Wikimedia Forum/Archives/2009-12

removing abusive user from English Wiktionary

The following discussion is closed.

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The user is Mr Ivan Štambuk, who has engaged in trolling, extreme personal abuse, and vandalism across several different projects and over a period of several years. Despite repeated blocks on various projects he has shown no sign whatsoever of modifying his offensive behaviour.

He was at one point blocked for a year in the Croatian wikipedia, and has been warned and blocked numerous times, essentially always for his vicious personal abuse of anyone disagreeing with him.

On being blocked in the Croatian wiktionary in February, he set about deleting Croatian from the English wiktionary, under the extreme POV idea of merging the language into "Serbo-Croatian". (about the subject in his own words)

That was voted on, and firmly rejected by the community; he continued (and continues) to delete Croatian regardless. Having been defeated in the vote, he then set about modifying the voting eligibility, that was also rejected. He then returned to the Croatian wikipedia, where he was fairly promptly blocked, this time permanently, for his continued personal abuse and threats.

Unfortunately, he was granted sysop status on the en.wikt some time ago, before we were aware of his history on the Croatian projects. He now repeatedly mis-uses that status to block those who disagree with him.

Would a steward please remove his "sysop flag" on en.wikt, so that his continuing misbehaviour can be addressed?

Thank you, Robert Ullmann 15:45, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

(just a note on something you will probably discover here quite promptly: Mr Štambuk's usual response is to write pages and pages of vitriolic attacks, in the expectation that everyone will stop reading or simply not want to get involved; intimidation does work. My apologies for the nastiness he will inevitably reply with. And, like any other vicious schoolyard bully, when someone stands up to him, he immediately starts whining that he is the victim.) Robert Ullmann 15:45, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

• I support this assessment of fact on en.Wiktionary. There are additional factors - one of which may mitigate - but this is not the venue to argue them. - Amgine/^{meta wikt wnews blog wmf-blog goog news} 16:29, 4 November 2009 (UTC)
• Support; not a regular user at en.wikt, but have been following the situation for a while and I'm familiar with the user's approach. Although a great contributor, he proved on countless occasions his unwillingness to consider opinions of others, and shouldn't continue to abuse his sysop status. — Krstulović 17:20, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I do rather think that this is not the right place to discuss the admin removal on a other wiki, the wiki where you are talking about has his own community and therefore its a community decision, my best guess is that you need to start a desysop vote on that wiki and than stewards can act on it, this vote doesn't mean a thing because it isn't in the right place.

There has been a desysop before and I think that is the road you must follow also. Huib talk 17:27, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, this should take place locally, or at least in a request for comments format. A vote like this means nothing. Majorly talk 17:28, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

• Comment (ec x 2) Not sure why this has turned into a vote. Surely issues like this should be discussed locally. Has that been attempted? If such attempts have been disrupted by this user then I could appreciate why this would now be the appropriate venue. Is this the case though? Can multiple clear examples of this user misusing their admin rights be provided? Adambro 17:31, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

This is (by plan) turning to a vote-like harangue because Ullmann's despicable trolling cannot pass on Wiktionary, since the regulars there (and I mean real regulars, not canvassed self-proclaimed "regulars" like Krstulović above :) are already familiar with the history of his psychotic behavior, and tolerate it simply because we don't want to lose the services of bots that he provides. Ullmann's crusade against me lasts for the last several months, and includes (among other things) abusive blogposts (where I've been called names such as "genocidal Serb nationalist" - quite an epithet for a Croat! ^_^), and defamatory e-mails to the Wikimedia Board as well as the entire Wiktionary community person by person. Ullmann very well knows that this type of formal vote against me on the local-community scale would fail miserably, so he must "simulate" the vote here by means of his blindly-supporting puppets._{And in case someone's interested in the history of my blocks on Croatian Nazi-pedia a few years back: these were maliciously organized by several hardline nationalist admins, all of which are now desysoped and blocked by the local ArbCom for their abusive behaviour. Ever since I've "migrated" to English-language wikiprojects, I had no problems of such kind, but it's amusing to observe the same pattern of "organized hatred" against me reoccurring as embodied by Ullmann. Everyone: please simply ignore this "problem" (or sit back and enjoy the show :)} --Ivan Štambuk 06:36, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Are you trying to say that most Croats support you? Looks like it to me, since their opposition has been lackluster.--Pepsi Lite 08:04, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Please note that I was not intending to start a "vote" here. Voting on a de-sysop is not appropriate in any case, on any level. It would be disruptive and used as an opportunity for personal attacks.

