Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Sfan00 IMG

The following discussion is an archived record of a user conduct request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.

A summary of the debate may be found at the bottom of the page.

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Sfan00 IMG (talk · contribs · logs)

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Statement of the dispute

Sfan00 IMG (talk · contribs) is an alternate account of ShakespeareFan00 (talk · contribs). The account is acknowledged to exist for the editor's main purpose, that of policing licensing issues on images. They operate on :en:, sometimes at Commons.

Many users have expressed the same issue, over a protracted period (see talk:). The account's edits (for all practical purposes) are to tag images for deletion, either by speedy deletion, PUF or FfD. Deletion is triggered if the image's licensing, sourcing or other technical metadata is inadequate, where an extremely broad interpretation is being taken of "inadequate". The specific concerns are these:

These deletions are "trigger happy". The slightest issue gives rise to deletion, even if it as minor as an obvious typo in a template name etc. The time given to consideration of each image is absolutely minimal.
The account makes no attempt to ever fix such an issue, merely to see deletion as the only possible action.
The account places no value on content as content. No matter how significant the value of an image, no attempt is made to preserve it, only to delete.
The concern has been expressed by a number of independent editors that this is actually an undisclosed 'bot account. This has been denied by the operator of the account. The sustained editing rate is quite remarkably rapid and sustained over a day, such that it stretches credibility to believe a human editor is actually capable of doing this. The operator of this account has also claimed to be using Twinkle, which might explain the rate, but not the duration.

Desired outcome

No-one is claiming that images should not be licensed according to our standards, or even that many of the images identified here do not warrant their inevitable deletion. The two changes in behaviour that are desired are these:

"Better consideration" is given to tagging any images. This is recognised to be a somewhat vague requirement and suggestions are welcomed as to its detail. A withdrawal of rights to Twinkle may be in order?

No further images should be tagged for automatic deletion, i.e. by speedy deletion (which happens automatically after 7 days) rather than PUF or FfD where there would at least be some opportunity for overview by other editors before deletion. This requirement is a stringent imposition upon an editor, but it has the advantage of clarity (unlike the first) and the nominator's view is that the past behaviour of this account is such that it can no longer justify such large and problematic use of automatic deletion.

As a further point, the editor should consider reducing their work rate, simply for the sake of their own health!

Description

The issue and its scale is best depicted by reference to the account's talk: and contributions history Sfan00 IMG (talk · contribs)

The most recent thread User_talk:Sfan00_IMG#This_is_not_just_craziness_but_insanity re-states the issues in some detail.

One of the biggest issues is in relation to older images, where their uploaders are no longer active. This is particularly an issue where images need minor fixup, but are tagged for speedy deletion. They are then deleted automatically, as no currently active editor gets to see their warning notification. As an example, see User_talk:Sfan00_IMG#Several images set for "speedy deletion" contributed by an editor who retired over a year ago. Perhaps the worst aspect of that comment is the patronising dismissal of the issue, when asked to hold off on the work of a particular editor with large and valuable contributions: "I also would like to think that I don't show any bias in what gets tagged. Thusly all I can say is good luck in fixing up the images tagged :)" I do not regard such a clear invocation of WP:SEP to be acceptable, even when it has a cute little smiley on the end to make it all better.

