User talk:David Gerard

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Past talk: 2004 2005a 2005b 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024

Please put new stuff at the bottom, where I'll see it.

This user is one of the 400 most active English Wikipedians of all time.

Warning messages

Hi David. I don't know who to ask about this, but thought you might know. There are a few sources that have come to RSN that aren't really in need of full deprecation, but that are wasting editors time by being reused and readded. Take for instance WP: Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 453#RfC: Universe Guide, a source that was both UGC and circular but was needing continuous clean up by the editors of the astronomic objects project. Ultimately deprecation was used so a warning appeared if you try to add it, stopping it from being a timesink. But really it didn't need the other aspects of deprecation. I was looking to find out how we got to the current deprecation process, and how editors went about getting it setup, as part of thinking about a slightly different solution for these sources. A different setup with a warning about UGC, self published, circular sources etc, rather than the deprecation one. I'm waffling on. -- LCU ActivelyDisinterested «@» °∆t° 01:00, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

so the history is the looooong RFC on the Daily Mail, which then opened a process for ruling other sources such obvious wastes of time that they could be similarly classed as almost never to be used - I would go through the deprecation RFCs in rough historical order to get an idea of how it developed as an idea.

UGC is its own class of thing, and you can see the reasoning behind deprecation: that some editors are so persistent in wanting to use known bad sources that you eventually have to make a rule that says "no." Even as all new rules are bad - David Gerard (talk) 14:34, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Happy First Edit Day!

Happy First Edit Day, David Gerard, from the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! Have a great day! DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 04:45, 4 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Disputed non-free use rationale for File:King Trigger River 7'' Chrysalis 1982.jpg

Thank you for uploading File:King Trigger River 7'' Chrysalis 1982.jpg. However, there is a concern that the rationale provided for using this file on Wikipedia may not meet the criteria required by Wikipedia:Non-free content. This can be corrected by going to the file description page and adding or clarifying the reason why the file qualifies under this policy. Adding and completing one of the templates available from Wikipedia:Non-free use rationale guideline is an easy way to ensure that your file is in compliance with Wikipedia policy. Please be aware that a non-free use rationale is not the same as an image copyright tag; descriptions for files used under the non-free content policy require both a copyright tag and a non-free use rationale.

If it is determined that the file does not qualify under the non-free content policy, it might be deleted by an administrator seven days after the file was tagged in accordance with section F7 of the criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions, please ask them at the media copyright questions page. Thank you. — Ирука¹³ 19:05, 8 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Funny bumping into you here

Hey David, I knew you were active on RationalWiki but I didn't know you were on wikipedia too. Great seeing you around. Simonm223 (talk) 14:59, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved.

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Recent Deletions of Astana Platform Articles and UPE Allegations. Thank you. Shirt58 (talk) 🦘 09:56, 23 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You've got mail

Hello, David Gerard. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template. Vanderwaalforces (talk) 18:00, 5 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Akintunde Sawyerr

@David Gerard I've reverted your banners as the person is notable and not UPE. 2600:4041:52E1:5800:8D21:1988:655A:2A8D (talk) 10:50, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@David Gerard Akintunde Sawyerr I'm talking about this article 2600:4041:52E1:5800:8D21:1988:655A:2A8D (talk) 10:51, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

While he may be notable, it's also got a whole pile of likely UPE editing and needs a serious cleanup - David Gerard (talk) 10:57, 6 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

OC&C Strategy Consultants

Hi David. I saw OC&C Strategy Consultants has been salted since the guys back then refused to learn their lesson. I think I can create an article on it now with enough sources. If I can produce a sufficient draft, can you please remove the protection?

Edit: I got a draft now. Would it be ok to take down the creation block?

Imcdc Contact 01:55, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

yeah looks reasonable at a glance, I've moved it to mainspace - David Gerard (talk) 14:43, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks David. Imcdc Contact 14:46, 8 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Aave

Hi David, hope all is well. I wanted to respond to Jeraxmoira on the AfD and add more academic coverage but AfD was closed by you as delete. I disagree with the outome as it was heavily manipulated by bad-faith actors (including nom who is still inactive and is just focused on destroying Wikipedia content via AfDs) and IPs are just proxies without any editing history, so should be discounted (like [1]).

