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Accuracy Paradox

I just stumbled upon a mention of my user in regards to the Accuracy Paradox article. I had not logged into Wikipedia for years. You suggested the article may have a WP:SYN issue. I looked into what this means and would like to consider improving the article if possible. However, I wonder if additional edits by other users have meanwhile addressed the potential issue? Tilmann.Bruckhaus (talk) 06:40, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

The article needs to be deleted again (as it was when first created), as it has no reliable independent sources. You appear to be engaged in promoting the concept so should not edit the article directly. Guy (Help!) 15:34, 23 November 2018 (UTC)
Goodness, I AfD'd the article, and it turns out to be a copyvio from a book written by a Tilman Bruckhaus. User:Tilmann.Bruckhaus has emailed me claiming to be unable to comment on my Talk page, and asking if I could undelete the article, or advise how to proceed. Thought you should know. -Roxy, the naughty dog. wooF 06:01, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
I'm shocked. Guy (Help!) 09:46, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
I'm confused. Where is the previous deletion? It's not in the log for the accuracy paradox page. My recent deletion for copyvio is the only entry. There's nothing for an article at a different title in Tilmann.Bruckhaus's deleted edit log either. SpinningSpark 13:50, 24 November 2018 (UTC)
It was a VfD, and the OP re-created it a few months later. It seems likely the IP that created the original is also the OP, since the primary source for the term is a book by the OP published through academic vanity press IGI Global. Guy (Help!) 14:15, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Refspam?

Can you please explain this edit? I placed the source there, when I wrote the rest of the article, as can be seen in the revision that I finished up on. How is that REFSPAM? Vanamonde (talk) 23:46, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

See 132.170.194.124 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) - seems that most references to Matusitz were added by SPAs like this. Guy (Help!) 23:51, 27 November 2018 (UTC)
I see. So you would not object to my reverting those edits of yours which removed references I added myself? Vanamonde (talk) 23:53, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

I think that should be fine, but I am suspicious of an author who mainly writes on marketing, but is also referenced on the subjects of terrorism, an obscure musical genre and so on. Guy (Help!) 23:59, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

That's fair. I will do a little more digging, and if the source is not essential, I'll do without. Rowman and Littlefield are usually decent, but there's exceptions to everything, I guess. Vanamonde (talk) 00:06, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
And sometimes vanity spammers are also genuinely valid sources (e.g. Pearce), so it could go either way. Guy (Help!) 00:08, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

Notice of Fringe Theories Noticeboard discussion

Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Fringe theories/Noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.--Shibbolethink ( ) 18:24, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Article quality

Hi JzG I wonder if you can have a chat with Stephencdickson. I just happened to chance upon one of his article. The editor has written a ton of them, but all references are bare urls. Terrible quality article references, in loads of small articles and I think it creating more unnecessary work for other volunteers. I wouldn't mind, but I checked the top 50, with exceptions, all bare urls. There must be a better way that doing it this way. It doesn't take long to create a 4 full ref's for a tiny article. scope_creepTalk 21:40, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

Aspersions 2

I assumed good faith the first time you said you weren't meaning to cast aspersions, but this[1] edit summery is not OK, I have told you that you can raise issues with my editing on my talk page, but instead you accuse me of having a pattern of defending charlatans using your edit summery, where I cannot defend my editing. You added an unsourced negative statment about a living person[2], I removed the unsourced claim[3], and you then restored it with a source[4], which made it no longer a BLP vio. This would have been fine, if it wasn't for your edit summary making it sound like I an trying to defend antivaxers by removing a clear cut BLP vio (and I assume you knew that calling someone anti-vax without a source was a BLP vio, given that you are an experienced admin) Please be more careful with your edit summaries in the future, and as always, if you have a problem with my editing, you can raise the issue on my talk page. Tornado chaser (talk) 01:56, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

