User talk:Ritchie333

Keeping an eye on stuff. Meanwhile, here is some music.[1]

"I'm not a cat. I'm a Texas lawyer!"

THIS USER MISSES RexxS

Your GA nomination of Live at Leeds

The article Live at Leeds you nominated as a good article has passed ; see Talk:Live at Leeds for comments about the article, and Talk:Live at Leeds/GA1 for the nomination. Well done! If the article has never appeared on the Main Page as a "Did you know" item, and has not appeared within the last year either as "Today's featured article", or as a bold link under "In the news" or in the "On this day" prose section, you can nominate it within the next seven days to appear at DYK. Bolded names with dates listed at the bottom of the "On this day" column do not affect DYK eligibility. Message delivered by ChristieBot, on behalf of DreamRimmer -- DreamRimmer (talk) 14:41, 10 October 2023 (UTC)

October songs

my story today

Congrats! - Even I collected a few GAs this year ;) - So happy that Martin is free again! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:01, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

Yes, great to see Martin getting back up to speed. Sorry I haven't been around much recently, as it says at the top I'm balancing life between work, DIY and decorating. However, my computer desk and bookshelf are now both back online, so I can crack on with things. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 09:03, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

That's great! - User talk:Gerda Arendt#Music keeps track of "my" music and memories, and just today I have a juxtaposition of music performed by the two church choirs in town, one I sang in and one where I listened, to music about love, evening and night. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:51, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Today, it's a place that inspired me, musings if you have time. My corner for memory and music has today a juxtaposition of what our local church choirs offer. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:16, 20 October 2023 (UTC)

A Romanian woman composer is today's topic. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:17, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

I thought of Brian Bouldton today, and his ways to compromise. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:00, 29 October 2023 (UTC)

I have just read through the Georges Feydeau infobox feud at ANI, and notice you got dragged into that as well. I have given my 2c in the thread, and am mindful of this comment from over five years ago. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:09, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

November music

November songs

story · music

Serial Number 54129, real Floyd fans listen to this sort of stuff.

I have vacation pics to offer, with the deepest blue of the sea the third day ;) - we celebrate the birthday of a friend who wrote quite a book about the compositions of a man who will turn 300 soon. - I don't take part in infobox discussions. Period. However, when I see a good-faith edit reverted with an edit summary like this, I can sometimes resist but in this case followed the invitation - which then got painted as if I had launched it on TFA day, - it's so kafkaesque. - I don't even care if that guy has an infobox or not. He was only on my watchlist because I take every TFA on the list for the day. Anyway, Feydeau had an infobox for several hours on the Main page, and nobody complained, until ... - I haven't even looked when the article became FA, - no time. I have articles to write, and two GAN open. That's what I'm here for. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:06, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Back from a great concert (all Brahms) with the London Philharmonic, and too tired for article work: I looked up when the writer became FA, last year. I was not part of the FAC, not welcome there. Since, we had a RfC for Mozart that expresses pretty much where the community stands in the matter. (I made one comment.) - I added the pieces and the performers to my talk, and looked them up, and the conductor was missing an infobox, but some instinct told me to better look into the history ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:12, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Some day if I ever have enough free time and money (I always seem to have one or the other but not both) I would like to take a trip on the Eurostar and Nightjet from London to Vienna and go to one of the celebrated New Year Concerts. Or the Musikverein to watch the Vienna Mozart Orchestra another time. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:43, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Sounds like a good plan! - As for the below: did you see the TFA today? Or the latest FA? Or the latest FAC (where I was not welcome)? Surprise. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:52, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Just accepted a draft from AfC, first one in ages. Can you remind me how we invite the author to Women in Red? I can never remember. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 17:20, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Better ask Ipigott, - I just do it informally. Next day of pics - today my topic is a soprano, comes with a video. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:50, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

next day uploaded --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:40, 19 November 2023 (UTC)

