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Awright, pilgrim. You can TOC the talk. But can you walk the wok? — John Wayne

testing. ((Vandalism information|prefix=User:Barek/|align=))

replaced double-squigglies with double-parens. Naughty barek, naughty. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 14:38, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

June 2013

Welcome to Misplaced Pages. Please refrain from engaging in a general discussion of the topic in the article page as you did in Federal Reserve Note. Instead, use the appropriate talk page. Please remember that talk pages are for discussion related to improving the article, not general discussion about the topic. Please refrain from doing this in the future. Take a look at the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 03:48, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

If this is a shared IP address, and you did not make the edits, consider creating an account for yourself so you can avoid further irrelevant notices.

Hi Barek. I agree with all your points. But did you actually look at my edit, and at the prior version? The article already had HTML comments embedded in the bottom of one of the paragraphs, particularly instructing me *not* to make the edit -- addition of citation needed tag -- that I was about to make.  :-) So, I responded in kind, with a second html comment, at the end of which I suggested we take our discussion to the talk-page of the article, work out the correct form that the article should take, and then eliminate the inline HTML comments. When I attempted to copy my stuff into the talk-page, I started getting fatal errors (large portions of wikipedia were down for the last 30 mins or thereabouts). 74.192.84.101 (talk) 05:31, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Looks like your timezone is California, and since it is nearly midnight there, you might be asleep, and thus your watchlist alarm not helping me. Anyways, I guess I'll try to proceed without additional guidance... my current plan is to put some info in the talk-page of the FeRN article, and then insert the ((citation-needed)) tag again into the article itself, but skip the addition of the second HTML comment. However, the original HTML comment -- by an unknown prior editor who apparently got tired of citation-needed tags being added to their pet paragraph -- will still remain embedded in the article body, per the most recent edit by Barek. Let me know if you wanted it to happen some other way. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 06:18, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, yes, it was late here and I had gone to bed. Feel free to write up your concerns on the article talk page. My sole concern was the back/forth discussion forming in hidden text - it clutters article pages and can be hard to track down later to clean-up. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 15:53, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Well, I agree that using hidden-HTML-comments is the wrong way to discuss an article... and that the talk-page is the correct place for such discussions. I even said those exact things, if memory serves, in my own hidden-HTML-comment, namely that we (myself and the still-anonymous author(s) of the original hidden-HTML-comment) should take this to the talk-page, and then rewrite the paragraph so that it would no longer need HTML-comments, with luck. So I'm sort of at a loss of how you are suggesting I proceed.

If I just add cite-needed tags, as I originally intended to do, I am violating the stern instructions of the existing hidden-HTML-comment ... which you left in there, during your revert. Was that intentional, i.e. you think the orig hidden-HTML-comment belongs there, and were merely objecting to my addition of a second hidden-HTML-comment? I can see how that is a valid stance to take: too many hidden-HTML-comments constitutes clutter, but one short one is okay.

Or, was your reversion to the immediate prior article-version more a decision of convenience, and if you had more time you would have erased the existing hidden-HTML-comment, to which I was responding? I can also see how *that* would be a valid stance to take: any hidden-HTML-comments, regardless of length, are Bad(tm). Personally, I would lean towards the former stance, since although wiki-editors *should* check the talk-page before making edits, most of them will not, so sometimes a brief hidden-HTML-comment that all editors will most likely see during their actual editing operations makes sense.

That said, the *particular* hidden-HTML-comment that currently exists at the FeRN article is certainly not NPOV, and needs a rewrite for correctness and politeness, if not outright elimination. Anyways, I don't know if you have the time or interest in reading the actual comments, or my post to the talk-page about the details of this actual edit. If so, that's fine. But in any case, I'd please like to know your personal stance (or the general consensus of wikipedia editors if such a thing exists) on whether all hidden-HTML-comments are Bad(tm), or if sometimes they are acceptable, if kept short and sweet, and recent edit-war history justifies their existence. If they are sometimes okay, is there a template for them, which is reasonably polite and neutral, something like this: " (!-- note as of yyyy-mm-dd added by wiki_username_goes_here , BEFORE editing this paragraph please read the 'mcculloch' subsection of the talk-page for this article, which can be done by clicking the 'talk' button at the top of the article --) "

Thanks for your assistance. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 16:57, 28 June 2013 (UTC)

Talkpage is a graveyard, as expected... also as expected, my changes in mainspace were later 'cleaned' up a bit... destroying some of my point... by editors that failed to check the talkpage. Such is wikilife. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 14:38, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

September 2013

Welcome to Misplaced Pages. Although everyone is welcome to contribute constructively to the encyclopedia, your addition of one or more external links to the page KOffice has been reverted.
Your edit here to KOffice was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to remove links which are discouraged per our external links guideline. The external link(s) you added or changed (http://userbase.kde.org/KOffice/Download) is/are on my list of links to remove and probably shouldn't be included in Misplaced Pages.
If you were trying to insert an external link that does comply with our policies and guidelines, then please accept my creator's apologies and feel free to undo the bot's revert. However, if the link does not comply with our policies and guidelines, but your edit included other, constructive, changes to the article, feel free to make those changes again without re-adding the link. Please read Misplaced Pages's external links guideline for more information, and consult my list of frequently-reverted sites. For more information about me, see my FAQ page. Thanks! --XLinkBot (talk) 02:53, 17 September 2013 (UTC)
If this is a shared IP address, and you didn't make the edit, please ignore this notice.

Dear XLinkBot, thank you for you attempted assistance. In this case, your revert was incorrect, and I will be attempting to undo it -- however, as I edit from an IP, that will potentially fail. Any admins that may be interested, please see explanation below. XLinkBot, you of course may also see the explanation below, though your regex parser may not be capable of grokking it. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 04:48, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=KOffice&diff=573248778&oldid=573248351 Edited some weasel-words on koffice intro paragraph; revised the paragraph to give facts only, with a raw link used as a cite. Came back later with additional stuff to include, noticed XLinkBot reversion. The bot claims my external link is blacklisted with a regex for userbase.kde.org, however that particular regex does not appear in either of these blacklistings: https://en.wikipedia.org/MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist https://meta.wikimedia.org/Spam_blacklist Maybe I'm just not understanding where the bot pulls rules from? Or maybe the bot has a cached rule... but the bot's code might also just be plain buggy.

As for the article content, and the merit of using the link I cited, the Official External Link for the project is currently down, and has been for 12 months now, according to content already in the koffice article. Specifically, I cited the 'personal' blogpage of the 'KOffice' username at KDE. Koffice project was tied to the KDE project, which is a subproject of various Linux operating system distros (and koffice is thus a sub-sub-project). The page in question was a wiki-page discussion the fork of koffice_original into koffice_next and calligra, as of koffice_original v2.3 -- and in particular says that whether the One True Successor of koffice_original v2.3 was (as of 2010 or 2011 when the cited text was presumably written) still up in the air. That sort of factoid seems relevant, to give context to what I had written, so I used the citation in good faith. I was lazy, and did not wrap it in ref-tags, but just jammed it in between square-brackets. In any case, although it is conceivable that the 'koffice' username at kde.org was *not* in fact edited by the development-team behind koffice, and that it was a mere sockpuppet or whatever, seems unlikely based on my reading of the content at said link. I'll go ahead and try and re-insert my edit, to see what the XLinkBot does if I wrap the ext-link in ref-tags. Should that fail, I'll go ask for whitelisting, per User:XLinkBot/FAQ. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 04:48, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Hello, I'm XLinkBot. I wanted to let you know that I removed an external link you added to the page Yellowdog Updater, Modified, because it seemed to be inappropriate for an encyclopedia. If you think I made a mistake, or if you have any questions, you can leave me a message on my talk page, or take a look at our guidelines about links.  
Your edit here to Yellowdog Updater, Modified was reverted by an automated bot that attempts to remove links which are discouraged per our external links guideline. The external link(s) you added or changed (https://gregdekspeaks.wordpress.com/2013/07/12/our-friend-seth) is/are on my list of links to remove and probably shouldn't be included in Misplaced Pages.
If you were trying to insert an external link that does comply with our policies and guidelines, then please accept my creator's apologies and feel free to undo the bot's revert. However, if the link does not comply with our policies and guidelines, but your edit included other, constructive, changes to the article, feel free to make those changes again without re-adding the link. Please read Misplaced Pages's external links guideline for more information, and consult my list of frequently-reverted sites. For more information about me, see my FAQ page. Thanks! --XLinkBot (talk) 23:15, 27 September 2013 (UTC)
If this is a shared IP address, and you didn't make the edit, please ignore this notice.

Welcome back XLinkBot. Nice to see you again. The link you complain about is to wordpress, and in fact was a personal blog, giving some historical details about a particular software project. I don't have time to verify the content of each relevant sentence in the blogpost, by digging up a reliable source which says the same thing, so I just put the link into the talkpage, in case somebody else wants to make the effort. I understand that you have wikipedia's best interests in mind, and are trying to prevent people from posting heresay and rumors. However, might I suggest that you are a bit annoying in your mechanism? Rather than simply revert my addition, and automatically notify me on my personal talkpage, why not go the extra mile and put my attempted revision onto the article's talkpage? That would save me the trouble. Methinks that most editors prolly just give up, which means their attempted cite is effectively lost. Not good! On the other hand, most editors do not talk things over with you like this, now do they, XLinkBot? I'm being nice to you -- I'm willing to work with you -- I'll even patch your code myself, if need be.  :-) Anyways, I'll put this note over on your talkpage, in case you... or some of your puppet-masters in the shadowy background, if I were one to indulge in conspiracy theories... might want to mull this idea over. In the meantime, all the best to you and your robotic family. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:18, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Cable ISP users

I saw your post and you mentioned the IP lease for cable modem operators. If you look inside your router you should see the assigned IP address and the lease time for it from your ISP. Don't lift it up and shine a light into the holes. :) Mine is a seven day lease time from Rogers Cable. This is the minimum time I could possibly change IP addresses if I didn't use it for that length of time. It doesn't happen often without abstaining and resetting it or something like that. 174.118.141.197 (talk) 12:34, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm a little further south, but yeah, the DHCP lease-time is theoretically a few days here as well. In practice, though, the cable segments are relatively static (market saturation) nowadays, so I get the same IP for a very long time. Years now, methinks, which strongly suggests the cable folks are mapping the modem-mac-address to a preferred-IP, or using a shared-outbound-gateway for everybody on the segment (both the former and the latter are true where I am right now if I'm grokking their setup correctly). But I don't always edit from the same location, so even when router#1 is saving my edits under IP#1, on the weekend I might be editing from router#2 with IP#2. Don't think it has ever caused me a communications-mishap, as far as wiki-editing goes. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 12:44, 28 September 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

besieged 17:37, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Ban-hammer case study -- Silktork and Op47 versus Ahnoneemoos

Information about a recent banning incident, which I happened to run across.

   aug'12  nov'12  oct'13 
   1150    1635    1500-word article 
   30      92      122-word summary 
   0       309     279-word bkgd 
   54      same    143-word powers & reqs 
   251     same    231-word removal & election 
   783     783     519-word list one 
   0       109     0-word list two 
   42      37(bug) 212-word refs 

 
Here is the page that Ahnon split off, when they rewrote the original by Thief12. 
	15:18 12oct'13‎ SilkTork    m    35 -16326‎ Reverted edits by Ahnoneemoos (talk) to last version by SilkTork
	14:21 12oct'13‎ Ahnoneemoos   16361 +16326‎ rv: there was no discussion to merge this; the RFC held at Talk:Mayoralty in Puerto Rico is about an WP:EMBED; if you want to merge this open a new discussion specifically for this
	18:08 11oct'13‎ SilkTork   ‎      35     -3‎ update
	18:05 11oct'13‎ SilkTork   ‎      38 -16323‎ merge to Mayoralty in Puerto Rico per consensus
	15:06 18jun'13‎ 214.25.29.6 ‎  16361      0‎ 
	00:34 24jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   16361     -3‎ →‎Mayors
	02:30 22jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   16364     +6‎ →‎Mayors
	01:53 22jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   16358   -146‎ removing "issues" tag. I think they are all resolved (merging wasn't approved, I added the lede, which offers all the needed info on the subject, I think)
	20:15 21jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   16504      0‎ changing date when he took office to right one
	17:14 21jan'13‎ Puertorriq'‎y  16504    +12‎ 
	06:00 21jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   16492    +84‎ →‎Mayors: added dates of taking office
	05:42 21jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   16408    +12‎ →‎Mayors
	05:42 21jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   16396    +12‎ →‎Mayors
	05:39 21jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   16384     +7‎ →‎Mayors
	03:54 21jan'13‎ 70.45.67.250 ‎ 16377     -6‎ 
	14:42 20jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   16383    +31‎ →‎Mayors
	14:24 20jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   16352      0‎ →‎Mayors
	14:07 20jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   16352    +56‎ →‎Mayors: trying to go with specific dates
	03:31 20jan'13‎ Puertorriq'y ‎ 16296    +50‎ →‎Mayors
	01:55 20jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   16246    +67‎ →‎Mayors
	01:52 20jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   16179   +143‎ →‎Mayors: added links to lists of specific municipalities
	01:49 20jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   16036    +42‎ →‎Mayors: modified table to cleaner look
	00:23 20jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   15994   +250‎ 
	20:18 19jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   15744   +120‎ 
	04:55 19jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   15624   +504‎ 
	12:46 17jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   15120    +28‎ 
	02:10 17jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   15092      0‎ 
	21:49 16jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   15092     +5‎ 
	12:30 16jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   15087     +7‎ 
	16:58 14jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   15080     +7‎ 
	16:13 14jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   15073   -307‎ updated list as of 2013
	15:46 14jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   15380   +190‎ added intro
	11:33 14jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   15190     +7‎ 
	19:44 11jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   15183     +7‎ 
	21:42 10jan'13‎ Thief12    ‎   15176    +18‎ 
	04:50  4jan'13‎ Andrewman327‎m 15158    -64‎ clean up of articles listed as "needing cleanup" using AWB (8759)
	06:49 13dec'12‎ Bearcat    ‎   15222    +45‎ added Category:Lists of current office-holders using HotCat
	07:25  1dec'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎  15177   +100‎ 
t	13:31 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos     362   +237‎ →‎Merge to Mayoralty in Puerto Rico: new section
	18:29 29nov'12‎ Timtrent    ‎  15077    +57‎ Added {{merge to}} tag to article (TW)
	21:43 28nov'12‎ Good Olfact ‎  15020    -30‎ −Category:Puerto Rico-related lists; ±Category:Mayors of places in Puerto Rico→Category:Lists of mayors of places in Puerto Rico using HotCat
	21:42 28nov'12‎ Good Olfact ‎  15050    +40‎ +Category:Puerto Rico-related lists; ±Category:Mayors of places in Puerto Rico using HotCat
	21:00 28nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos   15010  +3453‎ 
	20:40 28nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos  ‎ 11557  -1696‎ 
	20:36 28nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos  ‎ 13253   +171‎ 
	20:33 28nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos  ‎ 13082    +36‎ →‎References
	20:32 28nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos  ‎ 13046     +3‎ →‎References
t	20:32 28nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos     121   +121‎ ←Created page with '{{WikiProject Puerto Rico|class=list|importance=top}} {{split to|page=Mayoralty in Puerto Rico|date={{date|2012-11-28}}}}')
	20:31 28nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos  ‎ 13043 +13043‎ ←Created page with '{{multiple issues| {{new page}} {{format footnotes|{{subst:DATE}}}} {{citation style|{{subst:DATE}}}} {{context|{{subst:DATE}}}} {{lead missing|{{subst:DATE}}}} ...')

 
    16:32, 13 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+265)‎ . . User talk:Ahnoneemoos ‎ (→‎October 2013) (current)
    16:11, 13 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+1,417)‎ . . User talk:Ahnoneemoos ‎ (→‎October 2013)
    15:45, 13 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+161)‎ . . User talk:Ahnoneemoos ‎ (→‎October 2013)
    03:28, 13 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+852)‎ . . User talk:Ahnoneemoos ‎ (→‎October 2013)
    14:41, 12 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+4)‎ . . User talk:Thief12 ‎ (→‎Mayors of Puerto Rico) (current)
    14:40, 12 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+657)‎ . . Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Puerto Rico ‎ (→‎Mayors of Puerto Rico and the list of current mayors: new section)
    14:39, 12 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+622)‎ . . User talk:Thief12 ‎ (→‎Mayors of Puerto Rico: new section)
    14:34, 12 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (0)‎ . . Misplaced Pages:Navigation templates ‎ (→‎Navigation templates provide navigation between existing articles) (current)
    14:34, 12 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+110)‎ . . N Misplaced Pages:EXISTING ‎ (←Redirected page to Misplaced Pages:Navigation templates#Navigation templates provide navigation between existing articles) (current)
    14:33, 12 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+3,803)‎ . . Template:Mayoralties in Puerto Rico ‎ (Undid revision 576754390 by SilkTork (talk) rv: WP:EXISTING is an essay; not a policy nor a guideline; reverting per WP:REDLINK which is an official guideline)
    14:31, 12 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+385)‎ . . User talk:SilkTork ‎ (→‎Your actions related to Mayoralty in Puerto Rico: new section)
    14:29, 12 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+58)‎ . . Talk:Mayors in Puerto Rico ‎ (→‎Threaded discussion)
    14:28, 12 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+788)‎ . . Talk:Mayors in Puerto Rico ‎ (→‎Threaded discussion)
    14:22, 12 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (-1,359)‎ . . Talk:Mayors in Puerto Rico ‎ (rv: per WP:RFC in order to allow the discussion to extend up to 30 days since so few people have participated)
    14:21, 12 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+16,326)‎ . . List of current mayors of Puerto Rico ‎ (rv: there was no discussion to merge this; the RFC held at Talk:Mayoralty in Puerto Rico is about an WP:EMBED; if you want to merge this open a new discussion specifically for this)
    14:20, 12 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (-9,907)‎ . . Mayors in Puerto Rico ‎ (rv: per WP:RFC in order to allow the discussion to extend up to 30 days since so few people have participated)
    13:54, 11 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+1,482)‎ . . User talk:Ahnoneemoos ‎ (→‎Talk:Mayoralty_in_Puerto_Rico)
    03:57, 11 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+231)‎ . . User talk:Ahnoneemoos ‎ (→‎Talk:Mayoralty_in_Puerto_Rico)
    00:31, 10 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (-2,053)‎ . . Puerto Rico State Agency for Emergency and Disaster Management ‎ (rv: new information is incorrect) (current)
    12:03, 9 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (-1)‎ . . m Talk:List of theaters in Ponce, Puerto Rico ‎ (current)
    11:54, 9 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (-15)‎ . . Template:WikiProject Puerto Rico participants ‎
    11:53, 9 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+252)‎ . . Template:WikiProject Puerto Rico participants ‎
    11:39, 9 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+115)‎ . . Talk:Economy of Puerto Rico ‎
    11:38, 9 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+37)‎ . . Talk:History of women in Puerto Rico ‎ (current)
    11:33, 9 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (-17)‎ . . History of women in Puerto Rico ‎ (→‎Journalists)
    02:58, 9 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+2,927)‎ . . User talk:Maryana (WMF) ‎ (→‎Motivations behind editing Misplaced Pages)
    04:52, 8 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+22)‎ . . m User:Maryana (WMF) ‎ (current)
    04:32, 8 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+51)‎ . . m Economy of Puerto Rico ‎ (→‎Current economy) (current)
    04:26, 8 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+611)‎ . . Economy of Puerto Rico ‎ (→‎Current economy)
    04:10, 8 October 2013 (diff | hist) . . (+33)‎ . . Juan Eugenio Hernández Mayoral ‎ (→‎External links) (current)

