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Requests for comment/Spam and admin abuse on yuewiki 粵文維基百科虛假文章及管理員濫用權力問題

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The following request for comments is closed. Closing as inactive. No comments since November 2020. --Mykola 14:56, 6 August 2022 (UTC)[reply]

English / 粵文 / 中文

Please leave your comments only in the Discussion section.

Wiki pages

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Users involved

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There is also a gang that would lobby and rally with each other, but I might not name them as long as they stay out of this spam scandal.--01:48, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Why is it spam?

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Page 54299 is allegedly a romanisation scheme of the Cantonese language, which was created by a Simon Fraser University student. All sources are posts on an internet forum http://bbs.cantonese.asia/ .

But the truth is, the creator of the page, Cedric tsan cantonais, is the exact same person behind those forum posts. This user initially spammed six wikipedias (de, en, fr, yue, zh, and zh-classical) with his own invention. By the time I found out this sham, however, only the yuewiki version was not deleted yet.

Links to deletion logs or discussions for this spam:

  1. de:WP:Löschkandidaten/24._April_2010#Neufranzösische_Latinisierung_(gelöscht)
  2. en:New-French Latinisation
  3. fr:Discussion:Système Nouvelle-France de latinisation du cantonais/Suppression
  4. zh:WP:頁面存廢討論/記錄/2012/07/02#新法蘭西粵語拼音方案 https://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:%E6%97%A5%E5%BF%97&page=%E6%96%B0%E6%B3%95%E8%98%AD%E8%A5%BF%E7%B2%B5%E8%AA%9E%E6%8B%BC%E9%9F%B3%E6%96%B9%E6%A1%88
  5. zh-classical:新法蘭西粵語拼音方案

The subject is an unpublished invention. It is anything but encyclopaedic material. Flooding it onto six wikipedias is blatant self promotion. It is therefore spam.

This spam is also all over the place on https://yue.wiktionary.org/ .--01:48, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Admin abuse

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Timeline of events:

It should be noted that yuewiki admins have often failed to carry out necessary maintenance work: yue:Wikipedia:城市論壇_(雜項)/歸檔/2019年12月#Long-term_sysop_negligence.--01:48, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

Conclusion

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By now, I have exhausted all local means to remove this spam. A major reason that my attempts failed is that Deryck Chan (1) colluded with the spammer Cedric tsan cantonais to deleted my AN reports such that the truth behind the spam was kept secret from other users; (2) manipulated the AfD process to keep the spam; (3) removed AfD review request.

This scandal also shows that yuewiki fails to govern itself as yuewiki admins collectively ignore the complaints, and yuewiki users are either too frightened from admin threats or too inactive as a whole to respond to any complaints.

As such, I file this complaint here so that more users be made aware of these detrimental problems that plague yuewiki.--Roy17 (talk) 01:48, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Personal notes:

Wikipedia is built by numerous volunteers who care about its quality. It earns its reputation as it upholds verifiability as its core values. But there're always those people who try profiteering from this and use it for self-promotion, because they know Google etc. will soon pick it up and re-publish their invention everywhere online. How disgusting and disgraceful!

However, admin abuse and gang collusion prevent any self-correcting attempts on yuewiki. For that reason I have stopped contributing to yuewiki. It is unworthy to have one's articles listed alongside disgusting spam.

Let's see when this spam is finally deleted.--Roy17 (talk) 01:48, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion

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Statement by Deryck

Thanks User:Roy17 for raising this discussion on Meta.

This discussion concerns a dispute from 2019 that the Cantonese Wikipedia community was unable to resolve to Roy's satisfaction. I have suggested just over a year ago that he can escalate the issue to Meta. I am glad that he has taken up the offer but regret that he decided to characterize the issue as "admin abuse".

The crux of this dispute concerns one article, yue:新法蘭西粵語拼音方案 (Système Nouvelle-France de la Latinisation de la Langue Cantonaise, NF), about a system for transcribing Cantonese into Quebecois. In January 2019, Roy started an article deletion discussion (yue:Wikipedia:刪文討論/歸檔/2019#新法蘭西粵語拼音方案). Roy and one other editor argued for deletion based on a lack of notability (cf. en:WP:NOTE; yue:WP:NOTE) and that the article was original research (cf. en:WP:NOR; yue:WP:NOR), citing similar decisions on other Wikipedias. Four editors argued for keeping, demonstrating both primary and secondary coverage of this transcription system, and invoked a "cultural affiliation" exception to the inclusion policy (yue:WP:收錄指引). I closed the discussion as keep. (Roy's timeline - 1 Jan, 6 Mar 2019)

The Cantonese Wikipedia is not the only language edition of Wikipedia that has a codified exception to the doctrine of notability for topics with a close cultural affiliation to the language of the Wikipedia.[1] - where local consensus exists, topics about Cantonese language and culture may have an article on the Cantonese Wikipedia despite otherwise failing secondary sourcing requirements. The Cantonese Wikipedia version of this rule had been applied informally for a few years prior to its codification in 2018, about four months before Roy started the deletion request in question.

