Hmm, fascinating. I see that the ideal you attempt to live up to in your cartoon is "they care only that the information is correct". And yet you've said your editing and administrator actions in the past few days have been very borderline, which is beneath you . Two of us have asked you to substantiate this apparently unfounded allegation, and indeed I wondered if this was going to be another "slang-and-run". It appears from your banner above that it is. Don't you think it is time to update your cartoon, with something along the lines of "our readers may care, but I really don't care if what I say is correct or not"? William M. Connolley (talk) 13:22, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Gimme a break. I've been divesting myself of onwiki activities for the past week, and have been listed as "inactive" on the Arbitration Committee list and clerk noticeboard for any new cases. I'm really not that hard to find, you know. Talk page has been here all along, and the email this user button works. I'm sorry I didn't immediately respond to your comment on the talk page, but I took it off my watchlist before you made your comment.

Sorry guv. You can't just make inflammatory comments and then run away saying "gimme a break". And you are rather glossing over the fact that SBHB asked you to justify your comment too - and you edited the page after he said that, so you were still looking then William M. Connolley (talk) 20:07, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

You were edit warring on Heaven and Earth (book) to the point that the page had to be protected, after which you used your administrator permissions to tag the page. In case you had forgotten, administrators are held to something of a higher standard of behaviour, and the Arbitration Committee has desysopped administrators with a history of edit-warring. And using your administrator permissions to make even an innocuous edit on a page that has been protected in part because of your own actions is unacceptable. Keep in mind that a similar innocuous edit is what triggered the case you are answering to right now.

What I said is indeed correct - your editorial and administrator behaviour was beneath you. I rather doubt this sort of nonsense would be considered acceptable in academic circles, either; at least they wouldn't be in the academic circles I am associated with. Risker (talk) 18:44, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

That really is pathetic. Adding a protected tag to a protected page is just good form. You'll notice that no-one has seen any reason to change it. Calling that a questionable admin action is utterly bizarre. You've completely lost the plot. If you are so delicate about admin actions, why are you not in the least sensitive to Cla edit warring on the same article, followed immeadiately by Viridiae protecting it to Cla's version - when V is a clear partisan in this case, on Cla's side? It appears that only certain admin "abuse" is of interest to you. The edit warring stuff is dubious too; but its the admin actions that are of interest there so I won't muddy the waters William M. Connolley (talk) 20:07, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Neither Cla68 (a non-admin) nor Viridae (the protecting admin, who no doubt protected in the wrong version) are under the close scrutiny of the Arbitration Committee with respect to allegations of inappropriate administrator action. Look at what you have just written, WMC; you have excused your own action of tagging the protected article in practically the same (if considerably fewer) words as Abd defended his edit to Cold fusion that led to the case under which your conduct came under scrutiny. In that case, you felt his behaviour was unacceptable and provocative; even by the lens of your own standards, your action there was inappropriate at best.

I think this discussion has gone as far as it can. I rather doubt you will change your perception of your own behaviour, or mine for that matter. That's okay; I don't insist that everyone share my point of view. Risker (talk) 20:28, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

That is nothing but rhetoric, worthy of Abd (though insufficiently wordy, I'll grant you). But I agree; you're not going to agree; this is better discussed on the arbcomm page William M. Connolley (talk) 21:35, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Risker, are you arguing that adding the usual {{protected}} tag to a protected page is a controversial act? Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 03:38, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

No, SBHB. I am stating that an administrator whose own edit-warring is directly involved in the need for protecting an article is acting provocatively and controversially by using his administrator access and editing the article for any reason when it is in a protected state. WMC had other options, for example, asking the protecting admin to correct his error, posting at WP:AN, posting on the talk page of the article. There was no need for him personally to have added that tag. He was clearly involved in a content dispute on the page and, as such, should not have used any administrator tools in any manner with respect to that article. Risker (talk) 03:53, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

So you are arguing that adding the usual {{protected}} tag to a protected page is a controversial act. Wow. Just... wow. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 03:57, 14 September 2009 (UTC). :::SBHB, it would not be controversial for User:Prodego to have added it. Or User:Chillum. Or the vast majority of the 1600 or so people with administrative permissions. But for a handful of administrators whose primary involvement in the article is as an editor, yes it is a controversial act. Risker (talk) 04:08, 14 September 2009 (UTC)