User talk:Dave Braunschweig/2014

U.S. states
U.S. states/Illinois looks like a project that you or Marshallsumter might find interesting. - Sidelight12 Talk 18:34, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Color of the stars
Hi Dave!

Color of the stars might make a nice addition to introduction to astronomy with some improvements and a goal towards perhaps primary or secondary educational level. Thank you for letting me know! --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 20:18, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks
. Thanks. —Abd (discuss • contribs) 18:47, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

So much to do?
So much to do, eh? ;) (Just fixed up Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nah). --Goldenburg111 17:35, 4 January 2014 (UTC)


 * That looks much better. Good work!  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 17:37, 4 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Goldenburg did not create this page; however, in editing it, he refers to a Wikipedia page. He must have noticed that the name was incorrect. (Right?) However, let's not fix that first. Where should this page go? It really doesn't belong in mainspace, for reasons I give on Talk:Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nah. There is a whole can of worms opened if we allow "biographies of living persons" in mainspace. For prominent persons, as student exercises or draft articles, we can allow them, but we may need to develop some policies, to avoid problems with libel and contentious editing. I have many ideas, but one step at a time.


 * (The Wikipedia Way has been to assume that Consensus can work anything out, and to avoid Instruction Creep. The Wikipedia Problem is that, yes, it can work everything out. After fourteen Train Wreck Discussions, a trail littered with banned editors, and articles that become incoherent hodgepodges of what's left after waves of edit warring roll over them. We don't need that mess, so we may need (horrors!) to anticipate problems and set up structures to deal with them. We still can WP:IAR but ... it helps to know what to expect.) —Abd (discuss • contribs) 19:11, 4 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I apologize for not looking into the details. More at the talk page.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:16, 4 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Note: That I stated on the edit summary that it was from Wikipedia. --Goldenburg111 19:20, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Separate issues. As I understand Abd, he is mostly concerned with placement rather than content/source. We have a lot of content here from Wikipedia. But Wikiversity should be different somehow. I think of it as how to learn about something. That may be by researching it and creating content, as you do. It may be by creating instructions that show other people how to research it for themselves, which is what I try to do. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:25, 4 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Oh! I have a suggestion, we should create a Biography project where users may create fun little essays and articles. This can be included in Template:Welcome. --Goldenburg111 19:38, 4 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I agree, but follow the discussion at Talk:Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nah. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:41, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

User:Galinait
This user was the uploader of the file you undeleted on my request. Thank you very much.

This was not the only deleted file, and the user has many other pages, as far as I have seen, to be moved under Boundary Value Problems, they can easily be found in his contributions, they now stand out like a sore thumb. I've seen a number of users like him, experts in their fields, and clueless as to how to run a wiki. Our job as a community is largely to support these people. What happens when we don't do that is clear: they eventually move on, and we are left with a mess to clean up. We need to create support structure. How to do this while still preserving core wiki values is the trick. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 21:32, 5 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I'd be happy to restore the other files if you're willing to tag them. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 22:48, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I'll look later. I'm getting a bad feeling about what happened with this user. The later work was pretty incomplete. Many pages were clearly created as part of the BVP project, but were not linked anywhere. Anywhere on-wiki, that is. The user was creating many pages in mainspace with titles like "Example 1." He had no clue that this was an educational resource project, he was merely using it as a convenient place to host some files. So what if it's not linked, he only cared about his class, not future classes, and my guess is he supplied them with links, could have been in an email. He was almost totally incommunicative here. Why should he bother? Nothing in it for him! He was done with using the pages. Ah, well, maybe not.
 * I'm a little reluctant to try to link the many orphaned pages, except maybe to list them on the project page. I'd rather have some future expert do that. Same with the name of the project, by the way. It's easy to move the entire family, single button push. Most of the subpages would stay properly connected, as I've set it up (that is, I probably didn't catch everything.) --Abd (discuss • contribs) 23:44, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Ah, just found what others may have seen. The user had another account, so I haven't seen all his contributions. User:Wsgalinaitis. He was active up to a year ago. And he goes back to 2007. The account linked above was an interlude, with some back and forth. And the same kind of all-over-the-map non-structure, such as Lesson 1: Topics Map. From the user page, there were many more images with license problems. He wasn't paying attention, and all that was done was to tag the images and delete them. Later, he did provide license information. I'll research more later. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 00:11, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Active Custodians
Don't you think we need active custodians? --Goldenburg111 23:03, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes. The only seriously active custodians are probationary. I'll ping Jtneil. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 01:05, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Jtneil is quite "inactive" lately, edit was on December 19, 2013. --Goldenburg111 01:17, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Give him a break, Goldenburg. Literally. Christmas break! A year ago, no contributions between December 22 and January 23. --Abd (discuss • contribs) custodianstodian 2014 (UTC)

Yes and no. Do I think we need more custodians in terms of 'A person who has responsibility for or looks after something' ( Custodian), absolutely. But in terms of things that require actual custodian rights, no. In the past week I have spent tens of hours 'looking after' Wikiversity content. But I've spent very little time completing tasks that require custodian rights. We're much more in need of people willing to improve Wikiversity at large than we are in need of people with rights to delete content, etc. I encourage you to focus on the improvement part. We'll address the rights requirement as needed. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 04:13, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree. That's the real need. I see the job of custodians as two-fold. The first is to clean up messes. However, "custodians" are not specially qualified to distinguish between trash and curriculum. In one of the famous disasters in cold fusion research history, a batch of coconut charcoal, used to make a catalyst substrate, was discarded by someone cleaning up a lab. No other batch that worked was ever found. This one *had* worked, it had been independently confirmed.
 * Hence content decisions belong to users, qua users. Participants in the learning and educational process.
 * But we also need a different kind of administrator: curriculum coordinators. We need clerks, to handle routine tasks supporting the educational process. It is not the job of curriculum coordinators to tell teachers what to teach or students what to learn, but to organize the curriculum so that it is understandable and accessible.
 * We need a way to make decisions, efficiently. Participants should be able to know, in advance, what is likely to be acceptable and what is not. That requires documentation. Wikis were originally invented for the generation of user documentation.
 * We pretty much need what any school needs. Except for the bricks. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 04:30, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I wrote "two-fold." What's the other fold? I know it was around here somewhere!
 * Ah, yes, to make this a safe place. My goal is for Wikiversity to be radically safe. One's work is safe here, it is not going to unexpectedly disappear because Randy from Boise thinks it is wrong. We avoid deleting content, except under narrow and relatively predictable circumstances. We allow original research and the expression of points of view. We allow and can even encourage debate, talking about subjects, which is radically different from Wikipedia, which deliberately represses that, though, of course, it happens anyway, often in disguised form. Instead of directly arguing a point of view, on Wikipedia, one may argue that the sources supporting it are strong, and the sources opposing it are weak. One may refer to old sources as obsolete, or new sources as fringe or recentism. And, of course, one may attempt to ban the other side for "POV-pushing," if they insist on expressing their point of view with their fringe sources. That is not merely debate, it's battle.
 * There are users who have attempted to bring these conflicts here. They have not lasted.
 * What we do instead of deleting content, is to *organize* it. Some stuff we organize into user space, if it's not obvious how to arrange it, if there are neutrality problems. But lack of neutrality is not fatal on Wikiversity, non-neutral materal can go in mainspace if it is organized, framed, and attributed. I've been pioneering that with some topics that have been highly controversial on Wikipedia, and, so far, no problems. In the pages on Landmark Education and Werner Erhard, an approach can be seen. Cold fusion is different, in that the top-level resource may not be seen by some as neutral. But they haven't shown up to make it neutral, if there are problems with it. I have not needed to fork Cold fusion, not yet, anyway. We have had seriously fringe material show up in subpages, and very simple organization was enough. Cold fusion, at this point, needs a lot more organization, and I'll be on that in future weeks and months.
 * When there have been problems on Wikiversity, behavioral problems, the biggest difficulty is a lack of users interested in (1) finding out what actually happened, and (2) interested in *resolving* disputes instead of simply finding out whom to blame. The rush to blame afflicts all the WMF wikis, and it can afflict this one when conflict arises. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 04:44, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I am not saying I want to be a custodian, I am just asking him. Quoting again: No big deal. From what I think, I am doing a good job, but not as much as before.--Goldenburg111 13:16, 7 January 2014 (UTC)
 * As well, nobody here has said that you said you want to be a custodian. You are doing a great job, considering the conditions. Keep it up, keep learning, and you will go far. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:54, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Be Aware
Be aware that you are flooding the recent changes. You might be covering out vandalism or other unneeded actions. --Goldenburg111 20:52, 7 January 2014 (UTC)


 * I am aware of this. However, there aren't any alternatives available in terms of hiding deletes at this time.  Note that you can see back 500 changes, and I did not process 500 items today.  You can also hide registered users, which makes all of the IP edits visible.  I can also do a 'hide my edits', which allows me to see all of the other changes.  If you have any other suggestions, please share.  Thanks!  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 21:48, 7 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Yeah, no way around it, I'm afraid, beyond scheduling these changes in chunks, with some days in between.


 * However, Dave and Goldenburg, one can see more than 500 changes in Recent Changes. I just looked at 2000. How to do it: Change the number from the default (either way), with one of the other options, then change the number at the end of the URL (in the part "&limit=50", say) to the larger number you need. You can enter any number there, but 2000 took a little while. There might be a limit, but it's obviously above 2000. I've often done this kind of URL editing when I needed to collect massive evidence from page histories or user contributions. I think I've done 5000 with contributions.


 * Goldenburg, if you do WP RCP, here is a hint to rack up more vandalism hits: load 50 changes, excluding registered users. You can scan them quickly if you have pop-ups that will show the text. The page with only 50 loads quickly. If you don't find any thing there, refresh the page to get the next 50, it's a single click. Yes, if you want to do more thorough work, this is not how to do it. It's for playing the edit count, cross-project, game. You can quickly accumulate hundreds of good edits, reverting vandalism, spending little time, and that then will give you more credibility. On Wikiversity, there are far, far fewer edits, much less vandalism, and a real need to be careful with almost every edit from an unrecognized user. I'm just telling you to give you a leg up when and if you want to do more Wikipedia work.
 * You will notice, doing WP RCP work, that when you find vandalism, it has almost always been caught by someone else first. So you have to be quick. It's really a flaw in the structure. There is some attempt to fix this with autoreviewer status. Obviously, if you are an autoreviewer, you will want to carefully look at every edit you load, because if you miss something, the autoreview mark may cause it to be missed by others. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 23:53, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

What should we do?
What should we do about this IP Address? It has been editing User:Aida rz. Anything about this? --Goldenburg111 22:23, 7 January 2014 (UTC)


 * See https://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=User:Aida_rz&action=history . The user is participating in this project, using that page as a collaboration point.  While I personally would prefer to see them develop the content in main space and share it with the rest of us, I don't think there's anything wrong with them doing what they are doing.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 22:28, 7 January 2014 (UTC)


 * Those are not the only options. What the user is doing is harmful, though only in a minor way. First of all, this isn't the design use for a user page. It's confusing, and this is compounded by the effect on Recent Changes Patrollers, which is what Goldenburg does, part of the time, but we also have global sysops who do it.


 * Seeing that IP edits to a User page are tolerated, Global sysops and other RCPers stop looking for IP vandalism to user pages. That's a loss. An edit filter could prevent IP edits to top-level user pages, or to all user pages (*not* user talk pages). It's an idea, anyway. There is a lot of vandalism that comes in like this, and it would simply warn a registered user to log in.


 * Further, nobody has told this user that there is a much cleaner way to do what is being done, i.e., a dedicated userspace page, either a sandbox or having an appropriate subpage name. Many users link such pages from their user page. This user does have other user pages, for this user, linked from Topic:Web Science/Part1: Foundations of the web/Internet Architecture/Domain Name System/Domain Name System/Summary, Further readings, Homework/table, and that seems to be the practice there. Much of the course is video, making it difficult to see what they are doing without spending a lot of time!


 * There is a pattern here to notice. Uncommunicative user, in a course teaching, among other things, wiki skills. Basic wiki skill: communication. I just welcomed the user, and noticed the missing license bot notice. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 23:38, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Sundgauvien38 questions
Hello. I just started, but it does not look so easy to have many resources as I am reading the same data – when I have not conflicts to some of them - multiple times; by the way … Here are my first questions (I post them here in order to not flood the project discussion page with beginner questions) : Thank you for your return. --Sundgauvien38 (discuss • contribs) 08:24, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
 * I feel it would be a good idea to rename the courses from ITIL to ITIL 2011; so, if one day an ITIL V5, 6, 2015, 2020 … appears, it may be easier to let people know if they are running the last updated version. What do you think about this ?
 * I discovered that most of the content I wanted to summarize from the books I am reading are already in the ITIL Wikipedia article (for the first part about ITIL Overview & certifications). I feel it may be easier to update this latter article – I already add something there about master certification – than duplicate data in two Wiki projects and only focus in Wikiversity to a quiz that would help to review what needs to be known. Now this is only my feeling and I would appreciate your feedbacks about this.
 * If I go the way explained above, I will have to create articles in Wikipedia about ITIL Service strategy, ITIL Service Design …; anyway, if someone would like to develop one day the intermediate level, how will we be able to differentiate both level? May be you already have an idea about this?
 * I already started a quiz in my sandbox that looks how I see the first lesson would look; anyway, I cut and pasted most of the text from the Wikipedia article. Is there a way like the Wikipedia Template:Copied  to notify this?


 * Yes, multiple sources can conflict with each other. That's part of the challenge of learning complex topics.  If the source is Wikipedia, it can be corrected if you have a valid additional source to compare with.
 * In a general manner, I give low trust on Wikipedia, high on itil-officialsite.com and medium on other books/presentations ... By the way, in my case, as Wikipedia, itil-officialsite.com and one of the two books were all agree it was also not a big deal to find who was wrong.
 * We might want to name it ITIL/2011, and then have an introduction and link on the ITIL page. That way all ITIL content stays in one learning project.
 * My concern was more how a learner could ensure he will not go through an outdated content. May be better in this case to write clearly in the introduction we are dealing ITIL 2011 and if one day a new version appears, let people who will take care of it manage how they would like to do.
 * My personal view is to see Wikipedia as a source of content and Wikiversity as a source of learning about that content. Wikipedia will be better maintained than Wikiversity is, so I expect Wikipedia content to be more accurate.  Updating Wikipedia as you have done and using Wikiversity for the review and quiz makes the most sense to me.
 * Before creating additional Wikipedia ITIL articles, be sure to check existing resources. What Wikipedia editors have been doing is creating articles specific to each subtopic, but then including all ITIL content in the one article.  For example,  Service strategy is just a paragraph that then has links to five non-ITIL descriptions of the concepts that make up service strategy.  In most cases I see Wikipedia editors seeking to merge articles together rather than split them.  So my advice would be to enhance what is there rather than creating new articles.  Let someone else tell you if it should be split off.
 * OK, I suggest then to refer more on chapters of the Wikipedia article than the whole article that could make the learner eager to run away (especially if we develop the article with all the intermediate content).
 * Regarding intermediate level, that's where the Wikiversity resources come in. As I see it, there isn't a difference in material between ITIL Foundation and ITIL Intermediate, just a difference in level of understanding.  That means there would be one set of Wikipedia content, but multiple pages of Wikiversity learning and review targeting the different exams.
 * The concern I see here for people - like me - who only want to pass the foundation, how could we figure out what content we need to take care off and what could be skipped.
 * Template:Copied is available here. Using that on the corresponding talk page is the traditional Wikipedia way to reference sources.  I personally prefer using tags in the resource itself, but I do that because I make most of my resources into books / collections, and when that is done, the printed collection doesn't include the talk pages, so there's no reference to the original source.  Because the quizzes will only effectively work online, using Template:Copied would be fine.
 * Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:43, 10 January 2014 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your fast reply. I put my answer to your answer above, after each item. Now, I will need to take care of your feedbacks and go further.
 * Regards, --Sundgauvien38 (discuss • contribs) 15:39, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you
Thank you for welcome and for your comment at Historical Introduction to Philosophy :) Nikolas (discuss • contribs) 03:13, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

PROD vs Slow deletion, Incubator vs Playspace
and some others. Those pages had a slow deletion category tag on them for two years. That was an equivalent of PROD. My opinion is that they could safely be deleted. However, Incubator is an equivalent of a Playspace, the only difference being that there is no designated manager. All these possible procedures work together to allow the efficient cleanup of Wikiversity while preserving our radical freedom of expression and study.

When I was managing a nonprofit organization, I learned a technique called a "slow wastebasket," for handling the blizzard of paper that can be created. Stuff that was reasonably likely to be needed, or that was legally required to be kept, went into the files. Stuff that had no reasonable possibility of need went into the trash. And stuff that had merely some small possibility of use went into a box called Hold for Discard. Periodically, and if it filled, the box was closed and labelled with the closure date. After a period, the box could be tossed, en masse, without review of the contents. If something was needed, from the date of closure, it could relatively easily be retrieved in the appropriate HFD box.

What is normally recommended is called Handle it Once, or something like that. File or Discard, immediately. However, that makes for larger files, on the one hand, or the discard of useful stuff, on occasion. HFD is intermediate. So too with Slow deletion and Proposed Deletion. There is no need for further discussion, unless someone sees a need and retrieves the page from the slow wastebasket. If they put it in their user space, fine. That's their problem. If they want it in mainspace, then we might need a discussion. If we have to discuss every deletion, we will be discussing for centuries with an ever-growing pile of useless files.

I made some enemies by troutslapping users for going to RFD with obviously useless but harmless files. It was wasting user time. A solution is for WV users aware of the issues, should some Wikiversity noob, used to Wikipedia practice, go to RFD, to promptly userfy and/or PROD the file and speedy close the RFD. Only if the file is illegal, immoral, or fattening would RFD be needed, and if it's that -- or at least the first of these -- it might be eligible for speedy. It's easy to replace a speedy deletion tag with a PROD, and we need to maintain community awareness of how simple it is to work for project cleanup without contentious debate, only collaboration and cooperation.