My story today, Canticle I: My beloved is mine and I am his, - the composer, born OTD 110 years ago, didn't want it shorter (but the publisher), more here. I'm back to a good tradition: a Britten composition on his birthday. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:01, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

User Talk:Gerda Arendt#Mozart Requiem --Gerda Arendt (talk) 23:03, 26 November 2023 (UTC)

Today: in memoriam Jerome Kohl who said (In Freundschaft): "and I hope that they have met again in the beyond and are making joyous music together" --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:19, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Also today - Martinevans123 is back with his collection of bad puns and general wit and tomfoolery, so there's hope for us all. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:22, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Schro again, please stop silencing the whistleblower

You can’t solve a problem by ignoring it. And if you think im the only one fed up with Schrocat’s antics then you’re forgetting that community consensus called for sanctions.

So ive asked you about it before, your response was kinda well hes a good writer, which misses the point, and if you had to sanction everyone for disagreeing over an infobox, which also misses the point. Let me try to sum it up:

1. SchroCat was horrible to many editors.
2. Many editors left WP.
3. Many other editors called for sanctions against SchroCat. Community consensus was SchroCat should be sanctioned.
4. SchroCat “retired.”
5. SchroCat IMMEDIATELY began editing as an ip and doing the same things that got him sanctioned.
6. SchroCat “returned” to editing, never served the sanctions.
7. SchroCat is still being horrible, even playing the victim card on his tp, which is quite hilarious.

Can you please explain why SchroCat does not have to serve the sanctions that community consensus asked for?? Thanks and cheers.Avocadopowder (talk) 19:54, 14 November 2023 (UTC)

Firstly, apologies to HJ Mitchell who reverted this. I'm not really replying to the blocked sock, but for anyone else who might be reading this. (For the blocked sockpuppet, please appeal from your MAIN account then try again.)

I have met SchroCat in real life and got on with him, and he has done great work on numerous featured articles. I also think he has got a complete bee in his bonnet about infoboxes for whatever reason, and my heart sinks every time I see him get into an argument with someone about it, and I honestly wish he wouldn't rise to the bait. I don't think I'm the only longstanding editor who likes SchroCat's work who has that opinion. Frankly, if a consensus of administrators decides to sanction him for civility or disruption, he can't really say he didn't see it coming.

I did offer SchroCat the right to vanish in order to "save face" and not be sanctioned with something like an Arbcom ban. However, the deal as I understood it was that the vanishing was permanent and any IP editing or sock puppetry would not be tolerated. It's possible that SchroCat has a different interpretation of this, but that is certainly what I meant.

As it stands, I don't think I can take any further administrative actions regarding SchroCat, and there enough administrators around without the associated history who can deal with this. If the community decides that SchroCat's presence on Wikipedia is a net positive, then you'll need to take it up with the community. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:14, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Question from Costy94 on User:Costy94 (15:38, 15 November 2023)

Hello How can I add biography of someone on Wikipedia --Costy94 (talk) 15:38, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

If this involves a living person (and not a historical figure), then the best answer I can possibly give is ... don't. An article about somebody is not necessarily a good thing, it's sometimes impossible to make it accurate and pleasant enough for the subject and also be factually accurate and verifiable to reliable sources at the same time, which causes all sorts of problems. Who do you want to write about? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:40, 15 November 2023 (UTC)