During the debate, Roy posted personal information about User:Cedric tsan cantonais on the administrator's noticeboard and alleged that Cedric had a conflict of interest regarding the NF transcription system. While I appreciate Roy's good faith in his attempt to discuss Cedric's conflict of interest, Roy's posting of Cedric's personal information violated en:WP:OUTING, so when Cedric asked me to revdel those edits I complied, as not complying would amount to violation of the WMF Terms of use on harassment. I warned that Roy might be blocked if he insisted on posting Cedric's personal information. No blocks were issued throughout the incident. I welcome sysops or global admins to look at the deleted edits and advise whether I have applied the harassment policy correctly. (Roy's timeline - 24, 25 Jan 2019)

As Roy wrote in his statement, he tried to reopen discussion in March 2019 and August 2019. Unfortunately, no other editors responded. Because Roy directed the complaints against me, I recused myself from those discussions, except for suggesting to Roy that he may escalate to Meta if he feels that the Cantonese Wikipedia community cannot address his concerns.

The "Long-term sysop negligence" discussion is an unrelated issue, which is justified criticism that Cantonese Wikipedia admins regularly fall behind in terms of dealing with maintenance backlogs. But surely the solution is to appoint more admins, not to complain about existing volunteer admins for not doing enough! Deryck C. 12:03, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note to uninvolved editors: Please do not dismiss this RfC with "Meta is not appeals court". We genuinely want outside opinion on whether any WMF-wide policy should apply to this dispute, and if so whether they have been applied correctly. Deryck C. 13:10, 9 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Deryck Chan: If it really was personal information, why was it not reported to stewards to be oversighted? --Rschen7754 05:34, 11 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Rschen7754: Good point. It did not occur to me at the time that I should escalate to OS. The relevant deletions can be found in these log entries: [2][3][4][5] --Deryck C. 19:50, 11 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Key questions

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Some key questions for User:Deryck Chan and any other users:

On the spam problem:

  1. Do "Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought" and "Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion" apply to yuewiki? --Roy17
  2. Do you refute the fact that User:Cedric tsan cantonais creating his unpublished invention on six wikipedias violated "Wikipedia is not a publisher of original thought" and "Wikipedia is not a soapbox or means of promotion"? --Roy17
    • No comment, see below. --Deryck

On the admin abuse problem:

  1. Is reporting self-promotion and publication of original thought an act of harassment? --Roy17
    • No, but my understanding of the harassment policy is that speculating an editor's off-wiki identity constitutes harassment. --Deryck
  2. Do you agree that Cedric tsan cantonais lying about his conflict of interest was disruptive to the AfD because it misled other editors on the authenticity of the spam article? --Roy17
    • No comment, since this question was asked with the assumption that "Cedric lied about his COI" which I should not comment on according to en:WP:OUTING. The relevant policies concerning the editorial dispute at hand are yue:WP:NOR and yue:WP:NOTE, and Cedric's off-wiki identity is irrelevant. --Deryck
  3. Do you agree that deleting a genuine report of disruptive editing, threatening a block, and closing the AfD against wikipedia policies and ample evidence constitute abuse of the admin tools? --Roy17
    • Admins are bound by community consensus, which generally override pre-existing written policy except in cases of immediate demonstrable harm e.g. copyright law violation, harassment. --Deryck

Simple yes or no questions.--Roy17 (talk) 11:08, 10 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Comment Comment It is my opinion that this matter belongs at yuewiki as an RFC, and not at meta. This is for locals to work out, not the whole community. There has been the chance for additional comment and it has been without that addition. Suggest close and send it back to the community.  — billinghurst sDrewth 13:47, 8 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There is no local RFC process, yet previous local discussions have, in my opinion, received sufficient attention and input from active community members. I believe the only thing that concerns the global community is how fundamental policies are to be interpreted at local, individual wikis. H78c67c (talk) 03:35, 22 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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