The problem with Incubator is that, then, people can argue about whether or not the file is worth keeping, if it has potential for use. If I userfy a page into my user space, I am making a judgment that there is some possible use, though it might be remote. And I'm taking responsibility for it. However, PROD handles the matter reasonably well. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 14:50, 3 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Incubator is my project. I'm responsible for it.  It's on my list now, so I will check it regularly, and I'll be able to see any subpages added.  I appreciate that the approaches are similar in concept, but there's just something about moving content to your userspace (that I agree made sense at the time) doesn't mix well in terms of us encouraging users to move content to a user space if they want it left alone, and at the same time asking them to edit someone else's user space, which we wouldn't ordinarily encourage.


 * I also carefully considered the naming. Play makes sense in terms of the audience you were trying to assist (younger users).  I thought it best to emulate an existing WikiMedia concept, and also to point out that we are trying to grow the projects vs. simply play with them.  I intentionally didn't edit Playspace.  I'll leave that up to you.  But you are welcome to revise that page and direct users to the incubator project if you like.  If you believe they serve somewhat different purposes, there's no reason to make any changes.


 * Thanks! -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 15:06, 3 February 2014 (UTC)

what was this file?
User:Glimmerguard/The Nature of Object deletion reason says "broken redirect," but the page appears to have had content, no speedy tag shown. I noticed this because TCNSV has tagged the redirect to it as broken. So some error was made by somebody here, could have been me. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 15:46, 5 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Good catch. I must have deleted the page rather than the redirect.  Now restored.  Thanks!  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:37, 5 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Happens. It's cool that your deletions have the top of the original text. That establishes, often, a minimal record of what was at the top of the file. So when you delete a speedy deletion requested file, we can tell that. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 23:38, 5 February 2014 (UTC)

Fair use tagging
As you may have seen, I've started a project to handle the routine tagging of files with possible educational usage. After starting this, I noticed what you had done previously. I don't want to touch that. There is a bit of a problem in that the fair use description in the template is inaccurate. It says that the fair use claim was made by the user who first uploaded the file. I don't think that is legally necessary. It's obvious that someone else could download the file, upload it with a new name, and thus show as the first uploader. Files uploaded without source information are still a problem, and these files might eventually be deleted, through means exist for identifying sources, I think. Image searches.

The most important thing, ab initio, given the mess that you were facing, was getting non-free pages machine-readably tagged as such. That is the primary legal concern of the Foundation. The secondary goal, that resources use minimal "fair use" material, will be satisfied, long-term, by the project I've created. It creates temporary fair use rationales for immediate educational purpose, and proposed deletion tags will be added, to create long-term compliance.

Unfortunately, some of the resources created may be damaged, if users or others don't respond, but I don't think we should coerce course participants into doing all the work for long-term management of resources. I.e., "Give us what we want or else we will delete your file in a week!" It basically didn't work, anyway, and was too much work for too little gain. You have cleaned up that massive backlog, and maintaining the license situation as clean will now be easy.

If someone wants to do the work to provide stronger rationales, etc., or to propose files for deletion, they may. And we will not be thrilled if this is done disruptively. This is not necessarily like Wikipedia, where there are factions of users whose greatest thrill in life is deleting the work of others. There, it has an excuse. Here it has much less excuse.

I expect some carping and potshots are possible, but I'm confident that the community will handle this sanely. If not, well, I've done what I can do. It's not like I personally care if an image of a stresssssed woman is in that Book or not. That's an image, though, where I think we will get proper license information. We just need to facilitate that, and having a very specific procedure with prepared notices, easy to pop down with a template or copy into an email, will make that very efficient. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 23:38, 5 February 2014 (UTC)


 * While I appreciate the effort, I think we're all going about this the wrong way. We should simply set the system so that a file can't be uploaded without proper tags in place.  And we turn on the upload wizard add-in so that users will be both encouraged and forced to do it the right way to start with.  Then there is no problem.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 02:00, 6 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Is what you suggest technically possible? And what is stopping us from turning on the "upload wizard"? (Link explaining that?) Uploading files is currently a nightmare for users unfamiliar with licensing requirements. Users get it wrong all the time, maybe more often than not, unless they have developed experience.
 * I have no problem with a choice being required for upload. Even without the upload wizard, users could be warned, as an upload message, that the file will be deleted in so many days if there is inadequate information, and they should be given very explicit instructions on how to get help for this if they need it. Basically, we don't take care of our users. We suck them into wasting their own time. And blame them for not getting it right.
 * What is really a problem is that files sit there and are used, for months, and when the user is no longer paying any attention, then the files are noticed and tagged for deletion. I proposed a system to handle that, but you are absolutely right that it could be nipped in the bud, without an onerous burden being placed on users. One very helpful requirement would be that if the image was obtained somewhere, say on the web, where did it come from? That then makes for much cleaner Fair Use, if a Fair Use claim is needed. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 02:31, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Technically possible? Absolutely.  It would be a filter very similar to others I've already created, and would match the logic I use in my bot to identify untagged files.  It's similar to the logic used for the toolserver 'Files needing licenses', because I kept using that example until I had found everything it found.


 * The Upload Wizard is described at UploadWizard. I just don't know enough yet to know how we get extensions turned on.  I can't find anything in the MediaWiki pages for it, so I assume it's a server setting somewhere.  Perhaps you have contacts that could tell us what to do next.


 * One way or the other, we should first try to address how the problem happens. After that, we can look at finding any files that get past the user interface issues.  Thanks!  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:58, 7 February 2014 (UTC)
 * I agree that preventing the problem is most important. However, we also have past issues to clean up. An edit filter is a possibility. The edit filter should not merely prevent the file from being uploaded, it should provide very specific instructions on what to do to complete upload. That might be a link to a WV page. The page would include or link to specific templates to use, so the user could just pop the template on the file, save and done. Those templates should be protected, as should the instructions page. It really needs to be bulletproof. When we have experience, we may think that instructions are adequate, when they aren't. I remember when I didn't know to use the tildes for signatures on talk pages. I struggled with creating manual signatures with manual timestamps. I've seen many other users do the same. When faced with a screenful of instructions, some people don't read all of them, or there are words used that they don't understand. I just wrote the equivalent of "place a template on a page." How does one do that?
 * The goal of the edit filter should be to guide, and it should be very explicit about that. It should not convey the message "you are doing something wrong." Rather, this is how to do what you want to do, and here is where to ask if you do not understand. If we have a good edit filter set up, we may not need the Wizard, but the Wizard could be a help ... but I don't see that the Wizard really addresses the problem.
 * So can the edit filter present very specific messages to a user? --Abd (discuss • contribs) 14:46, 7 February 2014 (UTC)


 * It can. I'll have to play with it and see what I can come up with.  I won't turn anything on without sharing and seeking feedback first.  It may be awhile.  Other responsibilities catching up to me right now.  --  Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 15:23, 7 February 2014 (UTC)

I now have a filter that can detect unlicensed files. It searches for any of the valid license tags for uploads into the File namespace. If no valid tag is found, it records the upload. No other action is performed at this time. The next step is to create a page that the user will see if the filter is triggered. Interested? -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 03:19, 9 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Of course. The large problem of unlicensed files was created by a system that allowed them to be uploaded either raw -- no license -- or with incorrect licensing. I don't agree with our current EDP in that Fair Use could certainly apply to user space; and the arguments against this seem to ignore that re-use of user space is quite iffy in itself. If someone wants to publish our content, user space isn't what they would ordinarily be legitimately using! However, for now, Fair Use solely in user space is prohibited. We can direct users to an Incubator in mainspace, to move around the technicality. A Fair Use template should be enough to allow upload, and if needed, uploaded files claiming Fair Use may be linked from the Incubator. These would routinely be deleted after a time, and I'm suggesting a semester of life be allowed. That is an educational usage. We can make sure that users are pinged to encourage them to find free versions of the file. Leaders of courses should know that an improper Fair Use claim will likely result in deletion of the file, resulting in possible damage to the resource, but ... if the file is actually important to the resource, then Fair Use could be allowed!


 * If the filter is properly designed, and if there is a bypass described, I could easily see the filter disallowing the upload. However, a "license tag" that is essentially a "help me" template might be allowed. We would then immediately assist the user. It could even be a speedy deletion tag! (with a reason that would then trigger advice and assistance, rather than necessarily deletion.). Such as: Then any user could change that tag into a Proposed deletion. Or it might start that way. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 14:26, 9 February 2014 (UTC)


 * On the back end, it appears that this was the intent of the tag.  Users who indicate they don't know the license information tag their own file for deletion.  But right now, no one helps them with that beyond a notice.  The nld-generated No license tag is an accepted tag for the filter.  The only thing the filter would block is someone who doesn't select a license tag from the list.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 14:53, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Right. Then we make sure that the list of tags is complete to cover every reasonable situation, and that the explanations are crystal clear. Basically, good tech writing. By the way, I do not at all consider myself a license expert. Template:Nld is not going to explain what to do, to an unsophisticated user. I look at it and go, "Huh?" (I have a "stupid mind," sometimes that is quite deliberate, when I'm working on developing clear instructions. If I can understand them with my "stupid mind," that is lazy, doesn't work hard, research, etc., then maybe more newbies will understand as well.) We really need a full page for that, organized so that new users can figure out exactly their situation and then proceed accordingly. By the way, can a filter edit a log page, adding a link? I could watchlist a log page. One of the problems with using categories is that they aren't watchlisted as to content. I.e, a page being added to a category won't trigger an email watchlist notice, which would much more efficiently cause me, at least, to respond. Or anyone watching the log page. With some care, we can make the process efficient as well as thoroughly fair and welcoming. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 15:41, 9 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay, I tried following the instructions in template:nld and they did not work as a newbie would expect. Total mess. Really, if possible, we should recruit some noobs to help us. All of us were once newbies. Too soon, we forget! --Abd (discuss • contribs) 15:49, 9 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Rather that looking at nld itself, try uploading a file based on the options listed under Licensing at the bottom of the upload page. The noob doesn't need to know anything about templates.  They just need to choose the right licensing tag from the pulldown list.  It's the verbiage on the Upload page we should focus on first.  I/we can change the language on that page at the top, and the descriptions and sequence of the items in the list at the bottom.  I made one pass at both last night.  Time for other eyes to look at it.  Thanks!  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 15:54, 9 February 2014 (UTC)


 * I just attempted to upload a file for Fair Use. w:File:My Little Pony G4 logo.svg. The page on which it is to be used I just created in user space, User:MLP Princess Luna/My Little Pony, which technically violates our EDP, which prohibits Fair Use in User space (Why? Isn't user space part of our educational process? Can't students draft resources or create essays there?) This is Wikimedian content-centered policy, very different from Wikiversity purpose and operation.). However, the page is intended for ultimate usage in mainspace, so this can illustrate educational purpose in user space. The upload process was impenetrable for me. It's too much to even describe, I ran into so many obstacles. I downloaded the smallest version of the file from Wikipedia to my computer, where it displays fine, but upload failed because XML could not be parsed. Fair Use wasn't clearly listed in the options. How to add the necessary information was not at all clear. It's a mess. Let's say that I understand why users haven't supplied license information. It requires a level of understanding that most don't have, unless they are Wikimedians accustomed to uploading images. (I have uploaded maybe one, in my entire history with, what, some 25,000 edits? And I remember that being difficult.)


 * That file is not actually the one I'd most like to use, the user is "MLP Princess Luna," and there are Wikia images for Princess Luna. Now, how do they manage that? Maybe someone got permission, I didn't see the license information readily. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 15:59, 10 February 2014 (UTC)


 * So, how do we fix it? What words can we add or remove on that page, and to the list, that would help users unfamiliar with copyright issues make an appropriate, informed decision?  At Wikiversity, we educate.  How can we properly educate these users, enough to accomplish what they want to do?  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:42, 10 February 2014 (UTC)
 * We start by educating ourselves. I.e., we look at the process in detail, each step. We do what I call "putting on my stupid hat," i.e., I demand the Upload Manual for the Compleat Idiot. Wikis were originally made for system instruction manuals. It will be an interesting exercise in technical writing. Perhaps we start a technical writing resource. Is there one? I have to do some other things now, or I'd look for it.
 * I do have some ideas. A virtual flow chart, created in hypertext, a series of questions asked that lead the user through a decision hierarchy, with very explicit results generated out of the answers to questions. It starts from nothing, with instructions on how to set up a file upload, every step of the way, no assumptions that the user knows anything. Telling a user to put a template on a page is useless if they don't know how to put a template on a page! If the template itself says that it is to be used with subst: say what? Is that some kind of spice? And the user will be told exactly what to expect and how to handle notices, get questions answered, etc. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 20:38, 10 February 2014 (UTC)

new user
Hello Dave,

I'm a new French user and a little bit confused. Thus I ask you a question to begin without to many errors.

Do we need to create as many accounts as there are Wiki-sites : FR.Wikipedia, EN.Wikipedia, EN.Wikiversity, FR.Wikiversity and so on ?

Thanks for your help

--Stéfane (discuss • contribs) 09:40, 24 February 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Stefane! The Wikimedia sister projects use a unified login, also referred to as Single User Login (SUL).  Your account appears to already be active on en.wiki, en.wikiversity, and fr.wiki.  See the tool server for more information.  Just log in on any wiki with the credentials you already have, and your account should be recognized.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:16, 24 February 2014 (UTC)
 * Looks like accounts are being automatically created, and there is no conflict with any other user with the same username. Currently, the software will prevent a conflict from being created, so, Stefane, you are good to go. If you are logged in to any WMF wiki, and you simply look at another one, an account there will automatically be created for you and you will already be logged in, usually. As Dave pointed out, you may log into any one of the wikis. (I'm not completely certain that you can log in to a wiki that you have not viewed when you were logged in. Maybe. Maybe not. If you have a problem, this could be it.) --Abd (discuss • contribs) 20:07, 24 February 2014 (UTC)

new user, need to upload files
I am contributing to/creating pages related to aviation engineering and need permission to upload files. I was also wondering how to use files in the wikipedia commons IE. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Six_flight_instruments.JPG

I would also like your opinion about the stuff I am working on. My main experience is I just graduated from an aviation maintenance program, and one of the reasons I wanted to work on wikiversity pages related to this was for studying purposes. The general topic I am creating pages under is Aerospace engineering I am wondering if I should create a portal page for Aviation Maintenance, or a section like School of Aviation Maintenance.

Oh, and how do I move/rename pages? RandyRostie (discuss • contribs) 16:57, 14 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi RandyRostie!


 * The best option for file uploads, particularly based on what you are trying to accomplish, would be to upload your files to Wikimedia Commons. Putting the files on Commons would allow anyone to use them on any of the sister projects, including here at Wikiversity.  It's also easier to get the licensing right when you upload to Commons than when you upload here.  But if the content you need to upload would be copyrighted, and only valid under a Fair Use contribution for educational purposes, you will need to upload it here at Special:Upload.


 * Once files are uploaded, you just reference them by name using either a File or Image tag. You might take a look at some of the Astronomy content, as this contains excellent examples of image use.


 * Regarding aviation engineering and maintenance, start by reviewing Category:Aviation and Category:Aerospace engineering. There may be content already available that you can work with.  If you don't see your vision fitting in with what is already available, then feel free to create a separate portal or school.


 * See Wikipedia:Wikipedia:Moving_a_page for instructions on how to move / rename pages.


 * Let me know what additional questions you have. Thanks!  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 17:14, 14 March 2014 (UTC)


 * How do I reference a file/image from wikipedia commons on a wikiversity page? The specific page I am working on presently is Aircraft_Instrument,_Engines_and_Systems


 * When I go to Special:Upload I get a message that I don't have permission to upload files because I am not a confirmed or autoconfirmed user. I guess this is also why I can't move a page, I don't have that ability yet.


 * RandyRostie (discuss • contribs) 18:40, 14 March 2014 (UTC)


 * I updated Aircraft_Instrument,_Engines_and_Systems. See if that's what you are looking for.
 * Unfortunately, it takes I think four days and ten edits before you are auto-confirmed and able to upload files and/or move content. That's another reason why I recommend uploading to  instead.  I don't recall a limitation there, but there could be.
 * If you tell me what you want moved, (old title -> new title), I can move it for you. You can also make the same request at Request custodian action.
 * Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:45, 14 March 2014 (UTC)


 * So do the images need to be copied from wikipedia commons to wikiversity before they can be used? Your change worked fine.
 * I've been editing pages on wikipedia for a couple years, though up till recently it's been minor edits. So I know most of this stuff, I just wasn't sure if there were differences working with wikiversity.
 * Thanks! I just need the file 'Aircraft Instrument, Engines and Systems' moved to 'Aircraft Instruments, Engines and Systems'
 * I already changed the reference to it on the page School:Aviation
 * RandyRostie (discuss • contribs) 20:13, 14 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Any file at Commons can be used as though it is already here. No importing necessary.  Just use the same name and treat it like a local file.
 * Move done. You should be all set.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 20:19, 14 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you, I got it now, I'm not sure what I did wrong the first time, but I inserted a second image just fine.
 * RandyRostie (discuss • contribs) 20:27, 14 March 2014 (UTC)

Moving pages
Thanks for that, I can see this will keep things together better. I will follow this pattern whenever I add new material in this vein. Many thanks, Lesion (discuss • contribs) 10:13, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Thank you
Hi, thank you for your contributions to the Lua course. I'm glad to have discovered it. Kind regards, StijnCavour (discuss • contribs) 11:05, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Help for editing
Respected Professor, I need to have one of my article reviewed by your goodself. It will be one time bothering and not a general practice. How can I get my requested job done, Sir Nannadeem (discuss • contribs) 07:11, 18 March 2014 (UTC)


 * You would first need to post the article. Since you seem to be concerned about the content, you might try putting it in your user space first, such as in User:Nannadeem/Sandbox.
 * Second, you will need to describe specifically what type of review you are looking for and what the goal or purpose for the article is. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 12:08, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

You are invited to register for the Wikiversity Assembly

 * The Assembly has been established as a technique for developing reports on topics of import for Wikiversity administration. The Assembly is not a decision-making body, per se. Rather, it is designed to create or discover or estimate consensus, through focused, facilitated, thorough deliberation. Assembly reports may be referenced in regular Wikiversity discussions, but will not directly control outcomes. Where full consensus is not found, minority reports may be issued.
 * I invite you to register for the Assembly by adding your user name to the Delegable proxy/Table.


