Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard - Wikipedia

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Last month, we had a very long discussion regarding the NRHP stubs created by User:Doncram: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive223#Topic ban proposal re NRHP stubs. It didn't really end with any firm conclusion, due in part to the promise by doncram to no longer create such stubs (template-like stubs with statements like "It was built or has other significance in c.1817 and c.1855.". However, it appears that no change in actual behaviour has happened, with again many articles being created with the same annoying words and structure, e.g. Joseph Elliston House, Douglass-Reams House, Dortch Stove Works, Jacob Critz House and Robert Hodge House. Perhaps it's time to revisit the previous proposal and/or work out some other means of putting a stop to this? One can also wonder whether a supporting article like Central hall plan architecture isn't awfully close to a copyright violation, when 90% of the article is an attributed quote to a copyrighted text, and the rest is filled with meaningless stuff like "[...]as opposed to having another layout." But that is a different discussion. Fram (talk) 14:25, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

I don't have a problem with this. Editors are more willing to edit an article once its created than they are of creating the whole article from scratch. Additionally, many of these link to lists that cannot be built up or submitted to FL until all or at least most of the red links have articles created on them. I admit that he could probably make them a little longer and add some more detail but I don't see the problem here. --Kumioko (talk) 14:34, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

I have heard the "first create it, then people will edit" song many times, but in reality many such articles lay around for years and years. And creating poor stubs because some list has to become a FL is a very poor reason. But the main problem is that he already promised to improve them, but that he hasn't done this (or reverted back to his old system). Fram (talk) 14:38, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

I admit that I don't like the wording or shortness of them either however I am of the school of thought that if we have a small amount of information on a subject its better than nothing. Your also right that many lay around for years, many do not however and some eventually get to FA. We have to have faith in the system. These stubs Doncram is creating at least have some structure with an an infobox, a template and inline citations which is more than I can say for a lot of the geographical ones that are one line of less than ten words. As for the comment about the FL argument being a poor reason. That may be your opinion and your entitled to that however the rules clearly state that red links on FL's should be minimal if there are any at all. Additionally, the Wikipedia rules clearly allow the creation of stubs. So if people have problems with folks creating stubby articles then they should first change the rules allowing them to be created in the first place. I am not trying to play devils advocate here but after reading the very lengthy string you linked to above from last month I didn't see anyone post anything resembling a policy violation other than comments like "articles like this damage wikipedias reputation", "I don't like them", etc. --Kumioko (talk) 14:50, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

I re-read the Archive223 discussion recently. The major commitment that I made there in response to one editor's specific request was that I would, in a future NRHP article drive, set up a /batch system that would support editors editing in Talk-space draft articles, before copying them over to mainspace. That would provide facilitation for local or otherwise interested editors to develop articles in non-mainspace, while giving them many of the considerable benefits of my first batch drafts. I look forward to doing that.

In the Archive223 discussion, several editors were concerned about specific new articles linked from National Register of Historic Places listings in Grand Forks County, North Dakota. Some took combative-seeming-to-me steps of moving mainspace articles to userspace unnecessarily, or opening AFDs. All the AFDs closed Keep. All the articles specifically discussed were moved back to mainspace and were improved, in either order.

I don't think there is any problem requiring ANI attention here. There will be future discussion at the NRHP wikiproject, I am sure, which I will open myself, when I do open a new article drive using a batch supporting system as discussed. --doncram 15:58, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

Also, it is and was horribly inappropriate to seriously consider banning statements like "It was designed and/or built by" a person, when the statement is sourced and accurate. I have been developing a system that suggests accurate statements like that, which is better than the most commonly used NRHP article generation system supported off-line by another editor, which provides flat assertions that the person was an architect and designed the building. The other system's assertions are false about 5-10% of the time, and are often not questioned by editors relying upon them. That's the scandal, if there is one. The accurately ambiguous statements, on the other hand, obviously do provide a prompt to an editor to find out the facts more specifically, which is good. By the way, towards providing a further significant refinement to my system, I have been doing the work to identify what is the actual status of the most frequently named architects or builders of NRHP-listed places. Namely by creating articles about the most frequently named ones, and sorting out whether they are a covered bridge builder in Indiana or a "master builder" or what, rather than being an architect. I plan to use this more specific information in the generation of future batches of /draft articles. --doncram 16:51, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

I find Nathan Vaught particularly interesting. Why is it you have to dump random assertions into mainspace and then clean up your mess later? Why not just do the research and get it right the first time? Then there's the "Possibly related" section... --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:09, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

There you go again, posting link to a first-draft article, which in this case already clearly established notability, that was subsequently improved. You can cause a lot of misunderstanding and unnecessary concern that way. I also take minor offense at your unnecessarily inflammatory language. --doncram 17:20, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

P.S. You're not properly seeing the merit of getting the articles created, and sorting out correct information. The problem can be viewed as being the fact we didn't start all these articles long ago, and get all the imprecise information sorted out by now. Consider the Elm Springs (Tennessee) article, which since 2007 has included infobox assertion that Nathan Vaught was the architect of that building. That assertion appears now to be false. I should be clear: that article and the articles generated by the main provider of draft NRHP articles, does not contain a text statement. The assertion is in the infobox description of the person as "architect", which is bad enough. In many articles, further, editors have stated the person was an architect based upon the infobox assertion. --doncram 17:34, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

Actually, if what an article contains can be listed in {{Infobox building}} and an embeded {{infobox NRHP}} do we also need to repeat that in the article? Should that article exist if everything can be in infoboxes? I'll note that this is not the only user creating short stubs or area where we have short stubs. The geography stubs have similar problems, but they are being created by more editors. Is there a perfect solution? No. Is there a solution? I don't know. If anyone wants to look at the other end of the spectrum, cleaning up some of the long stubs might be a nice break. Vegaswikian (talk) 18:16, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

These articles are meant to include more information than is included in an infobox. Any one can be considerably developed if an editor collects the NRHP nomination document (as I have for some sites in the county). Fram picked out ones where I could not easily find any online sources to use immediately in the article. Roper's Knob Fortifications is another recent Williamson County article i started on the same basis, where i found an online Tennessee Archaeology journal article, which provides a lot more. Andrew C. Vaughn House is another without a lot more information, but happens to be a bit more satisfying I think, for connecting to the other similar houses in the same county. For one of the ones Fram picks to comment upon, I had noticed substantial coverage in The Tennesseean newspaper about the place, but could not access it behind a paywall, so the current article is indeed minimal. I left a note at Talk:Robert Hodge House, hoping for a local with access to Tennesseean archives will be able to develop the article. That's how it is supposed to work. Before starting an article, it is not clear what is going to be found. It's great if an editor starting an article does find additional sources and develops it right away. But if additional sources are not easily findable, it is still a contribution to give basic facts about the historic site, and to connect to appropriate architecture articles and categories and so on, and to facilitate other editors developing it more later (or not, which is not a tragedy either). --doncram 21:02, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

In the interests of clarity, here is a summary:

• Doncram was doing something many editors found objectionable
• Doncram promised to stop doing this thing
• Donram is doing the same thing again

We are humouring this because..? → ROUX ₪ 20:28, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

I suppose you are being glib for effect. But in the previous discussion I agreed to do something which I still agree to do. There are no promises broken. What Fram picks up upon is that I created several more articles in an already ongoing article drive, for Williamson County, Tennessee articles. I happen to have taken some more care to avoid "stilted" language or whatever in these, which was a concern for some editors previously. I don't think i am in violation of anything and I am not "doing the same thing" exactly, either, though I don't suppose you'd actually care to really look at the details to see that. --doncram 21:36, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

He does not belong to the Alpha Command structure? LessHeard vanU (talk) 20:49, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

There's an Alpha Command structure? Is the Cabal aware of this? -- Derek Ross | Talk 21:01, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

Because he knows he can get away with it, being that he isn't strictly violating any Wikipedia policies. Also, because anyone who criticizes Doncram's work more than a few times will eventually be labeled as a stalker and a harasser. Doncram will never change the way he operates, so we're going to be stuck with hundreds or thousands of crappy stubs that are just barely informative for the actual reader of Wikipedia. Debating this is just becoming useless, so my reaction is to simply give up and avoid participating in the project. Luckily, nobody gives a flying flip if I write articles about historic places in Minnesota or not. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 20:59, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

Well the thing is, he promised something and failed to abide by it. That usually results in sanctions. → ROUX ₪ 21:16, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

What precisely did he promise to do, and how has he failed at that? I think I agreed to set up a future article drive differently, and I plan to do that. --doncram 21:36, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

Proposal

• User:Doncram is banned from creating these or similar stubs in the mainspace.
• He may create as many as he likes in his userspace
• Before moving them to mainspace, must gain consensus for each one at WP:NRHP, and may nominate batches of no more than ten at a time in order to minimise the project being bombarded. One batch may be nominated at a time
• In six months, should a supermajority (70%+) of these stubs have been approved for use in the mainspace, these restrictions are lifted.

• Support - as proposer → ROUX ₪ 21:16, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose, requirement to get consensus at NRHP is not reasonable, in my opinion, and neither is requiring 70%+ "approval". --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:18, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

• NRHP are the subject matter experts here. 70% seems completely reasonable to me; either doncram will learn to make articles which are useful or he won't. → ROUX ₪ 21:21, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose. --doncram 21:36, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose. If there's a problem with these articles as a general rule, start an RfC on the notability of things listed on the NRHP. But making what should be a policy discussion into a referendum on an editor is never a good idea. -- ۩ Mask 23:59, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose. Since, ironically, the NRHP project's genesis was due to me creating a bunch of crappy stubs for Florida in the first place. --Ebyabe (talk) 19:47, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

• Ebyabe, you may think your stubs were "crappy," but your creations (example) did not contain blanks to be filled in later (such as the date "19__"), embroideries on the lack of information like "was designed and/or built by", or meaningless statements like "the listing is for less than one acre and, when listed, included one contributing site." --Orlady (talk) 13:48, 2 June 2011 (UTC) I forget to mention unforgettable items like "Dinnie Block is or was a property in Grand Forks, North Dakota." --Orlady (talk) 14:25, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
• Actually, Ebyabe, it wasn't the "crappy stubs" that got WP:NRHP started -- it was the classification of NRHP sites as being Protected areas, when they weren't officially protected. That situation led to Wikipedia's recognition that stuff on the National Register needed its own categories and infoboxes, instead of being lumped in with protected areas, and that was a good thing. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 15:32, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

• Weak oppose. I agree that these "articles" are irritating and little more than transposition of the NRIS database, but I also agree that the consensus requirements are unreasonable. Something should be done, but it shouldn't be this. PhantomPlugger (talk) 20:35, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
• Strong support. I know that Doncram is fully capable of writing decent stubs that are not padded with empty blanks waiting to be filled in, placeholder language, non-information (like saying that the article topic "is described in" a cited reference), or deliberately vague language like "is or was a building", "designed and/or built by", and "has some significance in c.1880, c.1910, and 1952". However, he is continuing to create this kind of noncontent, and until he voluntarily stops putting his rough-draft articles in article space, some sort of ban is needed. His reaction to the admonitory note I put on his talk page 5 days ago clearly indicates that he fully intends to continue doing things his way, regardless of what anyone else thinks or says. --Orlady (talk) 20:46, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  To anyone not aware, Orlady has stalked my edits for years and it amounts to wp:wikihounding. In these diffs which i accumulated and posted in the last AN discussion, it is documented that Orlady states she personally dislikes me, and I repeatedly requested she stop posting to my Talk page and engaging in other harassment.

  1. User talk:Orlady/Archive 11#it's harassment. Please stop.
  2. User talk:Orlady/Archive 11#Old Town Bridge
  3. User talk:Orlady/Archive 11#Moved to this page from User talk:Doncram who added the title "counting"
  4. User talk:Orlady/Archive 11#causing drama by wikihounding, again
  5. User talk:Orlady/Archive 11#your following me on Confederate Monument
  6. User talk:Orlady/Archive 11#Butting in on yet another case, Veterans Administration Hospital
  7. User talk:Orlady/Archive 11#hey what's going on, again

  She has also repeatedly expressed scorn and dislike for historic sites, for NRHP, for architecture, and in the last AN discussion she explained she maintains membership in WikiProject NRHP in order to have standing as a critic. Orlady has repeatedly refused mediation or other dispute resolution. I do object to her posting anything at my Talk page, to her using Administrative tools to insult me by userifying pages she does not like and block their return to mainspace, and in general to her inflammatory, nasty-spirited participation among what is largely a community of history-interested writers in NRHP. Some, including Elkman further above, have accused me of accusing any critic of wikistalking. No, I only accuse her. I will say that at times I have been frustrated by different others following my edits, who at times seeming to me to be interfering unproductively. But in general I do welcome others following, in general I do learn from others' edits and comments. For no other editor in Wikipedia have I ever sensed anything like pure nastiness and evil in their motivations. I think Orlady's hatred of me overrides her probably-usually-good judgement, and then she comes up with obtuse and totally unproductive positions. I have pointed out her outright lying on multiple occasions (and if I recall correctly she never disagreed that she was lying), and at this point I do not respect her opinions. If she says X, i expect it is motivated towards causing contention and causing discomfort for me, and is counter to the purposes and values of Wikipedia, while I am sure I would interpret someone else saying the same X quite differently. I tend to believe what Orlady states is not even her true belief, what she would say about another's editing. So, yes, I deleted her latest threat at my Talk page. I think it is not a matter for wp:AN, but it is probably a matter for Arbitration to address the personal conflict, personal insults, and vast, poisonous negativity. That's all for now. --doncram 22:21, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

• Support --Guerillero | My Talk 17:32, 7 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
• Oppose - this is inappropriate as a referendum on an editor. The proper venue is multiple-related article nomination on AfD or the Arbitration Committee, not an ad hoc group of editors here at the noticeboard. Also, surely some of the less notable NRHP sites can be merged/redirected into state or topical lists, right? Neutrality^talk 05:21, 11 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
• Support. We need to think of our readers. This sort of template-driven stub is a plague. Creating rafts of essentially blank pages like this is not helpful to our readers. They would get more out of a consolidated table. TCO (talk) 20:40, 11 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

goals

There was a comment by editor Choess in the previous discussion, that "I can't help but think, in looking over this, that part of the problem is that people's implicit goals seem to be quite different, and exposing some of those goals and assumptions to fresh air might improve understanding on both sides." I don't think ANI is the best place to discuss it, but Choess was right, there must be different implicit goals between camps of various NRHP editors and various outside critics. I don't understand what Elkman's bigger goals are, at all. My goals include sharing out information in accessible form to readers around the U.S., who would like to have a clue about their local historic sites, and to provide useful links between them (via geographic list-articles, via categories, via informative architect/builder articles that list the places the architect/builder's works). Some info, within a good structure of these lists and all that, is a good start. Then a local person might have a chance to add further context from old clippings and such available at a local library. Some editors would withhold any info, and not develop the supporting structure, to "save" the topic for themselves to develop in some future year and to grab DYK glory, perhaps, I dunno? Or is it a goal to "protect" readers from imprecise, not super-detailed information? Or to keep readers from becoming editors, because they might not be qualified in some way? --doncram 21:36, 31 May 2011 (UTC)Reply

Picking up on one point you make above: "Some editors would withhold any info, and not develop the supporting structure, to "save" the topic for themselves to develop in some future year and to grab DYK glory, perhaps, I dunno?" I used to create short stubs, but was not really satisfied with them and noticed that they weren't being developed by others as much as I thought they would be (to be fair, that might be due to other reasons, such as not filling in back-links from other articles). I now try and create longer stubs, tending more towards start-level articles, and do a fair amount of research before creating a new article. Certainly that satisfies DYK criteria, but more importantly I think it provides the reader with a better article. And one of the points made above was that some of these stubs are being created to fill out red-links in various list articles. I strongly disagree with this, ever since a list I had been carefully nurturing and making plans to create the articles to fill in the red-links, got taken to featured article status and I watched in horror as the nominator rattled off about 20 stubs (some were sub-stubs and only 1 or 2 lines) in one evening to "fill in the red-links" and satisfy the featured list (FL) criteria. So your comment about 'DYK glory' should probably be balanced by 'FL glory'. I also feel strongly that when you create an article, you have a duty to at least try and eventually raise it to C-class or B-class level, if not further, but that is more a personal view. Carcharoth (talk) 00:27, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I was into doing DYKs for a while, but it was too predictable, that anything long enough would automatically qualify.

