Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 00:06, 5 December 2009

Historical References

Historical Back Pointers

Rather than create archive pages which use up additional space I have decided to instead keep a list of back pointers to permanent links within the history of this talk page at various points in time.

Raul's Attack Page

• User:Raul654/GoRight
• Misplaced Pages:Miscellany_for_deletion/User:Raul654/GoRight

My Response Page

• User:GoRight/Raul654

Users Requesting to be Informed of Topics of Interest

The following users have explicitly requested that I keep them informed of topics I believe that they would be interested in:

• User:Abd
• User:John G. Miles

Requests for Collaboration

Talk:Heaven and Earth (book)

If you have time (& inclination), you might have a look at the RfC here for David Stockwell's review of the book. The Usual Suspects don't want to allow use of it. TIA & cheers, Pete Tillman (talk) 04:59, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

I shall endeavor to take a look but it may be a few days. I want to get the material at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William M. Connolley completed first. --GoRight (talk) 05:28, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Note on the ArbCase

Just reading through the evidence page and I've looked at your table of events. You might find a more effective presentation to be dropping the "Shows" at the beginning of your comments. When you repeat a word so often, it may cause eye-glazing. Style note only. Franamax (talk) 23:52, 20 July 2009 (UTC)

Point noted, thanks. --GoRight (talk) 00:37, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

comment in the case should be in the other section

You made this comment under "Comment by parties", it should have been posted to "Comment by others", could you move it there, please? --Enric Naval (talk) 01:30, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Quite right. Moved per your request. Sorry for the oversight. --GoRight (talk) 01:36, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, no problem. --Enric Naval (talk) 01:50, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Your recent comment

The comment you just made on the evidence talk page crosses the line. I was trying to make it clear that the discussion needed to end before it began degrading into attacks and trolling. Please redact your comment, or I will be reverting it and closing that discussion shortly. Hersfold 03:27, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Redact it in what way? It is a perfectly cogent response to TOAT's point. If my comment crosses some line then so must TOAT's. I have no problem with you reverting my comment so long as you also revert TOAT's. Fair enough?

And for the record, what line am I crossing here? --GoRight (talk) 03:52, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

"I was trying to make it clear that the discussion needed to end before it began degrading into attacks and trolling." - I am truly confused here. Is your complaint that I posted a comment after you had indicated the discussion should move on, or something else? I had only just become aware of that conversation and I certainly would expect to be given my say in it as well as everyone else. Please clarify your complaint.

I am not trying to be uncooperative here, I just seriously believe that my points are valid and should remain. If there is good reason to remove or adjust them I will certainly take action once I actually understand the nature of your complaint. --GoRight (talk) 04:07, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

FWIW I don't object to GR making his opinion known, though the clerk's stated intent to close the thread perhaps suggests that the comment should be moved elsewhere. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 04:16, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for chiming in, SBHB. Considering that, (since it was this comment I meant, sorry for the confusion there, my fault for not linking), I'll not ask you to remove it, although I will be closing the discussion anyway. My intentions in asking you to remove it were to try and keep the discussion above-board; I'd noticed that the discussion was beginning to go downhill rather quickly, and made a comment to that effect before you posted, GoRight. When I saw your comment, I felt it was rather pointed and the start of worse things to come. As a clerk, I am tasked with keeping the case pages in relative order, which includes user conduct. I will admit I'm trying to be a little more heavy-handed in this case than I might otherwise, due to the high drama levels involved with the subject matter and main parties; I'm not the only one who is worried this case could easily spiral out of control if it's allowed to do so. If it was not your intention to offend, I do apologize; it's clear SBHB didn't take it that way, anyway. Hersfold 04:27, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

(EC) Although it is moot now given Herfold's comment here, below is what I had written. Thanks, Hersfold, for the explanation and your tireless (and probably mostly thankless) service to the community.

(Begin Previously Written Text) For the record, I honestly didn't think that:

"Question: Is this discussion getting anywhere or is it time to move elsewhere now? It seems the main point has been addressed; these notifications are not inappropriate, Abd should strongly consider rewording his statements and/or providing more evidence to support them, anyone with an account on Misplaced Pages is free to comment here."

was intended as a definitive statement that the discussion was closed. And I certainly didn't mean my edits as any sort of challenge to Hersfold for goodness sake. I have no grudge here against Hersfold.

Hersfold, if you feel strongly about this either way please feel free to revert my comments and I shall bear you no ill will for having done so.

And SBHB I am serious about the kudos. Regardless of whether you are part of a Cabal, or not, as I note in the comment it was (would have been) a clever move on your part deserving of recognition. Or perhaps a notification is just a notification, eh?  :) --GoRight (talk) 04:37, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

Notice to all users involved in Abd/WMC

This is a general notice to all users involved in the Abd/WMC arbitration case that further disruptive conduct within the case will not be tolerated and will result in blocks being issued by Clerks or Arbitrators as needed. More information is available at the announcement here; please be sure to read that post in full. Receipt of this message does not necessarily imply that you are at risk of a block or have been acting in a disruptive manner; it is a general notice to all that the Clerks and ArbCom are aware of issues in the case and will not be tolerating them any longer. If you have any questions, please post them to the linked section. Thank you. Hersfold 23:55, 21 July 2009 (UTC)

If I am one of the disruptive parties and any of my existing comments or posts should be reconsidered, please inform me as to which so that I may at least retroactively attempt to rectify the situation. If no further action, other than behaving myself, is required then please confirm that as well.

At what point will we know if the time extension is granted? What is the process for that? I have decided that I would like to gather some additional diffs and to include another section which is likewise based on raw diffs to show some of the prior interactions between the parties involved in the case. This might help shed some additional objective light on the relationships involved. --GoRight (talk) 14:57, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

WP:BAN and editing on behalf of banned users.

Yes, yes, I know I am over analyzing things here, but bear with me. I am going through this exercise because of my proposal on the workshop page, but I certainly don't want to post anything as involved as this there. That being said, I would appreciate some feedback from the linguists and the logicians amongst you.

For the purpose of this discussion, the goal is to assess what the WP:BAN policy actually says, not what current practice is or what the policy should be. We are simply trying to parse the actual text.

The section in WP:BAN titled "Editing on behalf of banned users" states in full:

"Wikipedians are not permitted to post or edit material at the direction of a banned user, an activity sometimes called "proxying," unless they are able to confirm that the changes are verifiable and have independent reasons for making them. Edits which involve proxying that have not been confirmed to that effect may be reverted. Misplaced Pages's sock puppetry policy defines "meatpuppetry" as the recruitment of new editors to Misplaced Pages for the purpose of influencing a survey, performing reverts, or otherwise attempting to give the appearance of consensus. It strongly discourages this form of editing, and new users who engage in the same behavior as a banned or blocked user in the same context, and who appear to be editing Misplaced Pages solely for that purpose, are subject to the remedies applied to the user whose behavior they are joining."

I am trying to honestly parse the italicized sentences to discern what they actually mean. The first contains an intermediate clause that is non-operative so removing it should make no difference to the meaning, so let's simply remove it for clarity (just in this discussion, not in the actual policy). This yields:

"Wikipedians are not permitted to post or edit material at the direction of a banned user unless they are able to confirm that the changes are verifiable and have independent reasons for making them."

Now when I read that the "unless" forms a natural breaking point (i.e. "A" unless "B"), where

A = "Wikipedians are not permitted to post or edit material at the direction of a banned user" and

B = "they are able to confirm that the changes are verifiable and have independent reasons for making them".

"A" seems perfectly understandable to me, as does "B". So when they are joined using the conjunction "unless" it clearly seems to be saying that "A" must be adhered to unless "B" is true. Am I wrong on this point?

Assuming that this is the case can this not be legitimately reworded to say as long as "B" is true then "A" does NOT have to be adhered to? I think that these are logically equivalent, are they not?

If so back substitution yields:

"As long as (they are able to confirm that the changes are verifiable and have independent reasons for making them) is true then (Wikipedians are not permitted to post or edit material at the direction of a banned user) does NOT have to be adhered to."

Removing the double negative and simplifying seems to yield:

"As long a Wikipedians are able to confirm that the changes are verifiable and have independent reasons for making them then they are permitted to post or edit material at the direction of a banned user."

I claim that this is a logically equivalent statement to the current policy statement, unless someone can point to a flaw in this reasoning. Now maybe that is not what people want the policy to say, which is a different point that should be raised on the WP:BAN page, but I think that this is what it actually says today. Am I missing something here?

The second sentence states:

"Edits which involve proxying that have not been confirmed to that effect may be reverted."

I actually have a hard time parsing this sentence at all and have little idea what it truly means. Still it seems to break down into "Edits "C" may be reverted." for lack of a better alternative where

C = "which involve proxying that have not been confirmed to that effect".

What does "C" actually mean? What is "that effect" actually referring back to? This seems to be near gibberish, actually. It could certainly be made clearer.

"C" seems to be trying to classify or qualify a particular type of edit. It is trying to identify those edits which may be legitimately reverted. If that is the case the "which involve proxying that have not been confirmed to" part seems straight forward and can be simply moved out of "C" and appended to "Edits" which yields: "Edits which involve proxying that have not been confirmed to "D" may be removed." where

D = "that effect".

The only thing that seems to make any sense for "D" to be referring back to is the condition that the Wikipedians were confirming in the previous sentence. There seems to be no sensible alternative.

So, we then have D = "that effect" = "the changes are verifiable and have independent reasons for making them", and back substitution would yield:

"Edits which involve proxying that have not been confirmed to (the changes are verifiable and have independent reasons for making them) may be removed."

and with a little cleanup we would have:

"Edits which involve proxying that have not been confirmed to be verifiable and that the editors have independent reasons for making may be removed."

That seems to be my best guess at what the second sentence actually means. Do others disagree? (I am asking you if you agree with this reasoning not whether you agree that this is what the policy should be.)

