Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 14:01, 11 September 2008

In order to remain listed at Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/User conduct, at least two people need to show that they tried to resolve a dispute with this user and have failed. This must involve the same dispute with a single user, not different disputes or multiple users. The persons complaining must provide evidence of their efforts, and each of them must certify it by signing this page with ~~~~. If this does not happen within 48 hours of the creation of this dispute page (which was: 15:51, 8 September 2008 (UTC)), the page will be deleted. The current date and time is: 21:37, 30 December 2024 (UTC).

• Tony1 (talk · contribs · logs)

Users should only edit one summary or view, other than to endorse.

Statement of the dispute

This is a summary written by users who are concerned by this user's conduct. Users signing other sections ("Response" or "Outside views") should not edit the "Statement of the dispute" section.

Tony1 has been using a script to unlink dates in articles without discussion on the talk pages, in defiance of requests by several other editors that he hold off so that the unlinking can be discussed in the broader context of date autoformatting. Tony1 has accused editors who oppose his unlinking of trying to stall the process, which he feels is justified by recent changes to WP:DATES.

Desired outcome

It is desired that Tony1 temporarily stop unlinking articles, until a consensus can be reached on whether to disable date autoformatting in the MediaWiki software for the English Misplaced Pages. Until such a consensus has been reached, unlinking is premature and is causing disruption.

Description

Tony1 continues to unlink dates en-masse, in defiance of despite requests to temporarily refrain from doing so while discussion is ongoing.

Evidence of disputed behavior

Examples of Tony1 using a script to perform mass unlinking of dates:

Applicable policies and guidelines

1. Misplaced Pages:DATES#Date_autoformatting

Evidence of trying to resolve the dispute

Examples of Sapphic and UC_Bill requesting that Tony1 temporarily halt unlinking:

Evidence of failing to resolve the dispute

Examples of Tony1 continuing to unlink dates after being asked to temporarily refrain:

...and Tony1 continues to unlink dates using a script, clearly indicating contempt for this process:

...and on, and on. Taking this to AN/I.

Users certifying the basis for this dispute

1. --UC_Bill (talk) 16:07, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
2. --Sapphic (talk) 18:47, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Other users who endorse this summary

Response

This is a summary written by the user whose conduct is disputed, or by other users who think that the dispute is unjustified and that the above summary is biased or incomplete. Users signing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Outside Views") should not edit the "Response" section.

{Those diffs all look fine to me. I was initially concerned to see that I'd changed the fourth one from US to European format, but realised that, yes, this was a reasonable application of the MOS concern to allow international for US military purposes; as well, most of the subjects were non-American. The edits are clearly in line with the new guideline that "deprecates" date autoformatting, which has evolved after a long and extensive debate at MOSNUM and elsewhere, with WPians overwhelmingly in favour of removal.

Although I suspect that Bill is also in favour of the removal of DA; but he wishes to pursue his own strategy for doing so—at another "link" in the chain, involving WikiMedia—and to base this on his collection of data at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject_Dates. At that page, the discussion of the stats appears to be going around in circles: doubt has been cast on the validity of the stats by several editors, both there and at MOSNUM, and uncertainty as to how exactly the data would inform such strategy. At MOSNUM talk, the reluctance of MediaWiki (which serves hundreds of sites) to make structural and technical changes (such as turning off date autoformatting) has been aired many times after a two-year request to improve the autoformatting mechanism was rejected. This desire is apparently central to Bill's wishlist, against the experience of many at MOSNUM talk.

