against BCE/CE, but against making it the only standard. Jguk has interpreted this to mean opposite of what it means, that all dates should now be BC/AD. Even in specific cases where the consensus found it was more NPOV in a particular article to use BCE/CE (see Jesus where a 2/3 majority favored BCE/CE over BC/AD), Jguk refused to allow BCE/CE, even rejecting the widely accepted compromise of BC/BCE incorporating both. He has an obvious hangup about BCE, even refusing to allow "Before the Common Era" as the first definition on the BCE disambig page.[33] I'm not sure jguk needs to be banned from particular articles, but perhaps he should be prohibited from changing BCE/CE to BC/AD since he is clearly on a campaign pushing his personal POV systemwide.

Even though there is no current policy standardizing a preference of one over the other, only a nonbinding style guide that permits both, Jguk has been unilateraly changing BCE/CE to BC/AD systemwide. Here is a sampling since February (only the tip of the iceberg) even predating Slrubenstein's policy proposal:

• Silk Road:[34]
• Bihar:[35]
• Greek Conquests in India:[36]
• Ancient history:[37]
• Zoroaster:[38][39]
• Aryan:[40][41]
• Chandragupta Maurya:[42][43]
• Emperor Wen of Han:[44]
• Portugal:[45]
• Oman:[46][47]
• History of gardening:[48]
• Persians:[49]
• Alexander the Great:[50]
• Musical notation:[51]
• Afrasiab:[52]
• Taoism:[53]
• Ukraine:[54]
• Direct democracy:[55]
• Moses:[56]
• Water clock:[57]
• Ethnic cleansing:[58]
• Diadochi:[59]
• Kings of the Hittites:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kings_of_the_Hittites&diff=0]
• History of the Kurds:[60]
• Minoan civilization:[61]
• Kingdom of Judah:[62]
• Chronology of the Ancient Near East:[63]
• First dynasty of Egypt:[64]
• Hera:[65]
• Native American:[66]
• Diodotus I:[67]
• Apollo:[68]
• Wikipedia:Selected anniversaries/October 7:[69] *I love this one, imposing the Christian calendar on the Hebrew calendar

And more recently:

• Jesus:[70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77][78][79]
• Bible:[80][81][82][83][84][85][86]
• Islam and other religions:[87]
• Parthia:[88][89][90]
• Hamadan Province:[91][92][93]
• Persian Empire:[94][95]
• History of Iran:[96][97]
• Hamadan:[98][99]
• Cyrus II of Persia:[100][101]
• Qom Province:[102][103]
• Darius I of Persia:[104][105]
• List of kings of Persia:[106][107][108][109][110]
• Ahvaz:[111]
• Khuzestan:[112][113]
• Hormozgan:[114][115][116]
• Seleucid dynasty:[117][118]
• Achaemenid dynasty:[119]
• Medes:[120][121][122]
• Sassanid dynasty:[123]
• Template:Arsacid dynasty:[124][125][126]

Statement by RickK

When Slrubenstein discovered that his attempt to force a mass reversion of BE to BCE and AD to CE had failed, and was losing the vote he himself called, he decided to unilaterally go around making changes to articles anyway. User:Sunray and User:SouthernComfort are his accomplices in this practice. They are trying to make the claim that all articles about non-Christian subject matter must be BCE, and are using the disingenuous, but false, contention that the changes should be made because that was what the original authors of the articles they changed originally wrote. Perusing the article histories of the articles proves that such is not the case. When Jguk reverted their changes, they began a round-robin revert war with him, and when that failed, because Violetriga joined in with Jguk to prevent this attempt at violating the vote on the subject, they decided to write this RfAr against Jguk. This is bogus, they, in fact, should have an arbcomm ruling against them for making changes without support. RickK 22:26, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (0/0/0/1)

• I await a response from Jguk. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 15:08, 2005 May 22 (UTC)

Noah Peters

I have already wrote a lengthy case and cited evidence, but you closed the case when I did not have the time. I wish for it to be re-opened and a decision to be made.