Mr. Language Person (a.k.a Boris) what do you think? --GoRight (talk) 22:35, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

A Basic Chronology of Relevant Events

Re your entry for the 6th march: unaccountably, you have missed my comments under "useless advice" at t:SA . I'm sure I can count on you to be honest and update your chronology accordingly William M. Connolley (talk) 22:45, 25 July 2009 (UTC)

Done per your request. --GoRight (talk) 16:57, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Of course. I shall include it as you request. I am not done yet, and at this point I have mostly only gone through your talk and Abd's with still more even there to review. It takes a lot of time to sort through everything that pops onto your talk page, and I am impressed that you can keep track of so many simultaneous threads!

I have not (yet) looked into anything on SA's page at all and I would likely have missed that since I don't have his page watch listed and was unaware of a conversation there. If I miss anything that should be covered please feel free to point it out as you have done here. While I am trying to filter out the noise from the bit players I am happy to ensure that I include things that both you and Abd feel are significant. There is also the ANI thread to be included in some fashion, although that will likely overlap with material already available in other's sections. No doubt Enric is making use of it (I have not had time to review Enric's evidence in detail).

Hopefully there is some benefit to pulling everything into one place to facilitate the Aribter's review as the discussions tend to be spread out. Given my offer to you above, for parity I shall extend the same to Abd. The other's can fend for themselves in their own sections. OK?

Note that I may not be able to get to this until late tomorrow as I am out of town at the moment visiting with my family. --GoRight (talk) 02:14, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

I see on your evidence page that you feel I have misrepresented the comment of March 6. I would like to understand how you think I have done so, I provide a direct link to the actual edit. I shall do the same for the edit you provide above and adjust the descriptions to account for this new information. As I said above, I do not have SA's page watchlisted so I was unaware of that comment on his page until you just pointed it out now.

Once I make the requested change I likewise assume that I can count on you to adjust the tone of the statement in your evidence on this point to reflect the fact that I acted at your request to include this in my chronology and offered to include anything else you feel is relevant. I would also like a mention that I had, in fact, provided the direct diff that includes the quote you provide. Alternative just delete the parts that are no longer applicable. Your choice.

For the record I am not going through your or anyone else's contributions with a fine tooth comb (although perhaps as a cross check this may be a good idea if I have time). I started with the basics that I knew off the top of my head to get the framing in place. More recently I have been going through the talk page histories I am aware of to find relevant bits and including them in my table. Until I go through all such pages the chronology is necessarily incomplete as I clearly note in that section.

Please review my most recent set of additions to the table to confirm this if you wish. I was basically going through your talk page history and filtering through it to find discussions relevant to this case, and I decided on how to include the discussion links at that time as well. Note also that I have been basically doing so in chronological order. Using this method I would not have found the SA thread at all, which is why I offer to you that if you are aware of relevant threads that I miss, please point them out. How can I be more fair than that?

I first became aware of the March 6 comment when someone (I think it was MastCell) pointed it out in some discussion you were having on a user talk page that I don't frequent but happened upon that day. It is the place where you make your comment about "nailing your colors to the mast". I was not taking notes that day, so sorry I can't point you directly to it. When I needed to make the reference to it I simply found it on Abd's write-up as he likwise made note of it.

And for the record, I still need to include the comment you made somewhere where you explicitly tell me that the conditions of Hipocrite's lifting of the ban did not include "not editing" the CF page. I just haven't gotten to it, I am not leaving it out on purpose or anything. --GoRight (talk) 03:01, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Correction - Having reread this in the light of day I must have seen this thread previously because I distinctly remember the claims Lawful Good alignment portion of: "And speaking as someone who rather likes Thomas Hobbes and Leviathan, and claims Lawful Good alignment, I have to defend the Law, and that includes respect for those enforcing the law." I apologize for my confusion. --GoRight (talk) 16:35, 26 July 2009 (UTC)

Aha! I finally found it. Here is a permanent link to the full conversation where I came across all of the above, . Indeed, I even participated in it. I am afraid my memory is not what it used to be. --GoRight (talk) 06:41, 1 August 2009 (UTC)

What are you on about?

Re - in the interests of not filling up the workshop page with Abd-like volumes of natter, could you (here) please drop the snide sniping and actually be explicit about what on earth you are talking about? William M. Connolley (talk) 09:46, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

It is not a large point. You, Abd, and Rootology edit warred over the notices being given to Hipocrite regarding his being made (or attempting to make, if you prefer) a party to the ArbCom case. In the quote I provided (use your browser's search capability to find where I originally pulled it from) you referred to Rootology as "intervening unhelpfully where he wasn't wanted". I am merely pointing out the irony of this statement since you too could be viewed in that case as "intervening unhelpfully where wanted." There is no tangled web that has been woven here, I am merely pointing out the "Pot meet Kettle, Black" moment you were having w.r.t. Rootology. Clear enough now? --GoRight (talk) 13:33, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Actually, I never edit warred, in that incident or any in this case. I added Hipocrite to the list of parties, and notified him, that's all. That's certainly not edit warring! WMC edit warred. He removed my notice, then Rootology's restoration on clear argument that WMC was involved and shouldn't be removing notices. Rootology didn't respond by repeated reversion. The only one clearly edit warring there was WMC. Below, WMC appears to think that the only ones who can "interfere" are involved editors. That's backwards, but typical. --Abd (talk) 16:01, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

No, still don't understand. I was part of the case - clearly I had an interest. Rootology, for whatever reason, decided to interfere where he had no clear connection. So I don't see the symmetry that you appear to William M. Connolley (talk) 14:00, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

"So I don't see the symmetry that you appear to." - Understandable. It is not uncommon for someone's involvement in a situation to cloud their own objectivity. As an outside and uninvolved observer to that little edit war, you are correct that I do seem to see the situation differently than you do. No offense intended here, this is merely an observation about the reality of human nature. --GoRight (talk) 14:43, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

No, sorry, that isn't good enough. You raised this point, please don't duck out now. As you say, and I agree: I was involved. Rootology wasn't. You agree? William M. Connolley (talk) 16:31, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Involved in what? Please be specific. Involved in the edit war regarding the addition of Hipocrite as a party? I haven't followed the entire thread of events but I am certain that Abd, Rootology, and yourself were ALL involved in that, at least to the extent that Abd's initial postings could be construed as showing "involvement" in the edit war itself. There may have been others but it hardly seems important to check at this point.

Or do you mean included as active parties to the ArbCom case? Abd was, you were, Rootology wasn't, but this is irrelevant to my point ... at least from my outside and uninvolved perspective.

I'll be happy enough to continue to engage you in this if you want, but I have to ask to what effect? What are you hoping to achieve by continuing? --GoRight (talk) 17:36, 3 August 2009 (UTC) Updated to account for Abd's comment above. --GoRight (talk) 17:43, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I was involved in the issue of the involvement of H, of course. We all agree about that. That was a part of the setup of the arbcomm case. User:Rootology wasn't, until he chose to involve himself. As far as I can tell, was his sole contribution to the matter. Which is to say, he decided to butt in to this problem. He didn't have to; it was his choice. Whereas I was already involved William M. Connolley (talk) 17:50, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

The parallel I see here is that Abd was seeking to have H added to the case and was issuing notifications to that effect. When you started reverting the notifications, in my mind you were likewise involving yourself in something to which you were not really involved yet. You were a party in the case but that doesn't mean that you were involved in Abd's attempt to add H to the case. You were uninvolved in THAT right up to the point where you started reverting the notifications (i.e. you made a choice). Perhaps I have missed some context prior to that which is relevant, but from that perspective and that perspective alone I think you were butting in where you weren't wanted. YMMV on that point.

What I am confused about is why you would take an action such as that which will clearly be seen as attempting to provide "cover" for H bu keeping him out of the line of fire when you presumably felt that he was sufficiently in the wrong to warrant banning him in the first place. You ban him for his edit warring on the page and then provide "cover" for him to keep him out of the proceedings where his actions would receive scrutiny. There seems to be a contradiction in there someplace, it just just makes me say hmmm. --GoRight (talk) 19:34, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

3RR

You are aware that you just broke it on Fred Singer - right? (hint: a revert is a revert even if you do not mark it as rv - and it is also a revert if you rewrite what has just been reverted) --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 15:29, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

That's debatable. If the "rewritten" text answers -- or at least attempts to answer -- objections made by reverting editors, I've argued that it should not be considered a revert, but rather efficient negotiation process. Such edits don't match the detailed discussion, only wikilawyered analysis of the summary as being any edit that repeatedly restores or removes content. Perhaps this should be brought up the current RfAr. However, under current conditions, be careful and do not approach 3RR violation, even legitimately as you may have done here if I read between the lines of KDP's warning. I'll look at the incident. --Abd (talk) 16:05, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

(edit conflict with below) :::Okay, you hit 3RR or 4RR depending on the definition of revert. Don't do that. You are faced with tag team reversion, you know that. KDP is involved to his eyeballs, using bald reverts, which are objectionable at lower levels than what you did, especially with a BLP, you were initially removing unsourced negative allegations, in effect, so you weren't faced with a 3RR limit, so including that edit was really improper. I'm aware of your probable justifications for what you did. It can get you blocked, quickly. Tag team reversion isn't fair, but is much more difficult to address than single-editor reversion. You had some support here. Be patient. You could accomplish what was legitimate about what you were doing by being a little more patient, and not hitting the 3RR line. --Abd (talk) 16:26, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

By the way that they will be counting I believe that I have hit, but NOT EXCEEDED, 3RR. If they point me to a fourth revert within a relevant 24 hour period I will be more than willing to correct my unintentional oversight. I have no need to wikilawyer on the meaning of a revert.

