Wiktionary:Votes/sy-2011-08/User:Mglovesfun for desysop

I hereby nominate Mglovesfun (talk • contribs) to be removed as an English Wiktionary sysop.

Several days ago I have noticed that several Wiktionary entries, such as kolovoza, ožujka, rujna and travnja were marked as Serbo-Croatian. Given that they are not Serbo-Croatian, I returned them to their previous status, as Croatian.

For the sake of people who don't know the language, these month names are not used at all in Serbian language and are hence not Serbo-Croatian. If you would speak them to a Serbian language speaker, he would not understand you. If you would write them down for Serbian language readers, they would not understand you. They are completely impenetrable. People will more easily understand English or French month names than these month names. There is no reason whatsoever to call them Serbo-Croatian.

Either way, this Mglovesfun appeared on my talk page, saying "Category:Serbian language is not allowed here; see Category talk:Serbian language". I did not see and still do not see what this has to do with anything. I was not adding that category to any article, nor was I removing it from any article.

(Besides, on Category talk:Serbian language, I see that CodeCat Internoob, Daniel and Biblbroks are supportive of Mglovesfun's proposal, while Bugoslav and Sokac121 are opposed, and this doesn' t strike me as some community consensus, especially since Internoob and Daniel have just appeared to vote and took no part in the discussion. I don't see how someone could say that this category "is not allowed".

(At this point I should say that Mglovesfun has some history of leaving strange comments on my talk page. Once he said to me that "translations should not start with a capital letter unless the word is always capitalized" but to my knowledge I have never started a translation with a capital letter inappropriately; also "no punctuation in page titles" but to my knowledge I have never used punctuation in page titles inappropriately.))

I checked Wiktionary's policies about Serbo-Croatian, and they said:

Note that some of the proposals on this page have failed to achieve formal community consensus, and consequently, should not be considered officially enforced policy. Until such time as formal consensus is reached, editors are free to edit as they see fit

So, I continued to edit as I saw fit, and the next thing I knew, I was blocked by Mglovesfun, with comment "Disruptive edits". But my edits were not disruptive but constructive. For example, after Mglovesfun's edits a person who doesn't know the language might translate August as kolovoz, and be not understood in Serbia, while after my edits that could not happen. And either way, I have clearly stated the reason for my edits in the edit summaries, while Mglovesfun just reverted them without any explanation.

In summary, this user:

• Edits pages in a language he doesn't know to the detriment of our readers.
• Misrepresents community consensus to other users.
• Reverts other users' contributions without any explanation.
• Blocks other users without warning and for frivolous reasons.

Therefore, I see that he is not fit to be a Wiktionary administrator. Nikola 21:21, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

1. Support Nikola 21:24, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
2. Support; bringing up personal issues as an excuse not to communicate or co‐operate should never be acceptable under any circumstances. --Pilcrow 22:09, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

1. Oppose So, I suppose one way of dealing with this page would be a quick delete and maybe a short block for being disruptive, but I think it might be more effective longer-term to just get a quick snowball "close and stop being annoying". -- Yair rand 21:28, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

   From reading your comment an uninformed person might conclude that I have disrupted something. What is that thing that I have disrupted? Nikola 06:21, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

2. Oppose ...because Mglovesfun is right and Nikola is wrong. --Daniel 22:06, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

   Would you be so kind to explain to us who are not in the know what is this thing that he is right about? Nikola 06:21, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

   No. Mglovesfun already explained the situation to you, and you created this voting. He provided a link to a pertinent discussion, and you ignored most of it, and its context. I don't want to teach anything to you. You don't seem to want to learn; if you do want to learn, read others' comments. But don't try to take out the admin tools from people you disagree with, again. --Daniel 10:22, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