Evidence of disputed behavior

CSD of File:Group Captain Percy Charles Pickard.jpg, a 2005 upload with a FUR compliant with past standards, but in need of a re-filing exercise to meet modern standards. A very common issue. This is also a non-trivial file, a portrait of a subject notable on several grounds.
CSD as di-no license, on a scanned title page of what is obviously a a 300 year old book, described as such. The image was uploaded in 2005 (and used at DYK then), and its metadata meets the standards of 2005, but not 2010. Action is indeed needed, but not deletion. This engendered the response here User_talk:Sfan00_IMG#More care required, and one of Sfan's stock responses, "I call them as I see them. Thanks for letting me know it's PD though."
CSD as di-no license, owing to a simple typo in the template of {{PDiself}} rather than {{PD-self}}
File:Introduction2003albumcover.jpg gave rise to tagging with {{bsr}} and the interesting exchange here: User_talk:Sfan00_IMG#Better source request for File:Introduction2003albumcover.jpg in which we learn that, "A Full URL is one that ends up in a path+ filename. e.g http://somewebsite.com/index.htm" and that a URL of http://www.alexparks.com alone is apparently not acceptable as a source URL. WP:COMPETENCE would apply.
(RexxS:) User talk:Geogre#File source problem with File:Slaveship.JPG - Geogre no longer edits, so it was fortunate that I spotted the CSD notification and was able to fix the lack of source tag (although the image itself is marked with the source).
(RexxS:) User talk:Geogre#File:Maddog.jpg missing description details - two weeks later, problem solved with a few minutes googling. I actually thought at that point we were dealing with a bot.
(RexxS) User talk:Geogre#File copyright problem with File:Hutchenson-witch.jpg - image of a page from book published 1718. Simply can't be anything other than public domain. My exasperated complaint at User talk:Sfan00 IMG#More care required refers, including the "I call them as I see them" response.

Applicable policies and guidelines

The issue here is less about policy and more about good practice, particularly the recognition of others' role in a group project.

The account's edits are slavishly compliant with a literal-minded interpretation of policy. However they completely fail to recognise the difference betweeen actions that are merely correct and those that are also useful. In most cases there are several actions open, all compliant with policy, and some more useful to the encyclopedic goal than others. This account chooses prompt deletion over all else.

Evidence of trying to resolve the dispute

My interaction with this account began, I think, in October with this issue User talk:ShakespeareFan00/Sfan00 IMG/Archive7#File:Ggenov.jpg. Despite attempting to encourage the account operator to resolve simple issues with obvious resolutions WP:BEFORE deletion, there was no recognition that there was even a problem. Two biographical images, both uploaded years ago and with FUR formats not meeting current practice were tagged for speedy deletion. I FURed File:Ggenov.jpg File:Group Captain Percy Charles Pickard.jpg myself, as their original uploaders were no longer active. A number of other Russian actor portraits from the same uploader were deleted, on the same basis.

Evidence of failing to resolve the dispute

There is little evidence of even a discussion or recognition of the issue, let alone any change in behaviour. The best evidence of continuation is the continued stream of recent complaint at User_talk:Sfan00_IMG.

(RexxS:) My exasperated complaint at User talk:Sfan00 IMG#More care required is met with the "I call them as I see them" response. More in the User talk:Sfan00 IMG#This is not just craziness but insanity section.

Today (after notification of the RFC/U) we see some more edits, and a few with edit summaries like this:

This is a failure to understand the real issue, and an attempt to pass the buck onto this "vocal minority" who are implied to be opposing policy - so obviously indefensible, and of course we should never act to "appease" against licensing policy. Andy Dingley (talk) 13:27, 13 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Users certifying the basis for this dispute

{Users who tried and failed to resolve the dispute}

I endorse this dispute, as described, and the attempts made by myself and others to start some discussion towards resolving it. Andy Dingley (talk) 02:38, 13 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I certify this RfC as described by the originator, and have added a sample of my own evidence with the prefix (RexxS:) --RexxS (talk) 03:25, 13 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Other users who endorse this summary

Response

This is a summary written by the user whose conduct is disputed, or by other users who think that the dispute is unjustified and that the above summary is biased or incomplete. Users signing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Outside Views") should not edit the "Response" section.

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Actions already undertaken

De-install TWINKLE and other deletion scripts - DONE
Review recent di-no license tags - In progress

Users who endorse this summary:

Sfan00 IMG (talk) 14:18, 13 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Outside view

This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Response") should not edit the "Outside Views" section, except to endorse an outside view.

