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Hi there.

Thanks for clarifying more on copyvio. You are amongst a very rare Wikipedians around here who go at length to clarify and not just go about pasting copyvio notices, throwing warnings and moving on(example my talk page User_talk:thisthat2011). ..असक्तः सततं कार्य कर्म समाचर | असक्तः हि आचरन् कर्म.. Humour Thisthat2011 15:01, 10 July 2011 (UTC)

Welcome!

Hello, MangoWong, and welcome to Misplaced Pages! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Misplaced Pages
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
• Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Misplaced Pages:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{help me}} before the question.

Articles under the India project suffer from a systemic bias due to a dominance of contributors from Western countries. You can help counter this imbalance by becoming a regular contributor and by joining or watchlisting India related discussions. Again, welcome! Zuggernaut (talk) 04:52, 13 July 2011 (UTC)

List of India articles and an invite

First of all, thanks for speaking in defense of ThisThat2011 at ANI. There are a couple of issues I've wanted to discuss with you for a while now:

1. Sometime back you mentioned that there are other articles in need of improvement. As I mentioned on my talk page, it is best to have these documented in an open manner on projects like WP:India and WP:Countering systemic bias. We can create a section that identifies such articles and gives a brief summary of the sections/areas that need improvement. That way after the currently active editors are gone, others can continue with the work.
2. Please consider contributing to building a template I've created to welcome India related editors - {{Welcome-India}} (see the discussion on the talk page). India related editors who edit in some topic areas and are even slightly assertive quickly get blocked or banned because of the systemic bias and a British focus. But a vast majority of those get blocked because they do not follow the basic pillars of Misplaced Pages. The goal of the template should be to encourage these editors to first understand and follow Misplaced Pages rules and policies and then to deal with the bias by not leaving Misplaced Pages. Zuggernaut (talk) 02:15, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

It is an honour to know you. Please accept my regards.

1. Actually I was talking about articles in some other areas. Let us leave them for now. ;-)
2. I have taken a look at the template and I think it is excellent. I also took a look at the talk page. I am thinking about a few ideas, and will put them up there later on to find out if they are any good. I don't have any experience with these matters, so I will do some thinking to crystallize my ideas before I put them up for consideration. I too have an impression that too many new eds, and even experienced ones are being blocked or banned. I have the impression that it is being done (to some extent) to perpetuate the systemic bias. I have taken a look into the systemic bias page. I think its superb. About the A-A focus, I have never had a quibble with the Yankee part. I like it even, even if it is supposed to be a bias. It is heartening to see that you are investing time and energy to retain new eds. I agree that the best way to retain them is to help them understand WP. Best.-MangoWong 12:39, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

I've quickly skimmed through your suggestions at the template talk and they are all excellent, we might need to redesign the template to fit all or most of your recommendations in it. The original one was borrowed from the generic welcome template ({{welcome}}). I used it for the first time at the top of this page. The strength is not in the template by itself but when used together with WP:TWINKLE, any user like you or me can easily welcome new IP addresses or newbie editors. I am only editing in spurts right now so I will continue participation in the template discussion in a few days. Yes there are huge cultural differences between the US and Britain (check out this funny Gordon Brown video) and it shows on Misplaced Pages. Unfortunately Misplaced Pages is not as American as many would like it to be, and as one editor explained, it does not reflect or resemble American values (take a look at the first bullet item in Jimmy Wales' talk page archive and the founder was ambivalent about it. So the bad news is you cannot expect American values here. Zuggernaut (talk) 02:15, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

I have welcomed a couple of new users using the template. But I did it manually. I had tried using the India specific template using twinkle, but did not find it in the options which twinkle provides. Is there some "twinkle" way of posting that template which I could not find?-MangoWong 14:01, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Three steps here, more or less:

1. Turn on gadgets - A Misplaced Pages gadget is a JavaScript and/or a CSS snippet that can be enabled simply by checking an option in your Misplaced Pages preferences
2. Take a look at the Twinkle Quick info section - it provides a link to the Twinkle preferences panel. It also talks about clearing your browser cache which might be necessary sometimes with some users.
3. Twinkle preferences have thousands of configuration parameters - jump to the relevant section titled "Welcome user". You might have to play around a bit here but it is really simple. Basically you will need to configure three parameters ("Clicking the "welcome" link on a diff page will:" choose "prompt you to select a template", "Template to use when welcoming automatically:" type "Welcome-India" here without any parenthesis or braces). Save your changes and test it out. I might have missed out a step or two but I'm sure you'll be able to figure it out. After this, welcoming users will be a 1-click task. Zuggernaut (talk) 05:13, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the explanation. Got the hang of it now :-) MW 17:08, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