3. Oppose —Internoob (Disc•Cont) 23:26, 17 August 2011 (UTC) I sympathize to the extent that Croatian and Serbian are in a state of I-don't-know-what at the moment but I don't want to see Mglovesfun desysoped.
4. Oppose - please don't bring Balkan wars to Wiktionary SemperBlotto 07:03, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
5. Oppose, I don't think I'd be even half as effective here without sysop tools. Mglovesfun (talk) 07:50, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
6. Oppose - -sche (discuss) 08:12, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
7. Oppose Ƿidsiþ 08:18, 18 August 2011 (UTC) We have been over the SC issue time and time again, and the current situation is working well for us IMO. See also -sche's comment below.
8. Oppose ; there is no case at all. Noun forms follow lemmas and the lemmas under discussion are correct. Even if Mg were wrong in this particular issue - which he is not - a desysoping proposal cannot be based on a single case. --flyax 12:01, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
9. Oppose, but for the record, I disagree with Yair rand; I don't think snowball-and-close is substantively different from delete-and-block. —Ruakh_TALK 12:12, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
10. Oppose We brought this on ourselves with the original Serbo-Croatian vote. One can hardly blame MG. DCDuring TALK 12:14, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
11. Oppose. While I have some doubts whether Mglovesfun's blocking of Nikola Smolenski (talk • contribs) (block log) was justified, desysoping Mglovesfun for this is an overkill. --Dan Polansky 13:39, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
12. Oppose. Snowball! --Vahag 14:18, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
13. Oppose. I don't think this was handled ideally. The warning was barely sufficient if it was tangential and didn't demonstrate consensus. I would have no problem suspending an admin if the breach was egregious. That said, this does not warrant that type of action. Mglovesfun was sincerely acting in the interest of the project. The stray and inapplicable comments you mention only suggest that corrections were done hastily, and I'm sorry you were treated that way. We could have provided more background on this contentious issue, but you were not misinformed. DAVilla 15:56, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
14. Oppose. Leasnam 16:23, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

1. Comment: Nikola: I find it disingenuous that you discuss and link to inflected forms like kolovoza, not the main entries like kolovoz which are clearly marked as (''Croatian'') terms. - -sche (discuss) 07:45, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
2. I think if I were at any point to be desysopped, it should be based on overall performance and not on one issue. As my user page says, I have no personal feelings about Serbo-Croatian, no more than I have feelings about putting etymology sections before pronunciation sections - it's just what we do here! Mglovesfun (talk) 08:11, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
3. Is it absolutely necessary to make a decision on this topic by itself? I think the claim “Blocks other users without warning and for frivolous reasons” has some truth. --Pilcrow 14:58, 18 August 2011 (UTC)
4. How many admins have looked at these pages just as a result of this vote? And yet until now no one has appropriately marked the pages as Croatian, using a context tag instead of changing the language heading. Mglovesfun, why didn't you do that when you reverted the edits? DAVilla 15:47, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

   They were already appropriately marked as Croatian on the lemma page (kolovoz). It is not usual to insert dialect tags on form-of pages. —Stephen ^(Talk) 16:36, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

5. These months names are not used in modern standard Serbian, but have been historically used by Serbs until the first half of the 20th century. One can look them up in e.g. Srpski rječnik, the very first "dictionary of Serbian", or e.g. in this 1920 Serbian-English & English-Serbian dictionary (try terms such as kolovoz or rujan - they are all listed). Citations of their usage by Serbian authors could be added, if necessary. It should be noted, however, that in modern spoken Croatian, month names are rarely pronounced, and their respective ordinal numbers are used instead. So average Serb and Croat have no communication issues regarding something as basic as dates. Furthermore, given that Smolenski himself has stated in several edit summaries , , , that these represent archaisms in Serbian, his above statement that "these month names are not used at all in Serbian language" is at best disingenuous. Wiktionary does allow archaisms! Croatian TV channels are broadcast in Serbia, Serbian tourists visit Croatia in droves, and every single literate and educated Serb has at least encountered those month names, if he doesn't know them outright. At any case, which percentage of population knows a particular word is completely irrelevant: all that it matters is that it passes CFI. --Ivan Štambuk 17:16, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

No reason to drag this out any further. 2 votes for = 15%; 12 votes against = 85%.

Fails: User:Mglovesfun not desysoped. —Stephen ^(Talk) 14:40, 18 August 2011 (UTC)