Tuesday, April 14, 2026

My indefinite block in the English Wikiversity

What follows are my notes and takes on my indefinite block in the English Wikiversity. I found it shocking, but I should know better after all those years in wikis, which "anyone" can edit. It is less well organized than I would like it to be.

Outline

Outline of my indefinite block in the English Wikiversity:

  • Indef block done by Atcovi.
    • He also initiated the "community review" process against me by sending email to Mu301 (per Mu301 talk page and per Atcovi talk page, where Atcovi failed to respond to multiple of my inquiries).
    • And he provided the first (untue) rationale for an indef block in the community review.
    • I sense the lack of independence is inappropriate.
  • User Atcovi
    • Proven sockpuppeteer/meatpuppeteer (link, under user name Draubb; connection of Draubb to Atcovi by himself).
    • Repeatedly entered copyvios as per my blog post on Wikiversity and specifically Wikiversity:Candidates_for_Custodianship/Actovi4.
      • "Atcovi is by far our most scofflaw user at Wikiversity when it comes to uploaded files. There are currently 16 files missing source or author information. 15 of those files were uploaded by Atcovi. He has been repeatedly notified of the missing information, but simply ignores the requests and the requirements. If he's not willing to meet licensing requirements for content he uploads himself, he's not yet ready to enforce licensing on others."
    • Quite possibly enters unacknowledged GenAI or plagiarism.
      • In any case failed to respond to my related inquiry on his talk page.
        • Power holders must answer questions, not shirk them.
        • Short time after that inquiry, he issued a one week block against me.
          • It did look like a retaliation to me.
      • OTOH responded something in Colloquium later.
        • Shortly after that inquiry in Colloquium, he issued a three month block against me.
          • It did look like a retaliation to me.
          • My talk page contains no substantiation of the allegations he made against me in the block summary ==> administrative fail. 
      • He should have added references (not necessarily inline) to his material to substantiate lack of plagiarism and be done with it.
        • Instead of harassing me. 
        • If he knew which material he used, that is very little work.
          • ==> His behavior is very suspect.
    • Claimed that my indef block in the English Wiktionary flew under a radar screen (in the community review), which is clearly untrue given it was me who pointed that out as a warning when I was nominated. 
    • See also my blog post on Wikiversity.
    • For reference, a report on pages created by him in mainspace.
    • Induction-like generalization: a person who cheateed on his admin election can perhaps be sooner expected to cheat on use of GenAI, on providing fraudulent justification for an indef block or providing poor justification for closure of Wikidebates, some of the most interesting and unique material Wikiversity has to offer.
      • E.g. Atcovi claims that the offensive argument I entered into a Wikidebate (which I did as per the rules) went unnoticed for three years, without adding that all the rubbish entered by Marshallsumter into mainspace as so-called lectures kept accumulating in prime locations for multiple years (since 2011) largely unnoticed. By that standard, one would have to close Wikiversity itself as a whole.
  • User Jtneill
    • He nominated me for curatorship and offered himself as my mentor.
    • But when I needed help with KYPark/KayYayPark in Request custodian action (here and here), he was nowhere to be found for months (but then did help).
    • When I was dealing with the troll Harold Foppele, he did not help me with him and instead tolerated his copyright violation, as per his user talk page, where he wrote "I've removed the copyright tag [...]", after which I wrote "The page still contains copyright violation. [...]"
      • We could have blocked the troll early on for copyright violation alone, if the admins including Jtneill cooperated with me.
      • See also my Meta page on Harold Foppele.
  • "Community Review" (request for comments) on me (including desysop and block)
    • Dubious participation
      • Atcovi – sockpuppetter/meatpuppeteer; provided untrue justification for my indef block (since he indicated that I was an obstacle to cleanup).
      • Juandev – history of misuse of personally identifiable information in Czech Wiktionary
        • Attacked Czech Wikiversity and was caught by a steward 
        • Seems to hold grudge against me from Czech Wikiversity where I asked him to clean up his mess on his talk page and he refused.