Many NRHP articles should stay short. Take Robert Lindemann House, which "is locally significant as the best preserved Queen Anne style property in the area", long owned by one family, now abandoned. If a reader is seriously interested in more details, they can consult the online NRHP nomination document linked to that one. Some editors, on the other hand, have stated that they believe every shred of info in an NRHP nom document should be put into an article, before it is allowable in mainspace. I think less is more. And readers everywhere else around the U.S. deserve some info. If an NRHP editor chooses to spend a week or whatever developing a too-long-for-the-topic B or C article, they're misspending their effort, honestly, I believe. --doncram 00:44, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

You're wondering what my goals are? I'll tell you: I believe that every new NRHP article should give the reader enough context to identify the property, why it's significant, and what made the place historic. For example, let's say that someone was browsing Google Maps in Chisago County, Minnesota, and finds out that the Moody Barn is a historic building. They might click on the Wikipedia link and find that it's the last remaining round barn in the county, built in an era when farming was diversifying. That's the sort of thing that gets me interested in historic places, and the sort of interest that I want to encourage in readers. On the other hand, suppose I'm looking at a map of Brentwood, Tennessee, and I find there's a placemark for Joseph Elliston House. I might check it out (assuming I'm an end reader of Wikipedia, not an editor or an "insider"), and I find out that it may have been built in 1817 or 1855, depending. It has a central hall plan (which may or may not hold a staircase), and... what else? Is the house a notable piece of architecture? Who was Joseph Elliston? I guess I'd have to look for some more information on Joseph Elliston. Ah, never mind, I'm going to give up and find something else.

I switched to my Wikipedia editor hat and tried to find something about the Joseph Elliston House, and read through the 52-page MPS document, but I still couldn't find anything substantial. It shouldn't be my job to have to support the articles you create, though. If you create a bunch of thin stubs, then it just means that someone else has to go back and fix what you've created. It's like deferred maintenance. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 04:47, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

No, it's not like that, IMO. The Elliston House article is a good start, and actually conveys a lot more than you give it credit. It shows the state of information available, not quite satisfying yet, certainly. It conveys to the next editor that maybe it is not so easy to find online references to improve it. (Heh, heh, not like some other articles in North Dakota where you have pointed out it would be easy to add more info from the NRHP document that I had linked. Which was true, but missed the point that the starter article did provide a good link to the further information.) The existence of this Elliston House article might enlist the interest of a local historical society, or anyone else actually holding relevant information, to improve it. Its existence already provides something to local readers, and vastly increases the chances that next year there will be a lot more there. --doncram 18:37, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I don't have a lot extra to add to this discussion but perhaps some context is useful. I dealt with doncram about a year ago with regards to disambiguation pages and NRHP pages. There are a number of discussions you can browse here. The NRHP project always seemed to be given carte blanche to create stubs for any of the NRHP sites so long as they met a very low threshold for stub notability, because the assumption was the underlying topic is notable. Or at least from the disambiguation page perspective it seemed like that. This is part of a wider debate about kitten-esque articles in general though. There's an awful lot of them that go on, but yet there's no consistent or quick way to deal with them. It's quicker for me to write a script to create them than it is for me to amalgamate them together, write an AfD about it, and then deal with the impending discussions. It was hard enough to even get a relatively softly written policy about it under the BOT approval group (see this and the subsequent outcome here and also here).

I'm not saying there's not value to creating these kinds of articles... and early in my wiki career I did some of this myself. I've since proded some of the worst of these, and expanded others to be useful articles. But the central problem is that we tend to split off into inclusions versus deletionist corners and nobody has any serious debate about this kind of specific issue. At least not debate that doesn't have the same usual suspects popping up with predictable opinions.

Perhaps a more broad based discussion of stub threshold notability, or at least making authors be thoughtful about their creations, is appropriate. But I have limited expectations that will actually happen. Shadowjams (talk) 06:19, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

What does "It [...] has other significance in c.1880." even mean? (example from John Pope House (Burwood, Tennessee)). Fram (talk) 08:22, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

The National Register database has fields in it to indicate that a building has "significance" in one or more particular years. For example, the Floyd B. Olson House in Minneapolis has significant years of 1922 and 1936. The database doesn't indicate why 1936 was significant. There's another information source, the Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission, which indicates a period of significance from 1922 through 1936. I'm checking out another book, Larry Millett's AIA Guide to the Twin Cities, which states that the house was built in 1922 and Floyd B. Olson lived there until he died of cancer in 1936. But, the database itself (which is where Doncram is getting this information) doesn't explain why 1936 is a year of significance. My assumption is that the earliest date for "year of significance" is when the structure was built, so that's what I've been putting in the infobox. It takes more research than just looking in the database to determine other years of significance of a property. In fact, one of my frustrations is that Doncram is generating articles based only on the database, without consulting other research materials. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 14:07, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

That Olson was created by Elkman in 2008. From what you say here, plus informed understanding of how the NRIS database works, it appears the "built=1922" assertion in the article is incorrect. Rather, the house was likely built earlier but is significant for its association during 1922-1936 with notable person Floyd B. Olson. If i were Elkman, I would rant on and on about how terrible it is that an erroneous assertion has been out there in Wikipedia since 2008. --doncram 17:52, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Um, no, it appears it is correct. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 18:16, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I also checked out the Hennepin County Property Information System. 1914 49th St. W. is listed as being built in 1922. It's also listed as lot 28 in the Harriet Heights Minneapolis addition, with a market value of $646,000. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 20:01, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Okay, great, good. I thought Elkman was confessing to having relied upon imprecise information in a mainspace article, as the article then and now shows no other source for the built=1922 interpretation of NRIS, but I stand corrected. Or Elkman lucked out in this case that assuming the NRIS info meant built turns out to be the case (usually a pretty good bet). I thought the info he was providing here suggested a different reason why NRIS included a 1922 date, and the one other source he mentioned here could have been echoing that, but it sounds like the facts are it was built in 1922. Thanks. --doncram 22:34, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

(reply before Elkman's separate reply inserted above) I'll explain. Please don't complain about the explanation being long. The statement reflects the fact that the National Register's NRIS database gives two dates of significance for the place, c.1806 and c.1880. This reflects National Register staff doing data entry from the approved NRHP nomination form for the property, soon after approval. They entered the address and basic facts about the property, including significant dates. The NRIS database provides for data entry of up to 4 date fields, plus a corresponding number of "circa" qualifier fields. For an antebellum mansion built in Greek Revival style during 1830-1835, and then greatly remodelled into Colonial Revival style in 1925, that would get entered as three significant dates: 1830, 1835, 1925. In a small percentage of articles, the first date in the series is something different, like the date of founding of a cemetery on the property of a church that was built later.

My system's /draft for the John Pope House, which you can see at Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Williamson County, Tennessee/drafts#John Pope House (Burwood, Tennessee) used the NRIS database to report both c. 1806 and c. 1880 in the "built=" field of the infobox, including with the "circa" qualifier, although the dates are not 100% sure to be dates of building. And it includes /draft text clarifying that the dates are "significant" dates, not necessarily built dates, i.e. "It was built or has other significance in C 1806 and C 1880.<ref name=nris/>" For an editor using the /draft system, that obviously provides a prompt to try to find more specific information. For comparison, Elkman's system will simply report the earlier date, with no qualifier, as "built=1806", giving no hint to an editor that the date might not actually be a built date, and providing no prompt.

In the mainspace article that I created from the /draft, I used additional information from a source that I found, to state more precisely that "The original part of the house was built of logs in c.1806." I am pretty sure that the c.1880 date is in fact the date that the house was remodelled from being a "single pen" of logs into being a full, respectable, "Hall-parlor plan" house. I strongly believe that will be borne out in the NRHP nomination document, if/when someone chooses to collect that from the National Register or when the National Register makes the Tennessee documents available online (which it has done for OK, MS, ND, DE, CT, AK, and some other states and territories). What I left in the article was "It was remodelled, expanded, or has other significance in c.1880.", sourced to NRIS, which is an educated, accurate statement interpreting the NRIS database information. It properly begs the question, to a local potential editor, of what specifically happened in 1880. Which is fine and good.

You say that "It was remodelled, expanded, or has other significance in c.1880" is "fine and good." I contend that it's original research. All you know is that the date appears in a cryptic entry in a database, and you have guessed at what it might possibly mean. That's original research. --Orlady (talk) 20:51, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Please note this is better for the Wikipedia than an overly confident statement with no ambiguity based on the more minimalist article draft system provided by Elkman, and no other sources. It is far better for Williamson County readers to get to know something about the property, rather than nothing. Elkman can say that he prefers for more information to be provided upfront, which no one can argue with, more to a certain degree is certainly better. But I don't understand Elkman's preference that no information be provided, where some good information is available but not enough to answer all questions. I strongly believe that the amount of info provided in the John Pope House article is pretty darn good, way better than nothing at all. I also don't understand why Elkman prefers to give editors less information to start with than I have proven can be feasibly provided in a /draft system, based on the same NRIS database.

About this John Pope House article, I have already done a probably decent job of looking for available information online, both in the Williamson County MRA document that I cite in the article, and in the Google book cited, and otherwise, and I am pretty sure the 1880 question is not immediately resolvable without actually getting the NRHP nomination document (I'd be very happy to be proven wrong, if someone finds a source online right now). I myself have collected the free NRHP documents for several other Williamson County, Tennessee NRHPs, but I am not so interested in this one, so I don't plan to request it. Resolving the 1880 question can wait for any other Wikipedia NRHP editor to get interested, or perhaps for one of the local historical societies to get interested, or for the National Register to get around to posting the Tennessee documents (quite likely within the next couple years).

This was a serious reply to Fram's question. I hope it is helpful also in showing more how I am thinking, that providing a pretty good starter article is valuable. --doncram 13:59, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I get that this is what you are trying to convey, but the sentence does't make any sense as it stands. "The John Pope House has other significance in c.1880." is meaningless and incorrect. What you are trying to express is something like "Something significant wrt the John Pope House, perhaps remodelling, an extension, ..., happened in 1880." I am aware that I am not a native English speaker, and that my texts are far from error-free, but I can't imagine that "It has significance in or about ca. 18XX", which you used in many, many articles, would be considered a correct sentence by native English speakers. "It was built or has other significance in c. 1830, c. 1850, and c. 1907" (Mordecai Puryear House, which you revised today): why not change your template to something like "Significant years in the history of the property were ..." or something similar? Expressing ambiguity can be done in a meaningful, correct way and shouldn't be done in some extremely grating format instead. Fram (talk) 14:16, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Sure, thanks, I will be happy to try that language in my next batch of /drafts. That is the kind of actually helpful suggestion that I have actually been seeking from NRHP editors. I will be reviewing this and other discussions in the process of reprogramming for the next batch, and will necessarily dismiss all the shrill, simplistic complaints that are not about trying to actually help editors. I am sure that others will complain about this language too, but I believe it is better, and I will be happy to blame you for the wording. :) We might call for Elkman to modify his system to provide something better than the incomplete "built = 1806" that appears in his draft article generator, too. To see what his system suggests, go to http://www2.elkman.net/nrhp/infobox.php and enter "Pope, John" and "TN" and then hit "Submit". That provides a cut-and-paste-ready draft article which is better than my /draft in one respect, in that it includes coordinates data. (Elkman is using one version of a National Register coordinates database which I can't find easily in the National Register's systems, and which Elkman has declined to answer about sharing with me. I and Elkman both should use a different National Register database that provides better quality coordinates than that version. I am working at bringing that into my /drafts system). Elkman's draft is worse than my /draft for the same house in that it provides no actual drafted text prompting editors to try to figure out the meaning of the 1806 and 1880 dates, and in some other respects. Depending on the particulars of the NRHP place, my system can provide considerably better information. --doncram 15:30, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I never meant for my infobox generator to generate draft articles. I intended for it to generate the code that goes into {{Infobox NRHP}}, as well as the categories that can easily be surmised from the architectural style data and some of the historic functions listed in there. In fact, every infobox generated through my tool contains the text, "The infobox is NOT enough for a standalone article. You need to enter some more information about where the property is located, its history, and why this property is notable. In other words, don't use this infobox generator to create one-sentence stubs." If there's a need to add more fields to the infobox or to provide a minimal summary of other information in order to prepare a draft article, I haven't received any major requests for changes from anyone except you. And, I'm wondering if your comments about my infobox generator are your way of deflecting conversation away from criticism of your editing behavior. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 17:51, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Actually, Elkman, your disregard for minor requests (such as a multiple-times repeated request for you to remove an inconvenient line-break before the NRIS reference), and general respect for you and what your system does provide, holds off other requests from NRHP editors. I and other NRHP editors do respect what you provide, "on your own dime" as I have put it many times previously. NRHP editors politely ask one another at their Talk pages not to bother you with requests. If you were amenable to requests, on the other hand, you would receive them. In particular, I would be very glad to work with you to improve your generator in substantial ways, such as building in intelligent linking or not to builders and architect articles, and building in usage of the better, available coordinates database. And, as Dudemanfellabra agreed in the past AN discussion, probably the biggest specific help you could provide would be to build in a draft inline reference to the NRHP nomination document for NRHPs in the many states and District of Columbia where that is available online already.

About deflecting, I am kinda seeing this now as a pretty good strategy, maybe, to point out contradictions in what one major critic says, sure. It is maybe worthwhile to educate others at wp:AN who get concerned from time to time, but it is probably better for Wikipedia as a community to shut down these episodes here more quickly. (striking, as I didn't really mean that or say that right).

Are you suggesting you might be amenable to requests if you received them? That is great news, if the case. --doncram 18:43, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Why should I be amenable to requests like this if you're going to bring them up on an administrators' noticeboard, where I'm presumably in trouble for even being a participant in this discussion? I've got plenty of other things to do in "real life", in my spare time. And if you're going to ask me, under duress, to make updates to the infobox generator as part of an administrative action, that's hardly enough to motivate me to do the extra work. I've got enough projects going on in my real life to keep me busy. I might be amenable to NRHP requests if I had the time to do them. But, since you keep bringing up my conduct over and over and over again, I'm going to open a separate subsection below to ask the other involved admins (and uninvolved admins) exactly what the hell I'm doing wrong around here. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 19:56, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Doncram, I think you're creating a false dichotomy between "overly confident statement with no ambiguity" and your style of phrasing. The third alternative is to simply say nothing at all about, say, the John Pope House in c.1880 until we, as authors, have a less ambiguous idea of what it was. Consider the extreme of the logical tautology: "Leonard Coreman was or was not German." This statement is a completely true fact about Leonard, but it's absolutely inappropriate for a Wikipedia article, because even though it's true, it fails to usefully inform the reader. Now consider a less extreme case: "In c.1850, Alfred Sjogren either won the Battle of Mukden, planted a basil patch, or became ill from a surfeit of ice cream." Even if this statement is completely true and verifiable, I think the vast majority of us would agree that it's not appropriate for a biographical article; while in theory it informs the reader about Alfred, in practice it's likely to leave them more confused than they were before about what Alfred's been up to. I think these "Something happened to the building in year..." statements are of the same stamp; either we can say more or less definitively what event made that year important for the building, or we should leave it out until we have the information that explains it. As Wittgenstein would have it, "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen." (Whereof one cannot speak, one must remain silent.) The theory that we should leave these things in the article to "provide a prompt" for or "enlist the interest" of some hypothetical eventualist future editor is a bit like leaving your defunct 1973 Dodge Dart on the lawn in the hopes that someone will eventually show up with its missing piston rings. Yes, it may happen occasionally, but in the meantime, everyone who drives by has to gaze at the rusting hulk on the lawn. Choess (talk) 06:27, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Choess, I appreciate what you are saying and will take it into account, before drafting a new batch of /draft articles. I have indeed listened to and acted on other feedback I have gotten already.

