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User:Wikademia

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This review is now closed with the result being that the indef blocks of User:Wikademia and alternate accounts remains in place. --mikeu talk 14:13, 12 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Discussions are archived for review purposes. Please start a new discussion to discuss the topic further.


What's been happening?

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Wikademia (talk • email • contribs • stats • logs • global account)'s edits seem to have become increasingly unexplained and disruptive. This has lead to the account being blocked. This might hopefully give some chance to sit back and consider what's going on and what could/should be done about it. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 00:15, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

note: the block of User:Wikademia prevents editing this page. Responses to questions at this review and any statements he would like to make should be copied from his talk page to here. --mikeu talk 12:37, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by SB_Johnny talk

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The communication problem has been an issue for a long time. The last time he was firmly confronted about it he actually had sysop tools and protected a page to cut off further discussion. The question I have is whether the block should be extended or maintained until he does start communicating when people have questions about his activities here.

The vast majority of his edits are comprised of minor alterations such as adding templates or bits of code such as NOTOC, or the mass creation of more or less empty pages. From what little communication I have had with him over the years, I get the impression that he equates the growth of the wiki by the number of pages it has, and the health of the wiki with the number of edits per day. With that in mind, I'm fairly sure that he sees his activities as being constructive in that sense. The larger question we may have to take on here is whether we agree with that definition of health and growth, and if not whether there should be any sort of limit on this sort of activity.--SB_Johnny talk 11:26, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

By the way, his block has been adjusted a few times due to activity after the block occurred. The autoblock has been re-triggered numerous times since the original block. --SB_Johnny talk 11:30, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Communication

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I agree with SB Johnny that communication is key to the recent issues. The Remi and Emesee edits were almost all very helpful - he was a very valuable and productive contributor in that period. The more recent edits as Wikidemia etc. have been debatable in their usefulness. That in itself is not necessarily an issue, but attempts at discussion with Wikidemia seem to have largely floundered. What could be done differently? Let's be positive here. I'd suggest we discuss towards consensus around some simple ideas e.g.,

  • Discuss potentially controversial ideas for Wikiversity before implementing them (e.g., find out first - Do we want NOTOC on lots of pages? Do we want x template on lots of pages? Do we want lots of largely blank pages with generic titles?
  • Provide reasonable response to reasonable attempts at discussion
  • Sign posts

What do other think? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 12:22, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Overall, I very much concur with what you have said. (I'm not sure I would agree with the statement "very helpful" about edits from Remi and Emesee. There are many of the same issues with activity from his other accounts [1]) There is no requirement that participants at wv "scoialize" however, this is a collaborative project which requires discussion when there are concerns or differences of opinion about editing. Even simple actions like not signing posts and using multiple accounts often makes following the revision history and changes difficult. These features of the mediawiki software and convention of editing wikimedia project are important to maintain, and develop wikiversity. --mikeu talk 12:33, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

(Possible) community-requested behaviour changes

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  1. Discuss potentially controversial ideas for Wikiversity before implementing them (e.g., find out first - Do we want NOTOC on lots of pages? Do we want x template on lots of pages? Do we want lots of largely blank pages with generic titles?)
  2. Provide reasonable response to reasonable attempts at discussion
  3. Sign posts with user name, date and time (~~~~)
  4. Do not blank content from user talk pages
  5. Edit from a single account (unless there is a compelling reason for using multiple accounts)
  6. Provide meaningful edit summaries

Update

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User talk:Wikademia was protected for one hour after an attempt by me to communicate and explain the reasons for the block which resulted in a large number of nonsense edits to the page by wikademia. See the revision history of the talk page. It is impossible to try to summarize the edits. Talk page editing is to be used by a blocked user to request unblock and discuss the issues that resulted in the blocking.

Also, User:Eme is now blocked for 3 months for abuse of multiple accounts by using an alternate account to evade the block on wikademia.

Due to the large number of accounts that have been used in the past I have requested a checkuser at meta:Steward_requests/Checkuser#wikademia.40en.wikiversity_and_eme.40en.wikiversity

The block of User:Wikademia has been extended to 3 months due to the block evasion.

