Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 18:49, 20 August 2012

This is the talk page for Neotarf. Tarf means "eye" or "glance". It is also the name of the star Beta Cancri in the constellation of the Crab, above the ring of stars made by the head of Hydra, the Water Serpent.

If you leave a message for me here, I will probably answer you here unless you request otherwise.

“Solutions. A solution is somebody's product. A computer is not just a solution to a problem in payroll management, discovered when needed. It is an answer actively looking for a question. The creation of need is not a curiosity of the market in consumer products; it is a general phenomenon of processes of choice. Despite the dictum that you cannot find the answer until you have formulated the question well, you often do not know what the question is in organizational problem solving until you know the answer.” —A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice

“In some situations, the appropriateness of a move may be under dispute, and discussion is necessary in order to reach a consensus.” — Misplaced Pages:Requested moves

The very first message on my user page

Advice on proper procedure from a banned sock

==ArbCom evidence== Anybody can offer evidence to ArbCom, as anyone can participate on the workshop page. But the purpose of the evidence page is to present links and diffs, not (despite what several editors have done) to make speeches. What you posted on the Baden page contains several useful principles, with which I agree; I encourage you to offer them to ArbCom. If you do not choose to do so, I would like to quote them myself. JCScaliger (talk) 03:42, 6 February 2012 (UTC) My remarks were in answer to a specific comment; perhaps I should have marked it more prominently. I would hope no one would quote me out of context. I wonder why anyone would prefer making a statement to providing links and diffs. Neotarf (talk) 09:34, 8 February 2012 (UTC) To urge ArbCom to solve the problem their way - an impulse from which I am not immune. (While I agree with the rest of your sentiments - I think in context - what I considered quoting was There is only one thing that matters here - 1)Collaborating. To 2) write an encyclopedia. Everything else is just common sense. What context would you like for that? JCScaliger (talk) 03:39, 9 February 2012 (UTC) FYI – User:JCScaliger has been indef blocked as a sockpuppet of User:Pmanderson (blocked for another year for abusive sockpuppetry).

Re: Thanks for sorting out my footnotes

You're most certainly welcome Neotarf. Thank you for your note of appreciation. Stay well, and happy editing! :)  -- WikHead (talk) 23:23, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Comment

Sorry. I added that Comment "stray word" to distinguish your comment as a comment as opposed to a !vote. It's standard practice to do that in a discussion to prevent others from thinking a comment is a !vote. --Born2cycle (talk) 17:04, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

I doubt very much that anyone would mistake text written next to a bullet point for "voting". At any rate, I see you did not change anyone else's bulleted text in the same section. But if you were trying to find out if I would notice any changes made by someone else to comments that were signed by me, I guess you found that out. And it was two comments you changed, not just the one I called attention to. Neotarf (talk) 18:22, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

The odds might be low, but they are high enough that the practice is fairly well accepted. No one else made a comment at that outside level. I was just trying to help.

The other one was a mistake in formatting, or so it appeared. Was that intentional? Again, just trying to help. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:06, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

This is curious. It was properly indented before - indented one level from the comment to which you were responding. Why outdent suddenly? That messes up the indenting of the comments that replied to you. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:10, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

It looks like you may have had something to do with that: http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Talk%3AFort_Worth&diff=485066451&oldid=485066435

I don't see any edit summaries, or any other kind of explanation before the fact. If you really are just trying to help, and don't want people to think you are trying to sneak around, especially on a page where people don't seem to be able to stop bringing up stuff that is past, you should probably document what you are doing. Neotarf (talk) 22:09, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

You just linked to an edit from Dicklyon. Why?

This is the edit where I fixed the formatting. I didn't think that was even worth noting in the edit summary. What is there to explain? The formatting was obviously broken (look at how "titles..." is way out at the left edge in the version prior to my fix), and my edit to it simply removed a broken line. Why would you assume anyone was trying to "sneak around"? WP:AGF much? --Born2cycle (talk) 20:42, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

How dramatic. It looks like you have just accused me of "assuming someone was sneaking around." And the sarcastic "WP:AGF much?" comment I suppose means you are accusing me of not assuming good faith--of you, I take it. I did no such thing. Please read what I actually wrote and do not put words in my mouth.

As far as the edit that changed the margin, the margin was one way after Dicklyon's edit and another way after your subsequent edit. That means that the margin was changed by ... your edit.

