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    Researchers requesting administrators’ advices to launch a study

    Hello all!

    We bring together the forces of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and Sciences Po Paris to conduct a large-scale research project on the microfoundations and dynamics of online interactions and behavior. To this end, we invite internet users with many different profiles to fill out a survey on LimeSurvey which combines decision making involving money with substantive questions about attitudes and practices. As a part of our research agenda, we would like to achieve the highest answer rate possible among Wikipedia contributors.

    For this purpose, we presented our research goals and methods to the WMF which agreed to support our project and help diffusing our call to participate among Wikipedians (to make sure, please check out the list of research projects which have the Foundation’s recognition or contact Steven Walling). We planned to invite Wikipedians to participate in this broad study by posting individual invitations on the users’ talk pages through an automated procedure.
    So this message is both to let the community of admins know about what we intend to do (as our aim is surely neither to bother people nor to disrupt the editing process of Wikipedia!) and to ask for some clarifications and advices about some particular aspects of our invitation protocol, namely:

    1. Is there a risk that our account could be blocked while we are in the process of sending our invitations to participate and, if yes, how could we avoid that?
    2. Is there a risk that the external link to the study that we will include in our invitation messages could be blocked and, if yes, how could we avoid that?


    At the end of the study, research outputs will be made available under an open access license and we intend to share them at a Wikimania conference. If they wish to do so, participants from Wikipedia have the possibility to donate their final earnings from the study to the Wikimedia Foundation.
    We remain at your entire disposal for any further question or precision about this research project (if you like, please consider that you can also reach us by e-mail at: berkman_harvard@sciences-po.fr).

