| Revision as of 02:10, 10 September 2007 editTex (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users, Pending changes reviewers, Rollbackers2,617 edits →Question: Ha!← Previous edit | Revision as of 12:15, 18 September 2007 edit undoGeogre (talk | contribs)25,257 edits On strikeNext edit → | ||
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| Don't ask, because I'm not asking. It's just that I don't need it, and it doesn't need me. It isn't benefiting me, and whatever benefit I give is too little to overcome my distaste. | |||
| '''Essays''' | |||
| It's new! It's exciting! It's an idea whose time came months ago: ''']''' Continuation: ]. If RFA is "broken," let's not make it FUBAR: ] It's newer! It's not exciting! ] My attempt at impersonating Marshal MacLuhan: ] ]: My first attempt at hip artwerkx. ]: People are still getting blocked by "unanimous" IRC consent. ] An essay on how to tell if you may already have the qualifications to be an edit warrior and not even know it! | |||
| '''''New Messages''''' | |||
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| ==]== | |||
| Aha! Thanks, that helps quite a bit. Is it something that you'd like to help edit at all? It sounds like you are much more familiar with the subject matter than I! --]]] 21:29, 18 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :I'll try. I have my own positivistic-19th c. history that I can pull from, if necessary. The first reform act is out of my range of stuff I know in detail, so I'd have to double check everything, but that fustian prose has to go. It's ok to repeat speeches from Commons now, so there is no justification for hanging onto that dread indirect quotation style. ] 21:48, 18 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ==Age of Reason== | |||
| I have introduced a section that tries to outline major deistic beliefs in '']'' article per a suggestion at the peer review. Any assistance you could offer would be much appreciated. ] | ] 07:20, 21 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ==Poxy boxes again== | |||
| Bloody hell (scroll down for the magic word). I hadn't realised how bad the writer infoboxes were until now, but apparently we mustn't impede the "march of progress" or "general practice". (I have a soft spot for that article because it's the first one I ever worked on. That explains why it's not so great. I could have added a load more information, but at the time I was under the impression such articles had to be "concise" because most other French author articles I'd seen were little more than pitiful stubs. That's what happens when you follow "general practice"). --] 08:28, 21 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :I really hate it when my Cassandra act works out, but I have, for a while, said that the projects were heading this way. Soon, we were going to have Project Says We Own This, and then it was going to be This Now Property of Project, and then it was going to be You Cannot Write This, For Topic X Has Been Listed by Project (with mandatory passive voice). I've been calling it Project Hegemony, but what's really at the heart of it is the tendency of Wikipedians to want to not be responsible, to not have to be a voice, to have a system that will say what to write, how to write it, and that they are guaranteed to own it. That's a great comfort for people who like the "anybody can edit" but may feel a little nervous with the "anyone may oppose that edit" and the "nobody will tell you what to write." I.e. it's ''Les Fleurs du Mal.'' ] 12:16, 21 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::Yeah, the bigger the project, the less content they seem to produce. Instead they seem to turn their attention to fripperies and develop a conquistador mentality that sees them laying claim to huge tranches of the encyclopaedia. I've had that page bookmarked for a year now and in that time I've never seen anyone from the projects listed on the talk page add anything of any substance to the article there. The smaller projects are far more successful at creating new content. I've just noticed there was a ]. It's now sadly defunct and it only ever had one member, but I bet it was one of the finer projects around in its day. | |||
| ::Incidentally, since I've been revisiting my very early articles, such as Huysmans, I remembered that I once wrote a bio for ], who's in your neck of the woods (he was a protegé of Swift and has a passing mention in the 1728 ''Dunciad''). I added a bit more content from Broughton's edition of the works today, but that was published in the 1950s and it's possible there might be more info on him that has emerged since (I suspect not very much more though). Cheers. --] 12:52, 21 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Yes, indeed. Diaper, aside from the horrible name (which wasn't horrible at the time), is a seriously useful poet and writer whose biography needs exploration. I was not long ago reviewing the 17XX in literature articles to look for red links (many juicy bits to be found that way) and was more impressed by their paucity than plenitude. In particular, I saw that Diaper was already ducky. The 1950's edition will likely have used "best sources" of its day, which would mean biographical accounts written in the ''Gentleman's Magazine,'' mentions from Johnson, and the like. These biographical sources are generally all we have, and yet when the scholarly community get sponsored (that's what it takes: money), there can often be complete rewriting of those sources. It was an age that was more like the present day than like a generation ago. Imagine if FoxNews were the only source of obituaries. Sometimes, that's what we're up against. Sometimes, again, the contemporary accounts are just plain blind. (Imagine someone writing a summary of Jimmy Carter who drew from accounts written in 1985 and mentions in pop culture from the time ("History's greatest monster" -- Homer Simpson (in a parody of received wisdom of the day)).) ] 19:43, 21 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::I like Diaper (his name doesn't sound quite so bad in the UK). He still seems to have some sort of following. Only recently the British/Hungarian poet ] penned a six-part tribute to him (some details here ). --] 20:06, 21 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| I was holding off on saying more until I could do some good. What good I could do to his memory I have done now. I'm not entirely sure that Mr. Pope was blasting Diaper, by the way. Well, ok, he was, but I also think Pope's putting him into the category of "people who exceeded their gifts" rather than the category of "idiots with no grip on reality." The existing article was pretty darned good, and DNB didn't have a lot more to say. ] 19:39, 23 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Cheers for finishing that off.<blockquote>Though Venice boast, Brent is as famed a seat,<br>For here we live in seas and sail through every street;<br>And this great privilege we farther gain,<br>We never are obliged to pray for rain.<br>(from Diaper‘s ''Brent'')</blockquote>Check out the news from the West Country of England right now and see how appropriate that is!--] 19:54, 23 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ==Award plush toy for helping B.A.D== | |||
| ] award for helping ]]] | |||
| Prestigious plush stuffed ] prize awarded to Geogre for helping ] ! This unique prize may be ]d at will ! ] '']'' 19:30, 21 July 2007 (UTC). | |||
| :Now '''that''' is the only award any of the B.A.D. projectors should get. I will treasure mine and not sell it on eBay at all. ] 19:38, 21 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ==Your input requested== | |||
| Geogre, | |||
| If you have some time, I'd appreciate your input on this issue: ]. ] 10:49, 23 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :De nada. Speedy criterion: attack pages, and then regular deletion criteria involving POV forks.... Pretty obvious, really. No ] and no "catchall criticisms of <politico>." If it can't be in the master article, it can't be split off, either. ] 14:10, 23 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == Making a difference == | |||
| Geogre, I agree with a lot of what you have been saying about the Biography assessment drive and about infoboxes and similar stuff. I believe there are advantages and disadvantages to large projects, and that the best way to make a difference is to get out there and change the culture, or at least to generate visible discussion on the issues. For example, the Biography assessment drive has the following on its page: ''"The Amazing Biography Assessing Race! That's right, there will be a race to see who can assess the most articles."'' I kind of noticed this at the beginning, but didn't realise until now (with the steady stream of complaints) that this might be the reason for slipshod assessments (quite beside people assessing without knowledge of the subject area). I also agree with what someone said above that small projects are good at producing articles, while larger projects can be good at managing meta-issues (and these do exist). If you were to draw up a shortlist of three things that you could change overnight, what would they be? I'd hazard a guess at: reining in the WikiProjects; reforming the way assessments are done; and drastically reforming infoboxes. Have I missed anything? ] 14:51, 23 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Regarding "reining in the WikiProjects", a distinction can be made. Subject based projects (e.g. mathematics) generally work very well. It is non-subject based projects (e.g. Biography — I include things like FAC here) which turn out to be more problematic. ] ] 15:53, 23 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::I think there was discussion of this distinction at ]. See ] (now marked historical, but that is likely only because people lost interest). The current opinion is at ]. ] 16:21, 23 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :::I'd agree with what Paul said. I've always thought the problem with the Biography Project was its size and when I saw they were trying to assess 400,000 articles I couldn't believe it (though I still suspect that Misplaced Pages 1.0 or whatever it's calling itself nowadays is the ultimate villain in the assessment drive fiasco). WPP:Bio should be "downsizing" and relinquishing as many subject areas as possible to more specialist groups (or good old individual editors, of course); the smaller projects are much better at providing forums for expertise. I'm only a member of the opera project (and, by extension, Composers and Classical Music), but even we have created sub-projects for Gilbert and Sullivan and Wagner and we let them do what they like since they know about those topics. But nobody studies "biography" per se - it's just too vast a field. It's possible that Bio has a role to deal with some meta-issues such as BLP, but its aim should probably be to cut itself into more manageable chunks. (The same goes for Project:Novels). --] 16:27, 23 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :::::Nitpick, not 400,000, but trying to clear a backlog of around 120,000. ] 16:49, 23 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::::In some ways the model for how to handle size is the ] (Military History) group. It solved its size problems by setting up taskforces. WP:Biography has done this as well, but not all the taskforces work well. One taskforce was the "Core biographies" project that took ages to come up with a list of 200 biographies that were "top importance" to work on, and then didn't actually do any work on them (as far as I can see at ]). The good thing about subject-based taskforces is the way that they can provide assessments, avoiding the need for WPBiography to do so. But it might be too late for that particular horse. To be fair, some of the people involved in the assessment drive did limit themselves to their subject areas, but others just drove down an alphabetical list. That is fair enough, as long as the assessor leaves alone anything they know nothing about. WP:Biography does make sense in that it has helped to identify a lot of "people" articles. Previously, these articles had been diffused into the subcategories of ], and it was hard to get a grip on how many articles were out there under the name of a person. To me, that is the essence of a biography: title=person's name; write article about the person. And the example of ] shows that collating different biographies is nothing new. Browsing ] is a good historical index of our biographies, but sadly there is no overall index available. I'm hoping that WPBiography can work towards a fully-populated ] that can be accessed along the lines seen ]. ] 16:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :::::Well, you've always been one of the most reasonable "biographers", Carcharoth, and if everyone took your attitude I wouldn't have a problem. My main gripes with Proj:Bio are: (a) the infoboxes, (b) the assessment drive. These bring out the worst in a large project because you have a lot of people there who have little expertise in common and one way of bringing a sense of belonging and making everbody feel they're doing something to help is to embark on this kind of homogenisation scheme. The only problem is it doesn't work. In a way I'm glad "Core biographies" was a failure because it wasn't subject-based. You need to get the experts to improve articles, it's no good just inviting everybody along to the party. In fact, all the generalised article improvement drives I've seen have been failures and have often left pages in a worse condition than they were before. --] 18:47, 23 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| Ok, the ''immediate'' things that must be done yesterday? | |||
| #'''No passive voice evaluations.''' I'm serious about that. It's the most obvious, most insulting, most avoidable, and most disreputable piece of bullflop there is. In order to avoid the passive voice, though, '''all evaluations are signed.''' We sign everything else, so sign them. | |||
| #All authors have an inherent right of first mover, and no project can ever assert against the authors wills unless it has been brought up for ''full consideration'' and won consensus. This goes for evaluations, boxes, templates, etc. No one may say, "The project has just pw0ned your article, and you must shut up." A "project" is not a sentient being. It cannot have will or judgment, and when anything involving decisions is involved, there must be a demonstration of quorum, an actual discussion on the particular article. Otherwise, it is one person with one opinion against another person with another opinion (see "edit war"). | |||
| #Dissimilarities should be honored, not eliminated with a steam roller. There are no two lives just alike, no matter how large the population of the planet gets. All similarities are made meaningful only in the context of difference. I can get very abstract and academic about this, if anyone is interested in the philosophy, but the simple form is this: all babies are babies, and all corpses are corpses, so the critical question of a biography is "what made this baby different from the other babies, and what makes this corpse remembered more than others?" The question is always '''how''' and never '''what''' in a life. The central task of a biographer is to show the mechanism of difference, not to outline the elements of similarity. Therefore, "Born in Savannah, Georgia" is meaningful only because other people were born there who ''didn't'' turn out to be ], and "died in 1976" is interesting because we don't remember 200,000 million of those deaths, but we do remember this one. Therefore, all of the "consistency" demons are Satanic, or at least Noxian: they are promulgating darkness instead of light. | |||
| #One per customer, please: if two projects ''can'' claim a person, perhaps ''neither'' should. The fact that there are hundreds of subjects who can be put in twenty boxes suggests that there is something profoundly wrong with the boxes. I mean this graphically and intellectually. If he can be a composer, politician, philosopher, poet, and actor, then he should be '''himself''' and none of those things, for the life's overflow from each profession indicates eloquently why the categories are useless, and the lack of such categories on the life shows how full the life was. | |||
| #Not all of anything can be anything. All the projects need to learn this. There are no universals, when it comes to human life. Sartre argued that there isn't anything that is "human nature," even. Well, whether we go that far or not, the point is that it is not possible nor desirable nor honest to apply any universal to humans. "All persons need to eat," and then there are people starving themselves to death. "All persons love their children," and there are the infanticides. Therefore, trying to do something like, "Get all composers" or "all novelists" is ridiculous. Every one of these professions, like every one of the art works or actions, breaks down under a hard light. | |||
| #Projects need to justify the benefit they offer ''the reader'' rather than the packaging. What is it that a reader, a college sophomore researching population growth in Burma, gets from your project? Never mind what you think you can do for another project, what you can do for Version control, what you can do for exports: what is it that this project does for the READER? We serve them, not ourselves. If there is ever a dispute, let the reader win, and let the benefit to the reader overturn the benefit to the workers. | |||
| Anyway, that's just off the top of my pointy head. There is more to say, I'm sure, but that's absolute, or as close to absolute as I can get. ] 19:25, 23 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::I liked the above, but, while waiting for applause (the sound of one horse flopping, I guess), I'll mention a fundamental rethink that should be at least considered. Right now, the projects are all claiming space on article talk pages. This can be annoying from a practical point of view, but annoyance isn't a very compelling reason for changing things. However, this default land grab on talk pages means that talk pages are getting long (''very'' long, in some cases) without any ''article talk.'' | |||
| ::Projects got to that default position because of the objections that happened when projects tried to place markers on article main pages. Most authors and editors shrugged at the talk page getting a spot. However, ''discussion of article contents,'' which is the proper content of article talk pages, is now getting shoved farther and farther down. That's more than annoying. It keeps readers from thinking they have a blank slate on which to talk. It may make new users think that the pages are ''only'' for templates and stuff and not realize that it's a sandbox for the article. Additionally, it means that even speedy delete articles will often have contents on their talk pages that will make people think that the article has legitimacy. Additionally, it's making mud out of dirt and rain and confusing the issues surrounding articles (] is in the occult project, for example, as well as the Christianity project, as well as the saints project, and these all distort the content of the page.) | |||