Given that we have been unable to reach a conensus either way on the talk page I suggest that we seek a wider audience of opinion via an RfC. Agreed? --GoRight (talk) 16:48, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

You went above 3RR (btw. weren't you promising to only do 1RR at some point?) - here are the 4 reverts: #1 clearly marked as revert, #2 partial revert to a scibaby edit (rewritten somewhat), #3 revert and marked as such and finally #4 revert marked as such. That comes to 4 reverts within ~22 hours by my calculations. (nb. you had another edit - but that wasn't a revert - but introduction of text that was reverted by others) --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 18:52, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I think it a stretch to consider #1 as being related to the other three. Regardless, given that Raul has chosen to escalate things to the 3RR noticeboard I probably shouldn't discuss it further here. On the WP:1RR pledge you mention, yes I did make that and to a very large extent I believe that I have adhered to it with some exceptions, this being one. I have also made many WP:0RR attempts at influencing page content since then as well. It was just a pledge, though. We are all human. In any event I acknowledge your reminder and thank you for it. --GoRight (talk) 19:07, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Please read WP:3RR. It matters not whether the reverts are related or not (nor whether they where "bald" (as Abd puts it)). As you can see, you reverted a total of 4 times - and that is what matters to that particular rule. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 19:20, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

This is different than I recall it having been interpreted some time ago, but if this is now the norm then I will be more than happy to adopt it. This interpretation seems much more clear cut than the previous. And I will even allow that I may have had a misunderstanding of the intent of the policy even back then. There is no point for me to actively exceed 3RR, obviously, as I know I will be summarily blocked. This is one of the truly objective rules we have around here.

Just so we are in agreement on what the rule actually states, my revised understanding is that consecutive edits are still considered as one and revert is interpreted as the undoing of any action by any editor (other than yourself, obviously) any where on the page WITHOUT regards to the content involved. Is that also you understanding? --GoRight (talk) 21:02, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that seems very close to my understanding of it. There are a few exceptions: reverting vandalism (blatant (things like "hehe Julies a c*nt")), reversion of sockpuppets and finally reversions of BLP violations. (the last one is almost never accepted (from my (limited) experience) as an excuse, unless the BLP vio is extreme - although i have seen people getting a block lifted for it). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 22:40, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. The exceptions you mention do seem to be recognized as such but in general would would not try to rely upon them except in, as you say, obvious and extreme cases. Use at your own peril, as it were. And for the record I honestly wasn't trying to wikilawyer anything here, it was an honest misunderstanding of how the rules are being applied. I don't even want to push the line here as a general rule. I have found it is much easily for all involved that way. --GoRight (talk) 16:28, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

Please don't give wrong advice. "A revert is any action, including administrative actions, that reverses the actions of other editors, in whole or in part" - from WP:3RR. This may not be how you think it should be, but it is how it is. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 16:12, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Please don't wikilawyer. There is a more detailed discussion of revert, I'll find a link to it, that makes it quite clear what's involved, as to the intention. "Reversing actions" in the above phrase mostly involves removal of editorial work, negation, not new work that makes a contribution more solid by adding additional sources and that thus restores something that may have been removed because of being unsourced or inadequately sourced. You've been using this kind of argument for a long time to keep content out of the project, it's not going to fly any more, I predict. Your behavior sucks other editors into violating 3RR, and it's quite visible to those who look. In other words, if I add an unsourced claim to an article, it's easily reverted as not being sourced. If I replace it with a non-trivial source, that's not a revert, rather it is a satisfaction of the objection. Claiming that such is a "reversal," presumably in part, of a removal is preposterous, as to intention, and is dependence on accidental meanings of the language used in the policy, thus abundantly qualifies as wikilawyering.

There are a number of aspects of the 3RR rules that are difficult to express, and the result is that very different situations can be considered edit warring, while others which are clearly edit warring are passed over. It needs work. But the purpose of the prohibition of edit warring is very clear, and your warning and comment above completely neglect the purpose in favor of a technical interpretation that you use to justify highly objectionable behavior, which is exclusion of balancing content, reliably sourced. --Abd (talk) 16:26, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

• Oh dear. Still, I assume GR has been around long enough to know not to follow your advice William M. Connolley (talk) 16:30, 3 August 2009 (UTC)
• There is a discussion of reverts from a technical perspective at - surprise - WP:REVERT. But WP:3RR has run by a more inclusive definition ever since I first saw it - and that would have been around 2003 or 2004. And if you make any statements about me, you might want to back them up with actual data. WP:3RR is useless for "keeping content of Misplaced Pages" in even the medium term. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 17:35, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

I am fully aware of my edits at Fred Singer. I do not believe that I have violated WP:3RR. Are you asserting that I have? If so please point me to the relevant edits so that I can correct the oversight forthwith. --GoRight (talk) 16:40, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Ah well, looks like you'll get your chance to find out William M. Connolley (talk) 17:45, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

No stone left unturned. --GoRight (talk) 17:47, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) I have started a thread on your violation of the 3rr and latest instance of meatpuppetry on behalf of Scibaby here. Raul654 (talk) 17:48, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Pursuant to BlackKite's suggestion in the ANI/3RR thread, I have opened a sockpuppet investigation into your meatpuppetry on behalf of Scibaby. Raul654 (talk) 22:18, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

AN3 thread

I have left a proposal there for getting the article unprotected. Please respond if you have a moment. rʨanaɢ /_contribs 20:33, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Done. It shall be quite safe, from me at least, to unprotect the page. I shall next be pursuing an RfC on the talk page which should be uncontroversial in this regards. --GoRight (talk) 20:48, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Meatpuppet "investigation"

 Clerk note: – Raul654 has laid out evidence at Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet investigations/Scibaby that he claims shows you acting as a meatpuppet for the banned user Scibaby. I believe it is in your best interest to attend to that as quickly as possible. NW (Talk) 22:23, 3 August 2009 (UTC)

Talkback

Fabrictramp | talk to me 19:36, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. --GoRight (talk) 19:47, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

Satellite temperature measurements

I would welcome your input to the discussion related to the new public domain image of RSS and UAH global temperature anomaly data here: Satellite Temperature Measurements -- Update the Graphic. Thank you. SunSw0rd (talk) 19:52, 5 August 2009 (UTC)

No chit-chat

I don't know if you've noticed, but we're not on good terms. If you feel like correcting that, by all means do. Until then, please don't leave chit-chat on my talk page William M. Connolley (talk) 17:19, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

"we're not on good terms." - Under the circumstances I can understand why you might feel that way. Please recognize that my actions are not motivated by personal animosity, by rather by the underlying principles involved which are bigger and more important than either of us individually. But per your request I shall avoid your talk page except for official business or other matters of import then. You are still welcome here, despite our differences of opinion regarding policy. --GoRight (talk) 17:33, 8 August 2009 (UTC)

Glad to see someone stepping up to the adult plate. Does it bother you, having to eat at the kids table so often? (Sorry, sometimes the only response I can muster to some editorial attitudes is bemusement.) --John G. Miles (talk) 05:41, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

promotion of bad-quality sources

About restoring Abd's comment in Talk:Cold fusion. Those sources have been examined before in the talk page and they were found to be of very low quality. That editor was banned, (and his ban has been restored just less than an hour ago, so you probably didn't notice ). Anyways, if you restore edits from a banned user you are taking responsability for them (per WP:BAN, which you are already familiar with), so I warn you for making advocacy via promotion of bad sources that happen to be positive towards the topic. --Enric Naval (talk) 16:26, 9 August 2009 (UTC)

I would never promote the use of "bad-quality sources". Ever. I have now read the talk page discussions and I hereby disagree with your conclusion. I hope this clears the matter up. As for taking responsibility, I never make an edit to Misplaced Pages for which I am NOT prepared to accept full responsibility. To do so would be foolish. Regarding your warning, I shall give it all DUE consideration. Thanks for your concern. --GoRight (talk) 17:36, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

This is restoring again the same low-quality sources without providing any explanation of why they are good, using the same text that the banned editor used. Open a new discussion for those sources, providing your own reasons. Otherwise it looks like you are doing again WP:POINTs about banned editors

and this is a bad faith accusation. WP:MEDRS is the only RS guideline that we have for scientific-related sources, and it's frequently used as a reference. --Enric Naval (talk) 18:52, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

I requested a review here. I suggest discussing the topic there. --Enric Naval (talk) 19:09, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

You do not WP:OWN the Cold Fusion Talk page. I'll thank you to leave my personal edits there alone. There is no need for me to rewrite anything when the material I provided is already perfectly clear. --GoRight (talk) 19:10, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Re: Please clarify

In reply to User_talk:Hersfold#Please_clarify_your_meaning:

Both of you. You'd both made attacking/provocative comments in that particular discussion, and my comment was intended to tell both of you to remain civil. Sorry for the delay in getting back to you on this, but I've been out of the country for most of the past week and a half. Hersfold 20:16, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

"I've been out of the country for most of the past week and a half." - NP. I seem to recall hearing that you were out. Where was that again?  :) Welcome back. Hope you had a good trip. --GoRight (talk) 20:25, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Bermuda and Hershey, PA. The trip went quite well, thanks. :-)

In response to your question about the evidence page, it would probably be better to just move the table to a subpage and link to it there - I don't think that a collapsed table is necessarily out-of-bounds, but anything on the /Evidence page still counts toward your diff/word limit, which is probably pretty close if not over (I haven't checked lately). Hope this helps. Hersfold 20:35, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

OK. Are you talking about a subpage in my user space or a subpage of the Evidence page itself like Evidence/Goright or something? My concern is that I want the final material to be archived as part of the formal case materials, assuming that is possible/appropriate. --GoRight (talk) 20:40, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

minor edit on timeline page

I added information to "while it is protected" making:

"WMC's revert of the Cold Fusion page while it is protected, stating "Lets wind everyone up"

I also changed "me" "my" to third person "GoRight"

Hope you don't mind. Ikip (talk) 20:06, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I'll check what you have done but if anyone finds an inaccuracy I have no objective to having it cleaned up. It is meant to be a neutral chronology for easier reference. Thanks for pointing it out. --GoRight (talk) 20:13, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

I do prefer a single table, however, so I will be re-combining things accordingly. I will adjust the table itself to have month aligned headings similar to what you have done. Corrections of errors is fine. If you want something added or reformatted please ask first so that I can maintain some degree of consistency of the content. Thanks. --GoRight (talk) 21:54, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

you can revert it as you see fit. Thought I would help :) now if abd will simply agree to let me edit what he says. Ikip (talk) 22:38, 12 August 2009 (UTC)

Ikip (talk) 03:51, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

"Wall of Text" technique on Talk pages

Just a word of warning: I have seen other editors face consequences for using the same "wall of text" technique you are using on the Talk:Heaven and Earth (book) page to deluge the opposing editors. It's not subtle, and it's not welcome. Check the AN/I and other boards for references to this. Please try, in future, to make your points succinctly and concisely. It's a form of abuse when you add numerous wordy paragraphs when a few words would suffice. ► RATEL ◄ 23:46, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

You are confusing "Wall of Text" with extensive back and forth dialogue. None of my individual posts constitute a "Wall of Text" which is what the term is used for. I am perfectly within my right to examine in detail of every point being asserted on the main article, especially when it has been peppered with WP:OR. It shall take no small amount of discussion to cleanup the mess that is the current article, due in large part to your personal efforts. I resist your efforts to change the subject there.