    Looking forward to hearing from you,
    Many thanks,

    The Harvard / Sciences Po research team. SalimJah (talk) 09:15, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Hi SalimJah, I'm from the Wikipedia Bot Approvals Group. The correct place to get approval for mass message delivery using an automated process is WP:BRFA. Alternatively, you can look at getting a bot which already has broad approval for message delivery, such as User:MessageDeliveryBot, to do the job for you. Getting an approval like this reduces the risk of the bot or link getting blocked, if you use a bot without approval it will be blocked as soon as possible, for violating the bot policy. However, users often object to mass messaging which they have not specifically opted in for, as many consider it spam. An alternative would be to use a watchlist notice, or one of the other three site notices explained at the top of this page. Using this method would completely remove the risk of the link being blacklisted or the bot being blocked, as it would not be editing repeatedly. Hope that helps, feel free to contact me or any other BAG ember if you have further questions. - Kingpin13 (talk) 09:26, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    (edit conflict) Can you please provide more details about how you will be contacting people? (ie, the exact text of the message and which groups of editors you will be sending it to). As this is a WMF-endorsed study I don't see any generic problems, but you obviously need to make sure that your approach is appropriate (and posting this message here is a great way to start things off). One problem I see with your current approach is that posting access codes in publicly-viewable user talk pages will mean that these codes a) won't be private and b) are very likely to be used by people other than the intended editor in some cases. This will obviously impact on the quality of your data and may cause some privacy problems. Regards, Nick-D (talk) 09:31, 22 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you very much Kingpin13 and Nick-D for your precious input and advices!
    We are currently in the process of technically validating a bot that will have two specific purposes: (a) posting our invitation to participate in the talk page of several thousands of Wikipedia registered users (according to the number of Wikipedia participants that we will be able to fund) and (b) retrieving automatically participants' agreement to participate (we intend to ask participants to confirm their agreement to participate on their talk page as an answer to our invitation before they actually participate). I hope that this solves the privacy problem mentioned by Nick-D. Then, the text of the invitation will be almost the same as in our research description page on meta (i.e. a brief description of the goal of the study and how to participate in it). This research project is a large scale one that aims at understanding the dynamics of online interactions and behavior. So we intend to send our invitations to participate to all kinds of Wikipedia contributors, not restricting ourselves to one particular profile or group.
    About the issue of having our bot or account blocked while we are in the process of sending the invitations, I thought of asking Steven Walling to leave a note on my talk page in order to "whitelist" me and link to our research project page on meta. Would this prevent efficiently the risk of being blocked while sending the invitations? Do we still have to go through the whole bot validation process if we do that? I must confess that we would like to move fast and open the survey for Wikipedians to participate as soon as possible.
    Thanks again for your helpful guidance! SalimJah (talk) 09:57, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The text at m:Dynamics of Online Interactions and Behavior is around 3700 bytes (after deleting the misguided <br /> html). My guess (I am not an admin) is that anyone delivering that page to thousands of users would be blocked (or is there some benefit to the encyclopedia that I have overlooked?). Johnuniq (talk) 03:23, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Not unless you consider the evocation of thousands of orange banners a benefit. No talkpage spam, please. Bishonen | talk 04:48, 24 March 2011 (UTC).[reply]
    I second that, I'm sure interested people and pretty much everybody reads this board anyway, amongespecially admins. At most, if one really wants to reach thousand of admins, a feature in the Signpost (if its editor think it's a good idea) might be a less intrusive way of reaching out to a wider audience without spamming templates to everybody. Snowolf How can I help? 06:13, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Dear all, thanks for sharing your concerns with us. Our research project aims at making a significant contribution to the field of human interaction systems design in order to inform the design and organization of online social spaces (if you like, please visit the webpage dedicated to this research project). We expect that current and future Wikimedia community projects could benefit a lot from the insight of such research, which is precisely why we will make it available under and open access licence and intend to share it at a Wikimania conference. Another benefit to the community is that all Wikipedia participants are given the opportunity to donate their final earnings from the study to the Wikimedia Foundation (each participant can earn as much as $50 upon completion of the survey).
    From our side, we consider it important to get Wikipedia users to answer our survey, as the Wikipedia project has grown to achieve a prominent status on the internet. For validity concerns, we do not want to invite only admins to participate. We would like to be able to invite all types of Wikipedia contributors equally, ranging from the admin to the contributor who has just registered his Wikipedia account. So one reason why we finally opted for the talk page option is that this is the most widely shared discussion medium across all types of Wikipedia contributors and the only one available for recently registered users. We totally understand that this may appear intrusive to some. We are trying to figure out the best way to make our recruitment process valid and return our results to the community while not disrupting its editing process. Posting an invitation to participate in a research project on the user talk pages has already been done before. In response to this trend (and maybe because some researchers may sometimes not invest a sufficient amount of time trying to understand and abide by community guidelines and principles in their recruitment processes), the Wikimedia Research Committee and the Subject Recruitment Approvals Group are currently trying to come up with a formal procedure and define best practices for researchers willing to recruit subjects from Wikimedia projects. While this is still work in progress, we totally committed ourselves to respecting them all and are happy to do so. Regards, SalimJah (talk) 17:13, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Well unless someone has a way that can achieve the same result as asking lots of editors directly (watchlist notice wouldn't), I think we (/BRFA) should approve either a new bot or an existing bot to deliver this one-off request. Rd232 talk 15:29, 26 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Agreed. I'd suggest an existing bot, as that would also bring an experienced bot op into the discussion. UltraExactZZ Said ~ Did 13:36, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you Rd232 and UltraExactZZ for your comments! So to be very specific and totally transparent about how our invitation protocol is planned to work so far:
    1. We intend to use a Firefox plugin to post our invitation to participate on the Wikipedia talk pages. This plugin simply opens the talk pages that we would like to reach in turn (for instance in my case: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:SalimJah&action=edit&section=new), posts our invitation on it and simulates a click on the “Save page” button. As this is not a web service, I’m not sure it can be turned into a regular Wikipedia bot.
    2. Then, we wrote up a crawl in Python that has two purposes. First, it collects the agreements to participate in the study that participants will post on their talk page (see Nick-D’s privacy concerns above). In case we did not reach a sufficient number of participants after a first experimentation round and are able to fund more Wikipedians to participate, we would like to be able to open the survey again for a second round (in any case we will not do more than two rounds in order not to be too intrusive!). So upon reception of the first invitation, Wikipedians have the option to opt-out of potentially receiving a second one (according to the Wikimedia Research Committee’s proposed guidelines on how to handle the subjects recruitment process). So the second purpose of our crawl is to collect the list of those Wikipedians who explicitly opted-out of receiving a second invitation message. If this is deemed useful by the community, we would be very happy to provide the source code of this crawl (maybe this could benefit the Subject Recruitment Approvals Group in his current effort trying to define formal procedures for researchers willing to recruit subjects from Wikimedia projects).
    Alternatively, I guess that functionality 1 above could also be fulfilled by using the MessageDeliveryBot, as suggested by Kingpin13. However, I wonder whether this bot would be suited for posting a very high number of invitations. First, it would require some tedious manual checking work from community members on an issue not directly related to Wikipedia’s editing process. Then, according to the edit rate indicated on the bot’s user page, it could take several days to complete the invitation process while we intend to open the survey for Wikipedians to participate for about a week. I also wonder whether some overload problems could arise. But we remain totally open to this possibility if the community thinks that this option could work well!
    For organization purposes, we would really like to be able to open the survey for Wikipedians to participate as soon as possible, ideally in the course of next week. I hope this is feasible from the community’s side. Best regards, SalimJah (talk) 08:15, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    If you think that with the edit rate of message delivery bot (10 epm) it will take several days, exactly how many invites do you plan on sending out? Yoenit (talk) 08:41, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    (edit conflict)I have a privacy concern to raise; as you appear to be proposing to give unique codes to users who will participate this will allow you to link user accounts to IP addresses (when they come to fill out your survey). Have you got an agreement with the WMF regarding how you will store or user this information (if at all). In addition do you have a) a privacy policy and b) clear explanation to users of the fact you will be exposed to their IP address directly? Apologies if I missed any of this in the above :) --Errant (chat!) 08:46, 29 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Responding to Yoenit’s question: our prior experience at online based surveys indicates that response rates tend to be very low (roughly about 1%). While we could expect this answer rate to be higher for some profiles of Wikipedia contributors (namely the most experimented ones), the answer rate could well be below this number for newly registered users. There are about 60 000 newly registered accounts on Wikipedia each month. So if we want to achieve both validity (i.e. a representative coverage of all Wikipedia contributors’ profiles) and statistical power, we will have to contact many of those users. I think that all in all, contacting about 40 000 users would do the trick (which would take about 3 days for MessageDeliveryBot to do). I know that this is asking a lot from the community’s side. But I sincerely think that the benefits from this large scale research program in terms of practical lessons could be worth it. I see this being especially true according to the current debate about how should the community address the issue of the declining trend in newbies’ editing behavior, an issue that WMF Executive Director Sue Gardner considers to be the top priority one to solve for the community in her march communication. Note that this is precisely one of the reasons why the WMF accepted to support our project and help diffusing our call to participate among Wikipedians.
    Responding to Errant’s question: yes, this is a totally relevant issue! Thanks for asking! :) Our survey is based on the open-source survey tool LimeSurvey. LimeSurvey generally records participants’ IP address when they login. However, this is part of our privacy policy not to record or use participants’ IP addresses. So what we do is that when participants click on the link to the study, they are directed towards a proxy that redirects them to the survey. This way, each time a participant is loggin in, we do not store his IP address but the proxy’s one. More generally, our research procedures are subject to European privacy protection protocols, under the supervision of the European Research Council and the French ethics committee (CNIL). This entails notably that (a) all the data collected in this study will be used for research purposes only and (b) individual answers won’t be made public. Regards, SalimJah (talk) 09:56, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Arbitrary break