Source analysis done by Jeraxmoira was very selective and doesn't cover or challenge other sources such as Wiley book coverage or academic journal article I and Newatlascamels added. The AfD outcome is just based on Jeraxmoira and Xrimonciam (they might reconsider as I found better coverage later on). I request to please relist the AfD and let us discuss it further and add more coverage. Thank you. Veldsenk (talk) 13:47, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would say the first thing to do is to write a good draft with solid mainstream and peer-reviewed RSes and put it to AFC as answering the objections in the AFD. WP:NCORP is harsh, but mainstream RSes and peer-reviewed academic coverage have done the job for crypto-related stuff in the past. If you keep solidly to those and nothing else then that's the way to go - David Gerard (talk) 17:02, 22 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Could you please change the consensus to "no consensus" and draftification please? Because that would help me volunteer sometime and rewrite the draft (note that I didn't write this article but I'm very well aware of Wikipedia requirements related to crypto topics and have deleted/removed crypto spam in the past). Otherwise, admins would consider further article creations/submissions as WP:G4 so it would be waste of my time. Or at least put in a note in the closure that you deleted it per WP:TNT and a resubmission is allowed? Thank you and I appreciate your work. Veldsenk (talk) 18:21, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Here's the draft Draft:Aave. If it passes AFC it should be safe from G4 - David Gerard (talk) 21:53, 23 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question about reverting my edits

Hi David, I saw that you reverted my edits to the article on Bruce Lahn. My edited version is extensively researched and referenced, and adds a lot of information with more sources on the subject. If you see issues with the article, can you please offer advice for me to correct and improve upon the issues rather than reverting it, because if you just revert it, I would not know what the issues are that resulted in your reverting it. Look forward to your advice. Bofrosh1 (talk) 18:19, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Your tone is promotional and you used deprecated sources - which means you deliberately edited past a deprecation warning. This is your very first edit - a long and detailed text. Have you edited previously, and are you associated with Bruch Lahn in any way? - David Gerard (talk) 18:24, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When editing please make changes in smaller chunks so other editors can properly review the changes. Don't use deprecated sources. Robby.is.on (talk) 20:10, 26 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi David, Many thanks for the quick reply. I have not edited before and this is my first project. I do plan to make more edits on molecular biology technologies and notable people in the field, including creating new articles. I know Bruce but not in a conflict of interest way, and I did try to write the article in an objective way per Wikipedia's guidelines. But given that this my first time, I may not know the best way to do it. It is appreciated if you could give me a few examples of promotional language so I cam revise accordingly. Regarding deprecated sources, I recall getting a warning about some particular source when trying to publish my edits (I don't remember the details), but I wasn't sure what it was about, so I changed a few things and the warning went away so I thought it was taken care of. Can you point out which source(s) is still offending? Regarding changing in smaller chunks, I wonder if you could make an exception given that the previous article is quite outdated compared to this one that I have done extensive research on. Bofrosh1 (talk) 03:10, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As a follow-up on my last message: I just checked Wikipedia's deprecated source list and noticed Crunchbase is on it (didn't realize they are not reliable). I can certain remove it. Let me know if there are other offending sources, and look forward to whatever advice you may have to offer. Bofrosh1 (talk) 06:59, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Robby, Thank you for your previous advice. I did another round of edit where I focused on using neutral descriptive language and double-checked all sources to ensure that they don't belong to Wiki's deprecated list. If you see further issues with it, please let me know and I will be happy to make further adjustments. Thanks again! Bofrosh1 (talk) 04:06, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question about reliability of a source that was published in an unreliable outlet but was written by a reputable journalist

Hello! I saw that a source that I added ([2]) was removed recently, but I did some more digging and found that while the source that the article was written is considered generally unreliable, the author of the article itself (Janelle Borg) is a reputable writer who is also a Staff Writer on Guitar World. It turned out she was a freelance author for the unreliable source, and the source has since deleted the article because it was critical of NFTs, not supportive of it. In cases like this, would this fall under the "Even in cases where the source may be valid," clause of WP:GUNREL? Thank you! GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 21:07, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The usual way RSN handles this is: why weren't they writing it in a reputable source instead of a disreputable one? - David Gerard (talk) 09:33, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

From her LinkedIn [3], that was her only occupation at the time of writing the article (January 2022). She appears to be unbiased and experienced in the world of crypto and NFTs. For example, she has also written this article about NFTs and the music industry during her time at Amplify several months prior to her tenure at NFTEvening: [4] GregariousMadness (talk to me!) 14:24, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

At best it would have the status of an SPS and I'm not seeing a reason to regard her as particularly an expert. For comparison, I've written about crypto, an area I'm a public expert on, in RSes, non-RSes and blog posts. My RS posts might be usable as Wikipedia sources were someone of a mind to put them in, but I'm not convinced my non-RS/blog post articles would be found to be without a good reason. (In one example, one of my non-RS articles was post-edited a year later to put in a pile of stuff about DeFi for no good reason - there's a reason non-RSes aren't RSes.) - David Gerard (talk) 15:31, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Crypto Sources And AI Blogs