| ::So, here's the rethink: Instead of boxers, why not categories? If assessments and such are supposed to be for internal use, and if they're supposed to help the projects find, weight, and work on articles, aren't categories more useful than tags? Aren't categories less conspicuous, less a comment to the reader about the value of the article, and more readily generative of lists? Furthermore, can't categories contain subcategories that do not necessarily display on the page? Could you not have a category:stub-class inside category:monks inside category biography? Is it not possible to have the page merely bear an innocent (and not insulting) looking "biography" category and yet be utterly useful to the project? | |||
| ::I'm sure there are clever answers for this point that can be made, if there weren't any to start with, but it's at least a ready solution to some of the unwieldliness, ugliness, and contentiousness of the project hegemony. ] 03:11, 24 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :::Actually a rather elegant solution has been devised to deal with the talk page clutter caused by project templates, see for example ]. --] 07:11, 24 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::I read your 6-point charter, and am now wondering how to get the messages it contains 'out there'. A Misplaced Pages essay? Taking each point to relevant policy talk pages? The article talk page clutter issue has effectively been shoved inside its own box as Folantin has pointed out. In addition, many of these talk page templates already generate the talk page categories you mention. See the bottom of ] for an example of talk page category clutter. The idea of hidden subcategories is nice, but not feasible as far as I know. What is more annoying is the way each different project has its own assessment, which in some cases is needed, and in others is silly. Of even more concern is a project tagging and then never working on the article. The "country wikiprojects" are particularly bad at tagging and never returning. ] 10:56, 24 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ===And projectors/projections=== | |||
| For what it's worth, I still don't get why templates and tags are better than categories. They're a hell of a lot less obtrusive to readers, and they seem to be a hell of a lot better for generating the kind of data that projects claim to want. ¶Paul mentions the subject-based projects and how well they work. I'm in no position to argue. In fact, I used to desperately wish we had a list of interests or expertise of Wikipedians so that folks could know upon whom to call when they hit a snag. In fact, I met Giano ages ago because ] was on cleanup. I was rewriting it, and I saw him as an editor of an architectural article. He and I did good, basic work to save the thing. N.b. the distinction, though, between "call a helper with the interest" and "call in the corporate entity." If I were to call in Project Architecture, I assume that I would be shoved aside. I wouldn't meet anyone, because five people would rewrite everything, and certainly my rewrites, and I would learn little. This is why I haven't looked for the subject oriented projects. ¶Given this, what would I do? What project would I join? I think it's safe to say that I'm a bona fide expert on literature, literary history, European history of some periods, some Continental philosophy, punk rock, etc., but what do I get from them? I've managed for 3 years now, and every time I've run across ''organized'' experts, they've been rather unimpressive. Most of the ''organized'' literature not only know less but are sure that they know more. They offer up platitudes from stereotypes about the 19th, 18th, and 17th centuries and have no idea that virtually everything they "know" like that is wrong. I say these things not to doubt the usefulness of projects at all, but rather to ask what it is, actually, that, in the humanities, we can get from Projects as opposed to lists of ''people'' with knowledge and interest? I would love to ask Paul to help out an article on Newton, because I know calculus from ], but I don't want to ask Project Calculus. I would love to ask Giano about the Bridgewater family's estate, but heck if I want to talk to Project Country Houses or something. People are tolerable. Organizations...I'm not sure why they exist or what they do. ] 02:51, 25 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Hi Geogre, re above thread and this - your considerations regarding feelings are very welcome, but never hopefully, a bar to expressing forthright opinions. I think you're right - in essence the objective of assessment ''is'' categorisation. There's another minor consideration - advertisement. It took some time after I started editing wikpedia to find other architecture editors. (off topic) I was actually quite concerned about the coverage of certain aspects of modern architecture - you can call that the 'gateway' drug of wikiaddiction, I'm sure we've all got them. Membership of the wikiproject only really picked up after we dropped tags on talk pages. I'm quite ambivalent about the projects purpose or effectivness - COTM hardly ever produces anything of any value - new members get a bulletin that lets them know of arch articles at FAC or PR. The talk page provides a place for people to ask architecture questions or seek advice (which is probably its greatest value), the portal seems unread, the project page offers little 'how to do it' advice on article writing (and most of its content has been there for years without change or interest). I like it. Rarely are there complaints, people seeking advice get it, those who don't want it, don't get it thrust upon them. The thing about the promise of wikiprojects is that they're supposed to be effective - it took some time to realise that actually the real work on-wiki is done by loose associations of people who've just bumped into each other - in the best coffee shop in the world (apart from the coffee that is). But as ever in here - there are people trying to compensate for what they don't have in RL. | |||
| :On a related note the discussion on FAR was interesting - You always argue for inclusive community involvement, no elites - In a civilised community with mutual respect that's both workable and laudable. But I fear we don't have either. It was incisive to describe Raul's esteem as a product of 'antiquity' (not to mention amusing), but it's also the product of good leadership I think. I once heard the task of leading academics as akin to 'herding cats' so he's done well. As the project scales though what do we do? The project's systemic bias towards the techy, geeky and, with respect, US preoccupations, leaves me wary of trusting in full participatory democratic models - as an individual I'm more prone to favour the academic, the arts, humanities and European preoccupations and find myself in the minority. Naturally for me, the majority simply aren't always right - if they were we'd likely have forced repatriation of foreigners and capital punishment in the UK. Mandate democracy is supposed to elect the best people, on balance to represent your interests. I think as the project scales, more democracy is less important than better leadership in this model. It doesn't sound as good, and plays merry hell with my liberal gland, but it's more likely to be effective. I'm also pretty uncomfortable with appointments - but if we're to have them, we need the right checks and balances in place. The trick I think we are missing is we could take the opportunity to address the real problems at FAC and FAR - Raul a computer scientist/mathematician, has delegated Marskell and Joel who come from engineering and scientific backgrounds. It's bang on the money that FAC/FAR just aren't concerned with content anymore just style (insert cultural parallel of your choice). What it should be doing is ensuring the quality of selection and accuracy of information. Our response to this has been 'cite, cite and cite again' - that's all well and good, but how effective is it? The stated preference is for book citations because of the perceived reliability, but how many reviewers at FAC/FAR go to the books to verify the information? We miss a trick here by not appointing an academically diverse 'trinity' to judge FA's who might have at least some grounding in the content of what they are being asked to judge. --] 00:08, 26 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::That's an extremely dense and well considered response, and I fear that I'll miss things or fail to pick up things that occurred to me when I read, so I ask forgiveness and the right of editing in advance. Advertising.... It seems disturbing to me. I just don't like flipping through a paper encyclopedia and seeing that the next page is a large ad saying, "If you enjoyed reading about '''Manatees''' then you will love ''''Project Big Fish</red>.''' Better, perhaps, might be advertising at the disused portal. I.e. the BigFish project can have a list of hot topics, but do we really need to have the cross-promotion on the Manatee? The fact that the advertising via templates is alluring is what makes every possible confederation or cause develop its own ad and want to battle it out for priority. | |||
| ::Real work is, as you say, just people bumping into one another, a casual compliment on a talk page (those have been rare as hen's teeth lately, but I remember meeting people by dropping a "Great work on David Simple" on someone and finding neat angles that way), a shot in the dark, or someone answering a complaint or query on an article talk page (I still do that). If we had a "people with an interest" list and a "people with knowledge" list, we might ''still'' get good collaborations. Projects, though, involve leadership, and leadership is your next point, and hence mine. | |||
| ::We're up against another problem in group dynamics. The question is whether scale makes democracy into mob rule, on the one hand, or demoticism, on the other hand, or paralysis, on that infamous third hand. When we have large numbers, we can end up with popular prejudices (per your example) regnant, with vulgarisms confirmed (everyone knows that women couldn't publish under their own names in the 18th century, so a poll determines that my objection to the pig-ignorant statement in ] is overruled), or with so many competing voices that nothing can be done (look at any Talk:Misplaced Pages policy page or, even more insanely, try to propose a policy). The answer is that all three happen, have happened, and are happening. However, the scale point we needed for these things was hit long ago. The question, therefore, is what this means about the way forward. At least two years ago, I saw the paralysis fully formed at every policy change, the demoticism generally present, and the ''mobile vulgus'' pretty much under every rock. | |||
| ::To some degree, no one "does" anything in these situations, because the aggregate will act on its own. My Cassandra wails are based more than anything on knowing what forms these remedies take. First, chaos loves dictators. Give people anarchy, and you will inevitably create a crusader and a demagogue. Second, groups form and attempt to fix the whole, fail, and then try to erect a wall around the private garden. Third, groups find their gardens overrun and so begin to police their membership and set up invitations and exclusions to their groups. Fourth, the population fractures, and these fissures are ''enforced'' so that they don't do it over here the way they do it over there. | |||
| ::Are leaders a way forward? I really do not think so, not by itself. Leaders can be benign, yes, and a good deal of the veneration people do of Jimbo, for example, is the ''desire'' for an authority, any authority, that cannot be impeached. What must be clear, though, is the reason for the selection of the leaders and what the leaders are leading. If at any time the groups select their leaders on the quality of being most exclusive, hippest, most militant, most anything, then the group has already set itself on an unalterable course. | |||
| ::Suppose that you and I and Bishonen and Giano and some others created an Academic Community Working Group or something. We select ourselves as being people with academic training beyond the undergraduate level, let's say. We then have set ourselves invariably in a path that leads to a dead end. Why am I writing ]? Why is Bishonen doing the ]? Why are you doing ]? In other words, we start out by saying, "We share this quality," and then that quality becomes the identity, and it is inevitably competitive. You're being academic? Well, I'm going to be erudite! You're being erudite? I'm going to be esoteric. Oh, esoteric are you? Well, I'm going to be obscuriantist. You think ''you're'' obscure? I'm going to write like ] with constipation! | |||
| ::I don't know if we can have leaders unless we follow the ideal of ]. Administrators, I've said, should not want power. They should not enjoy using power. Leaders should ideally be indifferent to the thing they're leading ("indifferent," but not apathetic). They should be, in a sense, desirous of the highest quality and least committed to one or another vision of that quality. | |||
| ::Sheesh, I'm prolix. Ok, let me get back to the issue of FAR(C). It's another world, alas, but one where the indifference of the director meant that the selected articles were not in danger, but where the process was as open to abuse as a Bush Administration signing statement. ] 03:49, 26 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ===On the FA(C)(R)(C) (part two of the overlong response=== | |||
| The thing there was that Raul didn't get involved in FAC. He didn't get involved in FAR/C, either. He promoted, and he was generally forced to promote what the community approved. However, he was also supposed to promote if objections were not actionable. He was free to, and supposed to, ignore bad faith, bizarre, and non-policy arguments for promotion and demotion. Thus, he sort of sat in a different chair in a different room and decided after the shouting was over what the shouting was about. As a practical matter it worked for the FA's, and it worked for Raul, as it kept him from having to argue and yet kept a central set of standards. Now, I have blown raspberries at Raul's Main Page picks, of course. I think a lot of the stuff there is trivial. Big deal, though. It's more of concern to me when I see the supposed hypercritics of FAC not objecting to garbage like, "It was released to near unanimous reviews." (Adverbs are too difficult?) | |||
| Anyway, because Raul's chair was in a different chamber, the process at FAC already appeared to be one of cold command and open standards, and that attracted helpers. No, no, no, they said, Raul just doesn't understand that all of these articles are dreadful, because they do not have the look that is best. No, no, they said, it's clear that FA's all look alike. No, no, they said, a person can be an expert on this single look that all FA's have and therefore, without reading or understanding the articles, they can offer meaningful objections that cannot be overcome. Furthermore, they say a bit later, they are the ''only'' ones to know what makes an FA. | |||
| Each individual victim of this chorus is an individual. He or she might have a few friends, and so the choice is either to be beaten down by "consensus" (of three) or be a disruptive complainer (of the three) or be someone just calling in friends to try to astroturf the vote (and therefore be ''exactly like'' the goof who proposes his 5 line article for FAC and gets his elementary school Computers class to vote to promote it). The choices for someone who endures that are either to never get near the FA process again or to watch for a while to try to forge a coalition with the next victim. Meanwhile, the ''actual solution'' would be for the "leader" that is getting the borrowed veneration to come into the room and shout. To Raul's credit, he's done this, several times, but then things go back to "normal." | |||
| Well, once people have justified themselves by believing that there is a look to all FA's and that they are the sole possessors of this look, they '''must''' conclude that all things done before their achieving the Buddha were mistakes. Anything promoted despite their objections are also mistakes. Therefore, they create the deliberative FAR/C. They nominate to it, program -bots to track it, watch it, live on it, and dominate it. They are ''eager'' to pursue it only if they are absolutely convinced that they have the keys to the kingdom of God, and articles (if not their authors) must perform an ] to atone for the sin of not conforming to the expectations of this group. Sooner or later, new people will come along (as they tend to do) and think that this is how things are done, that this must be true. They may even testify that it is a delightful process to undergo. Who knows? They might even actually enjoy going through it with their own writing? As one woman told me (speaking of fetishes), "No matter how bent the pot, there's a lid that fits." | |||
| Because of a failure (sorry, Raul, if you're reading, but I don't think you could realistically have done anything but fail in this regard) to emphatically slap down such self-possession, it was inevitable that a group would take control. Oligarchy, I really think, is death, because oligarchies tend to exist for greedy reasons. Failure was inevitable, because the only way a leader could have prevented it is by wielding power in its naked form, and, had Raul done that (or anyone else), he would have been not a leader, but a ruler, and I would have been all over his case (and others, too, I'm sure). In other words, the kind of person who can be a good leader is the kind of person who would not scream at such groups. The only way out would have been to have gotten a great big poll or huge-participation census on views of the subject, and '''that''' runs into "democracy becomes paralysis" problem unless one is very clever. (Ok, well, maybe not very clever, but as clever as I am, which doesn't qualify as "very.") | |||
| How could it be done? In this case, take FA authors. Give 'em a vote each, or a vote per FA, if you're feeling cruel, and see what they think about "what makes an FA." That would scale away from the paralysis, but it would bias toward conservative outcomes. | |||
| Anyway, FAR/C has no legitimacy to me because of the above. I can single out people by name, but I'm sure anyone reading this knows what names those would be. In the end, they don't matter. It doesn't matter if it's This person I find vaccuous or That person I find petty or The Other person I think gets tumescent over formatting codes. It matters only, as I've said before, that any group formed around the presumption that there is such a thing as What Is an FA in any precise form. | |||