    Can I clarify a few things:

    1. You want 40,000 people to take the survey—do you want Wikipedia readers without accounts, Wikipedia readers with accounts, Wikipedia readers and active editors with accounts, etc., or all of them? Because there is no way you will be able to get 40,000 actively editing (experienced) Wikipedians (I doubt there are even close to that many) unless you want to conduct this survey across different language versions of Wikipedia as well. So if you want users who don't edit much, I don't expect that posting on their talk pages will be useful at all if they don't check them. So that leads to question two:
    2. Are you saying that every survey-taker has to have their own unique access code? If so, this is to me the biggest obstacle. Firstly, how will Wikipedians be given access codes—on their talk page, via email, through a separate site? If it's on the talk page, anyone could use someone else's access code. If there is any way that the survey could be done without the need for special access codes, it would be simple to set up a sitenotice (a banner at the top) and/or a watchlist notice that invites users to participate. I believe this could be adjusted to show only for logged-in users, logged-out users, or both, as well. It would be the least intrusive method, IMO, and reach a broader audience.

    Thanks, /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 02:57, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I cannot speak for the other people that would get this message, but if I were to get what is essentially a spam message on my talk page I would be extremely upset, both with the people that placed it there, and in the event that it was sanctioned by the WMF, with the WMF as well. Quite simply, mass mailings are unacceptable. Every automated message bot on Wikipedia either a) delivers newsletters/periodical messages which are signed up for in advance by the recipients and are only delivered to those that signed up, or b) delivers messages informing editors that they have made a mistake or broken a policy and asking those editors to fix that mistake. Wikipedians, like most normal people, have historically shown a low opinion of unsolicited mass mailings. There must be another way to do this that would be less problematic. Sven Manguard Wha? 06:47, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Dear Fetchcomm and Sven, I have the feeling that the answers to (at least some) of your questions can be found in the above, but I can try and make it clearer! :) We are only interested in Wikipedia registered users (the majority of those who participate in its editing process). Although we have the means to fund many Wikipedians to participate and are happy to give them the possibility to donate their final earnings to the WMF (which we see as a means to contribute to the Wikipedia fundraiser), our financial means are not unlimited. So, as noted above by Rd232, the reason why we have to invite individual editors directly and not all registered ones through a watchlist notice or a sitenotice is that if we did the latter, we could well end up with a sample that is not at all representative of the many profiles of contributors that can be found on Wikipedia. If this was to happen (and statistically it can!), this would significantly alter the validity of our results and thus make them unusable by the community. What we do is that we invite a subsample of Wikipedians to participate according to the answer rate that we expect given their contribution profile. Among them, we are obviously interested in getting many admins and experienced contributors to participate (and I sure hope that as many as possible will!). But we also want to reach a significant number of newbies, because those are very important both for the success of the community itself and in terms of the practical lessons that we will be able to draw from their participation in terms of how to enhance the design of online social spaces. So among the 40 000 users or so that we will invite, many will be newly registered users, specifically because we expect their answer rate to be very low (our response rate estimations are based on previous surveys conveyed to Wikipedians which used similar subject recruitment methods as the one we designed, but I would be delighted to have you all prove those statistics wrong! ;) ). The survey in itself is fun and entertaining, so I think those who will see the invitation and decide to participate will definitely like it!
    Fetchcomm, the access code privacy concerns that you raise are very similar to those raised above by Nick-D. We will indeed provide the access codes directly on the invitation messages. However, the privacy protocol we subject our research procedures to demand that we ask participants to confirm their agreement to participate in the survey before they actually participate. A consequence of this is that the wiki-signature that goes along with the agreement post will uniquely identify participants, thus preventing any user to use someone else's access code.
    Again, we totally understand that some may consider that receiving an invitation message directly on their talk page is intrusive. But I don’t see another means to do it in a valid way. We are not inventing anything new here, as subject recruitment for research purposes in Wikipedia is a relatively common practice. If anything, the novelty is that we deeply try to make our subject recruitment process valid while respecting our community commitment (please check here, here and here for more on how our recruitment process respects community principles). Then, one also has to take into consideration the benefits that such research can provide to the community, both in terms of practical lessons for enhancing its organization and efficiency, and in terms of the visibility that such research generally provides to the Wikipedia project at large. We do not only conduct this study with Wikipedians (as I said, it is a very large scale research agenda), but we really consider it important to have Wikipedians as a part of it, as the Wikipedia project has grown to achieve such a prominent status on the internet. Receiving an invitation to participate in your talk page may happen. If you don’t like it, you will never hear from us again (unless when we will present our results to the community!). So this will be the only cost you’ll bear for making this research possible.
    We are currently facing very stringent schedule constraints, so if it is ok with the community, we will try to open the survey for Wikipedians to participate in the course of next week. Best regards, SalimJah (talk) 14:37, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    A few thoughts:
    • Harvard is top-notch and Berkman is top-notch. Whatever they are doing deserves the benefit of the doubt.
    • The timeline is short; one week is not a lot of time to get consensus. Two would be better for something which can set precedent.
    • WMF support is not sufficient, since the WMF supports us, and if editors revolt, it's a wash.
    • A watchlist notice is better than a bot post. It will attract registered editors who use their WP:Watchlist. It will have a lower overall participation response, but they will be more involved editors. You may need to target new users individually.