 * Registering for the Assembly creates no specific obligation, but does consent to direct communication as the Assembly may determine is appropriate. You may opt out of such direct communication by adding "no messages" to the Table when you register, in the user comment field, but it is unlikely that the default (communication allowed) will create burdensome traffic for you.

You are invited to name a proxy

 * When you register for the Assembly, you may optionally designate a "proxy."


 * I suggest that you nominate, as a proxy, the user whom you most trust to participate positively in a Wikiversity discussion if you are unable to participate yourself. The proxy will not be voting for you in any process. Rather, the proxy will be considered to loosely represent you, as a means of estimating probable large-scale consensus based on small-scale participation, in the event that you do not personally participate.


 * If you name a proxy, you will be consenting to direct communication with you by that proxy. If a named proxy accepts the proxy, you become, as long as you maintain the nomination (you may change it at any time), the "client" of the proxy, and by accepting, a proxy has consented to direct communication from the client.


 * See Delegable proxy for details.

Comments
I suggest that you also invite a certain user whose Talk page I should not edit.... If you have any questions, please ask. I got this started before my long vacation. It's time to get it going again, and I'd love to see your input on Assembly committee pages, which requires registration as an Assembly member. You are, of course, free to comment on attached Talk pages, as is any user. Assigning a proxy is completely optional, that's an experiment; it won't hurt and it might help. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 01:02, 19 March 2014 (UTC)

Instructional design
Dave, this is Peter Honebein. Nice to meet you. I'm the Indiana University professor who started the Wikiversity Instructional Design site (https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Instructional_design) and whose students are building lessons every spring in my R626 - Instructional Strategies course at IU. My students have been writing to me that you and another gentleman named George Barnick have been going into their work-in-progress lessons and modifying/deleting content and such. Not sure why this is being done, other than Wikiversity is a collaborative environment and all users should expect such things. So anyway, I wanted to introduce myself and understand a little more of what's going on behind the scenes, so I can let me students know whether to 1) deal with it or 2) Dave will be dialing back his interventions until after May 15 (when class ends). Many students are saving their code by copying it to notepad because they are afraid they'll lose all their work (I need to remind them of the View History tab) - they are being graded on this assignment. By the way, I love it when students try to post some copyright protected media and you nail them for it! Let me know your thoughts.--Phonebein (discuss • contribs) 03:57, 25 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi, Peter. When you want to add a new topic to a Talk page, I suggest you use the "Add topic" tab at the top of the common display, and give it an informative title. This will automatically add the new comment, question, or discussion at the bottom of the page. If you put it in the middle, or at the top, it can be missed!


 * We don't nail people for making mistakes; this is a wiki and anything can be fixed. You mentioned what were probably file uploads without proper copyright information, those are often deleted rather quickly. I don't recommend that new users jump into file uploads, it can be complicated. If a user needs to upload a file, and it is not clear how to do it properly, ask! If a file is deleted, and if there is a legitimate use, it's easy to get it undeleted, just ask the deletiing custodian, giving the file name. (There is a more formal process, but it would usually not be necessary.) Without examples, I can't help you much, but Dave is unlikely to have deleted ordinary content. He may have blanked some. For example, if a user adds content to a user page, but is not logged in as the user, that might well be reverted, happens all the time. If a user is working on a page, and someone blanks content, the blanking can simply be reverted. The reason should be explained in the edit summary. And it is absolutely best if one is logged in when doing this. That way, if there is a problem, there is someone to discuss it with!
 * Yes, remind them of history.
 * Also let them know that they can build content in their user space with practically no interference, and then it can be moved into place in mainspace when ready. Content can be built in mainspace as well, of course, it's just that sometimes there is flak.
 * You were welcomed to Wikiversity long ago, but welcome, again! --Abd (discuss • contribs) 12:07, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Welcome Peter! Good to hear from you. Yes, I have been assisting users in organizing ID content, moving pages as needed and correcting links. Previous ID content was using separate main pages for each page of the project. In the past six months or so we have undertaken an effort to combine learning projects into a single primary page and project subpages. You'll see that the Instructional design project now has that design. Individual projects within ID are not as well organized yet, but will be at some point, certainly before next spring's students start creating their content.

The only significant disruption for one of your current students was another user who renamed all of the pages to sentence case rather than title case. This was done while the student was editing content and really confused the student. I worked with the student to correct this back to title case and merge edit histories.

So, in regard to helping them organize content and use proper wiki links, yes, I hope you will encourage your students to 1) deal with it by learning more about wiki project organization, and 2) indicate at the top of their project that their efforts are part of a course assignment that will end on May 15, 2014. If everything they create is a subpage of their primary project page, their content is very likely to be left alone. If they create pages all over the place, their pages will be organized and renamed for them. You should also encourage your students to speak up and ask questions whenever they have them. As instructional designers, that should be part of the experience.

Thanks for using Wikviersity for your assignments. The collective instructional wisdom is a benefit to all.

Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:23, 25 March 2014 (UTC)

Dave, thanks for the insight and for offering us additional assistance. I've passed it along to my folks. --Phonebein (discuss • contribs) 14:23, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

Augusto De Luca
See this. Augusto used all wiki to promote its photos and biography. --Wim b 15:42, 26 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks. I don't think the contribution meets our requirements for speedy deletion by itself, but I'll remove it based on the global lock.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:52, 26 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Dave, would you mind undeleting that page? A global lock is not a global ban, and we can sometimes allow content that would be considered self-promotion elsewhere, with appropriate conditions. The user name is of a notable Italian artist, Augusto De Luca, and notice that the complaint above assumes that the wiki user is, in fact, the artist. The user did not enable email, unfortunately, and the behavior simply indicates to me a lack of understanding of how the wikis work. I completely agree with the global lock, the user had to be stopped, and that kind of spamming (the term is appropriate) cannot be allowed. It is also legitimate to delete pages that are being spammed. That, however, can cause damage, compared to what else might be possible. There is damage in this case, apparently.


 * There are articles in many projects about the artist. I found an unlogged title blacklist entry..
 * I could not find a lock discussion (nor a title blacklist discussion).
 * SUL account apparently created 16:00, 23 March 2014.


 * Looking at your conversation with Wim b, this was not what we would normally call spam, except that it was broadcast. Some wikis block users who create pages about themselves as their user page, as their first edit. We would never do that, not solely on that basis. This user was only blocked in a couple of places. The unfortunate thing is that there appears to have been no effort to communicate with the user, as far as I can tell. No warnings, as far as I've seen. Not having email enabled, the user, unfortunately as well, wouldn't get any notifications, and if busy adding user pages, one for each wiki, wouldn't realize what had happened until the global lock hit.


 * There is a sentiment that "we don't talk with spammers." It's a particular point of view. I have attempted at various times to open up communication with what might have been true spammers. It never produced anything of value, but it didn't cause any harm, either, and a case like this one could produce substantial benefit. It's still a long shot, because of the logistics of establishing communication.


 * I found a number of undeleted user pages. On fr.wikipedia: history. So, who is Wim b? Since this user edited here, with a deletion request, that becomes a legitimate topic. Italian user. Global sysop. Crat and sysop on it.wiktionary (and very high contributions for a small wiki), sysop on it.wikibooks. On it.wiktionary, effectively salted User:Augusto De Luca, as redir to talk page. log for page, user.


 * Can of worms. Looking at the it.wikipedia article on the artist, I see the last edit to that article as being by the steward who globally locked. Involvement in local content.... It all could be justified; some stewards would never do this, some do it relatively routinely.


 * This is the first time I've seen a possible problem with a global sysop. I may ping another global sysop on this.


 * (The problem? The global sysop argued for deletion, and from the intensity of the response on it.wiktionary, showed involvement. Properly, they would call the file to our attention and leave it at that. We have seen many cases of very proper global sysop action, where we declined a speedy deletion tag, and there was zero problem. But some global sysops, particularly with the general encyclopedic focus, develop a somewhat visceral response to "self-promotion.")


 * This is not the first time I've seen users creating self-descriptive user pages considered "spammers," without any promotional links or commercial promotion.


 * Without seeing the page creation times, I can't judge the assessment of "spambot," raised on some places. However, I could probably manage a few creations per minute manually. A real bot would not be much faster.


 * Bottom line, do please undelete, I think that user page is just one of the artist/photographer's photos. And I'd like to welcome the user and suggest an approach to possibly getting unlocked. Hope springs eternal. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 20:14, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Hi Dave Braunschweig, we're dealing with a paid sockpuppeter (basically someone who has been hired to promote that photographer onwiki), I've just locked five more accounts, no way to unlock. --Vituzzu (discuss • contribs) 20:23, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
 * How could I argue with your magic pixie dust, that allows you to know just what's happening behind the scenes? (How you know that a sock is "hired" is what I can't tell. Maybe from activity on behalf of other customers? But don't these use open proxies?) I find it strange that a hired sockpuppeteer would do what Augusto De Luca did; if so, it was colossally stupid, poor De Luca got ripped off, but, Vituzzu, a global unlock request would be down the road, and I assume it would not be up to you to lock or unlock, though another steward might certainly consult with you.
 * Are you claiming that your actions as a steward are not appealable?
 * No, the only issue here is that page. "Cross-wiki spam" is not a reason for deletion here. The page itself is not spam, and has so little possible "promotional" effect that I find that accusation silly. Had the user created only this page, we'd have dropped a welcome on the user talk page, and there wouldn't have been a hint of "spam." Basically, what happens elsewhere is generally no concern of ours. Thanks for all your work stopping cross wiki spam and other disruption. Above, I agree that a lock was appropriate, and so?
 * In a personal conversation with Dave, I mentioned some other things, which are dicta, not central, just conversation. Such as actions without logging or discussion. Global locks are considered the most intrusive of tools, much worse than blocks, because they allow no access to the account, including watchlist, etc., and local sysops can't undo them. I'm disconcerted that you pop in here to comment. What about this affair is leading to such intense attention? Whether we undelete that page is of little consequence globally, though some other wikis also declined to delete. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 21:06, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

I think both are true. It's very likely something from the original artist, and also very likely all generated by bot. The page itself wouldn't be a violation here, but the creation by bot is. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 21:33, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
 * And the evidence for that? Dave, I could create just about any number of pages, very quickly, and without automated editor assistance. It's tedious to tell exactly, but there may have been 557 edits, each one creating a user page on one wiki, and all the user pages were identical, i.e., they were nothing but a link to an image from Commons, a work of August De Luca. Given a list of edit links, easy to create, I could do this manually in about two hours total. It would certainly look like a bot.
 * I can't tell when the pages were created because they have almost all been deleted, many by the global sysop who tagged the page here. Now, was this disruptive activity?
 * The answer is yes, because it triggers the antispam volunteers. However, we (the WMF community) don't warn users not to do things like this. The pages themselves, though, were not disruptive. They were completely harmless. Some wikis don't like user pages for users who aren't editing, though (and I can understand why, it just doesn't fit with Wikiversity).
 * Please do undelete the page.
 * I'll disagree that creation by bot is a violation here, by the way, if there is only one edit on wikiversity. There are reasons for prohibiting unauthorized bots, but they don't apply to a single edit on a watched wiki. What is violated is a global practice, not exactly a policy. That is, users who make many edits globally on a single topic, and rapidly, will be stopped. Doesn't really matter if it is a bot or not, and I've seen plenty of examples. If damage is being caused, a bot does more damage. Spambots are quite a nuisance. The spambot worry here would be that this account would be a sleeper. Yet from the history, this really doesn't look like that. I do know some of what else is going on here, but I'm not addressing it now, and maybe never.
 * Whether the edit was a violation or not would be relevant to a block of the user. That's moot. "User violated policy" is not a reason for deletion, if the page does not violate policy. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 22:52, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
 * From here (sorted by date):

6 edits in 1 minute, after, 2 (on average) edit in 1 minute for 13 hours (from 6:53 on ace.wikipedia.org, to 19:39 on zh-min-nan.wiktionary.org) in a alphabetical order. The day after from ar.wikisource.org (08:18, 25 mar 2014) to vi.wikibooks.org (14:11, 25 mar 2014), project by proget, in alphabetical order. This isn't a bot in your opinion? --Wim b 23:16, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
 * en.wikipedia.org	17:03, 23 mar 2014
 * en.wikibooks.org	17:03, 23 mar 2014
 * en.wikiquote.org	17:03, 23 mar 2014
 * en.wikisource.org	17:03, 23 mar 2014
 * en.wikiversity.org	17:03, 23 mar 2014
 * en.wiktionary.org	17:03, 23 mar 2014 ...

Please continue this discussion at Requests_for_Deletion. Thanks! -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 23:19, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry i didn't see the page, i copied my text on it. --Wim b 23:28, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Sorry Dave but I cannot waste any more time on this matter. Try multiplying this time by 557 wikis and by a few daily spammers and you'll get an average of 25 hours a day needed in fight spammers/vandals/trolls. Abd has a long history with these sterile polemics about my actions but honestly I don't feel like playing his game. I won't bother you about his requests for unblock at meta I denied (the main reason for his "attention" towards my actions) but I'm pretty sure about your good faith as much as I'm sure about his bad one. --Vituzzu (discuss • contribs) 23:31, 26 March 2014 (UTC)
 * I just noticed this, I'd missed it. Dave, I'd think of taking this to WV:RCA, but because this is on your talk page, and you responded, you are obviously aware of it. That was a grossly uncivil comment, coming from a steward. My attention to this matter had nothing to do with Vituzzu, originally. I only became aware of him as a steward recently. Since he mentioned my "requests for unblock," and I didn't know what he was talking about, I looked. I almost missed it. Yes, I had an unblock template up on meta, when I was blocked there for a time, and he did indeed deny it once, as a meta admin, in November, 2011. I had no recollection of that -- hey, I'm almost 70 years old -- and it did not therefore color my perception of him. But it obviously is coloring his perception of me.
 * It's remarkable. The basic problem here is an assumption of bad faith, and it's the same for him with me as it is for him with Augusto De Luca. He believes he can recognize the "bad faith" of others. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 22:44, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

@Wim b: No problem. It probably hadn't replicated to the server you were reading from yet. Also, I tagged the page before I created the RFD entry.

@Vituzzu: I understand. I'm not sure of the benefit of more time on this for any of us, but the question has been called, and I'd rather let the community speak for itself.

Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 23:36, 26 March 2014 (UTC)

re Category work
Doing some category work, helping to categorize previously uncategorized categories listed at Special:UncategorizedCategories.

Hopefully this is helpful work that other can then build upon and help to categorize in better or more specific categories.

Cheers,

-- Cirt (talk) 05:40, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Went through a bunch, will go back through another pass at Special:UncategorizedCategories to try to cut down more on the backlog. As of last check there were about 344 uncategorized categories on Wikiversity. -- Cirt (talk) 05:51, 27 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Cirt! Thanks for your efforts on updating categories.  One point to be aware of.  Computer Science is specific to the study of computers themselves, typically software development, hardware engineering, etc.  Information Technology is applied computer concepts.  Therefore, IT Service and Support is Information Technology rather than Computer Science.  I'll make the change.  Thanks again!  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:00, 27 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Hey there, thanks for the advice! And certainly feel free to make any changes, most appreciated! :) -- Cirt (talk) 17:24, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Please clarify
Sir, I have added a note to the topic stating that "the author of this article is a senior civil judge of Orissa from India". Being a newcomer to wikiversity ,I am uncertain if the note is appropriate under wiki-guidelines. Please clarify. 16.11.Rguru (discuss • contribs) 04:36, 29 March 2014 (UTC)


 * Welcome! The note is what it is.  Without a name, it's hard to judge the statement's validity, but it does provide context for the reader to either accept or dismiss.  I don't think your talk page is the appropriate place for the statement, however.  It should either be on your user page, describing you, or within the article or on the article's talk page explaining the author's perspective.


 * Regarding use of the Topic: namespace, note that topics are about Wikiversity organization of content rather than about content itself. For example, we might have a Topic:India Law that would organize users and articles about India law.  I've moved the page back to the main article namespace.


 * Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 14:03, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Full custodian nomination
Hi Dave, Thanks for your ongoing and outstanding contributions to Wikiversity content, admin, discussion, and custodial work. Are you ready for me to nominate you for full custodianship? Sincerely, James -- Jtneill - Talk - c 05:43, 2 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Yes, please. I think there's more than enough evidence on which the community can base its decision.  Thanks!  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 12:02, 2 April 2014 (UTC)

Turing test
Dave, you gave a "professional opinion" with. You did not point to evidence. Compiling evidence on edit times is something I have only started to do, and most of the evidence is hidden to non-administrators. Given that I've seen no compilation, and that I doubt you spent the hours necessary to compile the data from what remains accessible, I'd assume you looked at CentralAuth for Augusto De Luca, and considered those as edit times.

As I have shown in several places, most recently at Test#Account linking, what CentralAuth shows is not clearly related to what the user has done. Many wikis may be attached rapidly, based on activity on other wikis, so what amounts to automatic account creation time shows little about user activity rate.

Because of this, any "bot conclusion" is premature, if based on CA data. Did you look at anything else?