Not to take away from what you say, but I am not sure if you missed that the /draft in non-mainspace, which had several ambiguities, was not what I wrote into mainspace, which was this first draft by me of John Pope House article. That had exactly one inexact statement, that "It was built or has other significance in c.1806 and c.1880." Prior to this AN discussion, if i am reading times correctly, I edited it up to this version, with "The original part of the house was built of logs in c.1806.[3] It was remodelled, expanded, or has other significance in c.1880.[1]" It then included good wikilinks to architecture articles i created, and good categories, and additional interesting info in the article. I don't think either version was a rusting hulk. Then, during this discussion i edited it to implement Fram's wording suggestion. Station1 has since edited it to remove that. I think the article is now somewhat worse for not mentioning the c.1880 date at all. --doncram 22:40, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Don, could you explain why you include the phrase "...or has other significance..."? That strikes me as being exactly the sort of uninformative wishy-washy statement that everyone is complaining about. Blueboar (talk) 00:00, 5 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Fram asked that above, within this #goals section, and I replied and then Fram eventually suggested different wording, which Station1 now removes from the article. Please read the above and ask a further question. --doncram 00:17, 5 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I removed the sentence "Another significant date in the history of the property is c.1880" because it gave no clue as to what happened around 1880, nor, to the best of my knowledge, is there anything in that sentence's citation (which apparentlty requires downloading an executable file to access). Station1 (talk) 02:03, 5 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I have no problems with getting rid of these sentences alltogether, my concern was that if it was included, it should at least be correct English. "The building has significance in 1880, 1895 and 1920" is just nonsense, "significant events in the history of the building happened in 1880, 1895 and 1920" is easily understandable. It is, however, rather vague, so not much is lost by not including it. Fram (talk) 08:38, 6 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Elkman's conduct, inability to provide information in the generator, etc.

Since Doncram is making issues of my infobox generator, my participation in WP:NRHP, my conduct in general, and anything else, I'd like to know exactly what I'm doing wrong around here. Go ahead, let's discuss my behavior, not Doncram's. Tell me exactly where I've screwed up. And, if there's an admin sanction involved here, go ahead and make some proposals. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 19:56, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I don't think you've very much screwed up by stating your opinions here and elsewhere, but I don't understand your interest in criticizing the existence of starter articles on historic places in the United States far away from your own area. You've repeatedly stated that you wish for a certain standard in NRHP articles, including that it should include a decent explanation of the historic significance of a site. But, if the significance of a site is not readily identified (usually because the NRHP nomination document is not readily available), why do you oppose that other factual information be made available? What is the harm? And, don't you think that having some information is more likely to lead to local editors developing information, or do you really believe that having no information is more likely to lead to more information? I really don't understand your perspective.

Also, you are the main provider by far of stub articles on NRHP-listed places, which are used by many editors who are either starting a stub article using just the NRIS information you serve up, or they are adding more information from other sources. Given that your generator could provide more drafted information, comparable to what my /drafts provide (such as drafted inline references to the NRHP nomination documents where those are available), are you willing to provide more? Note, I won't say it is easy to provide more, because I think it is a pain to go back and reprogram anything, from my own experience. And to provide a decently worded English language sentence to communicate the number of contributing and non-contributing buildings, sites, structures, etc., is not simple (I developed a fairly decent version of that sentence only in my later /drafts). But, don't you think that providing more, is more likely to lead to articles having more? Or do you sincerely believe that having less, and including a big warning sentence that needs to be deleted, leads to articles getting more? How about including "find sources" searches set up, in the drafted Talk pages, as I have been doing, for the main name and any alternative names of the NRHP-listed place? --doncram 23:44, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

At this point, I'm willing to scrub the whole idea altogether. I'm tempted to remove the infobox generator completely just so you will stop bitching about it. I'm really tired of having to waste my time responding to your repeated complaints that my infobox generator (which is designed to populate the fields in {{Infobox NRHP}}, in case you forgot) isn't giving you enough content. I also had to interrupt my workday in the middle of the afternoon to reply to one of your complaints. You aren't even using my infobox generator, so why are you complaining about it? I suppose if you really felt the need, you could go back to your own generator or your own database query tools, look up the number of contributing buildings/structures/objects/whatever, and plug those numbers into someone else's articles.

Maybe some of the admins on this admin noticeboard can tell me whether I should just throw in the towel, get rid of the infobox generator, stop writing NRHP articles in my own state (where I have plenty of reference material handy), and let someone else do this. I'd like to get the opinions of other admins here, since, after all, this is an admin noticeboard. --These two paragraphs were written, typed, and/or have other significance by Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 23:56, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Please do your best to keep maintaining it and making it available — I use it all the time, as it's far superior to anything else, and I've never figured out how you get some types of information from the database. I've used it in two ways: (1) Infoboxes for new or greatly-expanded articles such as Epsilon II Archaeological Site, and (2) Basic information for description pages for photos of NR-listed sites that I upload to Commons. Nyttend (talk) 02:55, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Every previous time that Elkman has threatened to withdraw his off-wikipedia website, one or more NRHP editors has likewise asserted how helpful his site is, and asked him not to withdraw. I have generally been respectful and repeatedly expressed my appreciation about what he provides. However, the negativity that Elkman repeatedly brings to discussions at wp:AN and wt:NRHP is a drag, IMHO. Personally, I have respected his wishes about Minnesota NRHP-listed places. I have asked him above what is his concern about faraway places and he has not replied. Also, I have made suggestions for his NRHP article generation system (he says it is not one, but I don't understand the hairsplitting on that point), which he has sometimes accepted and sometimes not. He has not generally been receptive to suggestions; a main one that he has declined to address is whether he could incorporate a draft inline reference to the NRHP nomination document and its photos document, in new articles. I have asked him to share whatever database of coordinates he has, and he has declined to answer. I have asked him other questions, such as about his use of wp:MPS data and about incorporating better information about MPS studies, and he has declined to answer. There's potential now to improve what his system provides about architects/builders/engineers for about 10,000 out of 85,000 NRHP-listed places, but upfront I am not hopeful he will.

At some point, the benefits of his voluntary participation may not be worth the costs. It would not be the end of the world to accept Elkman's offer to withdraw. I can provide some partial substitute for what Elkman's site provides, and would make more effort to do so if he did withdraw. Several other better programmers have downloaded and used the NRIS database (including Anome, including some German wikipedia programmer who has recently generated disambiguation pages using it, including NrhpBot's programmer years ago), and someone else could provide the equivalent or better to what Elkman provides. In fact one factor in my choosing to program my system as far as I have, has been out of sympathy for Elkman, who seemed to want to get out of the business. Elkman notably has not updated his system to use the NRIS database that has been available since June 2010. His system serves up data only through March, 2009. There are complications in the 2010 version which necessitate some extra programming, in contrast to previous updates, and I myself have used the 2010 version only in some reports, not yet used it in generating /draft articles for any article drive.

I don't want him to withdraw and am not here asking him to do so. But, if Elkman is so personally bothered by regular development of NRHP articles in Wikipedia, and by many people using his article generator system in ways that he disapproves of, I wonder if it would be better for him to just withdraw it. In his repeated threats or offers, is he asking for affirmation or is he actually asking for permission to withdraw?

Elkman asked me at my Talk page for me to comment about his system and his behaviors in this section, rather than anywhere else right now. I don't suppose me commenting this way is going to improve the chances he will actually cooperate, programming-wise, to improve his and my complementary systems, which is what I would most like. But currently I think he is not likely to cooperate anyhow. Or, Elkman, would you in fact be willing to consider some suggestions for your generator, and to share some information to help my complementary one? --doncram 21:48, 3 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I'll let other admins weigh in on whether I should still be contributing my INFOBOX generator (not ARTICLE generator, since articles contain more than infoboxes -- or do they?) I'll also let other admins weigh in on whether my contributions at WT:NRHP and WP:AN are a drag. As far as the 2010 database is concerned, they changed large parts of the schema of that database. I've done most of the work on writing new PHP code to do new queries by city, county, and architect, as well as generating the new infoboxes, and I've been experimenting with it for some of the new articles I've done. But, since my conduct has come into question here, and since my support of the query tools is an issue, I'm not sure it's worthwhile to bring the tools into general availability. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 21:58, 3 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

You asked me to comment specifically here, so I am not sure if you are now suggesting you only want to hear others / administrators comments, not mine. If you wish to disregard my suggestions because they are from me, that's unfortunate because I am probably the most informed person about the good and the imperfections in your system. It's inefficient to ask administrators not familiar with NRIS to comment, if that is what you are doing.

Anyhow, great to hear you've done some more programming work. If I and other NRHP editors prepared a good list of architects/builders/engineers, comparable to the wp:MPS list about MPS/MRA documents, would you be willing to consider using that to improve what your generator serves up? It could use the (implemented or pending) new NRHP infobox field for builder=, instead of the one for architect=, where we now know, or could soon know, that a given person was primarily a covered bridge builder or whatever. And it could be smart about wikilinking the names, where we know this is an article for the person. And it could correct known typos in NRIS that I have tabulated where I know that an architect/builder/engineer name is spelled wrong and/or should pipelink to a specific differently named article. I would do the same in my complementary system, addressing one complaint about accuracy/ambiguity in NRHP draft articles. --doncram 23:12, 3 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

It sounds like you are asking Elkman to improve his generator so you don't have to do any real work. Good articles are not written by bots. Instead of relying on Elkman, you could do some actual research on these people... looking for sources beyond what is available in the NRIS database. Blueboar (talk) 13:47, 5 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

It appears that somebody (and I'm not referring to Elkman) has a massive chip on his shoulder that even causes him to try to prevent productive discussion of these topics. --Orlady (talk) 22:36, 7 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Consensus

Though I am new to it, I can see that this issue has been kicking around for a while with little to no progress. It seems that people are jumping to the "solution" without first gaining a consensus on the base action. Clearly, some people don't like what doncram is doing and others don't see a problem. Additionally, there is a lot of disagreement on what should be done about it. It seems a lot of people objected to the Archive 223 proposal and object to the above proposal (myself included), but agree that the behavior should be discouraged (myself included), creating more confusion and more off-topic arguing. I propose that we first reach a consensus on whether or not the practice is undesirable, then work on a solution (if one is needed). It seems that we can get a lot of the arguing out of the way if we first reach a consensus on whether or not the action is a problem. (A support vote indicates that you believe doncram's actions to be sufficiently disruptive as to necessitate some sort of action.)

• Support I find his pattern of "stub" creation to be disruptive because it typically derives its information solely from NRIS database fields and presents it in such a manner that renders the article unusable. Stubs can be very valuable and should be used to stimulate further editing and expansion. However, I believe doncram's style discourages further editing because it is so difficult to make sense of the information and/or find a jumping-off point. An example of this is his newly created article Rubush & Hunter. I created this redlink recently with the intent of eventually creating an, at minimum, Start-class article on the firm and hoping that in the meantime someone would come along with some additional info or a good starting point. However, the article that doncram created accomplishes little more than clicking "What links here?" Any attempt to create a decent article on the subject would require blanking the article as it fails to offer any useful information in a usable format. PhantomPlugger (talk) 21:08, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Not to mention that the stray bits of text like "coord_parameters region:US_type:landmark | locmapin Indiana | built 1927 | architect Rubush and Hunter ; William P. Jungelaus Company, Inc. | ..." and other copy/paste remnants make the article look more like rubbish than Rubush. (And don't forget to complain about my "rubbish" smart remark in the section immediately above.) --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 21:15, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Those were stray bits, yes, now incorporated/removed. Note the Under Construction tag on the article; it really was under construction.

I'm sorry, PhantomPlugger, I would have been glad not to start the Rubush & Hunter article 2 days ago if I had any idea it was on your or anyone else's radar screen to start it. I don't know what redlink list you are speaking of. I created it off a different list of redlinks, namely of architects and builders and engineers associated with many NRHP places. As you might or might not have gathered, the usage of NRIS information by Elkman to assert that these persons are architects is objected to by me, and the usage by me to state they are architects or builders or engineers, is objected to by some others. It seems best to me to figure out what these people are, so that articles on the NRHP places can state accurate information immediately, and this is best done by beginning to develop articles about them. Any builder or architect with more than 10 NRHP places listed for their architecture is pretty surely Wikipedia notable. I guess it is good we agree that there should be an article for the topic. I am happy for you to develop the article in any reasonable way. By DYKCheck, it shows as a 280 character stub (the list is not included for DYK-eligibility), so if garnering DYK is your concern you should have no trouble, you'd only have to develop the minimum 1500 character DYK threshold, to achieve DYK eligibilty under its 5X expansion option instead of as a brand new article, if you're not ready to develop it right now.

I don't think you have to say that blanking the article is necessary to improve it. If you wish to create a different list or table of the works of this firm, by all means go ahead, anyhow. But aren't the individually notable places which I listed out, worth mentioning in the article? I should think you should at least check whatever different list you have, to compare its completeness vs. this starter list of works based on NRIS information. --doncram 23:08, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

PhantomPlugger, with the removal of the stray bits, do you have any objection to the article in this current version? I don't understand what you mean about it being "difficult to make sense of the information and/or find a jumping-off point"? Couldn't it be easily developed by expanding the lede text, like was done by me and others for Alfredo S.G. Taylor, another architect article that i created today, and which garnered newly uploaded photos and moved from this early version to this current version today? --doncram 03:49, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I'm not worried about DYK or anything like that and your familiarity (well beyond my own) with the database can certainly be useful. I hope to expand the article well beyond 1500 characters if someone else doesn't beat me to it, but even so, my primary goal is expanding the information on Wikipedia in a certain sector that I find to be important.

The current version is certainly better, but the only piece of information in that article that didn't exist on Wikipedia before that article was created is the first names of the partners. If one were to type Rubush & Hunter into the search box before the article existed, one would get a list of their works, with links to those articles. The only difference now is that the list is in article form instead of in search results form. I'm not opposed to you creating stubs, in fact, I would have appreciated a good-quality stub on Rubush & Hunter as it would have helped me organize the general outline of the article. When stubs like this are created, at best, they add nothing to Wikipedia; at worst, they confuse, obscure and discourage.