        • For links and evidence, see my blog post on Wikiversity.
      • Harold Foppele – indefinitely blocked massive troll (blocked not because of Wikiversity but because of other projects). See also my report on him on Meta.
        • An aside: the case of Foppele shows the pitiably or even despicably bad state of the English Wikiversity administration.
      • RailwayEnthusiast2025 – his only contribution was a Scratch course against which I did not even use admin tools (from what I recall).
        • I only marked Scratch for deletion/move to user space, and when he removed the tag, I did not reinstate the tag.
      • Tomlovesfar – abuser (by my lights) of GenAI in discussions, only one contribution to Wikiversity.
      • Most admins did not participate (did not take a position) – they only tacitly approved the result.
    • Closure/evaluation of the community review
      • By Atcovi, who initiated the review by email to Mu301 as well as provided the first, untrue justification for an indefinite block.
        • Untrue since using need to clean up Wikiversity as justification
          • I was the largest cleaner of Wikiversity in 2025 by far, as per evidence below in section "My cleanup contribution to the English Wikiversity".
          • See also my blog post on Wikiversity in general 
  • Justification for an indefinite block
    • Weak: allegedly, I prevent or slow down cleanup, which is utterly wrong.
      • "It's beginning to get very exhausting trying to rid of the disruptive material and other garbage that has been growing on the English Wikiversity, and dealing with a user who still fails to see the problems with their contributions is taking the time away from developing resources. I originally believed Dan could be a positive asset to the community as a regular editor, but its obvious that this pattern of disruption is not going to change."
        • I do not know of any evidence that Atcovi, prior to Nov 2025, spent any significant effort in "trying to [get] rid of the disruptive material. Nor do I know anyone else spending that effort in 2025, with the sole exception: myself.
        • To the contrary, my request for help with those who enter bad material such as KYPark went unanswered. 
    • Why indef instead of, say, one year?
    • Highly subjective and opinionated
  • Ingratitude
    • No one said thank you for the cleanup of Marshallsumter or KYPark.
      • In fact, they could have been emberassed when I unquivocally showed that cleanup is possible, by doing it myself. 
        • This could have been one motivation for their letting me fall.
  • Possible motivation of the blockers and their implied supporters
    • My opposition to GenAI, posted to Colloquium.
      • They later took steps toward adopting a policy that de facto legalizes use of GenAI output.
      • This can easily get out of hand and make it even harder to curate Wikiversity than it is now.
      • I posted the opposition on 8. Nov 2025; Atcovi sent email to Mu301 on 13. Nov 2025.
        • But: an article in Wikipediocracy critical of Wikiversity (and me) was posted on 10. Nov 2025, "Wikiversity is a mess". The article complained about Is slavery good? in particular.
      • From that discussion alone, Jtneill is the sole clear opposer and we could even consider it as pass, even if a weak pass; support DP, D.H., unopposed Koavf/Justin, opposed Jtneill. 
    • My showing that curation is actually possible, embarassing those much less capable and active.
    • In Juandev, perhaps a desire to have Wikiversity to be as much as anything goes as possible, to which I was actively opposed.
      • Juandev's "contributions" to Czech Wiktionary are bad joke for the most part, not only by my assessment but by several others.
        • I asked for feedback in Czech Wikipedia and one of the admins used the word "mašíbl" to refer to the kind of person who creates the pages like Juandev's.
      • He complained that I moved his page having 3 questions and 1 answer to his user space and that I enforced the move by page protection.
        • For some reason, the page (which now still has 3 questions and 1 answer) remains in his user space, although as a custodian he has the tools to move it to mainspace.
    • I moved multiple spam pages out of mainspace, after no other curator or custodian did so. Could some of these people feel solidarity with the spammers?
  • Reproducibility and traceability
    • Wayback Machine for the rescue.
    • My pages that they deleted still seem available in Wayback Machine, with possible exceptions.
  • If you want to know who rules you, check who you are not allowed to criticize.
    • I created a page in my user space documenting how problematic Juandev was, and it was deleted by Atcovi as an alleged "attack page" or the like.