You have just spent three days, three posts, and several hundred words on two edits you made to my comments that you "didn't think that was even worth noting in the edit summary". Let me repeat the request I made of you on your own talk page. 'Please do not change my comments without formal and proper documentation.' If you wish to discuss this any further, I will answer at your talk page. Neotarf (talk) 22:55, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

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Reliable English-language sources

If you object to the change I have made then revert it and explain your objection on the talk page (WP:BOLD). In my judgement adding the word reliable in front of sources is making explicit what was previously implied, and IMHO is not something that needs to be discussed first as BOLD takes care of it. If you have a substantive reason for an objection then of course we can discuss it further in the appropriate place. -- PBS (talk) 13:34, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Busy

Busy for a while, so taking a break. Neotarf (talk) 18:37, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages Help Survey

Hi there, my name's Peter Coombe and I'm a Wikimedia Community Fellow working on a project to improve Misplaced Pages's help system. At the moment I'm trying to learn more about how people use and find the current help pages. If you could help by filling out this brief survey about your experiences, I'd be very grateful. It should take less than 10 minutes, and your responses will not be tied to your username in any way.

Thank you for your time,
the wub (talk) 17:39, 14 June 2012 (UTC) (Delivered using Global message delivery)

RFAR Perth opened

An arbitration case in which you commented has been opened, and is located at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Perth. Evidence that you wish the Arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence sub-page, at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Perth/Evidence. Please add your evidence by January 9, 2012, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can contribute to the case workshop sub-page, Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Perth/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Lord Roem (talk) 18:07, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Sinai and Palestine Campaign

Hi, you requested a reliable source in the middle of a sentence which has two reliable sources cited at the end of the sentence - here. I realise you have only been editing Misplaced Pages for six months and possibly aren't aware of all the guidelines which are followed in providing citations. Basically, it would be over-citing if a third citation was provided where you requested it and the information came from the two reliable sources quoted. I have therefore cut the cn tag. --Rskp (talk) 01:36, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

That is not correct. A "citation needed" tag should never be removed until the citation is provided. According to WP:VERIFY, which is a policy, not a "guideline", "All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be CHALLENGED must be attributed to a reliable published source using an inline citation," and "The BURDEN of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material". Any material so challenged can be removed.

The problem with bunching all the citation markers together at the end of a paragraph is that text-source integrity is lost. "When using inline citations, it is important to maintain text-source WP:INTEGRITY. The point of an inline citation is to allow readers and other editors to check that the material is sourced; that point is lost if the citation is not clearly placed." According to WP:CITEFOOT, "The citation should be added close to the material it supports, offering text-source integrity. If a word or phrase is particularly contentious, an inline citation may be added next to that word or phrase within the sentence, but it is usually sufficient to add the citation to the end of the sentence or paragraph, so long as it’s clear which source supports which part of the text."

I have taken some time to examine your sources and have added the requisite citations in the appropriate locations, as noted on the respective talk pages.

Also, it is recommended that editors comment on content, not on the contributor. See WP:No personal attacks and WP:OWN.

Neotarf (talk) 18:21, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Less busy

Less busy now, so trying to catch up with whatever I have missed here. Neotarf (talk) 14:39, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

Trouble at MOS:ABBR

Neotarf, Art la Pella is right that "stonewall-" appears in one diff that he provides (the latest of which is from 2010, I note). But it is important to look at the context. See Protection log for WP:MOS, showing that the main page of WP's Manual of Style was locked down 7 June – 5 August 2009. My "stonewalling" remark came on 1 August 2009, after almost eight weeks of not being able to do my usual routine maintenance of the page. The record shows that I did no editing in the period leading up to that lock-down. The only person commenting at the ABBR talkpage who was involved in that stupid edit-warring was Darkfrog. See relevant history:

(During the protection, several admins edited the page on their own initiative, against policy regarding protected pages.)

As you can see, I did resume my uncontroversial tidying on the day the protection was lifted.

There's stonewalling and there's stonewalling. In the present discussion over ABBR, I have been seriously misrepresented. A simple reading of the talkpage text (and the diffs and summaries in the history MOS:ABBR) will show that I never said there was consensus for anything on WP:ABBR at all. I said such things as this:

"There is no consensus to change the guideline to be silent concerning that comma, or to explicitly allow it. Nor was there ever a well-established consensus to disallow it. In such a situation, we go with the best approximation to a pre-existing consistent recommendation. That was to disallow the comma; and as I have shown, it is well supported in external guides."