I hope you don't see me (or anyone else for that matter) as just another lemming pile-on because I do think you have the capability to contribute positively. I just think we should set a good example to avoid WP:FAIL. PhantomPlugger (talk) 14:12, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, I appreciate what you are saying. But the Rubush & Hunter article provides more than you say, it includes what is likely to be a nearly complete list of works of the firm that are NRHP-listed and hence already known to be individually notable (15 in number) and it details them out, including 6 redlinks. You could not search for and find the firms' association with those non-article places in Wikipedia before. For an interested editor, i.e. you, it suggests that you can probably start articles on those (you may use tools and tips given at wp:NRHPhelp). The Rubush & Hunter article provides a place that the existing and future NRHP and other articles on their works can now explicitly link to. For a reader using "What links here" to navigate, it already provides means for reader to navigate among the existing 9 articles on their works. It clarifies that these are architects, not builders or engineers, which Elkman's NRHP article generator or my system can use to suggest more precise and accurate draft infoboxes/articles, and clarifies that the 9 articles are not likely to include incorrect infobox assertions (as Elkman's generator would have assumed correctly that the firm was an architect). Of course it will be better if you improve it. But I think Wikipedia is better for having the article now, rather than not having it, don't you? --doncram 19:10, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

• Support, of course. The Rubush&Hunter article isn't even particularly bad, when compared with the universe of potential examples. The list I compiled at User:Orlady/List includes many gems like Valley Falls Cotton Mill Site, created 6 months ago (current version) -- "is a property" (what kind? who knows?), "The property is also known as Site No. 146-04" (what does that signify? who knows? anyway, who cares? -- surely it's not encyclopedic information), "was built or has other significance in 1849" (since we don't even know for sure if it's a building, I guess it's not surprising that we have no clue what happened in 1849), "when listed the property included one contributing structure and one contributing site" (the only salient information here is that whatever it is, there is only one of it). If it were any other contributor, I would move that page out of article space with a suggestion that the contributor keep it in user space until there was enough there to justify an article. (I've tried that with Doncram, but it only leads to endless wikidrama.) --Orlady (talk) 21:30, 1 June 2011 (UTC) While we're on the subject of content that shouldn't be added to article space, let's not forget the one-sentence paragraphs in the bodies of articles that describe database codes in ALL CAPS, such as "Its listing status is DR, which means DATE RECEIVED/PENDING NOMINATION." When newbies generate that kind of thing, it usually is corrected with a gentle level-one warning message, but when an experienced user like Doncram creates that sort of thing -- and leaves it untouched for weeks and months -- it conveys the message that Wikipedia is utterly uninterested in quality. --Orlady (talk) 21:54, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  As Orlady fully well knows, that Valley Falls Cotton Mill Site article was created in an article drive for the 49 NRHPs in Tolland County, CT, supported by a batch of /drafts here which included drafted inline references to NRHP nomination documents. That one is alone, or among few, of NRHPs in that county for which it turns out the NRHP nomination document which would answer all those questions, is not available online. In the other articles, there is some further development using the NRHP nom document. In at least one improved (not started) during that drive, Orlady actually helped. In the larger context, I and others think it makes sense to have a starter article at the Valley Falls article's level, which some term a "sub-stub", rather than having no article at all. To anyone else, please do review the articles of that county. I think it is obvious that readers are better served by having these articles than not having them. --doncram 22:51, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  I don't "fully well know" what you were doing in creating that stub, as (your beliefs to the contrary) I don't follow you around. As it happens, with minimal research I have learned that the Valley Falls mill site is a small part of a large public park that is extensively documented (including the history of the mill) online. I would not be surprised if the stub you created will deter local residents from developing an article about the park, as a newbie likely would find it daunting to try to force content about the park into the current sub-stub article about a small part of the park.
  As for Mansfield Training School and Hospital, I don't think you should point to your involvement there with pride. The article was created as a stub, with good content and sources, by another user. In February 2010 you visited the page, adding an NRHP infobox and some text about the NRIS database entry, complete with one of your "fill-in-the-blank" reference citations (including "date=, 19", "author=____", and "Accompanying ____ photos, exterior and interior, from 19___"). Ten months after that, you came back to fix some of the problems with your edits and add some more of those non-informational sentences that you use to describe NRIS database entries ("It was built or has other significance in 1917" and "The listing is described in its NRHP nomination document."). Largely because you had shoehorned those sentences in between other parts of an article that had actual content about the actual history of the establishment, when I stumbled upon the article, I saw it as an article in serious need of editing attention. I confess I kind of enjoyed the research I did to expand the article and sort out the disconnected statements I found there, but I consider that my expansion of the article was more in spite of you than because of you. --Orlady (talk) 03:12, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  Okay, that is a bald-faced lie, that you don't follow me around. Evidence of hundreds of cases where you edited shortly after I first edited at an article can be shown. If I compiled a list of say 200 clear cases of you following me around in the last 2 years, would you agree to stop following me around for a future 2 years, with some severe penalty if you do? In the last AN discussion, you said that you do! Anyhow, you lie! Liar liar liar liar liar!!!!!!!!! I am just astonished at that. --doncram 03:55, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  Actually, looking at a few of the Tolland County ones, I see there do remain examples of the accurately ambiguous statements, but these are easily cleared up as here I amend the Mansfield Center Cemetery article by use of the fully developed inline references to the NRHP documents. In the last AN discussion, editor Polaron offered to visit the Connecticut NRHP articles and develop them out further from their linked NRHP documents. I repeat, that the Tolland articles are better to have than not. It happens many of them can be easily improved using the good sourcing already developed for them. --doncram 23:31, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  It's nice to know that you thought the Mansfield Center Cemetery article was "easily cleaned up," since your "It was founded or has other significance in 1693" sentence remained in the article for 5-1/2 months after you put it there. I gagged, however, when I saw that you had "cleaned it up" by inserting a very short direct quotation from the National Register nomination form. After seeing that, I took the time to edit the article with some information from the source (not quoted, but in my own words). It is unfortunately true that most of the meaningless verbiage you have inserted into article space could be relatively easily cleaned up. Similarly, the dog droppings that are left in in public parks by the pets of thoughtless dog owners could be "relatively easily cleaned up," but the world is not full of people who want to devote themselves to selflessly cleaning up after other people's dogs. Similarly, when meaningless verbiage is added bot-style to hundreds (if not thousands) of pages in article space, there is no army of selfless volunteers waiting around for the opportunity to research the topics and replace that verbiage with worthwhile prose. I would prefer to delete it and insist that it not be recreated in article space. --Orlady (talk) 19:35, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  What part of wp:civility do you understand? That's obviously offensive, and your edit summary in this edit was also offensive to me. I think you are completely wrong, if you think that is plagiarism or copyvio or "obnoxious" in any way. It is an unusual situation, where the cemetery is not clearly identified as having been founded that year; the best way I saw to explain the significant date was to include the short quote, which very nicely resolved the implicit question. --doncram 21:57, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

• Oppose In the statement above, I don't know what is meant by "this issue". I think in this discussion and others, there are many issues, which some would identify as basic questions about Wikipedia values, or about concerns about editor Elkman's article generator, or about many other matters. In the label of this new subsection, it seems to suggest PhantomHugger sees a consensus. I'm sorry what is the asserted consensus here? I think this is suggested as a vote, which could lead to a consensus? I don't agree that the above statement is a new consensus. --doncram 23:31, 1 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

• Support Something has to be done here. The entire situation is a mess and consensus is as valid as policy as any of those which Doncram has used to support his position in past debates. I may be wrong, but promised change in how things will be done always has the appearance of being some time in the future. - Sitush (talk) 00:17, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

• Comment I'm not interested in devoting the time it would take (reading archives, etc.) to make a well-reasoned !vote regarding this matter (should this not be a WP:RFC, however?), nor do I wish to spark a tl;dr debate about our past interactions, but let me just add that I find Doncram's incomplete, sometimes incorrect, and vaguely worded NRHP stubs aggravating, especially those that could be improved with less than 10 minutes of online research, and am glad to see that it's not just me who has that opinion. I've learned to preserve my low blood pressure by discovering it's easier to just avoid/unwatchlist/ignore most of these stubs for a suitable interval, while acknowledging that although the work is imperfect and ends up making a lot of work for other people, people like Doncram do get a lot of work done that might not otherwise. This is not an endorsement of his approach, just the way I choose to handle it. I'm not optimistic things will change. YMMV. Valfontis (talk) 00:44, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
• Support This matter has gone on too long. There's a good reason that NrhpBot was stopped after doing just a small portion of Ohio — that bot did basically what Doncram is doing, mining the database to create substubs such as Richard H. Mitchell House, except that it presented the statements factually without all the "It might..." statements. And guess what — the large majority of its stubs have never been improved, and I'm responsible for most of the ones that have been. Given the history of these articles, there's no reason to believe that people will improve Doncram's stubs either. Nyttend (talk) 03:02, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  I did not create that Richard H. Mitchell House article and never edited it. I am not responsible for what the NrhpBot did years ago; I would have objected to its running back then as it could have done better. I have so far created /draft batches of articles, not in mainspace, only for a few counties, none in Ohio, and only in counties where NRHP nomination forms or a good MPS/MRA document was available on-line. I have created scattered articles in Ohio relating to List of Masonic buildings or other list-articles that I deemed worth completing out, or for reasons of stopping contention about disambiguation pages. In Ohio, I also probably developed NRHP list-tables and I may have created multiply-sourced articles for NRHPs that are on List of NHLs in OH. I'm not likely to create more than an occasional Ohio NRHP article because the NRHP nomination documents are not generally available on-line, and also because you Nyttend (and I think some others) are informed and working on NRHP articles in the state. I don't think there's a general problem with articles I have created or will create in Ohio. Does this address your concern? --doncram 04:31, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  I think you might have missed the point of this comment. I won't speak for Nyttend, but my understanding is that he is making an analogy. Just like NrhpBot created poor stubs by simply taking bits of info out of a data base, so are you. And because NrhpBot was creating poor stubs, it was stopped. And because very few of NrhpBot's stubs have been improved after creation by anyone other than Nyttend, it's likely most of yours will remain as you create them for a very long time. Nyttend did not say or imply that you had anything to do with NrhpBot nor that you created Richard H. Mitchell House, nor does this have anything to do with Ohio per se. The first two sentences, especially, of your reply make it appear as if you are either purposely creating a red herring or simply do not comprehend the objections to some of your work. I wouldn't mention this if this was an isolated case, but in my experience these types of diversionary responses are very much a pattern. Station1 (talk) 19:08, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  Thanks. My first two sentences are deliberate, to head off misunderstanding of other readers like in the last wp:AN discussion where a British editor complained about something else completely unrelated to me, and one or more others incorrectly thought that i was responsible. These analogies are a bit dangerous. I think it is probably good also to address Nyttend's possible concern about Ohio articles, like Valfontis has concern about Oregon ones. I asked Nyttend to clarify if that addressed his concern or not, that is not avoiding his comment at all. I actually would appreciate if editors would be honest about what they are concerned about, like for whom. If you've got some intention to start architect articles in your area, and you're afraid you might not get first author "credit", or if you are honestly trying to build up NRHP articles in your area and you just want to do it your way. P.S. Actually I don't know what happened to NrhpBot and am not sure it was "stopped" by any discussion or action anywhere, maybe just the programmer lost interest. The programmer did not reply to my inquiry when I came upon its work later. Nyttend and/or Station1, do you actually know what happened, can you point to some past discussion? --doncram 22:22, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  No, I don't know what happened to NrhpBot, but since we all agree "it could have done better", it doesn't really matter. This seems like another red herring, intentional or not, whose scent I'd rather not follow. But I must say I really doubt any editor on this page is not being honest about their concerns, or would be satisfied if you left just 'their' state alone. Station1 (talk) 02:29, 5 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

• Support Doncram should not be creating stubs where he can't answer basic questions about the information he puts in the article. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:22, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  Different editors are speaking of different things. I can answer basic questions about any information I put into any article. I am pretty scrupulous about ensuring every statement I make is sourced. There may be cases where I am using informed judgment to interprete a source in a way that is not obvious to another reader of the same source. I would be very happy to be questioned and to answer why I did what I did in any such case. Here, SarekOfVulcan is referring to, I think, what he proposed in the last AN discussion, where he wished to ban specific accurately ambiguous phrases, such as a sourced statement that a person was an architect and/or builder. Again, SarekOfVulcan would seem to prefer a confidently stated inaccurate statement, like Elkman's generator provides, that a person is an architect when that is not true. Again there are many thousands of articles with Elkman-generated infoboxes asserting that persons are architects when that has not been verified, and many of those also contain text statements echoing the infobox assertion. I think SarekOfVulcan has also said he does not mean that, that he would prefer nothing be said. I just happen to disagree, that if you have a sourced factual statement to make which is not as precise as one might wish, you can still just say it, and that provides a good implicit request to readers with expertise to refine the statement. That's a subjective preference of mine vs. his. Anyhow, there's some momentum now I hope to improve the quality of information available about the builder vs. architect question, in part by my having recently figured out what is the status for about 100 of the most prolific of these persons (by starting articles for them and developing information about them). And there was a further discussion at wt:NRHP which my articles since have taken account of (SarekOfVulcan, please note I have actually not used a couple phrases you objected to there). And I agreed to something in the last AN discussion which I still do agree to. --doncram 04:31, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  I swear, if you mention my name and your quibble about the "architect" versus "builder" versus "engineer" business, I am going to blow a fucking gasket. Would you like for me to go back to each and every one of those articles generated by the infobox generator and put in a bunch of weasel words, saying, "This person may be a builder, architect, engineer, or someone whose name got written in the wrong line of the form?" Would you like those articles deleted entirely? You say you're "making an implicit request to readers with expertise to refine the statement". I interpret that as saying, "Here's the most minimal article I can get away with on the topic. I'm not going to read any sources or do any research because that's someone else's job." You're putting a huge deferred maintenance burden out there, and that's a whole lot worse than someone using my infobox generator to say that someone was an architect when in fact someone was a builder. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 05:13, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  Elkman, indeed I do think it would be reasonable to go back to every article having the architect= assertion, and call those into question. I suggested we might have to use a bot to do so, at Template talk:Infobox NRHP#Built information, and follow that by a long cleanup campaign to fix them. I am not particularly blaming you, because you served up what you did in good faith, but you facilitated the introduction of a lot of unverified/sometimes inaccurate information into Wikipedia. Note, the private website www.nationalregisterofhistoricplaces.com, while it has other errors of interpretation of NRIS, gets this right, correctly labelling persons "architect, builder, or engineer". Indeed it causes a lot of what you term "deferred maintenance" now. You don't yourself have to go back and fix all the articles; it can be done by others in a slow cleanup drive. But it would be nice if you would cooperate in improving your generator to help prevent extension of that particular problem, which indeed you are partially responsible for, IMO. And it would be nice if you would not repeatedly blow a gasket whenever you consider a new article that is not as complete as you would like. --doncram 21:51, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  As much as I'd like to tell you off in the sort of language I think you deserve right now, I'm going to spare it, because I'd only get warnings for breaching civility. Also, it would look bad in the Request for Arbitration that will no doubt be submitted soon. You are alone in assuming that I'm the only person introducing unverified or inaccurate information into Wikipedia. Nobody else has made that allegation. In fact, nobody other than yourself has used my name in this discussion, other than Nyttend saying he's using my infobox generator and finds it useful. To address the particular situation: You and I both know that the "architect" field in the National Register database can refer to either the architect, the builder, or the engineer. It is NOT POSSIBLE to extract any information from the database that isn't there. You can't classify someone as only an architect, or only a builder, or only an engineer, and then assume that's the way to route that information in the infobox and the article. Take the Peavey–Haglin Experimental Concrete Grain Elevator, for example. The National Register database lists "Haglin,Charles F." and "Peavy,Frank H." (sic) as the architect, builder, and/or engineer. Do you personally know what Frank H. Peavey's occupation was? The NHL summary says that he owned a grain company (Peavey, which later merged into ConAgra Foods.) It doesn't sound to me like he spent a lifetime designing, building, or engineering structures -- he just wanted to try a cylindrical concrete grain elevator. Now, how about Charles F. Haglin? You could assume, from the NHL description, that he was an architect by trade. But, from other sources I've read (like this), he and his firm were chiefly builders, not architects or engineers. His firm built Minneapolis City Hall, the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, and many other buildings in Minneapolis. Let's also consider Rand Tower, which lists "Holabird & Root" and "Haglin,C.F., & Sons" in the architect/builder/engineer field. It turns out that Holabird and Root were the architects, at least according to Larry Millett's book AIA Guide to the Twin Cities. Apparently, C.F. Haglin and Sons were the builders. Given that example -- and I'm sure there are others -- how do you possibly expect that I could apply any sort of a database script or a classification system to determine that someone is an architect, a builder, or an engineer, and to be able to say that with 100% truth for every article that someone uses my infobox generator to create? --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 02:34, 5 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  I believe you are angry and have been angry for years; i don't see why you should be, really. I was thinking we could build a table of architects/builders/engineers like the wp:MPS one that I joined into building, and which I believe you used to improve your generator (to include proper links to MPS documents). Elkman, did you or did you not use the wp:MPS table in that way, or did you find your info somewhere else? I've asked before and you have never deigned to answer; it's a bit frustrating trying to collaborate with you. About 90% or more of the time, a person in that NRIS field is an architect. About 8,000 - 10,000 NRHPs are associated with the 907 persons having 5 or more hits in the 2010 NRIS database; with recent work we are well on our way to knowing whether each of those are usually a covered bridge builder or a stone mason or a construction firm, unlikely also to be architect of an NRHP-listed place. This would permit better, not perfect, guesses than your 90% accurate guess is. It would permit 8-10,000 wikilinks to be set up. Another option would be to put nothing into an architect= field, but rather put some text note that the person (hopefully with wikilink to an article on the person) is an architect or builder or engineer, and ask the editor to verify. Some discussion at template talk:infobox nrhp and/or at wt:NRHP could probably build out some better options, enlist others, if you'd actually be willing to discuss. --doncram 02:55, 5 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  I honestly don't know what the hell your problem is. People talk about your stubs, and then you deflect the question by saying I don't know the difference between a builder and an architect. Someone mentions your fill-in-the-blank approach, like, "date=, 19", "author=____", and "Accompanying ____ photos, exterior and interior, from 19___", and you go completely berserk and assert that the person has no right to be complaining about you because she's been following you around all over the place. Well, guess what? Other people can also read your fill-in-the-blank-later approach. You've been operating for two or three years now with this approach: every time someone suggests that you should change your style, you absolutely refuse to cooperate. I honestly don't think you're going to change your behavior without a Request for Arbitration. I'm getting more and more ready to file one, except that would take many, many hours of my time. I'd rather be doing something more productive and personally rewarding than drawing up an RFAR. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 05:13, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