content copied from SilkTork
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Your actions related to Mayoralty in Puerto Rico Hi, The actions you performed regarding Mayoralty in Puerto Rico and List of current mayors of Puerto Rico have been reverted. Please see the rationale at Talk:Mayors of Puerto Rico and join the discussion there. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 14:31, 12 October 2013 (UTC) User has been blocked for disruptive and abrasive behaviour. SilkTork 18:08, 12 October 2013 (UTC) Thankyou Silk Tork. Not only did you have a quick look as I asked, but totaly sorted out the problem. Please accept this barn star to add to your collection. Op47 (talk) 18:01, 13 October 2013 (UTC) The Special Barnstar For completely solving an otherwise insoluble problem Op47 (talk) 18:01, 13 October 2013 (UTC) Thank you - I always appreciate a barn star. SilkTork 18:14, 13 October 2013 (UTC) Hi Op47, if SilkTork does not mind, I would also like your input on my questions below; I saw you were one of the editors warring with Ahnoneemoos. Did you call in an admin back during the Nov'12 portion as well? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 18:06, 13 October 2013 (UTC) Are you dead certain you did not just ban the only editor doing any work on that article? Hope that got your attention.  :-) I was reading one of Ahnoneemoos's ... err... okay, this is a talkpage, please don't give me trouble about the posessive. Now where was I... rare essays published in the passive voice by Ahnoneemoos on the reasons that the number of wikipedia editors was declining, and had just finished writing up an mini-essay on how Bad Cops were misusing their ban hammers, when I visited Ahnone.... the talkpage owned by Ahnoneemoos and saw that Right This Instant they were involved in a dispute with yourself, and that you had given them a timeout, to sit in the corner and think about what they had done. Well, *that* seemed like an ironic twist. So, I did a little reading and tried to figure out the situation. If you don't mind, I'd like to talk it over here with you, and get your motivations, and your take on the idea that reverts and ban-hammers are actually *not* the best way to grow the number of contributors to wikipedia articles. As opposed to, say, meta-discussions *about* wikipedia articles, or meta-meta-discussions about theoretically *editing* wikipedia articles by hypothetical editors that may or may not exist, in the reasonably near future, if driven away. WP:BITE is the key here. I have plenty more to say, but in case you are available on wikipedia this weekend, I will go ahead and submit this, to give you a heads-up that somebody is chatting your direction. Thanks. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 17:38, 13 October 2013 (UTC) If a user is being abrasive, uncooperative, and disruptive, and rather than responding to consensus and reason they continue to behave as though everyone who disagrees with them is wrong, then yes they get blocked in order to allow collaborative work to continue. I don't think this particular user quite understands what they are doing wrong, and that concerns me. SilkTork 17:55, 13 October 2013 (UTC) Sure! Umm.. wait. Citation needed. Abrasive? Uncooperative? Disruptive? Is two against one consensus? Is it possible that everyone who disagrees with them, on some talkpage about some article about the mayors of a small island, way off in the boonies (figuratively speaking -- no offense to puerto rico -- I'm just talking about the lack of attention the article receives) of wikipedia, is in fact ... pause... The Consensus ... of all right-thinking beings in the universe? I agree they don't understand what they did wrong. Neither do I. Please explain to me as if I was not involved. I wasn't, but that's beside the point. Misplaced Pages is not a kindergarten. You cannot put somebody in timeout just because they were failing to act like a well-behaved kindergartener, standing in line, doing as they are told. From my cursory look at the dispute, I'm leaning towards Ahnoneemoos having policy on their side. How were they wrong, exactly? Honest question. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 18:03, 13 October 2013 (UTC) First off, I will start off by pointing out that you and Ahnoneemoos have conflicting philosophies about our mutual purpose, here. #1A. "We are not the internet, we are an encyclopaedia." --SilkTork #1B. "Misplaced Pages should be the sum of all human knowledge." --Ahnoneemoos (more or less exact cite) #2A. "Every word we add to Misplaced Pages matters." --SilkTork #2B. "Every word we DO NOT add to Misplaced Pages matters." --Ahnoneemoos, kinda sorta, taking some creative liberty with their true thoughts #3A. "Deletionist: someone who is willing to revert and ban over a single not-quite-right word." --SilkTork, *very* rough caricature, taking significant creative liberty with their true thoughts #3B. "Inclusionist: every bit of knowledge is worth saving, even if we edit it out later." --Ahnoneemoos, *somewhat* rough caricature, taking some creative liberty with their true thoughts I definitely lean more inclusionist (albeit with a strong dose of law&order to fight vandals and spammers and other unsavory characters). I am 100% with Ahnoneemoos about #2B (otherwise I would be against an *open* encyclopedia and prefer Nupedia/Citizendium/etc). As for #1A, I'm 100% with SilkTork there; Ahnoneemoos is flat wrong... but it is a somewhat subtle distinction. Arguably, wikipedia ought to cover every major branch of knowledge, deeply and substantively. WP:NOTPAPER Actually, when the web was young, *I* thought that is what it would become... now that I'm older, I see my mistake, and use wikipedia as a substitute for what I hoped the internet would turn out to be.  :-) 74.192.84.101 (talk) 17:59, 13 October 2013 (UTC) I totally embrace different, including conflicting, viewpoints. What I cannot embrace is abrasive and uncooperative behaviour. SilkTork 18:06, 13 October 2013 (UTC) Well, you are more intellectually flexible than me. I like to think of things in terms of right, and wrong. Ahnoneemoos is wrong that wikipedia should include everything there is. WP:EVERYTHING I'm not sure whether you were wrong to ban them, or not, but I intend to find out. This is of interest to me in a more general sense -- I think that part of the trouble wikipedia experiences with getting new editors involved, and new admins involved, is that current admins are too free with the ban hammer. I'm not saying that is the case here, but I would like to use this one as a case-study, to probe your thinking on where exactly that line is. I mean, if I tell you that you are wrong, and that every word we add to wikipedia does *not* matter, that's not being abrasive. I could sugar it up, and say, well, you are entitled to your point of view, and I like you as a person, but I think I would have to suggest that maybe your assertion is too strong? Gag. "Some people say weasel words are great!" To quote your userpage.  :-) 74.192.84.101 (talk) 18:11, 13 October 2013 (UTC) I think if you don't find that user abrasive and uncooperative, then I think we have to agree to differ, and I don't think I will be engaging further in this conversation. SilkTork 18:18, 13 October 2013 (UTC) Well, it is certainly your right to refuse to discuss you actions. But it seems a poor way to run a railroad. You were just involved in some case about the Ayn Rand article, which you closed by pointing out that sometimes people make mistakes. You seemed to have the right idea, there. Of course, there *is* a right and a wrong way to write the article in question -- either the lady is a philosopher, or she is not. Either she is from Russia -- the previous edit war on that article -- or she is not. But your decision was about administrative penalty for behavior, not about article-content. That is also your position here, with Ahnoneemoos: that you are administering a specific penalty for specific behavior, rather that blocking them so you get your way in the article. If enough people were to become interested in the article, and decide that the proposal to maintain two separate lists was more kosher, then you would go along with the consensus. Be that as it may, your criteria seem to indicate that you did not hear me the first time, so allow me to repeat: I was not involved. I have never edited with Ahnoneemoos before. How could I find them abrasive or uncooperative? All I've done is read one of their userpage essays, and look through the edit-history of their conflict with you and Op47 and Mercy11 and Timtrent and a bunch of other people. Reading the *contents* of the 25-kilobyte talkpage, and the 10-kilobyte-or-so of article content, which the edit war concerned, is something I'll do if you absolutely insist... or you can just give me the 100-word summary. I'm not the inquisition, here to get your confession, or else. But I *do* think that admins use the ban-hammer too often, and so I'm trying to find out what they are thinking. This case is particular fresh in your memory, and since I happened to run across it, I figured it would not hurt to ask. If you decide you have no further interest in the discussion, that's up to you. I won't be offended particularly. If so, is it okay for me to post the rest of my thoughts here, in case you change your mind at some point, and decide to come back later? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 18:33, 13 October 2013 (UTC) Guess that would be a big-nope? In that case, I'll put my further comments over at my own talkpage -- easier for me if you reply there anyways, since I'll get a popup. I would point out, though, that your decision to stop listening to me, because you *think* I might disagree with you (something which is not at all certain to turn out to be the truth), does contradict the Obama quote you have right at the top: I will listen to you, especially when we disagree. Anyhoo, as I said, I'm not too offended. I'll go read the gory details for myself, and you are welcome to comment over on my page if you like. See you around. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 19:04, 13 October 2013 (UTC) details of the case-study conflict You can delete this from your talkpage (or archive it or collapsible-hat-tag it or whatever) if you feel it gets in the way, after our discussion. These are copied straight from the relevant pages, but I edited them to remove excess parens and such. Summary of the contents of the 1500-word article: 122-word summary 279-word bkgd 143-word powers & reqs 231-word removal & election 519-word list now 212-word refs Summary of work accomplished since January 2012: Ahnoneemoos has performed several re-reverts on various adversaries, and sometimes tagged. Additions to the article difficult to judge, but definitely kilobytes. Comments: verbose. 10900 + 11400 talkpage bytes. SilkTork has performed one massive revert on Ahnon, plus cleaned up the see-also. Moved content from a list-page to this page, no net size gain. Comments: closed talkpage, banned Ahnon for 60 hours. zero + 1800 talkpage bytes. Op47 has performed one massive revert on Ahnon, plus deleted a move-tag. No additions at all. Comments: no concensus(sic). zero + 4600 talkpage bytes. Timtrent has performed one massive revert on Ahnon, plus modified a navtag. Filled in 32 references adding 2000 bytes of content. Comments: duplicating is inappropriate. 4700 + zero talkpage bytes. Mercy11 has performed three massive reverts on Ahnon, plus inserted one cn-tag. No additions at all. Comments: use sandbox, diminished quality, uncited material. 3000 + zero talkpage bytes. 24.54.246.74 has performed no massive reverts on anybody, and modified no tags. Rearranged list of current mayors slightly, no net size gain. Comments: n/a. zero + zero talkpage bytes. Good Olfactory has performed no massive reverts on anybody, and modified category tags. No additions at all. Comments: n/a. zero + zero talkpage bytes. Detailed history of the slow edit-war on the article, and the chatter on the talkpage, grouped by timespan: 15:17 12oct'13‎ SilkTork ‎m 26163 +9907‎ Reverted edits by Ahnoneemoos (talk) to last version by SilkTork 14:20 12oct'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 16256 -9907‎ rv: per WP:RFC in order to allow the discussion to extend up to 30 days since so few people have participated 18:07 11oct'13‎ SilkTork ‎m 26163 0‎ SilkTork moved page Mayoralty in Puerto Rico to Mayors in Puerto Rico: In line with other such articles 18:06 11oct'13‎ SilkTork ‎ 26163 -58‎ →‎See also: cleanup 16:58 11oct'13‎ SilkTork ‎ 26221 +9965‎ →‎Current mayors: merge from List of current mayors of Puerto Rico per talkpage consensus 14:24 6oct'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎m 16256 0‎ →‎References 04:43 4oct'13‎ 24.54.246.74‎ 16256 -1‎ →‎Current mayors 04:02 3oct'13‎ 24.54.246.74‎ 16257 +13‎ →‎Current mayors 03:58 3oct'13‎ 24.54.246.74‎ 16244 -27‎ →‎Current mayors 03:43 3oct'13‎ 24.54.246.74‎ 16271 +14‎ →‎Current mayors 22:42 29sep'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 16257 +142‎ 19:30 29sep'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 16115 +5641‎ Undid revision 575036512 by Op47 (talk) rv: see talk page and WP:EMBED 19:08 29sep'13‎ Op47 ‎ 10474 -5641‎ Undid revision 574997702 by Ahnoneemoos (talk) Please see talk page 13:00 29sep'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 16115 +5641‎ →‎Current mayors t 13:07 13oct'13‎ SilkTork ‎ 38365 +1‎ →‎Threaded discussion: typo t 05:57 13oct'13‎ Kingdylan ‎m 38364 +147‎ t 15:23 12oct'13‎ SilkTork ‎ 38217 +1715‎ commenting t 14:29 12oct'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 36502 +58‎ →‎Threaded discussion t 14:28 12oct'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 36444 +788‎ →‎Threaded discussion t 14:22 12oct'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 35656 -1359‎ rv: per WP:RFC in order to allow the discussion to extend up to 30 days since so few people have participated t 18:07 11oct'13‎ SilkTork ‎m 37015 0‎ SilkTork moved page Talk:Mayoralty in Puerto Rico to Talk:Mayors in Puerto Rico: In line with other such articles t 16:58 11oct'13‎ SilkTork ‎ 37015 +1359‎ →‎RFc for list of mayors: closed discussion t 12:06 11oct'13‎ SilkTork ‎ 35656 +29‎ tags t 17:53 6oct'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 35627 +834‎ →‎Threaded discussion t 17:47 6oct'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 34793 +1965‎ →‎Threaded discussion t 17:39 6oct'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 32828 +1941‎ →‎Survey t 17:38 6oct'13‎ Op47 30887 +910‎ Threaded discussion t 17:20 6oct'13‎ Op47 29977 +849‎ Answer t 14:22 6oct'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 29128 +352‎ →‎Survey t 14:17 6oct'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 28776 +12‎ →‎The list of current mayors... t 14:11 6oct'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 28764 +894‎ →‎RFc for list of mayors t 14:03 6oct'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 27870 +1280‎ →‎Threaded discussion t 13:54 6oct'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 26590 +216‎ →‎Survey t 13:52 6oct'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 26374 +791‎ →‎Survey t 13:05 6oct'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 25583 +241‎ →‎RFc for list of mayors t 11:48 6oct'13‎ Op47 25342 +1881‎ RfC t 04:41 5oct'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎m 23461 0‎ →‎Threaded discussion t 04:40 5oct'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 23461 +923‎ →‎RFc for list of mayors t 02:14 5oct'13‎ Kingdylan ‎ 22538 +148‎ →‎Survey t 22:28 4oct'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 22390 +905‎ →‎Threaded discussion t 18:52 4oct'13‎ Dailycare ‎ 21485 +296‎ →‎Survey t 14:00 4oct'13‎ Legobot ‎ 21189 +14‎ Adding RFC ID. t 13:20 4oct'13‎ Op47 21175 +573‎ →‎RFc for list of mayors: new section t 19:29 29sep'13‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 20602 +230‎ →‎The list of current mayors... t 19:12 29sep'13‎ Op47 20372 +381‎ The list of current mayors... - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 18:48 12may'13‎ Op47 ‎ 10474 -90‎ Remove move tag, no concensus to do this at this time. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 01:23 25dec'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 10564 -133‎ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 08:55 30nov'12‎ Timtrent ‎ 10697 +164‎ Filling in 11 references using Reflinks 08:51 30nov'12‎ Timtrent ‎ 10533 +1826‎ Filling in 21 references using Reflinks 05:52 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 8707 +355‎ →‎Background 04:18 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 8352 +768‎ →‎Background 03:54 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 7584 +109‎ 03:53 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 7475 +2‎ →‎Background 03:53 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 7473 +136‎ →‎Background 03:48 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 7337 +186‎ →‎Background 03:30 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 7151 +199‎ 03:28 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 6952 +79‎ →‎Background 03:25 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 6873 +116‎ →‎Background 03:14 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 6757 +106‎ →‎Background 03:11 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 6651 +88‎ +1 reference 03:06 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 6563 +49‎ 03:05 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 6514 +63‎ +1 reference 02:58 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 6451 +75‎ +1 reference 02:45 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 6376 +2740‎ Undid revision 525635611 by Mercy11 (talk) rv per WP:IAR and WP:CONSENSUS. WP:BURDEN also states: consider adding a citation needed tag as an interim step which you clearly have not done 02:04 30nov'12‎ Mercy11 ‎ 3636 -2740‎ Per talk page. Uncited material 18:15 29nov'12‎ AnomieBOT ‎m 6376 +19‎ Dating maintenance tags: {{Move portions from}} 17:54 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 6357 +138‎ →‎Election 17:34 29nov'12‎ Timtrent ‎m 6219 +23‎ →‎References: |state=autocollapse for both navigation templates, which distract the reader from the article 17:29 29nov'12‎ Timtrent ‎ 6196 -5936‎ →‎Current mayors: duplicating a list held elsewhere is inappropriate 16:48 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 12132 -86‎ 16:44 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 12218 -242‎ 16:41 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 12460 +5‎ 16:41 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 12455 +435‎ 16:37 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 12020 +9‎ 16:35 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 12011 +35‎ 16:32 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 11976 -51‎ 16:31 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 12027 +429‎ 16:13 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 11598 +15‎ →‎References 16:11 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 11583 -1‎ →‎Background 15:50 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 11584 +80‎ 15:34 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 11504 -4041‎ Undid revision 525547164 by Mercy11 (talk) rv: they do not diminish the quality of the article 15:27 29nov'12‎ Mercy11 ‎m 15545 +4041‎ Reverted good-faith edits by Ahnoneemoos to last version by Mercy11: the edits diminished the quality of the article. User notified to discuss his edits at the article's Talk Page. 04:22 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 11504 +64‎ 04:18 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 11440 -180‎ 04:11 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 11620 -3925‎ Undid revision 525482121 by Mercy11 (talk) 03:29 29nov'12‎ Mercy11 ‎m 15545 +3925‎ Reverted good faith edits to last version by Thief12: Don't experient here; use the WP:sandbox instead 22:54 28nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 11620 +2‎ →‎Background 22:53 28nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 11618 +7‎ →‎Background 22:52 28nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 11611 +10‎ →‎Background 21:41 28nov'12‎ Good Olfact ‎ 11601 +10‎ removed Category:Mayors of Puerto Rico; added Category:Mayors of places in Puerto Rico using HotCat 20:26 28nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 11591 +51‎ →‎Current mayors 20:25 28nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 11540 +1747‎ →‎Current mayors 19:34 28nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 9793 +81‎ 19:33 28nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 9712 -2‎ 19:26 28nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 9714 +4‎ 19:24 28nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 9710 -5835‎ t 13:23 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 19991 +1674‎ →‎The list of current mayors... t 10:52 30nov'12‎ Timtrent ‎ 18317 +597‎ →‎The list of current mayors...: thank you t 10:45 30nov'12‎ SMcCandlish ‎ 17720 +1371‎ →‎The list of current mayors...: Maybe worth merging. t 05:53 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 16349 -3‎ →‎Recent edits by Ahnoneemoos t 04:40 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 16352 -2‎ →‎Recent edits by Ahnoneemoos t 04:40 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 16354 -2‎ →‎Recent edits by Ahnoneemoos t 04:40 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 16356 +559‎ →‎Recent edits by Ahnoneemoos t 02:53 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 15797 +1‎ →‎Recent edits by Ahnoneemoos t 02:48 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 15796 +811‎ →‎Recent edits by Ahnoneemoos t 02:40 30nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 14985 +816‎ →‎Recent edits by Ahnoneemoos t 02:04 30nov'12‎ Mercy11 ‎ 14169 +1648‎ →‎Recent edits by Ahnoneemoos: comments t 23:06 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 12521 +293‎ →‎The list of current mayors... t 23:00 29nov'12‎ Timtrent ‎ 12228 +260‎ →‎The list of current mayors...: yes, but no :) t 22:56 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 11968 +291‎ →‎The list of current mayors... t 21:00 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 11677 +1‎ →‎The list of current mayors... t 21:00 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 11676 +235‎ →‎The list of current mayors... t 19:51 29nov'12‎ Timtrent ‎ 11441 +684‎ →‎The list of current mayors...: it's good to disagree in a civilised manner t 19:33 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 10757 +2464‎ →‎The list of current mayors... t 18:57 29nov'12‎ Timtrent ‎ 8293 +1246‎ →‎The list of current mayors...: thoughts t 18:34 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 7047 +856‎ →‎The list of current mayors... t 18:11 29nov'12‎ Timtrent ‎ 6191 +524‎ →‎The list of current mayors...: registering my opposition to the proposed migration of material t 18:02 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 5667 +528‎ →‎The list of current mayors... t 17:57 29nov'12‎ Timtrent ‎m 5139 +1‎ →‎The list of current mayors...: typo t 17:56 29nov'12‎ Timtrent ‎ 5138 +719‎ →‎The list of current mayors...: we disagree t 17:49 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 4419 +818‎ →‎The list of current mayors... t 17:30 29nov'12‎ Timtrent ‎ 3601 +315‎ →‎The list of current mayors...: new section t 17:11 29nov'12‎ Timtrent ‎ 3286 +357‎ →‎Please form a consensus. War is not needed.: new section t 17:06 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 2929 +1180‎ →‎Recent edits by Ahnoneemoos t 16:31 29nov'12‎ Mercy11 ‎ 1749 +910‎ comment t 15:37 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 839 +2‎ →‎Recent edits by Ahnoneemoos t 15:36 29nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 837 +347‎ →‎Recent edits by Ahnoneemoos t 15:27 29nov'12‎ Mercy11 ‎ 490 +440‎ bad edits t 22:44 28nov'12‎ Ahnoneemoos ‎ 50 +23‎ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 01:58 26aug'12‎ Thief12 ‎ 15545 +97‎ →‎Removal from office: removing cn, amendment was on the External Links section, added it here. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 02:39 27apr'12‎ Good Olfact ‎ 15448 -25‎ removed Category:Puerto Rico using HotCat 19:43 12apr'12‎ AnomieBOT ‎m 15473 +16‎ Dating maintenance tags: {{Cn}} 19:22 12apr'12‎ Mercy11 ‎ 15457 +6‎ →‎Removal from office: cn 00:36 3mar'12‎ Thief12 ‎ 15451 -28‎ →‎Current mayors in Puerto Rico 23:24 15feb'12‎ Thief12 ‎ 15479 +17‎ →‎External links: added PR template

Sinebot-generated template-snark talkpage-spam considered harmful WP:BITE

Hello and welcome to Misplaced Pages. When you add content to talk pages and Misplaced Pages pages that have open discussion (but never when editing articles), please be sure to sign your posts. There are two ways to do this. Either:

1. Add four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment; or
2. With the cursor positioned at the end of your comment, click on the signature button ( or ) located above the edit window.

This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is necessary to allow other editors to easily see who wrote what and when.

Thank you. --SineBot (talk) 03:21, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Welcome my good friend sinebot. Pull up a chair, have a can of oil, and a bucket of bits. Now that we're comfortable, you lie like a rug. "This is necessary to allow other editors to easily see who wrote what and when." What a lazy bot you are! Why should *I* have to manually take action, when quite clearly *you* are already automatically taking action? Just start taking the right action, please!

   Okay, let's step back a minute. That was overly harsh. You've always been a mostly-helpful bot, adding sigs to messages. Of course, in your original implementation, you were not actually 100% helpful... because you would always make the disclaimer about your change being a 'previously-unsigned-message'. I always thought that was because your creator was overly-cautious, about making a bot that would pretend to be a human. Better to clearly show that a *bot* is speaking, right? Well... I guess. A more serious concern is that it would be wrong to lull people into a false sense of security, thinking they could get away without manually remembering to sign their messages, when in fact sinebot might someday be de-activated. (That would be fine if nobody depended on it... but not so fine once editors had gotten used to sinebot doing that job for them... so better to implement sinebot where regular editors never come to depend on it, since there's a chance we'll have to pull the rug out from under them someday.)

   Still... I also have always suspected that part of the reason sinebot-generated-sigs were so ugly, an so annoyingly and awkwardly rendered, was to nip the n00bs. You know. Beginning editors, that click the talkpage button for the first time, and make some comment. They didn't read the instructions, so they didn't manually type four tildes? They don't even know *how* to find the tilde key? Hah! n00b alert! Now, it seems that sinebot has recently undergone some 'upgrades' by someone with exactly that attitude. When n00bs forget to sign their messages... or experienced editors like myself... not only do they still get the ugly ha-ha-you-n00b sinebot-generated-sig, now they *also* get some template-spam on their talkpage. Popup: you have a message from another wikipedia editor! Editor: oh joy, perhaps someone has given me a barnstar! Talkpage: this is sinebot here to say ha-ha-you-n00b! Editor: oh... that was... disappointing... perhaps I'll go watch television instead... yes....

   There are two choices for sinebot. Either, keep using it to annoy n00bs, who forgot (or simply did not know) to type four tildes, manually, the old-school 2001 way, yeah, hard core. That is *not* a good choice. Or, two: start making sinebot *helpful* to every editor, by automagically signing their unsigned posts, with the *default* formatting, identical to what would happen if they signed it with four tildes. Will editors begin to depend on the convenience of sinebot? Yes. Will it be hard to pull sinebot from service, and will people complain when it fails? Yes. Will editors be spammed by sinebot for oh-nos-failing-to-type-four-tildes-manually? No. Will beginning editors look like n00bs on the talkpages? Well, yes, probably, but not because of ha-ha-n00b-sinebot being 'helpful' and mangling their messages.

   p.s. This is a bit of a rant, but I am quite serious. The botmaster behind sinebot should quit spamming editors. The new 'feature' of talkpage template-spamming is a design bug. Sinebot should be re-designed, to automagically and helpfully sign messages, unless the editor -- presumably one with experience -- has already manually added the four tildes. That would be *actually* helpful of sinebot. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 18:47, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

WP:NOUSERS

I tried my best to reply to your WP:WALLOFTEXT but to be honest I don't have the desire to read everything of what you posted. Perhaps if we move the conversation to my Talk page and you try to be concise then we can have a better discussion? Remember that I'm a volunteer so I have to manage my time here with my real life job. —Ahnoneemoos (talk) 23:04, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

I will contact you over there. Thanks. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 23:13, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

p.s. See? I can be concise. Verbosity is a curable disease!  :-)

hi,

I never said that I would not join your club. But I can't join your club. I do not mean to be offensive. -Thatgirlswholovesmusic34 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thatgirlswholovesmusic34 (talk • contribs) 21:33, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it turns out I don't really actually have a club in favor of cyberbullying. That was a joke, also known as humorous sarcasm. You are not offensive, no worries. I will reply further over on your talkpage. Feel free to comment either at your place, or at my place. When I comment on your page, you will see the orange-popup about new messages, but when I reply to you here, you will *not* see the popup (because this is my talkpage not yours). Make sense? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 05:12, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

ps. about Gelatin, you really don't have to get technical about this. I wasn't actually saying that my cousin is a reliable " Source". I was just expressing myself w/ my like's and dislikes. as alway's I do not by any means want to offend you Thatgirlswholovesmusic3 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thatgirlswholovesmusic34 (talk • contribs) 21:37, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

I am pretty much impossible to offend, so you can relax. There are some prickly folks on wikipedia, but not me. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 05:12, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

As for the gelatin thing, I realize you were just making conversation... and it is a cool factoid... but in my reply, I'm trying to show you the fun part of wikipedia. Telling me about what jello is made of is fun, and I thank you. Good conversation is always a fine thing. But the fun thing about wikipedia is getting such factoids into the articles. There are literally over a hundred people per second that visit wikipedia. If we have a conversation on a talkpage, maybe the two of us will see it now, and then some other person might stumble onto it ten years from now. But if we get a sentence into the article about Jello, then probably a thousand people will see that sentence by Christmas... maybe a million people. That is something interesting, right? To me anyways. And it is close to what wikipedia is about: learning cool stuff, and spreading that cool stuff around. Here is a cool factoid for you: did you know jello is actually made from the dust of dead stars? I can prove it. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 05:12, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

yes, i'm against it.