    • The incentive that survey-takers might make money from the survey is not necessarily a plus, since Wikipedia operates 'almost' entirely in a non-commercial, non-pecuniary, voluntarism mode.
    • Your need for validity is not our problem. We want to help, but we are first here to build an encyclopedia, not be guinea pigs for research.
    • It's not yet clear how this research will specifically help open source movements, online community collaboration, wiki-editing, or attempts at discourse-based consensus. At the risk of compromising your study, you might hit a little more at what the benefits/relevance would be. Ocaasi c 20:39, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    To comment on the technical issues with a delivery bot: Your proposed Firefox add-on would be a bad idea, for a number of reasons. Firstly, bots - especially message delivery bots - are expected to obey {{bots}}, which allows users to opt-out of "bot-spam", this is of particular importance here, considering the concerns that have been raised. In addition, the 10epm rate is self-imposed, following our bot policy, but in actual fact, a "proper bot" is technically capable of running at a much higher speed, and in a much more efficient manner, than the Firefox add-on. This is because the add-on is using the user interface, whereas bots would normally use the application programming interface, which removes the need for page rendering etc. So it may be possible to get the limit lifted for this specific case, but would be almost impossible if you're not using an efficient bot (because we (BAG and the community) would not want a bot which is that inefficient to be running at that kind of speed, when there are better alternatives, because it's a waste of resources) - Kingpin13 (talk) 20:57, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Regarding the validity, I don't see any reasonable way to achieve the desired number of results with talk page posts unless you use a site notice. What if you put a few extra questions at the beginning or have the notice ask specifically for the type of Wikipedian that you are looking for? I agree that posting to 40,000 users' talk pages is extreme and unlikely to generate anything but criticism. Perhaps someone could find a way to go through Special:ActiveUsers and figure out exactly how many active users there are, but I doubt it's 40,000 (due to a lot of new users/blocked users being on the list as well). /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 02:05, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Approximately 150.000 according to Special:Statistics. That is only one action in the last 30 days however, which means there is a high chance the user will never even see the message. I we count only users with >5 edits per month we have approximately 36.000 users and 3500 with more than 100 edits per month.[1]. If they expect a 1% response rate and want to post 40.000 messages they want a sample set of some 400 users. Yoenit (talk) 07:32, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • As people are indicating, spamming people's talkpages for an off-Wiki research project would not go down well, and it would harm any future research projects who would like to do a survey. There are various ways that people publicise projects. I would suggest MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-details. Write a short notice, linking to a page you can create, where you can give more details. The advantage is that people will read the notice in the background when they are ready. A talkpage message puts a yellow bar over what an editor is doing, and calls for attention. It has the tendency to draw people away from what they are doing to check that someone is not raising an urgent concern. To be drawn away or distracted from an involved editing session for something like this would really not be appreciated. SilkTork *YES! 10:30, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    FWIW a bot needs to be implemented properly - a FireFox plugin isn't appropriate because of a potential lack of oversight on the process, using a pre-existing bot and upping the edit rate temporarily is the best approach IMO. I think the optimal approach here might be:

    • Implement an obvious watchlist notice directing people to a page where they can "sign up" to recieve an access code (if that is how they still want to do it). This makes it largely opt-in.
    • Put a posting on some of the main noticeboards; say, here and on the village pump

    And then allow targeting of individual users on a smaller scale basis (which can be discussed). From a practical perspective getting occasional editors involved by sending a message to a super-huge number of people is non-optimal. It is unlikely to get you any better cross section anyway; the data is flawed, period, and not much can be done about that (as one of my better professors once said "any time you collect data on the internet remember, it's 99% inaccurate, at least according to Google"). As also mentioned above; I personally am willing to allow more margin here given where this is coming from & the WMF support, but it still needs to cause minimum "disruption" to the process. A research posting messages will cause massive complaints; I remember when I was first around here a legit researcher (I think with WMF backing) started posting to a a few hundred talk pages (it had been vaguely discussed prior to that I think) and the fall out was pretty large, even involving a short block. Not saying that will happen here at all; but do not dismiss the likelihood of a lot of people complaining. --Errant (chat!) 10:56, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    • Reading through the above discussion, this reminds me of Wikipedia:Subject Recruitment Approvals Group which planned to bot-spam users for research purposes. Researchers will continue to want to take advantage of the Wikipedia community, so this would not be a "one-off". We don't wish to block researchers from gathering useful data from Wikipedians, but nor do we open to open the flood gates to spam bots. Some people quite enjoy doing surveys, or are willing to help out some research projects. Rather than rush now into creating a "one-off" bot for one specific research project that might (WILL!) create a negative back-lash, it might be better to take some time building support for the general notion of research on Wikipedia, and to recruit a body of Wikipedians who would be willing to take part in this and any other future research activities. A sustained period of publicity via SignPost, Cent and the various site-notices would draw people's attention to a research page where people could register to receive notices about this and future research projects. Gaining site-wide consensus first would generate a whole bunch of good will which would benefit future researchers. There is the opportunity here for Berkman Center for Internet & Society to be thanked by future researchers for being involved in setting up a workable scheme, or to be cursed for messing things up! SilkTork *YES! 11:05, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Dear all, let me make a few comments:

    • First of all, thanks for granting us the “benefit of the doubt” as regards our intentions :) Saying that we may consider Wikipedia editors “guinea pigs for research”, however, is very far from the deep respect I have for this community, its members and what they have accomplished so far!
    • Our approach could set a precedent, that is true. But in my view, this precedent should be that no research program should be conducted within Wikipedia without proper community discussion and consensus building (which is initially why I wanted to make this post here before starting the project, even if we had WMF support: in this I totally agree with Errant and SilkTork’s comments above). True, we face stringent schedule constraints. But there is no way we start this project without the community’s agreement.
    • I see all of your comments as a clear sign that you all want to help, and I’m sure we can find a way to make this research program both valid and respectful of community principles. It will be a deep success I’m sure!
    • I understand all of your concerns and remarks. Your feedback is highly valuable! Let me speak with our team at Harvard and Sciences Po. I’ll try to see what we can do to make things better.

    Cheers! SalimJah (talk) 11:46, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I do not think this is a good idea, despite the fact that this proposed survey is being done by a respectable university that most likely has no malicious intentions whatsoever. But because of this reason, I am neutral. Now if this was not the case, this discussion would have hit the fan the second it reered it's head. Takeo™ 02:30, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    RM closure requested

    The move discussion at Talk:Occupation of the Baltic states has gone stale. A heavily involved editor attempted to close debate, but I undid this, as it was a violation of WP:RM/CI. However, I do believe that this discussion has run its course. As such, I kindly request that an admin put this debate properly to rest. ~~ Lothar von Richthofen (talk) 23:23, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    And while I am here, I would also like to request that an admin merge the page histories of Talk:Székely and Talk:Székelys, as these histories have become rather messed up as a result of overzealous cut-and-paste moves. Thank you. ~~ Lothar von Richthofen (talk) 23:26, 24 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    And while you are doing this I also request undoing a salted controversial move of Template:Occupation of the Baltic states sidebar, and warn Martintg not to do this again. I believe that he was already warned not to salt controversial moves and deserve a harsher sanction, but I am too busy to search through history of his talk page. (Igny (talk))
    I thought it was a requirement to categorise redirects per WP:RCAT. If I misread that guideline then please explain the guideline to me in plain english so I don't err again. Also please clean up this categorisation [2] too if neccesary. --Martin (talk) 20:11, 25 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    This thread has been sitting here for a week now, but it is still somehow languishing in obscurity. I would like to reiterate the requests I made above. The contentious move discussion at Talk: Occupation of the Baltic states has long since fizzled out into no-consensus land. It would be very much appreciated if this were to be resolved with all due haste. It is just taking up space at this point.

    Also, the page histories of Talk:Székely and Talk:Székelys have become rather seriously screwed up as a result of disruptive cut-and-paste moves by User:Iaaasi, who is being considered for a community ban below. There is currently a move discussion (proposed by the same user) going on which would risk destroying much of the editing history if it were to be closed without careful examination of page histories. ~~ Lothar von Richthofen (talk) 19:05, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Iaaasi

    Having discovered that User:Iaaasi has gone back to his old ways and is socking again, I've instituted a anonblock on 79.117.96.0/20. Feel free to loosen it if it causes problems, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of non-abusive IP editing from there. --jpgordon::==( o ) 19:34, 28 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    oops, wrong range....fixed it...79.117.160.0/20. --jpgordon::==( o ) 00:38, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I unblocked and added it to Special:AbuseFilter/395. Currently it is still a full block, but I intend to loosen it up (based on examining the log) to only topics he edits. -- King of ♥ ♦ ♣ ♠ 09:24, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Community ban proposal

    Iaaasi (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is community-banned.  Sandstein  06:21, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

