Talk:Backup/Archive 3

This is an archive of past discussions about Backup. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Now you've actually started talking to each other, can we remove the article from the 3O page? Or do you still need help? Satyris410 (talk) 19:20, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

No, don't remove it—because Pi314m hasn't started talking to me (other than one comment accepting my apology for a snarky erroneous criticism that I have now removed from the first sentence that started the section above). Last night I made the latest of several comments (starting 31 May UTC) on Pi314m's personal Talk page, "a set of comments intended to convince you that your trying to "help out" with the "Backup" article is not in fact helpful, because you didn't ask anybody on the Talk page what would be helpful." Pi314m hasn't yet made any reply to those comments either.

I can think of only two possible reasons:

The first is that Pi314m's religious sensibilities were immediately offended because I used the phrase "up his tuchus" in the first comment of the section above. Since I only used the phrase to catch his attention—I'm usually very careful not to use offensive language, I'd be happy to apologize for using it.

But I think the real reason is that Pi314m does have a "my way or the highway, even if I don't understand what I'm editing and violate WP rules" approach. Read the preceding sections on his personal Talk page, and then sample his recent contributions. If there's any indication of his interacting with other WP editors, I didn't see it.

Satyris410, given what I've just said will I need to need to repost the article on the 3O page in two days? I'd really like to handle this problem through a 3O, but if necessary I'll proceed to an RfC—because I consider this problem to be very serious for the article. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 20:32, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

If I do have to repost the article on the 3O page, or proceed to an RfC, I think I'd have to use the word "vandalism" that is a WP-fraught synonym for substantial deletion of useful text. I don't want to do that, because of the future consequences for Pi314m as a WP editor if I can justify it—which IMHO I can. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 21:41, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

So, it seems there are several issues here. First, it may do well to lower the temperature a bit. I think both of you are acting in good faith, and just disagree. It's a lot easier to talk to one another, instead of past one another, if you start with that view, rather than the view that the person who disagrees is malicious. I don't believe either of you are acting maliciously. That aside, it is permitted to move, merge, or redirect an article, and it is just as permissible to reverse such an action if you disagree with it. If it comes to that point, discuss the issue, and if need be involve other editors; a request for comment can be placed to bring in some fresh eyes. The prior continuous data protection was rather thin on sourcing, so it may not hurt for that information to be here for a while. If more sources come about later, and the section grows too large and unwieldy to fit here, it can always be split again at that point. Also, there seems to be some substantial disagreement over whether certain sources are or are not reliable. The best thing to do with that is to ask at the reliable sources noticeboard; some of our best at analyzing sources watch and participate there, so you should get some good advice there on the reliability of the sources you're proposing to use. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 22:15, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Last night I looked at what Pi314m did to the "Outsourcing" article from January to May 2019, and IMHO I've discovered both the motivation and the main technique for what he does with existing articles. His motivation is "my redefinition of the article's subject or the highway". His technique is merging related articles into the article he has chosen to redefine, and then deleting any part of the merged-in article that doesn't fit his definition of the merged-into article's subject.

Let's first see what happened in January 2019 after Pi314m merged the "Insourcing" article—without any discussion on "Talk:Insourcing" (hatnote—what hatnote?)—into "Outsourcing". He then expanded the "Insourcing" sub-section on that subject from 0.25 screen-pages to 0.75 screen pages—mostly referenced by magazine articles, but cut the "Standpoint of government" section from 2 screen-pages to 1 screen page—with cites of a 2006 semi-academic article by Richard Baldwin cut from 6 to 1. Pi314m commented "This article is not meant [my emphasis] to be at the PhD level, nor is it meant [my emphasis] to be about unemployment. Now the word unemployment only appears five times, two from a NYTimes financial writer."; that's what I mean by redefinition of an article's subject.

In February 2019 Pi314m deleted a paragraph beginning "Further, the label outsourcing has been found to be used for too many different kinds of exchanges often in confusing ways." from the "Insourcing" sub-section, moving it into the article A. Aneesh about the author of its main reference. Sorry, the fact that the "outsourcing-based market model fails to explain why these [global software] development projects are jointly developed, and not simply bought and sold in the marketplace" contradicts Pi314m's redefinition of the article's subject to fit the outsourcing-based market model.

In March and April 2019 Pi314m merged "Engineering process outsourcing", "Business process outsourcing", "Information technology outsourcing", and "Farmshoring"—all done without any discussion on their Talk pages—into the "Outsourcing" article. In all three cases he soon deleted all or most of the merged-in articles' text.