• Comment Still going on -- see here where he lists Robinson as "an architect, builder, or engineer of NRHP-listed St. Joseph Park and Parkway System".--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 15:24, 7 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

With a quick 30 second google search, I find that a more appropriate term for Robinson's involvement in that park and parkway system would be "designer"... which Doncram could have easily discovered had he actually looked for sources beyond Elkman's bot and the NRHP database. Blueboar (talk) 15:56, 7 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I searched too, and I'm not even sure if "designer" applies -- looked more like he wrote the plan, and someone else designed the system building on his report. Changed the article per the listing. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 16:25, 7 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Great! --doncram 16:43, 7 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

• Suppot. Stop the madness...TCO (talk) 20:44, 11 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
• Support This has gone on long enough. Consensus got reached at WikiProject NRHP on how to deal with articles in the scope of the WikiProject and Doncram don't appear to follow to it. Doncram is certainly capable of writing a non-stub article with minimal research (like the other veteran NRHP contributors do in most articles). As Elkman pointed out, we can have a bot write generic stubs. That's not our goal. I don't dislike Doncram. Royalbroil 04:23, 12 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Another question regarding consensus on article quality

As long as this is being turned into an RFC on editing style, one practice that Doncram has embraced to deflect criticism over his articles is the use of lengthy quotations to populate articles. These are not quotations from authorities on a topic, statements of opinion, or quotations used to convey the flavor of a source, but verbatim replication of objective statements from sources. For example (reference citations omitted for reasons of space):

• From Andrew Crockett House

It's nomination included:

"The Andrew Crockett House is a notable example of an ante-bellum central passage plan frame residence with Greek Revival detailing. The house is also notab1e through its association with early settler Andrew Crockett. Crockett received a 640 acre land grant from North Carolina and was one of the earliest settlers in the Brentwood area. His log residence which forms the nucleus of the house is the oldest structure in this section of the county."

According to a 1988 study of Williamson County historical resources:

"Also receiving a 640 acre grant for Revolutionary War services was Andrew Crockett. Crockett settled southeast of Brentwood and constructed a log residence by 1799. This residence was later enlarged ca. 1850 but the original log pen of the Crockett House remains (WM-86). His son, Samuel Crockett later began the construction of a two-story brick residence he completed ca. 1808 and named 'Forge Seat' (WM-82). In addition to the house Crockett also constructed a log building containing a forge where he made iron implements and specialized in rifle making. Crockett's guns were in great demand and Andrew Jackson purchased several on his way to New Orleans. The log building containing the forge still stands adjacent to Forge Seat."

• From Sherwood Green House:

According to a 1988 study:

"Sherwood Green settled east of Nolensville in the early 1800s and constructed a two-story log residence (WM-194). Green was a surveyor and he accepted land as payment for his services. By the 1820s Green owned over one thousand acres in this section of the county. Numerous log residences were also built in the valleys west and south of Nolensville. The most notable of these which remain are the Lamb-Stephens House (WM-1066), John Winstead House (WM-108) and Abram Glenn House (WM-204). These residences were all originally single pen log residences... that were later expanded."

• From George A. Berlinghof: They designed "many important structures in Lincoln and established a position of prominence. Among the buildings designed by Berlinghof and Davis were the Lincoln High School, Bancroft School, the Security Mutual Building, and Miller and Paine. They also designed a large number of schools and courthouses in Nebraska."

Note: The examples given above are just examples, not intended to be an exhaustive list of articles where I consider the use of quotations to be excessive. Other examples exist, including Fargo City Detention Hospital, Mordecai Puryear House, Moolah Temple, Northwood Bridge, John W. Ross (Iowa architect), and Charles L. Thompson. --Orlady (talk) 20:28, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I consider this practice to be inappropriate, as excessive quotation of copyrighted text. IMO, it's contrary to the spirit, if not also the letter, of WP:Plagiarism and it is certainly contrary to much of the advice in the essay Wikipedia:Quotations. If my interpretation is consistent with the community's interpretation regarding the use of quotations, Doncram needs to be informed that his use of quotations is inappropriate and will not be sanctioned. (Suffice it to say that he will not give me the time of day, much less credit any interpretation of Wikipedia policy or guidelines that I might offer.)

Please comment below. --Orlady (talk) 02:19, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

• Agree (as proposer) with this interpretation of Wikipedia guidelines on use of quotations. The examples given are excessive use of quotations from copyrighted material. --Orlady (talk) 02:19, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  If you think those were copyright violations, then your quote here, without citation, is a further copyright violation plus wp:plagiarism, because you did not give credit to the original authors. --doncram 03:12, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

• Agree. There's no good reason to have such large quotations from documents simply to keep the article from being absurdly short, especially since the presence of the nomination form means that Doncram has plenty of information about the place. Nyttend (talk) 02:57, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  The nomination forms are not available for most places in Tennessee; there is not plenty of information available for these. Two of the four quotes above are from the Williamson County MRA document, which I believe was written under contract for the Tennessee Historical Association using state or federal money. The document is published by the U.S. National Park Service. It may be in the public domain, in which case copying the whole darn document in full would be fully acceptable. They are longish quotes, but I don't know if they are too long for copyright purposes. Supposing the copyright is believed held by the Tennessee Historical Society, i give pretty negligible chance to the idea that the copyright holder objects to the usage in these articles. This doesn't seem to be a matter for wp:AN though. --doncram 03:12, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  • The issue at hand is your copying significant amounts of text from nomination forms when you have them, either online or in articles such as The Wilson, which you told me you requested from the NPS by mail. Do we need to quote from the forms in order to understand their subjects? No: you could easily rewrite the original text and have it come out equally well. For that reason, and because objections or lack thereof from copyright holders isn't really the determining factor, this is an improper use of copyrighted material, and thus an issue worthy of administrative action. I would be inclined to block for copyright violations if I weren't obviously involved. Nyttend (talk) 04:22, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

    About Orlady's accusation that these sourced, explicit quotations represent wp:plagiarism, that is absolutely 100% false and shows a complete lack of understanding by Orlady of what plagiarism is, and/or reckless disregard for truth and for my reputation. In the context of a long pattern of her seeking fault on any random matter that she can contrive regarding me, this is yet another, adding to my perception of her activity as wp:wikihounding. It is an insult, I think perhaps technically qualifying as a personal attack, for her to make that accusation here. --doncram 14:14, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

    Hey, Nyttend, I take copyright and plagiarism issues very seriously, and sincerely do not want others to get any impression that I do not. About The Wilson, this is the first mention of any concern about copyright. You apparently now object to this edit in March 2010 by me adding one sentence from its nom form. That was in response to Orlady having nominated the article for deletion, which you and I opposed, and in response to her immediately preceding edits in that article. Then and in several recent Williamson County, Tennessee articles, honestly I think I have used explicit quotations emphatically, more than I would otherwise, specifically to head off further potential interaction with Orlady. Orlady is a Tennessee-focused editor and follower of my edits who is likely to scrutinize and raise issues about Tennessee NRHP articles, about the notability of those articles. My only involvement ever with wikipedia copyvio noticeboards has been to raise issues and to help in addressing mistaken claims that all NRHP nomination documents are public domain. Since you and editor Fram, far above, have just now expressed some concern, I would be happy to reconsider these examples and what is actual policy or best practice. I will myself seek copyright-focused editors' views at an appropriate noticeboard. --doncram 13:49, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

    P.S. Please see Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2011 June 2. --doncram 14:14, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

• Agree that Doncram has been using quotations excessively to pad out stubs that he doesn't have sufficient information to write otherwise.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:25, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
• Agree. This is an issue the editor in discussion has that we can address without making the larger policy discussion the issue. Quotes fall under NFC, and their use here is clearly not minimal. -- ۩ Mask 21:01, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
• Agree. Copyrighted text can be used to some extent, but filling a significant part of an article with non-free text is clearly excessive. Jafeluv (talk) 08:59, 8 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
• Agree as well. I think brief quotes are acceptable, particularly why the NRHP or another organization found it significant enough to list. These long quotes can be rewritten in original thought. If the source is public domain, it should be attributed as such in the article as well.--NortyNort (Holla) 09:49, 8 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Context

Some numbers for context and to give an idea of the likely, or potential, scale of this:

• From National Register of Historic Places: "Of the more than one million properties on the National Register, 80,000 are listed individually. The remainder are contributing resources within historic districts. Each year approximately 30,000 properties are added to the National Register as part of districts or by individual listings."
• From National Historic Landmark: "2,442 or so current [National Historic Landmark]s".
• From National Historic Sites (United States): "There are currently 90 National Historic Sites".

If you look at the closest equivalent in the UK, you have Grade I listed buildings in West Midlands (as one example of a list). There are "over 6000 Grade I listed buildings in England". But you don't see people trying to generate stub farms for those buildings (though there are more when you include Grade II* and II - around half a million). Anyway, my point here is that given the numbers involved, something probably does need to be done. Carcharoth (talk) 01:31, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

There was a drive concluding on July 4, 2008, to create articles for any missing National Historic Landmarks and to include at least a good reference to a corresponding National Park Service webpage for each one. We did a great job, I think. I am sure there are articles for all the National Historic Sites already. There are about 30,000 articles for the 85,000 NRHPs. It's my general understanding that U.S. NRHPs are equivalent to Grade II* or higher English listed buildings. For each individually listed NRHP, there is a generally good nomination document, which is a reliable source written by architectural historians and equivalents, including numerous references. U.S. contributing buildings don't have reliable sources like that, generally, and there's no interest in creating articles for them (which i think i was told may be equivalent to Grade II buildings). There's really no controversy about whether NRHP places are notable.

All the NRHPs have had articles created in Maryland, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, almost all of Connecticut and New York, all of Detroit and its surrounding county, and in many other areas. I think there are no general problems, no general complaints from readers in those areas. I think readers in those areas are pleased to be able to learn a bit about the NRHP-listed places in their areas. --doncram 02:55, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

The problem is that you've been creating substubs for so many places when you have plenty of information. It's bad enough that we have substubs for much of New England and southwestern Ohio, but when we have the documents online, you should do better. Nyttend (talk) 03:05, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

You're referring to the running of a User:NrhpBot(?) years ago which generated stub articles in Ohio, at a standard below what Elkman's or my /drafts provide for. I don't agree that it's "bad enough" to have articles for these areas. But, I do agree that where NRHP nomination documents are available on-line, they should be included upfront in new articles. I do that. Elkman's article generator does not. --doncram 03:23, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Unlike your pages, the bot didn't add meaningless fluff such as "built or had other significance". When are you going to learn that Elkman does not provide drafts? More importantly, when are you going to learn that repeated AN threads just might mean that there's a problem with your actions? Your pages provide virtually nothing of significance to the reader: if you want to help readers and build an encyclopedia, stop creating these pages and instead produce fewer-but-better pages such as the Maryland articles you cite. Nyttend (talk) 04:26, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I'm sorry, Nyttend, I am really taken aback by wikipedia administrator Orlady's outright lie, above, that she does not follow me. I do believe that the cumulative effect of her as one consistently hateful commentator in multiple forums does build up to contribute to a negative situation here, and contributes significantly to there being several successive AN-type discussions. Many followers at wp:AN do tend to believe that where there is smoke there is fire, whether or not various views are contradictory or not, whether or not a major negative voice is outright lying here and repeatedly elsewhere. Some commenters here, at least Sitush for one, only know me from having followed Orlady's previous attacks.

You ask about "my pages". I don't know what you are referring to. Which pages do you think that I "own" and also that do not contribute to Wikipedia? I have created a lot of articles in concentrated drives in counties in New York, in Virginia, in Connecticut, in North Dakota, in California. I have created a lot of list-articles, and developed articles in those topic areas. Relatively recently, I have developed about 100 architect/builder/engineer articles, of the most prolific NRHP-associated persons. I have created many pages which solve particular problems, about disambiguation-focused editors or other situations. Many, many have been further developed by me and by many other editors. Which would you wish removed from Wikipedia? I have not heard anything here about the notability of any topics that I have correctly identified as important. --doncram 05:59, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

"Some commenters here, at least Sitush for one, only know me from having followed Orlady's previous attacks." - Doncram, that is just your perception. For example, I see Sarek's page & others. I do in fact look at some of your articles, and fixed one that was just dreadful IMO (but over which you then sought to assert ownership by reverting in the face of the work of three other editors). Also, I did not pile on with the initial proposal above, and still haev not even though I saw it within minutes of its being posted. So, your point is? - Sitush (talk) 12:24, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I've had a look at this myself. The combination of apparent sincerely and unselfaware obliviousness - e.g. the LIAR LIAR LIAR!!!!! stuff up above, the inability to draft an article before creating it, as if there was some kind of time limit - intrigues me. It reminds me of the issue with Playboy Playmates, from a couple of months ago. In brief, until recently there were articles on every Playboy Playmate, which generally consisted of "X was Playmate of the Month for January 1975. Her centrefold was photographed by Y" plus some vital statistics. They were subsequently folded into e.g. List of Playboy Playmates of the 1970s, which will at some point be folded into List of Playboy Playmates. By which time the magazine will be as relevant to modern audiences as the Pall Mall Gazette; and then List of Playboy Playmates will be reduced to "each month the magazine featured a nude centrefold" in the main article. I digress.

This situation is even worse, though; the articles have less information and are in fact actively user-hostile. After stumbling on one accidentally I assumed it was part of a machine-generated project; one of many robotic initiatives no doubt sanctioned by a higher power, accorded the same holy air as the articles on North American primary schools. Articles created by scripts that will only ever be edited by scripts. They will - hopefully sooner rather than later - be redirected to List of Historical Buildings in Michigan and so forth, and reduced to a photograph, a name, and a reference to a directory of listings. A handful will merit more than a paragraph.

And so, ultimately, Don, if your goal is to create something of lasting worth that you can be proud of, you're wasting your time on this. This "article drive" you talk about will be a complete waste of time. If your goal isn't to create something of lasting worth then you're just one of the many process-orientated editors that infest Wikipedia as they do the real world. Except that if your goal is to bump up your edit count, you're also going about it the wrong way. -Ashley Pomeroy (talk) 13:16, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

To Ashley Pomeroy, I am sorry that you get the impression you state. I am indeed reeling about Orlady's lie in this forum about her following me or not, in conjunction with her opening new issues regarding articles, and where I have already provided multiple links further above to her Talk page archives about her following me to multiple articles. And I am reeling about her suggestion of plagiarism "in spirit" for use of longish explicit quotations in several articles. I don't know how to talk to such a person. About articles I have created, I absolutely do wish and strive to create articles of worth and I absolutely do not want them to be "user hostile". --doncram 14:26, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Doncram, you should know by now that calling other editors liars, despite the veracity of their statements, is a violation of WP:No personal attacks. Please stop. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 14:35, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Lying itself is a violation of Wikipedia:Civility. If an editor is lying, and especially if that is part of a pattern of behavior, however, I think it has to be noted, and it cannot be ignored. I understand that back-and-forth accusations of various things, like Orlady suggesting that I have been plagiarizing (which she suggests, above, and which is false), and me calling her behavior lying (which I believe is the simplest interpretation of her statements here and in other cases), is not productive. Honestly i don't know how to handle this situation properly. But it cannot be right to rule out statements that another editor is lying, when they do seem to be lying. Lying has to be a worse sin than noting that lying is going on. --doncram 18:27, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

As I said to Doncram over a year ago, "I believe if I told you what day of week it was you would claim that I was lying." --Orlady (talk) 19:26, 2 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

In last month's version of this debate, Orlady said "I figure I pretty much "have to" look at your recent work in order to see if your recent editing is consistent with the promises that Dudemanfellabra has asked you to make in order to resolve this discussion. I don't "have to" edit the pages I've looked at, but sometimes I see things I can improve, and I can't resist the urge to do so." In this month's version she said "I don't "fully well know" what you were doing in creating that stub, as (your beliefs to the contrary) I don't follow you around." I believe this contradiction is the lie Doncram is referring to. They certainly are not statements that are consistent with each other. Lvklock (talk) 00:13, 3 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Doncram, as long as you're throwing around accusations of lying, I might note that according to Wikipedia policy, "Correct use of an editor's history includes (but is not limited to) fixing errors or violations of Wikipedia policy, or correcting related problems on multiple articles." That last clause seems to pretty well describe Orlady's recent activity with regards to you, and describing it as "Wikihounding" might also be considered an untruth.