    I'd support more than a rangeblock here. My logic is simple: you blow a second chance, you're gone. Edit-warring and socking is not on, but committing those offenses after being let back in from the cold? We need a community ban. --Dylan620 (t • c) 01:29, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I agree. Iaaasi was given a second chance, and has comprehensively blown it. A ban seems in order if he's socking so that socks can be blocked on sight. Nick-D (talk) 10:49, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Alrighty then, consider this a formal community ban proposal. --Dylan620 (t • c) 13:46, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    NOTE Guys do you remember that? Who proved that he is not User:Bonaparte? He didn't exactly seem too stressed while pushing the admins' patience. What if he took this so lightly, because he will travel somewhere else in the coming weeks and therefore might use another — probably already existing — account "legitimately"? Millions of Romanians work abroad as guest workers.
    In short: serious anti-Hungarian bias is more telling than IP ranges. Banning User:Bonaparte wasn't enough in the long term, he kept showing up. Squash Racket (talk) 15:24, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    So what do you recommend? --jpgordon::==( o ) 15:56, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't know. He already pretended to be a Serbian, so who knows in what forms and incarnations he is present currently on WP. I repeat: the only thing that is common in these accounts is the strong anti-Hungarian bias. User:Khoikhoi, an admin became quite an expert on dealing with Bonaparte socks, but he is not much around nowadays. Squash Racket (talk) 16:19, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Actually he also pretended to be Hungarian and Slovak as well (IIRC he didn't do these only once either). Therefore I agree with the fact that it's fairly hard to guess his next form. His "favorite articles" always betray him though. So watching articles like John Hunyadi and Transylvania might do some good. CoolKoon (talk) 10:44, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    A community ban doesn't necessitate a rangeblock. It just means when he socks, he gets blocked, no warnings 1-4, etc. Bans just mean taking out the trash without the fuss. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 22:09, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    What I'm trying to say is this: how many times do you need to ban the already banned User:Bonaparte? If Iaaasi is his sock, then why do you need a process like that? If WP can't prove that Iaaasi is Bonaparte's sock, then what prevents him from showing up with yet another account from another IP range? Squash Racket (talk) 08:30, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I think we have a miscommunication here. There's a difference between a WP:BAN and a WP:BLOCK. A block is when an editor/IP has been prevented from editing Wikipedia through the software. A ban is more like a big warning sign, telling the editor they are not allowed to edit. If they sock or IP to get around it, a ban allows Admins to block on sight, without going through the rigamarole of warning the user, seeking dispute resolution, or going through ANI. In other words, bans make it easier to enforce blocks. If Iaaasi pops back up, a ban allows admins to block him immediately. That's all. There's nothing we can do software-wise to completely block him, but a ban makes admins' jobs easier. — The Hand That Feeds You:Bite 16:41, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I think Squash understands that but is saying that Bonaparte was de facto banned well before Iaaasi, yet because Iaaasi wasn't detected/confirmed as a sock of Bonaparte, Iaaasi managed to get the whole DR system started from scratch as if he is some new user who isn't de facto banned. And now if Iaaaasi becomes banned, de facto or otherwise, he may show up under another account and start the DR system from scratch if he isn't detected. This would then create an unfortunately endless cycle. Not that I have an answer to that concern if it is justified...but just trying to clarify what Squash seems to be saying (or at least, that's how I read it). Ncmvocalist (talk) 19:29, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    That's it, sorry if my English wasn't clear enough... Squash Racket (talk) 10:50, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support. If a banned editor has become recalcitrant after being unbanned, it means the unban request itself was not made in good faith, and the editor who granted that has been totally had. A site ban would work best? --Eaglestorm (talk) 01:42, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    • Support – Cut out the intermediate steps between a sock's creation and its block. A community ban will help keep all of his reincarnations (socks) blocked. However, I do agree with Sqaush Racket's point above: If he manages to leave to somewhere else, we (unfortunately) have to restart the process from scratch, but for now, a site ban should keep his socking at bay. —mc10 (t/c) 16:10, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

    It's been past 48 hours

    Do we have a consensus to ban, or should there be more discussion first? --Dylan620 (t • c) 22:10, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Since the discussion above is unanimous, I've closed it with a finding that he's community-banned.  Sandstein  06:22, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Mediation concluded

    Following up on the ANI thread Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive681#Mediation anchor, Tony, Sven, Adam & I have reached a mediated agreement that resolves the outstanding conflict between the signatory parties. The agreement only deals with the disagreements between the four signatory parties. The agreement is private, however it can be made public if any party breaks the agreement. John Vandenberg (chat) 03:36, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Thanks for helping to work that out, John. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 03:43, 30 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    92 articles which as a class all seem to me to violate WP:NOT#DIRECTORY

    The category is Category:Lists of chapters of United States student societies by society. Each of these articles consists of a mere listing of the chapters of these fraternities, sororities, etc. How does this not violate WP:NOT#DIRECTORY? --Orange Mike | Talk 15:01, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Have you considered taking them to wp:AFD? I honestly do not see why you chose to bring this up at the administrators noticeboard. Yoenit (talk) 15:15, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Seems to me that there's a quasi-philosophical aspect involved that needs more eyes than an AfD discussion draws. If you'd really rather do a Mass AfD for this, go ahead (I'm not able to use Twinkle at the moment). --Orange Mike | Talk 15:23, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    You might be right about that aspect and perhaps an RfC could help, but you would probably need to think about its precise scope before setting it up. Ncmvocalist (talk) 15:36, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I think "Mere listing" is very much not true. Many of them include the chapter name, school, dates of activity, level of school recognition, and location in the organization structure. Also, Wikipedia:WikiProject_Fraternities_and_Sororities has designed templates to make creating these pages easier. There has even been an effort to encourage that for fraternities with a decent number of chapters that it be moved to a separate page to keep from overwhelming the page that it is currently on. Another guide is that this section of Wikipedia should reflect the best (and only) encyclopedia on Fraternities and Sororities: Baird's Manual of American College Fraternities. Naraht (talk) 16:14, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Audit Subcommittee appointments (2011)

    Effective 1 April 2011, Bahamut0013 (talk · contribs), Courcelles (talk · contribs), and Keegan (talk · contribs) are appointed as community representatives to the Audit Subcommittee. The period of appointment will be 1 April 2011 to 31 March 2012. AGK (talk · contribs) is designated as an alternate member of the subcommittee and will become a full member should one of the appointees resign their role during the term. The Arbitration Committee thanks all of the candidates, as well as the many members of the community who participated in the appointment process for these roles.