No problem. You probably already watch WT:IN but if you don't it's worth adding to your watchlist since many of the pages you've edited belong to that project. The Wikimedia Foundation just announced there that they are looking for feedback on some of the things you've just worked on (like the welcome template). Hope you got Twinkle working. Zuggernaut (talk) 14:18, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I have looked at the WP:IN conversation. It is good to see that the WMF is serious about this :-) I will probably join the conversation at a later stage. I do have the twinkle working now, thanks to you. I have used it to welcome some more newbies. And I consider the welcome template mostly to be a result of your initiative and effort. I suppose you will be the one who will also be designing the new, comprehensive one. I think you are better placed to understand the issues. The conversation at WP:IN is already deteriorating to personal bickering etc. There is something "low grade" to criticizing someone who is not allowed to reply. It is pathetic, to say the least.-MW 15:17, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Almost everything on Misplaced Pages is teamwork and collaboration so I cannot really take all the credit for this one. Sometimes, there's a need to provide initiative, sometimes we need people who can take things to closure. On Indian matters, I feel it is generally the former that's required.

I will be setting up the basic structure for the new template and will keep on working at it in bits as I find the time. Hopefully others will collaborate too and take it to a final form in just days than weeks. We need something visual, something that's short and easy to read.

WP:BAIT is a common strategy and if you watch ThisThat2011's page you already know what I'm talking about. Zuggernaut (talk) 13:10, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

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thnks for your work

i really appreciate your work done onyadav page.now users can share and ask for their doubts on the page ,this wiki page has gone through a lot of vandalism.thanks again dear. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 223.179.215.82 (talk) 17:15, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

From Talk:Yadav

In this edit at Talk:Yadav, you ask, "What procedure am I violating?" The relevant guideline you are bordering on violating (not actually across the line in my opinion, but approaching it) is WP:Disruptive editing. You are, as all of us are, a volunteer, so of course you are not required to actually edit the article, or take the issue to a noticeboard, or do anything you don't want to do. However, to continually make extreme claims, to imply that there are terrible problems and the sources are bad and the article is biased, regularly, in numerous different threads, but to simultaneously refuse to do anything about it, is disruptive. Raising the same points over and over again, but refusing to take the discussion to the next level, ties up the resources of other editors, and prevents other work.

Now, I could make all sorts of guesses about why you do this. The vast majority of them paint you in a pretty bad light. But I don't want to do that, because I reallly do believe that you really want Misplaced Pages to be better. You really do understand what systematic bias is, and how important it is to correct it, and how hard it is to do so. Now, this doesn't mean that I always (or, even, often) agree with the specific results you want, but I do believe you are not here out of malice. I cannot actually speak for the other part of my cabal of self-declared Wiki-Gods (as one editor referred to MV, Sitush, and I), but I will say that for myself, I too am not here out of malice. I really do think it's unfair that Misplaced Pages's core policies (especially WP:V) are actively detrimental to telling certain kinds of truths, especially the stories of the colonized or otherwise disadvantaged. But to work here, we have to work within the system (all of it--civility, reliable sourcing, neutrality, sockpuppetry, etc.). If I were to put this in the terms of my field (rhetoric), I'd say that while you can try to fight about the "facts" produced by this discourse community, and you can actually "win", you're almost certain to get nowhere by fighting the actual system itself (the rules of discourse). That type of approach only works when there is some sort of external body with authority (force) that can force shifts within the system, or when there are non-rhetorical methods that can force change in the system (protest, revolution, etc.). But Misplaced Pages is a self-contained, idiosyncratic community, that will likely never bow to an external authority, except those that can legally enforce sanctions against it, like the government of Florida and the US.