Sbaio and his behavior towards me

Hello Ritchie333. How are you? Hopefully good. I am Ethan and I am writing because I know you’re an administrator and while I usually wouldn’t do these types of things, I would like to share a complaint about one user the last couple months. In August, I was falsely accused of sock puppetry after a small handful of my edits were coincidentally similar to an individual who was blocked from sock puppetry in early 2022 called “Moka Mo”. I tried to explain repeatedly that I am not the same person as “Moka Mo” and most of my edits were actually useful and not intended to be malicious and my goal was to be informative and helpful. And whenever I tried to reach out to him, he either gaslights me, ignores me or says stuff like “stop wasting everyones time” or “stop wasting time” and more. I was falsely accused of sock puppetry since apparently a small handful of my edits were similar to another blocked user who was blocked for sock puppetry who is named moka mo who I had never heard of before until this summer. Whenever I try to explain I am not the same person, he either gaslights me, ignores me or says things (like stop wasting time or stop wasting everyone’s time and more). This is a very frustrating situation and ofc I understand millions of people have other ideas too but the thing that is frustrating is that he is doing them without any thought or without informing me first and not cooperating with me when I try to get his attention. These actions are very narcissistic to me toxic behavior like this should not be allowed on Wikipedia. It is all crazy because even after I have said many times I am NOT moka mo and my real name (it’s Ethan) but he doesn’t budge. Whenever I call him out on it too, he cries about “personal attacks” although he put this on himself with his narcissistic behavior and all the gaslighting and ignoring he has done with me when I try to communicate with him. While I get his feelings are hurt, I am stating the truth and he needs to realize that sometimes the truth hurts and honestly if he hadn’t gaslit me and simply have just communicated with me then he wouldn’t have gotten such criticism for his actions. I don’t want to ramble too much so I’m gonna stop for now because I think I’ve explained enough for you to hopefully get what I am trying to explain but I appreciate your attention to this very important matter because I want Wikipedia to be a place that is inclusive for all and where people can feel included and not gaslit. And hopefully considering unblocking my real account that got blocked a couple months ago, gymrat16 and consider the possibility of blocking the sbaio account indefinitely for his cruel and abusive treatment towards me and a couple other editors. I usually wouldn’t say this because like I said, this should be welcoming for all but he has crossed the line for me and I believe without repercussions, one can never learn that this behavior is unacceptable. If you open up the activity for gymrat16 you’ll see the edits were intended for good judgement and not meant to be disruptive. Thanks for your time and I hope to hear back soon. Stay safe. 2600:1007:B0A1:E997:D05C:8D3C:427A:3BD2 (talk) 03:45, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, being accused of something when you say you didn't do it sucks. Ask Paul Gambaccini. There's a lot to digest here, but I'll give you some advice. (And note, this on the assumption you're telling the truth, if you're making this all up, deal's off).

Firstly, in future, make your complaint concise and if you can, include some diffs. It took me about ten minutes to look through Special:Contributions/gymrat16 and see what disputes there were.

The first thing I picked up was this revert which changed History of United Airlines to state the merger with Continental Airlines happened in 2011 rather than 2010. Looking at the article, it makes it quite difficult to work out which is the correct year; the prose gives the impression that the merger took a significant amount of time that it covered both years. It doesn't help that the sources are either dead or tagged as unreliable.

Elsewhere, I can see you adding prose to Andrew Shaw (ice hockey) [2]. Again, it's not my subject of expertise, but it doesn't look factually wrong.

The best suggestion I can give you is to take the Standard offer:

• Wait at least six months with no sock puppetry. That means no IP editing, no new accounts, nothing. If you want to contact me in six months time, use the "Email this user" functionality.
• Promise to avoid the behavior that led to the block/ban. (I guess that means in your case, don't make things personal about other editors)
• Don't give people reasons to object to your return. (See above)

The other thing I'd advise you to do is don't bear any grudges against anyone. No edits like this please - if you want to change something, change it because you're making Wikipedia better, not because of what any other editor does. I did quick look through Sbaio's contributions and concluded they were a good-faith editor who did minor work that I don't particularly care about, so I don't have a problem with them. Sometimes we've got to work with people we don't generally see eye to eye with or have much in common with, it's true in real life and work just as much as it is on Wikipedia. There are millions of articles on Wikipedia that need improvement, and if you know how to write well and cite sources, you can be the most widely read author on an out of the way topic on the internet. That's something to aim for, isn't it? Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:56, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