"It's a form of abuse when you add numerous wordy paragraphs when a few words would suffice." - This is a true statement. Nothing in it applies to my posts. --GoRight (talk) 00:36, 14 August 2009 (UTC)

Be careful. Being right can be no protection at all. I have a suggestion: if someone complains about something you do, don't just answer it to your own satisfaction. Rather, take the lead and initiate dispute resolution process. Seek consensus. Ask for very specific evidence, there were no specific edits referenced, and "check the AN/I and other boards" is kind of like listing as a reference, the Enyclopedia Brittanica, with no volume or page number or other clue.

It's a mistake I made with Enric Naval, when he came up with silly complaint after silly complaint, that I didn't take the initiative and confront it, with true dispute resolution. "Exactly what is the problem here?" And "If we can't agree on this, can you suggest a mediator? If not, here is my suggestion...." etc. --Abd (talk) 03:43, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Workshop page

Your proposed remedy may be redundant with FloNight's Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abd-William M. Connolley/Workshop#Good faith and disruption. ☺Coppertwig (talk) 16:54, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Re: this comment

Re:

While I appreciate the initial sentiment, the latter portion of this comment is highly inappropriate. Please remove it at once (and by remove, I mean remove, not cross out). Hersfold 23:52, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Since you haven't edited since, I'll spare the block, but please contact me when you get this message. Hersfold 00:46, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I would have abstained from blocking you for trolling, but with your response here I've decided I was assuming too much good faith. It is one thing for Abd to make allegations of cabalism and conspiracy when he is able to provide some evidence to that effect. It is quite another for you to make similar accusations in a purely vindictive nature against those who ask for assistance dealing with your trolling within the case without any sort of basis at all. You are hereby blocked for 48 hours, and may appeal through the normal means. I ask any administrator reviewing the block to contact me or a member of the Arbitration Committee prior to unblocking, and that no admin who has participated in the Abd/WMC case review the block. Hersfold 03:30, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

"dealing with your trolling within the case" - Perhaps I assumed too much good faith on your part given this phrasing. Leaving that aside, (a) where did I claim anything to do with a cabal (note that "shadows" does NOT imply a cabal, you don't have to be part of a cabal to have things to hide or wish to avoid scrutiny), and (b) when did claiming someone was part of a cabal become a blocking offense (even on the Arbitration pages)?

What sort of acknowledgment or commitment would you be looking for in exchange for lifting this block (assuming that you would be willing to do so)? --GoRight (talk) 04:01, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Re: . Do you consider this reference to off-wiki commentary to be acceptable material for the the case pages given their obvious mischaracterizations and assumptions of bad faith? --GoRight (talk) 06:56, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I'm starting to think that restoring Abd's comment in Talk:Cold fusion was also done just to see how I would react, and not with intentions of improving the article. I was not amused at how you failed to even try to make your own argumentations for the sources. --Enric Naval (talk) 07:35, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

GoRight, the difference between your comments and Raul's is that Raul provided actual evidence to support his accusations. I haven't read the link because I'm at work, and yes, it's off-wiki, but his comment is not attacking nor otherwise disruptive. I see no significant problem with it.

To answer your first question, I'm not entirely sure. I wouldn't have blocked you in the first place if you hadn't reposted and continued the stuff I removed from the case pages onto my talk page. It's remarkable that you find it acceptable to, in the same breath, state that you would have complied with my request and then continue your trolling directly to my face. If you wish to be unblocked early, I'd first like a commitment to stop making unfounded accusations against parties opposing you in the Arbitration case (or anyone, for that matter), and secondly an agreement that if you break said commitment you may be blocked for the remainder of the case, or otherwise barred from further participation in it. We'll see how it goes from there, noting that further hypocrisy will not help your case. Hersfold non-admin 13:22, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Regardless of whether you unblock me or not, I shall issue an unconditional apology for making an unnecessarily pointy comment and admit that it was unhelpful.

Regarding a potential unblock, I shall agree to stop making accusations in this arbitration case without providing supporting links and admit that I should not have done so in the first place. If I violate this commitment I agree that I can and should be blocked for a reasonable period of time (but for the remainder the of the case seems excessive). Perhaps simply reset the clock on this block with no opportunity for early parole? --GoRight (talk) 16:20, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

GoRight, you should know by now that you will be held to a higher standard, and you will never get away with saying the kinds of things that some users say routinely. Retract the statement, take the high ground, and let arbcom handle the problem. ATren (talk) 14:28, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct. Good advice all around. --GoRight (talk) 16:18, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

ATren, could I ask what exactly your comment is supposed to mean? Hersfold non-admin 19:13, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

Hersfold, it means (a) GoRight should avoid such comments, and (b) some users routinely get away with worse. I view (b) as an ongoing problem here, but that doesn't mean I condone GoRight's tone. Rather, I hope we can get to a point where the sanctions for such behavior are more evenly applied to all editors regardless of their status or edit count. ATren (talk) 20:25, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

GoRight, if you wish to be unblocked, please go ahead and put up an {{unblock}} template. I'm at work and not able to log into my main account just now, but another admin can review your request. Hersfold non-admin 19:19, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

I can wait until you are available. Alternatively, do you accept my offer and if you were able at this time would you provide the unblock I am requesting? If so I will then put up an unblock request so indicating. --GoRight (talk) 19:32, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

GoRight, the original comment was unnecessarily provocative. I read Hersfold's comment as a willingness to allow unblock, he just can't do it now, so an unblock template would simply attract another admin to do it.

Hersfold, for the future, allow me to suggest that if you see an inappropriate comment in an RfAr, you remove it directly, rather than requiring an editor to remove their own comment. The latter course can cause unnecessary dispute. You have the authority to block if an editor resists the removal, i.e., edit wars with you, or for repeated offenses, if an editor continues to put up offensive comments (and you do have discretion to block in any case, I'm talking about wisdom, not a limit to authority). 48 hours is a bit long, but that's a small detail. My view of clerk responsibilities is similar to that of a bailiff in a court proceeding. The bailiff will order a disruptive party or member of the audience to cease disruption. If there is no compliance, the bailiff will remove the participant from the room, but the bailiff does not imprison someone unless more of an offense was involved than mere disruption. Only a judge can order prison for conduct in a courtroom, absent the kind of crime that would allow an officer, under normal discretion, to imprison pending hearing.

Simple removal of the offensive comment is far more efficient. You see the comment, you edit it to remove the whole thing or the harmful part, you are practically done. You may notify the editor, but you are not required to, it's a courtesy to give an explanation, and discussion can proceed on the editor's talk page, without any urgency. Blocking GoRight for inaction, which is what you did, is hardly ever justified. Not editing is never an offense! Your removal of the comment was quite proper, but I consider the block unnecessary. But big deal! GoRight is an experienced editor, being blocked is a transient problem. It's a critical time in the case, though, arbitrators are now working on the proposed decision page, and the block could possibly do some harm. I urge another admin to unblock, or Hersfold, if Hersfold sees this first and has admin account access. --Abd (talk) 20:05, 18 August 2009 (UTC)

In Hersfold's defense, Abd, I think you have a misconception of the order of events. I made the offending comment, Hersfold asked me to remove it, when it was apparent that I was not editing he removed it for me and indicated that I had narrowly avoided a block. It was not until I responded to him on his talk page (as he requested I do) and was unrepentant about having made the comment that he decided to block me. He didn't block me for inaction since he knew I wasn't around. He blocked me for making a similar point on his talk page. --GoRight (talk) 01:04, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

{{]}}

Your request to be unblocked has been granted for the following reason(s): Per Hersfold's comment Request handled by: Daniel Case (talk) 02:38, 19 August 2009 (UTC) Unblocking administrator: Please check for active autoblocks on this user after accepting the unblock request.

Thanks, Daniel. I appreciate it. It seems that autoblock still has me bottled up though. Could you please take a look if you are not doing so already? --GoRight (talk) 03:01, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Can someone please ping Daniel on his talk page about unblocking my IP as well? Autoblock still has it locked out. Thanks. --GoRight (talk) 04:29, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

{{Daniel has kindly unblocked my account but there is an autoblock on the IP(s) provided by my hotel. Can someone kindly unblock those as well?}}

I found one autoblock on you, and took care of it. If that doesn't work, please follow the instructions carefully to request an unblock; it can be hard to locate autoblocks without your help. Mangojuice 04:44, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

That was the one, thanks so much! --GoRight (talk) 04:51, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

In response to "Alternatively, do you accept my offer...", we'll see. Should I find there is need to block you again during this case, which I very very very much hope there is not, you will be blocked for a duration that I deem appropriate. 48 hours again, as you suggest, is a possibility, however depending on the circumstances it may be longer. I do not have the authority to deny you right of appeal, but I would as before require that anyone reviewing the block contact me, another clerk, or an Arbitrator first. However, let's try to make these details a moot point, shall we? Hersfold 05:14, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

It is not my intent to wikilawyer my way into being disruptive. I have no problem with you picking a "reasonable duration" to fit the circumstances, that exactly what I meant by "reasonable". I merely objected to an automatic statement of "for the duration" which clearly did NOT take any of the circumstances into account. I don't intend to give you a reason to need to block me again, but I am also aware that you may be likely to be hyper-aware and/or hyper-critical of even the smallest things at this point. This is natural and not a reflection on you personally, but something that I wish to proactively guard against for what I hope are understandable reasons.