You conclusion was correct, but misleading. I.e., you concluded that the behavior was a mixture of human and bot. The "bot" was CentralAuth, the SUL mechanism, which automatically creates user accounts according to an unknown (to me) algorithm. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 17:06, 4 April 2014 (UTC)

(additional comment archived to history, may be restored by Dave if desired --Abd (discuss • contribs) 17:06, 4 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Not a Turing test. Turing's test was machine behavior indistinguishable from a human.  The question in this case is whether or not the human behavior is indistinguishable from that of a machine.  As I reviewed the account linkings, I see more evidence of manual intervention than I do bot activity.  Other parts of the activity appear to be bot-like, suggesting a human driving a bot rather than a fully automated process.  If you're looking for me to say was this 100% bot, I can clearly say, no, it was not.  The activity is inconsistent with machine behavior, even a machine attempting to mimic human behavior.  If you're looking for me to say this was 100% human, I can't do that.  Parts of it appear to be automated.


 * Beyond that, I think you're focusing on a detail that is immaterial to the overall issue. It doesn't matter how the pages were created.  They were created, and that's the issue.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 18:17, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Dave, you have still not stated explicitly what evidence you are looking at to make your conclusion. I'm not asking for your conclusions, so much as the evidence on which you based them. If you are looking at CA account attachment times, then *of course* it is going to look like a "mixture of machine and human," because it is. The human took some actions like logging in and looking at chosen pages. The bot was CentralAuth, triggered by those actions and creating accounts automatically, according to some unclear algorithm. It is obvious to me that this process can create a CentralAuth display that looks like a bot did it.
 * You are correct that it should be irrelevant. But, in fact, the appearance of "bot" is what made deletion of the pages an easy decision for many administrators. Without getting that issue out of the way, addressing the rest runs into a similar argument to yours. So what if the pages didn't violate policy? They were made by bot, Delete. Your argument seems to be, if I'm correct, so what if it wasn't a bot, the user mass-created pages, Delete.
 * Is mass creation of pages an indication of lack of interest in participation? Could it not be the opposite? Basically, Dave, antispam work seems to create ready assumptions of bad faith. We do not actually know the intentions of Augusto De Luca. But plenty of administrators and some others seem very ready to assume they were Bad in some way. I have seen zero evidence of that, but evidence or lack of evidence doesn't seem to matter.
 * Basically, Dave, I find the sequence chilling. The responses of the global sysop and the stewards does not encourage me to think that they have my interest in mind as a WMF contributor. Indeed, to them, I'm an outsider, writing out of "spite." Most of the community, the real community that builds the projects, is, to them, "outside," they are quite clear, they "wouldn't understand how SEOs work," even though how SEOs work is actually irrelevant. Being an SEO is not grounds for a block, on Wikipedia, if the conflict of interest is disclosed and the user does not violate COI policy.
 * The locked users other than Augusto De Luca did not violate any policy unless they were paid and did not disclose it. That's why it's important that the steward claims they were paid. He then is claiming a policy violation. Even though that policy violation will normally lead to a warning only. (Some ad agency editors have been blocked without warning when massive COI editing was discovered. But something as restricted as was involved on this scale -- essentially mass creation of a articles that seemed acceptable to the users, having stood for years, with quite a bit of other editor attention.
 * I understand an argument from you that if the user did not intend to participate here, the user page should be deleted. I'm very much disagreeing with that. As long as the user did not intend to "harm" Wikiversity, as long as the page violates no policy, it should stand. We cannot know intentions, and intentions do not control the future. I.e, the user may have no present intention to contribute, but if asked a question, might answer and might contribute.
 * Expressing this in a policy, we should. Basically, off-wiki behavior, absent certain rare situations that require unanticipated exceptions, should not be cause for any sanction or deletion here. There are exceptions:
 * Mainspace content that is a duplicate also found at another, more appropriate place may be deleted.
 * Child protection policy or the like, where -- allegedly -- there is social harm or the danger of harm from a user, and the decision on that is made privately, not by public debate, and for fairly obvious reasons.
 * User pages may be identical. After all, same user!
 * But my point in posting here, today, was not to debate the overall issue, but just to ask about what you had asserted about "part bot and part human."
 * The Turing test runs both ways, it must. My view of the Turing test is that it is fundamentally flawed, by testing for something that is not absent from humans. That is, we are machines. We are sometimes quite predictable and regular, and sometimes chaotic. Machines can be made that are chaotic. I find it likely that ultimately there is no consistent way to tell the difference between humans and a sufficiently complex machine, because we are complex machines. We are far more like machines than we often realize. We, and animals in general, are the proof that machine intellligence is possible. Or do we think that only non-biological machines are "machines"?
 * The global bot policy is misleading, because a human may think, "as long as I don't use a bot or a script -- really the same thing -- I am not violating policy," or "as long as I don't exceed one edit per minute with a bot" when the "real offense" is "flooding." I.e, making many, many edits in a relatively short time, like in a day. I have every confidence that if I created a user account on every WMF wiki, even with some excuse (which might actually come up), if I did it "efficiently," I'd be stopped, probably locked, unless I was very careful, which requires knowing that there is a "defacto policy." I know that. I'd be willing to bet that the vast majority of even experienced users don't know that. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 19:48, 4 April 2014 (UTC)


 * I looked at the account linkings at Special:CentralAuth/Augusto_De_Luca. I accept that the data represented there is based on account activity.  A quick sample of the actual edits behind the first three linkings show the links being created when the pages were created on that wiki.  More importantly, I have no reason to believe that the process would differ on 557 wikis all running the same software.
 * The user's approach, whatever it was, is outside the accepted bounds of the global community. Your assumption is that this activity may have been for our benefit, but we'll never know, because we blocked the user.  My assumption is that the user should have engaged one or more communities before deciding to participate in all 557 of them.  Without that history, and without follow-up, there is no reason for the rest of us to give the user the benefit of doubt.
 * In my opinion, the user should be welcome to participate here on Wikiversity. But the 557 account posts can be removed, as they do not collectively represent involvement in any of those local communities.  It had some other purpose, one we don't need to support in order to support the user himself.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 20:23, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
 * First things first. I don't merely have reason to believe that the process would differ on different wikis, I know that the process differs, because I demonstrated it. You can see it with the information in the Test page I linked, plus CentralAuth for !proxy. The time for account creation on CentralAuth does not necessarily correlate with any account activity on that wiki. In some cases it does. In other cases, not. In some cases, many accounts appear to be auto-created by a user action on a different wiki, according to rules that I don't understand. In some cases I took an action and CentralAuth appears to have created accounts on several wikis, with no further action by me, but at different times. In other cases I took no action at all relating to a wiki, I didn't even look at it, and still, accounts were created. Basically, Dave, the account information is garbage, in terms of assessing if activity is human or bot, and it does not provide solid information even on the time of looking at the wikis. (I had assumed quite differently, I was wrong.)
 * I would see one likely difference between human activity and a simple bot. A human's activity would vary, with breaks and slow period and hesitations. A bot activity would occur at a relatively steady pace, unless it was programmed to vary. (It might still vary with server load, connection variability, etc.)
 * "The user's approach, whatever it was, is outside the accepted bounds of the global community." Yes, it was, but the global community has not published those bounds. I know what they are, but few users do. My guess is that most users, asked if one could create those accounts, would say, "Of course, why not?" Most users are not aware of what the antispam people do, and of how they interpret activity.
 * So if a user violates an unpublished standard, is the user to be globally banned with no possibility of appeal? There is a circular argument here: the account creations are a problem because it caused all that work to address and delete the pages (and that is still going on. Many pages have had the tags removed, many are still sitting there). But the pages themselves were not a problem, they would cause no harm. The pages themselves violated no policy. Users commonly link to their own photographs.
 * Basically, the antispam volunteers have created their own policies. I confronted this, first, in 2009. ArbCom essentially said they had no remit (which was procedurally correct). So an organization outside of the Wikipedia community -- or our community -- and not the WMF -- can control who can edit our wiki. In that 2009 case, the global spam blacklist was the issue, and each wiki can nullify the effect of the global blacklist with the local whitelist, in whole or in part. Global lock is widely known to be a problem tool. The eventual intention is to replace it with global account blocking, with, then, local wikis being able to unblock. There used to be the "'crat trick." I.e., a crat would delink the account by renaming it and then naming it back. That was accepted and used a few times. (And, yes, I was involved with this). I've heard a rumor that it doesn't work any more. It was "fixed." I'd bet, though, that it could still be done.
 * To me, how we treat the user page symbolizes our wiki's welcome to a possible new user. If we delete the page, we are joining most of the overall community in rejecting the user. So, to me, how we behave with this page is diagnostic of our community. That is a large part of why it's important enough to me to spend the considerable time I've spent researching and documenting this.
 * What I'm seeking here is that we follow our own deletion policy and not invent new reasons for deletion ("cross-wiki spam") that do not serve Wikiversity purposes. If we do need some new reason, then let that be developed and documented by consensus. If we would allow a user here to place a Commons-hosted image on their user page, and nothing else, then we allow this user to do it, without fuss. Our tradition has been clear that what is done elsewhere is not of major significance on this wiki.
 * If that tradition is to be dropped, I've got some doozies to bring up! And others will have them. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 23:33, 4 April 2014 (UTC)
 * You are arguing against the global ban. That's fine, but this isn't the place to argue that.  I didn't ban the user.  I welcomed him, and still will if he comes here.  He hasn't.
 * I see 557 updates as detrimental to the global community. If it is not addressed, it can be repeated by anyone else who chooses to post a picture and run.  The picture by itself is not serving any of those communities.  It is not serving our community.  At this point, I would say just the length of this extended discussion here and elsewhere is having a net negative effect on the community.
 * But it's a fight you believe in, and as a custodian, I believe in your right to speak for it, and must invest my time to moderate it. But I'm not interested in defending it or repeating it.  Cross-wiki spam has a net-negative impact on all of us, even if it is only because it distracts stewards from otherwise watching over the wikis.  Whatever value it might have is not worth the cost.-- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:35, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I hope there won't be any request to undelete User:Nannadeem --Vituzzu (discuss • contribs) 16:14, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Pages that violate local policy may be speedy deleted. The page that has led to this discussion does not (yet) violate local policy.  If and when it does, it will be deleted.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:57, 10 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Dave, I get into trouble this way. I have long had a habit of deeply investigating topics that others mostly ignore. And that leads me to learn and understand things that others, if they understand them at all, understand quite differently. When I write about what I've found, if I simply write it as a report, it is generally considered tl;dr, particularly on wikis. Get to the point! But if I just get to the point, without presenting the background, people often strongly disagree with the point, which is not surprising. They don't have the background! So, here, I want to ask you about your "bot" conclusions, because I just saw what is probably the same evidence as you were looking at, but I have some additional experience to bring to it. This is long, as written, and nothing is really extraneous, I hope you will have time to read it. This is really about the judgment you made about "bot editing," and it's important because the label "spambot" is what sold deletion of the pages, worldwide, it's obvious.


 * I'm not convinced either way, yet, about the account lock ("the global ban") for the user. There are issues of meta policy there, which will eventually be discussed. But there are also issues of evidence that would be used forthe proposed policy change. All that local admins had to do was look, not at the page, but at CentralAuth, conclude "bot," and then the edit itself looked "promotional." That was rare, apparently, just from the initial creations themselves. I found one in 557 wikis that may have been like this, I am still studying it.


 * You see "557 updates* -- i.e., user page creations -- as "detrimental to the global community." However, how? Users have created more pages than that, but it's not considered "detrimental," because their purpose was considered to be "legitimate." But Augusto De Luca's purpose was not necessarily "illegitimate." His actual purpose is unknown, but my study is revealing more than was immediately obvious.


 * However, if we think he did what he did with a bot, the immediate impression is that it must be illegitimate, if it wasn't an authorized bot. "Spambot" was a telling argument, it quickly sold deletion all over the WMF (though not everywhere). The pages themselves didn't. Local administrators, like you, who looked only at the page, saw no harm in it.


 * There is a philosophy common among the global antispammers that spam must be punished, to deter it. Were there a sane policy in place on meta, governing antispam activity, however, this would have been much easier for a steward to handle, and if action was necessary, it would have been done -- stopped dead in its tracks -- in minutes, and, from the information I'm developing, studying this case, it would have been detected quickly and handled quickly, in a way that would allow appeal, etc. Spammers generally do not appeal. Instead, the idea that all the pages must be deleted created a huge pile of work to do.


 * Now, if a page does no harm locally, if it is not "spam" locally, does it become spam if repeated? In the proposed deletion policy, "indiscriminate edits" repeated cross wiki, are to be considered subject to speedy deletion. But the creation of a user page is not "indiscriminate," it is "targeted," to a very specific page. The policy doesn't mention "user page." The policy in general is not written with user pages in mind. We allow far more with user pages than with resources.


 * The user had every reason, from precedent that he had very likely seen, to consider these pages at least generally acceptable. Quite similar pages had been created, cross-wiki, by two of the SPAs that worked on Augusto De Luca articles. No problems, no warnings, apparently no deletions, etc.


 * The issue is scale and rate, not the edits themselves, and that Augusto De Luca is an "outsider." And, of course, will remain so unless the global lock is overturned, which may be attempted. Just not yet. I've gotten a global lock overturned before, with one very unpopular editor. I have little doubt about being able to overturn some of the locks. If I'm incorrect about that, I'm incorrect about many things, and my entire involvement with the WMF wikis will need re-examination.


 * Responding to Wim b, on Wikiversity talk:Requests for deletion, I finally loaded the account attachment times from Special:CentralAuth/Augusto De Luca into a spreadsheet, and sorted by time and other information, to see what he'd seen to draw his conclusions. I now think that this is also what you looked at, because it is the only data still readily visible, and it's all easily seen with a single download; and sorted by time, it shows a very interesting story.


 * First of all, those are not edit times, they are account creation times. I will present a study of this on the study pages, but if I do assume they are edit times, as Wim b clearly did, and as I suspect you did, they show a very different picture from "bot." They show bursts of activity at high rate, and many pauses. While a bot could simulate that, it would obviously slow down the bot, substantially. A bot, however, would continue at high rate until completion.


 * You referred to the mixture of human and machine activity. This because you were looking at a mixture of human and machine activity. In the CA times, the human activity consisted of either looking at or logging in to wikis, not, generally, editing them.


 * CA account creation behavior, with SUL, is not consistent, there are hidden rules. For example, what Wim b first posted were the CA displayed times for thge English wikis, all showing the same time. I found that accounts were created for my account User:!proxy on the English wikis, all within a few minutes, without ever looking at them. I suspect that server load is involved, that the process has low priority. More will be revealed. I was working with high server load, possibly, perhaps Augusto did something at a low load time, so there were something like six attachments in a minute. He had looked at en.wikipedia, I suspect.


 * It looks like he started out only by looking at the wikipedias, where there were articles on him. There were quite a few more of them than I had thought, because most were directly and immediately deleted by Vituzzu, even though they had been standing for a long time, maybe a year. I did not anticipate that Vituzzu would do that to standing encyclopedia articles. What is left is wikis that don't allow global sysops and stewards to take those actions, I think. It is very unusual for a steward to act locally like this, except for immediate response to spam or obvious vandalism.


 * Knowing that these are automatic account creation times, and coupled with my experience in my test of the situation, I now am ready to come up with a hypothesis as to what happened. It requires no bot or script. I suspect that the user began with an intention to just create accounts on the encyclopedias, probably those where articles had previously been created. But then CentralAuth automatically created more accounts for him. So he then went ahead to create accounts on all the wikis. And then, accounts set up and log-in automatic (mostly), he started creating user pages. I have not studied the user page creation times, because most of the pages have been deleted, I can only study a sample. But I'll do that, as I have time.


 * Why is this important? Because the policy you propose requires a judgment of "indiscriminate editing," and there is no definition of that, and we have a case which wasn't "indiscriminate," as to how the user would perceive it, which wasn't against any policy I can find, but only ran into the antispammer practices. Creating a user page on our wiki, with information that is clearly related to the WMF (in this case, an image on Commons, by the photographer with the same name as the user name), isn't spam. But, repeated on many wikis, it looks like spam.
 * We welcomed the user, but then we delete the at-worst-harmless user page? Because the user has created other user pages on other wikis? How many other wikis? At what rate? It's a can of worms, difficult to enforce, etc.
 * You accepted the "spambot" argument, as did quite a few others, looking at CentralAuth, and the word "bot" in there takes what is not spam and makes it look like spam, because a professional spammer would use a bot, right? An ordinary user would not have a bot available.
 * We imagine that an ordinary user would not go to the trouble. Augusto De Luca is not "ordinary." He's an artist. I'm an artist, and artists do some very unusual things. I once filled a page in a drawing book with tiny circles drawn by a very fine Rapidograph pen, making a texture that looked like wood under a microscope. Most people would not even think of doing something so "tedious." Basically, artists get an idea, they then figure out how to implement it, and they may spend a day or two -- or longer, much longer -- doing things that others would say, "What? Why? Too much work!" And if they see that work, they will assume that the artist "cheated." Maybe, but maybe not. To actually do this work required less work than setting up a bot would have required, if a bot were not already available. And it was very doable, I've shown that.
 * I'm going to see if I can get the data for the page edit times. That shows actual human activity (or bot). The CA data does produce some interesting information, indicating to me the sequence of thought of Augusto. Once I know that the actual times are not directly edit times, but represent machine action feeding off of human action, the CA data doesn't look like a bot was involved, as to the user actions. The bot appearance comes from the server response.
 * The human intention appears to be originally to create an account on all the Wikipedias where an article existed, I'm suspecting. CA helpfully, then, creating a lot of other accounts. So the user decided to go ahead and create accounts there, since there was some history of the usability of his images on other wikis, such as a photo of a notable person illustrating a wikiquote page of quotations by that person. Why not?
 * There are even experienced users -- but not familiar with the antispam practices -- who, if asked, would have said, "Why not? Nothing wrong with it." --Abd (discuss • contribs) 17:43, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the breadcrumbs
Hi Dave - I hope I'm asking you this in the correct manner. I'm not sure what the format is for messaging you. Thanks for adding the breadcrumbs to the subpages on my home page (https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Instructional_design/Online_Presentations) It took me a while to find the help page on wikipedia help which explains that by adding a forward slash between the double brackets and the content at both ends generates the breadcrumbs on each page. Thanks - Jpankin (Jeff) Jpankin (discuss • contribs) 22:08, 7 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Hi Jeff! You're welcome!  Your message format is correct.  Feel free to ask whatever questions you have.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 23:36, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

ICT in Education
Hi Dave Thank you for your comment. I want to create a new project titles " ICT in Education' and create few sub pages in this project. Please can you tell me how I can create a new project (should I create a page and link pages) I went through the help, but it is not clear for me. Thank you Ranil


 * Hi Ranil! We already have a page for ICT Teacher Training.  We could rename this page to 'ICT Education' or 'ICT in Education' if those are more appropriate.  There's also the existing ICT page, which could be expanded or have 'Teaching' or 'Education' subpages added to it.  There's also ICT Literacy which has very little content so far.  Perhaps all of these can be combined with your own ideas in the existing ICT page.
 * As for how to add subpages, the easiest way might be to add the links first, and then click on the links to add the subpages. See Computer Skills for a related topic that uses and demonstrates the subpages approach.  If you tell me where and what title, I can create one for you as an example.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:40, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

User:Nannadeem
Above, it was written:
 *  I hope there won't be any request to undelete User:Nannadeem --Vituzzu (discuss • contribs) 16:14, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Speak of the devil....