My cleanup contribution to the English Wikiversity

In my blog deleted by Atcovi for alleged vandalism (Web Archive in recent revision), I reported by cleanup contribution to the English Wiktionary. I copy it below, in italics:

It is quite possible that I will be indefinitely blocked in the English Wikiversity, as per the proposal made by user Atcovi at Wikiversity:Community Review/Dan Polansky. As part of a potential farewell, let me review some of the results of my curatorial work that I have done in the English Wikiversity since September 2024 when I was made a curator, over a year ago (Wikiversity:Candidates for Custodianship/Dan Polansky). The work can be seen in part in the action log, Special:Log/Dan Polansky.

Item Description/Note
Completing the clean-up after Marshallsumter I have moved ca. 680 pages created by Marshallsumter out of main space and Draft space into user space; ca. 330 were moved out of main space. Data is at User:Dan Polansky/Change request on articles by Marshallsumter. I thus largely completed the important work started by Dave Braunschweig and Guy vandegrift, both unfortunately inactive. I opened a Colloquium discussion for this to make sure there was enough consensus (Wikiversity:Colloquium#What to do with remaining Marshall Sumter pages) and then interacted with Marshallsumter on his user talk page, which lead to discovery of evidence supporting the notion that he is very likely an intentional disruptor and hoaxer. I waited at least a month to make sure enough time was given to collect input. This was a lot of effort and also risk (one can easily make a communication mistake), but the result seems very important, bringing an embarassing chapter of the English Wikiversity history likely to the close. I in fact moved some of his pages before I opened the discussion in Colloquium, but then realized opening a discussion to produce evidence of lack of serious opposition was very much preferable.
KYPark's literature pages I proposed moving them out of mainspace via RFD and then I implemented the proposal when there were no objections after at least a month (Wikiversity:Requests for Deletion#Literature). These were about 500 low-value pages (a search "intitle:/KYPark.Literature/" finds 482 pages. By my assessment, these pages were an embarassment. The pages are now at User:KYPark/Literature. (I now requested more KYPark's pages from other root page for removal, via another RFD, Wikiversity:Requests for Deletion#Pragmatics/History.)
Smaller clean-ups I moved a range of pages to user space, as per the move log. Examples include User:Andra Rei/Human Behavior, User:Jaredscribe/Foreign policy from Obama to Trump, User:Ktucker/Start a Wikiversity Project, User:Journey Into the Other Side of Nothingness/Ontorealis. There are many more. Part of it was moving bad pages by User:MarsSterlingTurner to his user space and then requesting his block for block evasion. Example page: User:MarsSterlingTurner/Consciousness. He kept on creating bad pages until he was blocked.
User:Saltrabook pages I got on the case of Saltrabook, starting an inquiry about a possible copyright violation: User talk:Saltrabook#Possible copyright violation. The English Wikiversity needs to figure out whether the person (or persons) who control that user account could have been able to author the pages inserted; unless the user starts cooperating and properly responding, it is perhaps advisable to delete all pages created by him as a preemtive measure. Dave Braunschweig and Guy vandegrift did some decent work toward limiting problematic conduct of that user account, but probably more needs to be done.

From what I can tell, I was the biggest driver of the English Wikiversity clean-up in 2025 by far. One can review WV:RFD, WV:Request custodian action and WV:Colloquium to in part verify or at least plausibility check this notion, as well as the page move logs (I was usually moving pages without leaving a redirect instead of using the deletion tool). My page move log, 4000 last move actions (all are from 2025): here.

Some good structural things for which I did not need curator tools were the following recent proposals relating to GenAI:

Unfortunately, there does not yet seem to be enough support; I cannot claim the proposals passed. The first one has no support at all, it seems.

I have also made some mistakes. One learns, just like Popper's beetles, Popper's Kepler or Popper's Einstein (a nod to the great Austrian-British philosopher). --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 08:17, 20 November 2025 (UTC) 

Wikidebate Is slavery good?

My creation of the Is slavery good? debate/pro-con analysis (Web archive) and placenemt of controversial arguments (including racist ones) there was one of the reasons for my desysop and block.

The debate was challenged back in 2023 in Colloquium. I argued the case there and responded to that challenge back then by adding a disclaimer to the debate.

The Wikidebate rules requested at the time (Guidelines) that the author considers both sides of the arguments, "Therefore, try to add and improve arguments on both sides of the issue." So I did. The rules states that debates are on controversial issues. The rules state that all arguments should be provided (version of heading template before disablement by Atcovi), although "all" requires an interpretation. Moreover, I argued the case here: One man's look at the debate format in Wikiversity.

The disclaimer per per the Web archive above: "Disclaimer: The arguments for the motion do not represent the view of Wikiversity. Wikiversity editors do not assert that slavery is good, just, morally acceptable or that some people are slaves by nature. The purpose of this page is to examine arguments in a debate format, including arguments one disagrees with and finds reprehensible."

The debate links to multiple serious/reputable sources that contain such arguments, although perhaps in less graphic form. 

I do not believe that the debate page was the real reason I was desysoped and blocked. I believe the community review was a personal attack on me, by people who wanted to get rid of me (if they only wanted to address the debate page, they could have sent it to RFD and try to deleted it by a process, which they did later, but only much later). It seems to me that the curator work I did was first-rate/top notch and that showed the other administrators to be the kind of bozos/incompetents who they really are. And I challenged the use of GenAI, asking for a prohibition with possible exceptions, which they disagreed with. See also my notes elsewhere on this page on the possible true motivation for my block.

Blocking policy

There does not seem to be any approved blocking policy in the English Wikiversity, only a policy draft.  By searching for "conflict" in the page, I found only one sentence and that did not cover conflict of interest or blocking when one is involved. In the English Wikipedia blocking policy, I found this: "Administrators must not block users with whom they are engaged in a content dispute; instead, they should report the problem to other administrators. Administrators should also be aware of potential conflicts involving pages or subject areas with which they are involved. It is acceptable for an administrator to block someone who has been engaging in clear-cut vandalism in that administrator's userspace."

To be ideally completed

  • Add links to specific referenced items, to the above outline. More work, and hardly anyone reads my Blogger.
  • The detail of substantiation is lacking. Better detail could be added. 

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License of this post: CC-BY-SA: Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike.

posted by Dan at 12:55 PM

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