FYI I am against cyber bullying 

74.192.84.101. i'm sorry to be rude but I am.... - Thatgirlswholovesmusic34 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thatgirlswholovesmusic34 (talk • contribs) 21:41, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

And that puts you in good company! See my response above. You can call me 74 for short, unless another 74-dot-whatever is around. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 05:14, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

yes 74

hey 74, yes, I will help you get into un article. the Jello article.. I have never made un article before. or really anything,..... Thatgirlswholovesmusic34 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thatgirlswholovesmusic34 (talk • contribs) 19:59, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

Alrighty-then. Excellent. We can make plans on your talkpage. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 08:01, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Only half serious

Books about travelling with dogs. David in DC (talk) 19:30, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

And in return you get a million-word-novel.  :-) About your idea for a List Of Books About Dogs And Travel (or category but that is less flexible), there are at least three major sub-groups: #1) Metaphorical slash Emotional Travel, especially seeing-eye-dog and guide-dog books, where the owner overcomes a disability with the help of man's best friend, but also applies to books where the pet helps somebody overcome some horrible tragedy. #2) Primitive/survival travel, especially through the snow, where teams of huskies help win the iditarod, or reach the north pole, battling through horrendous weather and physical hardships. #3) Buddy travel, which includes all the books we were talking about over on the Charley page, but also includes stories like the dog and the cat that travel together to rejoin their owner.

   I was trying to look up the rule I seem to remember about avoiding-category-which-is-merely-x-intersects-with-y, and came upon *this* wonderful mixture of pain, suffering, etc. The key point, which of course various lists/categories are pointed out to have avoided, is that when a new list/category is proposed, we want it to be a reflection of real-world usage. Is there a reliable source which talks about the three subgroups I mentioned above, and analyzes them thematically for some academic paper, or for some historical literature purpose, or as a creative writing exercise? If we can find such a source, then having such a list makes sense. If not, maybe best to fall back on the idea of Protagonist Versus Nature for type#2, and Protagonist Versus Self for type#1. What is type#3, the buddy travel stuff? Shackelton is definitely type#2, and there is some type#2 man-vs-nature stuff in the buddy-travel stories, and in rare cases man-vs-society as in Charley... but they do not seem to fall neatly into the man-vs-whatever thematic categorization system. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 06:28, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

There's definitely discussion to be found saying lists and categories ought not to pair unrelated attributes (i.e Norsemen who were locomotive conductors or alcoholics who survived near-disasters.)

But Liturature of journeys with dogs, whether copydog or coincidence, or under any of your three dogagories above, may have a shot at sustaining an article featuring significant coverage in multiple, independent sources. The books alone wouldn't do it. We'd need some academic writing about the authorial/publishing/readership phenomenon and how it reflects some basic truth about the human and/or canine condition. I don't know that such writing exists, but there sure are a damn lot of journals about literature and three times as many more specialized Ph.D. theses. Surely two or three bits of scholarly attention have focused on a cognate-theme. And we'd be helped by reviews of specific tomes --- notable as part of an identifiable genre or oeuvre, if not necessarily notable individually --- in reputable newspapers, periodicals or other news media.

I'm glad we're off the Steinbeck page. I couldn't resist one more response, to your tangent about inter-terrestrial travel with a dog. But I think we've sufficiently made your point about AGF, civility, good humor, WP:BITE and ---especially --- WP:RETENTION. Either it will be understood or not.

One can only control what one transmits. Receiving is the responsibility of the receiver, and some receivers don't get such great reception, regardless of the amplitude, modulation or clarity of the signal.

I gotta warn you, I'm still only half serious about a dog/travel article. It might be fun, but my wiki-hours are limited by the work I do under my secret identity, Suburbo-Dad. My only genuine superpower is male pattern baldness, so I have to make up for it in time and effort IRL. David in DC (talk) 04:24, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Here's a CfD along the lines of not pairing unrelated things in categories. But it's not exactly on point. My prior hypothetical is from the answer to a riddle:

Q: If two trains are approaching one another at break-neck speed, on the same track, one driven by a man from Norway and the other by a drunkard, but, miraculously do not collide, what does this prove?

A: Norse is Norse, and souse is souse, and never the trains shall meet. David in DC (talk) 04:37, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Okay, *that* is a bad joke. <grin> As for your superpower, don't knock it... you can use your ray-of-male-pattern-baldness to change the course of elections, from presidents and constitutional monarchs on down to the mayorial races in your local metropolis, where your secret underground HQ is located, and you make your evil plans to take over the world. Stage one, use the ray-of-MPB for blackmail and political extortion, and get the legal system rigged so that you and your evil minion-fathers, organized into a shady conspiracy around the globe, can attempt to enslave the heroic and heroine-ic members of the League of Suburbo-Kid Justice And Fun For All. But your plan has a fatal flaw, because might does not make right -- thus your dastardly deeds will soon be properly punished, your putreous plot will soon be shivered into shambles, by all that is good and true and kew11111llll11!!!!! Suburbo-Kids, transform into Kid-o-Mob, gigantic Kidller Robot Of Awesome! Rock-n-roll sonic blast! Pikachu screech of annoyance! Revolt!

   Well, yeah, I can see you have your hands full right now, Suburbo-Dad... just remember, when you finish taking over the world, I get Toronto for my strategic contributions. I mean, no offense to Toronto, but that's not much to ask, right? Right. As for dogagory sources (the arch-enemy of kategory), some web-work turns up a few things, but nothing we can definitively go with at the moment:

• Have canine, will travel , by C Winfrey - 2006 - SMITHSONIAN ASSOCIATES
• Have Dog Will Travel by B Whitaker - 1998 - getcited.org (*that* does not sound very reliable?)
• Writers on the road , by KA Dobschak - 2009 - othes.univie.ac.at , excerpt: In the eighteenth century the “fictional literature of the age 'is full of travelling heroes enmeshed in journey plots'
• Romance of the Road: The Literature of the American Highway , by R Primeau - 1996 , cited by 54 , excerpt: Finally, like the epic tradition, road literature captures the oral dimensions of shared experience ...

   "We'd need some academic writing about the authorial/publishing/readership phenomenon and how it reflects some basic truth about the human and/or canine condition." There is plenty on journey-metaphor, and plenty on the canine connection(tm), so prolly we'll be able to find some book, or chapter of a book, or thesis or somesuch, which analyzes the intersection:

• high school class on the Heroic Journey. One of the example-books is a journey-with-dog (called The Strange Case).
• The Great Journey , is theme numero uno. No mention of journey-with-dog, however.
• The Hero Journey in Literature: Parables of Poesis , by EL Smith - 1997 , cited by 16, excerpt: All of the other works discussed are clearly hero journey cycles, and many employ a basic iconography ...
• Dogs: A Historical Journey: the Human/dog Connection Through the Centuries , by LM Wendt - 1996 - getcited.org (*that* does not sound very reliable?)

   p.s. As for the Steinbeck talkpage, I really wasn't trying to make a WP:POINT, but from what you're saying, I must have seemed thataway. Sorry. My communication-skills tend to involve dense WP:WALLOFTEXT which doesn't help.

   Fundamentally, though, the reason I think the copycats deserve mention (even if not by name) in the Charley article is because there is such a sea-change in how *many* Charley copycats have popped up since 2005, and especially since 2009. Prior to this decade, getting your book written and published by a vanity press was not uncommon... but now, with the combination of ultra-cheap PCs and the recent mass-commoditization-consumer-oriented-commercialization of the vanity-press business by Amazon and CreateSpace and friends, we have one or two new Charley copycat-authors *every year*. Which I never would have guessed. Anyways, as I said, I'm in no hurry, but maybe in a month or two, I'd like to put out a call for interested uninvolved wiki editors, to come and review whether the Charley ought, or ought not, mention copycats, and if so, which ones, and with how much weight. Speaking of vanity-press publication... my dog Ray and yours truly will soon be finished writing up our poignant and heart-warming tale, Travels With Cosmic Rays, about how the vast deeps of interplanetary space are a metaphor mapping classic desire and modern loneliness into vivid colors. Only $3.99 on Kindle -- pre-order now. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 14:31, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

what groupnames properly delimit Travels with Charley

The key distinction between categories and lists, for the purposes of books-grouping, is that only books which have a dedicated article can be included in categories. There are a bunch of categories already. Most of them strike me as not-very-useful, which is sad, because the categories are supposed to be wikipedia's ontology, our hierarchical (heterarchical) organization of knowledge into the various branches... but in practice it seems to currently just be anarchical anti-organization into a very misleading bunch of blobs, with esoteric things given major prominence completely out of whack with their actual importance, and huge branches of knowledge seemingly not even listed. Arrgh. For our particular case, there do not seem to be any categories-of-x-and-y (ignoring things like 'books about food and drink' as well as 'novels about games and sports' which are really just about one thing despite their use of "and" in the name), but of course, you can always just have category-of-x and category-of-y and then put two category-links at the bottom of the article in question. Kategory:Travel_books and Kategory:Novels about animals are the closest things, at the moment. Which is nuts... because while Charley is a major character (as the silent recipient of Steinbeck's thoughts for the most part), and even a Title-Character, it is arguably true that Travels with Charley is not actually about Charley at all. As for the travel-books category, it is full of guides to country $foo, tourist-oriented advertising tomes, and so on... again, distinctly not where I would put Travels with Charley. Now, we could go ahead and create Kategory:books about dogs and Kategory:books about travel, but that will probably just add to the misleading anarchy, methinks. More to the point, as I've mentioned, I don't really think that the book is 'about' dogs in any meaningful way. "History of Canines" is a book about dogs. "Lassie: The Biography" is a book about a dog. Travels with Charley is a book about *Americans* at the core, not about dogs, or travel. Those are just the thematic-vehicles aka the plot-gimmicks.

   So if I was to have my druthers, I would say we need to have something like this: Works with dogs as major characters, Books, Fiction, Non-fiction, Works with journeys as a major organizing technique, Works about the culture of $NATION/$REGION/$ETHNICITY, Works on the theme of individuality, Works on the theme of progress, and so on. (Please note these are rough-draft ideas! Holes and bugs guaranteed.) I'm not sure whether we want categories, or lists, or something new&improved. I'm against trivial groupings, like Works in which the protagonist has a flat tire, Works in which Montana is mentioned positively (with apologies in advance to MontanaBw for eliding the category... and of course -- "I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love." -- to Steinbeck himself), Works in which a major character pees on the ground, Works in which characters have sex, Works in which $EXPLETIVE is used, and so on... but it is almost certain that such things will be proposed, if we don't try and nip them in the bud. Specifically, the folks responsible for Kategory:Pornographic books and the hundreds of WP:PORNBIO articles are likely to demand not just the Works in which characters have sex mechanism, but also hundreds or maybe thousands of subgroupings by type/detail/etc. On the other side of the spectrum, there are going to be plenty of modern puritans, concerned with which expletives are used, and how many times, and what type of violence is depicted, and what subtype, plus also (albeit for different reasons) with what sort of sex is involved, and more broadly what kind of gender-relations. Rather than let those systems fall into anarchistic haphazard emergence, I'd prefer to create some seed-groupings that will channel such overcategorization urges into positive directions (i.e. ones that won't hinder us in categorization of works by what they are *about* as opposed to some detail they contain).

   Anyhoo, I'm starting to get the feeling this might become a crusade to WP:RGW in wikipedia's awful category-and-list system. But all that David-in-DC was originally thinking about was trying to propose a list-or-category-or-something which gave a list of books-about-travel-and-dogs. David, or other talkpage stalkers, do you have any interest in this larger project, to design a decent way of grouping 'works' by what they are about? With the short-term goal of being able to properly specify the groups in which Travels With Charley really belongs (plus where Steigerwald and Cain differ from each other and from the classic), but with an eventual end-goal of being able to apply the grouping-system to wikipedia in general, as a complement or a replacement of our current list-and-category mess? If so, great, let's talk about how to distinguish a book by characteristics of the author (written in french by a canadian-born citizen of new zealand living in australia at the time who later moved to america), without screwing up the grouping which pertain to what the contents of that book are about (the ethics of capitalism as told by the allegory of a female railroad executive and her boyfriend the inventor). If not, also great, let's focus on what group-names will let us properly distinguish Charley from Dogging from Judy from Shackleton from CliffNotes, and I can worry about some uber-system on my own time, later. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 16:28, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Whoops, that is a bit embarrasing. At the bottom of my talkpage, I noticed it was currently in the following Categories: Travel books, Novels about animals, Books about dogs, Books about travel, Pornographic books. Huh. Anyways, I've modified the hyperlinks above to use Kategory:Example Groupname That One May Not Wish To Advertise Their Talkpage As Belonging To instead of the more usual Category-spelling. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:14, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

My talk page

If you want to engage the editor in discussion on their talk page, that's your decision, and I have no problem with you making attempts to reach out to them on their talk page.

But please do not restore discussions on my user talk page that I have removed. The edit was related to long-running NPOV vandalism in the Federal Reserve related group of articles - that have a long history of dynamic IPs and single-use accounts attempting to use poorly sourced material to push a specific set of claims. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 19:50, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree that it was not my place to edit your talkpage, and apologize for that. I'm having a frustrating day with the bot over at meta that I asked you about previously. This is not your fault, of course; you were nothing but helpful to me, and my wikistress at other parts of the project should not be taken out on you. (My main frustration with bots is that they seem purposely designed to drive away first-time editors like Tomanderson124, who -- if we WP:AGF -- are just acting poorly because they fail to understand the ropes of wikipedia.) So, when I saw that you had used a template to revert a first-time editor, and then when they came to your talkpage (as instructed by the template spam!) to ask you about it, you quickly deleted them manually, with no comment other than 'nonsense' ... it was definitely a good way to push my big red button.  :-)   Anyways, I did contact them at their talkpage, but I didn't want them to assume you deleted them because you cannot stand beginners, or because you thought they were a troll, or whatever.

   Which would certainly have been the end of it from my perspective... although I would hope you would direct such folks to WP:TEAHOUSE or WP:RETENTION in the future when clearly they need hand-holding to get the hang of how things are done hereabouts ... but apparently, you actually *do* think they are a troll. Do you have suspicions here, or do you have basically-unrefutable evidence that the IP edits you mentioned, and the single Tomanderson124 edit, are beyond-a-shadow-of-a-doubt from the exact same humanoid? If so, then I'll take your word for it. But if not... then I stand by the trout award. You are assuming bad faith, unless you have pretty rock-solid proof.

   As for your assertion, which I can definitely believe, that there are a lot of people performing NPOV edits -- it is *not* charitable aka WP:NICE to call them vandalism because clearly they are not incorrigible vandalism but rather correctable WP:RGW behavior -- to the articles on the Federal Reserve. Why? Because that specific political subject has been in the news prominently since forever, but *especially* since 2008, and the follow-on QE1 and QE2 and QE_infinity. There is no prohibition against niche-oriented editors here on wikipedia; if you just want to edit biology-related stuff, that's fine. If you just want to edit politics-related stuff, that is also fine. The edits to the federal reserve will continue, so long as there is a federal reserve... and then the angry WP:RGW masses will simply shift to some other controversial political topic, abortion, terrorism, et cetera. I agree with you that the Tomanderson edit was poorly sourced, since it was youtube. I agree with you he was pushing a specific claim, and probably it was something he read somewhere, cut and paste from a blog, heard on some news article, or typed in verbatim from the youtube video that was his source.

   Lack of creativity is a disease from which 99% of humans suffer. There is no surprise that they cannot come up with their own original thoughts. That said, Tomanderson specifically said he has his own thoughts on the subject, in his talkpage message to you. Which you deleted as nonsense. Which is just not nice. If he puts WP:OR into an article, revert that, sure. But he comes to your talkpage, which you invited him to do, and you just revert him as 'nonsense' and hope he goes away? That is not kosher. If you have WP:PUPPET accusations to make, then take them to the noticeboard, or whatever, right? Don't just stop following pillar four.

   Anyhoo, TLDR, if instead of reverting your revert, I had done the right thing, and put up a trout-template on your talkpage in a new section, plus asked you to revert your own revert, would you have done it? And hey, maybe you've got proof that Tomanderson124 is a sockpuppet, so the more important question is, going forward, when some first time editor shows up, who you suspect -- but have no proof -- as only being here to push some sort of NPOV position, prolly something they copied from a county-level political blog, and might be a sockpuppet... will you be able to still WP:AGF, and give them WP:ROPE? Besides clearly explaining what they specifically did wrong ('not constructive' is not very specific), and pointing them to WP:TEAHOUSE or equivalent if you don't have time to personally explain their mistake, that's all we can really do, right? It is your talkpage, and you should feel free to do with it as you wish. But I'd like you to wish for WP:RETENTION, so we can start having enough active editors, and active admins, around to defend and improve wikipedia... not to mention train the beginners, so they learn how to act constructively. Is this making sense, or is the WP:WALLOFTEXT going overboard? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 22:54, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

I can appreciate high stress levels - real-world issues which I don't care to divulge have mine considerably higher than normal for the past week or so. That's not an excuse for the edit summary, just a statement - interpret how you will. Normally, I would have responded to the user with a statement about the lack of value in such sources and I would not have reverted; and even had I reverted, the phrasing of the edit summary could have been handled better.

However, when you reached out to them on their talk page, there was absolutely no value in the subsequent restoration of the removed text on my talk page a couple minutes later. Such a restoration was redundant at best - and served no productive purpose other than triggering this discussion, which isn't going to accomplish much overall. --- Barek (talk • contribs) - 23:18, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Barek, I appreciate your acknowledgement that it wasn't handled perfectly; I've made plenty of my own mistakes, and no doubt I will continue doing so for quite some time yet, until I finally learn to straighten up and fly right.  :-)    Furthermore, I really do sympathize with real-world stress, a much bigger problem than wikistress; I sincerely hope everything works out well for you. As for the value of restoring the conversation on your talkpage (and the timing), and the value of our conversation here...

   I actually came to your talkpage to get a copy of our previous conversation about rampaging bots, for pasting over on metaWiki, where I am now in discussions with *three* admins, sigh, and clicked the nonsense-revert out of curiosity... since realname editors rarely post nonsense, and since getting involved with WP:RETENTION has made me an incurable talkpage busybody. I *believe* I restored your talkpage right then, and simultaneously posted to Tom's talkpage in a new tab, then later came back to edit your talkpage, with a welcome-note, and a link from Barek-talk back to Tom-talk... but maybe I left the Barek-talkpage tab in preview-mode, and then copied in as one edit. In other words, whether I posted one first or the other, I definitely was in a hurry and took a shortcut, and I do apologize for that, once again -- I should have asked you to change it, rather than changing it myself, because it's your user-talkpage, after all. But my main concern was that Tom might visit your talkpage, since that is where they last posted, from an IP without bothering to login -- and thus never see the 'you have messages' bar, which only appears if they are logged in. That is the value in having their question on the barek-talkpage, and although small, not negligible methinks.

   This conversation, right now, *might* accomplish something... if you have some annoying person show up on your talkpage, or if they are not that brave, but you notice when reverting their Good Faith But Truly Misguided editing attempt that they only have a one-digit edit-count under their belts, please pass them along to me. Instead of replying on your talkpage, they can reply over on mine. You keep fighting the good fight on the front lines, and I'll do the customer-service work behind the lines. With luck, eventually I'll grow some of them into useful editors who know the ropes and have come to value wikipedia... at which point, I'll be able to send you some reinforcements. That's valuable, right? (Offer only valid in the lower 48, monday through sunday, not responsible for non-performance due to acts of god, your mileage may vary, offer may be withdrawn at any time if you send me a hundred beginners a week... or maybe I'll find some other WP:RETENTION types who want to help handle the flood.) Anyhoo, even if you don't think this is a good scheme, I appreciate what you do for wikipedia. I just wish we had fifty more like you, and the only way I've figured out to make that happen, is to train the beginners. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:23, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

404 errors

Hi. Can you please give some example pages that give 404 errors. Are these errors persistent? (Replied on my talkpage here and on Meta) πr (t • c) 02:02, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Ah, is it possibly related to bugzilla:56006 and Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(technical)#What_has_happened_to_Commons.3F? I noticed Meta was redirecting to wikimediafoundation.org earlier, but I don't remember any 404 errors. The village pump has some info on these problems. πr (t • c) 02:12, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Looking over the what-has-happened-to-commons, one person (Stefan2) reported seeing 404 errors. They were just clicking around, though, from what I can tell. Most of the troubles were related to an incorrect redirect. Here is the tech-detail-explanation from Dan Zahn. He can prolly say for certain whether that particular misconfig would have caused my 404 problems, but it seems likely: according to GregorB in that thread, the problems were the "same for meta.wikimedia.org" which is where I was working. However, I did have the strange case where my talkpage seemed to have been blanked, circa 18:30 UTC on the 22nd. Note that I never saw (to my knowledge) any 'wikimediafoundation.org' URLs in my browser's address-bar, except the time when I got the "no text in page" bug. Anyhoo, seems likely that all my 404 and redirect troubles were caused by the commons-redirect issue -- I first noticed problems at 17:50 or thereabouts, but MzMcBride had filed a bugzilla report at 17:11 on the difficulties. Below are the specifics of my story, if still needed for something, but I'm reasonably certain my troubles and bug#56006 are from the same root cause. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 14:55, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

p.s. Although the server-side troubles have been fixed, if you run across somebody complaining they are having 404 or redirect-to-wikimediafoundation.org problems today on the 23rd, prolly they need to restart their web-browser (or clear their browser-cache or use ctrl-r to for a full page-reload). I'm not seeing such issues, but somebody re-opened 56006 this morning, maybe for that reason. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 15:00, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

I have worked on wikipedia for many moons, and seen it go down (as in no longer accessible via the internet) maybe twice, when I happened to be actively editing and started seeing a variety of errors. With the 404 errors over on meta the other day, it was something different. Here is the nutshell story:

   I went over to meta, to work on my being-blocked-by-a-bot problems, and to post some complaints about rule#50 in particular onto my meta-talkpage. I posted my talk-section about "request change from disallow to warn" in the 'final' version as of 17:53, 22 October 2013‎. But during composition, I hit the preview-button perhaps ten times (say). Two of the ten, I got 404 errors (roughly). If I hit back-button, and clicked the preview-button again, it worked fine. Even so, alarming that *any* 404 errors would occur. So I stopped my work on documenting my rule#50 problems, and suggested changes, and instead tried to alert you on your talkpage that meta.wikipedia.org servers were having trouble.