(people on the en.wikt have run de-sysop "votes" on two occasions, the first a silly spat between two editors who are friends, the latter, fairly recently, a pointless vote on a user agreement to be de-sysopped that could have and should have gone directly to Steward requests/Permissions. Apparently a steward told them to go to a local process; but voting is not a good idea. There is no policy on such "votes".)

Larger projects have ArbComs, that make decisions like this for cause, not as some kind of poll. That is the only appropriate basis for a de-sysop, not that someone has become un-popular, or has a "cabal" against them, or vice versa, is destructive and abusive but has gullible support or a cabal. The English Wikipedia, properly, does not conduct votes on de-sysop, only on sysop (RfA).

The English Wiktionary has not been big enough to require an ArbCom, and really will not be for a while. The decision to remove a sysop for cause must therefore go to the Stewards or some other meta or Foundation procedure. (Ask youself, what would happen on a project with perhaps 10 users, with 3 or 4 active, and one that has a sysop flag and is trolling? Would it be left to a "community decision? What "community"? The troll and a friend or two? ;-)

Also, one only need to look at his response above with some perspective to see the problem, while being seriously abusive, he sees himself as a victim. In fact he was blocked repeatedly for abuse, and while some were years ago, the most recent was two months ago, on hr.wp (the "Croatian Nazi-Pedia"), permanently, for making threats. The fact is he got into serious trouble several independent times on the Croatian projects, was blocked by a number of different people at times spanning several years, and then came to the en.wikt and got himself in trouble again for the same kind of behaviour. The common element to all of the events is his behaviour.

As noted above, when last blocked on the hr.wikt, he came back to the en.wikt, started a proposal to delete Croatian from the en.wikt on an extreme political POV basis diametrically opposed to the positions he had taken up until 3 months before, and began deleting sections; he persisted during the policy vote, and persisted after the proposal was rejected. This is simple trolling. He was blocked twice recently, for very short times (1 day), the second time un-blocking himself with the comment "LoL". Note his comment: "enjoy the show" is exactly what a troll wants, and thrives on; he is clearly enjoying the damage he is doing, both to content and to the community. Robert Ullmann 10:01, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

For a brief moment I actually considered replying to your hideous trolling, point by point, but the fresh reminiscence of countless hours wasted elsewhere in futile efforts to educate you and other monolingual Americans on what my mother tongue "is" and "isn't", as well as to refute your cheap lies and chop-logic non-sequiturs to the general-readers public quickly overwhelmed me, averting me from the needlessly wasteful activity.

Look Ullmann: stewards have no power to exercise when the local community is large enough. Out of 30-40 relatively active Wiktionary admins the overwhelming majority (i.e. everyone excluding you, Amgine and perhaps some other puppet of yours) would be against your hateful cause to desysop me for being "abusive troll". By transferring the discussion here, you won't accomplish anything but make even more people aware of what kind of person and what your true motives really are. Folks here are more like the last commentator on the DailyKos post of yours, the ones who click on links and like to check out "facts" for themselves before making hasty judgments, only to be shocked in horror when realizing what BS they've just been maliciously served.

You should really be doing something more constructively instead of orchestrating "wiki-conspiracies" and playing psychological games which you cannot win. I really hope that I won't need to reply here any more. --Ivan Štambuk 04:39, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Well, it proved that Robert Ullmann was wright.
But, admins on Meta have missed one thing.
Ivan Štambuk showed offensive behaviour even here, on the Meta. So this isn't "local problem of en.wictionary" anymore.
"Croatian Nazi-pedia" [1] (posted Nov 5 2009) ???
Admins on Meta, where are you? Has anyone sanctioned him because of that etiquetting[2]? Not a single warning on his talkpage on Meta because of Štambuk's abusive language (last message on his talkpage is from Feb 6, 2009)!
That's very rude way of defamating of a whole community. This is not funny and this kind of language is a not discussion, but punching, punching below the belt. That's dirty talk. That kind of expressing does not belong to this project.
Regarding hr.wiki, you were blocked because of personal attacks, harassment, wikihounding, trolling, explicit provocations, disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point, disrupting of Wikipedia generally, persistence in personal attacks after being explicitly warned "don't do that", deleting of admin's warnings etc..hr:Razgovor sa suradnikom:Ivan Štambuk/Arhiv4
Now see how it's on the project where such person has admin powers. Kubura 22:04, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Note that Mr. Štambuk continues to vandalize entries (wikt:en:ono, this edit) today in direct and knowing contravention of the community vote in July. The usual action is to block repeat vandals, but since he will instantly un-block himself and continue, timely steward action is required in this case. Robert Ullmann 13:59, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

What nonsense :D Let's not even start to talk about Ullmann's recruiting users from other wikitionaries to manipulate the outcome of the vote that this entire discussion stems from. Opiaterein 14:27, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