| I apologize again (and again) for going long. ] 04:16, 26 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :I enjoy your ruminations and I'm currently chewing them over. There's a lot about FAC I don't like, but ultimately I think we're here to provide quality material that will get read. When all's said and done, being on the list gets your articles read. I completely understand your and Bishonen's and Giano's withdrawal from the process, but for me - head down, bum up and charge.....On another note would you mind keeping an eye on ] and ] situation - just a watching brief, but my replies are getting longer, my temper shorter and I'm rapidly running out of charm. --] 18:07, 26 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :::*Could I point out I have not withdrawn (well I did but now I have undrawn) in fact I have had two both quite recently, I have merely ceased to bother about the manual of style - (I never did much anyway) - they still seem to get through just the same, all this mumbo jumbo written by God knows who, I just can't keep track of it si have stopped trying. I advise others to do the same. Sorry to here you are running out of charm, I must give you some tips on how to retain it. ] 18:12, 26 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :::::Is it something to do with goats? --] 18:17, 26 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::::::Please do not bring my goats into this JC, there are enough of those silly creatures commenting on FACs as it is, one maintains one's charm by only thinking nice thoughts about people - it always works for me. ] 18:20, 26 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ===On that and that=== | |||
| Here I thought I had hit upon the cleverest solution ever devised for avoiding your POV forkers. I really didn't expect them to dig it up and start sniffing immediately. That is aggravating. The only thing I can say I will say. If I say anything else, it will ruin the entire project. Blug. ] 03:13, 27 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == Horse Flop Prize == | |||
| ]]] | |||
| Your contributions to the Biography Assessment Drive have not gone unnoticed! --] ] 21:12, 23 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Thank you! I have now gotten a plush doll ''and'' my very own horse flop. It's lovely, and it makes the grasses green. It can also keep me warm on a cold night on the prairie, if there ever are any more cold nights on the prairie. As such, it has already demonstrated ''utile et putreo,'' which is the goal of all critics. ] 21:46, 23 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ] --] 10:05, 24 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| Yes. I have made an important new analogy: I am appearing "like an infernus ex machina." :-) I have extremely strong feelings about the attempt to shut out the community and funnel decisions through self-appointed experts. If I laughed derisively at Snowspinner's attempt to make himself an "expert" at Webcomics and therefore have the right to determine what stays or goes among them, how am I going to feel about "expert on all featured articles, animal, vegetable, and mineral?" Dolores Umbridge strikes again. ] 13:12, 24 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == Request for your Opinion == | |||
| Geogre, | |||
| I've contacted you before since you are more accustomed to Misplaced Pages than myself. I'm currently engaging in a back and forth conversation with a Mrcineman on the discussion page of the Usana article and I want to know if you think I'm taking a poor approach in keeping with Misplaced Pages's intent. Any help you can give me in this matter would be greatly appreciated. | |||
| Regards, | |||
| Jean314 | |||
| :Jean, I saw that that was happening. You've been good at watching the article, and it has been hit from multiple IP's trying to do the same things. Now the IP's have gotten a new name account. I may not be able to weigh in tonight, but I will tomorrow. Additionally, I may ask other folks to watchlist the article on the administrator's noticeboard. If things are getting into serious dispute, or if I'm too slow at responding, you can ask for folks to take a look, too, by going to ] or ]. As of this time, though, I'll say a word or two and possibly mention the matter on AN/I, as I have a sinking feeling that I may end up blocking the advertisers. ] 04:24, 26 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| Jean314, you should know that my request for more eyeballs seems to have paid dividends. I have seen two other administrators step in today to revert some of the inflationary claims and POV edits, so I think, so long as they keep the article in their watchlists and I do as well, your job will be a good deal easier. Be aware, though, that the article may be trimmed down a bit more. The present version is still a little laudatory for the company, but more objective editing is always a plus. ] 03:08, 27 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ==One from your requested list== | |||
| ]. Typically I picked the one that had the fewest sources, so if you have anything you can add please help it out (The ] anecdote sounds like pure invention but Burford mentioned it so I put it in). ]] 12:47, 26 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :It looks good to me. I suppose that working in a tavern isn't that unusual for dramatists. If you aspired to be a leading comic playwright, you'd go to "make it big" in the theater. While no one reads your scripts or mounts your plays, you have to get a job, so you get one near the theater, where you can meet producers, and <dramatic flourish> that's why every waitress on 42nd street is an actress and every bar tender in Hollywood is a script writer. (I don't know that Foote would work ''there,'' if it was really that rough.) ] 13:03, 26 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::That's what I thought (our article on him says he liked the Bedford Coffee House) and the Rat King story seemed a little over the top, but I'll leave it there until somebody finds evidence to contrary. ]] 13:18, 26 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == ] == | |||
| Hiya, | |||
| Your comments on WP:AN were helpful. I've moved the dialog to ], and would value follow up specific comments and discussion there! Thanks :) ] <sup><span style="font-style:italic">(] | ])</span></sup> 23:53, 26 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == Devastating the crops == | |||
| I was tracking down some old AfDs, and I came across this great comment from you at ]: ''"As for stopping the cruft, we're way, way, way too late for that when it comes to Tolkeinland. We can still stem the tide of neo-Hitchhiker's Guide and Star Wars-revivus, but the Middle Earthlings have already devastated the crops."'' - apart from pointing out your wilful mis-spelling of Tolkien, I thought I'd point you to ], where I try to get a handle on how many worthwhile articles there really are related to Tolkien and Middle-earth (well, worthwhile according to me - I'm sure you'd differ). And if you really want to see how getting a handle on redirects can stop the flood of stubs and begin to stem the tide, see ] and its subcategories. Still over 1000 unsorted redirects, but I think that gives an idea of the scale of redirects from every conceivable name in the Tolkien corpus. ] 16:05, 27 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == ] == | |||
| I know it's been a long time since you created the ] article, but do you remember the source you used? I'm working on clearing out the oldest of the unreferenced (an impossible task, I know) and this is one of them. Since I can't find anything, perhaps you, as the only real contributor...? ] 05:23, 29 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Oh, yes! I do. It was Omelbert. Englebert, Omer. The Lives of the Saints. Christopher and Anne Fremantle, trans. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1994. Nihil obstat, Imprimatur 1951. ] 14:44, 29 July 2007 (UTC) (At the time I wrote it, I didn't have a copy of Alban Butler of my own, and I doubt that I've been using this little anonymous Catholic Saints Society source, which has never seemed adequate to me, and I doubt also that it was F. L. Cross in the ''Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church.'' Those are my general sources for saints.) ] 14:45, 29 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::Thanks. I'll copy the above into the article. ] 16:58, 29 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == Brace yourself... == | |||
| Ahem. Preemptive apologies for making everyone involved blush, but I need your help. There's a ] I'm trying to give an example who isn't a modern pornographic actor, and vaguely remember either you or Giano, when chatting with Bishonen, referring to an article about an early twentieth century society man ... ladies man ... gigolo ... known for such unusual dimensions. Do you remember the reference? --] <sup>]</sup> 13:27, 29 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Not me. Gentlemen don't look. ] 14:34, 29 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ==Templating the regulars== | |||
| Misplaced Pages essays are supposed to only represent the opinions of their author/s. Formally. Therefore, I didn't put up for speedy or ], nor boldly userfy it. Still, surely there's some lower limit to how silly, weakly argued, and partial stuff in Misplaced Pages space gets to be? The "essay" is a petulant reply to ] — reason enough to merge it (the worthwhile parts of it — I guess that would be the paragraph I just added, probably reverted by now) with the pre-existing "Don't" version, surely. What do you say, Deletion Man? ] | ] 15:12, 29 July 2007 (UTC). | |||
| :I can only see two users linking to the first essay. Consequently, if the essay has a ''use'', it doesn't appear to be used. Essay space is not the same thing as a sandbox, so the question about any essay is whether it is useful. If it represents a point of view shared by many, then there will be extensive links-to for the essay. If it represents a solo point of view, then it has to be in the user talk space. I write quite a few essays, as you know, and every blinkin' one is kept in user space (and yet, mysteriously, get quite a few links-to). I write them at all in order to have a non-recursive explanation of an argumentative position I am taking. Therefore, they act as a "If you don't understand why I'm saying this, here is the long version of my point of view." The first essay you mention should absolutely be in user space. It is the point of view of a single user, it seems, and not a contingent. On the other hand, the "don't template" is not only true, but it's useful for explaining why there is a precedent of a half dozen AN/I and ArbCom decisions surrounding the impoliteness of using templates on established users. | |||
| :The short version? Delete or userfy, but it doesn't belong in project space. ] 15:23, 29 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::Thanks. I was interested to see a user I had just been telling off for templating a regular, placing a link to that querulous strawman piece on his userpage. He's welcome to link to it; but, as you say, it's got no business in wiki space. People want to link to it, they can just as easily do that to user space, where they won't be misled into thinking it carries some sort of authority. (And thanks for the fix, Mouse.) ] | ] 15:36, 29 July 2007 (UTC). | |||
| :::]. There are few things I find more offensive on Misplaced Pages than "templating the regulars" -- after more than three years of editing and watching people interact, I have to conclude that it's one of the behaviors that drives away good contributors in disgust. (I realize I'm preaching to the choir... but you're good singers both.) ] ] 16:05, 29 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::::Yep, I've been reverted indeed, and as I rather expected, by the user who linked to it, who appears in Antandrus' link, and who is currently scolding about DreamGuy on my page. His reason given for reverting (see edit summary) rather enforces the need to userfy the thing, IMO — I suppose to the original creator of the page? What with the revert and the scolding, I guess I'm a little too involved to userfy or speedy it myself. I hope somebody will, as it sure isn't improving Misplaced Pages space. And then I foresee a Deletion Review — sigh, Misplaced Pages really '''is''' a chrystal ball sometimes. Good job I'm feeling ] today. My only problem is with ] I tried to communicate with. Really tried, and got slapped: he first ignored and then removed two messages from me on his talk. I don't think I've ever gotten that from an admin before. Oh, well, from old ... adversaries, of course, but you know what I mean. A stranger. It felt a bit weird. Nm, Zen it is. ] | ] 16:20, 29 July 2007 (UTC). | |||
| In some ways, "don't template the regulars" really means "don't template people ''you know'' are regulars". If a newish editor templates me, I put it down to their inexperience and take the opportunity to explain things to them - sometimes I come out of such discussions with a changed viewpoint. On the other hand, a regular templating another regular is easily seen as an insult. The subtext is "you should know better, and here's a template to show how annoyed I am with you". In reality, explaining in your own words is always best. Templates should really only be used for obvious vandalism (not test edits) and for anonymous IP addresses. Once someone has taken the trouble to register an account and start taking part in discussions, the least others can do is talk to them, not send them form letters. ] 18:05, 29 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| The first essay is right: Templates are for anonymous and believed-to-be brand, brand, brand new users. They have ''no other'' use. I do not believe they should be used on articles, on people, on any damn thing. Your words or no words. Honestly, there is no other excuse, no other use, none. I cannot, cannot get behind them. If a new user templates an experienced user, then one of the most valuable lessons we can teach is, "Templates are only for very, very, very narrow circumstances." Thus, let's refer to the "Don't template" essay. ] 20:55, 29 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Yes. Just so, Geogre. Therefore, I've commented on the RFA of the form letter enthusiast. I hesitated, not wanting to be mean — but this really worries me. . I hope he has some good answers. ] | ] 23:47, 29 July 2007 (UTC). | |||
| :Wow, like ...no, he didn't. He already replied. Man, that was... just bad. Oh, well, at least his tone stops me from feeling sorry or mean any more. ] | ] 23:51, 29 July 2007 (UTC). | |||
| No, well, I looked through, as I do out of curiosity, at voices on both sides and found that I honestly had interacted with perhaps two of either side, so I didn't have an enormous amount of "this person wouldn't vote for if the guy were bad" or "this person wouldn't oppose unless the guy were bad," so I had only the comments, their motivations, and the candidate's own reactions. Given what's at stake, being worried is sufficient to oppose, and there was a good bit to worry about. I am now wondering whether that abominable essay should be on...whatever it is that now deletes things like that...MfD? ("I'm the bloody Mufti!" -- David Thomas as Richard Harris in ''SCTV'''s "The Pope Who Would Be King.") ] 13:54, 30 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ==:(== | |||
| ] ] 00:59, 30 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :How utterly dreary things become. I'm not even sure that my work here is necessary any longer. It certainly was, once, and for a long time. This is what's paramount to me: is it needed by the others. If so, I do it. If not, there is a wider world. ] 13:42, 30 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == A-class assessments == | |||
| For an article to receive an A-class rating it has to go through a formal review process somewhat like GA. WikiProject Biography's A-Class review department can be found ]. This is done in all other projects as well, so complain to the "villains" over at ] if you have disagreements with the A-class reviews. I've made a few changes to the WPBiography template that can be seen ] that might address your passive voice concerns. If you really want the change to mean anything though, you're going to have to find someone who can write a bot to sign the few hundred thousand assessments that have already been done. I completely agree with you on the fact that too many articles are being rated Start when they should be rated B. However, assigning really specific workgroups to 400,000 articles, then trying to find people that have knowledge in that specific area that are willing to assess, is going to be more trouble than it's worth. Some assessors are just "B.A.D. assessors". I don't see what's wrong with assessors going through the alphabet though. We don't have a good workgroup scheme, so it's basically your only choice if you really want to reduce the backlog. The awards are mainly there to generate and maintain interest in the drive. I don't believe they're contributing to the problem of incorrect assessment, some people just don't know what is Start and what is B. I suppose we could remove the awards from the drive, but I'm not sure if it's going to have any effect. I really think people are trying to assess articles correctly; they aren't assessing articles as Start just to piss off the person who wrote the article. I believe everyone would agree that the assessments should be signed, but if you want it done you're probably going to have to get it implemented yourself. Beyond telling people to not assess articles wrong there's not much else to do about that problem. Just tell the person they've "assessed wrongly" whenever you see a bad assessment. Please respond on my talk page, the images will mess up your reply. Regards, '''<font face="Kristen ITC">]]</font>''' 18:04, 30 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ]] | |||
| == Thank you and a question == | |||