If you disagree with the unblock then re-assert it and let me wait out the remainder of my original time. The unblock was at least partially made on the assumption that you had agreed so if you did not then the unblock was made under false pretenses (through no fault of Daniel Case or Mangojuice in this instance). It's up to you. --GoRight (talk) 05:36, 19 August 2009 (UTC)

Re: Raul's comments

I've replied on my talk page. Hersfold 04:47, 20 August 2009 (UTC)

And have again, although you might want to get comfortable before you start reading, cuz its length is worthy of Abd's finest. ;-) Hersfold 00:59, 21 August 2009 (UTC)

Hersfold has given you a cookie! Cookies promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a cookie, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Happy munching!

Spread the goodness of cookies by adding {{subst:Cookie}} to someone's talk page with a friendly message, or eat this cookie on the giver's talk page with {{subst:munch}}!

Which page?

which page(s) does this refer to? . Perhaps you want to edit your post to clarify? thx SPLETTE :] 02:49, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Edit size

I'm impressed by the amount of analysis that you were able to generate. Do you have an automated tool for tallying the contributions of editors to talk pages?

In any event, there seems to be a little hiccup in your spreadsheet. The third name on your list (Cardamon, with 20414 characters) didn't ring a bell for me. I can only find three edits by him to the page, running no more than 1100 characters. Could you see if you can find out what went wrong there? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:21, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

You are correct. The error was with my manual steps. I also made an error on Paul August. These have been corrected. The analysis was manual but aided by notepad++ which lets you use regular expressions to do some of the editing to make things easily importable into Excel, and Excel to do the calculations. This was all driven from a snapshot of the history page. I could automated it but I don't really see the need. I don't intend to do it again.

If you want a copy of the spreadsheet I created to see how I computed things send me an email using the wikipedia email service and I will send it to you. --GoRight (talk) 03:40, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

The process could easily be automated. It would probably take about a dozen lines of Python code, using the mwclient module. With another dozen, you could get the output automatically formatted in wiki/HTML markup. Writing and testing it would probably take just as long as it took GoRight to do things manually, at least for me since my coding skills are rather limited. The advantage would be resuability, I guess. MastCell  03:45, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Agreed, although I am a UNIX geek from way back so I would tend to pipe together a bunch of sed scripts and gawk filters. This is how I computed the Scibaby rangeblock table from Raul's block log. Look in the hidden comment on my evidence page in my user space to see the gory 1 line monstrosity that does the actual work (obvious aesthetics were NOT a consideration there). I have been trying to learn perl but don't have sufficient need to keep up to speed with it's syntax. Python I have never tried but I know people who like it. For one shot things like this regular expressions in notepad++ (or even vi) and some copy/paste in excel gets the job done pretty quickly. --GoRight (talk) 03:54, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

For an amateur and dabbler like myself, perl is pretty useless. You have to use it hands-on, a lot, to get proficient, because it's so non-intuitive. I like Python, because even if you don't know what you're doing, and even if you don't really know the syntax or language features, you can play around with the interpreter for 10 minutes or so, and the language is intuitive enough that you'll get it to work for you. I don't do any automated editing, but with the mwclient module you can mine data here very effectively. I have a few utilities that I use from time to time - the most useful one takes an editor's name and a page name, and spits out all of that editor's contributions to that particular page. I use it because - not to put too fine a point on it, in light of recent events - I've been here so long that I often can't remember if I edited a page once or twice, a year ago. So before I start blocking people or protecting it, I can run my name through the script to see how many, and what sort, of edits I've made in the past to that page. MastCell  04:11, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

'The advantage would be resuability' You mean for Abd's next ArbCom case? :-) True. I know Python but I feel I have already wasted enough time on this case (just reading...) SPLETTE :] 04:15, 22 August 2009 (UTC):

(Edit Conflict) Back in the days before Perl and Python I was a serious AWK user. I was proficient enough that I could actually type in non-trivial in-line programs for one off's just like this. if I made some minor error I just used the command-line history to call it back up and fix it. I could probably use gawk to do this task pretty easily. It has everything you need to do sed-like RE editing of a line and it also has hash tables for the accumulation of the edit counts. Dump the raw results to stdout, pipe through sort, pipe through a second AWK program to format the results into wiki-syntax. Easy peasy except for gathering the raw table data. I assume you have the script actually grabbing the HTML output directly which I would still be doing manually.  :( --GoRight (talk) 04:22, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Ha! I've done some AWK in my past too. It was a great little tool for those cases which were a little more complicated than simple line editing. ATren (talk) 05:24, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Hey, check this out!

I love AWK. You can suck up the history of a given page (just the lines with the diffs), save it to a file named history.txt, and then utter this magic incantation and out pops a sortable wiki table! If I want the original table to be in sorted order I'd have to add a sort, but with one click you get what you want anyway.

$ cat history.txt | gawk '{ gsub( /*, * * /, "" ); gsub( / * */, "|" ); gsub( /bytes.*$/, "" ); gsub( /,/, "" ); split( $0, f, "|" ); if ( NR > 1 ) { t] += p-f; c] += 1; } p = f; p = f; } END { t] += p; c] += 1; printf( "{{collapsetop|As of }}\n{| class=\"wikitable sortable\" border=\"1\"\n|+Net Edit Sizes (Bytes)\n|-\n! Name !! Net Edit Size !! Edit Count !! Average Net Edit Size !! Average Words\n" ); for ( id in t ) { printf( "|-\n| %s || align=\"right\" | %d || align=\"right\" | %d || align=\"right\" | %d || align=\"right\" | %d\n", id, t, c, t / c, (t / c) / 9 ); } printf( "|}\n{{collapsebottom}}\n" ) }' > table.txt

Edit statistics

One factor that was probably overlooked: I did a lot of collapse, with short summaries, or sometimes even nothing but the title, at the top. To avoid "overwhelming" the discussions. Fat lot of good it did..... But, quite simply, I didn't have time to boil that stuff down. What was really needed was a more active ArbComm. I'd have preferred to have put up my initial evidence, made some assertions as to proposals, then be questioned. As it was, ArbComm turned into this big silent thing, and I didn't know what they needed to know. When bainer made the first proposals as drafting arb, it was pretty good, so I started focusing on policy stuff, it's an opportunity. But when FloNight popped in, moving in the opposite direction, and clearly not familiar with the case, I suffered an old reaction, and I was already on the edge in my personal life. Still am. --Abd (talk) 04:08, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes, you are correct about the limitations of this particular version of a tool. Resolving the issue you raise and implementing a more accurate word count requires the collection and parsing of the actual edits ... which means a lot more work than this simple little edit tool. The advantage I see to this is that it treats everyone equally. And while you make more edits overall than, say Thatcher, the average size of your edits is not that far off from his. It also illustrates that you are not the worst offender in terms of average edit size either. I suspect that in and of itself is a surprising result for most people who are currently complaining about the size of your edits.

If I somehow find the time I may produce a better tool to address these issues but that will have to wait for a time frame beyond what this ArbCom case will last.  :( --GoRight (talk) 04:43, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Congratulations

Well, you confronted Raul654 at AN. It's about time. My suggestion. Stop the small-time stuff, there is absolutely no way to resolve that through AN, and you complicated it by raising a content issue. Stick with use of tools while involved, perhaps add conduct unbecoming of an administrator, it's an open scandal. Go for an RfC. Find others who have tried to resolve dispute over this with Raul and ask them to certify the RfC. Get that agreement in advance. Make it focused and clear, pare it down; RfC/JzG 3 might be a good example. Don't worry about !vote balance in the RfC, RfC is not a decision-making process, it's a dispute resolution process, to gather comment and seek consensus. There is a lot of discontent about the Scibaby mess, and Raul provided you with plenty of material during the current RfAr. I specifically set up an RfC-ready situation with Raul before about use of tools while involved, as I recall, but never followed up. I may not be able to help with such a process, though, I could still be blocked, or banned, and I'll likely be subject to a mentor's approval for anything like this.

One of the difficulties with the RfAr is that it wasn't preceded by an RfC; I skipped that because it was so obvious that there was a situation needing ArbComm, I knew ArbComm would accept it. But had there been an RfC first, the cabal might have responded differently, and more support would have been gathered. We were a week into the RfAr or so, and nobody had commented but you, me, Coppertwig, and a pile of cabal editors. I was not expecting that, and I still don't know why it happened. Where were all the neutral editors? There are still only a few, other than arbitrators.

Boy was that AN report a great example for the cabal issue, though. The usual list of suspects revert warring at Lawrence Solomon and then at AN. Nice to see so many new names popping up to confirm your position, eh? I'm telling you, there is a cabal, but the only cabal that has serious power when discussions open up is the administrative cabal, and it's not a terribly harmful one, in my opinion. Do you know, by the way, what Jimbo called the group of administrators at first?

That's right. The Cabal. --Abd (talk) 04:08, 28 August 2009 (UTC)

Current Stats for the Evidence and Workshop Pages

Interestingly, the average size of Thatcher's posts is close to that of Abd's, but obviously Abd makes more of them.

Well, that is 19,000 bytes of my life that I wish I'd spent differently. MastCell  04:18, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

I plan to update my script to include "team" statistics as well, but not tonight. I am supposed to be traveling home tomorrow but Hurricane Bill may lock me down for another day.

Dang global warming!  :)

Prior to 20 April 2007 the article sizes were not included in the history. I have added a "STARTOFDATA" entry to account for all of the previous edits up to that starting point. Obviously this is NOT a real editor.