I thought it was clear that my agreement to unblock Skyrise was contingent on her agreeing with a 1RR restriction

I don’t understand why you just went ahead and unblocked. Please reinstate the block until she agrees or it expires. Thanks. Doug Weller talk 21:37, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

Oh right, I thought you were okay with it. Anyway, I've reblocked for the remaining duration. I still remain concerned that if Skyerise sits out the block and comes back, she'll get involved in some other dispute and the next block will probably be indefinite. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 22:23, 17 November 2023 (UTC)

So am I. I’d like to think otherwise. Thanks. Doug Weller talk 06:57, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't know, maybe I should ignore this, but blocked editors aren't supposed to use their talk page to urge action on an article, and Skyerise is doing just that.[3] Doug Weller talk 15:26, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

I've seen this before, and I'm not sure we've had consensus for this. There was this example at ANI some years back which concluded there was a slight consensus in allow blocked editors to use their talk page to request improvements to articles. There was also a number of complaints when The Rambling Man's talk page was turned off when he was blocked - I can't find the thread for that simply because TRM has been dragged to ANI too many times. In summary, it depends on what they're doing on the talk page, and as long it's not repeating the activities they were blocked for, there should be a bit of tolerance, unless there are already complaints. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:31, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Ah, I've found the ANI thread - it was this one. It's a long and arduous thread, and it appears I got in some mansplaining to GorillaWarfare, for which I can only apologise, I'm a lot less hot-headed these days. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:13, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

It's also worth considering WP:PROXYING. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:34, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

S.T.A.R. Labs

Hey on you closer of this afd you said that "votes were split between keep, redirect, merge and delete" wouldnt that be grounds for a "no consensus"? Questions? four Olifanofmrtennant (she/her) 02:04, 23 November 2023 (UTC)

Usually, the NC is appropriate if editors argue for some mixture of keep or delete with no middle ground. But in this case, several people suggested keep or merge, which along with those advocating redirect, means there is an option that sounds like a compromise most editors would find acceptable. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:47, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Okay cool Questions? four Olifanofmrtennant (she/her) 16:18, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/International Police Organization

Hey, are you open to reconsidering your close of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/International Police Organization? I think that the balance of arguments is clearly in favor of deletion. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 22:48, 24 November 2023 (UTC)

Oh right, I took your comment, specifically "I see two ([30] Dnevnik, [31] RTV) that clearly provide independent, significant coverage of the organization" and the overall decision of "TNT" as a "weak keep", which swung things towards NC. Nevertheless, I think my overall advice in the AfD should stand - wait a while and see if the article improves, and if not, start a new AfD. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:01, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

I'd be a bit concerned that it seems like the only editor invested in actually editing the article is the same editor who wrote the initial draft, which has the egregious POV issues I pointed out in my !vote. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 16:44, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Update: I took a stab at rewriting the article, and gave Topjur01 a COI warning, so at least the neutrality issues have been addressed for the time being. _signed, Rosguill ^talk 17:28, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

I think that's probably the best course of action. Also, after reading your revised version, it makes it a lot more obvious what the organisation is (or, indeed isn't). Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 11:58, 27 November 2023 (UTC)

Question from SuvarnaEditor (06:39, 25 November 2023)

Hello i need to create a page for the living person. --SuvarnaEditor (talk) 06:39, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

Unless you are a highly experienced Wikipedia editor, I would avoid creating articles about living people. It creates problems. The Biography of living persons policy has further information. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 10:02, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

CS1 error on Milan

Hello, I'm Qwerfjkl (bot). I have automatically detected that this edit performed by you, on the page Milan, may have introduced referencing errors. They are as follows:

• A "bare URL and missing title" error. References show this error when they do not have a title. Please edit the article to add the appropriate title parameter to the reference. (Fix | Ask for help)

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, Qwerfjkl (bot) (talk) 14:33, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