As happens to me often when I'm trying to find a way to express my emotions, I look up, and realize that I've been rambling. I swear, I promise, that what I am trying to do here is to help you be a successful participant in WP, and to successfully fight systemic bias. The approach you take very often takes you down the dark side of accusations, disruptive or tendentious editing, and instigating/"teaching" others to do the same. If anything I said here offends you, I apologize in advance. Feel free to respond, or not respond, or simply delete this immediately. Qwyrxian (talk) 09:37, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

The article has been protected for six months. I was explaining to the protecting admin why I think that IPs should be given an opportunity to edit if they request and why (IMO) it is not good to privilege registered users over IPs. Criticizing the article was not my main point there. After that, I was reqested to show some specific problems with the article and I did that. As soon as I did what I was requested to do, I began to get criticized. If folks did not want to see problems in the article, why request me to point it out? I don't quite see how this could be disruptive. If explaining to an admin why I think that the protection should be reduced (if IPs and new users request it), is disruptive, please show me the relevant policy which says so. If doing what I was requested to do is a problem, please show the policy which says so. Otherwise, please withdraw your comments.-MW 12:18, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I wasn't talking about the protection issue, I was talking about the support of re-discussing the same issues over and over again. That's what's disruptive. Just because a new user is raising an old issue again does not mean we have to have the discussion again. To give the most extreme example I know from another page, nearly once every few days, a new user shows up on Talk:Muhammad to tell us we need to remove the pictures of Muhammad because such pictures are forbidden in Islam. We do not debate the issue over and over again, because community consensus is extremely strong on this issue; instead, we just say "See the FAQ above and the previous discussions, along with WP:NOTCENSORED. I think that you were absolutely right to call for unprotection of the talk page; I just think you're not revisit the same discussion every few weeks just because someone "new" wants to raise it again. Furthermore, I think you're not right to say "These sources are terrible, unrelaible, etc.", but refuse to take the next step to gain outside input that would help settle the issue. You don't have to take them to the noticeboard, but then I think you also have to stop complaining about them. Again, as I said above, I'm not here to criticize you just to criticize, or to be threatening in any way...rather, I want to show you something I think you don't see about your own editing, something that I think prevents you from really utilizing your great enthusiasm and strong knowledge on the project. Qwyrxian (talk) 12:36, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

need help

Can you tell me how to change my username. I don't know who is a 'bureaucrat' to forward a request to.(Gyanvigyan1 (talk) 10:38, 12 September 2011 (UTC))

I can help with that. First, go here, and then type the name you want into the box that says "Display users starting at:". If they name you want is already chosen, you'll need to pick something else. Once you find a name that is not taken, go to Misplaced Pages:Changing username/Simple and follow the instructions there. Following those instructions saves you from having to contact a bureacrat directly; in a few days or so, someone will see your request on that page and help you make the change. Let me know if you have questions. Qwyrxian (talk) 12:02, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

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If you have feedback on how to make SuggestBot better, please let us know on SuggestBot's talk page. Regards from Nettrom (talk), SuggestBot's caretaker. -- SuggestBot (talk) 12:03, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Truefact1979

Apologies for writing here but your note on the WP:3RRN is unlikely to get a response because the issue is effectively closed. You could always ask directly at User_talk:EdJohnston but in any event the block of Truefact1979 is for edit warring, not 3RR. You are correct that 3RR was not breached but that was not the point at issue. Hope that this helps to explain. - Sitush (talk) 23:32, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Stay away from this page.-MW 01:15, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Random question about welcoming

I just have a random question: when you welcome new users (via Wikilove, I assume), you seem to often offer a bowl of strawberries. Is that a personal choice, or is there a special cultural significance to strawberries? Qwyrxian (talk) 02:01, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Nothing cultural about it. Just that they look refreshing to me.MW 07:48, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

