Wikipedia:Administrative action review

Administrative action review (XRV/AARV) determines whether use of the administrator tools or other advanced permissions is consistent with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Any action (or set of related actions) involving a tool not available to all confirmed editors—except those covered by another, more specific review process—may be submitted here for community review. The purpose of an administrative review discussion is to reach a consensus on whether a specific action was appropriate, not to assign blame. It is not the place to request comment on an editor's general conduct, to seek retribution or removal of an editor's advanced permissions, or to quibble about technicalities.

To request an administrative action review, please first read the "Purpose" section to make sure that your particular concerns are within the proper scope. Then, follow the instructions below.

Purpose

Administrative action review may be used to request review of:

1. an administrator action
2. an action using an advanced permission

Administrative action review should not be used:

1. to request an appeal or review of an action with a dedicated review process

   For review of page deletions or review of deletion discussion closures, use Wikipedia:Deletion review (DRV)

   For review of page move discussion closures, use Wikipedia:Move review (MRV)

2. to ask to remove a user's permissions:

   Permissions granted at WP:PERM may be revoked by an administrator consistent with the guidelines for that permission.

   Repeated or egregious misuse of permissions may form the basis of an administrators' noticeboard or incidents noticeboard report, or a request for arbitration, as appropriate.

3. to argue technicalities and nuances (about what the optimal action would have been, for example), outside of an argument that the action was inconsistent with policy.
4. to ask for a review of arbitration enforcement actions. Such reviews must be done at arbitration enforcement noticeboard ("AE"), at the administrators' noticeboard ("AN"), or directly to the Arbitration Committee at the amendment requests page ("ARCA").
5. for urgent incidents and chronic, intractable behavioural problems; use Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents ("ANI") instead
6. for serious, entrenched or persistent disputes and cases of rule-breaking; use Wikipedia:Arbitration ("ArbCom") instead
7. for a block marked with any variation of {{CheckUser block}}, {{OversightBlock}}, or {{ArbComBlock}}; Contact the Arbitration Committee instead
8. to attack other editors, cast aspersions, or make accusations of bias. Such requests may be speedily closed.

Instructions

Initiating a review

1. Before listing a review request, try to resolve the matter by discussing it with the performer of the action.
2. Start a new discussion by clicking the button below and filling in the preloaded template (or use {{subst:XRV}} directly)
3. Notify the performer of the action of the discussion.

   You must leave a notice on the editor's talk page. You may use {{subst:XRV-notice}} for this purpose.

   Use of the notification system is not sufficient.

Start a new discussion

Participating in a discussion

Any editor in good standing may request a review or participate in discussing an action being reviewed. Participation is voluntary. The goal of the discussion is to determine whether the action is consistent with Wikipedia's policies. Contributions that are off-topic may be removed by any uninvolved administrator. You may choose to lead your comment with a bold and bulleted endorse or not endorsed/overturn, though any helpful comment is welcome. Please add new comments at the bottom of the discussion.

Closing a review

Reviews can be closed by any uninvolved administrator after there has been sufficient discussion and either a consensus has been reached, or it is clear that no consensus will be reached. Do not rush to close a review: while there is no fixed minimum time, it is expected that most good faith requests for review will remain open for at least a few days.

The closer should summarize the consensus reached in the discussion and clearly state whether the action is endorsed, not endorsed, or if there is no consensus.

After a review

Any follow-up outcomes of a review are deferred to existing processes. Individual actions can be reversed by any editor with sufficient permissions. Permissions granted at WP:PERM may be revoked by an administrator.

Closed reviews will be automatically archived after a period of time. Do not archive reviews that have not been formally closed.

16 August 2026 (UTC) permanent ban by User:Acroterion

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Diffs/logs: Diffs:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk%3AMill-John&diff=1369688533&oldid=1369555805
• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User_talk:Mill-John&diff=prev&oldid=1369691227

User: [[User:Acroterion (prior discussion)

This permanent ban seems to violate various aspects of Wikipedia:Blocking_policy, including:

• "Administrators should take special care when dealing with new users"
• "Before a block is imposed, efforts should be made to educate users about Wikipedia policies and guidelines, and to warn them when their behavior conflicts with these"

And after the user requested a review, his review was not seriously considered with User:RickinBaltimore giving no reasons for rejecting his request and simply stating: "I'm going to keep this short and blunt. You aren't welcome to contribute here. Revoking TPA." (RickinBaltimore has not responeded to my comment on his talk page)

• "A user may be unblocked earlier if the user agrees to desist and appears to have learned from the matter"

As far as I can tell, this was a pretty lazy and knee-jerk permanent ban that should have instead been some kind of much more minor and temporary sanction. IMO merely a warning and a short discussion with the user would have de-escalated the situation and resolved problems. I'll note that I do see that Mill-John was immediately disrespected by User:Generalrelative where he simply called his opinions fringe and then added ai-collapse templates to Mill-John's comments and claiming that he was a bot (which it seems very clear to that Mill-John is not). That was not the only user that treated Mill-John with disrespect on that page. Those users faced no sanctions at all for their behavior that contributed to the escalation on that page.