Enric's stats are interesting, I'll have to look into this. Is this all censoring others or was he archiving stuff, or what? I won't rule out an anomaly/bug in my script yet either, but it seems to have been fairly reliable thus far. Take these with a grain of salt until I verify the results which might take a day or two. --GoRight (talk) 04:34, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

wikichecker may also help. Q Science (talk) 05:06, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Life beyond Misplaced Pages

I've got two proposals to finish by midnight, and I still haven't packed for my trip tomorrow morning. (In other words I really do have a headache.) Some other time, ok? Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 02:57, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Sure, no problem. Have a safe trip. --GoRight (talk) 03:06, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Question, really clarification

Hi GoRight, I would appreciate it if you could clarify what you mean when you say you want to revert banned users posts back. Do you mean in articles, talk or both? There is a big difference to me about what should be done with banned editors postings. If you have time and of course if you feel like answering I'd appreciate it. Thanks in advance, --CrohnieGal 18:11, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

"you want to revert banned users posts back" - Despite what Raul654 would have you believe I am not, nor have I ever been, nor do I intend to be on some rampage of wanton reversion of banned editor's posts. So that particular description of what I want is biased out of the gate (I am not accusing you of being biased personally, merely pointing out the reality of the statement itself).

Raul654 can point you to maybe 4-6 places where I happened to cross paths with Scibaby. This is out of hundreds of sock puppets and (presumably) thousands of posts by Scibaby. Yet Raul654 wants this to be called meat puppetry on behalf of a banned user and have me banned for it. This despite it being widely known that I am a self-professed global warming skeptic and that I push back against what I perceive as bias against such skeptics and their views.

I am not so much pro-reinstatment of banned editor's posts as I am anti-banning of other users that happen to hold similar views or who may reinstate something from a banned editor which is otherwise within policy. This is a direct implication of the commonly held perspective that the bans are on the editors and NOT the content. If we allow content similarity to be used to ban someone as a meat puppet for some banned user with a similar POV then you are, in effect, banning a content POV not merely the problem user. I believe that this is wrong and that it harms the encyclopedia.

I believe that this should be applied to articles and/or talk pages since the two are mirror images of one another (i.e. talk pages are supposed to be focused on content in the associated article). So if a banned editor points out some source on the talk page that is within policy and is appropriate content for the article in question, why should people be barred from ever discussing it? They shouldn't because the ban is on the editor and not the content. So if they aren't barred from discussing it, why make people jump through silly hoops to try and reword something that was most likely worded perfectly fine to begin with? I argue that it shouldn't matter as long as it was NOT the content that was banned.

Let me give you a hypothetical. Scibaby is known for trying to introduce material related to bovine flatulence, i.e. the methane produced due to cattle farming and its effects on global warming. There are perfectly acceptable peer-reviewed materials on such things and Scibaby does tend to provide such references. Once discovered, Raul654 will come along and remove the article edit or comment page edit that Scibaby used to introduce that topic and specific reference.

Now, if some other editor (perhaps myself or someone else) comes along looking through the history of a page or comment page for whatever reason and they notice this removed edit of Scibaby's and they think, hmmm, cow flatulence, I wonder how much effect that really DOES have on global warming? So they follow the reference and read it and come to their own independent conclusion that this material should be in the article. What should happen?

Should they be barred from ever discussing it again and banned if they do? Or should they, as an editor in good standing, be allowed to discuss the content in question as if Scibaby never made the edit in the first place? If we truly believe that the ban is on Scibaby and not a discussion of bovine flatulence the answer has to be yes, they should be allowed to discuss it.

But why don't you just rephrase everything, isn't that good enough? I anticipate two problems with that, one major and one minor:

(1) While rephrasing would be a minor inconvenience, it is still an inconvenience and one related to something that is NOT supposedly banned at all, namely the content in question. So requiring people to reword things just seems inefficient and a waste of everyone's time.

(2) Much more serious, however, is that there is no reasonable way to define how much "different" something has to be before you can safely avoid the meat puppet charge. I know Raul654 and believe me it won't matter how you rephrase something or if you even go dig up alternate sources, if you try to discuss bovine flatulation and he thinks you are an AGW skeptic he will try to make you out to be a Scibaby meat puppet whether you actually are one or not.

The first is merely annoying for no good purpose, IMHO. It doesn't matter if you rephrase things or not, you are talking about the same content. The second can get people banned merely because they happened to agree that bovine flatulation, or some aspect thereof, should be mentioned somewhere even though they don't know Scibaby, they are not talking directions from Scibaby, or even if they don't always agree with Scibaby.

The best safeguard against this type of abuse, IMHO, is simply to state that the mere act of reinstating something from a banned user is not, itself, a sanctionable offense. Making that statement is NOT promoting the practice, BTW, it is merely safeguarding the right of editors to introduce content they believe is beneficial to the encyclopedia regardless of where they became aware of that content. It merely prevents one user from being punished because of another user's bad behavior. What could be more fair than that?

You think I am being over the top here? Consider this discussion. Abd asserts that this is the only time he has ever restored a Scibaby edit. I have no reason to not believe that, especially since Raul654 has not contradicted it. Yet Raul654 sought to have Abd formally sanctioned at ArbCom for that edit. I ultimately restored the edit myself here. Should I be banned for that? I don't think so.

Does that clear things up for you? --GoRight (talk) 21:48, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

GoRight, 2 things... The first is that i think you overlooked the gist of the question, there is a difference between talk-space and article-space, reinstating comments in article space is tough to judge (i agree btw), but when we are talking about talk-space the equation changes quite distinctly. Imho in article space there arguably can be reasons to reinstate edits from banned users, but when talking about talk-space there (so far) hasn't been any rationale given that makes it reasonable. If a user is banned, then it is because the community has silenced that voice. (sounds harsh - but its reality), its not "we sometimes want to get input from that user".

The second is on the flatulence thing.. I have to ask: Haven't you found out yet why this is reverted? A hint: i'd revert such edits no matter if they are from scibaby or not) - first of all because flatulence (specific) is only a small fraction of the carbon footprint of bovine raising, even if we only consider the bovine itself, most of it actually is burps (not flatulence). The second reason is the undue weight - bovine emissions (methane) come to much the same as growing rice. The third reason is that the actual sources that are used do not come to this conclusion, they are calculating the total carbon footprint, which means an accumulation of growing foodstuff (tractors, land use, harvesters,...), the bovine impact itself, and the slaughter and "to market" emissions. (and then of course there is the major reason: Methane levels are stable (not rising) - ie. there is a balance in the methane cycle). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:29, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

"i think you overlooked the gist of the question, there is a difference between talk-space and article-space" - I directly and succinctly responded to that point here "I believe that this should be applied to articles and/or talk pages since the two are mirror images of one another (i.e. talk pages are supposed to be focused on content in the associated article)." Honorable people can disagree on that, obviously, but my hypothetical illustrates that all talk page comments are not necessarily opinions. They frequently contain relevant facts and so a blanket statement that no talk page comments can be restored is inappropriate from my perspective. If you think I am taking an unreasonably hard line on that point, you can blame Raul654 and his tendency to "exaggerate" his points. As a result I prefer a stance that errs on the side of the innocent bystanders.

As for the Bovine Flatulence example, it was merely meant as a hypothetical to illustrate the point using a well known "tell" of Scibaby. I'm not arguing the merits of that at all, although I concede it might have looked like I was. Your summary may very well be correct, it likely is at some reasonable level, and I simply have not researched the topic sufficiently to render an actual opinion on the merits either way. I apologize on any confusion on that point. --GoRight (talk) 17:29, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Thats the whole trouble about most of scibaby's edits - they look correct - until you dig a little deeper, which is i guess also the reason that tempers flare about this particular sock. Personally i do not blame you for thinking that they are reasonable, but it really would be much better to raise it on talk and let others comment before attempting to reinstate. There are most likely other reasons that just "its scibaby" for the reversions (at least there has been in every case where i've removed the edits). --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 00:02, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks GoRight, I appreciate you taking the time so I understand your stance on things. I did understand correctly that you want to be able to revert any edit made by a banned editor whether on article or talk space. Now so you know my feelings about this, I can understand the reverting of an article edit. If it is an edit that is within policy I can see how a banned editor may make a useful article edit occasionally. But talk is different. Talk is for discussing the article and other than using a reliable source a banned editor posted there would be no reason to revert the banned editors whole edit since what they say is their 'own' opinions on things. If you take the RS and turn the discussion into your own opinions about it then I don't see how anyone could assume any problems with the post you make. I don't think it's asking too much for editor in good standing to post things in their own words instead of taking the lazier way out and just reverting the banned editors talk page post which also gives that banned editor a voice again even though the community said no. We have to abide by consensus and a banned editor has a consensus to go away and leave the project to others to take care of it. If they continue to ignore the community norms then you are helping them say 'see I can still do what I want, whenever I want'. There are a lot of editors also wasting time trying to make editors like Scibaby do the right thing, not post. I think it's really sad that this person’s life is so bad that the only thing they can do even though they are not welcomed is to post here. I know if the community told me I was not welcomed here anymore I would leave. I guess the main reason I don't think it's good to revert talk page posts of a banned editor is this, I want to hear from the editor posting, not someone else. Even if you agree with a banned editor your words and debates would be different, they would be your own. You for one have a very solid editing style. I don't think anyone would have trouble knowing your edits, by the way this is a compliment, you really write well. So I think we agree on reverting article edits occasionally, which should not be frequently, I think we disagree though about whether it’s acceptable to revert a banned users talk page posts. If I understand you correctly you think you should be able to and I think it needs to be reworded into the editor in good standings own words when wanting to use the information of the banned user. I really do believe that banned users harm the project and so reverting or giving any credence to them just undermines the banning reasons. I really believe in banned means you do not edit. Banned means banned which is undermined when an editor in good standing just blindly reverts. Well thanks for clarifying things for me. I appreciate it. I have been watching off and on the conversation at the banned policy page. RL though doesn’t allow me the time right now to actively help with consensus there. I kind of think that the policy is fine that what is going on with you and Raul are being handled by arbcom members, at least that is what it sounded like with CHL and Thatcher. Thanks again, --CrohnieGal 10:43, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

I understand your position and why you are in favor of it. Let us simply agree to disagree on this particular difference. As I said to KDP above, I simply prefer a stance that errs on the side of the innocent bystanders as a check against potential abuses of the policy.