    The Arbitration Committee also extends its thanks to Dominic (talk · contribs), Jredmond (talk · contribs), and MBisanz (talk · contribs), whose terms in office were extended so that an orderly transfer of responsibility could occur. Dominic will return to his previous role as a CheckUser and Oversighter; MBisanz will assume his role as an Oversighter. The Committee also thanks former subcommittee member Tznkai (talk · contribs), who was one of the original appointees to the Committee in 2009, and resigned in August 2010.

    Support: David Fuchs, Elen of the Roads, PhilKnight, Jclemens, John Vandenberg, Mailer diablo, Newyorkbrad, Kirill Lokshin, Risker, Roger Davies, Shell Kinney, Xeno
    Oppose: None
    Abstain: None
    Not voting: Casliber, Cool Hand Luke, Coren, Iridescent
    Inactive: Chase me ladies, I'm the Cavalry, Sir Fozzie

    For the Arbitration Committee, –xenotalk 16:00, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Discuss this

    Rangeblock needed

    A persistent vandal/troll is attacking 2011 Libyan civil war‎ and its talk page. The same guy recently forced 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami to be protected (note they both introduce the same bizarre phrasing "disassembly of human beings" [3][4][5]). He keeps dodging blocks on his individual IPs and I can see several other ranges of the form 208.54.something have been blocked previously. I've never tried a rangeblock before so I'd rather someone else handled it. Hut 8.5 16:49, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I've semi'ed the page. The range is 208.54.0.0/17, but that's quite large, so I wouldn't do it before a CU looks for collateral damage. Courcelles 16:55, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    He just registered an account at SaveTheDisassembled! (talk · contribs) if that helps. Hut 8.5 16:59, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Okay, I've done an AO ACB block on 208.54.0.0/17 for 3 hours. Very short, but it can quite easily be extended. I didn't see any useful IP contributions on the range for the last week (100 edits). Courcelles 17:18, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Eyes needed...

    If only because people aren't always the brightest people in the world, The Onion (Motto: We're more accurate than FoxNEWS) just ran this little fun story: [6]. Given the distinct possibility we may see an uptick in vandalism at the relevent article, a few more people may want to add it to their watchlists... --Jayron32 17:39, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    General query re privacy

    I've been out of the loop for a while on this. What is current policy/guidelines on very young editors (12/13) putting their biographies (real names, parents' names, educational history, etc) on their userpage? I don't want to splash this over AN and add to any existing privacy problems, but if someone's more clued up than I am, I may want to email you the details. In this particular case there is also a severe problem with what I can only describe as immature editing - not malicious or unserious, but deeply lacking in WP:COMPETENCE, to the point where I do not think the best mentoring in the world would help. Feels like I could use some advice on handling this. Moreschi (talk) 18:03, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Delete it and email oversight. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:12, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    (edit conflict)What HJ said. T. Canens (talk) 18:13, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Done. Anyone up for providing advice on the competence issues? Moreschi (talk) 18:21, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Feel free to email me; I've dealt with these and they usually end up in blocks. /ƒETCHCOMMS/ 13:43, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Eyes Needed

    The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
    User:Greenbay1313 has been forum shopping at COI/N, editor assistance, and even arbitration requests. Closing this instance of forum shopping in an attempt to contain any discussion at Wikipedia:BLPN#Ronn Torossian 2. – GorillaWarfare talk • contribs 20:24, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    BLP violations on locked page. Ronn Torossian--greenbay1313 (talk) 18:23, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    • Sheesh. No. These are not BLP violations. After one editor removed this Greenbay's complaint at COI, because there are already two conversations/complaints at the BLP noticeboard, they decided to come forum shopping here. I would have hit rollback on this one, but that would only set me up for more wikilawyering. Someone please close this, and let's move on. Nothing to see. Drmies (talk) 18:34, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

    More eyes at AIV please

    More admins helping out at WP:AIV would be appreciated. It's relatively clear now, but it's been backlogged on and off for the last few hours. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:38, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Rangeblock

    I have range-blocked 124.49.0.0/18 but after some careful thought have realised that I did not need so large a range and have blocked a smaller range instead. I want to unblock the /18 range but this is the first time I have needed to do this and now realise that I don't know how to do it. Help please! SpinningSpark 18:48, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Done. The way you do this is you go to Special:BlockList, input the range you blocked into the prompt, and then unblock like normal. Courcelles 18:54, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Ta SpinningSpark 18:58, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Botched page move?