| Thank you for interest in the ArbCom involving my person; comments by neutral editors are much needed yet are few and far in between. If I understand your post correctly, you are critical of my gathering of evidence (diffs). Yet I wonder if you have considered that a) most DR proceeding requre diffs, and one may not have time nor will do dig through history and compile evidence quickly - what's wrong with taking weeks and few edits every week to compile one's argument? b) almost all pre-ArbCom evidence was gathered ] (please take a look at that section), not that active that one could gather evidence from just few recent days edits, and ArbCom preempted my RfC against him c) majority of diffs were gathered after ArbCom started, about users who were involved in past or ongoing DR with me and commented in the ArbCom (commonly presenting diffs of their own), with intention of presenting evidence in this ArbCom or starting a DR (RfC) of my own when I have time and will (and enough diffs to show a pattern) d) further evidence was gathered against users active in my ArbCom; I don't see why I cannot gather evidence for days or even weeks for the ongoing proceeding? PS. I assume you have seen my posts ] and ]. Bottom line, I fail to see how the right to collect evidence to defend oneself against people who have been accusing one (with or without diffs) already is wrong. And I find it very puzzling that people can criticize one's right to gather evidence, when everybody involved in DRs is gathering diff evidence (and further, why people discuss the "letter of the law instead of the spirit of the law" - i.e. instead of discussing how/when/by whom/etc. evidence was gathered, isn't the evidence itself the thing that should be discussed?--<sub><span style="border:1px solid #228B22;padding:1px;">]|]</span></sub> 21:02, 30 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :That's rather a lot to reply to, so I hope you'll forgive me if I miss something vital. What I wanted to do was ask a central question to help get through the business of evidence collecting vs. playing gotcha. There are times, and I make no bones about it, that people collect misdeeds in the form of diffs. This is particularly true for people who like to provide concrete evidence. A good diff is vital. That said, I hope that each time we're forced to do that in advance, it's because each example is an unambiguous policy violation and not merely an occasion of annoyance. | |||
| :You may or may not know my stance on "NPA." I'm very against the way that policy has been used, along with "incivility," as if either granted license to block. There are people who have said that they believe that rudeness is the #1 problem at Misplaced Pages, and that's 180 degrees from my position. It's not that I think anyone should be rude, but rather that, as Milton said, I cannot praise a close and fugitive virtue (''Areopagetica''). Truth and information like the forum more than they do the cloister, and the agora is sometimes raucous. Cautioning, admonishing, and even disciplining people who cease to be interested in truth and information and become interested in destruction is necessary, but that takes place when a person is causing disruption...disruption of the ongoing conversation, the ongoing debate, the ongoing progress. Therefore, I do not regard examples of rudeness examples of policy violations. Some people feel differently from me in that, but I am pretty strong in my convictions here. | |||
| :So, I have one question when it comes to compiling evidence ahead of time: is it evidence of infractions or of failed mediation? It is never across the line to compile examples where a person violated a policy, where an attempt was made at attaining compliance, where good faith measures were taken to resolve blocks, and where people were announcing or demonstrating disruption (not disagreeableness, but disruption). Therefore, is the evidence taking going to show attempts to resolve matters as well as lists of bad deeds? Is it evidence of policy violation? | |||
| :For my part, I have no opinion on your actions and don't want to stand in accusation. ArbCom will consider the matter. I'm not being coy or intentionally aggravating by saying this, either. Some of the diffs show compiling stuff on Ghirla and Irpen prior to arbitration. I fully understand why you might view them with ''suspicion'', just as they have viewed an entire cluster of Estonian editors from a single university showing up to make anti-Russian edits as suspicious, but surely both of those users have shown themselves as pretty dedicated to NPOV by now. More to the point, I have seen both of them try to find (and wring their hands at not finding) outsiders who will take the time to mediate between competing national and ethnic views of subjects. Most Americans are going to be piss poor at knowing when a word is loaded with special meaning, or when a fringe ethnic or nationalist group is trying to score a point. Americans are as ignorant of Eastern Europe and Central Europe as they are the natural history of Venus, and those few who have avid interests are likely to have family lore making them as partial as anyone could be. | |||
| :I don't have an answer. I just had a question, and the question really wasn't even for me. I just ask whether we're compiling evidence of policy violations, along with consequences, or compiling evidence of things we don't like. I hope I haven't been guilty of the latter, and I hope you haven't, either. Honestly, though, my interest is, as ever, in how we determine the best way forward. ] 01:42, 31 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::Thank you for the detailed reply. | |||
| ::Civility. I guess we may have to disagree on that. I believe civility is crucial for such project. First, look how incivility turned Usenet from an academic discourse avenue into flaming hell for trolls. Second, while thickness of people skins vary, many don't have and will not evolve the proverbial thick skin, and most of us don't enjoy being insulted. Hence, each insult suffered raises the 'wikistress' and makes a user less likely to contribute. I have seen many valuable editors give up on this project because they saw no reason to spend time creating content and in return, receive more insults than thanks - and I myself, author of 20 FAs and hundred+ of DYKs and so on, am recently feeling as if I am being dragged through mud and chased of this project with various accusations. When I find myself dreading clicking on watchlist, because I expect that I will have to read several posts/edit summaries accusing me of "violating BLP, V and RS, intimidation and threatening, mocking, baiting, stalking, disruptive editing, rudely presenting misleading evidence, wheel-warring, canvassing, forum and block shopping, blocking his opponents, black books composing and leading a cabal" (this is but a brief summary of things raised at my ArbCom), I wonder why I bother logging in. This all would not be the case if incivility would be enforced. Showing respect, assuming good faith and being civil makes a world of difference - and people who don't understand this should be taught good manners, because not everybody can live in the gutter. I am not advocating a 'block for a single slip', but editors who show a long history of incivility (which I hope has been demonstrated by my evidence) should not be allowed to go on unpunished. Or we will end up, by gradual lowering of standards, with only the thickest and most rude editors remaining in this project - and then Misplaced Pages will deteriorate into another Usenet, which was also once called a 'great thing' and 'compendium of public knowledge' and whatnot. | |||
| ::As you can see from looking at the diffs provided, my evidence was of failing to comply to CIV, NPA, AGF and related policies. I just don't believe that comments like "are you a liar (something that you recently called me) hallucinating between interludes of POV pushing and peppering Misplaced Pages with propaganda?" or calling others contributions "unbalanced propaganda piece" should be allowed to go on. As I said, I was collecting the diffs to such edits to show a pattern of disruptive behavior in discussions. That some editors who posted such comments are now saying they are offended because I collected them is rather... bizzare. | |||
| ::For the record, no, those users have not shown themselves dedicated to NPOV, as I explained in more details somewhere in the ArbCom. Unwillingness to present citations and compromise, but instead accusing others of propaganda and such is hardly something I would call neutral attitude. Somebody should consider why I have 20 FAs (extensively filled with inline citations and judged neutral in GA review, PA review, Project reviews and FA reviews), including quite a few on controversial issues (], ]), while major contributions of mentioned users to FAs has been accusing me of spreading propaganda during FACs or talk page revet warring to challenge a GA status (all diffs in my evidence) :> Getting an article to a FA requires the ability to compromise and work with other editors, addressing their grievances with substantive edits and not accusations of propaganda or nationalism. | |||
| ::In any case, this ArbCom, which most likely will just pass a general amnesty, will not do a thing. Nobody will be criticized, all will continue their behaviour, irking their opponents, and most likely at some point I will just leave the project after getting insulted once to many. And in a few years, the project will find itself another failed monument, next to the Usenet. The only good thing is that GFDL should allow somebody (Citizendium?) to rescue the database and continue work - hopefully, with stricter civility guidelines.--<sub><span style="border:1px solid #228B22;padding:1px;">]|]</span></sub> 11:40, 31 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :::I think such predications assume that incivility will spread to all Misplaced Pages pages. Usenet is by no means a failed monument, and even if it was, and though there ''are'' similarities, there are enough differences to, well, make a difference. How much work do you do outside of areas involving nationalistic controversies and conflicts? There are many areas of Misplaced Pages that are calm and functioning well. ] 04:03, 1 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :I'm not going to enter into this, as the conversation is now on "who's mean to whom." That is an argument not worth having and not logically valid. As far as I will go into such zero yield discussions is to restate my own judgment of the particular users and to point out that you're employing some rhetorical sleight of hand, to be charitable. I see both Irpen and Ghirla as quite committed to NPOV. Removing a source without adding one has nothing to do with the pursuit of NPOV. To take an hypothetical, if someone put in a statement from '']'' in the ] article that says that Bigfoot has been elected to Congress and cited it, I might well remove both the statement and the source. I wouldn't have a ''different'' source, indeed. Neutral point of view is simply that, and where it intersects the Reliable Sources policies we get friction. Every nation has its weaker and stronger sources. If someone cited a statement in a ''] News'' "proving" that Iran wants to invade the US, the point would be that the source would not be obeying NPOV, would not be employing journalistic ethics, would not wish to, and would be inappropriate. My own feeling is that there is some sleight of hand in the "civility" charges as well, but I'm not the judge and not really one of the jury. | |||
| :Usenet's ruination, if it got ruined, had to do with allowing .com's to sell IP's. Suddenly, the Duke-UNC network that had become the DARPA/sys/uni communication system became the flood of gibbering AOL users and anyone. In other words, the pre-selection was over. Usenet wasn't exactly pleasant before, but however rude it got, it got that way by having complete access to all those with a computer and a spare $20/month. Misplaced Pages ''began on the principle that we wanted'' all those people. However, I don't think Usenet got ruined in any form or fashion. What happened was the emergence of listservers and forums to take up the slack, as Internet phenomena move like mercury. It was not civility but democracy that "ruined" Usenet, and the answer was to go to purely elite formats (lists) and, from the gibbering masses who resented eggheads, anti-elite formats (web forums). | |||
| :I cannot imagine what your experience of Usenet was. My own experience of it was 1989-1991, where I found that it wasn't very useful compared to the private BBS system, for me. Instead, I turned to listservers, where we can be sure of control. There, I saw academics, each with articles and books published, cursing each other out over the etymology of "fuck." I saw and still see acid comments as customary when any new idea is expressed. If anyone asks something well known, the entire list serve takes it as an occasion to sneer, and the subtext is fully as nasty as anything shouted on the playground. In fact, I found those list servers, where everyone was educated and polite, to be uncivil because it was nothing but cattiness, cruelty, and looking at neither the content of the thought nor the quality of the expression, but only personal fears. | |||
| :Attempts at Laetitia Baldridge-style politeness result in the same object as attempts at ideological purity, patriotism, or religious orthodoxy: silence, paralysis, or death of the endeavor. | |||
| :Let's consider, just for a second, the question of Christian sin. One can take the ] approach at Little Gidding, or one can take the ] approach at Munster. You can spend your time, like a Puritain, watching constantly for transgressions against the Law, for sin, for failings, or you can spend your time encouraging good deeds, focusing on love, and making worship joyful. If you spend your time with Civility as piety looking for infractions, you're going to find infractions. At first, they may all be genuine, but soon enough they'll be imagined and possible and potential. You'll brush aside the question of "who determines if it's an insult, the speaker or the reader" with "anyone" and find that virtually ''everything'' is an insult. For my part, I see a bit of insult and rancor as the price of progress, while disruption is unforgivable, and I think it's a good deal better if we ''personally model friendliness and a desire for amity'' than if we try to become the Secret Police of words. ] 12:11, 1 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::The AOL business was ], wasn't it? I haven't had any experience with closed, academic listservers, but I'm pleased to hear that human nature can't be suppressed! :-) ] 13:33, 1 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :::I hadn't heard the term before, but yes. I remember, at the time, having a t-shirt that said, "The Internet is full: Go Away!" It was annoying. It still is. The idea of Misplaced Pages seemed to me to be inherently doomed because of it, but, once it reached a critical mass and met its own tipping point of protectors vs. attackers, it took off like a shot. Then its own reputation served as a selection criterion. However, we're still based on the idea that some jostling is going to take place when we head toward the goal. The guy standing in the middle of the crowd yelling, "But what about the plot of the Gnomes of Zurich" is going to get run over, and no doubt he'll be bruised in the process. | |||
| :::Yeah, human nature. What bugs me about the society of my professional peers is just how much condescension is necessary. People gain points by being less open hearted. Here, I'm an elitist. There, I'm a rabble lover. Anyway, the only real argument is "sticks and stones" and "if you're nice, other people will be nice." ] 13:46, 1 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::::''"The guy standing in the middle of the crowd yelling, "But what about the plot of the Gnomes of Zurich" is going to get run over, and no doubt he'll be bruised in the process."'' - LOL! Hilarious! I can't work out whether that is a swipe at nationalist conspiracy theories or fancruft or both! ] 14:10, 1 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == My RfA == | |||
| Hi, Geogre, and thanks for your participation in ]. I've withdrawn it, and will be writing up an "analysis" of it, which will soon be available at ] when it's done. Please come around when you get the chance, and give me feedback on how I can improve. Thanks again, ] <sub>]</sub><sup>]</sup>] 04:35, 31 July 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == Signing and dating assessments == | |||
| Thought you might be interested in ], which brings up more reasons (if more were needed) to have assessments signed and dated. ] 03:57, 1 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == Restarted FAC == | |||
| Debate has been restarted at ] and your voice has not been heard.