I believe this is clearly an unjustifiable ban that does not "fit the crime" so to speak. Lazy administrative actions like this has been killing wikipedia and should not be acceptable behavior for those users who have been given special powers over others. We should be holding administrators to a higher standard of behavior than wielding permabans as an indiscriminate tool to silence inconvenient users, especially when they're newbs. Fresheneesz (talk) 20:39, 4 October 2026 (UTC)

• Strongly endorse. Truth warriors have a difficult time here, because contrary to rumor we don't claim to be the truth; especially truth warriors with regards to trying to connect race and intelligence. WP:NONAZIS; WP:HATEDISRUPT. If this individual wants to return, they can use WP:UTRS to request it, but good luck finding an admin willing to unblock them at all, or even with some sort of topic ban(which this individual is unlikely to accept since they had a single minded purpose). 331dot (talk) 20:50, 4 October 2026 (UTC)
• Comment What Fresheneez leaves out of this report and has avoided confronting in my discussions with them is that Mill-John's focus was on shoehorning the views of "scientific racist" Richard Lynn, whose pursuits also extended to gender and intelligence, into Sex differences in intelligence, and was bludgeoning the article talkpage with repetitive sealioning. Once Mill-John had failed to gather any hint of a consensus, they devolved into comments like So why not shutting your fucking mouth, right? at FTN. I note that their conduct fell within two areas of contentious topics. While perhaps a short incivility or bludgeoning block could have been contemplated, taken together with their clear enthusiasm for Lynn's discredited research they were clearly on Wikipedia to pursue a fringe objective in favor of the views of a notable bigot. Acroterion (talk) 21:26, 4 October 2026 (UTC)

  • I have notified Rick in Baltimore, since his actions appear to be part of this review. Acroterion (talk) 22:43, 4 October 2026 (UTC)

  • Endorse Mill-John appeared to be on a single-minded campaign to correct what they saw as a bias, ignoring the established consensus for the page. Wikipedia doesn't work that way, and we don't have to put up with that kind of severe disruption.
    Donald Albury 21:30, 4 October 2026 (UTC)
• Some notes:
  • This permanent ban seems to violate various aspects of Wikipedia:Blocking_policy ... This was a block, not a ban.
  • RickinBaltimore's decline of the appeal weakens your argument that this block was incorrect.
  • and then added ai-collapse templates to Mill-John's comments and claiming that he was a bot (which it seems very clear to that Mill-John is not) Nobody claimed that the editor was a bot. They claimed he used AI to write a comment. That also has nothing to do with the original block.
  • I believe this is clearly an unjustifiable ban that does not "fit the crime" so to speak. Blocks are preventative, not punitive.
  • If you're going to accuse someone of being lazy, you yourself shouldn't be lazy and sloppy in your assertions/claims about Wikipedia policies.
• voorts (talk/contributions) 21:34, 4 October 2026 (UTC)
• Endorse - the editor's <50 contribs show a pretty clear pattern of uncivil POV-pushing. The block appeal was more of the same. Endorse the block and TPA revocation as within policy and admin discretion. Levivich (talk) 22:33, 4 October 2026 (UTC)
• Endorse--I'm somewhat baffled that someone would pick up the torch for this editor. Can we close this? Drmies (talk) 22:47, 4 October 2026 (UTC)
• Endorse. Obviously a good block. Levivich, as always, says it well. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 23:49, 4 October 2026 (UTC)
• Comment I'm not going to be able to respond fully for a while. I'm in the process of burying my father this week. RickinBaltimore (talk) 23:50, 4 October 2026 (UTC)

  Ah, jeez. -- Deepfriedokra (talk) 23:53, 4 October 2026 (UTC)

  Rick, I'm really, really sorry. Acroterion (talk) 00:17, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

• Endorse. I'm genuinely mystified by this request for review. Mill-John is not banned. He is blocked with TPA being revoked later. The TPA was revoked, presumably due to the very obvious unseriousness of the unblock request and the general behaviour of trolling (diff) and personal attacks (diff). This is entirely unsurprising and in accordance with our policies and norms. Anybody who goes on like that should expect to be blocked. If Acroterion had not done it then somebody else would have done exactly the same thing. How would our female editors feel if they saw us letting such behaviour slide? --DanielRigal (talk) 00:36, 5 October 2026 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.