    Could someone have a look at this for us, and see is it possible to sort out. This was the talk page for the the article, and this is the current talk page minus the discussions and archive. This page move is possibly the reason for loosing the previous history, but I don't know how to fix it. If the editor responsible for this could be told of the problem, and told the correct way to do it, it would be a big help. Since I can't fix the problem, I'm not the best person to explain it to the editor myself. Thanks,--Domer48'fenian' 19:22, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I've asked ProhibitOnions (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) to please finish the move, and pointed him to this discussion. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:42, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I histmerged the two pages (before you posted above, Sarek, my apologies). This fixes the cut-and-paste move, and now Talk:Orange Institution redirects to Talk:Orange Order. – GorillaWarfare talk • contribs 19:44, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    That's sound thanks very much for that. --Domer48'fenian' 19:47, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Looks like this has been fixed already. It seems the talk page might not have moved correctly when I moved the article, although all the archived talk pages did, and everything looked fine after the move. There was a previous cut-and-past move of the article some time ago, but that seemed to have been untangled. ProhibitOnions (T) 20:10, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, somehow the talk page either remained in both places or got split, and conversation continued. Now the histories have been merged to combine any straggling edits, and the talk page of the previous title now redirects to avoid confusion. It should solve the issue. – GorillaWarfare talk • contribs 20:18, 31 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for that! ProhibitOnions (T) 12:35, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Follow up

    I emailed oversight. It is Re: "[Ticket#2011033110004992] Personal information" Their reply indicated I should ask the question here. I noticed in an article I was editing, this reference. I also noticed it had an address label which would be someones personal information. I also noticed this source, which expresses copyright, and may indicate the referenced image is itself some form of a copyright violation. Anyway the many questions created can not be answered by me accept that I followed the ticket advice and reported the information here. I have no more input than that, but will monitor the discussion for the value of knowing how this situation should best be handled. Thank you for your time and consideration. IHaveBrownEyes (talk) 02:57, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I do want to add one thing. When I sent the email to oversight, I was told that my email displayed my real name. I intended to maintain a high level of anonymity. If it is possible to safeguard that piece of my personal information, I would be very glad. An introduction on my page tells more about that. If it is possible for you to tell me, to what extent my real name is known on this site, I would appreciate that. If it is common knowledge, I would rather just make a whole new account. So please answer this question also. IHaveBrownEyes (talk) 04:36, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I can't help you with the first part as I'm not knowledgable with copyrights at all, but your real identity is not shown on wikipedia, but if you used your real name for your email account and email someone, than your naem is shown to them. I suggest you do like I did and make a new email account just for wikipedia and use a fake name (my email name is Abe Lincoln). Oh and oversight people are all trustworthy so I don't think you have to worry about them knowing your name. Passionless -Talk 05:10, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    If I'm following the question correctly, it involves the link to the magazine cover being used at Elizabeth Taylor. Copyright in the magazine covers belongs to Harper's Bazaar; the photograph may be owned by the magazine or by the photographer. For that reason, even if the Flickr page that displayed it indicated public domain or compatible license, we could not accept their word on this without some proof that they are an official outlet. While it could be possible for that image to be used somewhere under a claim of "fair use", its obvious not fair use as it is. The personal information adds another dimension for concern, but the WP:LINKVIO policy issue really nails it. We cannot link to a page that illegally distributes someone else's work. I've removed the link. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 12:01, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    82.8.192.142

    (takes in mouth and trots over to proper venue) —Jeremy v^_^v Components:V S M 11:05, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Formation of the Committee of Public Safety.

    Screw WP:AN and all it's corruption, I am moving back to the COPS. Join the new AN at User:Takeo/Committee of Public Safety. Takeo™ 11:08, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    I vote for kittens. - Burpelson AFB ✈ 14:11, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Then kittens you shall have. VernoWhitney (talk) 15:21, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    What about the puppies?? Basket of Puppies 15:58, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Puppiez! - Burpelson AFB ✈ 18:23, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    (Yips, wags tail happily, and pants) —Jeremy v^_^v Components:V S M 19:25, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    In some jurisdictions, you could be arrested for wagging your pants. Corvus cornixtalk 04:39, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Jim Wales page listed for deletion

    Resolved
     – NFL Freak -SINCE 2011- (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) blocked 24 hours by HJ Mitchell (talk · contribs) for disruptive editing. Strange Passerby (talk • contribs • Proudly anti-April Fools') 16:19, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    No April 1 joke (the day has passed where I am). NFL Freak has listed the Jim Wales user page for deletion. Regards Peter S Strempel | Talk —Preceding undated comment added 16:00, 1 April 2011 (UTC).[reply]

    Where the NFL freaks live it's still April 1. God help us all.--Cube lurker (talk) 16:14, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    Where I'm at, 1 April has a little more than 14 hours left. And for the folks in Hawaii, add 3 hours to that: the day has barely begun for them. -- llywrch (talk) 16:50, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
    I shouda known better. It was real early, eyes bleary, synapses slowed to halt. Besides, everyone was all over it like a cheap suit. Regards Peter S Strempel | Talk 00:07, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Messy MOS proposal subpage

    Could someone sort please out this mess? LeadSongDog come howl! 22:11, 1 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

    Help needed to discuss WWI genocide issue

    As part of copy editing an article on alleged Turkish genocide of Armenians in WWI, it occurred to me that the article might be badly named/disambiguated/categorised, which isn't really my field.

    Because of Turkish-Armenian sensitivities about this topic, I wonder whether there is a senior editor/admin with some expertise or interest in WWI or genocide who might discuss with me how I best go about not just abandoning this article to obscurity or pseudo-orphan status after the copy edit. Regards Peter S Strempel | Talk 06:06, 2 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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