You are being paranoid. Defending the indefensible is a tough job, and I respect those who do it. In this case I did not source the statement (I have now). As previously, if you are not well versed in the antivax crankosphere you might think that Tomljenovic is a legitimate researcher, but the evidence very clearly shows that she is an antivaxer working outside her area of expertise in order to produce "evidence" to support her pre-existing beliefs. She has spoken at anti-vaccine conferences and co-authored a number of crappy and sometimes retracted "studies", part of the cottage industry of erecting aluminimum as the new bogeyman to replace mercury now that has been convincingly refuted as having any effect whatsoever related to vaccines. You should follow Science Based Medicine and Skeptical Raptor, both extremely well informed. Example: https://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/christopher-shaw-and-lucija-tomljenovic-anti-vaccine/ - Tomljenovic, Shaw and Exley are all part of this and I believe all are funded by the anti-vax Dwoskin foundation. Guy (Help!) 09:56, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
I do sometimes read SBM and respectful insolence, and while I am not super familiar with Tomljenovic, I knew she was at least quite biased against ajuvanated vaccines. However, I was unaware of a sufficient source to call her antivax in WP's voice. I apologize for sounding a bit pissed off in my original comment, there is another very experienced user who has made repeated assumptions of bad faith towards me and others, complete with threats of sanctions, so I got a bit defensive when I thought you were starting to assume bad faith. I still think I can (and should) remove unsourced negative content about antivaxers, just as I would remove unsourced BLP content on any article, this doesn't mean I am trying to defend antivaxers, just that I am not making exceptions to BLP to criticize them. I still would like you not to misrepresent upholding BLP policy as wanting to help antivaxers, though. Tornado chaser (talk) 15:25, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
It's more than that. She is an antivaxer, plain and simple. Guy (Help!) 00:54, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
Then get a sufficient source and don't accuse me of defending her when all I am doing is removing unsourced material. Tornado chaser (talk) 01:09, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
I did. You reverted. Funny, the more you complain, the more you seem to defend antivax cranks. It's a puzzle. Guy (Help!) 01:11, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
@Tornado chaser: - how about this book she authored? Black Kite (talk) 01:33, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
It sure looks antivax, but you don't need to convince me that she is anti-vax, you need it cite a source, the fact that I think of her as antivax too doesn't make it not OR. Tornado chaser (talk) 01:41, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
Which I did. But you reverted. Three times now. Guy (Help!) 01:45, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
Given that source, you can certainly write it as "Shaw and his colleague, Lucija Tomljenovic, who has authored anti-vaccination literature..." etc. Black Kite (talk) 01:48, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
That would probably solve the BLP issue, but would be quite redundant given that the next sentence talks about her co authoring a paper claiming that aluminum in vaccines is harmful. Tornado chaser (talk) 01:53, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
True, but this is a case of WP:SPADE. Guy (Help!) 01:50, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

An essay doesn't override WP:BLP or WP:NOR, and anyway that essay is talking about labeling editors, not the subjects of articles. Tornado chaser (talk) 01:57, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

And the harder you look, the more likely you are to find some reason to oppose every reality-based edit regarding antivaxers. I am bored with this now, I am off to watch a documentary about Syd Barrett. Guy (Help!) 02:10, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
Your insistence that I must want to defend antivaxers because I remove unsourced material and OR should stop. Tornado chaser (talk) 02:15, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
Your insistence that antivaxers be treated more fairly than everyone else should stop. Now o away or I will replace you with a very small shell script. Guy (Help!) 02:31, 29 November 2018 (UTC)
I find it remarkable, Tornado Chaser, that you are fiercely going after sourcing for anti-vax stuff standing on the altar of sourcing in a BLP, but you ignored the opinion piece supporting promotional content about Shaw, stated in Wikipedia's voice, that I removed here. So your concern is apparently not rigorous application of policy. That is classic advocacy behavior and you are digging a very well-defined hole for yourself. Jytdog (talk) 22:59, 2 December 2018 (UTC)

ICG

Hi JzG, I appreciate your cleanup on the ICG article. Although I would point out, with regards to the line about the Peace award "controversy" since that has implications, a mere one source may be used to dispute it. A controversy generally involves more than one article author complaining about something. Nonetheless I'm also aware of WP:CITEKILL, I shall merge the cites into two references in its place. I'm informing you in advance so we are not in conflict. DA1 (talk) 00:22, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Feel free to edit it. Guy (Help!) 00:24, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
Thanks. Also, I looked into the finances report, and it credits an independent auditor: Gelman, Rosenberg & Freedman. So that should be okay to keep. We shouldn't want to cleanup too much to the point that readers are left uninformed. DA1 (talk) 00:29, 3 December 2018 (UTC)
Did you see my post in the admin noticeboard regarding the article edits? [5] I believe it was being edited and censored by sockpuppets/COI. DA1 (talk) 00:32, 3 December 2018 (UTC)

Administrators' newsletter – December 2018

News and updates for administrators from the past month (November 2018).