But none of this addresses the real problem, which would still be here if Orlady were dragged away by the Lie Police tomorrow. The long threads about your conduct that keep popping up on admin noticeboards are not occurring because everyone reads Orlady's prose and says "Wow! Doncram is awful!" They are occurring because people read the stubs that you write and say "You know, this isn't really suitable for article space". And every time this blows up onto the admin noticeboards, a few more previously uninvolved people concur. At some point, you are going to have to make a fundamental shift in your editing patterns (rather than a little tweaking around the edges); I proposed trying to outline our collective goals for writing these articles in part because I thought it would give you a clearer sense of where your philosophy diverges from the community's.

Ultimately, all of us need to respect consensus. Most experienced Wikipedians can probably think of at least one thing they'd do things differently from the way almost everyone else does it. That's perfectly OK. What's not OK is refusing to acknowledge and work with the consensus, even if we don't personally agree with it; that's disruption. You've been cut a lot of slack as far as formal sanctions, in part because most contributors here have a principled reluctance to sanction someone who's contributing content in good, if misguided, faith. But you need a better answer to the question "Why are so many people hostile to the articles I've created?" than "Because Orlady lies about me!" because people's patience is going to run pretty thin soon. Choess (talk) 06:02, 3 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

To respond to above — by "your pages", I mean the ones of the type you produce, which Choess also accurately calls "the stubs you write". They're obviously "yours" in the sense that nobody else writes them the way you do. Nyttend (talk) 12:33, 3 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

It's not just that Orlady lies, it's also that she makes up charges repeatedly on random new topics and repeats them, until someone else might reasonably become concerned. She badgers. She has accused me of being a Republican, of being a plagiarist, of being racist and/or racially insensitive, among other things. She has criticized my focus on disambiguation and other thankless efforts. She has come up with innovative ways to insult and denigrate me. She challenges anything and everything, including being so petty as to actually argue with me whether I am working on an article that I have just edited and confirm that I am working on (about one such discussion, another observing editor termed commented that "of all the angry bitter venom-filled arguments I've seen on talk pages, this one is just so petty and color-of-the-bikeshed, it disgusts me."). The repetition of false, simplistic, and overstated negative charges is a cumulative drag on me and editors of various forums (such as the Talk page of WikiProject NRHP) to which she posts. It seems to me that she is determined to find any kind of fault, and perhaps to drive me from Wikipedia, and that she engages in sadistic and/or hounding and/or otherwise negative behaviors because she enjoys it or otherwise serves her personal needs in some way. As has been agreed by many editors in many discussions, including in her RFA which I and a good number of others opposed, she can be sarcastic and snarky. I feel sorry for any editor that she focusses upon. It does not seem to me to serve Wikipedia, for her to follow me (which she denies, above, absurdly). As Orlady notes above and as I also state above, at this point I do not give credence to her remarks. In my view she has cried wolf about false issues, and lied, and otherwise contributed negatively too many times. In every case there would be a positive alternative which an editor intending to be constructive could pursue instead. In my view, over the years she has striven harder to find new criticisms and to find new ways to insult and to cause trouble. She is fully aware that I have repeatedly requested her not to post to my Talk page and, when she disregards that, I delete what she posts there.

There are indeed editors who have noticed pages that I started and had concerns, independent of poisoning by Orlady. I'll comment about some examples in one or more subsections below. --doncram 20:51, 3 June 2011 (UTC)ouReply

You know, Doncram, there are shorter ways to say "Oh, please block me now"... --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:23, 3 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

SarekOfVulcan, when I read your comment above "despite the veracity of their statements", I read it as meaning you objected to calling lying what it is, whatever the truth status of given statement. I could agree that in a civil community, naming a bad behavior can be unhelpful and maybe should generally be avoided. I could have a discussion about how to deal with stuff with that better. I have had discussions with others, about the Christian meaning of "turning the other cheek", and otherwise dealing with bullying in wikipedia by Orlady and others. The Christian perspective is not, by the way, simply to allow bullying behavior to continue unopposed, unnamed. I am deeply concerned, and I don't say any of this lightly.

But, you actually mean to suggest you think Orlady does not follow my edits? If so, that is completely absurd. I offered, off-the-cuff, above to come up with 200 instances where it's clear Orlady followed me, if she would agree to stop. Although 200 is a huge number to document, she did not reply, and will likely not accept that offer, because...why? --doncram 23:49, 3 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Disambiguation pages and linked NRHP articles for example

Many editors have come across disambiguation pages which include NRHP entries and have had concerns; also, many have come across scattered NRHP articles scattered across the U.S. which I created to resolve or avoid contention by disambiguation-focused editors. I have created more than 2,000 disambiguation pages and I have developed developed a system of 3,686 articles in Category:Disambig-Class National Register of Historic Places articles overall. I manage Category:NRHP dab needing cleanup which currently contains 0 article.

Orlady has repeatedly criticised me, absurdly, for having done "too much" disambiguation. This is wrong and reflects ignorance on Orlady's part, or just obfuscation/negativity in pandering to what less informed editors might be concerned about.

Years ago, there were regular AFDs about disambiguation pages amongst same-named NRHP places, which rallied NRHP editors to defend them. That's rare now, as new notes of concern by newly arriving editors are usually addressed quickly, mostly by my educating them about disambiguation policies and practices. I consulted disambiguation-focussed editors in this extended past discussion "What is wp:NRHP doing wrong RE disambiguation" at WikiProject Disambiguation and other discussions. I took on the role of mediating between hard-line disambiguation editors who did not like NRHP redlinks, and hard-line NRHP editors who do not like short stub articles. The upshot then was a compromise that two, then later one, NRHP article must be created in at least stub form, for disambiguation editors to back off. I eventually achieved negotiation that no NRHP stub article need be created, so there are currently one or two hundred short NRHP dab pages of all redlinks. During a long time, anyhow, I started many short NRHP articles as needed to support disambiguation, and gradually adapted practice of explaining that in my initial edit summaries. This probably resulted in more than 500 scattered new short NRHP articles nation-wide. I informed local editors including Elkman who I knew were interested in developing them, when I created an article for that purpose.

I identified that the slow process of creating NRHP dab pages was itself a problem, allowing for continued arrivals of disambiguation-focused editors to become unnecessarily concerned, and allowing contentions to build up when editors in one state would create an article at an ambiguous basename, unaware there were other usages of the same name. Creating the missing dab pages would avoid article name conflicts and avoid contentions and article move discussions being needed in such situations. So, with announcement to disambiguation and NRHP editors, I drove to create all the needed disambiguation pages, and did so, working from this NRIS-derived checklist of NRHP name duplicates. During that time, Orlady opposed their being created, nonsensically IMO, and raised contention about the ones in progress in the Category:NRHP dabs needing cleanup, despite rapid progress on my part to finish them all, which I completed pretty promptly.

In my continued maintenance of the NRHP disambiguation pages, I am going through and checking all of them, and in some cases coming across new contention. I occasionally, pretty rarely, choose to create a new short NRHP article and/or other articles to settle or head off contention. For example, when an editor recently contended to eliminate the Midway Bridge disambiguation page by redirecting the name to the article for an extremely obscure, not-worldwide-important rural bridge in North Dakota, and by deleting mention of other Midway Bridges in the world, I tried adding MOSDAB-compliant entries with supporting bluelinks to List of bridges in the United States, and actually had to contend with the editor going to that list and removing the entries there and their supporting footnotes (which a bridges-focused editor restored). The issue was only finally settled it by my creating another Midway Bridge article. SarekOfVulcan watched that little contention -- and I think deleted one other Midway Bridge article which i started to try to settle the issue first but which turned out not to be as easily documented as the later one-- by the way, and might comment.

There have been many temporarily determined editors who have arrived and dismantled good disambiguation. Another example is a White House-focussed editor insisting upon removal of all redlinks at White House (disambiguation), addressed by my creating articles for the NRHP-listed ones.

I don't think anyone has ever given me a barnstar or otherwise appreciated all this work, but I am proud of it. I believe there is zero, zip, nada reason for wikipedia editors to be concerned about my development of disambiguation pages, and my tactical creation of short stub NRHP articles on occasion to defuse contention and preserve good structure. --doncram 22:24, 3 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

"Incomplete, to be developed." That describes a lot of things you do around here, and the very reason why people are complaining about the kind of articles you write. Yet now you've managed to deflect this discussion into criticisms of my INFOBOX generator and complaints about Orlady following you around. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 21:22, 3 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I completed what I was writing above. Please feel free to comment about disambiguation and related, tactical creation of short NRHP articles in this section. --doncram 22:24, 3 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Here's a lovely new technique -- pasting one of his database dumps onto a talk page and going "Hmmm, I wonder if any of these are in the article." Guess actually reading the article to answer that question is too much work for him.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 04:15, 5 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

That's not about disambiguation. Weird on your part, S, to go out of your way to delete a posting from a Talk page. I restored it. It did tally up notable, NRHP-listed places not yet mentioned in the article. Seemed like one or two times owners of architect pages have objected to additions of differently formatted or ordered items; here I merely provided some info at the Talk page; your objecting to that, and your bragging about it here, seems petty, not lovely. --doncram 14:53, 5 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

All but one of the buildings mentioned in your list were already in the article. Besides that one, you mentioned a couple of historic districts -- but didn't identify which buildings in the district he actually worked on. So, not terribly helpful, no. --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 17:47, 7 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

You don't realize that the checklist identified two other individual NRHP-listed places that provided prompt for Elkman to add them to the article. Currently there is one more un-added individual place yet to be added. And there remain 4 historic district items that apparently each include one or more contributing buildings designed by the architect. More specifics for each of those 4 can surely be found by an interested editor getting the corresponding NRHP nom docs for those districts. Seems the checklist was already very helpful. --doncram 20:59, 7 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I'm sorry, I didn't see those edits to the main page.--SarekOfVulcan (talk) 21:05, 7 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Oregon NRHPs for example

This to respond to Valfontis's specific concern about an Oregon NRHP article mentioned far above, and to comments by Choess and Nyttend in "Context" section. Oregon is different than any other state because it has the most active Wikipedia editor community. It has a highly productive Collaboration Of The Week (COTW) which I have participated in occasionally. It has multiple editors knowledgeable about NRHP information and sources and who occasionally develop NRHP articles. The state-wide list and at least one county NRHP list-article have been COTWs. What I know about Oregon-specific NRHP sources, and reflected in wp:NRHPhelp, is from them.

In 2009, I developed out the majority of Oregon's NRHP county list-articles (adding to Portland area ones already tableized), bringing them into table format and performing a painstaking reconciliation between competing sources of Oregon NRHP information. I may have then started some NRHP articles to capture complicated information. See really long Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Oregon#Developing and see Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Oregon#Reconciliation of wikipedia tables vs. Oregon PDF, in which i worked cooperatively and painstakingly to address Oregon editor concerns and get the wikipedia coverage all corrected.

I have since occasionally created an NRHP article in Oregon, but would not start on any Oregon county-specific drive as there is no need. I created a couple articles in one county, one which I brought to DYK, hoping to encourage a local who was uploading pics of all the NRHPs in two counties (my nomination for other articles in those counties to be created shows on Wikipedia:WikiProject Oregon/Collaboration#the COTW nominations page). When engaging in drives on List of Masonic buildings and List of Elks buildings and some others, I created short articles for the Oregon ones. These drives achieved other things, such as development of the list-articles themselves and of new relevant categories about their architectural styles and other aspects.

I recently identified that two Oregon architects were among the top 200 NRHP architects/builders/engineers, and created articles for them. I notified Oregon editors by suggesting these two at the COTW nominations page. I am amazed just now to notice that Valfontis, without explanation, immediately deleted that suggestion!??! Aren't they valid, good COTW topics? Valfontis, could you please comment?

Another Oregon-specific issue is hyphenation vs. en-dashes or em-dashes in article titles. I don't care about the issue, but some Oregon editors do, and they edited all NRHP list-articles to use dashes, including in redlinks, which causes some overhead, explained at Talk:National Register of Historic Places listings in Oregon#NRHPs with ndash in title. Related to the intersection of that issue and to disambiguation page cleanup at Jones House, I recently created short article Jones–Sherman House. I would be happy to notify Oregon editors if/when i ever created a new article there, but I have seen that Valfontis and others already do monitor Recent changes to WikiProject Oregon articles. Valfontis further developed that Jones–Sherman House article within 24 hours.

I think there is zero, zip, nada reason for Wikipedia editors to be concerned about my past and rare-but-occasional starting of NRHP-related articles in Oregon. --doncram 22:59, 3 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

This is all tl;dr, and the topic at hand is Doncram's behavior, not mine. Doncram is not a member of WP:ORE, so I routinely delete his suggestions for WP:ORE COTW (which, incidentally, isn't as much of a going concern as it once was), and I'll note that it is not the place for notifying the project of new articles. The architect articles in question were on my watchlist as redlinks, and I was actually dismayed to see them appear on my watchlist as new articles when I saw who had created them. I, like several others in this discussion, would rather see no article on a topic rather than a bad article. Here's an example of Doncram's work on an existing article, with its "whoever may be editing here" in his edit summary. I occasionally do "data dumps" such as this for articles, but I think it's far better for our readers to do this sort of thing on the talk page, or on a personal subpage rather than clutter up mainspace. Here is a lengthy discussion, in which I recuse myself from the sausage making, which was indeed "painful to watch". (Under my former username, which starts with "K".) In a nutshell, the only reason for concern about Doncram editing Oregon-related articles besides the general problem being discussed (his editing style, which I agreed is problematic), is that I do not enjoy working with him and tend to stay away from the articles he edits. This is mostly my problem, but it's sad when a highly productive and accurate editor with excellent research skills who is rarely uncivil such as myself feels she needs to stay away from the project because we have an inability to deal with problematic but not-quite-disruptive editors who appear to lack collaboration/social skills. Valfontis (talk) 04:39, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Ah, thank you for explaining to me who you are. I now can understand you were being deliberately rude, or politely dismissive, or something like that, unfathomable to me otherwise, about what I thought was a good suggestion of the new architect articles at the COTW.

I also did not understand your recent abrupt, immediate reversion at the Walter D. Pugh architect article, to which I believed i was contributing something substantial by adding new works. In my followup edits after yours, I did not take offense but rather just made small improvement to the article (wikilinking one and providing slightly better referencing) and soon acknowledged in my edit summary that in fact "all NRHP ones were already there"; my additions were not in fact substantial, I agree. I note, however, that the Wade Hampton Pipes article as i started it], one of two that I suggested for COTW, was very much equivalent to the Walter D. Pugh article before I visited there.

So what you're saying, I now interpret, is that in 2009 you didn't like my style in developing the NRHP list-articles in Oregon. It was indeed tedious doing the reconciliation between sources there, addressing your then-strong-preference for the Oregon state source which turned out to have many errors (as also did the nation-wide NRIS), and it was a bit unpleasant, but the development got done. I recall also that you also didn't like my application of disambiguation page MOSDAB guidelines in another discussion around that time, where I asked disambiguation-focused editors to consider an issue and the consensus was with me, as i recall. That's okay. I would hope that would eventually be water under the bridge.