 * Pages that violate local policy may be speedy deleted. The page that has led to this discussion does not (yet) violate local policy. If and when it does, it will be deleted. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:57, 10 April 2014 (UTC)

Dave, I missed that deletion. Not only do I see that you welcomed the user, but I happen to have invited Nannadeem to come to Wikiversity, having seen struggling on RationalWiki. Here, I wrote, it would be possible for him to explore his ideas and be appropriately criticized. I notice that he asked you about that. I'm guessing that he may have put something considered inappropriate on his user page. So, yes, please undelete the page so I may examine it.

Since this is an active user, not blocked, the user page should not be deleted unless the content is positively harmful. It could be blanked, of course. If you still think it should be deleted, please replace the speedy deletion tag with a proposed deletion. I will either replace it with a speedy tag myself if I agree to the deletion, or remove the proposed deletion tag, and ... our policy does require this process, as you know, and for very good reason.

(If there is seriously bad stuff there, obviously, which seems very unlikely to me, either decline my request on that basis or revision delete as needed.)

This user has undeleted edits here, no block or warning. He is not a commercial spammer. There is no sign in CA of global spam. The user has 184 edits on en.wikipedia, with no block log. I reviewed that history some time ago, and saw that he was getting into trouble, that's all. Happens to newbies all the time.

I thank Vituzzu for calling this to our attention, ironically or not. I may have more comment after I see that page. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 18:09, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
 * This userpage was deleted because it was spam, not created by the user. The content was along the lines of "tramadol get you high", but before the first deletion the content was just a hyphen. It was created by an IP with an edit summary that was just a bunch of random letters. Do not blame Nannadeem, since he is not responsible for this at all. Dave's actions were correct. PiRSquared17 (discuss • contribs) 19:14, 10 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Thanks, PRS. I incorrectly, assumed that because we had been talking about a user page created by a user and then Vituzzu brought up User:Nannadeem, that he was talking about a page created by Nannadeem. The deletion reason didn't explain accurately. Dave will normally provide a better explanation, like "user page not created by user." I've been spoiled by his excellent and rigorously transparent work. This, however, wasn't spam, it was vandalism. The same hit my talk page, and, finding some IP history behind it, I took it to meta and a global block was issued. No actual spammer uses that kind of nonsense title and summary, that will cause the edit to stand out like a sore thumb in recent changes. Some vandals want that kind of attention. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 02:25, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure it is a vandal as opposed to a spammer. Humans tend not to use edit summaries like "owISWjaFPfWuYSIiKbEhrrEWpOTcRXcUOlWZEx" to create other peoples' userpages with the content being a single hyphen, and the IPs are listed in stopforumspam.com as recently reported spam sources. PiRSquared17 (discuss • contribs) 03:38, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
 * Just checked your talk page, exact same pattern. Looking at it again, it definitely could be a vandal/troll as opposed to a spammer. It's hard to tell, but if it is a vandal he definitely (1) wants to look like spam (2) is using IPs from multiple locations, e.g. in a botnet or open proxy. Either way, the deletion was correct. :-) PiRSquared17 (discuss • contribs) 03:42, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
 * No disagreement about the deletion! If there was an error here, it was minor and not worth fixing: the deletion reason could have been more informative. Yes, the vandal wants it to look like spam. Except, I'll repeat, spammers don't add nonsense like that, not real spammers. Vandals do. Vandals sometimes repeat vandalism on a large scale, and we loosely call it "spam," then, but "mass vandalism" would be more accurate.
 * There is a way that a real spammer, however, might use vandalism like this, to test response. In that case, though, the real spam would appear from a different IP, and would not resemble the vandalism, the "fake spam." There are linguistic issues with the terms used. We tend to use inferred motive to describe actions, classifying the actions based on the inferences. That's substituting opinion (mindreading) for actual fact (what is actually seen). It leads to lots of problems, and administrative errors. If a sysop assumes that someone's motive is to upset and anger users, they may block the user as a "troll." But legitimate actions can cause anger, how do we distinguish a trolling intention from a legitimate intention? Further, some people are socially disabled, and do not anticipate angry response, when others, more normal socially, would be very aware of that as likely. (ADHD and Asperger's can create this situation). Complicating this, some users become upset and angry at anything that looks like criticism of them. So simple presentation of fact can anger and upset some. We cannot use the response of others to assess the intentions of a user, bottom line.
 * I've been through all this, PRS, on en.wikipedia. ArbComm struggled with how to characterize my editing, because, some arbitrators recognized, it was in good faith. What they came to -- on this point -- was correct: if I was disrupting the wiki, it didn't matter what my intentions were. Basically, administrators properly act to prevent disruption, and don't need to be mind-readers to do it. I don't agree with the remedies they implemented, because I was pointing to fundamental structural flaws, but, as I found out, ArbCom doesn't consider those. They are only looking to get the immediate case out of their hair, and it is far simpler to decide A is right and B is wrong than to look at the roots of conflict.
 * I knew that the issues I raised would not stop coming up, that it wasn't about me. And I was right on that, there was a massively disruptive RfAr that came next year over the same people and same behavior. They still punted, taking minimal action, not addressing the principles but just deciding with respect to specific editors, a few, when the real situation involves many. That RfAr was filed by a steward, one of the best. He consulted me, off-wiki.
 * They assumed I was trying to get administrators sanctioned, that's how they think. I was actually trying to get ArbCom to look at policies and principles, since I'd seen them do it previously. I was hoping for guidance from them. It irritated the hell out of them. So was I "trolling"? Actually, I was disappointed, I had really thought of ArbCom as a true deliberative body, with highly intelligent and highly experienced administrators being on the body. The reality was different, that's all. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:17, 11 April 2014 (UTC)

My concern on some of these recent spam/vandal posts is that they are using Wikiversity as an anonymous code exchange / drop site. We delete the page, but we don't clear the log, and it is the log entry that has the actual content in it, whatever that strange code actually is. We are providing a free communication site. If they're only testing us, we're passing. If they're using us for something else, we're failing so far. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:16, 11 April 2014 (UTC)


 * When you delete a page, you can always clear the reason for the deletion auto-generated by MediaWiki before deleting it, which is essentially the "content was:... and the only contributor was:..." part in the deletion summary. In worst case scenarios and extreme abuse from spammers, you can even delete the log entry itself. --TeleComNasSprVen (discuss • contribs) 20:32, 11 April 2014 (UTC)


 * The issue isn't the deletion log, which would only contain the article text, not the log entry from when the article was created. The only way to clear the log from the article being created is to hide the article history.  I wouldn't do that without community support.  The question is whether or not this content presents a risk to the community and the server.  Do we care if we're supporting some sort of outside clandestine efforts just based on log files?  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 23:26, 11 April 2014 (UTC)
 * It's important to think these things all the way through. If someone wants to send coded messages, it can be done in many ways. For example, messages can be encoded in pixels in images.
 * In this case, I don't see how the message was preserved in logs. There is a New pages log, but User:Nannadeem isn't visible in it, I think that New pages log doesn't show deleted pages. The entire deletion could be hidden, but we need to think of the overall effect of such a practice on the community.
 * As you know, Dave, revision deletion is considered a dangerous tool, because it decreases administrative transparency. So, we could attempt to hide messages, with revision deletion, and the cost is transparency, which is important. How important is it if Wikiversity is occasionally abused for sending messages? And why Wikiversity? They could -- and would -- pick any of over 600 wikis. It's vandalism, and we cannot stop vandalism. We can only detect and revert it, and slow it. Any sophisticated vandal can find more open proxies, the stewards are not even close to staying on top of open proxies unless they are first used for vandalism/spam.
 * If the message doesn't get through, they will just send it again. I.e., hiding it will cause more of it. Unless and until detection is very fast, even revision deletion could not stop this.
 * So I suggest this: if someone wants to hide messages in page history, we cannot stop them without doing damage. They have computers and it would be simple to hide messages in apparently random vandalism, much less visible than the the headers we saw. Those headers were easy to see and remove. If we make their task more difficult, they will make their message sending more complex and difficult to detect.
 * We should keep it simple. We revert vandalism and clear spam. We warn for what is marginal. We welcome users if AGF is possible. We don't revision delete stuff unless leaving it causes actual and ongoing harm. We remain as transparent as possible so that the community trusts us. And, yes, Dave, we get the custodianship process going again so we have more sysops to handle the load. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 01:08, 12 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Okay, another one just popped up. When it is deleted, it is removed from the 'recent' log.  No issues.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 01:18, 12 April 2014 (UTC)

no turkish wikiversity in wikiversity.org.
please read! https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_new_languages/Wikiversity_Turkish_2

you create turkish wikiversity (if you can) or dont move this page.

https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/%C3%96%C4%9Fretim_tasar%C4%B1m%C4%B1/R2D2


 * Please see https://beta.wikiversity.org . 'Wikiversity beta also serves as an incubator for Wikiversities in languages that have not yet got their own sites.'  If you'd like to create Turkish content, you'll need to do it at Beta until there are enough Turkish users to support a Turkish site.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:29, 23 April 2014 (UTC)

Hey
https://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=Wikiversity_talk:Requests_for_Deletion&curid=17552&diff=1181460&oldid=1181441 - what do you mean by that? --Goldenburg111 21:42, 23 April 2014 (UTC)


 * It means that I'm done with that conversation. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:38, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Collaborative Learning
Hello. I started a learning project awhile ago called Using Wikiversity. Collaborative Learning sounds like something a person wanting to learn about using Wikiversity might want to know. What do you think of the idea of merging the collaborative learning project into using Wikiversity? -- dark lama  16:40, 2 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I think it's something we should look at after my course sequence is over in August. I'm not quite sure where this is going yet.  I'm in the middle of a research project, and trying to make useful notes along the way.  It's going to be much more teacher/teaching focused, but it would have direct applications for teachers using Wikiversity.  Thanks!  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 17:01, 2 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I will try to remember to examine the resource when the course sequence is over with then. I'm not quite sure where Using Wikiversity is going yet either. I hadn't even thought about that Using Wikiversity resource in awhile, until I saw your course. -- dark lama  17:38, 2 May 2014 (UTC)

Request for a move of resources that contain subpages.
I have now settled on a structure for the six courses I routinely teach and request the following moves (with subpages):
 * 1) Move Intro astronomy college course to Astronomy college course
 * 2) Move Calc_based_physics_college_course_I to User:Guy vandegrift/Calc_based_physics_college_course_I
 * 3) Move Calc_based_physics_college_course_II to User:Guy vandegrift/Calc_based_physics_college_course_II
 * 4) MoveTrig based physics college course I to User:Guy vandegrift/Trig_based_physics_college_course_I
 * 5) MoveTrig based physics college course II to User:Guy vandegrift/Trig_based_physics_college_course_II

For more information and discussion, see User_talk:Guy_vandegrift --guyvan52 (discuss • contribs) 19:48, 4 May 2014 (UTC)

Pictures
hello,why can't i copy and paste a picture in editing?--Christian Merlyn (discuss • contribs) 13:18, 22 May 2014 (UTC)


 * The editor is text only. Pictures are uploaded separately and included as files or images.  See FAQ/Editing and Uploading files.  Note that new (unconfirmed) users aren't able to upload images.  That takes something like four days and ten edits before you are confirmed.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 14:02, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Your message
At the moment, Salomon v Salomon resembles a stub Wikipedia article. The only reason to keep it would be if it adds something useful to Salomon v A Salomon & Co Ltd that cannot go in that article. Perhaps it could be rewritten as a "case note" (i.e. a precis). For an example of what a case note should look like, see Twining and Miers, How to do Things with Rules, 3rd Ed, Wiedenfield and Nicolson, 1991, p 288 (further discussed at pp 283-8 and 450), 1999 edition, p 311. Perhaps someone could generate specimen examination questions on the case. Perhaps someone could generate some original research on the case. There isn't much there at the moment. I have not checked if it contains any information that needs to be added to the Wikipedia article. I am not in a position to promise to improve it. You'll have to decide what you want to do with it. James500 (discuss • contribs) 19:19, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * For now I've created English Law as an anchor project to put things like this under. They can stay there or be moved/combined with other content at some point.  Thanks.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 23:51, 25 May 2014 (UTC)
 * What is the relationship between that page and Department:English law? James500 (discuss • contribs) 00:34, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Now merged under the single English Law project. We don't have a 'Department:' namespace, and the Topic: namespace is for departments rather than content.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 01:43, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Gedgets and Javascript in wikiversity
Hallo dave, first of all thanks a lot for your help while moving the web science mooc As you realized I now have a student assistent User:sebschlicht who is helping me to program some php api bots (yes moving pages was handwork but this was intended for sebschlicht to become warm the everything), lua modules and some gadgets to improve the usability of the entire course. The goal is to make it more easy for other users to create their own moocs with the infrastructure that we will provide and for students to have a better experience while participating. Our own mooc will run again starting in october 2014. On the last Wikicon an employee from Wikimedia told me it should be possible to deploy javascript within templates / lua modules as so called gadgets once one has admin rights and of course as long one does not do any cross side scripting and violation of user privacy. Since we are planning to work with at least some minor java script (for example to enable students to ask questions right on the content pages and not forcing them to go the the talk pages) I would like to ask you if my information about gadgets is correct and what the standard procedure for deploying them would be. I already made an entry with some information about them on sebschlichts talk page but it would be great if you could help us out here and tell us if our plan will indeed be possible. Thanks again! With kind regards --Renepick (discuss • contribs) 16:24, 26 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I haven't written any gadgets, but I have edited one. To see all of the available gadgets, use Special:PrefixIndex and search the MediaWiki namespace for all files with a prefix of Gadget.  Start with Gadget kitchen/Training to learn how to write gadgets.  As far as I can tell, any custodian would be able to create and edit gadgets.  We can work together on testing it once you have a gadget to add.  You might also consider  requesting probationary custodianship yourself to make the process easier.  This would also allow you to more easily manage content, work with your MOOC students, etc.  The only challenge right now may be in finding a custodian willing to mentor.  I would, but I'm still probationary myself.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:53, 26 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Hey Dave thanks for the link to the gadget kitchen. This was exactly what I didn't find anywhere (all the wiki projects are just so big). I think for now it will be fine if we use common.js in our user name space for a user java script which improves the mooc while we do development. Once we have an excellent user java script which will serve the purpose of our studentss I will ask you or the other custodians if this can be included to MediaWiki:Common.js. I think Sebschlicht and me should currently not apply for custodianship since we are pretty busy with the mooc at the time and it is not quite clear if we really find the time to help other users. I think custodianship is a great responsibility which I would want to fulfill if I take it. FYI: User:Renepick/common.js and its application at Topic:Web_Science/Templates:DiscussionBox (you have to copy common.js to your userspace if you want to see it. but at the moment it is rather boring) best wishes. --Renepick (discuss • contribs) 20:57, 26 May 2014 (UTC)

Crisis Bonding
Hello Dave, Thanks for the welcome (you are the only one kind enough to do so thus far). My crisis bonding page should have gone in the original research section. At this point, I have no idea where the page is at unless I go to my inbox. Where exactly is it within Wikiversity? - (09:22, 9 June 2014‎ by SuttonClawson)


 * Hi! We don't really have separate sections here, just learning projects.  For now, Crisis bonding is probably best as its own learning project.  You can decide later if you want to combine it with other resources into a larger project.  It is at Crisis bonding.  You may want to edit your user page at User:SuttonClawson to add a link to this resource to make it easier for you to find.  The link is added using Crisis bonding .  You can also use the search at the top of the page and just search for Crisis bonding.
 * Note that whenever you start a new conversation on a talk page, you should do so by adding a topic, or by including a new heading using == new heading == syntax at the top of your post. Also, please always sign your talk page comments by using  in your edit.  The wiki software will use that to create your signature automatically.  Wiki editing is a learning experience, but we're available to help you learn.  Let us know what additional questions you have.  Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 14:49, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Hello Dave, please bear with me as this Wikipedia/Versity and anything about the Wiki format is totally new to me! Is it possible to put a search tab on the left hand side to search within Wikiversity? The other search tab takes you out to the internet it seems. I am looking for the page to insert the Psychologist button and have lost it in the transfer. Also, I lost my Wikipedia links and can't figure out how to correct those. Apparently the brackets differ during transportation. SuttonClawson (discuss • contribs) 15:23, 9 June 2014 (UTC)