A shallow, time-wasting, and inattentive discussion. I intend to stay away from it till people behave more constructively.

Thanks for your notification at my talkpage, by the way. Dirtlawyer really ought to know better.

Noetica 07:43, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

You're more than welcome. I see that Dirtlawyer is unfortunately a compatriot of mine. We Americans can be quite litigious — as a nation we enjoy our guns, our lawyers, and our pit bulls — but this isn't really the place for it.

Yes, I did notice that "stonewall" had been used to describe a situation, and not as an epithet, but I certainly do appreciate the background. Maybe I'll try again to get the current conversation back on track, don't know, but perhaps the well has been poisoned. It's an interesting subject, for sure, and I appreciate you introducing it. I notice that while the good stuff these days is all behind a paywall, there has been a proliferation of "lite" online style guides that do give some idea of what is going on with the various varieties of English, as does an hour or so of poking around in Google Books. But if you want to see a bit of anarchy in usage, check out this American... Oh, and I did enjoy discovering the Harleian article.

Neotarf (talk) 13:39, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

the current RfA reform project

De-adminship and un-de-adminship:

The Perth case: an attempt at community un-de-adminship. (Scroll down to the !vote.)

I have been thinking about term limits for admins for some time. That way, people who might not otherwise think of being admin could try it for a little while to see how they liked it, maybe as temporary short-term apprenticeship without the usual vetting, or maybe with a mentor. You would elect or appoint a bunch of them at the same time, maybe four times a year or so, then once they got their feet wet, they would serve a 2 year term or somesuch before everyone had to run for office again. It would get dialog going about what makes a good admin, and give admins continuous feedback about how they are perceived without putting extreme negative focus on just one person.

A little OT, but I found this particular remark interesting, especially in light of some of the issues that ArbCom did NOT choose to look at in the Perth case. What struck me was the tension between policy reflecting best practice, and best practice being dictated by policy. Seems like a critical self-correcting feedback loop is missing.

Does Misplaced Pages need a new tool, to remove arbcom as the only route for de-adminship? This idea has come up before, and there will probably be more on that later.

This project: the current RfA reform project is a place for proposals and comments.

UPDATE: Historical proposals about temporary admin trials at Misplaced Pages:RfA reform 2011/Radical alternatives/Pre-RfA Proposal and Misplaced Pages:Tool apprenticeship. Previous discussions at the latter.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Three concurrent discussions about removing adminship/sanctioning admins. 1) Misplaced Pages:Requests for Comment/Community de-adminship proof of concept, 2) Misplaced Pages:Request for Admin Sanctions, and now 3) Misplaced Pages:Requests for removal of adminship.

Neotarf (talk) 23:25, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

Dr.pragmatist (talk) 17:48, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

August 2012

Welcome, and thank you for contributing the page Trafficking in persons in Argentina to Misplaced Pages. While you have added the page to the English version of Misplaced Pages, the article is not in English. We invite you to translate it into English. It currently has been listed at Pages Needing Translation, but if it is not translated within two weeks, the article will be listed for deletion. Thank you. Best regards, Cindy(talk to me) 01:47, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your interest in human rights topics. Please note the {{ New page }} and {{translated page}} templates I placed on the article before beginning the translation, also the "copy Spanish text to page for translation" in the edit summary. I have placed a longer note on your talk page. Regards, Neotarf (talk) 08:20, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

?

Not sure why you feel my trying to keep my note about my post WITH the post it was about together was "quoting out of context; I assure you that was not my intent. How can I keep my post and my note about my post together without offending you? KillerChihuahua 18:59, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

I have move MY post, so that your reply is immediately below the note. KillerChihuahua 19:03, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Looks accurate enough now. Thanks for your quick correction. Neotarf (talk) 19:13, 14 August 2012 (UTC)

Question

Hi, how is "waiting on you" confrontational? I can't see it, but then if I could I wouldn't have used it. I try to avoid phrasing which can be misinterpreted (even though that's not a 100% possibility) so I try to find out why when my words have been misinterpreted like this. What in that made you think "oh, confrontational!"? unsigned comment left by KillerChihuahua 17:21, 15 August 2012‎