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Celebration cancelled

OK, no round of wiki-beer for us. I thought a majority was needed for the proposals to pass, but apparently you got thrown in the same ditch as the rest of us. Sorry for dragging you into this. Unless the guidelines amnesty is granted (and I don't have extremely high hopes), I will probably not volunteer much more of my precious time to this ungrateful project. Are you going to apply? MeteorMaker (talk) 23:13, 9 May 2009 (UTC)

Consolation barnstar

		The Defender of the Wiki Barnstar
		For hours of fruitless effort trying to protect Misplaced Pages from nationalist bias. Although you have been sanctioned unfairly, your thoughtful arguments and dogged research have given the community a strong background of information to draw on when denouncing future attempts to portray ideology as fact. untwirl(talk) 14:54, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Cheers, at least I get some recognition for being a (fairly casual) editor who did nonetheless try occasionally to deal with some of the more egregious POV pushing that permeates this place, as well as a whacking from ArbCom for my sins when they hoovered everyone up in one go. Although I'm not too sure I want to be part of a "gang" at all ... --Nickhh (talk) 19:21, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

My fault Nickhh. for introducing the gang of five. I never assumed we were anything but a bunch of individuals, but since we were being treated as a block of 'pro-Palestinians' I thought the variation on 'gang of four' put in the dock in China decades ago a kind of bad joke. I apologize. The same goes, not to repeat myself, for Pedrito, G-Dett and anyone else offended. You've always struck me as one of the most amenable blokes around here. Oh well, let's take the sanctions as an inadvertent gift. Wiki may be, in the end, somewhat poorer(or richer, we'll see). We will perhaps richer in terms of quality of life and time liberated. After all, it was more of a duty than a pleasure. I'm reading about 200 pages more a day than I would had I tried to stay on and edit two or three lines or key words of wiki over the same timespan! Best Nishidani (talk) 20:17, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

i'll go ahead and take that off of all of them, if it offends. nothing but the utmost respect to all of you. i, too, have no real world link to any of this, but noticed the inconsistencies and was intrigued. once again, sorry for the 'gang' remark, i guess with things like this now being reported, the ring isn't as 'neutral' as i intended. untwirl(talk) 20:41, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Oh sorry, my attempts at mock outrage fail me again! I should make use of winking emoticons more often I guess, but I just have a natural aversion to them. I actually quite liked the allusion to disgraced Communist cliques (not the suggestion that I might be part of one as such, but the allusion to the concept at least). I have a huge backlog of discounted books I bought a while ago, and will no doubt be spending the hour to thirty minutes or so a day I used to sometimes spend on fruitless discussions and being reverted here, and occasionally expressing some exasperation with the more bizarre goings on, to better effect starting up on them (or getting out more, now it's summer). As I noted on MM's page, if all those efforts were for nothing in terms of ultimate content, it doesn't make that much difference if any of us are now no longer allowed to make them. Although as noted, at least (thanks mainly to MM) at least the background research and evidence is there, and on the record. I was minded to hang around here and continue to contribute sometimes to pages on other areas that interest me, and that I know something about (journalism, wine, film, politics more generally etc - topics that have, since I started here, been far more what I wished to focus on anyway, and if one strips out the futile talk page debates, mostly about I-P content, are clearly what I have focused on here most of the time), but the latest farce on the Independent page has finally sapped what waning enthusiasm remained. Cheers as well, --Nickhh (talk) 09:39, 15 May 2009 (UTC)

Was writing something on your Kafkaesque predicament at the Independent page andWikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee/Noticeboard#West_Bank_-_Judea_and_Samaria, against the amazing, and amazingly popular, but impossibly illogical and draconian interpretation of a spectacularly foolish and draconian decision, but was taken away only by the most urgent personal matter, sudden hospitalization of a family member. If I find the time I might write something there, though the discussion seems dormant now. Anyway, a word of support from a protestor outside the prison gate. Free the Judea and Samaria 8 !John Z (talk) 09:07, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

No problem, and thanks for the note. As you say that particular discussion seems to have fallen off ... only to be replaced on the noticeboard by this one, which leaves me even more open-mouthed about the way this place works and the way arbitrary power is dished out and wielded here (although as it happens, the arbitrator in question seemed to be one of the more reasonable and thoughtful ones when it came to the original decision). The absurdity of the Independent issue was that I'm not generally not an I-P "warrior" as such, yet because I got caught up in the West Bank/I-P ban - for arguing, along with others, for NPOV editing and standard international terminology - I am now shunted off even discussing any vaguely related topic by people who actually are, when they start trying to drag the issue or related issues into other pages (as is often their habit). Oh well. And at least the Independent page seems to have been sorted now. --Nickhh (talk) 15:21, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

The Kafka Award

Cheers - I never got any awards or barnstars until I got (absurdly) topic banned. I should do it more often! Maybe one day we'll get some kind of ArbCom structure where the people involved do more than just sit back, allow reams of evidence to be posted about content, relevant policy and editor behaviour and then just casually decide to ... topic ban every single editor whose name they can see in front of them, and then proceed to interpret the scope of that ban as harshly as they can. --Nickhh (talk) 15:26, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

common traits

Apparently I remind someone of you. Needless to say, I felt that was a very nice compliment. Peace and happiness, Nableezy (talk) 20:21, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Cheers. I love the "no offence, but you remind me of .." - he's a funny guy that one (although actually much better than he used to be), as are plenty of others here who have somehow managed to escape topic bans either recently or in the past. Sane outsiders who at least try to engage (most of the time) in reasoned debate are purged, while involved partisans who seem unable to take a step back from their own viewpoints get to rampage over any article they wish to and insert all sorts of oddities into them. Oh well, I'm currently enjoying a semi-retirement, and I'm not sure this place is significantly worse than it would be anyway without my involvement. I'll vote for you if you stand for ArbCom though! --Nickhh (talk) 10:05, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

ps: a nice touch that ArbCom have now quietly amended their ruling, in an implicit acknowledgement that I was well within my rights to continue editing re the Lebanon stuff on the Independent page under the actual terms of the original ruling, despite all the criticism heaped on me for trying to do that. As noted above, at least that's been sorted (partly thanks to you)