At wp:ORE I don't see any alternative way to notify Oregon editors of new articles; please advise if wp:ORE would actually like to receive an announcement of new articles like the two architect ones. --doncram 05:41, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Featured lists

I admit I've only read a fraction of the very long thread above, but if the problem is that uninformative stubs are being created just to create a featured list, wouldn't the sensible thing to do be to change the FL criteria, to either make redlinks acceptable, or else to require that all links in the list are "Start" class? Gatoclass (talk) 04:05, 5 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I don't believe that Doncram is motivated by the desire to create featured lists. As it happens, I think my first interaction with him (possibly when he formed the idea that I have some sort of personal vendetta against him) was over his nomination for featured list status of a National Register list article, back in August 2008. He didn't like the review, so he pretty much packed up and left. He did participate later (December 2008) in the review for another FL candidate that succeeded, but I have the impression that he was (and still is) deeply resentful the fact that another contributor made changes to that list to meet FL criteria. I expect that he will make a long statement here on the subject of FLs. --Orlady (talk) 04:44, 5 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I agree that Doncram does not seem to be motivated by a desire to create featured lists... but he does seem to be motivated by a desire to create lists (and then rework them into sub-lists lists, and list-like dab pages, etc). As long as there is a minimal stub with just enough information to justify inclusion of the property in one of his lists (and to have the list entry blue-linked) his interest in researching the property further and improving the stub essentially dies. Blueboar (talk) 12:54, 5 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Further to the notion that this is not about lists, much less featured lists: Many of Doncram's comments about the stubs, disambiguation pages, and list articles that he creates support the view that his principal goal is to have an article about every one of the tens of thousands of properties listed in the National Register. Related to this has been his strongly held position that historic districts on the Register should be documented in articles separate from the articles about the neighborhoods/communities associated with those districts. This position of Doncram's has resulted in lengthy contention and a few megabytes of discussion, and is illustrated by article pairs such as Wauregan Historic District and Wauregan, Connecticut, Hazardville Historic District and Hazardville, Connecticut, Wilder Village Historic District and Wilder, Vermont, and Peace Dale Historic District and Peace Dale, Rhode Island. --Orlady (talk) 12:38, 7 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

There are several mischaracterizations in that statement by Orlady, relating to outcomes of a long mediated process. Not true about the "principal goal...every one" characterization. Orlady was a huge factor in length of contention to which she refers. Add this to long list of misstatements by Orlady, seemingly towards causing/extending contention here, too. --doncram 14:03, 7 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

There's a #goals discussion further above. Back in 2008, i do recall that Orlady's insinuation into the New York State NHL list-article peer review and then FLC nomination was unpleasant and seemed to derail what I thought was a good nomination, but it wasn't the first interaction. I recall being appalled then that she extended use of nasty language that had really damaged good momentum in WikiProject NRHP, earlier, and I recall realizing that her involvement was likely to be an oppressive vendetta that I would likely never get away from. That certainly contributed to me not pursuing other list-article FL nominations, where I perceived that one determined opponent could have an undue negative effect. --doncram 15:15, 5 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

It seems that you are correct. I find that we had some NRHP Wikiproject interactions before that FL nomination. As I have told you repeatedly, you were convinced that I was engaged in a personal vendetta against you before I had noticed that I had interacted with you in multiple situations. This pretty well demonstrates what I mean when I say that.
As for that FL discussion, I thought that the list was an excellent candidate for FL, but there were some basic issues related to how the scope of the list was defined. I was expecting to have some back-and-forth discussion and collaboration that would lead to the list being acceptable for FL, as had happened with other FL nominations that I had commented on. Your interpretation of my comments was surprising to me at the time, but re-reading it now, I see now that it was in many ways consistent with other interactions over a "relationship" that has continued for almost 3 years. That is, you somewhat condescendingly informed me that the list article was practically perfect and that my failure to discern its perfection was a shortcoming in me. That interaction was far more civil than many of the interactions that have succeeded it, but the theme is the same: you are convinced that your work is practically perfect, and any flaws that others see in your work are due either to (1) others' inability to perceive your perfection or (2) bad things that other people have somehow forced you to do. --Orlady (talk) 16:22, 5 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I don't want to have a relationship with you, Orlady, that's the problem. --doncram 16:47, 5 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

You will note that I surrounded the word with quotation marks. I would prefer that my interactions with other users focus on content and not on personalities, but you have persistently tried to personalize all interactions. Furthermore, your propensity to create drama around topics that I am predictably engaged with (such as the drama you created over Norris District, documented at Talk:Norris District) leads me to wonder whether you truly want to avoid me. --Orlady (talk) 19:51, 5 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Really, I want you to stop following me. I think you should be ashamed of how you participated in that July 2009 discussion about Norris District; that is nothing to be proud. You have to be kidding to think that is an invitation now in 2011. I most emphatically tried to break the relationship with you in multiple requests during 2010, and the relationship has only gone downhill since. It is distressing to some others, and bad for Wikipedia in general for this to go on. It is tedious for me to respond to new misinformation you suggest in wp:AN proceedings and elsewhere. In general I feel experience shows that it works badly to allow you to suggest misinformation and not reply, so I feel I often have to answer. In this wp:AN discussion you have used offensive language about dog shit, you have accused me of plagiarism and copyvio, you have absurdly claimed not to follow me and have not responded to my calling that a bald-faced lie. You have not responded to my related offer that would end this relationship. You have been following me, not the other way around. --doncram 14:51, 6 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Color me totally mystified as to why I should be ashamed of the discussion of Norris District. To summarize the situation, Norris is a small town up the road from where I live. I had contributed to the article Norris, Tennessee, which was and is heavily focused on the town's unique history as a planned community, which was recognized in 1975 (well before the town had reached 50 years of age) by historic district designation. You showed up and created a separate stub article about the historic district (based solely on the NRIS database entry), then informed me that you had done so and that you fully expected me to dispute the need for a separate article. Your principal reason for asserting the need for a separate article was the correct observation that the reported area of the historic district (given in the article as 40,000 acres) greatly exceeded the area of the town (given in the article as 6.9 square miles). As you predicted, I did object to the creation of the new stub, saying: "Please refrain from starting articles about topics you don't actually know anything about (and don't have sources for) just because you can (and because it's an opportunity to get under the skin of other Wikipedians who know and care about those topics and will have to divert their attention from productive activity in order to engage in arguments with you). I see your actions related to Norris, Tennessee and Norris District purely as attempts to create wikidrama." Active (and contentious) discussion ensued, focused in large part on the fact that the 40,000-acre number didn't accord with anything else that was documented (or known to us locals) about the Norris historic district. As I recall, after a couple of days, you came to the discovery that nationalregisterhistoricplaces.com, which was the immediate source of the acreage value, was misreporting all historic district acreages -- all values were too large by a factor of 10. When that was resolved, it was clarified that the historic district area was only 4,000 acres, which pretty nearly matches the area of the town. Consistent with your usual modus operandi, you didn't trust the various published reliable sources (such as books) that were cited in the article, as you only seem to trust National Register nomination forms, so it took another month before you allowed the discussion to be closed -- with your Norris District stub being converted to a redirect. I have absolutely no shame about my participation in that discussion. --Orlady (talk) 03:51, 8 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Doncram is probably going to blame me for the acreage in the infoboxes being off by a factor of 10. And, actually, that was an error on my part, since I didn't notice the note in the database schema saying that the published number was multiplied by 10. (It's probably because someone didn't want to program a floating-point number in the database many years ago, when they really just wanted one decimal place.) I fixed that error as soon as I was aware of it, and I regret that it happened, but I'm just giving the rest of you guys advance warning of the next shot to be fired in this volley. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 04:47, 8 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Given that both Doncram and Orlady are active members of the same WikiProject, I don't think we can say that either of them is "following" the other. It is only natural that they would frequently cross paths in editing the same articles. That said, given that Doncram's edits are so often problematic, I think it would actually be appropriate if Orlady (and other members of the NRHP project) did follow him around... someone has to clean up after him. Blueboar (talk) 15:06, 6 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

It's 100% observable that Orlady follows me around, has done so for years, there should be no doubt about that. Other NRHP editors privately or publicly agree; it can clearly be documented. Why does Orlady not answer my question about if 200 clear instances are documented. E.g. following can be seen in instances of me editing for the first time in a new article on any subject, and Orlady editing immediately afterwards. There is no suggestion of the reverse and that can easily be objectively shown. Blueboar, I am afraid you are unquestioningly being duped by Orlady's lie that she does not follow me; that is an absurd lie. The extent of following is extreme, that is an incontrovertible fact.

I do welcome feedback on my edits from others' follow-on edits, whether they are following me or otherwise arriving at articles, and I actively ask for feedback from time to time in various explicit ways. I completely buy into how Wikipedia can work properly in providing feedback implicitly and explicitly to editors. I can get mildly frustrated at some following edits that seem tendentious to me, for some bursts of attention from some following editors, but overall I accept and value them. My purpose is in fact to see to development of Wikipedia on topics of interest to me.

What I object is to the personally-toned, hatefully-motivated, oppressive, negative, snarky wikihounding that Orlady pursues (I can support every one of those adjectives with diffs in a forum that would resolve this.) She has provided helpful improvements and useful implicit or explicit feedback to me at times. She seems to me to be hatefully seeking out new criticism, and is often 100% wrong to my knowledge. Others are welcome to follow my edits from time to time; she should not be allowed to continue this, IMO. There has to be a point where a bullying editor's malicious and intellectually dishonest behavior has consequences; there has to be a point where a victim of bullying can get relief. I am asking for relief. Since I have now stated this request to her and otherwise publicly several times, it just gets worse. It seems to me Orlady tries harder and harder to come up with new criticisms to prove the value of her following and criticizing me. She invests considerable time into coming up with creative new ways to insult, denigrate, use administrative powers, etc., all dancing around the margin of obvious blockable/bannable behavior on her part. She can't hide the long-running pattern though. She's stated her dislike; others can objectively discern the hatred. There's direct and collateral damage from all this going on. It destroys good momentum; it drives away active and potential editors; there is no good purpose served by her behavior. --doncram 19:12, 6 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

So it's all someone else's fault, and never your own ... sorry, I don't buy it. In case you haven'tt noticed... Orlady isn't the only one complaining about your editing here. And this isn't the first time you have been the topic of complaints. You say you welcome feedback... unfortunately, my own experience with you is that you actually highly resent feedback... at least when it is critical. Blueboar (talk) 21:01, 6 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

What is posted here are complaints, yes, and yes there have been complaints before, about different matters. I also have many rewarding interactions with new and experienced editors elsewhere. I have been extremely patient and polite with many editors newly coming into contact and having concerns of various kinds. Including I believe I was with you Blueboar and other Masonic-interested editors, for quite a while at beginning of a long phase of AFDs and ANI and RSN and other proceedings you were a big part of, during a long period in which you and others extremely opposed there being disambiguation, list-articles, and individual articles on Wikipedia-notable historic places associated with Masonry. It took a long time to work through that, and now I perceive you happily contributing to further development of the list-articles and many individual articles. I was exasperated at your stubbornness at times during that; you no doubt perceived me as being stubborn too. But while that went on for a long time, it did not run for many years.

Whatever, I am not seeing a lot of point of discussing much here, so i am going to try to wind down my commenting here. Thanks. --doncram 21:55, 6 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Doncram's personal attacks

Regardless of the outcomes of the discussion items here, Doncram's personal attacks on me and Elkman during this discussion warrant some sort of sanction.

In the course of this discussion, Doncram has made a number of very negative allegations about me. I also have made a number of comments about Doncram and his work, but I' have generally refrained from responding to his accusations against me. There are several reasons for my reticence: I've become very accustomed to his throwing this stuff in my direction, I hope that my actual record speaks for itself, and I would like to be able to subscribe the principle that on the Internet it is wisest to ignore trolls. However, early this evening I went through a little exercise of copying down the various words and phrases that he and I have used in this discussion to characterize one other and/or one another's work. I was somewhat random but fairly inclusive in what I copied down -- in particular, I included some statements I had made (notably the one about droppings from dogs whose owners don't clean up after them) that were not specifically used to describe Doncram, but that he interpreted that way. When I finished the list, I was horrified at the results, which are compiled at User:Orlady/words. The best way to summarize the unsubstantiated statements that Doncram has made here about me is to borrow some of the less offensive words and phrases he has used to describe me: "pure nastiness" and "reckless disregard for truth and for my reputation."

I hereby declare myself "over" my practice of sitting back and tolerating this stuff, but I don't have any very good ideas on what measures would be effective in curtailing this behavior by this particular user. --Orlady (talk) 03:51, 8 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps we could start enforcing WP:NPA and imposing a condition of "no more claims of lies or other personal attacks, or you get blocked"? Nyttend (talk) 05:18, 8 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I admit that he has at times been a bit out of line with his comments but the comments directed at him have not been very nice either so I can't blame him for not sitting there and just taking it. Personally I don't see anything wrong with creating a stub of an article, I realize others do have a problem with it. But we are not going to fix the problem by arguing about one user when he is not the only one doing it. If the community decides that an article can no longer be created as a stub (I doubt that will ever happen) then fine. But as long as we allow stubs to be created then really the arguments presented at the beginning of this dicussion have no merit. --Kumioko (talk) 12:49, 8 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Kumioko, the issue being discussed is not the fact that Doncram creates stubs (I think most of us would agree that there is nothing wrong with doing that). The issue is how he creates his stubs... and especially the uninformative, whishy-washy material that he insists on sticking into his stubs. Saying things like: "Another significant date in the building was 1920" (with no indication as to why 1920 was a significant date) is simply uninformative and isn't acceptable. Saying things like: "Joe Blow was either an architect, a builder, or had some other significance" (without bothering to do even a quick google search to find out what Blow's significance actually was) is uninformative and unacceptable. Add on the fact that he quickly gets defensive and argumentative (to the point of edit-warring in articles and ignoring consensus on talk pages) when his uninformative information is challenged... and we have a chronic problem that needs some sort of admin action.

Doncram is a very prolific editor... and much of his material is a great benefit to Wikipedia... but he does not take criticism at all well. He is quick to adopt a WP:IDIDN'THEARTHAT attitude when others challenge material he has added, and he also has a bad habit of "attacking the critic"... trying to turn any complaint about his behavior and editing into a discussion about everyone else's behavior. That's why his name keeps being raised here on ANI. Blueboar (talk) 14:05, 8 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

[EC] I think you may have misconstrued the thrust of the posts that began this discussion, Kumioko (easy to do when there are so many words to wade through). This is not about stubs, per se. The objection is to production -- indeed mass-production -- of stubs that are rough drafts, possibly created before there was enough information to create a solid stub, so that they contain deliberately vague or speculative statements ("is or was a property", "has other significance in 1800 and 1822", "designed and/or built by"), or explicit blanks to be filled later (such as reference citations with the date "19__"). I am aware of no other user who does this.
I will freely agree that some things have been said to Doncram that were "not very nice," but I see a huge difference between my statements about "noncontent," "rough-draft articles," deliberate vagueness, "excessive quotation of copyrighted text", "doing things his way", "deeply resentful," and "persistently tried to personalize all interactions", etc., and Doncram's assertions that I am a "liar," "sadistic," "hatefully-motivated," "malicious and intellectually dishonest", "consistently hateful," "obviously offensive," contributing "vast, poisonous negativity," etc. Furthermore, it was hardly a "threat," but rather a reminder of reality, when I posted on his talk page to say "After all of the recent travail related to your newly created articles containing 'could be this, could be that' statements, I'm surprised to see that you have resumed creating that sort of content in article space. .... I can't imagine that anyone (least of all you) wants to go through further wikidrama about this sort of thing, but I predict that more wikidrama will ensue if you do not curtail your practice of putting this kind of vague content into article space." --Orlady (talk) 14:16, 8 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

The quotes Orlady provides from Doncram are what I'm talking about, plus Doncram's willingness to characterise others' words (e.g. "your objecting to that, and your bragging about it here, seems petty, not lovely" up above) — neither of these are acceptable under WP:NPA, and if I were to have come across them for the first time in normal text (i.e. neither an involved administrator nor with the comment-maker being under discussion at a noticeboard), I'd be inclined to issue a uw-npa4im warning and to block upon any future violations. I second Elkman's comment above about an RFAR, since I'm getting to the point of wondering if anything short of that will work, but I'm a grad student who doesn't generally have time for that kind of thing. Nyttend (talk) 04:57, 9 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Where do we go from here?