--] <small>(]/]/]/]) </small> 06:14, 2 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :UnBELIEVable. The complaints are half wrong, half stylistics (not grammar, stylistics). Now, most serious writers know why "stylistics" are not a reason for changing a cooperative or corporate document, but some low-level workers who merely do what the gods of their lights tell them, do not. It's simple logic. Stylistic preferences vary from place to place, time to time, and this is why, on anything that is international, it is going to be absurd to insist on a style sheet and chauvinistic to insist that it is right. This is why the people who get hives over anything not fitting their own style sheet started trying to make the MoS, then make it narrow, then make it mandatory, etc. I genuinely wish Raul would explain why on earth he reopened a passed FAC. SandyGeorgia and Tony1? I don't think the article is filled with musical prose, but this looks like ''yet another'' case of pride and self-righteousness, or self-importance. ] 12:09, 2 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::I'm hoping to support later. Are you referring to Tony's comments or mine? ] 17:33, 2 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Generally Tony's, but why another run in the first place? It '''passed.''' SandyGeorgia didn't remove her objection after four weeks or so, and Tony showed up just then with his usual style-sheet demands, but that doesn't change the fact that anyone can just go ahead and ''do the damned edits.'' If you spot that it should be "four-storey," you can just go ''make the damn change.'' However, these are people lodging Object, of all things, on the basis of their individual preferences. E.g. the person uses "story" throughout, but I would use "storey," and I would expect to see OBJECT! over it. (Look in a dictionary.) Individual preference is not grounds for withholding FA status. Individual style sheets are not "grammar" or even "better." They're all ''individual'' and therefore cannot be legitimate objections. ] 17:44, 2 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::I must confess, I wouldn't have gone and had a look without seeing the link here. I tend to end up at FAC only by chance. A lot of my suggested edits I could have done myself, though some (such as the pictures) need locals to do. Much of what I say at a FAC is more suited to the article talk page, or peer review. I generally ignore the FAC criteria and go by whether I: (a) enjoyed reading the article; (b) learnt something; (c) found it well-written; and (d) whether any immediate concerns I spot are addressed. Sometimes I make the changes myself and then support anyway. It doesn't feel objective, which is why I don't get involved with FAC more. Anyway, I'm off to see if there have been any responses. Oh, and looking at the previous nomination, I agree, it is strange that it was put up for another run. Better than having it fail, I suppose. Possibly Raul was unsure and was looking for more input? It does kind of raise more questions about the FAC process than it answers though. ] 20:08, 2 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Grrrrr. Yes, I suppose questions...about the process, I suppose.... It's not the process that bugs me, but a couple of people trying to own it who enjoy neither support nor expertise. ] 20:23, 2 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::Then get more people involved. People who evaluate articles on their merits first, and only then give a cursory look at the tick-box form to check nothing major is wrong. A delicate mix of the two systems, but with a dollop of common sense. Ultimately, Misplaced Pages can only go so far. I don't believe Wikipdia can produce the "best" articles on something, but should aim to provide readable and informative articles, leaving professionals to produce the best/more detailed content. ] 22:48, 2 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| Get more people involved? More people ''were involved,'' but they decided they didn't like a welter of "obviously poorly written because my corporate style sheet dictates 'outside New York' instead of 'outside of New York.'" People were reviewing, although now we're told that ''every one of them was wrong'' because they didn't have the genius to demand superscripts. Oh, we demanded citations, but that's not right: they have to be ''footfuckingnotes'' to be "inline citations." Yeah, well, most of us still realize that this is a volunteer effort, and having to fight, every day, with every one, all the time, against people whose sole virtue is that they ''comment on every single FAC in the misbegotten idea that they are experts on "what makes an FA" rather than any element of writing, researching, or communication'' is not going to pump anyone up for fun. I continue to contribute, but I continue to be quite purposeful in doing nothing that will ever get before those sophomoric monkeys. ] 02:10, 3 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :It is very frustrating - more so for the author than us I fear. He has my sympathies and I've tried to help him out by addressing Sandy's concerns. Would you consider putting the rights and wrongs to one side in favour of encouraging the author and supporting again? --] 12:22, 3 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| Of course, but I don't know why any of the supports wouldn't still be supports. Well, there ''is'' a reason. A lot of the bulldoody that these folks are demanding is vulgarian/Americentric, and I'd be inclined to oppose/make the changes if those were presented to me as the author's choice. In this case, I know the poor guy isn't choosing to write as if he were doing an interoffice memo (sic). Raul should understand all prior supports, but I will go support again. ] 13:56, 3 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :As you know Geogre, I'm all for reversing all these colonial 'advances' in English - how can the spellings of five year olds be considered literate (lede indeed!)? - but unfortunately since mislaying the Empire the 'special relationship' only seems to extend so far and doesn't include exemptions from such things as "dunkin' donut's". --] 14:14, 3 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :::This whole conversation is now hypothetical, if Raul can only promote with the assent of the chosen few, then that is his his "funeral" - I for one will have nothing to do it, I have given my views here and advise others to follow suit, if our opinions count for nothing then lets keep them to ourselves. ] 20:05, 3 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ==Running to keep still== | |||
| Thought you might be interested in ]. ] 17:33, 2 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == A slightly distressed question == | |||
| Geogre, I saw and had a think about it. (I'm referring to your annoyed mimicry of Sandy in the first part.) I'm not about to make any comments about the position you are taking on FAC, or FARC; I am not defending Sandy either. It's just a bit depressing to see these exchanges. | |||
| What do you think the possible outcomes are? I'm seriously asking; this is not a rhetorical question with the ulterior motive of persuading you to stop making such posts. If I thought you should stop, I'd say so. I'm just asking you, as an experienced editor, where we can possibly go to resolve these kinds of debates. I participate in FAC for my own reasons, so I read ] as a natural consequence of that. It won't wound me very deeply if Misplaced Pages can't resolve this sort of debate, but all the same I'd be happy to see a resolution. I just don't see where it would come from. I think Raul would have to be involved, just because of the nature of his role, and I can see multiple reasons why he'd stay out of almost all such discussions. | |||
| Anyway, not a criticism, just a thought. Here's another metaphor: I used to live not far from what was called an "Accident Black Spot". There was a sign at the roadside warning drivers that accidents were frequent there. I used to think about the people living in the house right next to that roadsign: would they see people dying in car crashes every week? (I was a kid and didn't realize how infrequent accidents needed to be to make something a black spot.) It seemed awful to me that they'd just sit there and watch it and could do nothing about it, though they drove in and out of their driveway and right across the black spot every day. Some parts of WP seem to me to be black spots in this way; and in the case of FAC I feel like the people in that house. I don't like seeing the roadkill, but I don't have an immediate answer. Can you see any further into the future on this? ] ] 17:31, 5 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Satire can have two purposes. The first and laudable one is to flog the vice and reform the victim. The second and shabby one is to form a community of the same opinion. My aims had been the first. If Sandy stops, categorically, ''telling'' how she's too tired to answer people, how her weariness is so vast, so unfathomable, as to excuse curt, impolite, imperious demands, then she will likely hear no more from me about her ''person.'' I'm reminded of the "Castle of Aaaaaargh" and the suggestion that perhaps it was dictated: "If he were dying, he wouldn't ''carve'' aaaargh, he'd just say it." Well, if you're that busy, that tired, that flummoxed at all the little people not obeying you, then you shouldn't be wasting energy '''telling''' them how busy you are. I have no patience for that kind of special pleading. I find it utterly despicable. The subtext is, "Oh, I ''would'' obey conventions of polite conversation and answer you and treat you with respect, and I ''would'' talk to you as if you were a peer, and I ''would'' think about whether or not I was wrong, but, well, I'm too busy to take time for such creatures as yourself, for I have vital work that my vital skills are needed for, vitally." A pox on that. A pox on such passive aggression. A block on any user who behaves so atrociously and then attempts to excuse it. | |||
| :Since nothing has penetrated, since Sandy's response has generally been to try to stiffen against anything and to stiffen his or her mind most of all, then I have no fear of the second motivation for satire. I read of user after user feeling brushed off, ordered about, and run-off by her behavior. Each one feels all alone, too. They get the idea (over and over again) that Sandy WP:OWN's FAC. So, if satirizing her abominable behavior allows people to know that they're not alone, that she is just a user with neither more power nor rights than they, then perhaps that, too, is a way forward. | |||
| :The number of self-evident paradoxes invoked by Sandy is choking. She "must" review every single FAC, whether she knows or cares about it or not, because no one else is reviewing, and yet people aren't reviewing because of the shrill and distasteful attitudes there. The smugness and profoundly stupid (yes, actually, although I try very hard never to note, much less care, about someone's actual intelligence) self-assurance poisons the atmosphere from beginning to end. If she will reform her invidious behavior, I will have nothing to do with her as a persona, although I will continue to oppose, thoroughly and as well as I can (which is pretty well, since right is on my side), all attempts at standardizing articles, making FA a matter of form rather than content, and trying to reduce quality to a set of steps, and so I will still be on the other ''side.'' ] 17:45, 5 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::That makes sense to me, and it makes it clearer to me how your approach fits in with a possible resolution. I'm not convinced that your approach actually ''will'' reach a resolution, but I see now why you're going about it the way you are. Thanks for the explanation; if I can think of anything useful to say, I'll add it. ] ] 17:53, 5 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :I see a great deal of ] behavior about the place, and, every place I see it, I see conflicts emerging one upon another. I have always been an opponent of power at a volunteer project, and self-anointed rulers bother me most of all, whether they're Kelly Martin saying that "thousands look to (her) every day for opinions" or any Sandy waving off all questions with an attestation to her importance. The fact that I know a good many Wikipedians who, in life, have accomplishments and education to spare who behave very modestly only makes the narcissistic horn symphony all the more intolerable. I can be quite arrogant, myself, if given half a chance, but I expect to be wrong sometimes and know that I'm just as clever for admitting my mistakes as I would be if I tried to bluff and bluster and puff. I expect to be one voice among many. This is in addition to yet another dreary reduction of the joyful chaos of difference, individuality, and critical thinking to a machine code of "the following steps must be accomplished." It is a combination of the worst personality with the worst approach that will not allow me to even pretend patience. | |||
| :Honestly, endashes are a reason for a "strong object?" Can't a person just go make the change? This is in addition to a really fundamental misunderstanding of English grammar. I say that unequivocally: many of the things being demanded (very much ''demanded'', or else your passing FAC will be re-run or immediately put on FAR) are incorrect. It is my ''professional'' determination that they are incorrect, and it's a trivial matter to cite books that say so. No checks, no humility, no moderation, no understanding, no thoughtfulness, just "'''strongest possible oppose.'''" My question is why anyone else is tolerating that kind of abuse. ] 19:22, 5 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::Well, there's a question I ''can'' answer. I write FAs to help me learn more about Anglo-Saxon history. I am a student, not a teacher, as far as those FAs are concerned; and the FAC process is just an external yardstick I can use to see if I have managed to assemble what I've learned into a coherent and reasonably well-written article. Passing the MOS requirements is just a question of being asked to put on a certain uniform -- I don't regard myself as a member of the organization so I don't care how the uniform looks. | |||
| ::Having said that, of course I do have an unavoidable minimum of pride in my work, and I do have opinions about things such as dashes. I have a little experience in the world of professional writing, and I've done some copyediting work. But on the other hand I've been a professional consultant for decades, and that's a business where you shrug and do what the customer asks, while trying to make it the right thing. | |||
| ::I'm aware of the weaknesses of the analogy. But you did ask why FAC doesn't bother me; I hope the above goes some way to answering that question. ] ] 21:11, 5 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Oh, Lord, I'm not ''crusading.'' I'm happy if others are content with things as they are, but I'm not, and I think people would be happier without the ]. I know that it's not nice to parody people, but I know that the person so mocked isn't nice, or good for us. (We need more AS stuff, still. We need eME stuff in particular. I don't have it in me to work on ''],'' but that's one, and '']'' could be better. Furthermore, and this would actually be fun, ] could be beefed and illustrated and made presentable. (Peterborough Chronicle covers it now, while The Anarchy is dry.) I know everyone wants to do Scyld Sheffing and stuff like that, and they're great, but who's going to do ]? Who's going to do ] (the poem)? | |||
| :My problem with your analogy is not its similitude. It's fine. My problem is that I don't accept that two persons get to be the employer, that two persons are the community, or that they have rights special. I think they indict themselves but manage by the sole virtue of persistence to clear the field, so that they are the only voices that can be heard, the only din that can be discerned. ] 21:53, 5 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::Actually, I was thinking of having a go at ] myself -- I don't own a version of his life, but the Colgrave edition can be picked up at a reasonable price, and that might suffice. Mostly I'm working on the kings -- I was going to do all the ]s first but have been diverted. I was also thinking about trying to knock all ]-related articles into shape. | |||
| ::As for my analogy, the fact that there is (or should be) no employer here is what I meant when I said it had a weakness. And for a solution -- well, if you think of one, let me know. Meanwhile I'll keep my head down and keep writing. Thanks for the answers, by the way; I really did want to understand your approach, and I think I do, now. ] ] 22:32, 5 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :::If you're going to do Guthlac, please, please read the poem. It's not a thrill ride of a poem -- somewhat dull -- but there is a ton of interesting stuff about it. It basically shows the Anglo-Saxons as still a brutish people, because their saint fights off the temptations of devils in the wilderness less in a Christlike manner than in a Rambolike manner. He's going to duke it out with the whispering voices, and he's going to whip that infection. | |||
| :::It's like the early ''Anglo-Saxon Gospel'': it begins with this stuff that's really wild about God as the great ring lord and the angels as his thanes. It's not that I'm making fun of it at all, but rather I think it shows the people who read it very well. The reception of a work is a codification of the anxiety of the readers (I'm a ] fan). Right now, I want to work on ] off wiki to try to discuss the critical reception. Reading Leslie Stephens's biography of him in the ''DNB'' and the pompous (not for his age, but for us) decree that only Duck's earliest work is worth anything, because "they" "made" him into a polished poet later just shows again how the works don't change, but their valuations do, and these changes in valuation demonstrate something about History and Culture. | |||
| :::Anyway, if you don't have access to ''Guthlac A'' and ''Guthlac B'' (B is the more interesting one, IMO), let me know, and I'll do some notes about it, if you're going to slap some sense into the article. ] 02:36, 6 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == Regular templating == | |||
| In case you missed it, the ] stuff that seems to have started "a world and an age ago" in another section earlier on this page, ended up at deletion review after an MfD become a speedy. Gory details are ]. There is an essay being written about template messages, and it puts ] to shame. Well, that is a bit unfair as the two are trying to do different things. The former can be seen as a short sharp shock to point newbies at - a bit like using a template on them, ironically enough - while the former (I shouldn't link to it, as the author wants to develop it fully first, but it shouldn't be difficult to find), is a detailed guide and explanation, which in my opinion is a lot more informative and actually stands a chance of changing people's behaviour. Of course, ] also does that, but doesn't really offer any follow-up. Maybe a see also link eventually? (Sorry if this is all a bit cryptic). ] 01:05, 8 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :I could have ''guessed'' that it would be DRV, and acrimonious meets sanctimonious. As for the templating... I really, honestly, genuinely don't see the use of a template in most cases. I mean that. In ''most'' cases, a template doesn't actually do anything. It's like a xeroxed "Cathy" cartoon: whatever value it had for the first person has been lost by repeated washing. This applies to articles, talk pages, everything. | |||
| :The critical feature is that they are all alike, and therefore they can be used satisfactorily only when the occasion is exactly alike. In other words, only if the event/occasion is ''precisely'' reducible to a line, a template doesn't do anything. Thus, "test1" - "test3" is fine, because that is a very simple occasion. Beyond that, it's always more complex than a template can allow, unless it were a really generous (and hence meaningless) template, like, "You have made a comment which seems very rude. The person placing this template has no certainty that you were not provoked, is not making any threat, and does not know absolutely that the comment was rude, but the comment nevertheless seemed a bit shocking. This comment will likely make you look bad to people who have not been following things, and it almost certainly won't help matters any. Please think twice before saying things like that, because they really do look gauche." ] 02:31, 8 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::If you have time, look through the 559 user warning templates in ]. Maybe something like what you describe is already there... ] 02:55, 8 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :::Maybe ]? ] 02:56, 8 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::::A classic case of "I'm trying really hard to be nice, '''BUT'''..." ] 03:00, 8 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :And yet, isn't it all as many keystrokes and more aggravation as ''talking to the person'' with... you know... words? I've gotten good results with, "What the hell, man?" I've gotten good results with a tender, loving, circumlocution. Regular users can be known, and that's why using ''any'' standardized response indicates a lack of respect. It's easy to know me at Misplaced Pages, and that's why, if you throw a template at me, I think much less of you, because you couldn't even take the time to get to know me. ] 13:05, 9 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| Nuke that one! And, btw, Geogre, would you consider writing a short addition to ], a paragraph or two about citing policies around in a patronizing way? I see that not much different from templating. Maybe a separate essay. Besides, is there any chance to promote that one to a guideline? Or maybe it does not matter much, does it? Cheers, --] 03:33, 8 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :I have done, now, although it was really in the spirit of the page itself: very brief. The thing about the quoting of policy that's aggravating is that it reminds me of fundamentalist Christians arguing. They throw verses at each other like rocks. Now, the biggest problem is that it's often '']'' and an argument on authority. (I believe in the Bible, but a single line grabbed out of the whole and thrown out as if, in all contexts the nouns and verbs apply, is, I think, not quoting the Bible, but punching a hole in the Bible.) The people grab a line of text here, a word there, and throw it as if it were a universally applicable widget. First, it's not an effort to understand or spread understanding, when people do that (i.e. there is no actual educational intent). Second, it's not an effort to conform to policy, because the policy is not being discussed ("our subject is your bad behavior, not the policy"). Third, it is an effort at "winning" and therefore is the fundamental problem of fighting. Fourth, it is a way to excuse actions or prohibit actions with no consideration of context. | |||