"Thanks again" - You're most welcome. Even though we may have exchanged some heated comments here and there I bear you no ill will. I wish you all the best with your health issues. --GoRight (talk) 17:29, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi again, I'm curious, when or how would a talk page comment be more than just an opinion? I am not trying to trick you here but honestly I can't think of a time when a talk page comment wasn't someone's opinion wrapped around a source or two. Maybe there is a way I am not looking at things so I am open enough to listen if you can share. I've always considered talk pages opinions of what should be in an article. Oh and I hold no ill will towards you either. For the most part I understand where you are coming from. I do try to get a full picture on differences that are different from my own. I actually do learn a lot this way. Thanks for the good wishes for my health. My surgery got the final clearance today, so I go in this Fri. at 11 AM. I'm a wreck. Thanks again, --CrohnieGal 19:42, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, in many talk page comments which properly suggest changes to the article there are likely to be references to applicable sources, statements of the contents of those sources, perhaps some logical argumentation as to how those sources affect the content of the article, and so forth. I don't consider those elements to be opinion. I suppose "logical argumentation" might be considered a grey area in this respect.

To the extent that any valid talk page comment is supporting a change to the article in question (because the author of that comment thinks the change should be made), you are correct that they will all have some element of opinion in them. But if some independent editor comes along, reviews the references, accepts the logical argumentation as being valid, and decides that they too believe that the corresponding changes should be made, restoring such an edit (even character for character unchanged) is STILL expressing the opinion of the editor doing the restore (otherwise they wouldn't be restoring it in that form, presumably). The fact that their opinion happens to coincide with that of an editor that was banned for bad behavior should not be considered justification for labeling someone a meat puppet and banning them as a result, IMHO. --GoRight (talk) 15:47, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

The bottom line is that WP:BAN should no longer be policy. I have tried to nudge things in that direction on the policy talk page. Things are moving in that direction but we're not quite there yet. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 16:03, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Are you talking about all of WP:BAN or just the meat puppet/proxying type references? --GoRight (talk) 19:41, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Mostly the meatpuppet / proxying stuff. It is unenforced and unenforceable, so it should be removed. I think that allowing people to reinstate edits by banned editors is a terrible idea but it's more important that policy be clear and enforceable. At the moment we've got a policy that says "you shouldn't do this, but if you do it anyway it's OK" which is stupid. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 20:26, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

WMC

Just ignore him. ATren (talk) 18:03, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

I am at this point. I just wanted to clarify that my agreement wasn't with the "ignoring" part of your comment like he implied. Beyond that I don't care if he has the last word or not. --GoRight (talk) 18:11, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Right, I understand the sentiment. It can be extremely frustrating to deal with insinuations, and our first impulse is to respond. But then it just turns into a shitfight and your point is lost anyways, so it's best to disengage. Reminds me of one of my favorite lines, from WP:NOSPADE, relating to the "duck test":

However, ducks are funny in that they rarely believe they are ducks. A humane way to communicate with an anatid that you believe to be a duck, would be to calmly inform it of its duck-like behavior. Shouting "IT'S A DUCK" is likely to excite the duck, and it may quack at you, and when you're in a shouting match with a duck, no one really wins.

That last line is what I think of whenever I'm tempted to engage in a pointless pissing match. So rather than shouting "DUCK", I make a simple statement that I stand by my earlier point and I'm now disengaging - and, of course, resist any further temptation to comment. The resulting thread is thereby less cluttered, and the original point stands more prominently for any passerby editors who join the discussion later. ATren (talk) 18:43, 11 September 2009 (UTC)

Evidence pages in userspace

You have one or more pages in your userspace that were used as evidence in the Abd-William M. Connolley arbitration case. All 23 of these pages are listed here. I'm proposing to move these pages to subpages of the case pages, and courtesy blank them (as has been done with the other pages in this case). Could you let me know if you object to this? I won't be doing this myself, but I will pass on any replies to whoever does deal with this. Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 00:49, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

I have no objection to this and would, in fact, prefer that this be done. Thanks for your assistance in making it be so. --GoRight (talk) 00:38, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Chronie

GoRight, the only one who decides whether Chronie is on good terms with Abd is Chronie. I think it's clear that she is not—especially since she's retiring over the case and particularly his accusations. You might think that this is silly, but it's not for Chronie, and I think she should be given a level of respect.

At any rate, that's why I re-blanked the page. I believe that was one of the most distressing ones because it lists her as a part of the cabal. I don't believe that's a fair characterization, particularly not of her. Cool Hand Luke 14:11, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

"GoRight, the only one who decides whether Chronie is on good terms with Abd is Chronie." - With all due respect, well duh! I certainly don't mean to imply that I speak for her. I was merely pointing to evidence that seemed to contradict the accusations being made by Abd's detractors. If Chronie says she is on bad terms with Abd then she is. This is obvious. As I said I certainly don't object to attempts to make her feel more comfortable about the situation. It was never my intention suggest that I can decide if she is on good terms with someone, or not, and to think it was is somewhat insulting, actually, not that I think that was actually your intention.

"You might think that this is silly, but it's not for Chronie, and I think she should be given a level of respect." - Where have I disagreed? I haven't. I never said it was silly for her to be upset. I do think she is placing far too much weight on the perceptions of herself that will come out of that case, especially in light of the actual ArbCom ruling on that point. The part that is lost in all of this is that Abd was very explicit that being listed was NOT an accusation of bad faith. Obviously his detractors are the ones that have a stake in pushing the idea that bad faith was actually being implied. So if anyone is actually smearing CrohnieGal for being on the list it is those people who continue to obfuscate this fact. My comments were merely being made in response to my perception that Abd's detractors (not meant to include CrohnieGal) were and are capitalizing on the situation to try and demonize him while he is blocked. I am still not convinced that this is not the actual motivation behind the current posturing. Unfortunately CrohnieGal is caught in the crossfire. --GoRight (talk) 00:34, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks

GoRight, thanks for removing the personal attacks at the Solomon talk page. I think that was very constructive. 115.128.8.93 (talk) 21:57, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Don't bother refactoring that stuff, his friends will just bury you for it (there are 3 or 4 who defend him unconditionally and their opinion carries weight in certain crowds). Better to take the high ground. If you feel you must do something, collect diffs for future reference -- offsite, of course. :-) ATren (talk) 02:08, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Hi GoRight, I had that thought too -- thanks. Alex Harvey (talk) 15:22, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

This is just hilarious!

and . Apparently the UN is now relying on Misplaced Pages for its scare tactics and relying on non-peer-reviewed graphics (as opposed to data) that combines datasets in a way that Michael Mann asserts is never done by "researchers in this field". --GoRight (talk) 20:42, 27 September 2009 (UTC)

AfD nomination of List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming

An editor has nominated one or more articles which you have created or worked on, for deletion. The nominated article is List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming. We appreciate your contributions, but the nominator doesn't believe that the article satisfies Misplaced Pages's criteria for inclusion and has explained why in his/her nomination (see also Misplaced Pages:Notability and "What Misplaced Pages is not").

Your opinions on whether the article meets inclusion criteria and what should be done with the article are welcome; please participate in the discussion(s) by adding your comments to Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of scientists opposing the mainstream scientific assessment of global warming (3rd nomination). Please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~).

You may also edit the article during the discussion to improve it but should not remove the articles for deletion template from the top of the article; such removal will not end the deletion debate.

Please note: This is an automatic notification by a bot. I have nothing to do with this article or the deletion nomination, and can't do anything about it. --Erwin85Bot (talk) 01:11, 23 October 2009 (UTC)

The CRU Job

I have no problem with this, but it needs to be cited and attributed. "According to blah blah blah, this was likely to be an inside job." Or similar. -Atmoz (talk) 01:51, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

No it doesn't. It was reported in a WP:RS. And it should go in the lead as well. I am diggin up additional references as we speak. --GoRight (talk) 02:04, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

WP:NPA

I've cut this per WP:NPA. You assertion that you aren't pinpointing a specific editor is gaming... But if you aren't insinuating something about editors on the talk-page - then i suggest you answer this:

• Who are "they"?
• What are "their personal agendas"?

--Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:13, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

OK, your queries illustrate my point. Whom have I attacked? Please indicate who has been attacked so that I might apologize to this individual. --GoRight (talk) 23:17, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Sorry, but your reversal of my questions is not an answer. I'm not going to assume anything - i'm asking you to answer the obvious questions. --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:24, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

If you feel I have attacked someone, please point them out. --GoRight (talk) 23:26, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

I do not know, which is why i'm asking you. All i can see is that you are attacking "someone", since if i exchange "they" with any editor(s) on the talk - then it is a personal attack, and "they" must obviously be "someone". --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:34, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

If you feel I have attacked someone, please point them out. And since when is it an attack to point out that unidentified people have unidentified personal agendas? Boy, I really know how to insult people, don't I? (Note the snark.) --GoRight (talk) 23:46, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

How about you just answer the questions? --Kim D. Petersen (talk) 23:58, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Interestingly enough, I can't either since I wasn't referring to anyone specific. It was a general comment, obviously. Once again, that's the point. --GoRight (talk) 00:37, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Excuse me for jumping in, but Kim, by what authority are you making these rather brusque demands of a fellow editor? Is this a crude attempt to get GoRight to somehow declare that he meant to insult someone and thus violated a rule? I have read your cited edit several times and don't see it. He is speaking of a non-specific entity in general terms. That's it. Move on. Lexlex (talk) 00:57, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Dear GoRight ... thank you for applying WP:NPA to redact edits against me. Your efforts and interpretations are applauded. I must take a break now to recover from the personal distress in the Talk Page incident by WMC . I wish I could find a way to return your kindness to other editors on Wiki. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 18:13, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

December 2009

Valid NPOV defending effort by GoRight. I support any appeal. Admin Tedder corrupted my intent for placing the POV-tag. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 21:19, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

Zulu, if you have issues with me, please take them to my talk page or to WP:ANI. tedder (talk) 21:33, 2 December 2009 (UTC)

GoRight (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

Request reason:

The simple fact of the matter is that I have not committed any blockable offense here. There is a valid WP:NPOV dispute occurring at the article in question. I am well within my rights to post a NPOV tag on that article, I was following the requested steps outlined by User:William M. Connolley who is one of the primary editors from the other side of this dispute. I have been making extensive use of the talk page in support of my position both prior to and subsequent to my placing the NPOV tag on the article. While I have reverted the NPOV tag a few times so have my opponents, and I have not committed any WP:3RR violations. There is no emergency requiring that I be blocked. There is no danger to the encyclopedia by my placing an NPOV tag on that article. I can only assume that Tedder means for this block to be punitive, not preventative, which makes it inconsistent with WP:BLOCK. I therefore request that I be unblocked.