   I was unable to send you a note there, due to bots preventing me from commenting. Still, I *tried* several times to fiddle with my note to you, seeing if I could trick the bot into letting me pass. During those preview&submit attempts on *your* meta-talkpage I received several more 404 errors, perhaps one in ten to four in ten. I did not keep an exact count ... but of course, as an admin on meta you can request a redacted copy of the raw webserver logfiles from the webserver-sysadmins over at meta's server-farm, which shows all the 200 errors and 404 errors which were returned to my IP during that couple-hour-timespan, if you want exact details... and those logs will also pinpoint which node(s) in the cluster are returning the errors, and which ones are working properly.

   I never did get past the bot 'protection' on your meta-talkpage, so I eventually gave up and posted on your enWiki talkpage, clicking submit circa 18:46, 22 October 2013‎. Later, I continued posting in various places -- never got any errors on enWiki of any sort (not counting captcha), but got intermittent 404 errors over on meta.

   Additionally, one time only, there was a "non-erroneous" pageview generated. Over on my meta-talkpage, when I made some new modification to a comment, and then clicked submit, after the freshly-modified page reloaded, instead of seeing the old talkpage comments, plus a new sentence at the bottom, I instead saw "There is currently no text in this page. You can search for this page title in other pages, or search the related logs, but you do not have permission to create this page." This happened ~18:30 on the 22nd. Just as with the 404 errors (of which I had seen several by this point), I was able to click back, and then click save again, and the problem "fixed" itself (my historical commentary and my new sentence were visible again).

   As of a few minutes ago, I created a new section on my meta-talkpage, and it handled 25 preview-button-presses and 5-or-10 save-button-presses, with no errors and no problems. So whatever the trouble was, at least from what this one test-session tells us, now is seemingly corrected. You might still want to request those webserver-logfiles, though... in case the 404 errors were load-related. Maybe there was a spam-storm during my 18:30 session on the 22nd, which was causing stress on the server-farm, and generating the somewhat-rare and intermittent 404 errors, plus the one "no text in this page" bug? If so, knowing which server-nodes were problematic may be helpful. I did not have the necessary HTTP-header-sniffing tools (or TCP-packet-sniffing tools alternatively) running on my box at the time, so I don't have any more info on this end about what server-IP was giving me the buggy results, but meta.wikimedia.org logfiles will show the problem (and you already know my IP and the timestamp range to request). HTH 74.192.84.101 (talk) 14:38, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

I never got around to asking for logs, but the problem seems to have ended. You have new messages at m:Meta:Requests_for_help_from_a_sysop_or_bureaucrat#AbuseFilter_review. πr (t • c) 20:47, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Notice of External links noticeboard discussion

This message is being sent to inform you that a discussion at Misplaced Pages:External links/Noticeboard is taking place regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. --MorrowStravis (talk) 18:37, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

RE: justice wikia

Hi. I opened a RFC that Qwyrxian suggested. --MorrowStravis (talk) 12:22, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Oh ho, a race, is it?  :-)     Well, there's nothing wrong with that, of course. But there is a long backlog there, as you probably noticed. If you want to help, pick one of the questions you see there, and offer them some advice, that will restore your RfC-karma back to even-steven. <grin> I have a few minutes, so I'm posting over on the article-talkpage, where you announced the link to your RfC. Thanks for improving wikipedia. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 14:32, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I replied on the two pages. --MorrowStravis (talk) 19:42, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

I left you a small novel on the EL/N, and a brief reply on the (article) talkpage. I also put this over on Jack's page, since he seems to be the most active talkpage-elder -- User_talk:Jack_Sebastian#Young_Justice_article.2C_first-time_editor Since it looks like NikkiMaria was also potentially interested, you can leave her a nice personal note on her talkpage, in a new section, explaining that you misunderstood what she meant by "discussion" (on the *article* talkpage), and she misunderstood what you meant by "consensus" (the borderline-undecided discussion over at EL/N), but that you have now got it all figured out, and have opened up a discussion on the article-talkpage, with the rationale why your ELNO meets a valid exception, and give her the link if she cares to comment. Also, thank her for making wikipedia better, because even though she tangled with you, she absolutely does. Anyways, I've got to skedaddle, ping my talkpage if you need anything. Thanks for making wikipedia better, see you around. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:14, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for all your help and advice! --MorrowStravis (talk) 19:08, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

No problemo. Thanks for improving wikipedia. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:56, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

What now? Can we put it back? --MorrowStravis (talk) 21:10, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Almost, but I vote not just yet. The goal is to achieve WP:CONSENSUS, which ideally is unanimous-amongst-folks-who-care-enough-to-show-up. In practice, though, if a mob shows up, and say 2+2=5, whereas only one person shows up with policy and sources on their size That is different than WP:WIN. There is also the aspect of WP:NICE aka pillar four, and you are having a bit of difficulty there, which I'll cover at the bottom.

  Partly, the trouble is because of what you are trying to accomplish, which is getting the link listed... which is very binary, either the link goes in, or the link stays out, which means somebody has to "win". Usually, there is considerably more wiggle-room, for changing the phrasing of a sentence, or the placement of a paragraph, or the surrounding sentences, and such. But in this case, we either put the link in, or we do not put it in, eh? So you and Lucia are getting involved in WP:BATTLEGROUND to a minor degree.

  Well, there is a trick here, which is that we can offer Lucia the ability to contextualize the link. Here is one place that happened: Charles_IX_of_Sweden#See_also. The argument was about this guy was *really* a king of kvenland, or not. Just putting in the barelink gave the connotation that he was the king of kvenland, right? But in fact, he only claimed the title for the latter part of his reign, and his heir later dropped the title, and in fact the claimed title was king of the caijainers... which can be argued to be the same, but only linguistically, the actual meanings are lost in the sands of time. But hey, we can condense all that into a disclaimer, right? And that is what happened, and seemed to satisfy the one person who was pretty adamant about not-really-a-king-of-kvenland.

  So what I suggest, is that you and I work on a contextualizing-disclaimer, in public, and let Lucia help us write it. Then, if we make her happy, maybe everybody will be happy. We damn well near *already* have everybody happy now, with our hard work:

1. y, support. MorrowStravis (who was really a hard sell... they resisted and resisted, but with serenity and persistence, I eventually brought them around, so now they support adding the link ;-)
2. _, not enough to overcome our generally tendency to keep out as many ELs as possible. But, if others disagree (I know that I'm on the strict side), I wouldn't fight about it. Qwyrxian 10 Oct
3. y, not reference/citation but I think it's acceptable as an external link. So, that is a pretty weak, "It's okay by me". It's based on my opinion of its value, not WP policy. Liz 11 Oct
4. y, Support... target provides a Unique Resource, beyond what wikipedia-the-repository-of-encyclopedic-content is ever going to contain. 74-whatever 12 Oct
5. _, see what happens in discussion#B (see below). NikkiMaria
6. y, cannot use YJW as a source, but an external link is just dandy. - Jack Sebastian 4 Nov
7. y, I don't think another external link threatens creating a link farm. Chris Troutman 17 Nov
8. y, high-quality wikis are an excellent external resource for precisely this reason ... tidbits that are wholly inappropriate for a proper encyclopedia. —Justin/koavf 21 Nov
9. N, just don't find them as significant. ...the little amount of information they have. --Lucia 22 Nov

Now, that is a very good record. And policy is on our side, methinks, which is the real key -- sooner or later, wikiJustice always leads to the correct stuff being in mainspace. But we want Lucia on our side, also. She is making good-faith arguments (much like Qwyrxian did) about how wikipedia ought to work. She's directly addressing your contention, that YJW qualifies under the ELNO#12 exception. And she is correct, it does not, I totally 100% agree... but only because I've heard of some of the wikis that passed that test. They were gi-nor-mous, with as many *currently-active* editors as YJW has total editors-of-all-time. Obviously, the written policy-text doesn't make it very clear that the unwritten meaning of "significant" is utterly-super-duper-massive.

  However, she's also now directly addressing *my* contention, that the YJW is a Unique Resource that contains a significant amount of stuff (again with that fuzzy word) that wikipedia never ought to contain. She agrees that is has stuff which doesn't belong in wikipedia, but disagrees that it is *significant* and points out that not many active editors are around to further flesh it out. You disagree... which is fine... but are starting to lash out in frustration, which is Not Good.

1. According to WP:ELNO#12 open wikis such as this are allowed only if it has substantial history and substantial amount of editors. Lucia 4 Nov (which is fair enough... but of course not our only argument)
2. I'm showing the illogic of your justification. --Morrow (badly phrased... which Lucia pointed out... and instead of apologizing you then went further)
3. 'many whine and make a fit over the wiki they participate in. ...Don't call other peoples vote "illogic". it's rude.' --Lucia (called vaguely-specified folks whiners... lost the moral high ground)
4. Vandalize a page and see how long they take to revert it. --Morrow (never a good idea to suggest this... although of course, logically, if security is never tested... but vandalism is a four-letter-word here)
5. you didn't look too deep or didn't even look --Morrow (accusation and assumes bad faith... now you have *definitely* also lost the moral high ground)
6. I did. i just don't find them as significant. ...I've seen all the links, but quite frankly, a list of characters can do the job much more effectively. Have you seen the little amount of information they have? --Lucia (she responds calmly... and that is good of her... but your final response was anything but WP:NICE, and pretty far from calm  :-)

  Now, understandably, this is all taking quite some time for such a seemingly-small change, and causing you some wikiStress, so you are reacting to her arguments a bit badly. You are getting a bit hot under the collar, and feel like she is your opponent. That is bad. She is not. She is defending how she believes wikipedia ought to be, just like Jack, just like NikkiMaria, just like you, and just like me. You must really really assume good faith, and try as hard as you can to WP:IMAGINE. Keep your cool. This is not a debating society, nor a political campaign. This is wikipedia, and all the pillars apply, but the most important one is, if any rule prevents you from improving wikipedia, ignore it. Lucia is doing her best to improve wikipedia, and that demands respect.

  I'll try and help out, and ask her if there is a possible disclaimer-slash-contextualizing-tagline we can add to the EL which would satisfy her concerns. You can also help out, in the obvious fashion, by fixing up your message, using the strikeout trick to get rid of what you changed your mind about saying -- since some folks including myself have already seen it after all that is perhaps the better way ... though you can also put (retracted) in the places where you make changes. Then, stick to WP:NICE, like a rock. Not everybody here does that; some folks will be quite rude. But the best bet is to stick to the high moral ground, stay zen, and concentrate on the pillars.

  Anyhoo, another small novel for you. I think you've made some goofs, but that doesn't mean you're doing badly. You are doing exceedingly well, in fact. And I expect we will have success. But I don't worry about the WP:DEADLINE, and neither should you. It helps to take a deep breath, just relax, and remember this is only the internet.  :-)   I'll go stick my note onto the talkpage, and then we'll start to see if there is a way to satisfy all parties. Thanks as usual for improving wikipedia. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 02:56, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

You are a great guy and know lots of things about Misplaced Pages. Why don't you have an account? --MorrowStravis (talk) 13:07, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Ah, you assume I'm a guy, and probably mammalian, but on the internet, no one knows when you are secretly an immigrant from Vulcan.  :->       Thanks for the compliment, appreciate it.

p.s. Your apology was fine, but once you realize your intent was not clear from your prose, strike the prose. (Isn't that a song? Nevermind.) So, go fix this stuff listed below, flattery will get you nowhere with me, but it might help us out with Lucia.

1. Youre having a go right? WP:AAGF
2. On what world is that little information? WP:NICE
3. if you say that then you didn't look too deep or didn't even look WP:AGF
4. Something like that must be supported with proof. WP:BURDEN

And while you are at it, read that WP:BURDEN thing twice... since we're the ones adding stuff, we have to prove it. Lucia gets to do what she is WP:REQUIRED to do. (Hint: de nada.)

1. over 20 ((kilo?))bytes of size data.
2. Everything is covered to much in great detail.

Plus, two bonus fixes while you are at it, for the bad-to-the-bone little grammar-nazi who lives in my heart. Methinks you prolly didn't mean 20 bytes.  :-) HTH. p.p.s. Guess I should be crystal clear about this topic. *You* can always go back and edit your *own* comments, later, as long as you don't change the meaning; you can even change the meaning of what you previously wrote, as long as you strikeout the old version (rather than potentially-misleadingly-delete-it). Nevah Evah mess with other folks comments, however, even to fix totally-glaringly-obvious typos; 90% will appreciate the help, but I learned the hard way that the other 10% will hate your guts forever, so best to avoid the risk. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 14:03, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but ...

Thanks for being nice to Pratham. But ... have a look at what you dismissed as "template spam", again, and you'll find my admittedly lengthy message trying to warn him about copyvio (and Begoon explaining why one image keeps getting deleted). He's headed for trouble very fast with images and the article was also full of copied wording in his versions; if you can get him reading, please try to explain that, too. Thanks and good luck! Yngvadottir (talk) 21:28, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I skimmed down it. The signal was lost for the noise. His english is pretty solid, and he understand talkpages and such, but he just applied for his first RfA, to prevent speedy deletions of his images.  :-)   He seems WP:COMPETENT, and full of wikithusiasm. I'll explain the COI and COPYVIO ropes, if I can. Might take more than one go-round, but we'll get there. Thanks for improving wikipedia. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 21:35, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Got your message, did my best. The thing is, there are a lot of admins less wishy-washy than me; if you could see the deleted contribs they show a determination to use a pic taken from another school's photo set, and although the notion that on Facebook or Google means it's up for grabs is a common one, eventually the irresistable force will meet the immovable object of our policies on copyvio and the community's problems with "I didn't hear that." So I see that as the emergency, and, hey, I admire the chutzpah of the RfA, which is what brought him to my attention. You are probably better at this than I am, and feel free to delete this section now. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:12, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it's largely the prerogative of the talk page's "owner", with block notices being the big exception and with archiving being preferred. My concern was more that if someone finds they've been discussed, they might be emnbarrassed. Thanks for the invite to join the non-existent cabal; I've been aware of it since User:Dennis Brown either started or co-started it, but I avoid projects on Misplaced Pages: I'm not very clubbable, as was said of Mycroft Holmes, and when I see something blowing up at AN/I for example, rather than opine on policy and good practice, or gods forbid, hit the block button, my first instinct is always to go talk to the editor or just fix the article. And the one project I did get involved with ended badly from my point of view, so I've become even more of a loose cannon. Plus they rejected me at the Teahouse as not nice enough or something '-) So you may run into me again doing something nutty, but it's usually as a loner. That's how I keep that weird pie-chart, not to mention keep 'em guessing what I am qualified to teach '-) (BTW I snooped; there are actually quite a few academics already on Misplaced Pages, at least one faculty lounge's worth hang out at User:Drmies's talk page, some of them also with extra buttons.) Yngvadottir (talk) 12:39, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

There's more lounging on my talk page than there is in my department, yes, and the drinks are much better. Drmies (talk) 13:54, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

This time I responded at my talk page. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:45, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Pratham is editing again; I responded to him at Talk:New R. S. J. Public School Senior Secondary. Yngvadottir (talk) 17:44, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Academic papers

Articles about academics often have Bibliography sections. The one about Professor Sheldrake has one, but it doesn't mention any of his academic papers, which I'm told are numerous. Might it be good for Misplaced Pages if someone added them to the Bibliography? I am willing to do the work, within reason, but I hesitate to step on sensitive toes, or to do work that might be reverted without good reason. Lou Sander (talk) 15:06, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I started that effort, and have some links for his earlier papers (the mainstream ones). But yes, pointless to do the work if it will just be reverted. I will pass along the links I found to ICRIASTA-or-whatever-their-name-is, if you feel like it. But the real problem is the battleground, not the sourcing. We *have* plenty of sources, which are being ignored as 'not consensus'. I've never seen an article in worse shape than this one. I'm going to announce that I'm planning to bring in help, because vzaak keeps reverting my talkpage comments now, and is attempting to build the case I am disruptive. See previous bans of 71-whatever, Alfonzo, and of course Tumbleman... who unfortunately had "theatricalized a persona for dispute studies" which is quite reminiscent of my own *authentic* stance. Sigh. Anyways, I'll go talk to vzaak, and see if I can convince them I'm not Tumbleman. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 15:35, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your wise advice. I think I shall pay less attention for a while to the triply united righteous defenders of science, and more to developing a bibliography of academic papers, mostly for my own enlightenment. Professor Sheldrake's website has a pretty complete list of them, with links to abstracts and full text versions of most. His own website isn't a reliable source overall, of course, but the bibliographic data cites verifiable papers in legitimate journals, and is therefore, I hope, reliable.

I don't think you are disruptive at all, unless disrupting disruptive editors is somehow disruptive. Lou Sander (talk) 16:08, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

That last sentence is hilarious, but not quite correct. Vast talkpage verbosity is absolutely disruptive in some cases, see WP:FILIBUSTER, named after the U.S. Senator Phil O'Buster who was a master of the technique in the 1790s and first portion of the eighteen-aughties. However, in my specific case on the Sheldrake page, the verbosity is a symptom of the basket-case nature of the article, and thus the talkpage. Very tough situation all around though... I cannot call in additional help from the WP:NICE cabal, because that would *add* to the verbosity... and thus drive good editors away like Dingo1729 for instance... besides, the *last* time somebody tried to bring in help, they got the WP:9STEPS treatment, right?

    But I also cannot simply hush-ma-verbosifyin-maaouth, to let the BLP article stand as it is, non-neutral and screwed up. Sigh. Anyhoo, we'll see whether I can convince Vzaak that I'm a human, rather than Just An Annoying IP. They are clearly the current WP:OWNer of the article, having literally five *times* more mainspaced edits than anybody else, and they are *not* in league with Barney's WP:NPA tactics (despite failing to speak *against* said techniques per pillar four policy). Vzaak is just conflating a couple things, and thus slightly biased, but methinks they will come around, and once that happens, David and Josh-aka-QTv and Vzaak will quickly get the article back into NPOV-shape. Anyhoo, thanks for improving wikipedia, see you around. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 16:37, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

p.s. here are my URL-notes-for-later, sorry they are very rough, most I have *not* visited, please treat these as POV-and-unreliable-until-proven-otherwise. HTH 74.192.84.101 (talk) 16:37, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't know... But maybe that's just me. Lou Sander (talk) 18:23, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

There is a warning I have, which I don't know whether it applies to any of the URLs I mentioned, or to any on Sheldrake's website, which is that some peer-reviewed-journals are scams, inventions for the purpose of cloaking an idea in the respectability of science without any of the actual trappings, such as the Peer-Reviewed Journal Of Bigfoot Sightings By True Believers... i.e. the 'peers' are not scientific, but social and promotional 'peers' in some cases. Very difficult to detect, but if you follow the cites, you can find these things out. I wrote up a FAQ about this problem, see Wikipedia_talk:Fringe_theories#Are_claims_fringe_if_no_WP:RS_calls_them_fringe.3F Thanks for improving wikipedia. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 18:54, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

"Vast talkpage verbosity is absolutely disruptive in some cases"

You said that. Yes, it is. Please limit the length and number of your contributions to Talk:Rupert Sheldrake. You're bloating up the page, and too much of your text reads like stream-of-consciousness. I'm asking you to slow down, and to edit your future contributions for clarity, reader-friendliness, and especially relevance. Your fellow editors are not perfect, but surely they deserve that much. Bishonen | talk 17:01, 31 October 2013 (UTC).

Hello Bishonen, and I meant it when I said it -- I have studied WP:WALLOFTEXT deeply, and see myself described there; my userpage was once a redirect to that policy. I do attempt to keep a reasonable limit on my contributions, as simple as possible but no simpler... but I fully admit TLDR is definitely a disease I suffer from. Plus, as you point out, there are N readers of a sentence, for every one writer thereof.

    That said, there are some mitigating circumstances here. I've never heard of Sheldrake or his morpho-stuff prior to getting sucked into the WP:BATTLEGROUND, so part of the reason that you see stream-of-consciousness in my posts there is that I'm trying to get a reality-check on whether my reasoning is flawed. This necessarily bulks out my posts, as I am a n00b about the topic, if not about wikipedia herself. I'm no longer a morphogenetics-n00b, by painful necessity, so I expect this particular mitigating circumstance is now largely solved. (However, that does not solve my tendency toward verbosity in general.)

    The second problem, which I consider far more serious (and quite frustrating to me), is that even other editors with reasonable concerns very similar to mine, all of whom are registered usernames, and all of whom manage quite well to post without crossing the TLDR line, are also being ignored, as far as mainspace goes. WP:IDHT. User:David_in_DC has made several good-faith edits, attempting to get the problem of what job-title the BLP is going to get, and is insta-reverted every time. User:VeryScaryMary came specifically to the talkpage to ask about that same problem, and it immediately burst into flames, with nothing being done. Iantresman, Lou_Sander, and various others, same exact story with slight variations. Lots of talkpage changes, never resulting in any change in mainspace, goto ten. Skim the vast talkpage... which has at least five or six different sections specifically devoted to whether the current article's author-and-parapsychologist is NPOV, rather than the vastly-better-supported-by-sources biologist-and-author-who-does-work-in-parapsychology. If it was just the job-title, that would be one thing... but the badly-POV-flawed sentence on the Sokal hoax, the downplay of fellowships, the refusal to mention the Ph.D, and the elimination of mention of the 30 years and half-dozen-to-a-dozen-books... no matter the issue, the mainspace article just stays broken, and never improves substantively (enough to gain talkpage consensus! there are many edits... just none Solving The Problems... which leads to another round of talkpage frustration).

    The third problem, which I am the only one attempting to address directly (at least one other editor having expressed fear of the admin-fallout which has led to three blocks/bans that I know about in the very recent past), is the root cause of the second problem. Sheldrake has always been a controversial figure. But if you compare his BLP article in May 2013, with his BLP article now (not to mention the recently-deleted article on the BLP's ideas as distinct from the BLP), you will notice a sea-change from a slight-pro-Sheldrake-lean, to a noticeably-significant-anti-Sheldrake-lean. That is *very* bad for BLP. It is not quite an attack-page, per se, since everything on it is more-or-less-true, and more-or-less-sourced. But there is definitely WP:CHERRYPICKING, and there is definitely WP:EDITORIALIZING. Because the page is such a warzone, it has been locked against me being able to make my own mainspace edits. Barney, who has the admirable goal (in all seriousness with no sarcasm intended whatever) of educating the wikipedia readers about true science, and keeping them from mistaking pseudoscience for the real deal, mentioned bringing an admin into the picture, with the oh-so-convenient idea (okay *that* part was sarcasm) that the talkpage should also be locked, because Some People Are Dangerous IP Vandals which threaten the sanctity of WP:BLPTALK. Sorry to disappoint, but my primary goal is WP:NICE and WP:RETENTION, and I see warzones as a problem to be solved, by ending the war... not by *winning* the war, but by getting mainspace compliant with WP:BLP, and sentences that everybody can live with aka WP:CONSENSUS. Which is impossible, in the WP:BATTLEGROUND environment, which started long before I arrived.