You have on numerous occasions removed legitimate sources as AI blogs when they were not and stated crypto sources weren't allowed for BLP of which you made up as there is no actual rule. I request you stop. Making things up thanks! Muckraker2018 (talk) 23:08, 2 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Crypto sources and AI spam sites are not RSes. Non-RSes are not usable for claims about living persons in the general case. Please stop repeatedly putting non-RSes into Wikipedia articles - David Gerard (talk) 09:32, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

and I see you've been indefinitely blocked for abusive editing. Editors might want to keep an eye on Jeremy Ryan and Lil Pump in case the crypto promotion continues - David Gerard (talk) 09:36, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Daily Signal as Source

Hey David,

I'm approaching you from a position of ignorance. During Daily Signal's time under the Heritage Foundation, is their material generally considered unusable as a source for reference or citation purposes? There's obvious right-leaning bias, but does that discredit all of their reporting?

Thanks! 2601:8C0:480:CCC0:5406:4637:95D8:4914 (talk) 14:38, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I meant to reply as me. I didn't realize I wasn't signed in. LexiconLynx3234 (talk) 14:39, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There is no reason to regard DS as a reliable source. (Frankly I don't see a reason to regard them as one now.) Anything from Heritage was found to be unreliable at the very least, I don't think the deprecation question was resolved. And it was clearly a Heritage site up to June 2024, so covered by that - David Gerard (talk) 15:26, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Got it. Thanks David! LexiconLynx3234 (talk) 15:27, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd quite like the DS reliability post-June-2024 question resolved at some point, but I expect that would await a real editorial issue - David Gerard (talk) 15:29, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The article I cited seemed fairly innocuous and credible, but there's nothing that you and I can do with regard to the generally accepted reliability right now... LexiconLynx3234 (talk) 15:35, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I dunno. It reads to me like SPPI claiming a result (per their press release) but no verification outside their say-so that they had anything to do with it. Brenner from SPPI got an op-ed in American Banker (reprinted in Albuquerque Journal), but again that's not third-party verification that SPPI swung it. It reads to me like Pew did stuff and SPPI is trying to claim credit somehow - David Gerard (talk) 15:51, 3 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Philip S. Hess

Hi David. A few moments ago you removed a deprecated and a primary from this article while I was taking a look at it. at NPP. This is the second time that article has appeared in the feed recently. There's more to this than meets the eye but I'm used to doing deep article forensics. This is what it looks like. But there's more to this story.

It was then moved to Draft:Philip S. Hess. -- Pemilligan (talk) 21:16, 27 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]
17:20, March 4, 2025 Significa liberdade talk contribs deleted page Draft:Philip S. Hess (G8: Redirect to deleted page Draft:Writing text) Tag: Twinkle (thank)
17:08, March 4, 2025 Rarely I burden myself with thinking talk contribs moved page Draft:Philip S. Hess to Draft:Writing text (thank)
17:20, March 4, 2025 Significa liberdade talk contribs deleted page Draft:Writing text (G7: One author who has requested deletion or blanked the page – If you wish to retrieve it, please see WP:REFUND) Tag: Twinkle (thank)

and then today recreated:

17:42, March 4, 2025 Rarely I burden myself with thinking talk contribs 8,960 bytes +8,960 major edit thank Tags: use of deprecated (unreliable) source Visual edit.

What does this tell you? Because theoretically an article may not be moved to draft twice, what do you think our next move should be? I've been around on Wikipedia as long as you have and I was an admin for 9 years, but I'm scratching my head on this one. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 13:47, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ha. I have redraftified and left a suspected UPE note on the uncommunicative editor's talk page - David Gerard (talk) 13:52, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Well done! Thanks for taking a look. Please don't think I was just passing the buck but sometimes two heads are better than one. Cheers, Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 14:26, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

oh no absolutely, this is me concurring - David Gerard (talk) 15:35, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Speedy deletion nomination of Be Music

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A tag has been placed on Be Music, requesting that it be deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under two or more of the criteria for speedy deletion, by which pages can be deleted at any time, without discussion. If the page meets any of these strictly defined criteria, then it may soon be deleted by an administrator. The reasons it has been tagged are:

It seems to be unambiguous advertising which only promotes a company, product, group, service, person, or point of view and would need to be fundamentally rewritten in order to become encyclopedic. (See section G11 of the criteria for speedy deletion.) Please read the guidelines on spam and Wikipedia:FAQ/Organizations for more information.
It appears to be about a person, organization (band, club, company, etc.), individual animal, or web content, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is important or significant: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. (See section A7 of the criteria for speedy deletion.) Such articles may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. Vinegarymass911 (talk) 19:54, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

wild stuff - David Gerard (talk) 20:10, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]