In March and April 2019 Pi314m also merged "Regional insourcing", "Homeshoring", "Personal offshoring", and "Nearshoring" into the "Outsourcing" article. However in these cases he seems to have kept at least the key definitions from the merged-in articles, so maybe the merging-in of those articles—which again was done without any discussion on their Talk pages—didn't actually delete much text.

The overall picture that emerges is of Pi314m deciding without any discussion to consolidate a whole series of related articles into a single article that conforms to his concept of the subject matter. He can technologically get away with this flouting of Wikipedia rules, apparently because because he is doing a copy-paste of the merged-in article's text followed by replacing that text with a redirect to the moved-to article. The only reason I caught Pi314m is because he did copy-pastes between a sub-section of the "Enterprise client-server backup" section and preceding sections of the same Backup article. As is his custom, he did not discuss these "merges" on that article's Talk page; if he had, I would have carefully explained (as I now have on Pi314m's personal Talk page as well as in the section above this) that application feature descriptions in the last section of that article may seem like duplicates of the same-named feature descriptions in preceding sections of the article—but they're not.

IMHO the underlying problem is that—as I've shown in the preceding paragraphs—Pi314m believes that Wikipedia gives him the right to be the sole decider of the subject and contents of an article, even when it's partly about subject matter of which he knows nothing. That would explain why he has not responded to my subject-related comments in the Talk page section above, and why he reverted my 26 May edits that put back the two feature-description paragraphs he had deleted from the "Performance" subsection of the "Enterprise client-server backup" section; he considers that I have no right to second-guess his decisions. It's debatable whether a 3O will be sufficient to change Pi314m's belief; I now think that it will require an RfC at the least. But good luck as we follow the prescribed process, Seraphimblade! DovidBenAvraham (talk) 06:28, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

In regard to the next-to-last paragraph of my 06:28, 5 June 2019 (UTC) comment, I later found from this section on his personal Talk page that Pi314m was cautioned in January 2017 by Diannaa not to do "cut_and_paste moves". That caution didn't stop him; it's what he's continued to do both on the "Outsourcing" article and the "Backup" article. I wouldn't be surprised if Pi314m likes the idea that, as Diannaa said, "it splits the page history, which is legally required for attribution." In any case, it didn't stop him from doing another "cut_and paste_move" almost exactly a year later. In that January 2018 case Matthiaspaul said on P314m's personal Talk page "As I told you already, don't carry out such edits without prior discussion or against consensus, as you did twice already. If you continue these kinds of edits, they will have to be regarded as vandalism which may led [sic] to a block [my emphasis]." DovidBenAvraham (talk) 01:22, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Should Pi314m be permitted to, without prior or subsequent discussion, merge other articles into this one, merge paragraphs from the rear "Enterprise client-server backup" section of this article into preceding sections—and then immediately delete most of the text from what has been merged-in?

What Pi314m initially did to this article—without discussion—from 21 May through 27 May is described at the beginning of the preceding "Rewrite ..." section of the article's Talk page: merging another article, cutting much of what was merged in, and then immediately reverting my edits responding to that merging-in. What he also did to the article's pre-existing text during that same time period is also described in that the preceding "Rewrite ..."section of the article's Talk page: essentially destroying two paragraphs in the article's "Enterprise client-server backup" section by trying to merge them—grossly-simplified—into one of the article's preceding sections that deals with personal backup applications. In this section of Pi314m's personal Talk page, I supplemented an invitation to him to discuss the change on the article's Talk page with an explanation of the two-audience-level structure of this article; Pi314m never gave any indication that he had read any of what I had written there.

In addition Pi314m merged-in a second article, except that after that merge-in he deleted all but the lead two sentences of the merged-in article. That, as I pointed out to him—also in this section of Pi314m's personal Talk page—is something he is not entitled to do under rule 4 of the Wikipedia Deletion policy, because IMHO that article had "relevant or encyclopedic content" that had nothing to do with the "Backup" article. I have preserved the deleted content of that article (preceded by the content of the two "Enterprise client-server backup" paragraphs before Pi314m grossly simplified them while "internally merging" them) in the preceding "Rewrite ..."section of the article's Talk page.