Administrator changes

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Obituaries


Electric Outboards Page

Hello,

I noticed you deleted the Electric Outboards page, calling it "Spam-tastic" because it included a handful of current manufacturers. This page now redirects to the "Electric powered" section of the "Outboard motor" page, which contains very little information, some of which is inaccurate or incomplete.

I am not sure I understand what was wrong with my and some of the other previous contributions to this page. Since there are a limited number of manufacturers, I feel it is logical and helpful to the general public to list the specifications of each, and to include an accurate history. Deleting this page for the reason stated is akin to deleting the wikipedia page on cars because it mentions Mercedes-Benz and GM. I put a lot of time and effort into making this page a valuable resource to those who are interesting in powering their boats with electric outboards. I have no malicious intentions, no ties to any manufacturer, and am not a spammer. Wikipedia exists to supply the general public with useful accurate information. Getting rid of this information seems to be an attack on Wikipedias ideology.

If there is a problem with lack of citations, or if anything is actually inaccurate, I would love to get your feedback. I would be glad to work with you to get this page up and running again. I see you have made many positive contributions to Wikipedia and are a much more experienced editor than myself. However I believe your edits on this particular page have erased valuable information that is otherwise not easily accessible. For this reason I feel it is important to reach out to you.

I look forward to your thoughts. Rdoaner (talk) 04:21, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

MoneySavingExpert.com

Hi JzG. You removed many links about this site (link) stating "excessive self-sourcing - site is a native advertising spam bin and this article seems to be abused in order to promote link juice". As a person probably responsible for a lot of these links, I can assure you this is not the case. I created a request to remove the site from the blocklist (link) but as I rarely use Wikipedia these days, not even sure I did it correctly. The reason I created the article for MoneySavingExpert many years ago was that I was a passionate forum user there and I still tweak the article sometimes because changes come up in my RSS feed. But as with a lot of people, I'm a Facebook/Twitter guy these days and don't really give that much thought to "MSE". So I won't really be fighting to much to have them removed from the spam blacklist - They can do that for themselves. If the site is removed from the blacklist, would you restore those citation links? (where appropriate). As I mentioned on the blacklist page, those citations are only there because of malicious edits trying to change things for no apparent reason Aldaden (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:17, 5 December 2018 (UTC)

Around half the sources were the site itself. One or two sources to the site (foundation date for example) are normally acceptable, but that looked more like SEO than anything else. Guy (Help!) 23:27, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
I fear that might be my fault some of the time. Every so often someone would come along and just want to remove something or mess with the article. You can see a small fraction of it in the talk page for the article. As a forum user, I could often correlate - forum arguments, then complaints that people had been expelled from the forum, then coincidentally someone would want to mess with the MSE article. I'd often respond by restoring a bit that had been messed with and adding a citation from the website. I don't know if you're aware of the site. Back in the day it was scrupulus in it's ethics. Now they're owned by MoneySuperMarket but they've made a big thing about keeping their ethics moneysavingexpert.com/site/moneysavingexpert-finance/. I'd be very suprised if they've gone all blackhat. I created the article when it was a little site and I liked it so much I wanted it to succeed. I'm trying to remind myself now that they're part of a big company now and they can fight for themselves. Still have a soft spot for them tho Aldaden (talk) 23:42, 5 December 2018 (UTC)
I can tell it was written by a fan. It was, sadly, a little too obvious. Guy (Help!) 00:13, 6 December 2018 (UTC)
Actually I'm responsible for very little of the current article. It has many fans. Forum currently has 1.8 million members. The ones that aren't angry with the site, as mentioned, come over and try to put how wonderful the site is without citation. Which I may have "fixed" with citation from site. Can't remember if I did that once or a few times. Would hate for it to be called a spam site because of my bad. Aldaden (talk) 00:19, 6 December 2018 (UTC)