See:

• Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Noah_Peters
• Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration/Noah_Peters/Evidence
• User:Apollomelos/Virginia_Vandals

Thank you. Apollomelos 04:48, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (2/1/0/1)

• Isn't he already hardbanned? Ambi 10:32, 15 May 2005 (UTC)
  • The point of the case was to investigate the hardban and possibly lift it. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 19:24, 2005 May 17 (UTC)
• Accept reopening of the old case - there is evidence to be considered now. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 19:24, 2005 May 17 (UTC)
  • What is the point of reopening the case when the evidence concerns how he's still a problem, and not why he's reformed? I see no reason to even consider lifting the hard-ban. Ambi 09:31, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
• Accept ➥the Epopt 20:04, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
• Reject. I agree with Ambi. Unless Noah Peters chooses to present evidence for us to consider, the hardban should stand. Apollomelos' evidence will be useful if that should happen, as it stands there is no need for us to look at the case - unless Noah wants to actively pursue an appeal, the ban can simply remain as is. -- sannse (talk) 20:29, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

Cantus

Involved parties

• Cantus
• Netoholic

Netoholic is bringing this case against Cantus, on charges that he's failed repeatedly to abide by a previous ruling against him, continues to revert war, fails to gain consensus before making widespread changes, has performed vandalism, has misused anonymous proxies to bypass restrictions placed on him, fails to input edit summaries (particularly when his edits represent major changes), and is generally a persistent disruption to this project.

Confirmation that all parties are aware of the request

• Cantus - notified on Talk page
• Netoholic - I am aware. -- Netoholic @ 08:05, 2005 May 14 (UTC)

• I'll notify netoholic's mentors too. Kim Bruning 09:26, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
• I've seen it. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 14:54, 2005 May 14 (UTC)

Confirmation that other steps in dispute resolution have been tried

• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Cantus (Aug 2004 case)
  • How is this qualified as a step in a resolution to this "dispute"? —Cantus…☎ 08:15, May 14, 2005 (UTC)
• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Cantus vs. Guanaco#Remedies (Nov 2004 case)
  • How is this qualified as a step in a resolution to this "dispute"? —Cantus…☎ 08:15, May 14, 2005 (UTC)
• request on his talk to use edit summaries (which Cantus blanked immediately)
  • I was blanking all messages, not just yours, because I was leaving the project. —Cantus…☎ 08:15, May 14, 2005 (UTC)

Statement by Netoholic

While I don't look forward to or enjoy bringing this case, I feel it is necessary in the best interests of the project's editors. I would say "the project", but frankly it is the constant stress and rework required where Cantus is concerned which is the most damaging aspect. This user has learned nothing since his previous Arbitration involvement.

• Cantus has broken his revert parole on numberous occasions and has been given blocks of various lengths (Block log). These do absolutely noting to help him avoid the problems leading up to revert wars. After a block, his usual first actions are to re-revert each and every change. Please note this recent report where hs is shown to have broken the parole four times in one day [127]

• Wherever Cantus is in disagreement over a page, "slow revert wars" often start. No meaningful dialogue is happening, but Cantus persists in reverting at the rate of about once a day.
  • Terri Schiavo - May 9 to 14 - insertion of a particular template and bit of text. [128], [129], [130], [131]
  • Template:Europe - Mar 10 to May 11 - over a seemingly minor bit of formatting. [132], [133], [134], [135], [136], [137], [138], [139]

• When blocked, or to avoid breaking his parole, Cantus has employed anonymous proxies to evade detection. For example, the histories of "Developed country" and "Template:Europe" show IP addresses which are reverting to Cantus' preferred version. In Jan 2005, Cantus employed anon proxies to edit war with Gzornenplatz [140].
  • 200.83.181.18 (talk · contribs) and 220.110.164.82 (talk · contribs) have recently been used to perform edits which revert directly to Cantus' prefered versions.

• Cantus fails frequently to submit edit summaries (contribs). Many of these represent reverts or major changes which were not noted.