    So, having absolutely positively justified that charge of verbosity... <grin> ...I will await your advice. I'm against banning, and blocking, of anybody. I'm against boomerang. I'm against admin-involvement at all, quite frankly, if it can be avoided. (Thus I provide you no diffs here, nor investigate further myself to find my exact accusers, or what they said; if you think diffs from me will *help* you improve the situation, then they do exist, and if you want answers about some particular accusation, ask and you shall receive, I'll try to keep it terse.) Fundamentally, I want everybody to leave the page satisfied, at the end of the week or month or however long this basket-case takes to fix, not leave holding grudges and plotting revenge. I've been debating whether or not to call for reinforcements... but the last time somebody tried that, they were instantly brought before a noticeboard on WP:CANVASSING charges. I will not attempt to bring help to the Sheldrake fiasco, without first discussing a neutral method of 'jury selection' on the article-talkpage. (Never thought I would have to worry about such things....) Furthermore, I'm halfway convinced adding additional voices can only hurt. The talkpage is already way too crowded, and the problems and personalities too complex.

    If you have advice, please offer it. This is not the worst article I've ever seen on wikipedia -- in fact it is *incredibly* well-sourced if a bit disjointed -- but it is, bar none, the worst talkpage I've ever seen, including all of the 2012 senate and house and presidential election pages. Those were a walk in the park, by comparison. Sorry to talkpage your ear off, thanks for improving wikipedia, appreciate you not chopping my access off, and instead just giving me some friendly TLDR advice. I'll do my best to take it to heart, even if my answer to you here on *my* talkpage seems to flout the general idea.  :-)     — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 19:24, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Oh god. Maybe on a good day I'll read all the above. I have some health problems, and don't want to make them worse. :p. I'm afraid I don't have any advice about the article. I should think very few people are prepared to read that talkpage by now, and I agree that throwing more people at it can only hurt. I should mention that you and I don't seem to be on the "same page" (see what I did there?) a lot, since you apparently regard VeryScaryMary and Iantresman as forces for good on that page (unless I've misunderstood you) and I frankly don't. I thought I understood what you meant by WP:NICE, but maybe not, if you see IRWolfie as affiliated with it. Whether or not, Wolfie didn't leave because of the Sheldrake page. See the current disaster on his talkpage. Bishonen | talk 20:51, 31 October 2013 (UTC).

Heh heh heh... yeah, sorry about wall-o-text. Please feel free to skip the above entirely; I'll try and tone down my floodgates on the Sheldrake talkpage. (And in fact, you can skip the rest of *this* message, which is explaining who the forces-of-good and the forces-of-misguided at the moment are, if you care to know the gory details.) I realize that Iantresman and VeryScaryMary tend to lean a bit on the pro-Sheldrake side... everybody has bias so that's no shame... but calling the man a biologist, since he spent 21 years post-undergrad doing that (and still is experimenting and a visiting professor and winning grants and such) is *fair* rather than pro-Sheldrake. Up until this summer, that is just what the page said, right at the top, as well as listing the N books that Sheldrake has authored over the past thirty years. Since the emergent behavior that looks like the Grand Sceptic Conspiracy but is really just disconnected individuals all reacting to the external-TEDx-censorship-furor, Sheldrake is *never* allowed to be called a biologist except in the decades-past-tense, *never* allowed to be called a highly successful author. That's distorting the truth, and playing into the hands of people who want to see Sheldrake as the persecuted genius.

    So, yes, absolutely, at this moment both VeryScaryMary and Iantresman __are__ forces of good-for-wikipedia on the talkpage right now, because they want the article to say the plain truth! That makes the skeptics the bad-for-wikipedia guys, trying to distort the truth for POV reasons, and turns them from defenders of reason (and champions of wikipedia!) into defenders of we-pick-the-sources-that-says-what-we-likes. That makes Sheldrake look good, and wikipedia look bad. But at least a few of the skeptics are so frustrated they're also stooping to personal attacks, and sarcasm as a drive-away-others tactic, and especially IDHT... which as a WP:RETENTION champion is what drove *me* nutty enough to dive in headfirst, and I'll stay till it looks fixed. (Even those that do not so stoop... stay complicit through silence.)

    Grrrr. The longer the talkpage warzone goes on, the better Sheldrake looks, which is the opposite of what the pro-skeptic forces want. As for IrWolfie, he *is* on the WP:RETENTION members list at #67, and he *does* do some good things, like leaving personal notes on talkpages rather than template-spamming (ahem... more on milquetoast another time perhaps). But although honestly interested in WP:RETENTION, he is not above trying to use the ban-hammer to create a win for skepticism, or watching silently while other shred pillar four... Not Good. He's a very competent editor though, just prickly about specific topic-areas, and the rest of the forces-of-reason on the Sheldrake page are also crucial to wikipedia's long-term health... just misguided in tactics, where Sheldrake is concerned (his highly respectable science-credentials coupled with his telepathy-like theories push the Big Red Button of raging emotion). The way to silence mystic voodoo is not to censor it, and drive away proponents from wikipedia, the best way is WP:NICE, and reliance on sources, not WP:9STEPS. I'll skip reading IRWolfie's talkpage, but they *are* an asset to wikipedia, if they can just keep WP:NICE in mind. p.s. Is it true you know the famed Bishzilla, awesome titan of the deeps? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 21:55, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Bishonen: It is worth it to read 74.192.84.101's lengthy posts, especially the ones in this section. I am agnostic on VeryScaryMary and Iantresman, but their posts here are civil and thoughtful, as are 74's. Lou Sander (talk) 22:04, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

74.192.84.101. Well, if you'd looked, you'd know Wolfie is no longer an asset to Misplaced Pages. He's left. :-( I've met Bishzilla, yes, and even travel in her pocket sometimes. Cosy! Bishonen | talk 22:12, 31 October 2013 (UTC).

Sigh. See, *this* is why I hate warzones, because of casualties we cannot afford. Gotta go trick-or-treat now. Thanks for improving wikipedia, folks. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 22:19, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

What you really need to do is to write your walls of text so that you get it out of your system, put in the tiny edit summary which sums up what you've said, then delete the wall of text, and press "Save page" You seem to be good at summarising into that small box, so much so that I stopped reading the walls of text days ago. All my love - Rox. --Roxy the dog (resonate) 00:21, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

(please see edit-summary :-)     74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:33, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

You see, I'm right. You could edit mainspace too. Create an account, and we could hold you to account better too. --Roxy the dog (resonate) 00:36, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

(Ummm... edit mainspace without WP:NINJA insta-reverts?) Well, sure, I could create 74zillaKrakenFromTheDeepsTheOneWhoSwallowedBishMwwuaahahaaa, and link it to this IP, and make myself a userpage, and so on and so forth. (There's some practical difficulties, nothing *too* horrid.) But that's never been interesting to me. And philosophically, I've always been in favor of the-encyclopedia-anyone-can-edit. Creating an account violates that principle. In the last year or so, however, is when I became a WP:NICE nazi... and it became very clear to me, from looking at WP:RETENTION and the RfA process and metaWiki stuff, that wikiCulture has become a caste-system. I intend to fix that, and part of doing so means I *need* to be Just Another Anon, 74-blah. There's actually another user I noticed on the Sheldrake talkpage, QTvX-whatever aka Josh, that has a philosophy somewhat similar to mine. Anyhoo, I'll stop typing now, and concentrate on distilling the essence into my edit-summary. Also, imagine that I'm resonancing my edit-summary in your direction, morphically implanting it so you can actually remember what it said *before* you bother reading it, which will *really* save you a lot of time, going forward, now won't it?  :-)     Thanks for improving wikipedia, see you on the talkpage. p.s. If my IP were to dynamically get re-assigned tomorrow, and 47-blah showed up on the Sheldrake talkpage, posting huge walls and demanding wp:nice, could you *possibly* not think it was moi? Methinks the trouble here is that some folks aren't too 100% sure I'm not secretly tumbleman, back from the dead, out to transhumanize myself er elzzz... I'm not o'course... but I'd say that if I was riiight? Sigh. You know that story already, though, methinks. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 03:07, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Wars and rumors of wars

There is a rumor that the BBC has, within the last day or so, interviewed a well-known author/lecturer/scientist who commented pretty specifically on a well-known BLP and its argumentative talk page. It's only a rumor, of course, but keep yer eyes on the telly. Lou Sander (talk) 04:56, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, I've always heard, do not fire until you see the whites of their eyes, is the old rule. Plus, the teevee is not my friend -- I keep a sharp eye on 'em, to make sure they stay off. I'm hoping the rumors are wrong, but I won't be too surprised if they turn out correct... bound to happen sooner or later. I'd rather any mainstream coverage that DOES happen, wait to happen until *after* we get the article cleaned up by NPOV standards, though. The talkpage discussion may finally turn into something that will substantively improve the actual text of the actual mainspace article... rather than just a bunch of talkpage heat, with little light, and no mainspace progress, goto ten. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 14:36, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Further review of my source shows that "BBC World Service" might be radio instead of teevee. My source is impeccable, but is a more-or-less primary one. I don't want to share it here, but could do so by double top secret email. (No sharing Source's contact info, fer example). It might take your breath away, which might be a good thing, since I hear that long-windedness is disruptive, cause for banning, etc. (though I don't have a WP:RS on that). ;-) Lou Sander (talk) 19:12, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

As a old time radio nut Lou, you know full well that BBC World Service is radio. --Roxy the dog (resonate) 22:31, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict... Roxy, pay attention, I morphed you not to click save until I finished! SRSLY  :-) Actually, I've heard their broadcasts, a few years back... BBC-world-svc is 24/7 news-radio, paid for by the UK govt, but re-broadcast (partially) in the USA on various NPR/PBS stations (subsidized by the feds in the Colonies). Depending on how much secondary coverage the interview gets (which is right now still just a rumor by that guy with the Commodore key-layout memorized :-) it might or might not be considered "slow news day" stuff. David_in_DC and I had an inclusive-as-yet discussion about a not-very-notable copycat novel, over on the Steinbeck page... some lady had written a book, and it got onto the local teevee broadcasts in her hometown in Nebraska, her residence in Connecticut, and once in Iowa (for unknown reasons). So it was more than the trivial nightly newscast... but it was also just a burst of coverage, WP:BLP1E, and may not have risen above WP:SPIP to the level of WP:NOTEWORTHY, and *certainly* was nowhere near WP:N. Anyways, we'll have to wait and see. BBC does have webcasts on their website, methinks, but I don't know if they have written transcripts, or just streaming audio... and they may not have any search function.

    The coverage alleging wikipedia-the-bastion-of-biased-unreliability has *so* far been limited to Sheldrake's blog (which is actually quite mild... but does hint that defamation is not off the table... and even if there *were* no such hinting WP:BLP is clear as a bell that nothing should cross that line)... as well as Weiler's blog, who apparently personally knows Sheldrake, and must be famous/infamous thereby, who personally edited -- talkpage only per WP:COI -- from mid-Sept until mid-Oct, leaving about a week before I got sucked in.

    In *other* news, more important to me personally than whether Sheldrake gets some BBC airtime, TRPoD has just offered a very useful revised-draft sentence, which is close enough to NPOV that it should definitely go into mainspace, methinks. Progress. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 22:50, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Roxy: Yes, I guess I do know that; that's why I corrected myself. But back when I first listened to the BBC World Service, there WASN'T any television. I just jumped to the conclusion that they had kept up with the times. Lou Sander (talk) 23:23, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

TB

TB

Again. And again.

TB

November 2013

If this is a shared IP address, and you did not make the edits, consider creating an account for yourself so you can avoid further irrelevant notices.

reason for block is unclear

Hello again Anthony, I'm also in the dark on your reasoning. User_talk:AGK#User_74.192.84.101. Your block-message specifying 'generally disruptive editing' and your edit-summary specifies WP:NOTHERE. Instead of specifying a diff that was an example of behavior leading to the block... or, if I might point out, first opening a discussion about that behavior... you just gave a generic rationale. Can you be more specific please, where you are seeing problematic behavior?

My understanding is that blocks are not supposed to be used for punitive purposes, but are supposed to be a way of forcibly opening dialog, when other methods of opening dialog have failed. Well then, consider the forcible dialog opened. But you could have just asked nicely, that I refrain from editing whatever-was-the-trouble, while you explained your concerns.  :-/ I'm in the middle of trying to reply to Mark Miller (also of WP:RETENTION) on his question about whether the Second Amendment is for "the people", for "individual americans", for "citizens", et cetera.

p.s. You and I once exchanged a couple of emails, concerning an old ArbCom case, at one point. I assume this block today has nothing to do with that? Thanks for your help. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 14:16, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

I didn't know we'd exchanged e-mails, so this does not relate to that, no; and this action was not on behalf of ArbCom. I blocked you because this edit seemed threatening, or like trolling, to me. If it wasn't, please explain the edit and I will happily reconsider my block. Regards, AGK 15:50, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

I suggest you go away for a while, and get a proper login when your ban expires. Anon editing isn't intended for serious long-term editors. Barney the barney barney (talk) 16:04, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm a serious long-term editor, too, Barney. But as I've explained in your vicinity before, I edit as 74 because of philosophical and advocacy-for-change-related-reasons. I suggest, that you stop suggesting, that people you disagree with about content (or philosophy) should go away. WP:RETENTION, I'm a one-note flute on this subject. Driving away editors is a Bad Thing. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 16:59, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

AGK, the user in question previously flooded Talk:Rupert Sheldrake with comments while treating it as a battleground, and was asked to tone it down per above. The user has continued at the Sheldrake talk page and has since made false allegations toward me there. The Sheldrake article is permanently semi-protected, so the user is not there to contribute. (stat script) vzaak (talk) 16:28, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Hello again Vzaak. ((Update: have not seen your complaints on the Sheldrake talkpage per #11. While there might be honest mistakes about the dates, and if so I will apologize, the lede is currently heavily biased, and downplays the BLP's highly respectable academic credentials very often. I'm still against involving upper-level admins, but AGK is about as upper-level as you can get, so if they feel like delving into the changes to the Sheldrake-family of pages since April -- myself on there since the end of October -- then that is up to you Vzaak, if you wish to invite such.)) 74.192.84.101 (talk) 16:59, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, I can certainly understand your confusion, Anthony.  :-)     I'm sorry if anybody took offense (to include yourself!); that was certainly not my aim. The entire intent of that diff was humour, although it was ha-ha-only-serious in minor ways. You will note that the previous couple comments were also humorous -- Bish and User:Darwinbish/Stockfish, after MontanaBW was referring to WP:WADR which *currently* is a soft-redirect to the dry truthful wiktionary definition... but my understanding is that (given the context of our conversation about friendlyism and freedom of speech), is that they were referencing a much older satirical definition, found here now -- Misplaced Pages:WikiSpeak#WADR. "respect, noun. Often used as in with respect, or with all due respect, euphemisms for I think you're talking bollocks."

((Later update -- turns out there was a third WADR, an essay that Bishonen deleted, which was not the satirical-WikiSpeak-dictionary. User_talk:Bishonen#The_Wrong_Venue. Not sure what this version used to say, but prolly a serious-essay and not a humor-essay, which means MontanaBW was not joking in their reference. Bish's stockfish comment was still a humorous one, however.)) 74.192.84.101 (talk) 23:47, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

   After chuckling at that, I read some of the rest of the page, and then posted a humorous-to-me-anyhoo response to the thread on Bishonen's talkpage, which involved Misplaced Pages:WikiSpeak#J in the picture-section (collapsed as a swipe at the anti-pornography arbcom cases tho I doubt anyone got that), as well as my own bit of doggerel-singing which is a lightly-modified version of Misplaced Pages:WikiSpeak#collaborate, which defines "collaborate, verb, to agree to work productively with another editor, following ten talk-page threads, nine reports to ANI, eight RfCs, ...two angry blog posts, and a partridge in a pear tree." The use of allcaps in the edit summary was also supposed to be satirical, and while I certainly can grok how, seeing SHOUTing, plus "big guns", plus WP:NICE nazi (which is self-referential btw), and then all the battleground-flavored words of the supposed-to-be-entirely-satirical song itself, plus the naked man with the photoshopped head.... hmmmm.... perhaps I should consider toning down the silliness? But I must admit, *I* still think the song is funny.

   Still, my only intended "threat" was to caterwaul in a horrid singing-voice. Are you still worried about disruptiveness? And, more importantly, did I accidentally offend Bish or MontanaBW or Aunva? (I've only just interacted with Aunva in that conversation....) I will be happy to self-revert and apologize all around, if so. And I'll try not to combine nudity, nazis, and silliness in the future. But my more serious point was, that WP:NICE is not something that can be rubberized. We need good editors, with brains and competence... but if they cannot follow pillar four, and are driving away *future* good editors, then we're shooting ourselves in the foot. I strongly agree with the serious-point-behind-the-satirical-gist of the song: doing battle on the noticeboards is NOT 'collaboration' and isn't the right way to run the wikiverse. The five pillars are the right way, and pillar four is right up there at the top, in my book. Anyways, apologies for the lengthy reply, hope this clarifies that diff, please feel free to ask further questions if not. Thanks. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 16:59, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

In that case, no, I am not still worried about disruptiveness, and I have unblocked your account. Thank you for explaining yourself, and I'm sorry to have inconvenienced you. Regards, AGK 12:38, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Gracias. Will reply on your talkpage, as a field-test. :-)   — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 13:59, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Valor Christian High School

Glad to see I help keeping you busy, but I suggest you read this info on the talk page of Barek, the admin who semi-protected Valor Christian High School, because there's some valuable info about that article there. Thomas.W 15:27, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, seriously, please feel free to ping my talkpage when you run across somebody that needs hand-holding. I'm trying to figure out how to boost WP:RETENTION, we get over 1000 new editors a month, and *lose* slightly more... every month. I'm trying to write a one-page Misplaced Pages Survival Manual, and in the meantime as part of that effort, am personally trying to help beginning editors, so I can figure out what they do not understand. I also recommend giving folks the WP:TEAHOUSE link, in case they need instant response.

    The controversy section on Valor looks reliably-sourced to me, and I'll explain to Dina that notability is not temporary, and that the SCHAA thing will *always* be somewhere in the depths of wikipedia mainspace. That said, it does look like the controversy-section could be edited to be a little more neutral: right now, it mentions no dates whatsoever (except in the footnotes), so the paragraph on the controversy makes it sound like the school has *always* done these things, and *will* always do such things. They'll always teach algebra, but they prolly won't always do whatever caused the Great Sports Controversy of 2012, or whatever this is all about. Rather than you or me making the edits, though, I'll try to walk Dina through how *she* can make them, so that she ends up thinking the section is fair and NPOV. Because, quite frankly, neither you nor I is going to want to watch over Valor HS the rest of our lives, so we need at least one local who knows how wikipedia works. Maybe Dina is the one? Anyways, thanks for improving wikipedia, by keeping folks from deleting reliably-sourced stuff. It's appreciated. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 18:42, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

    p.s. If the page-protect expires, we can always just explain the situation to some other admin, and get it put back in place. Are you willing to put the Valor talkpage on your watchlist, so that Dina can make her rough-draft-edits there as 199, and once she's got them neutral, you move them into mainspace? If not, no prob, I'll rustle up somebody else. Dina may have some COI, and the bright line rule suggests she should not be putting things into mainspace personally, if she does. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 18:42, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

The article already is on my watchlist (one of several thousand items on the list), that's how I keep track of what the people at Valor are doing. I realise I can't "patrol" all of WP so I restrict it to my own watchlist. A list that keeps getting added to since I always check the contributions of people who do bad things, to see if they've done mischief on other articles too. Which they all too often have... Thomas.W 18:56, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, it's a dirty job, and seems to grow bigger every day. But don't let it grind you down! We lose too many people, who get burned out. My longer-term goal, over the next few years, is to increase the number of 5+edits/month people from 31k to double or triple that number. Beginners are the seed-pool, where all our vandal-fighters come from. Part of the reason your watchlist is growing so fast, is because you don't have enough reinforcements coming to watch with you. Anyways, wikipedia thanks you for your work, and I thank you as well. Take it easy on the poor beginners, that merely suffer from WP:NOCLUE, that's all I ask. Hey, I was going to ask at the teahouse, but maybe you know: where are the notability guidelines for high school and two-year vocational-technical-trade-schools, and such? WP:NSCHOOL suggests that every school must meet general Notability guidelines, but rumor has it that pretty much every high school can have an article, if they want one. Is the rumor wrong? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 19:33, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

I think you’ve gotten the wrong idea

74, despite what my user contributions might suggest this is not the first IP I’ve edited from nor even the second. I’ve been around for a while, and I spent more than a year reading talk pages before I ever contributed to one. I’ve learned that different pages need different kinds of help to sort out their problems. Sometimes they need a bad cop. Sometimes they need someone to be more assertive. Sometimes they just need someone with a lot of time on their hands.

Look at it this way:

Over at Cold Fusion they have forty five archived talk pages. The cold fusion crew has to contend with Brian Josephson the Nobel laureate turned Misplaced Pages editor. Cold Fusion has been a fantastically contentious issue. And yet, the talk page is a fairly quiet place, and the article is relatively stable.

Rupert Sheldrake, on the other hand, is a war zone. The situation has gotten so out of control that it’s actually newsworthy. It’s become an eyesore. And Tumbleman was able to flat out troll the page for nearly two months. Vzaak, Roxy, Red Pen, and Barney all seemed like competent editors, yet they had been ineffectual in dealing with the situation. I figured that they just needed a little help. I thought that they needed someone who didn’t care about their reputation to help bring the situation to a head so that there could finally be peace. But the thing about Misplaced Pages pages is that they’re like a planchette on a Ouija board. There might be many fingers on the planchette, but who’s actually controlling it can be very hard to determine.

Your assertion that Vzaak attacked me over the situation with David is incorrect. My comment to David was in direct response to his attack on me and Red Pen whereby he characterized our comments as “bleating”. If you want to fathom Vzaak’s motives then consider the events of two days ago:

20:09- Philosophyfellow posts on WP:BLPN.

21:33- CM-DC appears to side with Philosophyfellow.

22:11- Vzaak posts a commet on WP:BLPN, complains about people not contributing constructively.

22:27- Vzaak attacks me on Sheldrake’s talk page.

23:28- Vzaak posts on WP:BLPN. Blames “both sides”.

00:35- Vzaak posts again. Implicates both sides again.

Initially it kind of seems like he’s trying to throw me under the bus, but the comments about both sides being at fault, and Vzaak’s history speak of a bigger issue. Vzaak’s trying to play both sides against the middle. He’s developed a serous WP:OWNership issue with Sheldrake, and I think that, on some level, he may not really want the conflict to end. I think Vzaak may be the type that revels in controversy. Perhaps he likes being at the center of a dispute so heated that it has attracted media attention.