--mikeu talk 21:44, 12 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Update 2

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Per results of the CU request at Steward requests/Checkuser (perm link) I have indef blocked the following for abuse of multiple accounts:

(date is account creation)

--mikeu talk 00:20, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The following accounts are also now indef blocked, talk page editing is disabled.

--mikeu talk 10:33, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

New discussion

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note: if anyone would like to review the deleted materials (some of the links below are now broken) please make a request to custodians. The deleted page seems to be primarily intended to draw attention to the "big wiki art" and should probably remain deleted to discourage further attempts at disruption. --mikeu talk 13:11, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The activity of Wikademia has led to a number of questions about his edits and the reasoning behind them. See here for some of the recent questions that members of the community have been asking. Very few of these questions have received a response. After the actions that led to the 1 week block a number of custodians tried to communicate with him. He was also offered the chance to post responses to this review on the talk page so that they could be copied here. Here are the diffs, but please note that you will need to repeatedly click (between 10-15 times per diff) on the "Newer edit" button to read the full response due to his editing.

From there the talk devolved into "big wiki art" followed by repeated reformatting of the page. Perhaps he sees his editing of the talk page as some kind of performance art... I really doubt that further attempts to discuss the issues brought up in this review will be productive. --mikeu talk 02:14, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Wikademia has mentioned "big wiki art" on his talk page. (The phrase "big wiki" has been used by him to refer to Wikipedia) The Wikipedia Art controversy was an w:art intervention project which "explicitly invites w:performative utterances in order to change the work itself" that two artists conducted on Wikipedia by creating an article page. See this page on Wikademia's private website: wikademia.org/Wikipedia_Art which I think might be a deleted article from Wikipedia. At Wikipedia Review [2] (login required) emesee states that his reply to SB_Johnny's question is: "I like to think of it as "BIG WIKI ART"" It would seem that he considers his many talk page edits (and his interaction with custodians at wikiversity) to be some sort of w:performance art. The discussion thread at Wikipedia Review also includes a running commentary of his actions at wikiversity, presumbably the "audience" of this performance. There are just too many red flags here to maintain a plausible assumption of good faith. We have spent much time and effort to accomodate and engage in a dialogue with someone who clearly sees disruption of Wikiversity as a game. The rest of his known accounts will be indef blocked, until such time that the community decides that there is a compelling reason for allowing editing from one of his accounts. The talk pages of all of these blocked accounts is protected from editing by him to prevent further abuse. --mikeu talk 10:02, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

User talk:Wikademia has been deleted to prevent this stunt from attracting more attention than it deserves. --mikeu talk 10:53, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid I have to agree that a block was the only option left here. The fundamental problem has been this individual's inability to communicate with other editors, something which is essential on a project like this. His edits have got more and more obtuse and his failure to respond to queries about his contributions makes it no longer possible to allow him to continue to edit. His username is a major part of the problem. It is obvious that this individual has contributed using a large number of different accounts and so it is unclear why he needed to create yet another account under the name Wikademia, that of his own wiki. He's seemed to have described it as a fork of Wikiversity. One has to presume that if he is motivated enough to create a fork, he has become disillusioned by this project. In these circumstances, it is hard to understand why he continues to contribute here and it is inevitable that the community will wonder if it is simply to promote his project whilst causing disruption to this project. This is a conclusion a number of other projects have also come to independently. As mikeu notes, the apparent reference to the Wikipedia Art project only adds the suspicion about his motives. Adambro 12:56, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Likewise, it's difficult for me to see any alternative here to blocking. There has been considerable patience exercised by others with numerous attempts at communication which have been largely ignored and blanked, then followed by escalation rather than improvement in the editing patterns that have been clearly identified as problematic. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 14:00, 13 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I recently noticed a couple of things that I would like to bring to the attention of the community. In this discussion thread from April 2009 the user Wikademia asks how to promote his wikademia site and learns that "content is king." He then goes on to say: "The content that I've added has been from other wikis. What I have added, I have attempted to do so in a meanginful way, and selectively. Much of it I have reformatted fairly substantially to try gear it's presentation a bit different." [3] This seems to run counter to his strategy of creating otherwise empty pages with just a {{whas}} at wikiversity. The thing that really strikes me about that thread, though, is the level of communication. He engages people there in a discussion of how to improve google ranking and develop his site, which is sadly lacking in his wikiversity contributions. He seems to have a habit of not communicating with the communities he is linkspamming, and yet encourages people from outside those communities to defend his activity. [4] We really need to take a closer look at pages that he has bulk created. We should also take a look at how search engines rank sites, to determine if these pages without content are detrimental to people finding our content when searching. From what I have been reading recently I am starting to suspect that a large quantity of pages without content on a server could lower the ranking of our entire site. There are also related issues of navigation and possible user frustration that need to be discussed. --mikeu talk 14:59, 17 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is very interesting to me. The Jade Knight (d'viser) 20:17, 25 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Update 3