 * There is a search box at the top of every page that allows you to search within Wikiversity. If you're going out to the Internet, you're using your browser's search box rather than the Wikiversity search box.  The Wikiversity search box is the one on the same line as Read / Edit / Add topic / View history / and the Favorite star.
 * I'm not sure what Psychologist button you're referring to. Can you provide a link?  Even a link from Wikipedia as to what it looked like over there?
 * Wikiversity and Wikipedia are different projects. To link to Wikipedia from Wikiversity you need to precede the link with either Wikipedia: or w:.  For example, Crisis bonding here is Crisis bonding .  Crisis bonding on Wikipedia from here is Crisis bonding .  I would correct the links on the Crisis bonding page for you, but you've asked that no one assist you on that page.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 15:51, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Hello Dave, here is the link to the nifty button I was referring to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:SuttonClawson Also, I'm not sure if I added the links correctly to the crisis bonding page. Are they supposed to have the word Wikipedia in front of them all? SuttonClawson (discuss • contribs) 20:30, 9 June 2014 (UTC)


 * I've imported the template.  You can use it now.  Technically it's considered a userbox.  It's not a button, because there's nothing to push.
 * If a resource is at Wikipedia, you must include either Wikipedia: or w: in the link. It's a matter of user style as to whether you display that or not.  For example, Psychology would link to Wikipedia's Psychology article without displaying the leading w:, but the user here at Wikiversity wouldn't know they are being redirected to Wikipedia.  To me, that is misleading.  I always include the full Wikipedia: in my links so that new users understand where the link will take them.  How you choose to write your content is up to you.
 * Note that because you've corrected the links, you should now remove the at the top of the article.
 * Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 23:42, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi
Hi, thank you for helping. I am new here and just learning how to use the forum facility... I've created a Talk page in moments ago, can you check if I did it correctly? I also need to know how I can view other online users

Regards, Ananie (12:26, 18 July 2014‎ by User:Niyana)


 * Hi Ananie! The Talk page you created wasn't associated with any particular subject.  It, too, would be ignored.  I'd recommend leaving a message for User:Guy vandegrift.  You might also try User:‎1sfoerster or User:Marshallsumter.  All three have been active recently, and all three have a much stronger physics background than I do.  Also, whenever you leave a message on a Talk page, be sure to sign your message by including four tildes .  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:53, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

moves on How things work/Industrial Revolution versus w:Industrial revolusion
Dave- I have been moving some names around. This quiz is specific to Industrial Revolution, but for some reason I can't interlink to a subpage. I will let you know when its all worked out.--guyvan52 (discuss • contribs) 15:44, 28 July 2014 (UTC)


 * I would recommend not including w: in the title. That could cause problems.  It also forces the article into a different namespace because of the colon.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 15:55, 28 July 2014 (UTC)


 * I will do that right now, even if it doesn't solve my wikilink problem. There is no point in tempting fate with questionable names in namespace. I will do it by creating two parallel sets of duplicate pages.  Later I will speedy delete one of those sets.--guyvan52 (discuss • contribs) 16:34, 28 July 2014 (UTC)


 * It's a syntax problem. Try something like  .  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 17:15, 28 July 2014 (UTC)

gday
hi dave thank you for your kind msg. i see we share a common interest. commuters. i am a gnu/linux man. well i am now. am learning bash. and bridge too! all the best, regards

bridge question
Hi i just created a bridge page. is it possible to create something like this: http://www.reddit.com/r/bridge/comments/2cboa4/formatted_cards_and_bridge_boards/ to facilitate the learning of bridge?

Futhermore, creating bridge hands in the manner suggested in the reddit link is quite tedious, would you know how to go about implementing this code etc in wikiversity? thx mate.--LucySteele (discuss • contribs) 23:27, 1 August 2014 (UTC)--LucySteele (discuss • contribs) 23:27, 1 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Start by taking a look at Contract bridge. I've imported the corresponding templates, so you have the same tools available.  It's still going to be a bit tedious, but it appears to be the best the wiki family has to offer.  Give it a try, and let me know if something isn't working, or if you discover other templates at Wikipedia that you need to have imported here in order to do what you want.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:20, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

subpages versus categories
Hi, I noticed you created a CDIO page and moved some projects to subpages of it. Then you created a static electricity sub page and moved projects to subpages of it. I had created a static electricity category and put the subpages in it. Most of these projects don't fall into a particular pattern. Categories seem better. What do you think? --1sfoerster (discuss • contribs) 19:56, 18 August 2014 (UTC)


 * When organizing subpages, I generally go by links. If there's a primary page that points to a number of other pages, and those pages only have the other page as their incoming link, I make a bold assumption that they should be subpages and move them accordingly.  Unfortunately, I've moved enough pages that I don't always remember possible connections to other pages.


 * But as to overall structural philosophy, I think Wikiversity is more useful as a collection of learning projects or courses like Wikibooks than it is as a collection of individual topics like Wikipedia. Structure, and seeing how concepts are related helps learners apply what they are learning.  It also improves navigation between the topics.  To me, categories are better used for linking across learning projects, and for pages that belong in multiple projects.


 * If I've inadvertently moved things together that would be better separate for your students, please feel free to move them back, or let me know and I can move them. I don't mind learning new approaches for content I'm less familiar with.


 * Thanks! -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 21:26, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Appending Mediwiki:commons.js for globally available MOOC user frontend.
Hey Dave 4 months ago I have asked you how one would deploy javascript to wikiversity. We (primarily User:Sebschlicht for the technical stuff) now have worked a lot to create a MOOC like experience as you would experience on sites like edx or coursera as a learner. You can see a preview of the new system at: Web_Science/Part2:_Emerging_Web_Properties/Web_Search_Ecosystem/Introduction_to_Online_Advertisement. The problem is that for you the page will look kind of boring and bad designed. The reason is that you don't have all the java scripts that we have. If you want to check out our user experience we recommend copying User:Renepick/common.js to your common.js and refresh the page.

Currently our common.js is bigger than it will stay at the end. We are planning to create several seperate javascript files like mooc.js and discussion.js and use dynamic resource loading from common.js to load these other scripts for users only if they surf on mooc pages. It would be great if in near future (we plan to have our system stable and better designed by the end of the month) the scripts could be copied to MediaWiki:Common.js and to respective subpages for resource loading. We try hard to make the scripts secure but I guess a code review would still be necessary at some point in time in order to proof that we don't do anything to intrude the privacy of the user.

The MOOC lua scripts, java script and css files are designed in a way that teachers can easily create courses with a point and click experience. Once you have the javascript installed in your user account (or of course if it is globally depolyed) you could for example use all the edit buttons within the templates to have in place edits of our so called MoocIndex and transcluded pages. The Mooc Index is a central index that stores the structure of lessons and learning unites. our mooc index can be seen at Web_Science/Part2:_Emerging_Web_Properties/MoocIndex. It has to have this specific format and the entire scripts will break if the mooc index is mal formated. Another feature we are particular proud of is the (still in development) question answering and commenting system for learning units and lessons. With this feature users can on the page they are viewing ask questions and reply to them in a tree like structure. The questions and answers are stored on the respecive talk pages but for non mediawiki users the usability increases a lot.

You can find our current roadmap (we are one week behind) on User:Renepick/todos/Mooc_Scripte. I am also not sure if your talk page is the proper place to discuss the matter of moving our java script to the protected pages since other custodians might be evolved to the process? For deployment and bug fixing it might actually really make sense now (as you have suggested before) to apply at least for temporary custodian rights. Anyway thanks for helping out. Feel free to ask as many questions as you want (I tried to keep the post short since documentation of the entire system is also part of our schedule and will come soon.) Maybe you even have some idea how we can better present the new system (maybe with a screencast) so that other custodians can get a quicker feeling of what we built.

By the way I will present this system to Wikimedia Germany on September 12th which is a reason why we are planning to have the system ready by the end of this month and why I am already contacting you. I assume that the deployment process will take some time. --Renepick (discuss • contribs) 09:59, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * The Colloquium is the place to discuss this. MediaWikii:common.js deployment would be up to the community.  I don't know that the deployment itself would take very long, but building consensus and testing might.  I've been waiting eight months for consensus on the UploadWizard and have a whopping three responses so far and no custodian comments at all.  User:Darklama would be the best choice to oversee this Javascript deployment If he's available, as he has much more experience with it than I do.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 12:11, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * thanks for your prompt and helpful reply (once more). I contacted you since you are somewhat familiar with our course and project. i realize that it is currently hard to explain to people what we are really pitching for. would you have any suggestions for proposing our changes to the colloquium? Should I just crosspost my request on your talk page or should I rather first talk to User:Darklama. Do you think creating an example screencast will be helpful? --Renepick (discuss • contribs) 12:16, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * Several thoughts. 1) If Darklama is willing to take this on, follow his lead.  2) I wouldn't approach the community until you're fairly confident the look and feel is done.  The code itself may change, but you want them to be able to evaluate what you are asking for, and it should look and feel like what you are asking for.  3) I would make a much shorter request to the community.  Provide examples of what it does and indicate what is required to make it happen from the community's perspective.  The detail beyond that makes it sound more complicated than it needs to be from a community perspective.  4) Yes, a screencast would certainly be helpful, as it can be viewed without someone having to implement the JavaScript themselves.  5) Would it be possible to implement this as a gadget instead?  Then users who want Mooc functionality can turn on the gadget.  Everyone else is unaffected, and it's a simple user choice to enable or disable depending on desired functionality (and stability).  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 12:31, 21 August 2014 (UTC)


 * @1 through 4: I will contact darklama first and see how he will react. Since I will make a presentation + documentation + screencast for the wikimedia event in september anyway this will be a good moment to envolve the community. @5: I think a gadget would be rather impractical since people will link to pages of the mooc and then wonder why they are strange looking (as long as the gadet is not enabled). We considered writing gadets for content creators. but then we realized there is resource loading anyway (which means only people who interact with the content will receive the extra javascript + everyone should be also able to fix mistakes and collaboratively edit the content). in this case we can also tell our students to update their own common.js but as mentioned this would exclude all other learners and kind of destroy the idea of OER. --Renepick (discuss • contribs) 12:48, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

Nomination for permanent custodianship
Candidates for Custodianship/Dave Braunschweig. As Jtneill gave me permission, I have nominated you for permanent custodianship. I will place a notice of this on the Colloquium. We have often site-messaged permanent nominations, but my opinion is that, absent an expressed consensus, you shouldn't action that. So we'll see what the community says on the Colloquium, I'll request comment there. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:07, 29 August 2014 (UTC)

Matter concerning you
Request_custodian_action. Thanks. - Sidelight12 Talk 01:28, 10 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Noted. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 02:02, 10 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for closing that, Dave. However, bans are possible here, and as I pointed out, local bans must precede global ones. (Two local bans, actually.) Local bans are not merely blocks, they require a community discussion. Local bans are very rare, and there is only one declared global ban that sort-of followed global ban policy. Naturally, I was involved in that case, indeed, I was emergency-desysopped here because I acted according to established community policy. There are defacto global bans, implemented through global locks, ad-hoc, by stewards, not following policy. And naturally one of these cases was mentioned.... I expect there may be more coming, with the SUL changes and removal of local authority, giving stewards global access to all accounts, not just global ones (essentially, with the new policy, all accounts become global, thus all accounts may be locked, with no local recourse.)
 * Community Review/Moulton's block is a ban discussion. Moulton was later unblocked, was blocked again but there was no renewed ban discussion, so he's not banned, my opinion, just indef blocked. (He could be banned, but with no disruption in years, it would be silly and disruptive to open the required new Review.)
 * Wikiversity:Community Review/User:Wikademia is a ban discussion, Emesee (Wikiademia and other user names) is banned. I know of no others.
 * There are a few blocked users. They have always been blocked based on current disruption, and remain blocked because of no unblock, not due to a community ban. Any custodian could unblock, being personally satisfied that there was no present risk to the project or the community. Traditionally, unconditionally unblocking a community-banned user requires a discussion. One may unblock talk page access without prior discussion to allow appeal, etc., and the same for email access. I.e., if a user is still disruptive on their own talk page, they may still be allowed email access, so that they may definitively appeal, and this is only to be revoked if abused. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 13:54, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

speedy deletion
User:CorneliMerrill/Arrendar o comprar un automóvil. I moved that there because the translation did not reveal any actual solicitation. Did you see something I didn't? I notified the user at User talk:CorneliMerrill. Yes, I know exactly what that page looked like, and what it might be, a setup for a later addition of a link. But maybe not, and that's why I moved it instead of tagging it for speedy deletion, then I tagged the redirect. Thoughts?

I notified the user that the page was deleted. Yes, the chances are high that we will never hear from this user again. The page is on my watchlist, from the move, I'd have seen any edits to it, I'd actually get an email.... as I did of your deletions! --21:29, 13 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I saw it first on the Abuse Log. It was promoting car leasing and a website.  The style is consistent with a lot of other solicitation we get on a daily basis.  While it could just be moved to user space and ignored, take a look at ViewStats for some of the most popular pages.  Amazingly, we have deleted solicitation content showing up very high on our hit list.  The automation behind the promotions doesn't notice the deletion, because they're not getting a 404 error.  So they keep hitting it, trying to push up their SEO statistics, including user space pages.  I appreciate your desire to reach out and encourage users, but this page wasn't in English, and was promoting an external website.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:11, 14 September 2014 (UTC)
 * I looked and didn't see the external website. Had I seen that, I'd have tagged it for speedy. No big deal, it was a long shot to AGF at all. It read like SEO content without the web link, so even if I was right -- no URL -- it was still likely to catch one later. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 12:12, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

Students Uploading Pictures from other Web sites
What do I do about this ... on wikimedia? User:Seandonohue001 has done this --1sfoerster (discuss • contribs) 11:46, 15 September 2014 (UTC)


 * There are several parts to this story. Images being uploaded fall into three groups:
 * Images that the student owns the copyright or other license to. These should be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and tagged with appropriate licensing information to make them available to all.
 * Images that the student doesn't own but can claim fair use. These should be uploaded to Wikiversity with appropriate fair use information so they may be used in articles related to the image (in which the image adds educational value, doesn't otherwise impact the value of the image itself, etc.).
 * Images that are neither licensed nor fair use. These should be tagged for deletion as a copyright violation.
 * Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 12:54, 15 September 2014 (UTC)


 * I'll add to this, images that are public domain or available under a free license. This can get really complicated and is probably better worked out on Commons, where at least some of the users are experts. If an image cannot be hosted on Commons, we may allow fair use here, and if there is any reasonable educational purpose, that can usually be done for an image uploaded here and actually used in a project.
 * For efficiency, for immediate use in a class project, and with non-personally-owned images, I suggest uploading here and claiming fair use. The only issue then will be "impact to the value" which can often be handled by reducing the resolution. Just be completely honest! --Abd (discuss • contribs) 15:35, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

I closed your custodian vote as successful
Because I'm involved, this isn't final. I've done a lot of involved closes. They have almost always been confirmed, because I don't do that unless consensus is clear (or, occasionally, policy is clear, and never contrary to consensus). In this case, consensus is completely clear. I was thinking that I was going to go to meta to get a steward close, but then I realized that this was silly. We go to meta not to validate local consensus, but to have something done that we cannot do with local tools. I have gone to meta to get steward action to implement a local decision, which is why I thought I'd be doing that here, since Jtneill had not responded (nor did SB Johnny, who occasionally shows up). It's up to us to decide and express local consensus. I thought of asking for a neutral user to close. That's asking someone else to do what I can do. So I notified the community of what I was doing on the Colloquium.

Please don't remove the site-message notice of the voting, at least not right away. Because I'm acting outside of policy, it's important that this be as visible as possible. The removal of that notice, with the close standing, would signify an acceptance of the close.

Actually, ironically, the policy was demoted to proposed policy in 2011, and if I were to go over the history, I could easily show that I was blocked for almost two years because I stood for it being policy, against certain Wikiversitans who were actually opposed to our standard and long-followed practice. I'm not bringing that ancient history up on the Colloquium, but it is ironic; because of that, there is no "policy" that requires a bureaucrat close. There is also no policy that requires non-involved closes. If it's consensus, if the community actually supports the action, it's self-enforcing. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 01:04, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

Is there a way to create student id's and user pages in batch mode
This would reduce the pain of getting started, stop the chaos of students that don't know the difference between article space and user space, etc. And it would get around the spam that shuts the college ID down after 6 id's have been granted per day. I am trying to figure out a way to start up the semester easier. Also .. is there a way to monitor the uploads to wiki commons given a list of id's? --1sfoerster (discuss • contribs) 19:42, 22 September 2014 (UTC)


 * See meta:Help:Mass account creation and meta:Extension:ImportUsers. I checked, and the noratelimit right is available to custodians.  You might consider applying as a probationary custodian to test this and see if it would resolve the problem.  It would also give you the ability to delete pages students create in error, of which there's a good bit at the beginning of the semester.
 * The other option would be to use a bot for this, because bots have the noratelimit right as well. I'd have to check the API to see if there's an easy way to create accounts with a bot.  I don't recommend the ImportUsers extension, because it is no longer supported.
 * Monitoring uploads would likely be easiest by bot. Since it wouldn't be making any edits, you wouldn't need bot permission to run it.  There's starter code for doing it in Windows PowerShell at MediaWiki API/PowerShell.  I wrote that one, and can help you with the code if you want.
 * Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 22:35, 22 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Just following up. Account creation is possible by bot.  See mw:API:Account creation.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 01:29, 23 September 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks .. I may take you up on this in the future... still not at this point yet ... thanks for setting expectations ... describing what is possible --1sfoerster (discuss • contribs) 12:29, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

Location map import
Can you import the following pages to here? (See w:Module talk:Location map for details.) Thanks, Jackmcbarn (discuss • contribs) 20:20, 23 September 2014 (UTC)
 * w:Module:Location map
 * w:Module:Location map/doc
 * w:Module:Location map/multi
 * w:Module:Location map/multi/doc
 * w:Module:Location map/info
 * w:Module:Location map/info/doc
 * (intentionally not specifying w:Module:Location map/data; the doc page below stands alone)
 * w:Module:Location map/data/doc
 * w:Module:Arguments
 * w:Module:Arguments/doc
 * w:Module:No globals
 * w:Module:No globals/doc
 * w:Template:Location map
 * w:Template:Location map/doc
 * w:Template:Location map+
 * w:Template:Location map+/doc
 * w:Template:Location map~
 * w:Template:Location map~/doc
 * w:Template:Location map many
 * w:Template:Location map many/doc


 * ✅ -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 20:43, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

some pages tagged for speedy deletion
I'm still researching this and am seeing some things that might possibly shift my opinion in some cases. Probably these deletion requests will stand, but would you hold off a little? These are all pages under Nonstandard physics. I'll let you know when I'm ready. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 20:22, 27 September 2014 (UTC)


 * No hurry. Let me know.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 20:55, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Probationary Custodianship
I'm still interested in being a Probationary Custodian. The longer probationary period is better for me. Thank you for your continued interest and willingness to mentor. --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 20:22, 1 October 2014 (UTC)


 * With respect to the Custodian Skills:

As questions arise where would you like me to ask them? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 00:31, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
 * 1) Request custodian action and Notices for custodians have been on my watch list for a couple of years.
 * 2) How do I find out about new users so as to put the welcome template on their user talk page?
 * 3) I've been responding to Colloquium questions and requests for a couple of years.