As for the propriety of using the human-supervised script at this stage, there are at least six compelling reasons to do so:

(1) it represents the first proper audit of dates in WP articles, and has uncovered and corrected inconsistencies, faulty syntaxes and globally wrong choices of format to the extent that only about 40% of articles have had no issues;

(2) it spares editors the manual labour of removing numerous square-brackets in their articles;

(3) it corrects the inaccurate Julian/Gregorian date inaccuracy that comes with autoformatting, a matter that has come to light only recently;

(4) it has been undergoing continuous refinement, which would be impossible without its use and the helpful feedback from editors we have received;

(5) it promulgates the change in the guideline (via the edit summary), and the existence of WP:MoS, WP:MOSNUM and WP:CONTEXT, to editors who would not otherwise have thought of consulting these modes of achieving project-wide cohesion in style and formatting; and

(6) it has been instrumental in prompting the experts at MOSNUM talk to negotiate, several years too late, a guideline for which format should be chosen for articles unrelated to anglophone countries.

I believe that these are reasonable grounds for the application of the script by me and others at present, and that the complaint is unjustified. Tony (talk) 16:59, 8 September 2008 (UTC) }

Users who endorse this summary:

1. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:24, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
2. Hesperian 23:43, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
3. Ceoil 00:26, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
4. Karanacs (talk) 01:51, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
5. «JavierMC»|Talk 02:23, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
6. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:02, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
7. Closedmouth (talk) 05:24, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
8. Teemu Leisti (talk) 05:52, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
9. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:48, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
10. Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 14:07, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
11. SWTPC6800 (talk) 15:06, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
12. LuciferMorgan (talk) 18:30, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
13. Lightmouse (talk) 21:33, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
14. Waltham, The Duke of 21:57, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
15. Tony is going a good job. Giggy (talk) 00:39, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
16. EdJohnston (talk) 02:59, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
17. Eleassar 08:05, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
18. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 17:07, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
19. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:29, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
20. Professor marginalia (talk) 21:39, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
21. Donald Albury 14:01, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Outside view from SandyGeorgia

This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Response") should not edit the "Outside Views" section, except to endorse an outside view.

I don't think wording like "in defiance of" is helpful in dispute resolution. Tony1's editing is in conformance with WP:MOS on an issue that has been worked on diligently and within process, involving many editors for several years.

UC_Bill mentions refraining from making edits that adhere to MOS "until a consensus can be reached on whether to disable date autoformatting in the MediaWiki software for the English Misplaced Pages". Tony1 and others have already attempted for several years to get the Wiki developers to pay attention to the problems created by autoformatting of dates. Only after those attempts failed to gain any attention from developers did consensus form at MoS for delinking of dates.

Finally, date delinking has been widely well received, with a minority of editors taking difference with it, but doing so vocally.

In conclusion, I suggest that the editors presenting this RfC find a more effective means of conceptualizing and resolving their differences. Consensus on date delinking was long in forming, involved many editors, and all indications were that developers didn't intend to resolve the problems.

Users who endorse this summary:

1. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:23, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
2. And to reemphasise that Tony now has a large majority behing him, given the number and range of editors thanking and congratulating him on his talk page, and in other rooms, over the last number of weeks. It had been until recently a long and thankless struggle. Tony should be given some sort of athletically shaped bronze object, not an RfC. Ceoil 22:57, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
3. Hesperian 23:43, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
4. «JavierMC»|Talk 02:22, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
5. I do think there is something of a problem at MOSNUM, but it's not Tony. Gimmetrow 03:46, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
6. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:02, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
7. Closedmouth (talk) 05:26, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
8. Teemu Leisti (talk) 05:54, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
9. I too have been routinely unlinking dates of late, to near-universal unconcern from article editors. Tony's actions should be welcomed, not questioned. We've had the debate - now let's get on with making the encyclopaedia better. Colonies Chris (talk) 09:39, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
10. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:22, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
11. Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 14:09, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
12. With the exception that it is not clear, and is becoming steadily less clear, that the objectors are a minority; it is tolerably clear that the claims of consensus by the deprecators are somewhat exaggerated. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:57, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
13. SWTPC6800 (talk) 15:09, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
14. Lightmouse (talk) 21:34, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
15. Waltham, The Duke of 22:10, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
16. EdJohnston (talk) 03:00, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
17. Eleassar 08:06, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
18. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 17:07, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
19. Ottava Rima (talk) 19:30, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Outside view from Dm

This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Response") should not edit the "Outside Views" section, except to endorse an outside view.