Outside view by Fut.Perf.

I must agree there are a couple of cases in the list cited above that are clearly suboptimal. In particular, one would wish Sfan would consistently take the time to consider things like simple typos or obvious PD-old status. On the other hand, it is a fact that:

The number of images that require constant review, and the number of images that are genuinely problematic, are huge.
Mass-reviewing of images is a necessary but extremely wearisome task.
If an editor regularly undertakes this task, it is unfortunate but probably unavoidable that he will occasionally make rash or otherwise less-than-perfectly considered decisions.
Fortunately, all the tagging he does comes with the additional security net of at least one further pair of eyes checking on each case before deletion actually happens, that of the reviewing admin. (I'd be interested in seeing evidence of cases where an admin failed to understand such a case and a poor tag actually led to avoidable deletions of valuable content.) The statement in the case description above that "deletion happens automatically after 7 days" is just wrong.
If these are all the problematic cases that were found recently, compared to the overall volume of edits he makes, I would still consider this as within the bounds of a reasonable and acceptable error rate. The overall benefit of the many justified taggings, in my view, far outweighs the problems here, so on the whole I will thank Sfan for their valuable work.

There are also aspects of the complaints above that I find objectively unjustified. In particular, it is unreasonable to demand of an image patroller that they should always check on the activity status of old contributors, or refrain from tagging old images whose uploaders are no longer active. The process is clearly set out in our rules: for certain issues, you need to notify the uploader, period. If the uploader is no longer around, that's really just that, bad luck. Normally, the bot/twinkle system ought to make sure that notifications will appear also on the article pages relevant to each image, so one hopes that editors interested in the topic will still be able to review things. But we cannot change the fact that some old content simply is no longer actively watched and maintained, and that's not the fault of whoever does the reviewing. Sfan works by the rules here; if you don't like it, you need to change WP:CSD (but I don't see anybody has a recipe for that).

Andy Dingley's complaint about Sfan's tagging of File:Ggenov.jpg is also not convincing. The problem with the missing FUR on that image was not simply some paper work that Sfan could simply have carried out himself. A justification for keeping this non-free image in addition to a free one that was already in the article was, to say the least, far from trivial. Only somebody with substantial knowledge about the topic could come up with such a rationale (and I'll leave it open if the rationale added by A.D. is actually successful; I'm not quite convinced personally). Documenting such a justification is plainly the responsibility of the uploaders or other authors interested in the article; that's why we have the FUR rules in the first place. Shifting the responsibility to the reviewer, as A.D. is trying to do here, is not reasonable.

Fut.Perf. ☼ 15:45, 13 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Black Kite (t) (c) 18:59, 13 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Barking Fish 20:33, 13 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
FASTILY ^(TALK) 23:48, 13 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
J Milburn (talk) 22:46, 14 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. If checking a lot files in a row makes you make more mistake then a short break would be wise. --MGA73 (talk) 16:16, 15 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
--Hammersoft (talk) 22:57, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Jafeluv (talk) 10:35, 26 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Very encouraged by SFan's response. This RFC looks like it's having a good result. --GRuban (talk) 20:09, 28 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 17:55, 29 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Logan _Talk ^{Contributions} 22:03, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Courcelles 20:17, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Outside view by Black Kite

Oh look, another complaint about NFCC enforcement. Oddly enough, editors are human, they make the odd mistake. Apparently I've even done that a few times. Even more oddly, I've never seen an RFCU on any of the editors - they know who they are, and so do I - who make the careers of those trying to make Wikipedia an actual "Free Encyclopedia" so difficult, and are personally responsible for the fact that there are so few editors willing to take on the task. Plus ca change. As for this RfCU, inevitably it is addressing a minor problem that is effectively being caused by a major editing issue by others. Black Kite (t) (c) 18:58, 13 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Users who endorse this summary:

Black Kite (t) (c) 18:58, 13 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Barking Fish 20:33, 13 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
FASTILY ^(TALK) 23:47, 13 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
J Milburn (talk) 22:46, 14 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Nyttend (talk) 15:00, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
--Hammersoft (talk) 22:57, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Outside view by Hammersoft

A few issues:

It's interesting to first note that the editors bringing this RfC have failed to identify any policies or even guidelines that Sfan00 IMG is violating.
Yet another claim being made this editor is a bot. Lots of people have attempted to make that claim, and it's never stuck. Either produce actual evidence to that effect rather than vague accusations, or drop it.
I've reviewed some of the supposedly "slavish" and "literal minded" taggings done, as noted above and among the ones I can actually see the diffs on, I'm not finding much that is probematic. [1]? It really is missing a rationale. [2]? It really is missing a license. "Free to use" is meaningless. It could be "free to use (on Wikipedia)" which would make it a candidate for speedy deletion under CSD F3. We don't know, because the uploader hasn't provided a valid license, and User talk:Atreidis was notified of this by Sfan. And on and on.

I'm NOT seeing a problem here. No actual assertion of any policy violations. No actual assertion of improper behavior. Just vague accusations of being a bot, vague accusations of being "literal minded" and "slavish".

Users who endorse this summary:

--Hammersoft (talk) 22:56, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
J Milburn (talk) 00:47, 26 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
FASTILY ^(TALK) 10:10, 26 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
--Barking Fish 19:23, 29 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Logan _Talk ^{Contributions} 22:02, 31 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Outside view by Hammersoft regarding bot accusations

There's an accusation in this RfC that Sfan00 IMG is an undeclared bot. This accusation has been made before (examples: 1, 2, 3) to WP:AN/I. Plenty of administrators have reviewed his contributions and patterns with an eye towards determining if this account is a bot. To date, none of those reviews have ever concluded this editor is a bot. Nevertheless, to put hard data to work here; I analyzed Sfan00 IMG's contributions from early December to now. My criteria for finding large sets of rapid edits was: If the prior edit was performed less than two minutes before the current edit, increment group counter by one, else reset to one and start counting again. Here's what I found.

There's no question that the editor is capable of producing a high volume of edits. The largest set was 89 edits performed from 1/6/11 12:28 to 1/6/11 12:57 (29 minutes). The editing rate was 3.07 edits a minute. Hardly bot like. #2 was for 49 edits across 15 minutes beginning 1/7/11 11:51. Rate: 3.27 per minute. #3, 43 edits in 19 minutes: 2.26 per minute. Indeed the average number of edits per any group of edits with more than 9 edits in the group was 2.35 edits per minute, and the maximum was a whopping __4__ edits per minute.

Apparently Sfan is using Twinkle. I don't. I have no automated scripts and I sure as hell am not a bot. Yet, I'm capable of banging a bunch of edits in small time frames, and have done so on multiple, multiple occasions. Have a look here, specifically my edits from 1/24/11 20:36 to 20:42. 6 minutes, 21 edits, 3.5 per minute - which far exceeds what Sfan00 has cranked out on average. Or look at this set, specifically 1/19/11 20:29; 15 edits in a minute by me (and this is not isolated).

If you're going to bring accusations of Sfan00 IMG being a bot, you'd better bring a hell of a lot more than vague accusations. The data does not bear you out.

Users who endorse this summary:

--Hammersoft (talk) 23:53, 25 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
--Andy Dingley (talk) 00:36, 26 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
FASTILY ^(TALK) 10:10, 26 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Haven't checked the actual numbers myself, but this has been my impression whenever the concerns above have come up. Jafeluv (talk) 10:40, 26 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
--Barking Fish 19:24, 29 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
--MGA73 (talk) 10:52, 1 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Outside view by ExampleUsername

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Summary

Closed per the motion to close and due to inactivity. Ncmvocalist (talk) 04:07, 10 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.