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This is not a matter relevant here. Discussion can take place on the local wiki(s) involved. There is nothing the community at Meta can or will do to resolve the issues at this point.  — Mike.lifeguard | ^@en.wb 14:32, 12 December 2009 (UTC)

Project growth stats

How does one pull up data on the growth of a WMF project? Am looking for 12 or 18 month growth stats on the Turkish Wikipedia, in absolute and relative terms. They happen to have the second largest Wikipedia featured picture program (after en:wiki, not counting Commons), but are currently 19th overall in terms of total articles. Am seeking data to correlate whether that language experienced unusually strong article growth as their FP program expanded. Assistance welcomed with fact gathering. Durova 23:22, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

There's the standard wikistat charts - http://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/ChartsWikipediaTR.htm Bawolff 03:41, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Proposal: Distributed backup & the Safety of Wikimedia Commons' information

Hello, after reading several reports about really obscure and illegal confiscation of data to some important websites (Most notably, Indymedia), and I am a little worried about the safety of Wikimedia content. I bet that you have backup copies, but do you have International backup copies in case of a local or National catastrophe?

Furthermore, I am not just writing to note my concern and charge you with all of the weight and responsibility, but to make a proposal as well. I propose a distributed backup copy of Wikimedia that everyone can download to make local backup copies of parts or the totality of the Wikimedia commons sites and thus ensure the perpetuality of Wikimedia. I understand that the total amount of data is enormous and that content is dynamic, that is why the distributed copy would be based on one of your internal backups and available in sections. I am willing to buy a few more disks to backup Wikipedia and many others will certainly will as well. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Tauiris Tauiris 19:01, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Most data is backed up in both Florida and the Netherlands, so yes there is an international backup copy for most things. Dragons flight 01:41, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

- Oh! that's great to know, but what about allowing people to make local copies or mirrors of Wikipedia articles? if not the server software, just the articles in latex form or html probably, and in a monthly rate or even every 6 months ty. Tauiris 00:00, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

You can: http://dumps.wikimedia.org (If your google, you'll find lots of people mirroring wikipedia) Bawolff 03:38, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Translation update

Can someone please update the nds-nl translation for the sitenotice? Since the heading is still in "Wikipedia Forever. Our shared knowledge. Our shared treasure. Help us protect it." is still in English after a couple of weeks. Servien 16:55, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

Wiktionary/logo/refresh/voting/tally

Can someone please unprotect this page, for those users who don't have SUL, making them wait four days before being able to contribute to a discussion that is relevant to them is draconian. Conrad.Irwin 00:22, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

The page was semi-protected after an appeal to troll the vote appeared on 4chan (see the page history, see also here). I'm sorry, but we just can't have that. Regards, Wutsje 00:28, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Given that only one of the stream of votes was actually valid (i.e. with both boxes filled in) I see no cause for alarm at all. I have added another hat-note instructing people to register their votes on the talk page. Conrad.Irwin 01:09, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

CentralNotice/Global sysops and Global sysops/Vote/Introduction

The vote for the global sysops proposal is to begin on 1 January. Before then, we need these two pages to be translated into as many languages as is possible. I understand that this is not the usual forum for this kind of thing, but I figured it would attract the necessary attention. —Anonymous Dissident^Talk 13:09, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Navigation

Hi, I've just taken a plunge into MediaWiki. And I'm trying to get that {{RightTOC}} happening on a page, but it is not happening. Not knowing anything about the language here, why is this not showing on a page as a menu on the right hand side based on the Heading? When I try it on my pages it just comes up as Template:RightTOC

You need to copy the page Template:RightTOC to your wiki. iAlex 16:10, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Letras griegas

Hola a todos: necesito ayuda para llevar adelante un proyecto en Wikilibros y no dispongo del alfabeto griego arcaico de que ES NECESARIO PARA ESTE. No tengo los Conocimientos técnicos que se precisan para traer las herramientas al sitio. ¿Podria alguien indicarme la forma de proveerme de ese material para llevar adelante mi proyecto? De antemano, muchas gracias. - Virginia 00:04, 1 de diciembre de 2009 (UTC)

Hola, ¿no te sirve el alfabeto griego moderno? Si editas una página en Wikibooks en español, te ha de aparecer abajo (bajo el botón "Grabar la página") a la izquierda un desplegable con idiomas, y entre los juegos de caracteres disponibles hay uno de nombre "Griego (moderno)". Si lo escoges, puedes pulsar sobre las letras que aparecerán. Saludos. -Aleator (talk) 19:02, 31 December 2009 (UTC)