In any case, I had no role in designing that template.MW 10:32, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I know that there's a bunch of different food to choose from, so I was wondering if strawberries were somehow special for you. Most people I've seen use cookies or pie or similar desserts, or beverages of various types. I liked your choice of natural food. Qwyrxian (talk) 00:45, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

bowl of strawbarries

why did you give me a A bowl of strawberries? Distributor108 (talk) 12:45, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I had looked at your recent edits/comments on some other page and liked it. Then I hopped onto your talkpage and saw lots of notices there. I too have the intention to upload some pics, but the copyvio policy looks snaky to me. So, I thought we might discuss what sort of difficulties crop up in uploading images. Maybe discussing the issue could be beneficial for both of us. Maybe two heads are better than one? Interested?MW 13:03, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Yeah man Distributor108 (talk) 13:24, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I have looked into your images. I think all of your images are self created, and you are allowing free distribution with modification etc. As such, they would be acceptable at Wikimedia commons. They have a nice upload wizard there. It makes uploading easy in the sense that you upload, and then fill out the form they provide, and you are done. Did you try uploading your files there?MW 14:15, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

yeah I found that thing later. thanks for that. Before i kept being messengers front his stupid bot, not realizing its only bot i was responding to it getting angrier. anyway thanks for your help much appreciated i gotta run off now dont wanna be late. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Distributor108 (talk • contribs) 22:15, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I have done some more ferreting on this. I think I have located what we need. Reading Help:File page seemed useful to me. It contains a link to this sample image . This is supposed to be OK per our policies. Comparing what information this image has with your uploads may help fix them. It seems to have some more fields filled up. I think we need to add the part under the section called "Summary" in that image. If that is done, I think your images would be fine for WP too. After adding that part to one of your images, I think you could put up a question at Misplaced Pages:Media copyright questions to make sure that it is OK. That place also looked very active and helpful to me. What do you say?MW 12:21, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not too sure what is happening, can you help me? It says that this file is being transferred to commons, what is that? I received those warnings page when i first uploaded the images, however I uploaded again using, using this http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Upload/Own_work I'm not sure what is happening now, I also used the "GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2" tag in the image. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Distributor108 (talk • contribs) 02:49, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

er

The transfer to commons thing is nothing to worry about. That notice is there because currently there is an ongoing drive to transfer as many images as possible to commons. If it gets transferred to commons, so much the better. It will be available for wider use, not just on english WP. You see, in some cases, copyrighted, non free images can be hosted on WP. But commons only keeps those images which are freely distributable and modification allowed. Your images fall in the second category. So, it can be transferred there. It can still be used on WP, and other places. Nothing to worry about there. Now, let us see how to fix what those notices are saying. This is the diff of the image which you had uploaded again. Let us compare this with this image which is OK by WP rules etc. The main difference I see is that your images do not have the description part. The part in which your username etc. will appear. You need not give your real name. The username will do. There are some other fields too. In the uploading link which showed, http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Upload/Own_work there was "File Description" -- "Summary" field for filling up that sort of detail. Actually, your username should have been filled up automatically. Why is that field not present in your image? You can add it now too. You can also look into the other image to get an idea what it will look like. Just look at the "Summary" section in this image. You will have to fill different details, but the fields will be same. You can try opening the edit box of the summary section in the other image, copy it into your image at the appropriate place, change the details, and save it. While doing that, please be careful not to copy material which is not applicable to your image. The "This is a retouched picture..." part etc. will not be applicable to your pic. That should fix the issue.MW 14:40, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

A bowl of strawberries for you!

I found a link to the Misplaced Pages humor page from your user or talk page. The apple v. orange discussion made me laugh. It has since become my favorite. Thanks for this as well as the various other links including the one to the welcoming committee. Zuggernaut (talk) 14:13, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

NP. Thanks for ↑. Some people do have an ability to see nefarious conspiracies in every corner. And you know, the orange image still stands!!!! Orange (fruit) :-)MW 02:14, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Drats!!! I am beginning to feel that the orange industry guys' conspiracy theory does have some value in it. Do you think I am becoming paranoid or that something might be having a rub-off effect on me? Do you feel that it might have something to do with some sort of culture? WP culture perhaps? I understand that some scholars have been doing some research on WP. Do you know anyone who has done some research on this? Maybe we should find someone who is planning to do a thesis on WP, and suggest that this could be the subject of their thesis?MW 07:30, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

After reading that conversation, I too got the feeling that apples are more popular than oranges due to some excellent marketing and PR work done by the apple industry. After all, everybody's heard of "An apple a day...". Poor oranges don't have that kind of an axiom. I've recently enabled the reception of e-mail from other Misplaced Pages users. Please send me e-mail so I can send you links about the kind of information you are looking for. Zuggernaut (talk) 03:51, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

ANI

You have been mentioned at ANI - I have to notify you here, sorry. - Sitush (talk) 07:23, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Comments from an outside editor

Hello there, MangoWong. I'm Tristessa, an uninvolved admin and mediator who came across the AN/I thread opened by Sitush. I'm at your service to help as a neutral party here to give you advice on the issues that have been cropping up between you and other users on your interpretation of policies regarding coverage and use of sources. I hope you don't mind giving my opinion on what's been going on and I'll try to keep my comments as brief as possible.