Yeah, that whole thing was bullshit. You were arguing that there is a disconnect between articles related to the Arab/Israeli conflict and edits in other articles related to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. Everybody who read that either had it go completely over there head or just dismissed it without actually looking at the wording of the decision. You were right, and that they changed the ruling should make that clear. You were also right on the other page as well and that you cannot continue to show that same dedication to not making this "encyclopedia" a collection of bullshit shows how dumb that decision was. As far as ArbCom voting, fuck that, I am not a fan of lynch mobs so I don't think I will ever try to volunteer to join one. Enjoy your retirement, Nableezy (talk) 16:04, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Hi Nickhh! Are you still here? just wanted to touch base with someone from the old crew. I just need to check in weith you. it seems strange that Arbcom simply banned everyone who was active in that topic area. I don't quite get it. how are you? --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 18:11, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Happily in semi-retirement, for all the reasons stated above. And increasingly confirmed in my belief that this place is more like an asylum of some sort, open to everyone to come and throw in their random opinions about the world, rather than a place for serious and disinterested people to try and create something approaching an accurate, neutral and reliable record of things. And of course a place where those who edit only in one topic area, seemingly from an ideological viewpoint, are treated the same when it comes to any dispute as those generalist editors who at least try to stand back and take a more objective view, and everyone gets hit with the same big stick. Anyway, enough complaining .... --Nickhh (talk) 14:29, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

thanks for the reply! I certainly understand your feelings on that. It's understandable to feel that way after all the edit conflicts etc which have happened. hope to see more group types of efforts, etc. see you! --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 17:15, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

anti semitism, the Guardian, ARBCOM, dejavu

I remember some discussion regarding your edits to The Independent after ARBCOM ruling. I did not watch the issue that closely so I may be wrong but I thought there was an agreement that controversies regarding anti-Israel, anti-semitism, etc. are all included in the topic ban. I'm very lazy these days and don't have the patience to track down diffs so I'll just broach the issue directly to you. Are you sure you comments regarding the balance of article space pertaining to allegations of antisemitism within the The Guardian (which is based on its anti-Israel comments) are allowed under the ARBCOM ruling? Best, --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 07:26, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

that was specifically about the Independent's coverage of the Lebanon war and their "lying", which was decided fell under said topic ban. Not general discussion of antisemitism. nableezy - 07:46, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

The basis for the antisemitic allegations is the Guardian's anti-Israel positions. --brewcrewer (yada, yada) 08:14, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

I think they are actually arguing that the reason for their so-called "anti-Israel" positions is their supposed antisemitism, but how does a discussion if whether a paper is biased against Israel so then antisemitic related to the Arab/Israeli conflict (the topic area covered under the topic ban). Coverage of Israel is not exclusive to coverage of the Arab/Israeli conflict, and it was decided that discussing coverage of the Arab/Israeli conflict was prohibited. But Nickhh is able to speak for himself so I will step away now. nableezy - 08:26, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Apologies, haven't really been around. Thanks Brewcrewer for not actually trying to "report" me for this (even if it wouldn't make a practical difference one way or another), but I would make the points that - the ArbCom verdict was changed to post-facto catch the brief comments I made on the Indy page, which were in no way related substantively to the I-P conflict; the comments on the Guardian page had even less to do with Israel per se, but were to do with the weight one editor was trying to attach to one throwaway and non-specific comment by Julie Burchill (look her up) about anti-semitism. Oddly, perhaps, I just genuinely think that pages here are best served by the avoidance of any obsessive focus on ethnic or religious "nationalism", one way or the other, whether it relates to Britain, Israel or Belgium. But hey, you get told off and sanctioned for that, apparently by a bunch of American high school students. Way to build an encyclopedia, it's funny. --Nickhh (talk) 22:18, 7 August 2009 (UTC)

Nick, if you're speaking of me, I hope you understand that the issue is wider than that. I, also, declined to "report" you, as I was, perhaps, your biggest defender in your arbcom case (much as it may have pained me to do so). IronDuke 03:27, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

I do recall that, and thank you for it (much as it pains me to say so). I still believe that every single "Criticism of ... " and "Allegations of ... " page or section/subsection should be deleted forthwith, in their entirety, and their mostly op-ed and partisan sourced contents very definitely not merged into the main articles. But that's just me and my battle against political essays, which are even worse when written by committee. There was once a "Criticism of Star Trek" article here. I rest my case. --Nickhh (talk) 22:46, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

(sorry to be lurking but ...) i nearly choked on a sip of water when i read that, nick. you know, i can think of alot of criticism of star trek, the bad sets, the overacting ... what a great idea! lets do "criticism of dijeridoos" - they're so annoying! - and "allegations of unpleasantness against patchouli." (still laughing) untwirl(talk) 19:13, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

you have been mentioned

in this ridiculous request for enforcement. doesn't look like its going anywhere but thought you should know. untwirl(talk) 18:21, 24 August 2009 (UTC)