User talk:ToBeFree

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Oh, this could be messy

IPs registered to the Ohio state government have been editing articles about active Ohio politicians. That range isn't very active, fortunately. –Skywatcher68 (talk) 13:42, 29 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Skywatcher68, thank you very much for finding and reporting this. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 14:07, 29 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Rollback

Hello @ToBeFree! I posted on the request for permissions: rollback page on 5/16, and you asked me to reach out on your talk page after two weeks. I appreciate you mentioning how important it is to respond to feedback I get on my talk page. While I'm proud of the responses I gave to people -- especially ones where I realized I had made a mistake -- I can see now that there are a couple that I should have responded to, and this is something I'm working to get better at. I haven't had much practice until recently, and I'm feeling more and more confident in talking with people on here :)

I was actually hoping I could get some advice on what to do with talk page messages from people who leave veiled threats -- are those ones OK for me to remove from my talk page? In situations like that, or when someone leaves incoherent messages, it's sometimes difficult to know how or whether to respond. I've avoided reverting almost anything on that page, but twice in the last few days other editors have stepped in to revert vandalism on my talk page.

For context, since we last spoke two weeks ago, I've:

Made 3400 edits -- about 240 per day -- mostly reverting vandalism, leaving notices on other users talk pages, or making minor improvements to articles that had just been vandalized
Needed to report 26 users at WP:AIV. 100% of my reports were deemed valid and 100% of the users I reported were blocked.
Needed to report 7 accounts at WP:SPI -- all but one were blocked
Needed to report 1 user at WP:AN/3, who was blocked for edit warring
Thanked others 60 times
Been thanked 65 times (this stat is my favorite)

I appreciate you considering me for rollback, and regardless of whether you grant it I hope to continue seeing you around :) —tony^{st (talk)} 18:51, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hey TonySt, you do a great job, thank you very much! I'm impressed. Very well done.

Regarding removing messages especially including threats, this is up to your personal judgement in the end. You are generally allowed to do so independently of the message content, even if it's a kind message. Some content should obviously be removed rather than replied to, but the obvious cases are rare and often already dealt with by talk page watchers or people reverting all of a disruptive user's contributions. A fine response to Special:Diff/1292038458 would be moving the message to the bottom of the talk page in a new section, and adding {{uw-nlt}} on the sender's talk page, or (if the threat is clear enough) reporting it as was done at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive1188 § Pointed legal threat by Augmented Seventh. I think rsjaffe's response to the report is perfect. And of course you're free to remove the message instead of moving it to the bottom.

What I wouldn't do is archiving it unanswered despite this being a third option, as I think such messages then look strange without context and without response in the archive.

Special:Diff/1292037619 is suboptimal in my eyes as it is arguably incompatible with WP:BLPRESTORE (If it is to be restored without significant change, consensus must be obtained first), but this isn't relevant to the rollback permission. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 22:53, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Noted, and thank you. Augmented Seventh 🎱 23:49, 30 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for rollback but especially thank you for the note about WP:BLPRESTORE. I'm going to take another gander at all of the BLP policies to make sure I'm not missing anything else. If you see me out in the wild and notice anything else I'm missing, I would greatly value any feedback you'd be willing to offer in the future as well. Take care, and thanks again! --—tony^{st (talk)} 00:30, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

All good, thank you!

~ ToBeFree (talk) 00:32, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Forspoken edit warring

Hello @ToBeFree, as you have overseen the dispute resolution at Forspoken, I am contacting you again. Some users seem to ignore the RfC consensus. The RfC was formally closed by @Toadspike. My addition, which was not even connected to the RfC, also got fully reverted again without explanation. I did one revert now, back to the consensus version and reinstated my addition. Please take a look, and maybe also @Toadspike, what we should do here. Vestigium Leonis (talk) 10:50, 1 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I did not know of any dispute resolution and do not plan to get involved in this dispute. I simply closed the RfC at Talk:Forspoken#Follow-up RFC on Japan sales according to my reading of consensus. Please do not look to me to end an edit war or enforce the outcome. Toadspike [Talk] 11:02, 1 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Toadspike Apologies if this was not the right approach. I did it with the intention of not overstepping anyone. This was the first RfC closure I have come across, so I was unsure about who to tag in this situation. Vestigium Leonis (talk) 11:20, 1 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No need to apologize. I'm simply saying that I, as a fellow non-admin, have no more power or authority to stop edit wars than you do. Being the RfC closer doesn't give me any special status here. Anyhow, it seems the brief edit war has ended now. Toadspike [Talk] 11:27, 1 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hello Vestigium Leonis and Toadspike, thank you very much! The closure is fine, the advice in Special:Diff/1293376286 a bit suboptimal and new advice provided at the bottom of [1] and [2]. Both Wyll Ravengard and BMWF are relatively new editors with less than 500 contributions and may simply not have been aware of how this works. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 11:29, 1 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]