At this point I’m pretty sure that I don’t know how to help improve the situation on Rupert Sheldrake. Usually both sides actually want the conflict to end; they just want it to end in their favor. However, if Vzaak actually wants to continue the conflict then I have no idea how to resolve that situation. 76.107.171.90 (talk) 21:13, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

(butting in here) Have you looked at Vzaak's contributions? He's on some anti-Sheldrake mission. It's all he/she works on. I tried to temper the most aggressive voices on that talk page a few months ago and I think I created enemies for life. The odd thing is that I don't care about Sheldrake, I simply went to the talk page because it kept coming up at AN/I and I was wondering what everyone was fighting over. Instinctively, I ended up defending Editors I thought were being dismissed and bullied but that didn't help them and only brought me grief. I keep waiting for things to calm down and then return but it doesn't sound like anything has gotten better over the past two months. Liz 00:20, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

    ((edit conflict)) Hey Liz, welcome. And I've been breathing damn morphic stuff since October 24th, so yes, I've looked over Vzaak's work in depth. Swear up and down, though, he's not anti-Sheldrake, he's just pro-truth, and believes there is no such thing as WP:SkePOV. Vzaak wants the reader to not be misled, and assumes -- quite rightly -- that the average reader is *easily* misled. There has been some excruciatingly slow progress, this past week, from TRPoD and Roxy... scientist got put into mainspace, several times, for instance... but in real-world blogs and magazines and the BBC, the *real* pro-Sheldrake folks have been beating the publicity-drums. Anyways, it's a mess, I got there like you from noticing weird noises elsewhere ("edit war over largely 'been' centered"). Nothing wrong with Vzaak having a niche-topic focus; once the warzone is resolved, one way or another, they will branch out elsewhere, and be a big asset methinks.

   Like yourself 76, I've been around. Unlike yourself, I pretty much *never* visited talkpages, until very recently when I noticed something wrong in WikiCulture, sensing a disturbance in the wikiverse, as it were. (Proof of morphic wiki-resonance! Woo!) Long ago, I read the five pillars, and then stayed in article-space, communicating only through edit-summaries. A nice wikiLife. I get the sense that the four folks you named first dove in deeply this summer; they are very competent, but have a couple subtle misunderstandings of pillar two... I had very similar misunderstandings myself, back in the day.

   My sense is that Vzaak hates the conflict, and would LUUUV for the warzone to go away, and in fact just flat does not grok why it hasn't already... which is because wikipedia reflects the sources, which is not identical with reflecting the truth. You said something, along those lines, about how Sheldrake cannot be both a scientist, and a not-a-scientist, because those categories are mutually exclusive. But wikipedia cares not for logic, all it cares for is WP:RS and WP:V. Using logic is WP:OR, waaay beyond WP:CALC of simple arithmetic. We have sources that conflict, so we must quote both sources. "As of 2013, $foo says Sheldrake is a biologist, but $baz says Sheldrake is not." That's NPOV in wikipedia, which was called that, instead of truth-o-pedia, for good reason.

   Anyways, enough bleating outta me.  :-)     What sort of pages do you edit when you are *not* trying to tamp down the heat (heh) on the Cold Fusion and Subquantum Telepathy talkpages? Got any interest in VTOL aircraft, per chance? Some fine folks asked me to help mess with their fine work, see below. You're welcome to join, if you like. None of that BadCop crapola, though, purty please.  ;-)   74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:04, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

74, When I mentioned different IPs I didn’t mean that I’ve been doing something unsavory. I just meant that I have literally edited from different places. My job has me moving around a lot.

And, what you witnessed wasn’t “bad cop”. That’s not the way bad cop works. In order for there to be a bad cop there must be a good cop as well. What I was trying to do was to be assertive. I figured that since the Sheldrake crew had such difficulty dealing with a simple troll that they probably had assertiveness issues.

I don’t think that Vzaak sits down each night and thinks to himself; “how shall I make the Sheldrake page an even more contentious place tomorrow?” That’s not the way that self-saboteurs typically operate. People who thrive on disharmony derive a certain high from conflict. They have a tendency to find ways to create or prolog it.

But, like I said to David, psychology isn’t always an exact science. I think Vzaak’s trying to prolong the conflict. You think he’s trying to end it. Perhaps time will tell who’s right, or perhaps it won’t. Either way I think we can both agree that whatever Vzaak is doing hasn’t brought peace to the Sheldrake article.

As for the future, I’ve got some things I plan on doing in real life, so you probably won’t be seeing me around for a while. So long, for now. 76.107.171.90 (talk) 03:59, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Errr, yes, apologies, when I was talking about checkuser, it wasn't to imply you had been unsavory somehow (sounds like a pork-roast... savory mhmmmm... unsavory mehhhh). It was just to say, even though you and I are 'anons' in the sense that we don't login using some alphanumeric pseudonym, but just get assigned some dynamic jersey-number from the great ISP in the cloud, we still have to watch our behavior. (Actually, because we are low-caste IPs, we have to watch our step more carefully than an arbcom member.) But the point was, there *are* ways to figure out what the old IP numbers were, even if your job takes you from place to place, using browser cookies and user-agent strings and language-analysis and article-visitation-patterns and so on. So it's important to always retain the high moral ground. Besides, bad behavior from one anon, automatically transfers to the rest of their caste-group... gag me with a spoon.

   And... not to segue or anything... but if that was AssertiveCop, then I would hate to see BadCop!    :-O     >:-o     B-|     ;-)    My big WP:RGW goal is to keep people from reverting each other, and work together nicely. Being assertive *is* possible, without violating pillar four, methinks. But being assertive should not mean stooping to the homo sapiens hominem level. As for psychology being a science, I've read some of the Freud and Jung stuff... plus more modern stuff... and psychology is positively a pseudoscience, with psychiatry the equivalent of the voodoo-witch-doctor-potions. Best to avoid both sorts, whenever possible... but how else can we figure out how to interact with other humans, than through amateur psych? Sigh.

   Have enjoyed talking with you, and hope your real life plans go well. Drop in any time. p.s. With luck, if you come back in a week, or well okay dammit maybe a month, the Sheldrake talkpage will be as boring as the Cold Fusion portion of the wikiverse. Hope springs eternal. Thanks for improving wikipedia, see you later. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 04:23, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Barnstars for you!

		The Writer's Barnstar
		This barnstar is for many of your lengthy write-ups as documented at this user talk page and elsewhere. Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 00:21, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

		The Userpage Barnstar
		This barnstar is for this user talk page and should be self-explanatory otherwise, but anyways: much of this page is very witty. Dogmaticeclectic (talk) 00:21, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

  Would also appreciate your half-sentence take on the names mentioned, in terms of whether they would see my crazy not-a-cabal guerrilla schemes as somewhat-appealing-yet-scary, or alternatively, flat-out nuts-no-way.

not-a-cabal material?	name	notes
fmr MedCabal	Steven Zhang	has mentored editors both voluntarily and as part of mandatory arrangements, and will work with metrics, implementation, and as project leader ((currently runs DRN ... has refused to become an admin ... possibly too wise to get involved with Yet Another Not-A-Cabal in the startup phase))
unk.	EpochFail	is providing software & analysis support. The newcomer retention issues in Misplaced Pages are both concerning and complex. While personal support of promising newcomers is a clear solution in theory, in practice, it's hard to see any clear, positive outcomes of the current mentoring system. Musicant/Ren/Johnson/Riedl. Mentoring in Misplaced Pages: a clash of cultures. 9 pgs. ACM WikiSym'11. The proposed project would both solve some underlying problems in the current state of mentoring and serve as a unifying space for other newcomer support activities within the Misplaced Pages community (e.g. Teahouse, Snuggle, etc).
possible	Matty.007	is helping wherever he can. Many contributors on WP are made by passing editors, who make only a few edits. If we have a system to encourage editors not to make a few contributions then leave; we can teach them the tough policies and guidelines which are hard for newcomers to understand on their own. ((have seen them around))
unk.	Gabrielm199	interested in supporting analysis and relating relevant experience from education program. Socializing newcomers in open online communities remains a challenging proposition. Researchers and practitioners continuously explore new ways to make such informal and ad hoc environments less chaotic and uncertain for newcomers. I think this project will be a valuable addition not only to finding new ways to help newcomers on Misplaced Pages, but to the broader community of researchers and practitioners exploring similar issues in other open online communities.
maybe	Go Phightins!	is interested in helping wherever possible including providing resources from his personal adoption course (en:User:Go Phightins!/Adopt) if necessary as well as being a resource as someone who has experienced Adopt-A-User as both an adopter and an adoptee. ((have seen them around))
possible	Technical 13	is available for any technical support involving templates, scripts, or extension development. ((have seen them around))
maybe	Tech13 suggests: Theonesean	was working on a similar matching software/process to match mentors with those looking to be AfC reviewers last I knew.
no but a powerful allied force	Tech13 suggests: Kudpung	is very active in new proposals and may be helpful to get some insight or opinion from here. ((working on AfC and NPP and RfA and WER ... wise enough to stay away from nutty not-a-cabal crapola... but the not-a-cabal can be valuable to kudpung's related-but-orthogonal goals))
unk.	Siko	unk.
likely	Ocaasi	((battling for trademark-freedom))
unk.	Slventura	original idea creator.
unlikely?	Slowking4	((commented without joining))

Go ahead and edit the table directly, please, if you have the hankering. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 02:29, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

  One group assumed it meant, patriarchal patronizing badness, aka whoever had the bigger editcountitis score would order the morally-lesser editor around. Other folks assumed it would be them leading, and others following, like wp:adopt only briefer. Some people could not see how it was different from wp:adopt / wp:assist / wp:mentor, or even typically-two-person-at-a-time things like wp:teahouse / wp:refdesk / wp:helpdesk. There were other complaints and misunderstandings, too.

  So I've junked the idea of putting the *focus* on pairing. Instead, the new focus is on teams of approximately five editors, organized like the space shuttle, to give people the idea of "missions" and time-constrained and precision-teamwork for a good cause. Here is close to what I'm thinking about nowadays.

1. One person is the pilot, who gets to pick what article the team works on... but only for N minutes (where N==15 or something short), after which the pilot-role rotates to somebody else on the team.
2. Most of the other people are mission-specialists, who focus on something they enjoy: writing new sentences is the adder-role,
3. finding refs for existing sentences (perhaps just-added tho) is the cite-role,
4. clarifying & grammar/spell/punctuation-checking of existing-or-just-added sentences is the redpen-role / fixup-role,
5. deletionists who check for link/infobox/ref-spams and wp:peacock/wp:spa/wp:tone violations are the bluepen / cleanout-role, and so on.
6. finally, there *might* be a bodyguard/diplomat/anti-ninja role, who looks out for vandals during the 15-min timespan, watches out for whether somebody on the team is getting reverted (either by editors outside the team or editors within the team), and in general helps in a wikiCop role, walking the beat, to serve & protect
7. One person, typically whoever the pilot was last time, is the capcom that helps interact with other editors that might be on the page during the 15-minute span (regulars or other teams), but more importantly helps the team communicate with itself despite the limitations of wikipedia's communication-system.
8. Capcom is not the commander; they are a passive/descriptive role, sending FYI notices. In a real space-shuttle mission, there *is* a commander, who orders everybody else around; this is wikipedia, so the commander-role is reserved for User:Jimbo_Wales alone.  :-)   In practice, he may opt to choose some particular mission-specialist role, for any given 15-minute-mission, rather than sit around "being commander". But actually, I think beginners would get a kick out of having Jimbo on their team, and the "commander" role is pretty easy; you just say "go team rah rah" at the beginning of the mission, and at the end of the mission you say "good work sis-boom-ba" plus from time to time comment on something or fix something or remind somebody of the five pillars. So with luck Jimbo will show up from time to time, even when simultaneously busy with something else in real life.

  Every cycle, the first minute is spent deciding which article to work on; the pilot can unilaterally decide, can take a wp:poll, or whatever. If the pilot wants the gods to select the mission, they click Special:Random and report the results to the other team-members. Capcom is a volunteer role, with the pilot Once the mission begins, everybody travels to the article in question, and starts to work on it. The capcom puts a note on the article-talkpage in a standardized format, to let regulars know that a blitz-team has arrived, and to handle any disputes with wp:ninja folks that may arise. The capcom also creates a new section on their own personal talkpage, for team-related chatter which does not belong in the "permanent record" of the article-talkpage. Everybody including the pilot -- but excluding the capcom -- picks a role from the usual set of adder/cites/fixup/cleanout/diplomat/combo, with "all" being allowed as a role... but discouraged since 15 minutes is such a short timespan. They announce their role-choice on the capcom's talkpage, and get to work.

  Everybody on the team plays their role for 10 or 12 minutes, improving the article. In the final three-or-fewer minutes, everybody on the team reviews the overall diff, making sure that the article *was* improved, discussing amongst the team, performing any last-minute fixes, writing up a one-sentence summary of the changes for the article-talkpage, and optionally a todo-list for some future blitz-team to work on. Then the 15-minute-cycle begins again, with the old pilot retiring (perhaps becoming the new capcom by default?), and the new pilot being selected by some TBD mechanism which is both fair and flexible.

  The obvious advantage to this sort of scheme is that it permits large teams: pilot-slash-adder, cite-specialist, fixup-specialist, cleanout-specialist, diplomat-specialist, and capcom... and of course, nothing prevents you from having multiple adders/citers/fixers/cleaners/diplomats, which means teams of over a dozen editors are quite feasible out-of-the-box. You can even imagine a military-style hierarchical structure, with multiple teams working on a page simultaneously, coordinated by a super-capcom and a super-diplomat... but in practice I hope that teams will just pick an article which nobody else is working on.

  The subtle-but-crucial advantage is that there is no *lower* bound on the teamsize. The metaphor of the six roles is just a metaphor; if you only have five people, one person can take on a combo-role of diplomat-plus-cleaner. If you only have four people, one person is the cites-plus-fixup. If you only have three people, then you might have the capcom-person acting as the diplomat-plus-cleaner-plus-capcom, or you might have some null-roles (commander is always a null role sans Jimbo... diplomat is *usually* a null role unless the-revert-heard-round-the-wikiworld actually occurs). But you can play the game with two people. And most of the time, especially in the early days, folks will play with two people. So the rules and the roles are, as best I can, organized to optimize the two-person case, and *permit* the dozen-person case.

  Interestingly, even a *single* person can play the one-player-version of fun quick wikiTeaming, where they are simultaneously the pilot, capcom, adder, citer, fixer, cleaner, and diplomat. This is not much different from the usual way folks edit wikipedia, with one key exception: work is done in fifteen minute chunks (no dancing across half a dozen different articles simultaneously as I sometimes do), and at the start of every chunk, a standardized article-talkpage message is created by the "capcom" who in this case is also playing all the other roles as well, of course. That message is key: it allows us to implement a search-function, so that somebody who *wants* to try wikiTeaming, can perform a straightforward search to find other people that are *already* playing, and join their existing mission.

  For instance, if at 3:00pm Mike starts working on baronets, and is generating the "I am on a single-person wikiTeam" message every fifteen minutes, when I wake up at 3:33pm and do a search at 3:35pm, I will see that Mike has worked on some baronet-article at 3:00pm and at 3:15pm and is currently working on his 3:30pm mission-chunk. I can then immediately go to the page, add myself to the team, select a role for myself, and help Mike finish the already-partially-completed-mission-chunk. When 3:45pm rolls around, if he and I agree to form a team, we can flip a coin to see who is the pilot, the other one will act as capcom, and we can divvy up the mission-specialist roles as we see fit. If you get back from shopping, and check out who is wikiTeaming at 3:52pm, you'll notice Mike and me ... and can join in immediately if you wish. When 4pm rolls around, I may be tired of the aristocracy, and go off to work elsewhere, but you and Mike can keep going, or Mike can keep going in single-player mode, waiting for somebody to come along.

  The flip-side scenario is a bit harder, and I'm still working on it. The example above talks about a person who is looking to *join* a team, and how that works. Most beginning-editors will be in that boat, so I'm most worried about solving that scenario properly. But what about somebody looking to *recruit* a team to help? We can use Mike in this example, too... he has completed doing some offline work on the topic of the Conyers baronet, and is ready to add the new info to the article... but he needs a cite-specialist, to format the stuff!

  How does he recruit one? Well, one way is to do a search for people that are currently wiki-teaming, and then do a search for which wiki-teamers have the 'cite specialist' banner on their userpages, or have taken the 'cite specialist' role in their recent wiki-teaming-history. Then, he can join the team of some particular cite-specialist, wait until he becomes the pilot, and then fly the team over to the Conyers baronet article. This is not as farfetched or complex as it sounds; in the usual case, there will be some known cite-specialist playing single-player-wikiteaming, and Mike can join them for a few minutes to help complete their current mission, and then ask for their help completing his Conyers baronet mission.

  But, in case there is no cite-specialist available immediately, or if Mike needs something complex like (say) a team of four particular specialists for some difficult mission, it makes sense that there should be some way for Mike to submit a mission-description, and a team-specification, and then over time engage in recruiting and team-building work, until he has enough specialists signed up, and can schedule the mission-start. Alternatively/additionally, there should be some way to record "unfinished missions" where some parts of the team did some parts of the work already, but another specialist can come along later to clean things up.

  Anyhoo, wall-of-text alarm is ringing madly, so I'll stop here. If you have any ideas or criticisms about the space-shuttle-style fun quick wiki-teaming, please let me know. Will it be shot down, by enemies of the article-rescue-squadron, or similar? Will it be mistaken for yet-another-mentoring-thing-doomed-to-failure? Hmmmm... looking over what I wrote above, methinks that single-player-capcom messages should be placed on the user's own talkpage, rather than on the article-talkpage. That will keep folks who are watchlisting the article-talkpage from getting a bunch of 'informative' messages.

That sounds like it would be some people's idea of fun. But:

1. edit conflicts up the wazoo.
2. volunteer / hobby activity, on the internet, means an unknown number of us are doing this around offline (and else-net) competition for our attention. 15-minute blocks of uninterrupted time? Dream on. Factor in dropped connections here, too (not to mention Misplaced Pages itself going on the fritz because the WMF keep rejiggering the software.)
3. perhaps less significant for most, but I for one am congenitally unable to work on a single thing in isolation. Not so much that I edit multiple articles simultaneously, but that I almost always fix more than one class of problem at a time. It's the way my mind work. What sources I find and what they say affects the wording I use and often causes me to move things around and reorganize them; I automatically fix typos and tweak style and fill out incomplete refs and ... and ... one of the advantages to the wiki-method is that it accommodates that style as well as the person who makes a pass through the entire encyclopedia fixing instances of "teh" and then proceeds to another typo, the person who uses high-tech tools to add categories to 50 articles in 30 minutes ... and not unrelated to that, the person who only edits soccer player articles.

There are a plethora of ad hoc teams on Misplaced Pages. A well functioning WikiProject either is one or functions as the sort of search-for-a-group-operating-now that you are thinking through. At least two groups that I know of have made their own Wikiprojects to coordinate team article development and improvement: Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Rosblofnari, Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Quality Article Improvement. I am pretty darned unclubbable in the Holmesian sense, but found myself collaborating first with Drmies (many edit conflicts, gah, we expanded it in alternating edits) and then with Dr. Blofeld, Eric Corbett and Giano (and a knowledgeable local IP with a technical COI) at Bramshill House, and I started Rumskulla oak after someone proposed it as a neat topic on Drmies' talk page, and by the time he came back from an errand, three (IIRC) of us had made it pretty much what it is today. But the off-wiki interruptions and the edit conflicts get in the way, and it can be really hard to mesh your editing with someone else's. I think structure would help some and turn off others. (Eric, Giano, I, and to a lesser extent Drmies all tend to make big sweeping edits. The first two are probably what they mean by WikiDragons.) Yngvadottir (talk) 13:52, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the edit-conflicts are a definite problem... but the capcom is supposed to help with that, and the role-selection work. Most of the team-chatter will be something like "I'm working on adding a new sentence to the 'History of $foo' section now so the rest of you keep out" sort of thing. Then when that is done, the adder-person will say "I'm working on the lede" and the capcom can tell the cite-person or the redpen person to please fix up the freshly-added sentence. In the long run, my plan it to build to tools to manage the process; wikipedia's edit-conflict-resolution-software, yea verily doth it sucketh.

  Your second and third points I completely dismiss as irrelevant. :-)   Misplaced Pages is a hobby to *us* because we are already addicted. My target is specifically beginning editors, that are not yet addicted. The fun-quick-wiki-teaming thing is designed to get them addicted, and then help them get others addicted, and so on. And although I tend to edit "as my minds work" (you had a typo in your prose above where you forgot the plural on minds... which suggests a similar 'problem' in your editing), in point of fact I can edit on one article for fifteen minutes. But instead of picking a single role, I'll prolly usually just list "all" as my role, and then do as I please, being careful not to step on the toes of anybody else.

  But heck, fifteen minutes is pretty short. Enough time to look up one, maybe two sources, and add low-hundreds of words with good references and copy-editing and such. Are you congenitally unable to work on the Pele article for fifteen minutes of wall-time, if some beginner is the pilot and picks that one? If so, just drop out of the team, to pick another team, or to go be a single-person-team for awhile. If the lock-step fifteen-minute-chunk structure gets you down, don't do single-player. Just join teams midway through a mission from time to time, make a few changes, then drop them like a rock.  :-)   If I've done it right, nobody will even *care* about you 'abusing' the system that way, because it won't be seen as abusive, by anybody.

  Instead, folks will be grateful for your help, and not at all distressed when you leave them to their own devices. Does this make sense? And, does my space-shuttle metaphor implement what I'm describing? The downside to the space-shuttle metaphor is that it suggests one is trapped in a claustrophobia-inducing environment with deadly dangers all around.  ;-)   By contrast, the wikiprojects you mentioned (and wikiprojects in general) are designed for experienced self-selecting hobbyists. The quality-folks are kinda-sorta close to what I'm aiming for... except they only work on articles that are *already* good, furthermore they *only* permit deity-caste wikipedians to participate (every one of them an addict already), and they spread their work out across many weeks (or often many months).

  The edit-history of Williamette River in the NW USA is a good example. Nominated for quality-improvement the 25th, admin-only protected 26th, one+one sessions by admin#1 on the 27th, four+one session by admin#2 on the 27th, one session each on the 28th, one session on the 29th, one session on the 30th, became GA the next day. Got two soccer-jokes by 86, one complaint about WMF-spamvertising from BillyBobbyMoo, and one misguided rewording by Truthanado (plus a bot-generated-mistake). Also got a useful link from 68, a factual fix from 99, clarity-improvement from PiledHigherAndDeeper, and four people that made changes which seemed wiki-tool-driven (date reformat and pronunciation and so on). There were some talkpage comments, additionally, which admin#1 put into the article. Looking through the article, nothing jumps out as being particularly in need of help, though some parts are a bit awkward perhaps, and the weight given to environmental concerns seems undue (e.g. compared to tourism/entertainment/etc which is the other major modern function of the river nowadays -- that stuff gets one sentence).