In summary, what seems to be happening is that you are passionate about how you believe Misplaced Pages articles should be written (and how topics should be covered). This is definitely a good thing and your contributions to the encyclopaedia are definitely valued. To make sure that your contributions are accepted into article revisions by other editors, I'd like to give you some background on the way that Misplaced Pages policies, such as those that you have indicated issues with, are applied.

Community consensus means that editors decide on how to do things together, and this process takes place at both the Misplaced Pages-wide level in policymaking and at the article level in editing. Consensus policies that have become long-standing, and are considered very important for Misplaced Pages's content standards, include Misplaced Pages:Neutral point of view, Misplaced Pages:Verifiability, Misplaced Pages:No original research, et cetera, policies that I know you're already familiar with and you've been at issue with when interacting with other editors. I know you don't always agree with the way these policies specify articles should be written. What you must understand, however, is that the community has taken a decision that these policies apply to all articles and content in the encyclopaedia in the way that most editors accept it to -- and much as you may disagree with those policies, editorial changes and content that don't meet the guidelines can't be included. Just because you personally disagree with a policy does not mean that it isn't necessary for you to follow them in your editing, especially where those policies have become standard norms; and whilst I stress that Misplaced Pages policies are always guidelines, those that are considered core pillars of content standards, such as these policies, are less flexible.

If you think that policies should be changed, the answer is to discuss how those changes could be made on the policy talk pages, the village pump, or via a request for comments to the Misplaced Pages community. Misplaced Pages works by discussion, and by mutual decision-making on the basis of majority consensus, rather than on the basis of individual editors preferring to do things in a certain way. I want to reiterate that your contributions are valued and I have every expectation that, with a little more thought about Misplaced Pages's community editing norms -- WP:BRD is a page you might be interested in -- you will be able to work better with other Wikipedians and have a better time of editing.

In closing, I'm always here to help if you need me. Yours, --Tristessa (talk) 16:24, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

From our NPOV policy (Misplaced Pages:NPOV#Due_and_undue_weight), it seems that it is other editors, not MangoWong who need this sort of a reminder:

From Jimbo Wales, paraphrased from this post from September 2003 on the WikiEN-l mailing list:

• If a viewpoint is in the majority, then it should be easy to substantiate it with reference to commonly accepted reference texts;
• If a viewpoint is held by a significant minority, then it should be easy to name prominent adherents;
• If a viewpoint is held by an extremely small (or vastly limited) minority, it does not belong in Misplaced Pages regardless of whether it is true or not and regardless of whether you can prove it or not, except perhaps in some ancillary article.

Keep in mind that, in determining proper weight, we consider a viewpoint's prevalence in reliable sources, not its prevalence among Misplaced Pages editors or the general public.

Zuggernaut (talk) 00:51, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I think our policies are fine. They are excellent. The folks who are writing our policies are doing a fine job of it. If someone thinks that I have disagreements with our policies, it is not necessarily their fault. I have a crafty bunch of opponents. It is likely/ possible that my opponents have created this wrong impression about me. I have found them to be making false claims about me (behind my back) on other occasions too.MW 00:59, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

How could I forget!!!! Tristessa de St Ange and Zuggernaut, I do appreciate your interest and willingness to help sort out this issue. This has become a somewhat complex issue and does need more attention.MW 01:01, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I think I should make some effort to explain my view of things. My opponents have a massive obsession with inserting defamatory material about Indian castes. They are continually grasping at straws to do so. They use complete misrepresentations, unreliable, off topic sources etc., and their favorite funda is to use passing comments from off topic sources etc. They have no problem in doing synthesis to depict various types of things as being "disputed", even when no such dispute in reality and not even among the secondary sources. Most/ all of these features can be seen in the present dispute at the talk:Lodhi.MW 01:13, 21 September 2011 (UTC)