I typed a dash instead of a pipe symbol. And they say ChatGPT is the future, but it is, as the Italians might say, affogare in un bicchier d’acqua. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 15:17, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

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To give my own answer to Gerda's question to the arbs, consider Talk:Mayfair#RFC: Infobox. A drive by IP started the debate, but it was left to me to actually design an infobox that everyone agreed on, get consensus for it, and put it on the article. Anyone can argue back and forth about infoboxes, but it takes more effort to put some actual work in to make the article better. As Observations on Wikipedia behaviour wrote : "There is less "exciting" work to do, such as creating from scratch an article on an important topic, and conflict is the most usual substitute excitement. The early days of the project are over, and just as in a relationship, the truly hard work comes after the initial excitement has faded.". Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:38, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Does it follow from this that editors whose idea of "important" strongly diverges from the mainstream are more likely to still being writing articles? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:46, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I don't necessarily think so. There are two factors - firstly, the systemic bias means the articles we're likely to write about have been written to some extent, while notable topics we don't think about as much (eg: cabinet ministers in African countries who obviously meet WP:POLITICIAN) might still yet need to be written. The second is, as standards for inclusion get higher, with more stringent sources required, articles that might have been created back in 2004 wouldn't withstand AfD; when I wrote King of the Rumbling Spires, I wasn't actually sure it would withstand such a debate (but had reasonable confidence it would close as "redirect" if not "no consensus" or "keep") and didn't put it up for DYK (as well as I couldn't think of a suitable hook for it). Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:56, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

"The early days of the project are over, and just as in a relationship, having tried dogging and swingers parties, the truly hard work comes when you have to go to Relate and start looking around for a good divorce lawyer..." Martinevans123 (talk) 13:30, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

I limit my articles to one per day, expanding or new, and there's no end in sight of topics: artists I hear making music or visual things, songs I sing, music I encounter, places that impress me, recent deaths to be improved. Today an opera singer who died (haven't started yet, had to shuffle heavy snow). On DYK, another opera singer, Luca Salsi, who performed recently with Anna Netrebko which caused political furor, in an opera house with a Ukrainian flag on top, pictured on my talk, in a staging opening on a battle field with smoke rising, almost throughout the performance, - and that was a 2018 production, nothing recent and appropriate. Just appropriate, thanks to Harry Kupfer (trailer video also on my talk, and tomorrow here). I see no lack of topics for life. And no time for anything but content (and music and flowers for thanks). --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:53, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

A7: some thoughts

Thanks for your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Shaheen Sayyed, including your link to User:Ritchie333/Plain and simple guide to A7. Rereading what I wrote in that AfD, I realise that, writing hastily and without due thought, I did not express what I intended to. No doubt anyone reading my comment would think that I was suggesting that you were wrong to decline the speedy deletion nomination, but what I intended to convey was merely that I didn't really see the decline as "obvious", not that I thought it was wrong, and I would not myself have speedily deleted the article. In fact I rarely do A7 deletions, even of articles which I think deserve it, because I think of all the speedy deletion criteria, A7 is the least clear and the most subject to variations in interpretation, with the result that very often neither accepting nor rejecting an A7 nomination is "obvious"; therefore deletion is less likely to be uncontroversial than for any other criterion, and controversial deletions are not what the CSD are supposed to be about. Indeed, you pretty well summed up the point in your "Plain and simple guide to A7", where you wrote "The problem with terms like "importance", "significance" and "notability" ... is they are subjective. What I think is "important" may not be the same as what you think." In fact I suppose that is what lies behind the fact that in this case what you think is "obvious" is not the same as what I think. JBW (talk) 15:10, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

Incidentally, I wrote above "I would not myself have speedily deleted the article", but in fact it's more accurate to say "I did not myself speedily delete the article", as I saw the nomination before you got there, and decided not to delete it. I stopped short of actually declining it, though, for some reason that I now don't remember. JBW (talk) 15:17, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