| :All of the above must be understood when discussing the quoting of policy to regulars. If User:Bobo writes an article of four lines about how his classmate is gay, I will delete his article and cite policy. The moment Bobo understands policies, I have to hear him out and address his arguments. ] 13:12, 9 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| Would you have time to look at ]? It is still in draft form, and I'm not sure if the editor wants lots of attention until it is ready, but I think your input on the 'regulars' part of it (]) would be appreciated. ] 13:34, 9 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == Pronunciation of Ine == | |||
| Hi, Geogre, I wonder if you can help with a question that came up at the ]. I've been asked how it was pronounced, and I have no idea what reference, if any, could answer the question. Do you have any advice on where I might look? Thanks for any help. ] ] 10:31, 8 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Wow. Oh, wow. The short version is that we can't be sure. I mean, the ''logical'' pronunciation, based on AS, would be "innuh," but the problem is that we just can't be ''sure.'' Generally, AS didn't always follow the orthographical rule that we're familiar with (vowels are long if followed by a single consonant, and an /e/ can lengthen a vowel with an interposing nasal or liquid (n, l, r). They certainly had the continental /i/ ("eeeee") and the contemporary English "long i" ("I"), but they generally (generally, generally) preferred to do the latter with an ai dipthong. So, it's either "ee nuh" or "in nuh," and it's just open which it would be. To be sure, we'd really like to see how it was transliterated into Latin (possibly found in a charter somewhere) or find it in a rhyme (not much chance of that, given the time frame and the scarcity of rhyme in AS poetry). If it was transliterated in Latin as "Ine," then it's the "continental i" ("eenuh"). | |||
| :I'll go there to give a briefer version of what I'm saying here. My money is now on the inuh. ] 02:36, 9 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::Thank you for helping out on this; I appreciate it. I think I'm going to suggest that we copy your comments to the talk page of the article, pending me finding a text that would allow me to reference it. If you were certain of the conclusion, I'd put it in as uncontroversial, but I see no harm in leaving this on the talk page till I can find a published source that is willing to draw conclusions about pronunciation. Thanks again. ] ] | |||
| :Sure thing. I learned Old English and have tried to keep up with it, and I studied early Middle English (which is a separate beast, and a beast that needs more interest), and phonology was something we spent a lot of time on. There are students of Bruce Mitchell out and about who might be a great deal more conclusive about it, and perhaps one will stumble by and set the record straight, but I think the presence in Latin does a lot to suggest. (We always have to triangulate pronunciations, but we have pretty good reasons for most of our conclusions.) I still have to read the article itself and support, if possible. I'm all for more Saxons getting the spotlight. They were a delightfully bloodthirsty and clueless lot. :-) ] 13:31, 9 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ==Siteban of Ideogram proposed at the ]== | |||
| A siteban has been proposed against Ideogram for sock-puppeteering, baiting and trolling. You might want to take a look and consider commenting. You know a lot about what it's like to be baited and trolled by Ideogram, as do I. The amount of energy and time his activities waste for his chosen targets is tremendous, IMO. ] | ] 20:59, 8 August 2007 (UTC). | |||
| :It's certainly a big pile of aggravation he causes, and the loss of energy is voluntary. (Should I have "outdented" this reply?) I will look, and I will almost surely comment. Thanks. ] 02:43, 9 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == The Key to the Lock: self-parody? == | |||
| Hi. ] says you would know whether Pope's ''Key to the Lock'' should be mentioned at ]. What do you think? While I'm on the subject, the article has plenty of examples from after 1980, but anything from before that would be a welcome contribution. Especially any visual example. (You don't happen to have ]'s illustration for "The Lay of St. Odille" from '']'', do you?) —] 19:15, 13 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Well, of course, the ''locus classicus'' in English is ]. However, plenty of other authors worked themselves in as dim-witted characters, including ]. The problem with Pope as an example is that it's really not self-parody as much as it is a component of a grander parody. He was doing what his friend Swift had done with the "notes" to ''],'' where the notes are an amalgamation of the "keys" published by ] and ] and notes by the "author" that were intentionally obscure. In the case of the ''],'' Pope would go to extraordinary lengths to create a multifaceted parody, including roping in his friends to write "commentary." The "Key to the Lock" is a parody of the "Key" industry going on around him (very much like Cliff's Notes and SparkNotes now, a "key" would appear as soon as a work was popular) as well as some self-deprecation. The parodic element is aimed outward, but there is an artful humility involved, too (and Pope was most emphatically not a man who doubted his very real skills). | |||
| :For visuals.... You know, that's a more strained topic, really. Many artists put themselves in their paintings -- it was common practice -- and usually in a low position. Is that parody, though? What would be more proper would be when a painter imitates his or her own formal traits, own ''style,'' with an absurd subject, and those are somewhat more rare. ] 22:19, 13 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Sssssamuel Johnson.... I need to re-read. Something...something there was, a poem of his that was self-parody. To do that properly, one must recognize one's own style, highlight it, and perform a bad version of it, with exaggerations of characteristics, and so Johnson's "Lexicographer: n., Maker of dictionaries, a harmless drudge" doesn't count. I believe I have ''Poems of Samuel Johnson'' nearby. I'll look. ] 22:46, 13 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::I agree with you here. For me, mainly parody applies to a work of art, not a person, so self-mockery and even self-caricature aren't self-parody. That may not be clearly stated at the article, though. I might not have included Sir Topas in the article, except that Chaucer is showing himself as a doggerelist, and I found a reference that argues one thing he's parodying is '']''. | |||
| ::If you know a ''locus classicus'', or anything else, in a language other than English, that would improve the article, since all the examples are in English. But I don't want to take all your time with my requests. | |||
| ::In searching for self-parodying painters, I found many references to modern painters, but facilely ironic hip campy kitschy arch excuses for repetitiveness don't interest me much, and anyway there would be copyright problems. The Tenniel illustration I referred to above, though, is described as a clear self-parody. —] 02:38, 14 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :The interesting thing there is that, as ] once indicated, "parody" begins in Greek poetics, where it is dismissed by Aristotle as semantically void. No one is ''quite'' sure where the Greek word παρώδια came from (all sorts of "make up your own story" explanations abound), but for Aristotle, then Horace, then Quintillian, it is absolutely confined to poetry and not a form of satire. It is simply "amusing imitation of style." The first application to prose is Jonathan Swift, 1710. Swift uses it to cover what had more or less previously been called "burlesque" (even though we wouldn't use the term) and stylistic satire. Anyway, the point to this pedantry is that it remains "imitation for satire" with a strong element of "imitation of characteristic style." People who use words like "po-mo" in conversation have tried to stretch the elastic in the term to say that "self-parody" is a normal thing that people do once part of capitalist productive modes (i.e. you're an artist until your imagery appears on lunch boxes, and then you're in self-parody). | |||
| :Self-parody requires a fictionalizing of the self, inevitably, in poetry or prose, because that's the only way that any author can perform an imitation with intent to satirize. Perhaps "Mr. Eliot's Sunday Morning Service" is self-parody (http://en.wikisource.org/Mr._Eliot's_Sunday_Morning_Service at Wikisource); the unbelievable vocabulary there, the rhythms, all seem to be self-conscious TSE imitations of TSE with satirical exaggeration. Also, the T.S. Eliot poem which begins, "How unpleasant to meet Mr. Eliot" is self-parody (not at PoetryFoundation.org... I guess because of his editing of The Dial... apparently not at WikiSource, either). "With his porpentine cat and wopsical hat"...he is not just making fun of himself as a person but as a poet, especially his own prosodic cadence. | |||
| :I really need to dig, though. I will see what I can find/remember/think up about the Classics. The ''general'' view is that they did not do parodies of themselves. They did parodies of each other pretty freely, but not generally themselves. I'll think and put my memory in the rock tumbler and see what comes out. ] 12:14, 14 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::Pardon me for butting in, but one that hasn't been mentioned is ], who wrote a couple of excellent self-parodies. One that I recall runs "What, still alive at twenty-two/A fine upstanding lad like you?/Sure, if your throat 'tis hard to slit,/Slit your girl's, and swing for it." I can probably dig these up if need be. Hope that's useful. ] ] 14:22, 14 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :::A classic, but it's by Hugh Kingsmill (according to the ''Oxford Dictionary of Quotations''). A Housman self-parody would be great, though, if you're interested in looking. —] 15:52, 14 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::::Darn. I've gone twenty-five years at least thinking it was Housman; now I do need to dig out the book if I can remember which it was. I thought I recalled a discussion in the appendix to a collection of poetry talking about Housman's ability to parody himself as unusually sharp, and giving two examples, one of which is the one I quoted. I'll see if I can find it. ] ] 03:11, 15 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :::::Well, some Google Books searching tells me that it was Housman's opinion that Kingsmill's was the best parody. I must have converted that in memory to Housman having written it himself. | |||
| :::::In apology for the red herring, here are two of my favourite parodies. One on Wordsworth's famous sequence on daffodils: "I once saw some daffs by a lake/A wonderful sight--no mistake/It gives me a thrill/To think of them still;/That sure was a real lucky break". And one on Wordsworth's "Upon Westminster Bridge" sonnet ("Earth has not anything to show more fair . . ."): "Nice view from here; just stop and look a minute./Ships, towers, domes, theatres. Pretty, innit?" which may not work well if you don't know the London accent. Neither is self-parody, though; if I come up with something I will post again. ] ] 03:35, 15 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::It's also interesting because Housman invites that with "Terence this is stupid stuff," which is a self-deprecating verse but not a self-parody. Hmmm. It's Housman's ''sentiment'' that gets satirized in the "Still Alive at Twenty-two" -- like the geriatric choir recently doing The Who's "My Generation," so thematic parody (with good rhythmic parody and syntactic parody, too). There are tons and tons and tons of poetic parodies in Modern poetry. ''The Stuffed Owl'' and ''The Brand X Anthology'' are nothing but parody anthologies, for example, and I think one can find some self-parody in the latter. (Everyone, but everyone, took a swipe at W.C. Williams's "This is just to say," including ] best of all). I'm still thinking, though, and I'm really going blank on anything in Latin and Greek that would qualify as self-parody. | |||
| ::The Augustan era is, of course, ''the'' period of parody. Parody was probably more common then than any time since (even our own "Saturday Night, Live" and "Daily Show" and "Not Necessarily the News" era included), but self-parody is much rarer. (Didn't Picaso do some "Picasos" that were jokes at his own style? Didn't Max Ernst? I suppose all bets are off with the Dadaists.) ] 02:46, 15 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :::Thanks for the "Wordsworth", Mike. "Two voices are there…" | |||
| :::I own ''The Brand X Anthology'' (an extremely perceptive gift from a friend), and I think I included everything that looked like real self-parody instead of a joke on the editor's part (e.g., the Crashaw and McGonagall entries don't count). | |||
| :::I imagine it would be pretty hard to tell what Picasso was self-parody and what was the result of having settled into a style and being able to sell anything he daubed. But what do I know? —] 20:51, 15 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :I'm still trying to think, but I'm getting no farther back than ''Don Juan,'' by Byron. ] 20:21, 16 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == Tonight, on Passive Voice Theater == | |||
| ...]! | |||
| <blockquote>There is speculation that Bunny is actually lonely, and the older bunny watching him is a nanny, as he refers to her as an "old lady." This makes sense, seeing as ], the author of the story, was raised by wealthy parents who often left her at their luxurious home with a nanny. ''Goodnight Moon'' is thought to be a reflection of the author's childhood, emphasized when Bunny says, "goodnight nobody."</blockquote> | |||
| "There is speculation!" "is thought to be!" All without any subject (or, of course, any reliable source) doing the speculation or the thinking. | |||
| It's enough to make a bunny want to run away. ] 04:39, 18 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| *Oh, hilarious. There are even more there, "was raised" and even "emphasized" as a doubleplus sneaky. That may be a perfect example of what's wrong with the passive. I think it should be enshrined in the Passive Hole of Fame which can be seen and visited elsewhere on the site. ] 12:31, 18 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ==Thanks== | |||
| For your response on the Bishonen page. You're absolutely right about the tactic and the context and I'm grateful for the insight. And that push poll joke of yours nearly sent orange juice out of my nose. 'Autographed photo from the Hitler Fan Club?' Priceless. Thanks Geogre. -- ] ] 14:49, 18 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :The truth is, that's not very far from the push poll I got in... I think 1992. It was a senatorial campaign by ], and the questions did include ''would it change my support if I were to find out that the opponent supports raising taxes and allowing unmarried couples to get tax credits?'' I.e. it was the "Republican issue + prejudice" combination that is at the heart of a really dastardly push poll. It would be like, "If you found out that the Democrat was in favor of carbon credit trading and miscegenation?" I mean, it was a push poll to start with (any "would it change your opinion to learn" is), but then it was the height of appeals to fear, hate, and ugly. | |||
| :Given how frequently the Helms folks did it, and how it was done in other Congressional campaigns that were "well funded," as they say, it's not surprising that some folks used it within primaries. I'm well known and well established in my registration, so I don't get too many of these things now (primary registration), but, when I was a younger, less known voter, I did. In the case of the Helms/Gantt 2 race, Helms's people were actually convicted, but they just paid their fines...''after the election.'' The lesson was, "It works." | |||
| :I can't see how anyone even ''would'' battle against the allegations of push polling, because the documentation of generalized push polling (often by "unaffiliated groups that just feel passionately about the issues" (with closed membership)) is so thick that it would have made that campaign unique to not have engaged in it. Mind you, I have not received nor seen documented any cases of Democratic push polling, but they wouldn't really call me. ] 15:30, 18 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ==Etuvluk River== | |||
| It's been taken to DRV, and i've commented there . If I hadnt been involved in the debate, I'd just have undeleted it, and I suggest you do it now and let consensus proceed. ''']''' (]) 05:13, 20 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Yes, sure. I wasn't involved in the debate. I explained my rationale at the AfD. There is a big difference. ] 11:39, 20 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == IRC and AfD == | |||