 * Identifying new users is a matter of reviewing the Recent changes list and looking for those with a red Discuss link. A red discuss link means they've never been welcomed.  We each tend to have our own guidelines on who needs a welcome.  In general, accounts created but with no edits don't get a welcome, because they haven't contributed.  Users who only edit their own user page can be hit or miss to me.  I tend to welcome those with an academic background, and may or may not welcome those who are just setting up their own little corner of the Internet.  I generally will welcome anyone who creates a valid main space page, if for no other reason than I may need to clean up their content later, and they should be welcomed first.


 * Questions are going to effectively come in two forms. 1) Questions that you think are specific to you personally, and may not have a wider audience.  2) Questions that should be captured and shared with future probationary custodians.  Since we learn by doing here, we should endeavor to capture any useful learning that we can share with others.  The best approach may be to ask here, and then summarize learning on either a custodian page, a probationary page, or a mentoring page.  We seem to have all three, and they don't (yet) link to each other.  Something else we can work on as we find time.


 * You are also welcome to use the 'Email this user' link if you would like to ask questions that you don't want the whole world to read, or read the response to. Some learning is best shared from a summary perspective vs. 'in the moment'.


 * I've asked Jtneill to give you custodian rights. As he is our most active bureaucrat, that's the place to start.  Once you get custodian rights, you'll see more options on the More menu, and more links on the Special pages page.  Please ask questions whenever you have them.  It's much better to ask and discuss, and we'll both learn as we go.  Thanks!  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 04:04, 2 October 2014 (UTC)
 * I'm watching this. While I have some concerns about Marshall as custodian, those vanish if he is attentively mentored. In my own last two probationary periods, I agreed to a WV:Candidates for Custodianship/Standard stop agreement. This was designed to address concerns. (That wasn't used, which was unfortunate. It would have been far less disruptive to simply ask me to stop what I was doing that was allegedly improper, and it would have set a clear precedent, as it was designed to do, rather than going through emergency desysop process, misrepresenting the situation, as actually happened.)
 * If Marshall agrees to that, or to something like it, I'd not have any concern at all, and I know how to get the button pushed, and would so act.
 * I do expect that you would carefully monitor anyway, that's what you do, and so I'm not placing any objection on the candidacy page. This SSA idea is a suggestion, not a demand. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 15:31, 13 October 2014 (UTC)


 * It seems to me that the SSA is just stating what should be obvious and assumed. Probationary custodians should be recognized as probationary, and under the expectation that they may be asked to stop what they are doing in regard to x, y, or z or risk being blocked until they agree.  (I'm not sure it's that different for full custodians.  I still assume I may be asked to stop what I am doing or risk being blocked until consensus, or at least acceptance, is reached.)  Rather than adding an SSA, what can we do to modify the probationary documentation so that this is part of the process?  I would prefer that any added language appear less legalese than the SSA example.  When we need an attorney for this, we've lost the community aspect.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:01, 13 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes, this should simply be policy. This was the goal of the SSA. Absent changes in policy -- and it was very difficult to change the policy, and the policy was even demoted to proposed policy, in spite of having stood as policy for many years -- an SSA was a way to put clean teeth behind what you call "obvious and assumed." Stewards will not usually yank a bit based on that. They will normally want something very clear. If a custodian has clearly consented to the removal of the bit under circumstances that are precisely specified, so the steward is merely confirming what is in a request and then acts based on what is established, the whole thing becomes no-fuss. In practice, Dave, what you claim should be obvious and assumed does not happen, or does not happen without massive disruption. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:10, 15 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Steward requests/Global is not a discussion page. Stewards strongly dislike discussion there. The SSA is complex because it considers contingencies, and wikis have often avoided this out of an idea that there is something Bad about "instruction creep." But the SSA is not policy, it is deliberately a voluntary agreement, and it was designed to defuse objections to probtationary custodianship, objections based on the practical difficulties of supervision. Notice that the process was designed to be generic, and a probationer could modify the SSA, or a mentor could. The agreement is to a specific version. Very different, in that, from an agreement to follow policy.


 * The SSA was designed to greatly simplify steward decisions, without requiring the alternative, local discussion of desysop, with WV:Community review. The desysop request then becomes a matter of verifying that the conditions of voluntary desysop are in place, which is set up to be easy by the requestor, with links. Read a couple of short pages, verify links, done. Nothing need be discussed unless someone has lied.


 * In addition, there were political considerations at the time. It did work, SSA defused objections, but, then, when there was controversy, SSA was not used. This was about me, of course. I was not warned under the SSA to not take actions considered problems, rather I was emergency desysopped, in an action that would make very poor precedent, with arguments that would leave heads being scratched if considered.


 * We should first implement standing practice as policy, and if changes are necessary to do this, that's great. The biggest and most obvious problem is when a mentor does not supervise, and also does not support. Under those conditions, a probationary custodian is just like a permanent custodian, and just as difficult to remove. So tightening the policy may require defining mentor supervision. It need not be difficult. If a custodian "loses supervision" for whatever reason, and this could rather easily be defined, then the situation should be equivalent to a withdrawal of mentorship. I would, under that condition, prohibit the probationer from using tools in any controversial way, *plus* would require replacing the mentor within a period. If tool usage is prohibited, then the period could be longer than 48 hours, which is pretty short, many wiki processes can take longer, a week allows it to fit into people's work cycles, so 10 days is often used. Because the problem is mentor inaction, the desysop request would then be open to filing by any user, or by any permanent custodian if it desired to limit it (might be a good idea.) If we fix the 'crat problem (inactive 'crats) it could be any 'crat.


 * (If a mentor supports the probationer's actions that have become controversial, it is as if the actions were those of the mentor, and the mentor becomes personally responsible for them.)


 * I consider these principles quite clear, but there is the basic wiki problem. Wikiversity is very active now, activity levels have been increasing. But few users pay attention to central process, and fewer still understand it. This leads to participation bias, some of which is helpful (participating users more highly informed) and some of which is other than that (participating users have axes to grind.)


 * Good process can reduce that problem, avoiding "community discussion" unless it is actually necessary. Restraining a possibly rogue or clueless probationary custodian should not be complicated, it should be easy, which should go together with it being easy to create them. Our adminship process is, in my opinion, the best in the WMF, when it works. And when it doesn't, it is not necessarily worse, because unqualified individuals become custodians on many of the wikis where they don't have probationary admninistrators. All it takes is someone who makes some positive contributions and stays out of trouble for a while. Once they have power, only then are they tested. In the early days of Wikipedia, it was assumed that "the community would not allow abuse." The reality is quite different. Most admnistrators are fine, work hard, but exceptions can be tenacious, especially if they have some level of support. It then takes an ArbCom case to remove them, i.e., a bureaucratic process, complex, and still highly vulnerable to participation bias. This is not the way to design a system. It's simply what arose first, and it *usually works.* The exceptions can cause great damage.


 * I want to be clear. Policy allows you to mentor anyone, and policy then allows any 'crat to push the button. Community approval is not required (this was a major controversy, and probably the core of the demotion to proposed policy). Requiring community approval turns probationary custodianship, really, into much more ordinary adminship. Allowing unconditional probationary custodianship makes the process work without requiring what can be highly disruptive discussions, as trolls and SPAs come out of the woodwork. It all hinges on supervision. It was believed that I was unsupervised, and maybe I was. However, in the only case where a 'crat actually reviewed what I'd done, the 'crat confirmed it as within custodial discretion. What was really happening was that I was standing for the rights of the community vs the power of an established oligarchy that considered itself the proper guardian of the community, but that actually -- on occasion -- made decisions based on their own survival or maintenance of power. This are all normal things that happen in communities like Wikiversity, I've seen this all over society. It is not about bad people.


 * I have deliberately refrained from objecting to this probationer. He may make an excellent sysop, but will require training, my opinion. My sense is that he is responsive. I suggested the SSA because it will completely eliminate my concerns. And I also want to establish that kind of precedent, this is not just about him. Consider, now, if all probationary custodians had something like an SSA in place, or if it were policy. Consider how much disruption could be avoided. His acceptance of an SSA, if he chooses to do that, will then empower me to go ahead and do what may get that button pushed quickly. Jtneill might do it anyway, but, as you know, that's not necessarily reliable. SB_Johnny could show up and push the button. I know how to get the button pushed should they remain relatively inactive. I've done it before. It's fairly simple. Anyone could do it, and if anyone wants to know how to do it, look at how Jtneill became a bureaucrat, and my edits just preceding that. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 16:10, 15 October 2014 (UTC)


 * I'd like to see us fix the policy so that it is clear and can be processed by stewards if need be.


 * One thought I've had on the supervision issue. Up to now, we've assumed a mentor/mentee relationship exists once it is posted and accepted.  It seems to me that there should be an opportunity for positive confirmation when requested.  Asking on the same page, custodian x, are you still mentoring probationary y?  Lack of affirmative response within a reasonable timeframe would indicate lack of supervision and a termination of the mentor relationship.  The other side would also apply.  Asking mentee y, are you still pursuing full custodianship?  Lack of affirmative response would indicate lack of interest and support for pulling the custodian bit.


 * My personal schedule is pretty crazy at least through Thanksgiving, or until I finish Windows PowerShell. I'm only three weeks or so ahead of the students in a real-world course.  Once that's done, I should have more time to work on things like this.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 17:15, 15 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Pretty much my thinking. Not complicated. This, however, may not handle emergencies, even though it could be much faster than full-on removal process. Still, it does address a big part of the problem. No rush. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 19:50, 15 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Note regarding a question in this section that a list of new users can be found at https://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3AListUsers&username=&group=&creationSort=1&desc=1&limit=200 -- Jtneill - Talk - c 13:00, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, for quite some time now, loginwiki automatically creates user accounts from SUL even without a local login or view, I've tested this. Most of those accounts have not even looked at Wikiversity, they are not our "users." So it fills the log with zero value. It looks to me like Recent Changes only shows explicit account creation, so that's what I watch.
 * Looking back at the question, we do not generally welcome users based on account creation, even setting aside the automatic creation issue. We welcome on the first edit that is not spam or vandalism. I will ping Marshall about this, explaining it. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 19:15, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
 * FYI, User:Marshallsumter is now a probationary custodian. Thanks for mentoring. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 13:16, 17 October 2014 (UTC)


 * When I was contributing to Wikipedia I created an entry called phosphate reaction. I intend to recreate that here as a resource for my phosphate biochemistry project but in looking at my copy the previous work was large. Is there some way to have that deleted page imported over here?


 * Also, how would I close the Sidelight12 discussion on Custodian feedback if this seems appropriate? --Marshallsumter (discuss • contribs) 02:41, 19 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Importing pages is done through a link near the bottom of Special:SpecialPages. Importing from Wikipedia is nothing more than choosing w: from the source list.  Importing deleted content isn't possible, unless you can get someone to undelete it for you temporarily just to import it here.  Abd may have ideas, but since you're not welcome over at W, it may be more complicated.


 * Because I am your mentor, you probably would not be accepted as an impartial third party. As for how to do something, I always try to refer to previous (archived) pages of similar situations to use as examples.  The custodian feedback page has no guidelines and the archive has no clear examples of closure.  To me, closure could take several forms.  One option would be for the user who opened the feedback to close it.  Anything else would then need to be a different feedback section.  Another option would be for someone authoritative (bureaucrat) to say it is closed.  A third option is for a neutral party to say the conversation is no longer productive, the situation no longer supports the discussion, whatever it would be that logically indicates a reason for the discussion not to continue.  The fourth option is for everyone to just ignore it and after awhile someone will archive it.  As with everything else custodial, you need to use your best judgement.  If you decide you want to get involved with this, have a good reason to do so, believe in what you are doing, and believe it is best for Wikiversity.  If your beliefs are in line with the community, it will work.  If they aren't, you'll find out very quickly that it wasn't a good idea.   -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 04:13, 19 October 2014 (UTC)
 * There is no requirement that a discussion there be closed by a custodian. I could close it as the filer (basically withdrawing it as now moot). I'm just giving it time. When there is an obvious close, I don't let conflict-of-interest stop me, I will act on the obvious, if nobody else acts after a decent period of time. If it stands, done. If someone objects, I do not revert war, I let the person immolate themselves on the obvious stupidity of their action. Or, really, let them be bold and fix my mistake. Basically, two principles: be bold, and be respectful of the community and of policy (policy simply means what the community has decided for the past, the community is above policy, always.) As someone who has not commented, you could close it as I'm mentioning. Mention any possible conflict of interest. Say that you are closing as a user, not as a custodian. Or you could indicate intention to close, and that you will close if there is no objection. These are ways to Get Things Done on a wiki, while not becoming a petty dictator. It irritates a few people. They will want you to follow "policy" but don't follow it themselves. We don't really have many such. Most users here just want a nice quiet place to develop their content or to learn. That is what we intend to maintain. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 11:49, 19 October 2014 (UTC)

Hello
Hello Dave,

I have made a statement on a matter in which you're involved at Notices for custodians, I would really appreciate if you could avoid re-blocking the user, now that the original cause of the block is moot, as I think this might help de-escalate this matter, hopefully. It never is good for two administrators to wheelwar, even when I can tell that both of you have only the best interests of the project at heart. Kind regards, Snowolf How can I help? 17:40, 16 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your quick attention to this matter. I see no need for re-blocking.  Sidelight12 has always been an excellent contributor to Wikiversity.  It was simply a custodial tools issue, and hopefully without the tools we can now engage in meaningful dialog.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 18:35, 16 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Since you consider my posting on your talk page to be harassment, I will simply post here. You are welcome to come here and discuss anything you'd like regarding recent events.  Wikiversity is a learning community, and I would hope that we can learn from this and move on.  From my perspective, you are an excellent contributor, and the content you have rescued from Wikipedia is invaluable.  The only issues I have relate to your interactions with others.  To me, the abusive approach is unnecessary and counter-productive.  But just as I have advised you to focus on the actions of others rather than the person, I make the same offer myself to you.  I support you as a person and your efforts to improve Wikiversity in all other aspects.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 03:04, 17 October 2014 (UTC)


 * You need to be desysoped. Your first block was rogue. I wasn't going to participate in you and abds reinforcement of each other. My point for blocking was in the edit. If someone who is uninvited on my page posts on it they need to be blocked for a while. There is a lot of conflict of interest between you and his actions. There was a lot of inappropriate closings by you. My blocks were appropriate and if you were going to block me, you need to be blocked. I hope a review comes over both of us. You are more guilty of abusing blocks than I am. - sidelight12


 * abusive approach? Abd is abusive, likes turmoil and a mischevious and you follow up with it. - sidelight12


 * Thank you for responding. I'm sorry you feel this way.  I hope you will continue to contribute positively to Wikiversity.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 11:40, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for trying to find positive ways forward. I realise there was an escalation and you felt compelled to act for others and not just yourself - and the specific intent of the actions I do not necessarily disagree with - but nevertheless can I encourage/recommend avoiding wheel-warring particularly with admin tools. Sincerely, James -- Jtneill - Talk - c 13:11, 17 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Agreed. -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:45, 17 October 2014 (UTC)

Thai recipes etc.
We seem to have some very substantial influx of Thai users. It has happened before that some class at a Thai school points to Wikiversity, and I'm suspecting that this has happened.

I'm inclined to keep the recipes here, instead of just transwiki to Wikibooks. Any of these recipes can be copied there. Our organizational structure is quite different from Wikibooks. They have a Cookbook namespace. Recipes are in the Cookbook mainspace, top level. They use categories to sort, it's higher maintenance than what we do.

It is not only recipes coming in. This is pretty clearly a wiki educational project in Thailand. I see that you created a Thailand resource, and linked to the Comparative Law and Justice pages. I thought that was great.

Wikibooks will be focused on collecting recipes, we will be focused on the educational process. Just as Wikiversity has been used to create Wikipedia content, in some cases, we can also do this with Wikibooks. So I'd rather see a "copy to Wikibooks" template rather than a "move to" one. We then maintain a live resource where people can discuss recipes, present alternatives, etc. What do you think?

I also just noticed a page deletion by a global sysop, Line Integral. While it is quite likely that the page was deletable, we are moving toward confirmed deletion, i.e., in general, one user tags a page for speedy deletion, and a sysop confirms. And our sysops also tag, allowing another sysop to confirm by deletion. (Thanks, by the way, for setting that up with Marshall. It helps maintain transparency.) (With spam, I will blank and tag, not just tag, because blanking defeats the usual purpose of spamming.)