JBW, you've put in words how I've felt about A7 and some other subjective criteria for a while now. I would have deleted the article if Ritchie hadn't already declined, but now I think I will just ignore A7 tags. The speedy criteria are meant to be for bright-line cases like "this was created by a banned user", "this is an exact copy of a deleted page", and "this is a copyright violation"; cases where the criterion is met clearly and nobody could rationally argue otherwise. Some are subjective but tend to be uncontroversial and net positive anyway (attack pages and clear advertisements, for example) but I don't think that A7/A9 meet that goal. Especially now that draftification is an option, and considering that I'm sure most A7/A9 deletions are the work of new users who might otherwise make good content, I'm beginning to think that those criteria should be abolished. I don't have time to make noise about it right now but you've given me something to think about. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 17:30, 28 November 2023 (UTC)

JBW, Ivanvector I wrote the "plain and simple guide" a year before the WP:ACPERM RfC which stopped the creation of articles until a user was auto confirmed, at which point the amount of CSD A7s in the queue plummeted from about 20 a day to very few. Nowadays, it's vanishingly rare for an A7 to turn up; most CSDs I find are G6, G11 or G12 these days. The last couple of times I've seen an A7, it doesn't meet the criteria, at least as it was originally designed. There have been references to WP:NEWSORGINDIA, and it took me a while to work out where that was introduced, but it turns out it was in this RfC over eighteen years after A7 was introduced. You can't fit square pegs in round holes, if we have sufficient articles arriving at AfD that are chock full of paid content in India, we should start a new proposal for a CSD criteria at WT:CSD. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 12:03, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

In one detail my impression of recent CSD nominations differs from yours: I find that G11 and U5 are the two commonest, with a few others, such as G12 and G6 following them, whereas you don't mention U5. However, that is a small detail, and otherwise my impression agrees with yours, including the fact that A7 is uncommon, whereas it was common, perhaps the commonest, before the requirement for autoconfirmation for article creation. I check the CSD queue very frequently, and I go not to the list of nominations, but to the list of subcategories, and I never click on A7, because I feel so uncomfortable about them. Therefore on the infrequent occasions when I do see an A7, it's usually because I have come to the article because of some other problem, so what I see is probably not a representative sample; however, I find the proportion of unambiguous cases is very low. I said above that I didn't remember why I didn't decline the nomination which led to this discussion, but having thought about it, I think it's just that I have such a negative view of A7 nominations that I just tend just to walk away and not deal with them either way unless I see one as really obvious, and, as I have already said, this one didn't look as obvious to me as it evidently did to you. Ivanvector, your idea of abolishing criteria such as A7 is one I have thought of many times, but every time I have come back round to "... but what about the occasions when some totally non-notable person creates an account, games autoconfirmation, and creates an article about themself, or their garage band, or their mother, or their pet cat, or whatever?" It doesn't happen terribly often, but it's often enough that we need a simple way of dealing with it, in my opinion. Sometimes such articles can be speedily deleted for other reasons, but by no means always. Draftifying isn't an ideal method for several reasons, including the fact that if the draft is moved back to mainspace we are stuck with having it around while we waste time at AfD, and the fact that it risks misleading the person into thinking that such an article is worthwhile if it's improved, rather than conveying the message that it just isn't suitable at all. JBW (talk) 14:25, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

In my mind, the "topic is not suitable for Wikipedia" messaging of an AFC decline is much more newbie-friendly than visiting your page to find a deletion log entry. You're right, though, that a user could just move their page back. I think that's a separate problem worth addressing: I've thought about proposing that moving pages into article space should require extendedconfirmed or pagemover permission, specifically because of new users and UPE sockpuppets promoting unsuitable drafts without review, or promoting them after they've been rejected. Maybe their ought to be a criterion like G4 for rejected drafts promoted without improvement, but then that also seems subjective. I guess it needs more thought than I've given it, there's a lot of small but important aspects to consider. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 15:42, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

On occasion, I've spotted an article tagged for speedy that was in draft, unilaterally moved into mainspace, and subsequently tagged by NPP, whereupon I've moved it back to draft and removed the tags, particularly speedy and PROD. I think this has been a long-standing issue in that while the AfC reviewing script is only given out to completely trustworthy editors, it can always be bypassed by moving things into mainspace.