• On May 8/9, Cantus made a change to a very commonly used template (see Template talk:Infobox Biography#Death information). Before gathering further opinion, he implemented that change. At first, the change was made just to the template, but that broke all the articles. After User:PRiis fixed the template back, Cantus reverted the template to his version, and proceeded to make an alteration to about 250 articles without leaving edit summaries. This was all done before even 24 hours had passed since he first made his proposal.

• Cantus vandalized User:Netoholic's user page [141]

• Cantus' user page (as of today) has a misleading message indicating he is no longer with the project [142], but this is far from the truth.

I ask the Arbitrators to accept this case so that his status can be corrected as necessary. I also ask that an immediate injunction be placed, banning Cantus from editing any pages except his user space and pages related to this case. -- Netoholic @ 08:05, 2005 May 14 (UTC)

To Ambi

I'm intentionally limiting my evidence to occurences after the last Arbitration case involving him. The patterns are the same as noted twice before in Arb cases, so I'm not sure what sort of further dispute resolution is recommended by you. -- Netoholic @ 09:19, 2005 May 14 (UTC)

Statement by party 2

Ok, so now that you've been blocked from editing the Wikipedia and Template namespace, you feel so shitty that you want everybody else to suffer from your same punishment? I mean, bringing stuff from four months ago as evidence and declaring previous ArbCom rulings as steps in dispute resolution? This is all really sad, and I await for the arbitrators' quick dismissal of this baseless request. —Cantus…☎ 08:33, May 14, 2005 (UTC)

Arbitrators' opinions on hearing this matter (2/1/1/0)

• Reject. Please pursue other avenues of dispute resolution first - most of these are either not recent (and thus have been dealt with by prior cases) or are too minor to stand on their own. Ambi 08:16, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
• This could be a dispute of substance. Before accepting or rejecting, I'd like to hear the opinion of Netoholic's mentors on whether it seems not a bad idea. Cantus should also note that Netoholic is not presently restricted in the manner described - David Gerard 11:01, 14 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Accept. Note that Cantus has violated his revert parole again and is currently on a 24 hour block (username and IP) - David Gerard 08:44, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
• Recuse for obvious reasons. -- Grunt 🇪🇺 14:51, 2005 May 14 (UTC)
• Accept. -- sannse (talk) 20:18, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
• Recuse, due to my current involvement as Netoholic's mentor. →Raul654 22:42, May 22, 2005 (UTC)

Requests for Clarification

If you need to clarify the precise meaning of a previous decision of the Arbitration Committee, your request should go here.

Wikipedia:Meta-templates considered harmful

In Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Netoholic 2#Meta-templates issue referred to developers, it was decided that the page would be referred to the developer committee, who woould presumably decide if we need a guideline to this effect. Please tell me what steps have been taken by the ArbCom to satisfy this ruling. A link to a Meta page or mailing list post would be appreciated. -- Netoholic @ 03:19, 2005 May 10 (UTC)

• The developers have made it clear to my satisfaction that template:sisterproject is harmful. Move the contents to the other templates and delete template:sisterproject. →Raul654 21:08, May 18, 2005 (UTC)
  • Could you show the rest of us this so we can make informed decisions? The only examples I have seen deal with editing popular templates. So it was my understanding that preventing editing on popular templates (meta or not - it makes little difference) would solve the major issue (flushing the cache of every page the template is used on). The only remaining issue is the per template query each time a page those templates are displayed on (again, meta or not) is saved. That is not a big issue, as far as I can tell, and the same issue applies to any page that has multiple templates (once again, meta or not). --mav 18:35, 19 May 2005 (UTC)