I'm not sure if I'm technically an outside view, but was not aware of this RFC, nor would have recommended it as a course of action. In any case, I dont think this should be directed at Tony1 individually, though he is certainly championing the aggressive mass removal of all linked dates. I also think that everyone at the MOSNUM page needs to chill out a bit and start doing a lot less badgering and a lot more assuming of good faith and behaving with civility. There is a middle-ground that has yet to be found.

All of the arguments presented above and at MOSNUM about why auto-formatting or date linking are bad are somewhat irrelevant. The MOSNUM changed in August to indicate deprecation. As some people interpreted that as encouragement to implement mass unlinking, more people became aware of this change and started contributing to the discussion (Misplaced Pages:CCC). Most of the new contributors seem to be arguing against unlinking for whatever reason, again, the reasons are irrelevant to this RFC. What the two people above and I separately have been asking is that the group hold off mass unlinking temporarily while we see if we can address most of the concerns in a different way (patch/template/whatever). My particular concern is that even though this data is arguably structured badly, it is still a lot easier to parse than plain text. Once it's unlinked, it's gone.

I had taken a few days off from the group due to the Sturm und Drang. When I came back, and before I knew about this RFC, I suggested this Proposal to stop mass unlinking for 30 days and no other changes We'll see where it goes. My only question is, if it took 2 years to build to this consensus, what is a temporary hold on mass unlinking really going to cost? Ironically, the more aggressive the unlinking, the more users we'll see respond like this, this, this, this, and this. None of which are mine, UC Bill or Sapphic's.

Finally, I would encourage anyone contributing on this page, regardless of your position, to give a hand in bringing civility and good faith back to MOSNUM, it's sorely missing.

Users who endorse this summary:

1. dm (talk) 06:24, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
2. Tennis expert (talk) 09:05, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
3. I can endorse this too. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:57, 9 September 2008 (UTC)
4. --UC_Bill (talk) 20:39, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Outside view from PMAnderson

This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Response") should not edit the "Outside Views" section, except to endorse an outside view.

This should be an RFC, but it should not be on user conduct. For Tony, this is civil; I've seen him when he's not civil. But as long as the substantive discussion takes place, I don't care what it's called.

On the substantive matter: Date linking and autoformatting was an attempt, from 2003, at a technical solution to a behavioural problem; date warring over 8 September 2008 vs September 8, 2008. It did not solve the behavioural problem, and it has has several undesirable side effects. We would, I think, resolve the problem, were it arrise now, by telling editors to live and let live, as we have with color/colour and AD/CE; the technical fix was a failed idea.

But not every bad idea should be torn out by the roots. Tony is not being uncivil, but he may be being imprudent. The "consensus" of a small number of editors at WT:MOS can normally be assumed to be the consensus of Misplaced Pages, but not in the presence of numerous complaints.

We should suggest, page by page, that the page be delinked, presenting our reasons. I think them formidable, and we will see if others do. In a couple months, we will be in one of two states:

• Either we will convince most editors that we do have a new standard and it is sensible, in which case they will routinely delink dates just as they used to routinely link them.
• Or we will have firm evidence that some, but not all, editors judge that delinking is helpful, in which case WP:MOS should be rephrased.

Either would be better than quarrelling over it.

Users who endorse this summary:

1. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:12, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Outside view

This is a summary written by users not directly involved with the dispute but who would like to add an outside view of the dispute. Users editing other sections ("Statement of the dispute" and "Response") should not edit the "Outside Views" section, except to endorse an outside view.

{Add summary here, but you must use the endorsement section below to sign. Users who edit or endorse this summary should not edit the other summaries.}

Users who endorse this summary:

Discussion

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