The focus and pages in the draft namespace has changed quite a bit since WP:ACPERM. In the past, it tended to be articles that could be notable, but the user wasn't sure and needed help to get them correctly written. Nowadays, it seems that a lot of stuff that would previously be quickly speedy deleted is now in draft, and the quality of potentially salvageable drafts has declined to the point where I don't review much there at all, and avoid it. The help desk appears to be chock full of Indian editors wondering why their WP:BLPSOURCES violating semi-paid editing page isn't notable, and getting the same answers again and again. I noticed Cullen328 declined a bunch of these a few days back, quoting some of their text back at them which would certainly prove the worthiness to speedy delete them per WP:G11 (I'm not sure if this happened or they were just declined). Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 16:05, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Each administrator has their own approach and style of working. Looking at my adminstats, I see that I am about seven times more likely to block a user as to delete a page. That is mostly because I patrol WP:UAA and WP:ANI frequently, I suppose. I try to encourage and assist in the creation of new articles through my work at the Teahouse and the Help Desk. WP:AFCHD is a place where I can frankly assess junk as indicated above, and there is a certain satisfaction in that. As for A7, I have not thought about it as deeply as others but I have no problem applying it to a high school student, a newly formed garage band, or a local pizzeria, if there is no assertion of notability. Cullen328 (talk) 17:55, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

Sigh...

"Wikipedia belongs in education"

I've just seen your "This user misses RexxS" further up this page. I totally agree. He was one of the most productive contributors Wikipedia has ever had, and the way he was driven off the project was ridiculous. He was not entirely free from fault in the incident which led to it, but the response was absurdly disproportionate. JBW (talk) 14:32, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

... I also miss seeing him at Wikipedia meetups. JBW (talk) 14:35, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

The picture is, as you've probably guessed, of me and RexxS chatting together at a meet up. I've only met RexxS in person a few times, but on those occasions I seem to recall spending hours chatting to him about everything and anything. He's one of the most knowledgeable, thoughtful and passionate editors Wikipedia has ever seen and his enforced departure is the biggest proof of evidence towards the claim that "The loss of long-established contributors due to avoidable conflict is one of the greatest threats the project faces. People who have been here a year or more, and made thousands of contributions to the project, are its greatest asset, and this cannot be overstated.". I believe he is still actively editing as an IP, however, and have noticed on a few occasions seen such an IP that I suspect is actually him. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 14:45, 29 November 2023 (UTC)

December songs

story · music

I miss him much, look on my talk under "have just given up". - Today's story is about Maria Callas, on her centenary. - Aaron Copland died OTD, and Jerome Kohl (mentioned in November) said something wise on Copland's talk, - yes, regarding a soft(er) stance towards infoboxes. I saw that only today, and I wonder if RexxS saw it. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:07, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Rexx was and is a good friend in real life and I agree with you all that his absence is a detriment to Wikipedia. I've never seen an ArbCom case accepted on such flimsy grounds and the "case" consisted largely of people with an axe to grind flinging as much mud as they could at Rexx in the hopes that some of it would stick. In my opinion, anyway. I'm obviously not a neutral observer. But the whole thing makes me sad and angry in equal measure. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:13, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

I hope that it's true that, as Ritchie suspects, Rexx is still around as an IP. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:57, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Editor experience invitation

Hi Ritchie333 :) I'm looking for people to interview here. Feel free to pass if you're not interested. Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 02:15, 1 December 2023 (UTC)