Decline reason:

Edit warring is not permitted. The reason for this is that edit-warring is an ineffective way to solve disputes. The use of repeated reversion rather than discussion is only permissible in emergency situations, such as those caused by defamatory content. Unless you can explain why you felt that there was an emergency that meant that you needed to revert immediately, this block would appear to be valid. CIreland (talk) 14:02, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

Unblocking admin, and GoRight, you were blocked for edit warring with the NPOV template, against this: Talk:Scientific opinion on climate change#Cease-fire on POV template. This was not punitive, you have clearly been edit warring with the template, which is actively being discussed on the talk page without consensus. tedder (talk) 02:54, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I refer you to the complete text of Misplaced Pages:NPOVD#What_is_an_NPOV_dispute.3F, but I wish to highlight the following portions thereof:

"By linking to this page from an article, a dissenter can register his or her concern without unduly upsetting the author(s) or maintainer(s) of the article, and without starting a flame war. Others would maintain, however, that linking to this page only postpones the dispute. This might be a good thing, though, if a "cooling off" period seems required."

"Sometimes people have edit wars over the NPOV dispute tag, or have an extended debate about whether there is a NPOV dispute or not. In general, if you find yourself having an ongoing dispute about whether a dispute exists, there's a good chance one does, and you should therefore leave the NPOV tag up until there is a consensus that it should be removed."

I also refer you to Template:POV and note that I was merely following the instructions described there. I also highlight the following text from the template itself:

"Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved."

which clearly indicates that the intention is for the NPOV tag to be left on the page until the dispute is resolved. Note that the dispute is not yet resolved. tedder's actions are clearly at odds with both the letter and the intent of the NPOV tag as described in the essay linked above. I can only assume that the existence of the essay suggests that there is some level of precedent for how these situations are normally handled, and that I am acting in a manner consistent with those precedents. --GoRight (talk) 03:14, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

How can one side in an edit war be blocked, and not the other? Sounds punitive to me. Having said that, GoRight: even if you are in the right here, you of all people should know the playing field is not level on these pages. A POV tag is not worth giving them an excuse to block you. ATren (talk) 03:03, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Tedder, given this result I intend to raise this issue at WP:AN because I while I accept that you are merely attempting to contain the edit war you are also using your admin bit to prevent me from utilizing the NPOV tag for its clearly intended purpose, and are thereby, in effect at least, aiding one side in what is fundamentally a content dispute. I wish to seek guidance at WP:AN related to the proper use of the NPOV template as well as the community norms for such use.

If I agree not to restore the NPOV tag until the matter is discussed at WP:AN and I further agree to abide by any decision that arises out of that discussion, will you agree to unblock me? --GoRight (talk) 16:02, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

GoRight, I'll happily unblock you given those limitations. Additionally, please leave this section on this page until the AN/ANI discussion is over, okay? tedder (talk) 17:42, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Please don't forget about the autoblocks that typically get setup as well. Thanks.

Just to be clear on what we are agreeing to, I will also be free to edit elsewhere (i.e. other than just WP:AN) and to continue the discussion on Talk:Scientific opinion on climate change subject to the usual WP:CIVIL rules, correct? --GoRight (talk) 17:51, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

I've unblocked you and I think I cleared the autoblock- let me know if that doesn't appear to be the case. You are free to edit anywhere, including Talk:Scientific opinion on climate change, paying special mind to WP:CIVIL and the aforementioned NPOV tag on the article in question.

Let me know when you've posted to AN- link to it here and on my talk page. tedder (talk) 17:59, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. --GoRight (talk) 18:03, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Discussion of Science vs. Non-science Content

GoRight, I think you need to consider that most people who edit science related pages think primarily about the fundamental basis of statements. The fact that everything needs to be consistent with Wiki-rules, while true, plays a secondary role. If you put the Wiki rules first to get a statement edited into an artcle, then you'll face strong opposition if you are not prepared to argue from the fundamentals.

In case of scientific opinion on climate change, you want to write that some fraction of the population reject the scientific opinion. I think the best you could do here is to argue about the public perception about the scientific consensus in an open way on the talk page. You can bring in your favorite sources, but you have to be prepared to enter a discussion in which others will argue that some people are misled on the basis of propaganda that already has been debunked.

Such discussions can lead to a common point of view and then one can decide how to edit that into the article, while talking into account the Wiki-rules. You'll face strong opposition if you insist on some suggestive text from the WSJ and try to protect that by using wiki-rules (RS to keep your text in, OR to defend against criticism of it). Count Iblis (talk) 18:40, 3 December 2009 (UTC)

Without rules, there is chaos. That's why WP:V opens with "The threshold for inclusion in Misplaced Pages is verifiability, not truth — that is, whether readers are able to check that material added to Misplaced Pages has already been published by a reliable source, not whether we think it is true." (emphasis mine). If we start evaluating sources according to our own POV, imagine the can of worms that will open, as every reliably sourced contentious claim will be subject to "correction". Look at how often the NY Times is accused of being biased or wrong by those on the right -- the "verifiability, not truth" clause is the only thing holding back the throngs who would question the veracity of reliable sources. If you skirt those rules, you weaken WP:V, and a weakened WP:V means the floodgates are opened. ATren (talk) 05:14, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

This is a general principle that works well for Misplaced Pages, because in many cases there is no unambiguous "truth". However, in case of most scientific topics, there is usually very little disagreement about some basic facts in the scientific literature. Also, most of the popular press is quite unreliable when it comes to reporting about scientific matters.

What happens from time to time is that you get sensationalist news reports in the press (e.g. Special Relativity has been violated), while in reality nothing of the sort has happened. You can then block inclusion of this in Wikpeida by invoking the NOTNEWS policy. If an editor insists saying that newspaper X is a reliable source and that hundreds of other newspapers ae reporting the same story, you have no choice but to discuss this issue from first principles using the scientific literature, the scientific paper in which the claim was published as opposed to the newspaper articles about this etc. etc.

Those discussions then cannot be opposed on OR grounds. The OR policy applies to what is edited in the article, not to discussions on talk pages. If the editor can only argue that the newspapers are reporting the story and is not willing to engage on the basis of the fundamentals then, despite what Misplaced Pages's rules say (except for NOTNEWS), the editor will not get his/her way. Count Iblis (talk) 16:29, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

I am not of the belief that scientific articles should be treated significantly differently than non-scientific. In fact, I think part of the reason for contentiousness on science articles is the due to the attempt to achieve truth as opposed to verifiability. It seems like we are trying to treat one part of this site (the "non-science articles") like an encyclopedia, where OR, NPOV and V apply; and another like a scientific journal, where scientific method applies. Misplaced Pages is not a scientific journal. If something receives notable coverage in the press or other reliable sources, we should report it even if it's "wrong". If it truly is wrong, rebuttals can be provided from expert blogs like RealClimate (which are fine sources for non-BLP content). Trust the reader to make their own judgement.

As it is today, editors take great pains to suppress reliably-sourced, notable content, and not only does it create endless drama, but it also serves to undermine the reliability of Misplaced Pages itself, giving the appearance of partisan reporting. This, in turn, is amplified by fringe opponents offsite (sometimes even in the media), which then draws more fringe editors into the fray. It's the Streisand effect. ATren (talk) 21:57, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Very well said, and clearly articulates the core of the problems. --GoRight (talk) 22:18, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

"GoRight, I think you need to consider that most people who edit science related pages think primarily about the fundamental basis of statements. The fact that everything needs to be consistent with Wiki-rules, while true, plays a secondary role." - While I am sure that this is true in the minds of many, it is incorrect. This view is completely at odds with WP:V and WP:OR. How can you say that it isn't?

We as editors are here to fairly document what is being said in WP:RS. Period. We, as wikipedia editors, do not have the privilege of being able to take the fundamental basis of the WP:RS statements into account so that we may thereby interject our own POV and WP:OR in the form of editorial decisions. If you think that this is the way it is intended to work, you are wrong. If you merely think that this is the way that it turns out in many cases, you may likely be correct. That still doesn't make it right, nor does it mean that it is in line with the principles on which the project is founded.

I do want to thank you for being willing to have a reasonable discussion about the issue, though. --GoRight (talk) 22:29, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

Hope, I am not being rude by commenting. Anyone who holds an "opinion" above that of NPOV, has a fundamentally flawed argument (with possible conflicts) in regards to the principles of editing here. Relevant sources are stronger than any "opinion" on Misplaced Pages. This ensures that "opinion" may be properly attributed for the good faith in the human reader to make their own judgment. The fact is opinions subjectively change and sources are objectively referenced. Anyone who holds a "scientific opinion" is in effect taking a POV which must be neutralized. Anyone who holds "scientific opinion" above wiki principles may be corrupted, by virtue of poor faith in readers to balance the opinion with their own and others sources. Count Iblis, you make many rational statements, and I ask you to consider what WP:FIVE means to humanity. I take in your points about scientific pages. Zulu Papa 5 ☆ (talk) 00:06, 5 December 2009 (UTC)