| I dropped by to ask whether you think ] is an example of good or bad use of IRC. Then I saw the silly AfD above over a six-word article. I tried to short-circuit an AfD myself at ]. What do you think about that? In particular, the idea of still being able to carry out redirects, and moving the AfD notice to the destination of the redirect? ] 16:59, 26 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :And now I've appeared on a COI bot report! See ]... :-) ] 17:05, 26 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| The problem is that all of the "Current Opinion" journals could or could not have a separate article, but ''that one'' is bullflop. It's inaccurate ("new founded in 1988"). It has advertising boilerplate. It contains no actual information (circulation numbers are available; distinguished prior editors are available). Should I reveal that I was once involved with one of those? I've worked with Elsevier (on behalf of others) several times, but the joke I always had was that the opinions are anything but "current," because the turn around on writing one of those is about 10 months, and then the publication means that it's always "last year's current thinking." In a lot of fields, that's as good as paleo-opinion. I feel bad about being so snarky on Deskana's page. He's a nice guy with great integrity, but I was aiming my shovel at the head of a different person entirely, and I just hope he ducked. ] 20:52, 26 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::Ah, things seem OK. I knew you had a thing about IRC, but I didn't expect you to go steaming over there. I thought you'd respond here. Though maybe a little voice in the back of my head was telling me you would be more, shall we say, forthright about it? I've been a bit involved with images lately. A big debate about a Chamberlain pic being the most obvious one (], and see the one below it as well about Austria), but mainly historical pics in general. Most of these historical pics are not likely to provoke copyright lawyers, are obviously encyclopedic, and sometimes are iconic, but some of those who have the bit between their teeth in their usually laudable aim to vastly reduce excessive non free use of images seem unable to distinguish between contemporary pop culture pics taken in the last few years, and historical pictures from over 70 years ago. What's your take on that? ] 22:07, 26 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Ooh, I was once involved (very, very briefly) with Elsevier, but on a vastly different level. Let's say I didn't get the job. :-) Have you read ]? Anyway, I spent a pleasant(?) morning pulling some journals into "by publisher" categories. I kind of regret that now, because journals can change publishers, but ] now has most of our articles on the Nature journals, the Elsevier journals, the University of Chicago journals (those are the big ones I've heard of). I then found some from the University of California stable, but stopped there. I began to realise that there are ''lots'' more out there, and that some (many?) of the journals are semi-autonomously independent from their publishers, or are only loosely connected by some over-arching umbrella multinational conglomorate publisher. Anyway, do you know which are the really, really big journal publishing houses? And do you think the "by publishers" categories are helpful or not? ] 21:42, 26 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::Is ] any better or worse as a starting point for articles about the journals? ] 22:07, 26 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| Well, trust me when I say that my experience was menial. You know how "article authors can be replaced" at Misplaced Pages? Well, technical editors can't be seen in biological sciences. (They did the science and the "writing," and then I did the "writing.") Publisher is a good category for ''some'' of them. ''Some'' of the houses are highly identified with their journals, and ''Current Opinion'' is probably the landmark there, except the ''Nature'' ones. However, there are university journals that really belong to the university (jumping over to humanities) like ''Studies in English Language and Literature,'' ''Notes & Queries,'' ''Studies in Philology,'' etc., where the journal is founded by a given department, edited always by that department (with a huge list of editorial board members elsewhere), and then printed by whoever. That academic ownership exists in some of the hard sciences, I suppose, but it's more pronounced and common in social sciences and humanities. On the other hand, many float. The answer, therefore, is "sometimes it's a useful category" and "sometimes it's the best known attribute" and "sometimes the school is the most important aspect." Our categories have a tendency to be a bit like the templates: ALL X must.... | |||
| You know, the thing about the pictures.... I don't want to accuse anyone of having a learning difference or cognitive disability, but sometimes the same ''impulse'' as we find in Aspberger's Syndrome is gloriously illustrated by the photo taggers. It seems to be about a nervous compulsion to Order, rather than a rational decision about legality or usefulness. My favorite fiction is ''Tristram Shandy'' or ''A Tale of a Tub'': I'm at home with chaos and the living impulse wrecking all static categories. I know that this is not a common trait, but it seems so universally preferable that I don't understand the tenacity of those who fight like mad or drunk for put-ting ev-ery-thing in pl-ac-e. ] 10:48, 27 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :The university connection is important. Thanks for making that clearer. I found the ] articles in ]. Most (but not all) would publish journals as well. I'm wondering if the category should be renamed ]. Someone will object that they aren't all ''called'' XYZ University Press, and at that point I shall scream. :-) Or maybe I would counter with suggesting ]... The other important connection is the journals produced by ], such as the ] ones, and many others. Again, a lot of overlap between universities, academic societies and private publishing houses (for example, an academic society moving the production and publishing away from in-house and out to a publishing house, either when the society is too small to cope with the publishing, or when the journal is so successful it begins to overwhelm even a moderately sized society), but I think there is enough of a distinction for a category structure to be viable and useful. Not putting everything in its place. Oh no. Just loosely organising! :-) ] 21:09, 27 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::The professional associations are interesting. Again, some do one thing, some another, but the ''general'' thing is to have it "published by Society" and "printed at...." The question is what one needs to be "published." (To tell the truth, and there is no point in telling very much truth when it comes to journals, in the days of print on demand, the press is often not much of a component.) Suppose I'm a member of the Society for Little League Baseball Sociology of the Northeast. We do our own journal. Now, most of us are at Rutgers, and I am the editor. I drafted most of my department to be on the board, that first year, but within five years we had two dozen people elsewhere. Thus, Rutgers UP ''publishes'' on behalf of the SLLBSNE. I retire or finally go berserk. The new department head doesn't want to talk about Little League Baseball's sociology, so the new professor at UPenn takes over. She ''might'' move the journal to UPP, but she really won't have much reason to do so, unless the journal has gotten prestigious. ] 11:21, 28 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :::Thanks again for that. I'm also discussing this at ]. Would you be able to contribute anything there, specifically about humanities journals? I'm wondering if there is a (wait for it...) <small>WikiProject</small> to co-ordinate and network academic and research stuff on Misplaced Pages, where those who are, or have been, in university academia or science research, can comment on such things? ] 13:07, 28 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::there is already a group at ] and ] who have been working on this for a while. . Please see what they have been doing there; it would probably be appropriate to organize a wikiproject--I'd call it Wikiproject academic journals. But I would most certainly involve those who have been working on this, and working hard, long before I joined Misplaced Pages. See their page. Let's check there, and then get it set up at the Wikiproject council page. It will be very good to have everything at one place. <small>—Preceding ] comment added by ] (] • ]) {{{2|}}}</small><!-- Template:Unsigned --> | |||
| :::Thanks for reminding me of that page. You did mention it earlier, but I forgot about it. The talk page has details of an earlier effort, but if the page is working well, no need to specifically turn it into a WikiProject. A ] page should be a ]-type guideline. The discussions we've been having should be copied to one or other of these pages. I've tidied up the list and updated the numbers. Have there really been ~300 journal articles created since December 2006? Or is that mostly redirects being made and removed? ] 12:39, 29 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::From checking at various places on my watchlist, I think there have genuinely been between 3 and 5 a week,but they tend to be in fields of interest to individuals, not uniformly distributed. The advantage of a project is coordination of multiple parts. There is a need to watch for spam , a need to identify COI people to be educated, to coordinate the writing of articles, to agree on categorization, to agree of the infoboxes, to watch out for speedies and prods and afds, to list stuff that needs doing, to work on the indexing services, and so on, to keep up with plans for a central registry of references in standardized format, & to get the other librarian types involved and science types involved. But I thought it was your idea to do this??''']''' (]) 09:03, 31 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :::Oh, sure. I'm just slightly wary of building up more bureaucracy than is needed. Also, I don't have time right now, but if no-one else gets organised before I find the time, I'll try and set something up. Or at least make a start. ] 13:38, 31 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == El Toro Handrail, revisited == | |||
| Hi, you commented on the last time ] was put up for deletion (]), and had some interesting things to say. I've put it up for deletion again (]), and I'd like you to review the article one more time. ] ] 06:55, 25 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == "No license" versus "no source" == | |||
| Please learn the difference between "no license" and "no source". No one ever said ] was lacking a license; as you pointed out, it was tagged as being public domain as a work of the U.S. Government. What it has ''never'' had is '''source''' information allowing that claim to be verified. —]] 10:26, 1 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :And I should be ever so delighted if you were to learn to communicate with the people whose articles are affected, instead of using bots for edit wars. The distinction you suppose could have been easily solved by anyone interested, even slightly, in the quality of our project by short investigation instead of by deletion. However, I understand that those who are both incapable and uninterested in making things good still believe themselves sanctified by the cry of making things ''rectified.'' Such glories are they that words are beneath their twitchy minds. ] 11:24, 1 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::], who first tagged the image as lacking a source, is a human being, not a bot. He notified the uploader, ], who hasn't edited since February 2006. The only thing the bot did was remove an image that was about to be deleted from the page where it was used, and then another human being, ], deleted the image. Then you restored the image with the completely erroneous message "It HAD licensure, USgovt PD, but those tags got removed in all the bot frenzy; if PEOPLE read these things, it might work out better". In fact, there was no "bot frenzy", no tags were removed, and PEOPLE did read these things, and found the image lacked a source. ''You'' were the one who misread the "no source" tag and interpreted it as a "no license" tag. Another human being, ], retagged it for deletion because it still lacked a source. When I deleted it again, you restored it again, with the message "USgovt PD; Please learn to READ", which once again missed the point that what the image lacks is a SOURCE not a LICENSE. For all the snobbishness in your above message, the only mistakes made here were yours: ''you'' are the one who twice restored an image that had no source information because you misunderstood what the problem was. And now you are edit-warring at ] to restore a red link to an article. If you think that "short investigation" will reveal the original source of this image, so that the PD-USGovt tag can be verified, then why don't you track down the source and add it? Otherwise, leave the image deleted, and remove the red link from the article. There are already four unproblematic images of the structure in the article anyway; any of them could be used as the lead image. —]] 14:02, 1 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::P.S. I know perfectly well how to link to an image. I chose not to because I saw no point creating a red link. —]] 14:03, 1 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Oh, look! Look! Someone contacting me and trying to reason it out. Astonishing that this has occurred for the very '''first time''' today to tell me that I am part of a "war." Golly. I thought wars needed declarations and that the person who does not employ the talk page of the article is the one doing damage. Have you used the talk page of the article? Did the -bot? Have you looked at the article? Have you looked at the image? Let's see: It's aerial, and it's showing trees all around the structure, and so to suppose that this is somehow a murky copyright sabotage by a crafty vandal is absurd. The existing photos, on the other hand, are from ground level, show restaurants, and are brand new. Do they show the ''structure?'' What is the likelihood of a photograph from an airplane/helicopter is US government vs. commercial? What is the usefulness of the photo of the commercial structures? | |||
| :In fact, the photo has been in the article for long enough that it has been ''taken from Misplaced Pages and placed on pages that have copyright on them.'' For example, the city of Gaffney SC has an official site. Guess what's there? Peach2.gif and a copyright symbol. The site is a .com, because they paid a host, and there is a copyright symbol. Does that mean that our crafty, sneaky, non-orthogonal uploader from 2 years ago was trying to get us in trouble? No. Being a fool is forgivable, Angr. Being a presumptuous, high handed one is not. Leave Peachoid alone unless you're prepared to, by hand, do what is necessary, and leave the red link red. Those who actually ''edit pages'' will take care of it. ] 14:37, 1 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::Thanks for the personal attack; it weakens your case even further. The article talk page is not the correct place to discuss problems with images; imagine how much time and effort would be wasted if every time an image was found to have no source, it had to be discussed on the talk page of every article where it was being used first! As long as "those who actually edit pages" (as opposed to whom?) provide a verifiable source showing it to be the work of the U.S. Government, it will be fine. (And to answer one of your questions, the chances of a photograph from an airplane/helicopter being commercial--or the work of the local or state government--are rather greater than the chances of it being the federal government. What branch of the U.S. government would care enough about this advertising gimmick to take a picture of it?) I already tried to do "by hand" (as opposed to what?) what is necessary at ], but you reverted me, so it is stuck with a red link because of your refusal to admit you made a mistake. —]] 17:48, 1 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ==Peachoid== | |||
| I'm going to raise the issue at ANI because you are edit-warring over a dead link. --<font color="#0000C0">David</font> ''']''' 20:39, 4 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :And I am glad that you will, because you are edit warring, plain and simple. Learn to DISCUSS things, child. ] 20:45, 4 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| Good grief! And now I'm responsible for your lack of knowledge of English? See ], third paragraph. I would do a Wiktionary link, but I'd rather you accidentally learn something about English in the process. ] 20:56, 4 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ==Peach2.gif source?== | |||
| George can you please add your source information which validates that this image is in fact public domain? I think you are one of the better editors Misplaced Pages has to show for, but the way you are conducting yourself right now with the ] article usually results in a short block, or worse yet permanent op removal depending on the circumstances. I do not want to see that happen. ] 21:13, 4 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Let's be extremely clear: once Angr's message explained why the image had been deleted, I have left it deleted. There is no bad behavior with the deleted image. I have not restored it since. I do not yet have a source. The garbage that David Shankbone has run to AN/I with has nothing to do with whether the image should or should not be at Misplaced Pages. It is all... get this... about whether or not the ''link'' should remain to a deleted image at the present time. I had wanted it to remain while I searched for the the source. He reverted repeatedly without discussion. I do not respond well to arrogance, but, then again, I cannot imagine that too many people do, and so did not feel that it should be rewarded as, outside of me, and I can take care of myself quite well, it was going to be driving away users like crazy. DavidShankbone has been in multiple conflicts over WP:OWN of his own private photos, and he has consistently been rather rotten in his behavior about them. Even here, there was no discussion on the article talk page, or the image talk page, but merely revert, revert, revert, AN/I. That's not at all how we behave. ] 21:50, 4 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::According to Archive.com (the internet wayback machine) the particular image in question was on that page as early as 1998 . ] 00:56, 5 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :That's good to know. That suggests (only) that it really is the town's image, or the state's, but not really a private one. It also indicates pretty clearly to me that it was not copyright ''controlled.'' (I.e. it may or may not have been copyrighted, but the fact that it was being given away to the universe as early as 1998 indicates that whatever the copyright holder, it, he, she, or they were not chasing it to prevent web publishing. That doesn't make it free, but it does suggest that fairuse is at least a feature of the copyright holder's understanding(s).) ] 02:26, 5 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::Since it was apparently taken from a helicopter I'd agree it's an official image of some kind; however, PD only applies to the Federal Government. But since it is used for the purpose of promoting the Peach, and we are more or less using it the same way, fair use should be no problem. ] 10:39, 5 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == how rude... == | |||