Journal check, please

Environmental Health Perspectives Atsme✍🏻📧 19:35, 8 December 2018 (UTC)

@Atsme:, a horrible article on a decent looking journal. It is published with support from NIH and has a fair IF. Guy (Help!) 23:12, 8 December 2018 (UTC)
Well, maybe now that you've trimmed it down, some academic editors will do a better job expanding it. It seemed worthy to me considering EHP’s 5-Year JIF is 9.87 per Clarivate Analytics. From what I'm understanding about JIF, the highest you can go is 10, isn't it? Atsme✍🏻📧 02:11, 9 December 2018 (UTC)
Yes. The issue is that journals in some niches will attract more citations irrespective of merit, but in this case it does look OK. But the article was almost exclusively self-sourced. Guy (Help!) 09:37, 9 December 2018 (UTC)

Unfulfilled - What the heck?

Guy, I understand you are trying to assist with what appears to be an edit war, but you are way off base for completely blanking the entire episode summary of this episode Unfulfilled. Per WP:TV and WP:MOSTV the airing of the episode itself is sufficient source itself for the basis of a plot review. Your removal of the content that has been hardly worked on by myself and other editors is completely irresponsible. If your sole objection is to the Forbes source (and I'd love to see some proof that Forbes is not a WP:RS), it can easily be replaced with one of the other sources in the article which all say the same thing as the Forbes source did. Please restore the content. Thank you. - SanAnMan (talk) 14:34, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

The sources are not reliable. There's a Forbes contributor blog, J. Random Website, and most of it had no source at all. Guy (Help!) 15:14, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
Again, Guy, you're missing the main point. Any episode recap uses the airing of the episode itself as the source of the recap. This is allowed per WP:TV and WP:MOSTV. If not, there would be no episode recaps whatsoever on any television episode. Stop and take a look at each and every episode of this season of South Park just for an example. This has been done this way for years, not just on this episode, but every single article that has a recap of the episode. Your blanking of the content is unjustified. Again, the Forbes article being used as a source can be easily replaced, but the content is independently written and needs to be reinstated. - SanAnMan (talk) 15:18, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
You might want to read WP:V, WP:RS and also in this case WP:BLP. Watching TV shows and summarising the plot might be common, and might be approved by the subset of editors that watch TV shows and summarise the plot, but it's not policy. Guy (Help!) 15:20, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
You might want to read MOS:TVPLOT, "Plot summaries may be sourced from the works themselves, as long as only basic descriptions are given", and per WP:PRIMARY, the existence of the television episode itself suffices as a primary source. If you're going to blank this episode summary, you might as well go out and blank each and every single episode summary ever written. - SanAnMan (talk) 15:53, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
Oh, and as for WP:BLP, since this episode isn't about an actual living person, but a fictional parody of said person, that policy doesn't even come close to applying. Maybe if you watched the episode in question you might have realized this. Every episode of South Park includes the disclaimer "All characters and events in this show - even those based on real people - are entirely fictional." Waiting on a response. - SanAnMan (talk) 20:04, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
MoS pages are written by small cliques of similarly interested editors. Policy has a vastly broader consensus. MoS cannot override policy, however much the small cliques might wish otherwise. Guy (Help!) 22:22, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
It is becoming apparent that you are not budging. Consider this issue elevated to ANI. - SanAnMan (talk) 22:55, 10 December 2018 (UTC)
Astoundingly, that's where I found it in the first place. Guy (Help!) 23:03, 10 December 2018 (UTC)

Could you keep an eye on ...

Could you keep an eye on User:Jytdog? Non-admins are edit-warring to place and keep this template on his userpage (which was never placed by any Arb or admin): [6]. -- Softlavender (talk) 08:53, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Might be an idea to protect the page to stop it becoming a locus of dispute? Alexbrn (talk) 08:58, 11 December 2018 (UTC)
Handled (locked) by DeltaQuad. Never mind. Softlavender (talk) 09:03, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

My bad, I guess I was tired because I thought you just removed the {{Citation needed}} while keeping the unsourced statement . The RedBurn (ϕ) 09:15, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

@The RedBurn: No harm no foul. Guy (Help!) 09:27, 11 December 2018 (UTC)