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I have temporarily unblocked User:Wikademia's talk page since the user is seeking clarification about the block and inquiring about conditions that could lead to unblocking. -- Jtneill - Talk - c 03:31, 2 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Your efforts here are helpful but it seems to have rapidly become obvious that despite your attempts to discuss the various issues with Wikademia, his inability or unwillingness to do so properly make it impossible for us to consider unblocking him. His behaviour doesn't really demonstrate a strong desire to rejoin the Wikiversity community and work constructively to improve the project. I think the time has come to reinstate the "cannot edit own talk page" block setting. Adambro 20:59, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Adambro. Similar sentiments here - any other comments? -- Jtneill - Talk - c 22:06, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see any pressing need to lock his talk page. What's the harm? --SB_Johnny talk 22:18, 6 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
A blocked user should only be using their talk page to discuss the block. Wikademia's user talk page keeps popping up in recent changes and on mine and presumably others watchlist's due to yet more bizarre edits from him. It is disruptive that we're having to continue to monitor these edits in case he wishes to properly discuss the block only to find it is yet more random nonsense. As I've said, his inability or unwillingness to properly discuss the various issues but continued bizarre edits ([5][6][7][8]) to his talk page don't demonstrate either a strong desire to return to Wikiversity or much possibility that it might be appropriate to allow him to do so. I therefore have reinstated the "cannot edit own talk page" block setting since it is clear that despite the efforts of a number of different users, it is impossible to establish a proper dialogue about the issues which led to the block that might allow it to be removed. Adambro 21:01, 7 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Update 4

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'Nother sock: Dr. Eme‎ (talk • email • contribs • stats • logs • global account). CU is probably a good idea, but I gotta run. --SB_Johnny talk 01:04, 10 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I've just added that one to steward requests. --mikeu talk 11:19, 11 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The results are here. --mikeu talk 12:54, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Query

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When is a Mascot a sockpuppet?

When the original creator, or someone else, takes over the account in order to cause trouble?

Recently JTNeil had another attack that looked very much like Wikademia's signature that came from Jack (russel) the mascot. I note that REMI was quite involved in the formation of this mascot and that as part of the vandalism, Jack has removed all the pictures on the original Jack user page. I think that this draws some interesting attention to the nature of the Mascot contest, and causes me at least to wonder how many other mascots are vulnerable to attacks from the original creator of the User File, and how many of them were created by or usurped by REMI who we now know is the same user as Wikademia.--Graeme E. Smith 00:09, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sockpuppets aren't really a problem as long as they're either identifiable to the "owner" or at least not used abusively to vote-stack or evade blocks.
Jack (talk • email • contribs • stats • logs • global account) doesn't fit Emesee's pattern, at least so far. If you're concerned about one of his edits, probably better to just bring it up with him directly on his talk page. --SB_Johnny talk 00:22, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
ZOmg, nooo. Jack
I've blocked Jack (talk • email • contribs • stats • logs • global account) now. It is either Eme or someone pretending to be so disruptive either way. Adambro 08:34, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]
We should probably have a look at the ranges again to see if we can shut off the tap. --SB_Johnny talk 09:43, 18 August 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See also

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More possible user names

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