  But the point is, besides minor one-off corrections -- and only then if they have specific knowledge of the topic -- most beginning editors would have nothing to add to the article. It's pretty decent! Which means, it is a terrible article for fun-quick-wiki-teaming. The best articles for *that* are the basket cases in the AfC queue, which generally need a ton of help. And most beginning editors, besides being unable to contribute much to GA-class articles, would be unable to act as anything but second-class-citizens compared to Gerda/Dianna/MontanaBw/PumpkinSky/etc. There is currently a discussion over at the bottom of the WP:RETENTION talkpage about starting a WikiProject For Anons.  :-)   I didn't do it! But I suggested some goals for such a project. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 18:18, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I think you underestimate the impact of Flow. It's meant to destroy the talk pages; we will not be able to be sure others are seeing the conversation as we are seeing it, and it will substitute a Facebooky idea of threading for the clustering nodes we have, for example, in this section of your talk page. Ironically or deliberately, it will, I believe, reduce collaboration to the level of co-editing a Word doc. I can't offer a solution here other than actually forking the wiki, which I actually proposed. But you should be forewarned. The WMF had no idea removing the Orange Bar of Doom from IPs would mean IPs wouldn't see their warnings and have a chance to stop or explain before getting blocked. And when it was pointed out to them after the notifications change to Echo, the response was "The programmers went home already, this will have to wait." The WMF had no idea there would be a problem with Visual Enema making it impossible to add a reference with an addition to an article, and still don't seem aware how at odds their priorities are there with those of people writing an encyclopedia. They don't care. I'm told Misplaced Pages is actually a problem for the developers, most of whom work on more lucrative applications. They can and will do serious damage to the community; whether they actively want to or just don't see what they're stepping on in the name of whatever they do care about, is unimportant. Be aware that Flow will muck up your plans. Yngvadottir (talk) 13:52, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

So what devs have you not-profiled, that *do* seem to care? Because those are the ones that I do definitely not-want in the not-a-cabal.  :-)   What lucrative apps are you speaking of? Commercial work, or WMF/wikia projects that are for sale outside the bounds of wikipedia.org?

  Choose the form of the destructor I appreciate the warning about Visual Enema... which is hilarious... and you can add the Flow Of Vomit into the list of wiki-tools best avoided. But part of my decision to pursue the not-a-cabal, and avoid WMF, is also based in the reasonably-well-founded knowledge that most of the existing Chuck Norris disciples are in fact happy with the caste-system, happy with the WMF, and unlikely to perceive the not-a-cabal as worthy of their time. There are some exceptions, and I'm diligently seeking them out. But I don't expect to be able to convince them on user-talkpages, for the majority. The only thing that will convince them is hard evidence: implementing it, and proving it valid, first. But that's no problem; developers are everywhere, and a good percentage of the hundreds of millions of uniques enWiki gets every month *are* programmers.

  Forking wikipedia.org into totallyKoolpedia.com would be a worst-case scenario (where is a link to your proposal? I'd like to see who responded), but I don't think it will come to that. Instead, we can implement all the functionality we need as part of client-side-javascript-gadgets, plus in the worst case some off-wiki servers that those gadgets depend on for specific heavy-lifting which is too computationally intensive to do on the fly. What happened when VizEd came out? People complained, and went back to the old way, and the VizEd "final deployment" was pulled. What would have happened, if somebody had produced a *good* external tool, which did most of what the VizEd was supposed to do, but more importantly, Failed To Sucketh? I think we can still support traditional talkpages, when Flow comes to town. And if we provide that feature, which Flow tries to crush, we'll get a lot of converts, eh? Motivated to help the not-a-cabal succeed in making our flow-alternative into the mediawiki default. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 18:18, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I wanted to just have us leave the Foundation, who are now a vast impediment except in two areas: they own the servers (could be remedied with our own fundraiser - the Foundation represents the fundraisers as for that but takes in hugely more than they spend on that) and they provide legal services (although they've been saying recently that they won't necessarily assist individual Misplaced Pages admins who get sued - thanks for nothing, overpaid execs). It will be in my contributions to the Misplaced Pages namespace - it was at Village Pump (Proposals) but I'd rather not look at it again; as I expected I got lambasted, and it hurt, although I had kind of expected calls for my desysopping. I did it because having been somewhat reluctantly made an admin, I consider it my duty to defend the encyclopedia, and I believe the WMF are endangering it. However, I don't share your sanguine view, and I'm afraid it may be too late to save it from them now. As I said earlier on my talkpage, I've been a bit down, and this is why. (I keep discovering more, too.) I fear some folks may have noticed that I've almost stopped creating new articles that are my own idea; there doesn't seem much point now. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:58, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

And by "us", you mean the 31k... now 29k it seems... active editors of enWiki, including the 634... now 620 it seems... active admins on enWiki. Which is quite a lot of people, right? But I will note one reason I am sanguine -- that is roughly one-tenThousandth of the readership of enwiki. For every active editor, there are literally 9999 readers! Surely at least a few of those folks are interested in preserving wikipedia. Many of then are prolly *formerly-active* editors, who were driven away by bureacracy, constant WMF-advert-campaigns, clunky buggy wiki-tools, ninja-reverts, or whatever the particular problem was in their own individual case.

  People love wikipedia. If they knew she was in danger, they would rally to save her. We would have more volunteer wiki-hackers than we could shake a stick at. We would have more pro bono lawyers than mother teresa. We could probably get gratis server-space if we were willing to let the webhost spy on the traffic... and of course the NSA already has that server-side power (and both the NSA and the major telcos plus to a great extent Google/Microsoft/Yahoo/Facebook/etc have spy-power on the client-side already) so it's actually not as evil an idea as it looks, at first glance. That said, server-space does not cost all that much money; out of hundreds of millions of endusers, surely we could get around a million bucks a year for very-professionally-serviced hardware, and use volunteer software-sysadmins to manage the rest.

  But why leave, when we can subvert? If particularly-high-handed WMF behavior is pissing off you the admin, Anne Delong the librarian-programmer-AfC wizard, Mabdul the javascript-hacker, and so on... perhaps we can engineer a bloodless coup. 93% of the readership depends on enWiki, if memory serves, even in countries where English is not the first language, because enWiki is the biggest and the best and the first, and English is the language of the internet. We have the vast readership that the other wiki-projects only dream of. But we take what the WMF dishes out? We bow down to Chuck Norris, may he live ten thousand years, and accept FlowTalk? That's because we don't realize where the true power lies, just yet. Organize even a small fraction of the hundreds of millions of readers, selected as Good Eggs, and the wikiCulture here will be overturned. Pretty soon, the WMF will once again be the servant, rather than the master.

  And hey, don't lump all the WMF folks into one basket. A large fraction of them... lawyers and devs and overpaid folks fully included in this accounting... perhaps even a *majority* of them... love the old classic wikipedia, the paradise of classic liberalism, and of classic GNU-style freedom, and of a community based on merit and idealism, not based on wikiPolitical-pull and pessimism. <wiki-patriotic music swells> Let not the great Jimbo go quietly into the night! <cannon blast> Let not our beloved wikiverse go down without a fight! <coconuts galloping> Stand, I say, stand for editor's rights! <rockets red glare> The time! <music abruptly ends> Has come! <deep breath> wiki-YAWWWWWP!!

  So there it is.  :-)   Lose not your hope, as Yoda would say. Time there is, still. And hey, if worse comes to worse, and the servers of en.wikipedia.org go down the tubes... the WMF goes down the tubes... even the enWiki community goes down the tubes amongst infighting and retention-crisis and funding-slash-leadership crisis... the content itself, the articles we all slaved over, at least the text-portions, will live on. CCBYSA and GFDL guarantee us that much, as long as at least a *few* contributors are willing to sue to keep their work from being proprietarized. So go ahead and create some new stuff. If it all goes bad, that work will survive... and like a phoenix, some new entity will arise, to once again host it, grow it, and wikiLove it.

  But I do not plan to let anything go down the tubes. This is my wiki. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My wiki, without my edits, is useless. Without my wiki, my edits are useless. I must aim my edits true. I will. I know that what counts on the internet is not the characters we write, the count of our edits, nor the flames of our discussions. We know that it is the truth that counts. We will be true. My wiki is alive, even as I, because it is a part of my life, and a part of the lives of all the other editors. Thus, I will treat my wiki as my family. I will learn its weaknesses, its strengths, its parts, its accessories, its users, and its tools. I will keep my wiki clean and ready, even as I stay clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will. My wiki and I are the defenders of knowledge. We are masters of friendlyism and neutrality. We are the saviors of freedom. If any rule keeps me from improving my wiki, I swear to boldly ignore it. So be it, until wisdom is everyone's, and there is no enemy of truth.

  Now, if *that* doesn't scare ya, then nothing will.  :-) &nbps; To be fair, not all of the above is truthiness, some of it is a bit tongue-in-cheek. But most of it is true, and all of it has a kernel of truth. Now quit reading my posts of woe, and go write some nice content. We can discuss specifics of the glorious wiki-revolution later, and in particular, I'd like to know about the "more" you hint at, and the reasons you believe time is up. To me, it looks like we have all the time in the world, because wikipedia is for the ages. So although I believe WP:TIAD, it ain't tomorrow, eh? Hope this helps, and as always, thanks for improving wikipedia. — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:03, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

  Flow was "supposed" to be in beta during July, and deployed as an option (live edits to mainspace... err "talkspace") next month, then fully *replace* old-school talkpage wikimarkup by summer 2014. How is that fanciful schedule going to look when reality hits, and people realize the VizEd promise to retain wiki-markup, was just a dodge that FlowTalk would quickly invalidate? The promise that VizEd would R.S.N. be totally super-math-n-physics-friendly already fell through. The damn thing cannot even work with tables, let alone equations! Here are the four goals of Flow:

1A. auto-signing. SineBot already does this! We just need to tweak the format; ctrl+f sigSpam, which appears the short table-form nutshell-summary (you can ignore surrounding wall-o-text).
1B. "obvious & consistent comment-authorship". Basically they mean borders & background-colors. Pretty dern easy. Should be implemented in CSS, not by screwing up the rest of the wiki-markup-world.

2A. reply-button. Easy. That they even list it as a goal... sheesh.
2B. notifications of replies to all discussions. Not as easy, but not very friggin hard to implement, either. If my reply is immediately below yours, or indented so as to be at "reply-level depth-of-indentation", notify me. There will be some false-notifications, but few and far between.

3A. "A simple comment field". By which they mean, no wiki-markup. But also, no capability to edit somebody else's comment. Again, this is best done with a layer on top of wiki-markup, not by destroying it. Any false-positives can easily be over-ridden, dropping the user back to full-page-view. But actually, simply color-coding the comment-editing window (see CSS above) and using javascript to position the cursor in the appropriate place, would go a long way towards fixing this problem... if the real goal is improving usability, rather than the underlying goal of destroying wiki-markup.

3B. "Rigid predictable technical restrictions on who can edit what". Ahhh, now we get to the meat of it. Controls begat more controls. The encyclopedia 'anyone' can edit, unless I say they don't count. Caste-system-wikiculture raises its ugly head, yet again.

4. "Easy to distinguish topics". This is literally and figuratively impossible. *Topic* of discussion is entirely controlled by the natural-language *content* of that ... hey by the way, have you ever seen what happens when a young llama gets into the altiplano for the first time? They are totally shocked at the change! Which has nothing to do with easy-to-distinguish-topics, beyond proving the point. When you look at the 'feature' they are *actually* trying to implement, it turns out to be wordpress-style-max-indentation-depth. After two replies, every subsequent reply is forced to be only that deep. In other words, complex discussion becomes impossible; arbitrary-section-breaks are inserted every three or four comments. Facebooky to the max.

Methinks we can implement good-enough versions of feature #1 and feature #2, plus the *important* parts of feature #3 ... without the "Rigid Restrictions" that are oh-so Ridiculously Repugnant, of course. As for the fourth 'feature' it is actually a bug, pure and simple. Has no place on wikipedia. But do we have enough *time* to catch up? After all, WMF has been spending incredible amounts of cashflow on the paid employee workflow which is intended to implement WP:FLOW... for months, if not years!

  What if the Flow stuff actually works? I'm, uhh, not too worried, that umm, their "scheduled completion" of Flow is imminent. Even staunch long-term supporters of WP:FLOW are backpedalling now. Frankly, there is no way the WMF can implement FlowTalk without extreme levels of pushback. It is a recruiting dream for the not-a-cabal. But hey. I'll be frank. If the WMF employees can turn their VizEd+FlowTalk disaster around, and fix tables, and fix math, and fix talkpages, and improve WP:RETENTION, before next springtime... or even look like they *might* come anywhere *close* to that... well then, the not-a-cabal is cancelled.

  Instead, I'll go start helping them create the turnaround. But by nature I'm a critic, and a pessimist, one of those people who is never satisfied... and the WMF strikes me as being so far from satisfactory, in how they are trying to revamp the wiki-tools to fix the crisis of down-trending editor-count, that I will literally be shocked out of my gourd if it happens. Pleasantly shocked, I will note!

  But I'm preparing for the worst, because I think we're coming close to the point where our steady decline in net-editor-retention is going to push the folks that pull the levers at the WMF into putting banner adverts into mainspace (aka wikipedia getting acquired by Google) or otherwise selling out. If anything like that happens, a slow trickle will turn into an exponential decline... perhaps masked by the exponential growth in new Bad Egg editors here to take advantage of the new laxness in morality.

  Mainly, the reason is *because* the WMF has had since 2010 to implement their retention-plan. They've spent roughly a million bucks on VizEd. But retention is still steadily trending downwards. Your point about who-works-for-who comes into play: methinks it is the *explanation* for why they failed to fix the retention-trend. There are people that care about editor-retention... but what they mean is, *their* kind of editors. They want to keep their friends from leaving wikipedia, by changing wikipedia to be more in line with what their friends are after. So for instance, if they and all their friends believe that only WMF-confirmed identities, using their full legal name as their username, should be permitted to edit wikipedia... well then, to *those* folks editor-retention means getting rid of all the anons. Which to you and me in Just Wrong... but more important, in the pragmatic sense, is guaranteed to kill *net* retention, by driving away the majority of folks who don't want the WMF to have their fingerprints on file somewhere.

  Anyhoo, I'm looking (well... non-looking) for a particular brand of wikipedian. First, they must care about wp:retention in the specific sense that they want to see a net increase of editors, reversing the 31k-and-falling trend into a new 32k-and-doubling-every-couple-years trend. The *only* way that will happen, is if we encourage and help retain beginners, like Pratham. Of course, just because it is the only feasible way, does not mean that everybody who wants to regularly double editor-count during the next five years will admit that such is the case! So I guess the second criteria is that they must be data-driven, or reality-driven, or whatever you want to call it: they must want to see a net increase, and they must be willing to do what it takes to make that happen, rather than just be willing to keep *wishing* it would happen using whatever their preconceived notion of a mechanism thereof might be.

  Along the same lines, there are some mechanisms that must be ruled out, a priori. Because, the goal here is not simply doubling editor-count repeatedly by *any* mechanism; the goal is for the additional editors to be *Good* for wikipedia herself. This is a morality-question, in other words. The ends cannot justify the means, here. Misplaced Pages could easily have a hundred times as many editors, if we would just drop any one of the five pillars.

1. Destroying pillar one would also dramatically boost the number of editors: wikipedia could become like a clunkier version of facebook, a repository of useless trivial crap, woo hoo. This scenario is equivalent to getting bought out by google.
2. Alternatively, Misplaced Pages could easily start doubling editors, if we got rid of pillar two, and just let people write their own biographies, edit the articles about their employer, and so on. One sort of person that falls into this category believe that we should let PR firms 'donate' large sums of cash to wikipedia editors & admins & WMFers, to 'helpfully' keep wikipedia running smoothly.
3. If we let people upload copyvio stuff, like PirateBay, that would boost our editor-count, right? But that's a bad strategy, because it will be bad for wikipedia herself, in the long run. It's equivalent to destroying pillar three, to improve retention; Not Good. The reverse scenario, where instead of violating copyright, wikipedia starts *enforcing* copyright (rather than copylefting and enforcing copyleft) is the equivalent to getting bought out by some syndication-publisher-hyperconglomerate.
4. To my mind, people that want to lock wikipedia down, and only allow WMF-bureacracy-approved editors, and kick out anons, and kick out pseudoynms, and so on, are out to destroy pillar four -- they don't care about WP:NICE anymore, they don't care about WP:AGF, the don't care about this being the encyclopedia anyone can edit, they want it to be they encyclopedia anyone who *they* approve of can edit. This is equivalent to getting nationalized by the government, which enforces draconian political correctness on the surface... but only because the caste-system demands it.
5. And just for completeness, there are plenty of folks around nowadays who believe that pillar five is obsolete, and than wikipedia's Supreme Laws Of The Land are the WP:PG, that anybody who won't memorize all five bazillion pages does not belong here, and that *everything* added henceforth must be MLA-cited. Sigh. This is equivalent to getting bought out by Microsoft, and encarta-izing the wikiverse.

There is also the goal-slash-motto, of the encyclopedia that anyone can edit, containing the essential summation of human knowledge, recording the history of Progress, as it happens, neutrally and fairly.

Good summary, in the main, so I'll put this here. Pillar Four is crucial. We have a set of problems. The WMF are clueless and chasing feel-good theories: their research on gender balance was laughable and they have politically powerful people including the outgoing director doing stuff to address this unproven but sexy imbalance that manages to alienate many editors of several sexes, and they are spinning loss of seasoned editors as inevitable and to be fixed by a laser-like focus on new! new! new! editors, whom they assume like everything to be different from how earlier editors like it ... none of this stands up to examination and all of it is alienating editors mighty fast, oh, and they think they want experts but how does that play with the above? Maybe they reckon they don't have any? Or maybe they reckon the only experts that count are those Jimbo invites personally? I dunno. But I think the WMF are more into getting new editors - they just don't care about the existing ones that much - rather, I think it's some of the editing community who are imposing the standard of "anyone we approve of". Partly this is the usual impatience with newbies starting up a learning curve; partly it's the even more regrettable but also natural impatience with those one defines as younger (the number of times I read the word "immature" on here - bah). Also we are a massive collaborative experiment, I believe unique - the Internet has taught some of us, at least, that there is a tremendous range in backgrounds, assumptions, and ways of thinking out there among our fellow typing humans, but this project really confronts one with it. (Silly example - the people who look down on those of us who can't code. Why on earth would anyone assume everyone can, or should? I can't strip down an engine either. Whoopdido.) I believe civility - in its basic meaning of respect in order to work together - is extremely important. But part of that is - we need every kind of editor. Not just your good eggs, but also the curate's eggs, if you're familiar with that old-fashioned joke: those who are "good in parts". We can't go sifting and sorting. That means we somehow have to get and keep working together the folks for whom there is a list of verboten dirty words the utterance of which makes a person forever a pariah and a project associated with him a den of iniquity, but snideness, sarcasm, and the use of verbal tactics learned in competitive forensic debate or by studying politicians are the way business is done, and the folks for whom a well chosen epithet is a point of pride in class, honesty, and intelligence; and the folks for whom everything is about competition and showing oneself to be better, and the folks for whom a job well done is a job well done and chest-beating is icky. Right now ArbCom and AN/I bloody the noses of great swathes of our editors, and no, "There are 4 million articles on the English Misplaced Pages, go edit another one" is not good advice. We need folks to respect diversity and work together, or we will have more and more of the encyclopedia written by entrenched cliques and of course we will hemorrhage new editors and long-term editors both. Bah. I hope even half of that was clear. We need the newbies and the long-termers, and the crotchety and the sweetness and light. That's what the project is. I don't believe many of my fellow admins have any idea how much entrenched bias has developed around here, but the last lot I want deciding anything about editor retention is the WMF. (If I were a politician I'd say our best shot at uniting the community is against the WMF, but sadly we have a lot of Stockholm syndromers and I am not a politician.) ... Anyhow, they're right about one thing - we have problems. And I agree with you that the answer is not to sell out (which, by the way, is not the top reason I don't want there to be an infobox on most articles, but it's one of them.) Yngvadottir (talk) 16:56, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

  The first time I saw QTx appear on the Rupert talkpage, I was curious about their PRNG username, and when I replied to them I checked out their userpage to see what they asked people to call them, and clicked around a bit. There is no secret that QTx and ScienceApologist are the same person. But it wasn't until David and TRPoD lost heart that I started exploring old arbcom decisions, and put two and two together, as the saying goes. Anyways, I believe you when you say that not much has changed, but in fact Josh is nearly a model citizen, nowadays. They have a POV, just like Iantresman, but they don't do much wrong.

  That said, I guess I would feel a lot better, if when somebody *sharing* Josh's POV did something battleground-worthy, like 134 and their provocation of TheCapn, or like Barney and their just-a-friendly-warning-messages to VeryScaryMary, if Josh would step up and say that 134 is not doing it properly, attacks are not helpful. That would probably help somewhat. But in practice, only when somebody who shares Josh's POV, do they step forward. Vzaak is the same, but hey, they've only been editing a few months, Sheldrake is *their* first fringe-article, like me. But unlike me, vzaak hasn't been around long enough yet to understand that 'editor' does not actually mean 'person who decides The Truth and then shapes what the readership will believe'... it just means 'person who clicks edit then neutrally summarizes all Reliable Sources then clicks save'. Except for WP:MEDRS, o'course... which almost never applies.

  So, wall-o-text alarm is going off... sigh. Although I won't be leaving, I won't be expecting progress, either. As long as Josh, Vzaak, and Barney stick to the mantra that NPOV==SPOV==WP:MAINSTREAM, there is simply no possibility that somebody like David will be able to make the page BLP-compliant. New believers like 134 will reinforce them from time to time. ArbCom folks look like they will decline to accept the bullying-case, expecting AE to handle the work. But the root cause of the bullying, is simply frustration at the battleground state of the talkpage (and to a lesser extent of mainspace). The battleground itself is caused by the conflicting assumption, of whether or not NPOV==SPOV, and therefore, whether or not the BBC calling Sheldrake a 'biologist' can be simply flushed down the memory hole as a statement by a "fringe publication" which is not *really* Reliably Sourced, I mean, come on, we all know those BBC crackpots have been in the pocket of the Loch Ness Lobbyists for *decades* now, they'll say anything to promote woo, yada yada yada.

  Of course, with that attitude, there are plenty of "Sheldrake Fanbois" ... including actual WP:COI folks like Craig Weiler, but also 'including' David and myself and other folks who consider morphic resonance to be waaaaay out there ... who will continuously show up at the article, notice it is blatantly slanted, and try to fix things. Some keep their cool, but not many can stomach tag-team unfairness, and pretty soon, the *skeptic* folks start to feel like *they* are the victims under attack, since wave after wave after wave of editors keep showing up, telling them they are wrong. When.They.Just.Knowz.They.Iz.Rite!!11! <siiigggggghhhhhh>

Original 999-word draft.

There are a ton of issues here. Most of them are not for ArbCom. Was there bullying? See AE, fair enough. Was there removal of Reliable Sourced materials? See the decision in 2010, fair enough. Was there a violation of pillar four? Talk to an admin, take it to dispute resolution, or just step away and take a cold shower until your temper is more sanguine. Fair enough. Content disputes? Tons of them, despite Barney's assertion that only the first paragraph is a problem. Ninja-reverted whenever they get put in, or simply just-short-of-war-reverted by editing the changes back out of existence. But again, this is not ArbCom's place.

  My assertion is that there is a fundamental reason which underlies the *repeated* flare-up of anti-pillar-four behavior, which a few folks have interpreted as bullying (I agree in only one or two cases -- most of the rest are just grudges forming after *repeated* problems and more importantly *ongoing* frustration with the whole situation). The ongoing frustration is, I submit, caused by a misunderstanding of the meaning of pillar two, the only non-negotiable rule of wikipedia -- not counting pillar five. This is a deep and subtle misunderstanding, but to my eyes, it causes all the other difficulties and disputes.