Our sysops are locally elected and generally understand Wikiversity policy of high inclusion. Some global sysops don't, and the immediate deletion makes it impossible to verify. The page name in this case could look like legitimate Wikiverity content. Would you mind checking that page to confirm the deletion?

In general, I'd like to consider disallowing global sysops from deleting here, we may opt out of that. Speedy deletion tags, fine. Fine for anyone. If we get overwhelmed, we can ask for help, but I'm not seeing any sign of that. Absent emergency, we should handle deletion locally. Again, what are your thoughts?

I also moved an autobiography to the users' space, that you had moved to a bio project space. Generally, I'd prefer that for autobiographies, leaving the bio project for ordinary biolgraphies, perhaps, though even those might be in user space. The page was blanked by IP shortly after you moved it. I reverted that as possible vandalism, but then moved the page to the creator's user space, welcomed him, and told him he could do whatever he wanted with it, in his user space, and told him how to delete it if he wanted to. But the kid is or wants to be a rapper, and it's about time he learns to be proud! So I also copy-edited the page and would really encourage him to develop it.

This occasionally works. Users get involved, learn wikitext, and even get involved more generally. I won't mention his name, he is very young, much younger than the rapper, but he's fun to have around. It shows some of the potential of Wikiversity. This was supposed to be for all ages, in the original vision. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 18:57, 30 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Multiple users in a class is a possible explanation. A single user rejected at Wikipedia who is now creating multiple accounts to get around some perceived barrier is another.  Some of the early articles were first in Wikipedia userspace for almost a month before they came here.  My biggest concern on this one, whoever it is, is that we can't seem to contact anyone and get them to participate as a learning project rather than top-level pages.  They're all one-hit wonders.  It would be nice to just have an explanation leading into the project as to whether it is a project on how to cook Thai, or how to create wiki articles.  If it's just recipes, it seems the content would be better at 'books.  If it's a technology project and using cooking as the topic, then here is appropriate, at least until the class is over.  I just know that Cooking is a big part of Wikibooks, and I don't see recipes as our area.  How to cook in general, absolutely.  Recipes to me is just like some of the Wikipedia articles here that are just copies of the original.  I like some of the old templates and posts I found about what Wikiversity is and what Wikiversity is not.  It's not a copy of Wikipedia or Wikibooks.


 * I can't find anything on Line Integral. There's no history on that page and nothing in the logs that I can find.  Note that based on our abuse filters, sometimes pages look like they were created when there was only an attempt, but the attempt was blocked by the filter.  Most of the stewards are quite good about tagging or tagging and blanking rather than deleting outright.  I'd rather try to educate first instead of explicitly blocking assistance.


 * Separately, feel free to take a look at some of the Category:Candidates for speedy deletion that I've tagged. If you edit and save to confirm deletion, I'd accept that as a second pair of eyes.


 * Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 19:22, 30 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Okay, found it. It was Line integral.  It was gibberish and a valid deletion.  Let's see how this goes for awhile first.  In principle I fully support multiple looks, but only if there are enough of us looking and deleting to make it work.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 21:05, 30 October 2014 (UTC)
 * Any resource here that is "just a copy" of something on Wikipedia or Wikibooks can be tagged for speedy deletion, unless there is some reason to think it's up for deletion there. However, we are also here for users to learn wikitext, for example. I do suggest we consider how to engage these users. Identifying a Thai user to coordinate might help. Meanwhile, little or no harm is being done. To me, what is most important is that Wikiversity is open and welcoming.
 * Speedy deletion tags get local attention fast. The issue, as you know, is not that particular deletion, though thanks for looking. In any case, I will look at any open speedies and if I agree, edit them as requested. I'll confirm in the reason. Right now, I see no Deletionists on a rampage, but we are paving a secure road for the future. I already see Wikiversity activity expanding and I think you know my long term vision has Wikiversity being larger than Wikipedia. We are nowhere near ready for that! But we can get started.
 * On the issue of global sysops, there is no sign of a major problem at this point. What I'm always looking at is structure. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 00:22, 4 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Done. All speedy deletions reviewed, all are confirmed. Ones by you I edited, and touched a few others. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 00:34, 4 November 2014 (UTC)

"Car games" spam abusefilter
Hi. I created a filter for recent spam. Please review and feel free to disable it. PiRSquared17 (discuss • contribs) 23:53, 31 October 2014 (UTC)


 * Fine with me. I might merge it into one of the other filters at some point, but that's good for now.  Thanks!  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:09, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

Could you please restore this page by author request?
https://en.wikiversity.org/w/index.php?title=User:Goldenburg111/List_of_presidents_of_Maybeury_Elementary_School_and_soccer&action=edit&redlink=1 - thanks! --Goldenburg111 15:27, 7 November 2014 (UTC)


 * There's a lot of personally identifying information on that page. Rather than restoring it, I have used the 'Email this user' feature and sent you a copy of the last content before deletion.  Feel free to recreate the page and add back what you wish, but I don't recommend adding any content that would identify you or refer to any real-world people under age 18.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 16:25, 7 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Aiight, thanks for the help. --Goldenburg111 23:14, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

In a custodianship request, am I allowed to ask for a permanent custodian to be my mentor?
I already have a request for custodianship open, may I ask for a mentor? --Goldenburg111 14:25, 12 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Of course. You can always ask.  You should probably ask directly, rather than in the custodianship request, however.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 14:28, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Alright, then may I ask for you to be my mentor for my custodianship request then? --Goldenburg111 14:33, 12 November 2014 (UTC)


 * I appreciate how you have grown and matured over your tenure here at Wikiversity, and I particularly appreciate your desire to improve our learning environment. However, I do have some concerns about your dedication to the task.  As is common and to be expected of young people, you tend to move around to different projects, looking for exactly where you fit in, what you enjoy doing, etc.  I personally would like to see custodians with a consistent history of editing rather than those who are here for awhile, go off to other projects, and then come back again.  I also have concerns about attention to detail.  For example, I recently noticed that you moved Federal Writers' Project - Life Histories to the Biographies project, without addressing the 94 subpages that were left abandoned and without a project anchor.


 * This is nothing that you can't overcome in time, but for now, I would encourage you to do your best to improve Wikiversity without being a custodian. Tag the things you would address as a custodian so that we can address them.  If in May or June you have a solid track record of helpful participation, without attracting some of the drama that followed you here a couple of years ago, I would be happy to consider your request at that time.  Thanks for asking!  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 14:51, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Alright, thank you very much for the advice :-) I'll leave the request until next year. No problem also. --Goldenburg111 14:55, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I have a unique perspective on Goldenburg, having welcomed him to Wikiversity under very unusual and difficult conditions. His learning and development are deeply gratifying. Once he realized that I was working to support him in doing what he wanted to do (while at the same time protecting the wiki from problems), in pursuit of our "learning by doing" mission, he became completely cooperative, and I'm happy to see this continuing. He responded to "No" here in a way that will eventually lead to "Yes," with high likelihood of success. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 21:01, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

What do we usually do with pages like these?
https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Do_Coach_Outlet_Better_Than_Seth_Godin - Do we put the "Prod" template on it? --Goldenburg111 11:33, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
 * Prod is for pages that might possibly be improved. This page was spam, so I tagged it for speedy deletion with Thanks for catching it. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 11:50, 13 November 2014 (UTC)
 * It's spam? I never noticed that haha. What about pages with another language? Thanks for correcting me Abd. --Goldenburg111 12:08, 13 November 2014 (UTC)


 * This is the English Wikiversity. Unless the other language pages are teaching that language to English speakers, the pages generally belong on a different wiki.  But there are a few exceptions.  There is currently a multilingual project being developed where the main page is English, but subpages are mostly Spanish or Portuguese.  If in doubt, you can tag a page as Delete | Not English and we'll take a look.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 14:09, 13 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the advise
Thanks for the templated "advise" stuff, but it's not a dup of any other project information at this time.

Thank you also for moving the page to an appropriate subpage format, most appreciated. :)

Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 23:52, 26 November 2014 (UTC)


 * It just appeared to be more of a Wikipedia project rather than a Wikiversity project. I'll trust that the learning part will come along in time.  Thanks for responding!  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 01:24, 27 November 2014 (UTC)
 * I think it's relevant to several of the learning projects listed in the See also section. But yes, I'll think of some additional ways to incorporate further learning projects. No worries, -- Cirt (talk) 01:25, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

MOOC interface documentation
y Dave, we promised to update and clean up the documentation of the MOOC interface in the past two weeks. Though we did not reach our goal (to finish yesterday) we managed to document the MOOC creation process and the addins' architecture and tidied up. The community poll was moved to the interface's talk page but is still linked on the landing page. We are happy with the documentation so far but we try to provide some screencasts, where it's reasonable, in the near future. If you have any suggestions or find the documentation lacking in aspects you think of, please let us know. --Sebschlicht (discuss • contribs) 17:47, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
 * hey Dave and seb thanks also from my side for this great collaboration. For the great implementation and documentation work of sebastian on one hand but also the great support, feedback and suggestions by Dave on the other hand. If there is anything else - but creating oer learning content - please let me know. --Renepick (discuss • contribs) 22:45, 28 November 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks! It's all good for now.  I wish I had time to do a code review for you, but I think you've got plenty of web science students who can do that.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 03:47, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Involved party tried to close
Do not close discussions which you are heavily involved in. - Sidelight12 Talk 10:16, 5 December 2014 (UTC)


 * There is no discussion. There hasn't been any for weeks.  Abd's request and your requests are closed.  You are welcome to pursue your request for a review of my actions, but you need to stop harassing other users.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 12:57, 5 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Involved closes are possible. Generally, they are allowed where the discussion has been open without continued discussion for a substantial time. Sidelight is obviously talking about . Whatever might be legitimate about a claim that that an involved custodian cannot close would also apply to an involved user editing to keep a dead discussion going. Revert-warring with anyone is not a good idea, but revert warring wtih a custodian is a very Bad Idea. I have argued that the behavior of Sidelight is not an emergency, since he's no longer a custodian, and since he has not been spreading disruption widely. However, he has been engaging in blockworthy behavior, and recusal policy is not an invincible shield that can be used to prevent administrators from using tools in defense of the wiki. Sidelight has been operating completely outside of community support, and is not here for his own learning, nor is he hear to build educational resources. It's obvious from Special:Contributions/Sidelight. Nobody has been harassing him. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 03:15, 6 December 2014 (UTC)

Do not revert war
You've revert warred. Someone needs to look over it. - Sidelight12 Talk 10:30, 7 December 2014 (UTC)


 * At some point I hope you are able to recognize that everyone who cares has already looked over my actions and either supports them or doesn't object enough to get involved. It's been seven weeks now, with Custodian Feedback, Notices for Custodians, and Request Custodian Action.  Both bureaucrats have looked it over.  It's time to accept the situation as it is.  You are free to contribute productively to Wikiversity, or move on to whatever other project interests you.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 14:21, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

3rd warning
This is a 3rd warning, aside from the two warnings directly above. DO NOT CHANGE HEADERS IN MY TALKPAGE. - Sidelight12 Talk 09:10, 8 December 2014 (UTC)


 * It's probably not a good idea to warn a custodian for performing custodial activities. It's unlikely to achieve the outcome you desire.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 14:10, 8 December 2014 (UTC)

Possibly a spam page...
I'm not completely sure, but it looks like the page, Zespół na wesele Słupsk, may be spam/advertising. Though I'm not completely sure, since my Polish isn't that great (well, reading wise anyways), so I've just decided to notify you and hopefully you can review the page. --I8086 (discuss • contribs) 15:45, 10 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks! In the future you can just put a  or  or  right on the page in question.  Marshallsumter and I check for deletion nominations regularly.  I also monitor the Abuse Log, and anything with a link posted by an IP address or new account shows up there.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 18:09, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
 * So many templates...thanks for all your help since I've been here. --I8086 (discuss • contribs) 19:15, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

The Stock Market article
All I need is just some help for the article. That is all. Can you help? Qwertyxp2000 (discuss • contribs) 09:07, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * What type of help are you seeking? -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 13:45, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * Expansion. Qwertyxp2000 (discuss • contribs) 23:30, 17 December 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm sorry, but I'm already committed to projects I teach that have pending deadlines. I also disagree with the basic premise of the content added to Stock market so far, so there's not much I would be able to add in support.  I'll add more to the talk page there.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 00:22, 18 December 2014 (UTC)
 * You could always go to the Stock Market article in Wikipedia and Simple Wikipedia for some more added stuff. Qwertyxp2000 (discuss • contribs) 04:48, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Vandalism
vandal ... reverted good talk on boxing's talk page, I reverted it back ... if there is something u don't like, u can remove it but don't remove everything like vandal ... who reverted everything n lied how I am banned user. He is banned himself on simple Wikipedia, watch over my talk. If so, thanx & happy holidays! ...


 * Wikiversity's mission is to create and host free learning materials and activities. Solicitation for external organizations and websites is not accepted. Abusive language is also not accepted and has been removed from your post above.  The abusive IP address has been blocked for 24 hours and the page deleted due to solicitation links added to the edit summaries.  When the block expires you are welcome to contribute positively to Wikiversity.  This includes treating other users respectfully, and not promoting external websites.  Let me know if you have any questions.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 03:48, 28 December 2014 (UTC)

I was initially inclined to allow the user some space, as you did, but you have blocked the IP and this is obviously the same user. The mentioned user, who reverted, is a Wikipedia administrator. (I didn't like that, disruptive users should not be pursued here; but when I realized there was a completable URL in the post, to a page we would not want to be linked, I moved to accepting the suggestion of that admin. Thanks for deleting so quickly.) The admin is not blocked or banned on any wiki; there are a few unattached accounts that are blocked for impersonation, possibly of him, so the person here is lying, and is not here for creating educational resources. There are no "globally banned users," generally. I'm checking a little more. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 03:41, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Okay, this is likely the user. Stewards routinely violate what there is of global lock policy. Maybe -- probably! -- it's justified, this is a very disruptive user. However, on the face of it, the user has one account that is globally locked, with only some edits on Wikipedia, and no pointer to any other account. Global ban policy doesn't really allow that, but stewards routinely go after certain kinds of users outside of policy. I attempted to study this so that, on the one hand, policy could be revised, or, on the other, stewards might have guidelines to restrain them, because abuse has occurred. The study on meta was very much not welcome, it was oversighted.
 * At best, the action isn't transparent. In the past, it's occurred that I've looked back at a highly disruptive user, and discovered they had been administratively abused. They didn't take it well.... and then we have, the example I'm thinking of, one of the largest sock farms ever, Scibaby. It becomes a game of whac-a-mole, and they have discovered that being the mole is the most fun. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 04:11, 28 December 2014 (UTC)


 * He's a serial harasser, and has been stalking me personally since early 2006, more than eight years. You linked to one of his IDs.  On Wikipedia he was called the "George Reeves Person" or "George Reeves vandal" or User:BoxingWear (search the admin noticeboard archives for "George Reeves" and you will find copious discussion of him). When he started making death threats to me I took it upon myself to learn his real identity, which I did, without much trouble.  I've contacted authorities.  Sometimes I remove his spam from other wikis.  As of "globally banned" -- on multiple occasions his IPs or IP ranges have been globally blocked, but it's probably been a while.  There are many.  Most recently he's been on T-Mobile at 172.56.0.0/23 and 208.54.64.0/24.  He also uses display computers at stores, e.g. the Best Buy IP you just blocked. Antandrus (discuss • contribs) 04:23, 28 December 2014 (UTC)
 * That is totally not true, the link was a good one & not spam, it explained fight between rocky & bob baker. ... Dave, u should have not deleted good boxing conversation! Anyways, the content u deleted I put it somewhere else in a safe place vandal antandrus will never find. edited


 * You need to stop this. Take your feud somewhere else.  You are welcome to contribute boxing content here, but without links to external websites that are in any way promotional.  If you can't leave other users alone or you can't resist promoting external websites, your content will be removed and you will be blocked.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 18:29, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Since he bragged about other content, I looked, and speedy tagged it. Not in the least difficult to find. He may have more, but so what? It will come out in the wash. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 23:36, 30 December 2014 (UTC)
 * U deleted when I posted antandrus is vandal but u left his accusations against me stand. U r very unfair dude!!! I don't use best buy for writing u, I write from wifi in my car, close to best buy.

But u n antandrus deleted good talk page, it was very informative!!!


 * As indicated already, the boxing talk page was deleted by request because the history had been contaminated with abusive links. The problem wasn't the content, but the links.  If you are willing to behave and treat others with respect, you are welcome to participate here.  But you'll need to use a single account rather than creating additional accounts.  The user pages of blocked accounts allow editing so that unblock requests may be posted.  You need to discontinue using the Boxingfella2 account, and post an unblock request on Boxingfella if that's your desire.  Boxingfella2 will be blocked as a sock account.  -- Dave Braunschweig (discuss • contribs) 21:07, 31 December 2014 (UTC)
 * I restored sock history above. Boxingfella, we don't care about your history except as it helps us understand the present. We don't care what you have done on Wikipedia. If you want to discuss boxing here, you may. However, not as you have been doing it! If you don't attack Antandrus here, we won't let him harass you. The problem with what he reverted was the linking to an inappropriate page, which included grossly offensive material. We won't let you do that. Because of what you have done, now, with socking, you will need to request unblock. You have an opportunity for a fresh start on Wikiversity, even if you lied as part of this. (Antandrus is not blocked on Simple, that's an unattached account, not him). You can take the opportunity, or you can continue to play the outlaw. As to your threats, we, again, cannot allow that, so part of what you would need to do, my opinion, is apologize and commit to not doing that any more. Or we can leave matters as they are, if we see anything that looks like your contributions, they are likely to be deleted on sight. We cannot control what stewards do, but if you commit to new behavior, we can attempt to make it possible for you to edit here. We've been able to do that on occasion. So it's really your choice. --Abd (discuss • contribs) 23:52, 31 December 2014 (UTC)