Pi314m has a distinct fondness for "cut-and-paste moves" that he calls "mergers", which he does without community consensus—frequently starting in January. He did one in January 2017,and was rebuked for it by Diannaa. He did another one in January 2018, and was warned about it by Matthiaspaul—who said "If you continue these kinds of edits, they will have to be regarded as vandalism which may led to a block." On the Talk page for that second article, Matthiaspaul said "No, this is not how it works! It is good that you are trying to be constructive, but your edits are not. You are already edit-warring over it and if you continue to try to force your undiscussed changes into the articles, this may led [sic] to a block. [new paragraph] Such changes require prior discussion and won't be carried out unless the outcome of such a discussion (after a reasonable amount of time for other editors to see, think about it and react - typically months) would be consensus for a merge." Pi314m quoted part of that on his personal Talk page, saying "I too can and hopefully will learn from what you said on the article talk page". However starting in January 2019 he did another series of "cut-and-paste moves" without community consensus, which nobody caught him doing—so I have described them starting in the 9th paragraph of the preceding "3O" section of this article's Talk page.

The preceding "3O" section of this article's Talk page was named "3O" by Satyris410 because it was supposed to be where some third editor —Seraphimblade eventually—would provide his/her Third Opinion. However Pi314m never responded on the preceding "Rewrite ..."section of the article's Talk page, which was the section I had listed in my request for a Third Opinion, other than to graciously thank me for my apology for a later-removed bit of (as I later found out, unjustified) snark I had put into the first sentence of that section.

The title of this section is Request for comment on _un-discussed_ text-destroying "merging-in", both of other articles_and of paragraphs within this article, by Pi314m. Sorry I didn't know I'd have to repeat it myself in this section.

DovidBenAvraham (talk) 01:46, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

The RfC process is not to be used for discussing the conduct of another user, see WP:RFC#About the conduct of another user. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:06, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

Are you saying that I should delete the fourth paragraph, the one beginning "Pi314m has a distinct fondness for "cut-and-paste moves" that he calls "mergers", ..." from the comment beginning this section? My purpose in filing this RfC is to stop Pi314m's oversimplifications of the "Backup" article, since it is clear—despite my explanation on his personal Talk page—that he doesn't understand that the "Enterprise client-server backup" section is written for a different audience than the preceding sections of this article. One solution (which reinstates something I thought of doing in September 2017) would be to create a separate "Enterprise client-server backup" article. But the problem is that Pi314m, as shown in the fourth paragraph of this section, has an obsession with merging smaller articles into larger articles that have a related subject. So if I created that separate article, it is highly likely that I'd be back in the same situation a week from now—after Pi314m merged the new separate article back into the "Backup" article and over-simplified its merged-in contents. So this RfC inescapably deals with Pi314m's conduct, because what he's done to the "Backup" article is the continuation of a behavioral pattern that has lasted for at least two years with other articles. What Wikipedia process other than an RfC would you suggest I use, and wouldn't that—at least until we've tried an RfC—be overkill? DovidBenAvraham (talk) 10:04, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

If you hold an RfC it should be purely about the content of the article, and the statement should be neutral and brief; but as it stands, it's neither brief nor neutral. In fact Pi314m is mentoned no fewer than twelve times before my post - and that's not counting your reply to me. RfC is not for discussing user conduct, for which other avenues are available. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:55, 12 June 2019 (UTC)

In the cold light of mid-day, you're right about both the neutrality and the briefness; I thought only the initial pragraph had to be neutral and brief. I'll prepare another RfC based on most of the content of this earlier section of the article Talk page, omitting anything having to do with the body of the "former "Information Repository" article that Pi314m deleted when he "merged" that article into this one. As for that deletion, I'll make it plus at least a couple of the content-deleting "mergers" into Outsourcing—which I mentioned in a paragraph in the preceding "3O" setion of this Talk page—the subject of several Administrators' Noticeboard complaints. These, especially the "Information Repository" deletion—of content unrelated to "Backup", IMHO really amount to vandalism a WP-fraught synonym for substantial deletion of useful text. As I pointed out in the fourth paragraph of this section, Pi314m was previously warned about that in 2017 and 2018—so the consequences for him this time may be severe. I was trying to avoid that, but—as I said in a non-neutral quote of myself I immediately deleted from this section (which I can put back in now that you've removed the template)—IMHO the underlying problem is that Pi314m believes that Wikipedia gives him the right to be the sole decider of the subject and contents of an article, even when it's partly about subject matter of which he knows nothing. The fact that he essentially never responded on the preceding "Rewrite ..."section of the article's Talk page, which was the section I had listed in my request for a Third Opinion, reinforces my reluctant acceptance that the severe consequences may be necessary. DovidBenAvraham (talk) 16:25, 12 June 2019 (UTC)