• It does appear Netoholic was 100% technically correct. Jamesday's opinion on metatemplates was pretty clear: at least in MediaWiki 1.4, they create noticeable server load all by themselves. WP:VFD was recently switched from templates-in-templates format because that page alone, generating one and a half megabytes of uncacheable HTML every time the page was accessed by a logged-in user, was creating noticeable load on the server. See Tim Starling's mailing list post on the subject, and most of Wikipedia talk:Votes for deletion/May 2005 Part One. The real technical solution, of course, is to stop templates in templates from working at all; I'm now asking if there's any reason not to make this so - David Gerard 19:20, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Granted, this will make some templates stop working, but really, calling templates within templates was always a kludge and more "clever" than helpful. Most instances are easily solved by creating one or more additional similar templates and splitting the workload. It's usually trivial to keep "look and feel" from drifting after a split. -- Netoholic @ 19:32, 2005 May 17 (UTC)
    • Discussion appears to be in progress on wikitech-l; see thread asking about this on wikitech-l - David Gerard 20:45, 17 May 2005 (UTC)
• If Tim and Jamesday are agreed, then that's close enough to "the developer committee" for me. -- sannse (talk) 21:16, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
  • Yep. I mean, this isn't something the arbcom can actually rule on per se - it's one of those things where if the devs say it's a serious problem, sensible people should act accordingly and minimise the use of templates-in-templates. We can't really declare it's now policy, because it's really in the class of good sense. Perhaps a rewrite of Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates emphasising their statements on the matter. And noting that if people really love their metatemplates (which they do), then the really effective course of action would be to hack on MediaWiki so as to make them less of a horrible performance hit. I can see why they're a really neat idea, but ... - David Gerard 22:33, 18 May 2005 (UTC)
    • I've now amended Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates to emphasise the technical angle, and added a note on the talk page to the effect that technical realities aren't really amenable to votes. But they might be amenable to thought, design and MediaWiki coding - David Gerard 23:15, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

CheeseDreams

It has been suggested [143], [144] that User:The Rev of Bru is yet another sockpuppet of User:CheeseDreams which seems to have reactivated (they both have the same POV and act in similar ways). Would it be possible for this to be confirmed please? --G Rutter 14:40, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

• I'd already received email on this from someone whose judgement I basically trust, and if they can substantiate it enough that a third party would go "yup" I'll block the offender myself. CheckUser doesn't show anything positive - they use the same ISP, but it's one of the largest broadband ISPs in Britain and changes people's IPs regularly, so that really says nothing at all. But we're aware of this one and keeping an eye on it - David Gerard 19:55, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

Whilst they share some points of view, there are some subtle differences. I do not think they are the same person. See also the comments CheeseDreams left on User talk:The Rev of Bru. There are also areas where there have been differences, which I would not expect of sockpuppets (such as The Rev of Bru's insistence on the CE/BCE notation system compared with CheeseDreams having to explain it - even to the extent of putting at the top of a page what CE/BCE notation was for those unfamiliar with it). I'm afraid Mr Rubenstein edits in a controversial area, and sorry that he has to put up with a rump of editors who are not prepared to discuss points in a proper academic way - The Rev of Bru and CheeseDreams are two such editors. Kind regards, jguk 19:09, 7 May 2005 (UTC)

Look to yourself before you judge others. Vanity is a sin. - 81.156.177.21 (presumably the user under discussion, last few edits spell "Cheese" "Dreams" "Signing" "Off")

For what it's worth, here is a page I started, explaining why I felt they were the same people: User:Jayjg/Rev of Bru - CheeseDreams My enthusiasm for the project waned when I realized Rev of Bru was gone, and I found it very time consuming trying to comb through links of the various sockpuppets, especially when the User contributions button was rarely willing to go back more than 500 edits. In any event, the fact that one talked to the other on a Talk: page means little in my opinion; any reasonably intelligent person trying to maintain two sockpuppets would do the same. Jayjg ^(talk) 04:12, 11 May 2005 (UTC)

I believe that the inactive user Dr Zen is (was) also a sockpuppet of CheeseDreams; similarly to 81.156.177.21's "Cheese" "Dreams" "Signing" "Off" edits, Dr Zen's last few edits were Fuck Off Cunt Bye. ral315 17:33, May 12, 2005 (UTC)

Dr Zen was quite definitely not CheeseDreams; CD is Swedish living in the UK, Dr Zen is Australian; and they write completely differently. - David Gerard 20:21, 15 May 2005 (UTC)

I concur; Zen and Cheese are completely different - different interests, different writing styles, etc. Cheese might have learned that trick from Zen, but that doesn't make them the same person. Jayjg ^(talk) 17:37, 18 May 2005 (UTC)

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