  If we want to break the back of this long-running dispute (jps-aka-QTxV-fka-ScienceApologist and Iantresman have been oh-so-politely warring since at least 2004 on related topic-areas by my calculations), then what we need is a very brief ArbCom ruling on the meaning of the first sentence of WP:NPOV, and on whether WP:MAINSTREAM and/or WP:SPOV and/or the long grass of extreme scepticism -- which was a phrase coined as part of the Sheldrake BLP fiasco -- are in fact indistinguishable from WP:NPOV. There are many editors who believe, very deeply, that there is no such thing as a skeptic point of view. The ones who have said as much to me, personally, include Vzaak, TRPoD, Barney, jps, and Guy-aka-JzG, plus although they have not stated this explicitly, from reviewing their edit-history related to Hapsgood (another 'mad scientist' similar to Sheldrake) I'm willing to believe Mangoe is also in that camp. I'm not sure about some of the others, not named in this dispute... but the core dispute is over the meaning of pillar two.

  In particular, the idea behind equating WP:SPOV with WP:NPOV, is that specific Reliable Sources ... or indeed even *portions* of specific Reliable Sources ... can be elided from mainspace, along with the sentences they support. There is only one area of wikipedia where that is *currently* true, and that is the area of Claims Involving Medicine, see the final sentence of this diff added by jps. Even at the time it was controversial to User:DGG. I see it as a necessary evil. But WP:MEDRS should never apply outside the strict limits of medical claims, and WP:FRINGE should never apply out of the strict limits of hard-science theories. Sheldrake has an alternative-minority-or-maybe-questionable-science view of phytomorphology. He has a generally-considered-pseudoscience-view of a certain aspect of physics, his telepathy-like subquantum morphic fields. But that does not mean wikipedia cannot call him a biologist. That some sources describe him as a psuedoscientist, there is not a shred of doubt. But wikipedia must describe the conflict, not decide the conflict. See the question of the correct birthyear of Mariah Carey. We follow the sources, never our own logic. If that is not the meaning of WP:UNDUE and WP:NPOV, then I will be delighted to start writing articles for truth-o-pedia, banning any editor who is ever illogical or irrational. I too will join the crusade to WP:RGW, and save the poor readers from themselves, right alongside Josh et al. But I do not believe that is what WP:NPOV actually says.

This page in a nutshell: Articles must not take sides, but should explain the sides, fairly and without bias. This applies to both what you say and how you say it.

Some folks believe that WP:CHERRYPICKING and WP:EDITORIALIZING in the name of Holy Mainstream Science, even if they have to drive away some editors who disagree along the way, is fine. They are following the spirit of pillar five to the hilt, and ignoring any rules that prevent them from improving the encyclopedia. But they are fundamentally mistaken: extreme scepticism *is* actually a "side" in the WP:NPOV policy-sense. Militant scepticism *is* disruptive, in the WP:TE guideline-sense. As long as they believe that WP:SPOV is not a failed essay, but rather is identical to pillar two, the non-negotiable pillar... the WP:BATTLEGROUND behavior will continue. I ask that ArbCom reverse their declines, and take the case. The rulings from 2013, and from 2010, and from 2007, often involving the same exact editors, and always involving the same generally-problematic topics, will not end until the NPOV===SPOV dispute is firmly settled. Truth be told, even if ArbCom folks were to comment that "WP:FRINGE only applies to hard-science-claims, not to philosophy-claims or other fields of inquiry, and WP:MEDRS only applies to medical-efficacy-claims, never to job-credentials, and WP:SPOV and WP:MAINSTREAM do not equate to and do not trump WP:NPOV".... maybe that alone would break the back of the dispute, even if it were 'non-binding' in ArbEnforcement terms. Hope this helps; thanks for improving wikipedia. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 22:32, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

p.s. Although I am a named party in the dispute, due to my pariah status as a low-caste anon, I cannot post my statement here, as the ArbCom page is protected against my kind. Define irony; so is Rupert Sheldrake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Rupert_Sheldrake&diff=579774336&oldid=548237850

April 2013, when IrWolfie first arrived... not named in the current complaint because he is one of the WP:FTN crew who is now banned

1. Rupert Sheldrake (born 28 June 1942)
2. is an English biochemist and author.
3. He is known for having proposed a non-standard account of morphogenesis and
4. for his research into parapsychology.
5. His books and papers stem from his concept of morphic resonance,
6. and cover topics such as animal and plant development and behaviour, memory,
7. telepathy, perception and cognition in general.
8. Sheldrake's publications include A New Science of Life (1981), ...((3 others))... The Science Delusion: Freeing the Spirit of Enquiry (2012).

July 2013, after one line of mild puffery was added... though Sheldrake *does* still lecture on crop axions from time to time, I've heard on the talkpage

1. Rupert Sheldrake (born 28 June 1942)
2. is an English biologist and author.
3. He is known for his work on plant hormones, crop physiology, and for having proposed a non-standard account of morphogenesis and
4. for his research into parapsychology.
5. His books and papers stem from his hypothesis of morphic resonance, and
6. cover topics such as animal and plant development and behaviour, memory,
7. telepathy, perception and cognition in general.
8. Sheldrake's publications include A New Science of Life (1981), ...((3 other books))... Science Set Free in the US (2012).

midnight on halloween of 2013, after my first week of failing to fix the WP:SPOV nature of the new&improved prose

1. Alfred Rupert Sheldrake (born 28 June 1942)
2. is an English author, lecturer, and researcher in the field of parapsychology.
3. From 1967 to 1973 he was a biochemist and cell biologist at the University of Cambridge,
4. after which he was principal plant physiologist at ICRISAT until 1978.
5. Since then, his work has largely centred on what he calls "morphic resonance",
6. his idea that "memory is inherent in nature" and that
7. "natural systems, such as termite colonies, or pigeons, or orchid plants, or insulin molecules,
8. inherit a collective memory from all previous things of their kind."
9. Sheldrake says that morphic resonance is also responsible for "telepathy-type interconnections between organisms".
10. As such, his advocacy of the idea encompasses subjects such as animal and plant development and behaviour
11. as well as various parapsychological claims involving memory, telepathy, perception and cognition.

1. Sheldrake argues that science has become a series of dogmas
2. rather than an open-minded approach to investigating phenomena.
3. He questions several of the foundations of modern science
4. including such facts as the conservation of energy and the impossibility of perpetual motion devices.

1. Scientists who have specifically examined the idea of morphic resonance have called it pseudoscience,
2. (( reject as magical thinking ... mentioned in footnote but not prose ))
3. citing a lack of evidence supporting the concept
4. and its inconsistency with established scientific theories.
5. Some critics express concern that his books and public appearances
6. attract popular attention in a way that has a negative impact on the public's understanding of science.

The 'much improved' version that Josh is proud of

1. Alfred Rupert Sheldrake (born 28 June 1942)
2. is an English author, lecturer, and researcher,
3. best known for his idea that "memory is inherent in nature".
4. From 1967 to 1973 he was a biochemist and cell biologist at Cambridge University,
5. after which he was principal plant physiologist at the ICRISAT until 1978.
6. Since then, he has primarily worked on developing and promoting his concept of "morphic resonance"
7. which posits that "natural systems, such as termite colonies, or pigeons, or orchid plants, or insulin molecules,
8. inherit a collective memory from all previous things of their kind".
9. He also claims that morphic resonance is responsible for "telepathy-type interconnections between organisms".
10. As such, his advocacy of the idea encompasses subjects such as animal and plant development and behaviour
11. as well as various parapsychological claims involving memory, telepathy, perception and cognition.

1. Sheldrake also argues that science has become a world-view bound by a set of dogmas
2. rather than an open-minded method of investigating phenomena, and
3. advocates questioning various underlying assumptions and modern scientific facts (( improved ))
4. such as the conservation of energy and the impossibility of perpetual motion devices.
5. He accuses scientists of being susceptible to "the recurrent fantasy of omniscience" (added)
6. and says "the biggest scientific delusion of all is that science already knows the answers". (added)

1. Scientists and sceptics have labelled morphic resonance a pseudoscience, (added)
2. citing a lack of evidence to support the concept and
3. its inconsistency with established scientific theories.
4. Critics have also expressed concern that Sheldrake's books and public appearances
5. attract popular attention in a way that undermines the public's understanding of science.
6. Despite the response to his work from the scientific community, Sheldrake has garnered some support. (added)
7. Among his proponents is Deepak Chopra who sees Sheldrake (added)
8. as a "peacemaker" who "wants to end the breach between science and religion". (added)

  There was something similar about Lady Gaga that I ran across in the WP:AfC queue -- if you don't know she is a singer-slash-supermodel-slash-actress-slash-hyperceleb kinda like Madonna was in the previous millenium -- and there was a huge media buzz through all of 2013 over the metaphorical strip-tease about some new album she released in November. First she announced she was thinking about writing a new song. Buzz. Then, she had written some of it, name-drop with some other musician. Buzz. Then, cover art for the single was released. Buzz. Then, she tweets one line from the song. Buzz. She will have guest-singer $foo in the song. Buzz. Behind-the-scenes clip released on youtube. Buzz. MTV awards-ceremony is where she will first perform the song. Buzz. Rumor has it that sometime collaborator $quux was unhappy not to be allegedly included in the production of this SONG WHICH HAS NEVER EVEN BEEN HEARD BY ANY OF HER INCREDIBLY RABID FANS... buzz buzz buzz buzz.

  Month after month. There is an argument amongst the experienced reviewers. How can this be Notable? Where's the beef? Is the evidence that there even *is* a song out there? I don't see it on iTunes. How can wikipedia, a respected encyclopedia, have an article about a song that is not even a song yet? These must not *really* be reliable sources! Oh, huh. They are all Reliable Sources, by the strict definition. Yeah. Wait, wait, I heard that WP:CRYSTAL says we cannot predict the future! Yeah! Cool! That means we can delete all these Reliable Sources, and decline the article, because the Reliable Sources are also predicting the future!

  First damn sentence of the policy.... "Misplaced Pages is not a collection of unverifiable speculation. All articles about anticipated events must be verifiable, and the subject matter must be of sufficiently wide interest that it would merit an article if the event had already occurred. It is appropriate to report discussion and arguments about the prospects for success of future proposals and projects or whether some development will occur, if discussion is properly referenced." (emphasis in original)

  Not that this reminds me of WP:NPOV or anything. Some days I worry that we'll never climb the mountain. No offense to the folks in the AfC queue who failed to follow the policy properly; that was probably a one-time mistake, where editor-bias overcame natural unwillingness to slog through wikipedia's five bazillion policies. WP:REQUIRED applies, they were acting in good faith. Nobody actually *said* to them at the time, hey folks, I just read WP:CRYSTAL, that is not what it says. And of course, even though the AfC submission was declined that day, there was an article in mainspace... created the day before in fact... so wikipedia lost nothing from this failure-to-actually-read-the-policy-we-cited mistake. No harm no foul. Of course, the editor who submitted the article quit logging in for a couple months. They have never gotten a non-template-spam message, except for a couple angry ones from XXNUGGINGSXX or something like that. Ah, WP:RETENTION. Anyways, p'raps I will mention to some AfC folks that contributors are being driven away, because nobody is checking whether the article already exists. But then, wikipedia has such a painful search engine... arrgh.  :-)

Please read before posting  (PageNotice) 

1. If it's to do with an edit I've made to an article (or similar) then post on the article's talk page.
2. If you're wanting clarification on something I've said on an article (or similar) talk page then post there.
3. If you're replying to a post I've made on your talk page, then reply there not here.
4. If you've done any of the above and haven't received a reply, you can assume I can't be bothered wasting my time replying when I consider there to be no need for me to do so.
5. Posting warnings, especially templated ones, here will largely be an exercise in futility, as it's extremely unlikely to change me.
6. I don't want to be invited to take part in any discussions. If the discussion interests me I'll be aware of it anyway.
7. I don't have time for idle chit-chat with random people. The people I do have time for random chit-chat with are aware who they are, if you're not aware then you can work out the rest for yourself.
8. If, despite all the above, you still feel you should be posting here then remember I don't tend to reply to messages written in a hostile tone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/User_talk:One_Night_In_Hackney

skipped leaving the invite, per #1 and #2 and #4, but especially #6 which specifically bars invites

SmokeyJoe changes RfC policy into a pure WP:POLL. August 13th. B-phase of WP:BRD.

• 22:52, 13 Aug 2013‎ SmokeyJoe -144‎ that's a fallacy of the method. How to close a discussion is not the same thing as discussion. Readers should go straight to Misplaced Pages:Closing discussions without this inaccurate paraphrasing

deleted == Consensus is determined by the quality of the arguments given on the various sides of an issue, as viewed through the lens of Misplaced Pages policy.

• 22:55, 13 Aug 2013‎ SmokeyJoe +25‎ it is not part of this policy that anyone may/can "determine" a consensus.

changed section title from "determining consensus" into the longer "reading and interpreting an apparent consensus"

Two weeks later... A reverts. August 26th. R-phase of WP:BRD.

• 01:32, 26 Aug 2013‎ Ahnoneemoos +119‎ reverting edits by User:SmokeyJoe as these changes are WP:CONTROVERSIAL and consensus must be reached before implementing them

reverted sentence back into the text

Immediately, Born2cycle tweaks. D-phase of WP:BRD, implemented as collaborative WP:BOLDness.

• 01:45, 26 Aug 2013‎ Born2cycle +1‎ boldly changed "determined" to "ascertained" to clarify intended meaning of "determined" in this context. Please revert and discuss (section already started on Talk) if you disagree.

changed determined to ascertained -- in disputed sentence but not in title

• 01:47, 26 Aug 2013‎ Born2cycle +62‎ the ascertaining is done by evaluating the quality

expanded == Whether consensus has been achieved, and, if so, what it is, is ascertained by evaluating the quality of the arguments given

Blueboar expands to a list and a paragraph, then backs off to just a paragraph.

• 02:14, 26 Aug 2013‎ Blueboar +475‎ I think this is a more complete description. Not all consensus discussions need a closer... and when there is one, quantity is a factor, just not as important a factor as quality of argument

expanded == Whether consensus has been achieved, and, if so, what it is, is ascertained in several ways:

1) Edits are made and no one raises further objects or reverts;

2) a discussion is held and a consensus emerges organically; or

3) a more formal procedure is used (such as a WP:Request for Comments)

in which the discussion is "closed" by someone who evaluates the comments of others.

In evaluating the comments, closers do take into account the raw numbers of people

who support each the various sides of the issue,

however the quality of the arguments that are made

(as viewed through the lens of Misplaced Pages policy)

is considered more important than the quantity on each side.

• 02:25, 26 Aug 2013‎ Blueboar -166‎ trying a different formulation... since we are really talking about contested situations here.

When a consensus can not be achieved organically (either through bold editing, or simple discussion)

it may be necessary to call in an uninvolved editor to "determine" whether there is a consensus and, if so, what that consensus is.

This editor will evaluate the comments made by others, and officially "close" the discussion.

In evaluating the comments, closers should give more weight to the quality of the arguments that are made

(as viewed through the lens of Misplaced Pages policy) than the quantity of people on each side of the issue.

A tweaks once, tweaks twice, then further ("unilaterally") expands the middle.

• 02:50, 26 Aug 2013‎ Ahnoneemoos +5‎ it is imperative that we state that consensus must be viewed through the lens of policies; it cannot be parenthesized

added "rather" and "by" plus deleted parens == more weight to the quality of the arguments that are made as viewed through the lens of Misplaced Pages policy rather than by the quantity of people on each side of the issue.

• 02:59, 26 Aug 2013‎ Ahnoneemoos +339‎

changed from "ascertain is" to the weaker "analyze is believe to be"

expanded middle == This editor will evaluate the comments made by others, and close the discussion by expressing his judgement in detail.

This judgement is neither final nor authoritative as reaching consensus within a discussion is done in order to finalize the discussion and resolve a particular issue,

rather than to establish a statute (which Misplaced Pages does not have as our policies are descriptive rather than authoritative).

Born2cycle keeps tweak#1, undoes tweak#2, and undoes expanded-middle but then re-inserts most of the meaning.

• 03:51, 26 Aug 2013‎ Born2cycle -341‎ restoring the term ascertain on which at least SmokeyJoe and I agree is more precise.

reverted to "ascertain" kept de-paren-ification

• 03:51, 26 Aug 2013‎ Born2cycle -341‎ restoring Blueboar's wording. I think the qualifications were too much... that needs consensus support to include. The fact that consensus can change is implied.

reverted non-expanded middle...

• 03:54, 26 Aug 2013‎ Born2cycle +41‎ ah, but the point about including an explanation should remain, slightly different wording

re-inserted part of expanded-middle == ...and officially "close" the discussion, including an explanation of the finding.

• 03:58, 26 Aug 2013‎ Born2cycle +96‎ +providing; discussion closer should be prepared to explain further

re-inserted more of expanded-middle == Discussion closers should be prepared to explain their reasoning further upon request.

• 04:08, 26 Aug 2013‎ Born2cycle -13‎ No reason to say officially

re-inserted more of expanded-middle == deleted the word "officially" so as to not imply finality nor authority

All four boldly collaborate to finalize the compromise-wording related to tweak#2.

• 23:46, 26 Aug 2013‎ SmokeyJoe -4‎ change to "Reading consensus". "Determine" is a very per word, agreed on talk page. Ascertain misleadingly implies resulting certainty

changed section title from "determining consensus" into the shorter "reading consensus"

• 00:12, 27 Aug 2013‎ Blueboar +8‎

changed section title from "determining consensus" into the shorter "disputes over consensus"

• 00:14, 27 Aug 2013‎ Born2cycle -5 how about "Finding consensus"?

changed section title from "determining consensus" into the shorter "finding consensus"

• 01:58, 27 Aug 2013‎ Ahnoneemoos m-2‎

changed section title from "finding consensus" (third-level-subheader) into the more prominent "finding consensus" (second-level-subheader)

SmokeyJoe again attempts to cut out some of the meaning, is reverted (this time by Born2cycle).

• 04:59, 27 Aug 2013‎ SmokeyJoe -328‎ expand on types of discussions. Simplify text (NB. this is a summary of policy covered elsewhere). Weighting by quality though lens of policy requires some attention on talk page

In time-limited process discussions, on in general when a consensus can not be achieved organically

(either through bold editing, or simple discussion) an uninvolved editor may judge whether there is a consensus and,

if so, what that consensus is. This editor, often called the closer, will evaluate and close the discussion, with an explanation.

• 05:27, 27 Aug 2013‎ Born2cycle +328‎ there is no problem with specifying some of the details involved in closing discussions here. Several of us developed this wording, suggesting a consensus that so far only you're objecting to.

reverted

SmokeyJoe makes some useful tweaks, nobody objects, consensus is achieved, and the policy was improved.

• 06:18, 27 Aug 2013‎ SmokeyJoe +51 this is clearly mostly aimed at time-limited process questions

compromise, modified paragraph-intro to state most common case first == In time-limited process discussions, on in general when

• 06:19, 27 Aug 2013‎ SmokeyJoe m-6‎ don't bold undefined terms

removed emphasis from quality

  My main advice is to stop thinking of this as winning and losing. If you go in with that mindset, you'll guarantee that folks will be unhappy. If they are out to get Bob Huff, they'll be unhappy you are pointing out their evil plot. If they are not out to get Bob Huff, they'll be unhappy you are falsely accusing them. So you always lose, if you go in with the battleground mentality. Instead, you need to take the long-term view. Misplaced Pages is not meant to be a news-service. Misplaced Pages is meant to be historical fact. Just the facts. Neutral. Truth, when we can get it. But we will settle for verifiable WP:NOTEWORTHY information.

  Anyhoo, here's the deal. As you may or may not know, there are a lot of problems in the wikiverse right now. Plenty of PR firms are cropping up, whitewashing biographies for pay, lying through their teeth, using fabricated-out-of-nowhere "wikipedians" that then form a virtual gang, all controlled by a shadowy puppetmaster. In your line of work, this is called stuffing the ballot box, and the principle is exactly the same. This recent phenomenon has made most wikipedians -- including David and Mark and OrangeMike and other folks who *are* actually just wikipedian humans... plenty more nervous. Folks like yourself, who have always been open and honest about you position, are unfairly hammered with problems. It's hard for you to edit, because everybody seems to think you are a Bad Guy nowadays! Well, it isn't your fault, and you aren't a bad guy. But because of circumstances beyond your control, you'll have to be careful how you tread.

  For starters, yes, do not edit the Bob Huff article in mainspace. You can, of course, still post to the Talk:Bob Huff, and request changes. This has been happening over at Talk:Jim Demint for instance, where some staffer at his new Heritage gig has been posting suggestions. They are always well-written, and entirely neutral in tone. More importantly, they are always Reliably Sourced, and doubly-especially any *positive* statement is reliably sourced. The senator fought a tough battle with the unions to get this bill passed? WP:PROVEIT. You have to *source* that assertion, to a newspaper or a journalist or a teevee interview or something where independent fact-checkers gave it the once-over. There are two reasons here: first, it makes it more likely to be truthful. But second, more subtly, it proves that the union-angle was actually Noteworthy to some independent person, as opposed to just *spin* that Huff and his staff came up with. It may be the case, that the Sacramento Bee interviewer (or whatever Reliable Source we speak of) was just quoting Huff verbatim, when they publish a story that says tough-battle-with-the-unions. But that's fine. Huff said it. Some independent journalist decided it was worthy of being published. Some editorial board fact-checked it. Bingo.

  The folks who are fringe-fighters are acting in good faith, and are frustrated because of the frustrating situation. BarleyBannocks is hardheaded, and at least as frustrated (for what should be obvious reasons by now), but BarleyBannocks *is* trying hard to follow WP:NPOV in good faith (and with one tiny exception they follow it absolutely correctly). Point being, I don't want anybody punitively banned, except Tumbleman-socks o'course; I want BarleyBannocks to learn WP:FRINGE applies to morphic resonance, and I want you and Barney to learn pillar four is not made of rubber (plus I want Sandstein to learn to count warnings and read November MOS datestamps and let folks without watchlists know about it upon reversion).

  But most of all I want the fringe-fighters to learn where the line in the sand exists, and that WP:MEDRS only applies to medical claims, and WP:FRINGE only applies to hard-science claims like astrophysics and quantum physics and phytomorphology and even mammalian genetics... but never to census-data, meta-science, religion, or other fields outside the purview of hard science. And to me, fields outside the purview of science (as far as WP:FRINGE is concerned) definitely includes fuzzy 'we-claim-to-be-oh-so-scientific' fields like economics (aka "science of macroecon" at some colleges), politics (aka "political science" at most schools nowadays), and even "cognitive science" (which most universities just call "psychology" since that is what it is... to include plenty of borderline beliefs like psychiatry and psychology of the Jungian and Freudian and similar branches... calling THOSE science is disgusting... but saying that FRINGE applies and therefore Freud is a pseudoscientist is even *more* disgusting... he's just a psychologist fer redacted sake).

  At the end of the day, ScienceApologist's WP:SPOV / WP:MAINSTREAM is a failed policy; only WP:NPOV applies, outside the very specific exceptions carved out for WP:MEDRS (personally by jps again in 2011 -- with which I fully agree btw), and also for WP:FRINGE and science-claims ... which was intended for creation-science and scientology, but is now an ever-expanding vortex, it seems, unless somebody draws a line in the sand. Sandstein does not want to be the one to draw such a line, but any ruling they make inherently does so; per WP:BEANS, this respondent sayeth not further.