| ].]] | |||
| a short note of support re: the rudeness you've been dealing with lately - I hope your reasoned responses indicate that it's not getting you down. I'll try and chip in somewhere it may be useful, and in the meantime enjoy this large fish from ] - best, ] 22:29, 4 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Oooooh, that's a great one! Somewhere I have a penguin sculpture. I know I've photographed it, but now I would have to find it. It was in an office tower in Durham, North Carolina, and, more amazingly, it was constructed before Red Hat Software (about 8 miles away) took off. However, they were great penguins. Really impressive. I never could figure out what they were doing there, though, except marching. | |||
| :Please ignore the rudeness, though. I'm a big boy, and I don't take e-people very seriously. I'm currently working on an essay on why the very action of creating an e-person is inherently psychotic. I mean that literally, by the way. I don't mean that everyone who does it goes gibbering mad instantly, but that it is by itself a psychotic act that may or may not reverberate to the wider psyche... or something like that. | |||
| :DavidShankbone is p*ssed off at me probably because of my reaction to his senseless rudeness from May 2007 or my daring to oppose his insertion (against all odds, all protest, all qualification, and reason) a picture of someone's pubic hair and manroot. None of that will be clear from AN/I, of course, but so it goes. As for the lovely Angr, above, he's been spreading graciousness all over Misplaced Pages for some time. Every where he goes, flowers bloom and people begin to smile in joy. Meh. There are poxes enough to go around, I'm sure, and I needn't be plagued by those particular ones. | |||
| :I know few notice and fewer understand, but I'll go back to writing articles. It's the only bit of Misplaced Pages I actually like. ] 22:37, 4 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == Literary journals == | |||
| Hi Geogre. If the peachoid isn't giving you nightmares, I wondered if you'd have time to have a look at ]. There is discussion on journal categories at ], but what I noticed about the literary journals category was that journals/magazines publishing fiction and short stories have been mixed up with peer-reviewed ]s about literature. Would you be able to help pick out the academic ones, and point out the major ones. For example, is ] one of the major journals? Looking through the names, some stand out, like ], ], ], ], ]. ] looks interesting. ] 23:54, 4 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ==GA Empires== | |||
| Would anyone like to comment on ? --] 11:03, 6 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == Singular they == | |||
| I post here to avoid continuing a tangent on Bishonen's talk. I wrote because I thought her AN/I posting unfair, but I consider it resolved after . | |||
| Geogre, I don't get it. Rules, rules, rules, you're always railing—but you’re a prescriptivist! Now, though my opinion affects exactly nothing in the wider world, I'm a descriptivist and I find the logic baffling. "Number is non-negotiable in English." Why is it non-negotiable? ''Everything in language is negotiable.'' We managed (sadly) to negotiate ''thou'' right out of English, and if number were non-negotiable the singular ''you'' would be an error. | |||
| ::That's a complete red herring, and I will hold my fingers and not describe what ''kind'' of herring it is. "Thou" and "you" are an interesting issue, and they disappeared through the elimination of a prestige pronoun and a conflation of sounds. There was nothing ''conscious'' about their loss. There was no "we killed 'em." It was simply a process of confusion that took about 125 years, '''and''' it reflected an economic triumph of one region of England over another. Do not be so blithe as to assume that it is analogous. Notice ''when'' they went out of usage (as opposed to print), and note that they did not create an advantage by leaving. Every American dialect has had to create a new word to supply the linguistic void. "Y'all" and "you guys" are the most famous, but they have been created by this triumph you would praise. Finally, print not only does lag, but ''should'' lag. Number is non-negotiable, and the "you" situation occurred with the changing of the meaning of "you" and disliking of a prestige marker. Oh, and those nasty fussbudgets who opposed singular "you" -- they were at it for a good 200 years. How stupid of them. ] 11:04, 7 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ''They'' is becoming singular. It is. The indeterminate pronouns ('someone', 'anyone') have long presented situations where 'singular they' is sensible, and gender neutral is pushing through a full expansion of denotation. I don't call that good or bad—I recognize it as a fact. At some point an English language government is going to start writing 'singular they' into statute for ease of reading (I'm betting on Canada) and the "error" will have become acceptable usage; it may be fifty more years, but it will happen. Phrasing like "If a student loses his or her book, she or he should report to the principal" does not reflect the way people speak. People don't talk like that and people aren't going to start talking like that because it's clunky and counter-intuitive. The written and spoken word never perfectly align, of course, but no written gap is properly filled by phrasing that is not in substantial verbal use. (I type 'he or she', incidentally, but I view it as a band-aid.) | |||
| ::Singular they is absolutely out. We do not take all of the mistakes made and say that they are the new rules. Singular they has been in ''usage'' in speech since 1300, and yet we -- we enlightened and glorious -- are supposed to be the ones who finally set things right? In fact, the evil proscriptivists have been keeping down the singular they since Chaucer. Why? Why would they have fought this and won (until the glories of CUP shone upon us and the ill graced descendants of ''Why Can't Johnny Read'')? It is because number is an issue of logic and fundamental sensibility. In other words, we've had 800 years of people who have known about this mistake and kept rejected its adoption -- much as they have rejected other mistakes like "We be" and "they is" -- even as they have not rejected other mistakes ("you" and "hopefully" and "split infinitives"). It is because there is not a communicative value to this mistake, while there is a deficit created by it. Again: there are a dozen solutions to "he," and this is the one that creates more damage than the others. Why this one, except bogus claims of democracy? | |||
| ::You don't get my stance? I'm in favor of democracy really, and I know the difference between democracy and demoticism. I am in favor of social groups that negotiate the way forward, but not taking whatever the masses are doing and enshrining it as a law. "There's reasons" for my position. ] 11:04, 7 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| And the fact is that some authorities would simply disagree that it's ever been an error. Tony provided an interesting on this. Jane Austen, Thackeray, Auden—the singular they has a long pedigree. You can say "but it's still wrong" and I'll shrug. If our best writers employ it, I fail to see the use in a blanket ban. | |||
| ::I've seen such argument before. They do not move me. In fact, I just gave you one: Chaucer did it. It is, in fact, still wrong, and if we were to look for the solo examples of this mistake in those writers' works and then look for all the places where they did ''not'' do it when confronted with the indeterminate gender singular, you'd see that they themselves did it as a mistake or variation. They would be products of their own times, and this particular bit of laziness goes to 1300. That does not make it acceptable. It simply means that Homer nods. We all know that, if we actually read widely. If we don't, we publish essays for ''CCCC'' that then get cited by people trying to be dogmatic about grammar without bothering to learn it. ] 11:08, 7 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| (As a last point, your objection to Tony's 's/he' was curmudgeonly. It's a talk page—he's not actually advocating its use in the potential guideline.) Cheers, ] 08:48, 7 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :I realize that the second person is not perfectly analogous, but it's far from a red herring (or any other kind of herring—not sure what you mean). "Language historians would note that the trend towards using '''they''' for both plural and singular is exactly what happened with ''you'' some centuries ago." (Can't a hundred percent swear by the source—just grabbed it quickly.) We're currently ''living through'' a period of confusion with pronouns—perhaps we will also require a century in this case. Unless a word medial slash is accepted, which I highly doubt, then I suspect 'singular they' will win the day. It's already winning, at least verbally. The quote from Auden: "Too hideous for anyone in their right mind to buy." I'm sure you hear and read the some/anyone + they/their construction as regularly as I do. In speech, at least, I can't imagine anyone pausing over the plural as an error and to do so in writing would be dreadfully pedantic. | |||
| :And then we get back on the circle: it's still wrong, an error, an act of laziness. I simply do not follow you on this. On a basic epistemological level, it makes no sense to me speak of these debates in terms of ''wrongness''. A construction is used or it isn't; if it's used across the anglosphere and it's used by professional writers, then the style guides will eventually accept it. It's not right or wrong—it's just what happens. What was wrong yesterday may be right tomorrow, as you freely admit above. Nor do I expect a "we killed it" moment in this case, but rather gradualism, just as with ''you.'' Perhaps it will be the Canadian government, or maybe UNESCO, or maybe the US Postal Service. I don't know. But once, as I believe they will, organizations of stature adopt it internally, news organizations and then dictionaries will follow suit. And Cambridge is not silly, obviously, but a voice of some note on this subject. | |||
| :And I disagree about the writers. It's perfectly possible that the authors were making deliberate choices because they weren't particularly concerned with what the grammarians had to say on the subject. Apparently, it's quite frequent in Austen—she was as conscious of her language as anyone around here. ] 12:51, 7 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| == Question == | |||
| Are you related to ]? The lady makes me laugh, as do you, and you both have a unique grasp of the English language. I could see the two of you sitting up late into the night enjoying a witty repartee in Ye Olde English over a spot of tea. --] ] 14:26, 7 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :Or perhaps she's more Giano's style. I'm sure the 3 of you could have some lively chats, that's for sure. Oh to be a fly on that wall! --] ] 19:48, 7 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ::Young man! SGT Tex! odd name, American I assume? The Americans all have odd names Hanks and Marvins and whatever - let me tell you I am not here to make you laugh or indeed to amuse you in any way, I am here to maintain standards, and standards begin with showing respect to one's elders and betters, in this case me and one does not drink a spot of tea one drinks a cup of tea. So please kindly remember that. ] 22:29, 9 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :::My most humble appologies, Ma'am. Yes, I am an American and we tend to chug beer rather than sip tea, so I'm not up on the vagaries of the English. And while I'm quite certain you may not be here to make me laugh, make me laugh you do. And I thank you for it! --] ] 02:10, 10 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| ==From my page== | |||
| ''I found the posts below floating around the userspace. They had momentarily snagged on my talkpage, of all places. Please continue dialogue (if any) here.'' ] | ] 16:33, 7 September 2007 (UTC). | |||
| :"S/he?" How do you ''pronounce'' that? Do you pronounce it "she" or "suhhe" or what? If it's not pronouncable, then it's not a word. "S slash he" is not a word. Another of the really unintelligent solutions. No one disagrees that there is a problem, but I have a bit of trouble with the transparently insufficient solutions that are promoted on their political rather than communicative advantages. | |||
| :As for the MOS, it's a suggestion. To treat it as a law is yet another instance of trying to favor "consistency" over sense. It is also flat out '''wrong''' on a number of fronts. Allowing a singular "they" would only be an egregious example, but the apostrophe rules are easily, easily demonstrated as incorrect as well. The fact that only a few, and they like minded and of like temperament, can withstand the horrors on the discussion page is another indication of its lack of legitimacy. Don't claim "consensus" for the status quo, when 99% of Wikipedians have never read it, much less assented, and much less still consented. ] 01:49, 7 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| :: "S/he" is clear discrimination against those lacking gender, for whom the pronoun is "it". The correct abbreviation is "s/he/it", the "e" of which is optional, and the pronunciation of which is obvious. --] <sup>]</sup> 15:09, 7 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| Geogre, if you didn't exist, Tony would have to invent you. | |||
| Disparagingly (I think): ''From the evening news to TV commercials, you will hear such things as, "There's millions of reasons for calling this a mistake."'' Indeed you will, yet the sky is not falling. News, yes: I believe that you — pardon me, that thou art in the United States, which have thrilling news; hast thou watched them today? | |||
| ''Old errors are still errors'': a delightfully simple notion, but alas a wrong one. Today's bombshell: ''language changes.'' The United States and the news are now usually singular, and ''you'' often is too. (Crikey!) Not that singular ''they'' has changed so very much: (or anyway by the writers of the KJV and other bibles), by Shakespeare, Austen, and others. | |||
| ''As for ''CUP,'' it already has a silly reputation for being faddish.'' It does? Well, every university press seems to publish books on Lacanianism, Foucauldianism, postmodernism, poststructuralism, blah blah; and I presume that CUP does too, but those aren't bookstore corners that I frequent so I'm not entirely sure. Quite how the ''Cambridge Grammar of the English Language'' might be faddish eludes me, but anyway it (faddishly?) has little to say on singular ''they.'' The coauthor does have an appreciable amount to say (with no ₤125 entrance fee); in this talk, where does he misdescribe the relation between referring and bound pronouns or the idiomatic use of singular ''they'' as a bound pronoun? -- ] 09:44, 7 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| *Wow, those are some really lame attempts at insults. People consistently make consistent mistakes, and "descriptivists" would say, "Oh, that's just language." Therefore, let's move the goal posts. Let's make ''Harrison Bergeron'' our emperor next, because we have devalued language to the lowest currency. I'll bet that, because Cockneys drop their haiches, we should start spelling that way, too. Why not, after all? All it takes is a speech community with an itch to get Hoary to say that the rules were the mistake. What an impossibly untenable position. I'm afraid that P.J. O'Rourke probably already ''has'' invented someone like that. ] 15:04, 7 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| **Oh, right, apologies to the devotees of Lacanianism, Foucauldianism, postmodernism, etc. I don't know what "consistent mistakes" you're referring to; in my book, verbal "mistakes" by skilful writers are those they'd correct if brought to their attention; at least for writers not browbeaten by Strunk, White, and other dead frauds, singular ''they'' is not one of these. Orthography is irrelevant to pronoun choice. As for the last part, you've utterly lost me, though I do relish the picture of myself as a sort of Manchurian Candidate, robotically following the dictates of some shadowy but unnamed "speech community". -- ] 16:10, 7 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
| (outdent) A quick note on "lame attempts at insults." I rather enjoy my conversations with Geogre. For about a year, we have had a mutually tendentious conversation every two or three months. Of course, he might tell you that he's ''right'' (on any subject—FA process, pronoun usage, whatever) and that I'm the tendentious amateur—but that's what's so invigorating about Geogre. He's always so utterly convinced; he really would need to be invented if he didn't exist. (That's a compliment, honestly.) I don't post to Geogre's talk to drop "lame insults." | |||
| Now then, we're all trying to be 'clever' (naturally), which is a central problem. You can cleverly dismiss descriptivist arguments, but they aren't going to go away. Tell me, 'til your blue in the face, that 'someone' and 'they' do not agree and I'll tell you that I really don't care insofar as native speakers have adopted the construction. They have. | |||
| So maybe let's agree to disagree and think about what was initially at issue. We might: | |||
| * Completely avoid this subject for the timebeing and at least admit the gender neutral suggestion in simple terms. I mean, just two lines in the MoS: "Please try to use gender neutral language. Do not be disruptive." Or something like that. | |||
| * Create a full section, based on what Tony has suggested. (I won't speak for him definitely, but I think Tony is very leery of 'singular they' himself, and would kill it, in order to move the central gender proposal forward.) | |||
| * Create a full, distinct guideline, like WP:LEAD. And admit that we're going to need a month or two to actually create it. In some ways I prefer this. Tackle GNL, and 'singular they', and s/he, and all of it—even if it means a few more tendentious conversations. | |||
| There's enough intelligence here to do one of the three. I think Misplaced Pages will be better off. ] 23:13, 7 September 2007 (UTC) | |||
Revision as of 12:15, 18 September 2007
Don't ask, because I'm not asking. It's just that I don't need it, and it doesn't need me. It isn't benefiting me, and whatever benefit I give is too little to overcome my distaste.