This discussion has gone on for 1-1/2 weeks. There were !votes on 3 specific items. I hope that an uninvolved administrator will determine what consensus was reached (if any) on each of the specific items. Two of the three items related to acceptability of certain forms of content created by Doncram. If the consensus is that some or all of those forms of content are unacceptable, then we may need additional discussion on what measures are appropriate in dealing with that sort of content in article space.

Currently, Doncram is blocked for three weeks and SarekOfVulcan is blocked for a short time for edit warring over a couple of articles in which Doncram had included lists created in an automated fashion from the NRIS database (example). One reason why contention over Doncram's stubs has persisted as long as it has is that other editors' efforts to address perceived problems with those stubs have had a tendency to lead to edit wars. That needs to change, IMO. It is a bit awkward to address this in Doncram's "absence," but if there is found to be consensus that certain kinds of content are unacceptable in user space, I propose the following:

Proposed enforcement. Users encountering Doncram-created content that is defined in this discussion as unacceptable may delete that content from the article or move it to the talk page for discussion. If simple excision of the problematic content cannot be done in a fashion that results in a coherent article or stub, then the entire article may be moved to the user's space. Content should not be restored to article space until the issues are resolved. Content removal consistent with this directive will not be considered to be edit warring. --Orlady (talk) 14:39, 10 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

• Support Orlady's solution. KillerChihuahua^?!?Advice 00:12, 11 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
• Support, sounds like a good idea. Sounds like you're proposing this as kind of a Gdansk vote situation? Nyttend (talk) 03:42, 11 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I wasn't thinking in terms of precedents, but that Gdansk vote situation is a relevant precedent. :-) --Orlady (talk) 04:13, 11 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

• Support - might work and although more work for the community its a lesser restriction on the user than other possibilities. Off2riorob (talk) 09:13, 11 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Could someone sum up what has been "defined in this discussion as unacceptable"? Blueboar (talk) 12:47, 11 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Nothing has been "defined as unacceptable" yet, as we need an uninvolved administrator to make that determination. This is anticipatory. However, there are two !votes regarding content that appear (to me) to be pointing to consensus on content: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Consensus and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard#Another question regarding consensus on article quality. --Orlady (talk) 16:02, 11 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Given EnergyNeutral (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) following on from an unsuccessful appeal of the topic ban re Cold fusion (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views), I am assuming that Abd (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) is now considered banned? It's probably best if someone else tags the user page and links to the various sockpuppets. Guy (Help!) 02:26, 3 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

He's under an indefinite block and a cold fusion ban, but I don't think he's site-banned...yet. T. Canens (talk) 15:37, 3 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I would say that sockpuppetry to evade ArbCom sanctions is pretty much a slam dunk for a siteban, wouldn't you? He's topic banned from cold fusion, appealed the topic ban, was declined, registered a sock pretending not to be Abd, was rumbled and permanently blocked. Sockpuppetry to evade a topic ban leading to an indefinite block - who's going to lift that block? Especially given that the whole problem with Abd has always been an inability to accept that he is anything other than 100% right? Guy (Help!) 19:43, 3 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

He's been documenting his evasion of his block at Wikiversity [1]. Given that he's turning topic ban evasion into a research project I think a siteban is more than called for. Hut 8.5 23:01, 3 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Honestly, given that, I wonder if it's possible to arrange a *global* ban from all WMF projects, because I can't see how it could possibly be appropriate to allow him to edit on ANY Foundation page, as he'll clearly use it as a way to try to further push his cold fusion POV. rdfox 76 (talk) 01:15, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

You've hit the nail on the head. Given that Abd is already permanently banned from editing the english Wikipedia, and further given his use of Wikiversity to document his disruption of Wikipedia, the topic of discussion here should be if and how to impose a ban on him on all WMF projects. The best venue to do it, I think, would be to work through it with the Office people. Raul654 (talk) 19:27, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Calling for a global ban is a bad idea. Partially for the reasons listed below (tl:dr LBJ's comments on J. Edgar Hoover: "I'd rather have him inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in".) but also because the absolute last thing you give to someone who loves nothing more than spinning tales of persecution is a good reason to keep going. Seems fairly harmless to have him writing to himself on wikiversity until the folks over there decide otherwise. Protonk (talk) 21:01, 5 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

• It seems to be implied here that Wikiversity somehow cares about someone being banned on the English Wikipedia. Trying to go to the Office to get a global ban instated seems like a method of avoiding having to say that, if Wikiversity didn't want him, then they would ban him themselves. Since they haven't, they obviously don't care about his actions on English Wikipedia (nor should they, since his actions aren't vandalism, they're just the cold fusion topic area). Silverseren^C 19:45, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
  • WMF projects don't have to "care" about each other, per se, but they do have a responsibility not to aid and abet people causing damage to other WMF projects. if Wikiversity didn't want him, then they would ban him themselves. - That would be true if they had competent administration. They do not, as was illustrated the last time a Wikipedia-banned user went to WV and tried to conduct a "research project" into distrupting editing, with tacit approval of the WV administrators. (That ended when Jimbo stepped in and shut it down, to the gnashing of teeth of the WV administrators who had until then stood idly by). Since they haven't, they obviously don't care about his actions on English Wikipedia - Agreed, this is obviously true. nor should they, since his actions aren't vandalism, - Wrong. He disrupted Wikipedia for years on numerous topics, wasted the time and energy of innumerable users, and to this day has yet to make a single useful edit. After he was deservedly community banned, he came back to sockpuppet, causing yet more disruption. Raul654 (talk) 19:55, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
    • If Abd's socks come to attention here, they'll be blocked. If he's quietly editing some non-cold-fusion-related topic with socks, then what's the harm? I don't think we have any jurisdiction over Wikiversity. I agree that they've made some really self-destructive decisions, but if they want to position themselves as a less interesting and more self-deluded version of Wikipedia Review, it's on them.

      Abd clearly has a great deal of prose of which he needs to unburden himself on a daily basis, and it doesn't seem to matter to him whether anyone is actually listening. So Wikiversity is actually sort of a good fit. At some point, the site will have to decide whether it wants to be an echo chamber for boring Wikipedia vendettas or whether it wants to be taken seriously, but I don't think we as Wikipedians can force that decision. MastCell ^Talk 20:53, 4 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

• Two problems with Abd's involvement at Wikiversity: the tendency of a small cabal there to abuse WMF resources to refight battles they lost on Wikipedia; and the attempt to set up in competition to enWP as an information resource on topics where he is banned here. I think we know enough by now to be certain that Abd lacks self-criticism and is unable to distinguish between MPOV and NPOV. That said, I was actually questioning whether he should be considered formally banned from enWP at this point (and hence subject to WP:RBI and the game of whack-a-mole). Guy (Help!) 19:49, 6 June 2011 (UTC)Reply
• Although uninvolved throughout, I'm not particularly active lately, so take this as you will:

• Abd has created a wonderful garden over at WV, with at least one mainspace? page bearing a prominent notice with a link advertising their COI, which link leads to their commercial website that sells cold-fusion test kits. Well OK, they don't actually have the kit available yet, apparently there is some problem with finalizing the actual working model, but still, you can buy all the components and try it yourself. Just one link away from a WMF wiki, but Abd is careful to stress that it's all quite hypothetical.
• So yes, WV seems quite willing to tolerate the promotion, and they also seem willing to tolerate maintenance of pages which will apparently be used some day as data points in a study of alternate approaches to editing whilst banned from a WMF wiki, which wiki happens to be this one. Interesting air of clinical detachment there, more power to them I guess.
• With respect to documenting "experiments" with the Wikipedia society (which is one interpretation of the entries in Abd's WV userspace) I would point the community attention to the case of User:Roadcreature (GdB), who discussed a somewhat similar experiment and was summarily banned (per my proposal, also uninvolved).
• Further, although it seems obvious that a de facto ban exists, in that no admin in their right mind will ever unblock, there is a big loophole in the chain of policy/guideline if there is no one single ban discussion to point to. If you're an admin, you can block away for "block evasion" or "sockpuppet" or even "disruptive editing" - BUT you can't actually revert the edits more than once, else you risk running afoul of EW and eventually 3RR. The situation is much worse for actual editors (those without the sysop bit, 'wut edit the actual artikles).
• Considering the above, and having watched this operator from back in the delegable-proxy days, I see a net negative and would support a community ban for Abd. They have consitently contributed large amounts of material discussing what Abd thinks about everything at all. Most compellingly for me, they have consistently and extensively discussed, here and elsewhere, why they (and they alone) have the key insights to divine the true nature of this wiki, and it would seem, reality. I've never seen that sort of editor work out, ever even once, Support community ban. Franamax (talk) 05:59, 8 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

  Abd is already (permanently) community banned. If he wants back, he can appeal to the arbcom, which (given how GoRight's appeal proceeding) seems highly unlikely to approve. Raul654 (talk) 13:51, 8 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

• Could you link to the community ban discussion? It would be helpful to put it at the top of this thread to help clarify a rather muddled discussion. Skomorokh 13:59, 8 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Seconded, since I am not aware of it. Guy (Help!) 20:46, 8 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

• I'm fairly certain also that he was community banned, but that was never the purpose of this discussion. Jzg Some users above are trying to force him to be banned from all of the other Wiki projects, essentially a global site ban. However, that is something that is not under our jurisdiction, nor anyone in this community, nor even the entire English Wikipedia community as a whole. We have no authority over the other projects and rightfully so. If they (Wikiversity specifically) decide that they don't want to ban him, then that is their prerogative and we have no right to try and force them to. English Wikipedia is not in charge of the other projects and if you try to say that it is, i'm quite sure you're going to have a lot of pissed off responses from people. Silverseren^C 21:15, 8 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

What a curious interpretation. Guy is asking here for confirmation of a community ban, not "fairly certain". Is or is not Abd banned? If so, where is the discussion? And Guy has not suggested a WMF-wide ban, even once, as he is quite likely aware that indeed en:wiki doesn't run the entire project. Such discussions belong at Meta, not here. We are talking about a ban from English Wikipedia. Do you support or oppose such a ban? Franamax (talk) 23:31, 8 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

You are correct, I apologize. I misread the discussion above. The users supporting a global ban were Rdfox and Raul, not Jzg. Stricken from my comment above. I'm rather neutral on a community ban, as I don't feel that Abd is really to that extent compared to the usual criteria we hold for community bans. On the other hand, he has very clearly been disruptive and is fully deserving of the indefinite block. So i'm kinda in the middle there. Silverseren^C 23:59, 8 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I think the discussion is obvious. But then, it's the spin off of another discussion that I thought was obvious that provoked a lot of contentious comments from a single editor. I would prefer it someone neutral and uninvolved make the call, so that I don't have to Here's the discussion involved. [4]

Thanks in advance. This should be easy. Really. Shooterwalker (talk) 01:34, 9 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I'm not sure there's a consensus in that discussion whether to merge the content or simply redirect. Is there a reason you want the discussion closed now instead of waiting the normal 30 days for RfCs to close? -Atmoz (talk) 16:21, 9 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

A redirect would be tantamount to deleting it, as the content would be lost, but deletion of the article did not get a consensus at AfD, so the only options really available to the participants is to keep it as is, or to merge the content to another article. Beyond My Ken (talk) 01:46, 10 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Redirecting is not deletion, and a no consensus close means no action pending additional discussion, not a consensus to keep. I left a longer reply at Talk:Timeline of Asimov's Foundation Series#RfC: merging as outcome of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Timeline of Asimov's Foundation Series. Flatscan (talk) 04:24, 11 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

(moved my response, originally posted here, to the RfC) Beyond My Ken (talk) 17:57, 11 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Hello. Would an admin uninvolved in the ARBPIA topic area please review and close the discussion at Talk:Gaza War#RFC? Thank you. nableezy - 22:44, 9 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Timestamp to prevent archiving. Cunard (talk) 00:35, 11 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

It's with no small amount of pride that I can tell you: The tests of the new account creation processes that I have told you about previously are now launched.

• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&action=submitlogin&type=signup&campaign=ACP1
• http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:UserLogin&action=submitlogin&type=signup&campaign=ACP2

They are not perfect, but they are something that we can work from. I know that at least I will tweak them during the next week to get the most out of them. And although the main goal is to make it easier and more inspiring for the newcomers, the community is of course invited to speak your mind about good and bad aspects of this.

As there have been some confusion over this point previously: this is not a top-down process where I (or someone from the Wikimedia Foundation) decides "how it's going be" without regards to what the community think. I'm very much a Wikipedian and long for collaborations with others. For instance, I have re-written the form after your suggestions, and will continue to ask for your input and help. Thanks to everybody who have commented and helped out so far.

Best wishes//Hannibal (talk) 23:41, 9 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I was pretty puzzled by the Reason box, but it seems this only displays to logged-in users, and the three check boxes below for bypassing the blacklist etc., but they only show wto an admin user. (or I suppose anyone with account-creator). DGG (alternate account) (talk) 00:04, 10 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Yep, you'll want to be logged out to ensure you get the standard form layout.--Eloquence* 02:27, 10 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

When I looked, there was a box at the bottom which included "By adding what you know...". I understand that the aim is to get people started without a bunch of bureaucracy, but that wording needs reworking because any addition of "what you know" to an article is going to be reverted as unsourced (i.e. the new user is inadvertently led into a trap). Or, is there something to clarify that later in the process? Johnuniq (talk) 03:18, 10 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

I just tried it. The new screen makes you expect to be led through a three-step process, but once you're at step 2, you're basically just in the normal Wikipedia working environment. How do you ever get to step three? Fut.Perf. ☼ 06:28, 10 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Sorrry for the delay in responding. Thanks for your comments and your kind tone.

First, let me recommend two things. A) check out Category:New Wikipedians 2011-06. They are coming from one of the new account creation processes. Some of them have only clicked save, without changing the text, and some of them have written about themselves. Please talk to them. Ask the former group to write about themselves, and recommend the other group some articles to work on. I will do that, starting tomorrow. B) people from the other process have been seeing one of thirty lists of suggestions for articles to work on, based on their skills and interests. Those lists are going to get out of date soon, so please help updating them with new things to do. You can find them on my user page, with the names like this one: MediaWiki:Customusertemplate-ACP2-Be_a_part_of_Wikipedia_(History,_Research_&_Writing).

Second, do any of you have a suggestion for new wording of the phrase that presently says "what you know" that includes something about sources? As a non-native speaker, it's hard for me to find a phrase that sounds good there.

Third, the third step is the "Welcome to Wikipedia" banner, but I guess it could be made to look more like the rest of the progress bar. Let me look into changing it, or you can do it if you have some design skills.

Again, thanks for the comments and the pleasant tone. I will let you know as soon as I have stats about how successful they were compared to the old one.//Hannibal (talk) 07:06, 11 June 2011 (UTC)Reply

Beyond My Ken and Mjroots make a couple interesting points here. There are plenty of places where there isn't a lot of information available to start an article, or at least not a very good one. Even though a subject's listing on the National Register pretty much infers a subject is notable, that doesn't mean there's enough information to start an article. I've pretty much avoided starting any articles on NRHP topics unless there's source material other than the National Register database. Maybe we at WP:NRHP should start filling in the summary descriptions on all those state and county lists, as a bare minimum starting point to provide context to the reader, and then work on building the individual articles if enough information on each structure becomes available. Or, we could do as Nyttend suggests, and write articles on places as a group when there's not enough information on the individual structures. For example, in Crow Wing County, there are five metal water towers listed on the National Register, built at a time when towns were flush with cash from mining revenue. (Pardon the pun of "flush".) The five are all listed on the same Multiple Property Submission. Instead of creating five watered-down articles about the separate water towers, I created one article, Cuyuna Iron Range Municipally-Owned Elevated Metal Water Tanks. It's not exactly a flood of information, but an article on the five water towers as a group actually seems to indicate the history behind these improvements better than just five individual articles would do. --Elkman ^(Elkspeak) 06:09, 11 June 2011 (UTC) Reply