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Saturday June 21: Wiki Loves Pride

Upcoming Saturday event - June 21: Wiki Loves Pride NYC

You are invited to join us at Jefferson Market Library for "Wiki Loves Pride", hosted by New York Public Library, Metropolitan New York Library Council, Wikimedia LGBT and Wikimedia New York City, where both experienced and new Misplaced Pages editors will collaboratively improve articles on this theme: Saturday June 21: Wiki Loves Pride NYC (RSVP), focusing on LGBT history and culture. 11am–4pm at Jefferson Market Library. We hope to see you there! Pharos (talk)

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Cosmologist downgrade protection

First off, thanks for the help over at AN/I. Although it was beyond what I had originally proposed, I think it was the right thing to do, and it looks like that's what the consensus was (I think I may have been excessively cautious about this because my interactions with Holybeef have been very frustrating, and I was worried that would bias me). In the related case regarding the fluctuating-IP editor (here), the result was unfortunately 1 month's full protection on both pages. Since there is no "content dispute" without Holybeef and the other editor is an IP editor, would it be possible to drop the temporary protection from full to semi-protection, so the (logged-in, autoconfirmed) editors left at the respective pages can start the cleanup? Let me know if I'm out of bounds by asking this directly to you - I'm not sure if it's the sort of thing I should be doing via an {{edit request}} or appeal directly to the protecting admin (Ged UK), but it seems like a natural follow-on to the Holybeef action. 0x0077BE 22:52, 29 July 2014 (UTC) Oops, forgot to give the page links:

• Alan Guth (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)
• Laura Mersini-Houghton (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

Sorry. Thanks. 0x0077BE 22:53, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Let's wait until tomorrow to see if there are any unanticipated developments. Assuming not, I'll lower the protection then (or if I'm not here, any other administrator should do so). Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:07, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

Sounds good, no rush - I think in the current state of both articles there's nothing potentially libelous, just a very minor POV issue on Alan Guth, so it's nothing that can't wait a bit. Thanks. 0x0077BE 23:48, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

It's done :) GedUK  12:44, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Vandal

• Thebitc Has Smotherfrickin (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log)

That user is making disruptive edits at own talk page. Do you need to remove the user's access to editing its own talk page? You blocked the user without revoking the user's talk page access. Eyesnore (pc) 01:34, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

It looks like another administrator already got to this. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:21, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

dubitante

Where one has well-founded doubts about even taking on a case, then one should simply oppose taking it on. "Dubitante" is more apt for decisions after a case has been accepted where a judge thinks a precept or proposition is wrong but where he does not feel competent to declare it invalid on his own. Appeals courts are generally the ones to look at the invocation of the term, and are generally far more willing to rule on the underlying precept or proposition. Frankly, the case is, IMO and IANAL, to be a hopeless morass quite equivalent to having the committee thank a long stroll in the Everglades. Tell me when you are south of Lake Okeechobee. Collect (talk) 12:52, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Put it this way: Why do you think the Justices don't typically record dissents from grants of certiorari? Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:21, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Certiorari is generally a writ for a lower court to review (not reverse) a previously decided case - not a decision about whether to hear a case in the first place as a rule. (SCOTUS uses certiorari to basically hand the ball back to the lower court and not to indicate that SCOTUS actually decided that the decision has to be reversed, AFAICT. All it means is that 4 justices agree the matter should be reviewed.) The judge in the case being appealed may have done so "dubitante" - but one does not "dissent" from forcing a review of a decided case. In the example at hand, the WMF issue was not yet a case at all, much less one which had been decided. Be sure to use bug spray. Collect (talk) 15:34, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

You've missed my point; perhaps my fault as I wrote in haste. A justice—or an arbitrator—may express reservations about accepting a case, as I did to some extent in my preliminary comments on this one. But once a majority of one's colleagues have taken the case, there's limited utility to continuing to intone "this is a mistake, I know better than the rest of you, and we shouldn't be deciding this." Sometimes it's better to say, "I wasn't sure this is the right move, but the rest of the Committee were elected just as I was and have their share of wisdom, and the majority has ruled so let's see what productive we can do with this." I've written about this question before, as have scholars of real-world tribunals. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:37, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Book review

Hey NYB, just reminding you about this. :-) Ed  18:53, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Indeed; I'll be finishing it up tonight (NY time). Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:04, 30 July 2014 (UTC)

Why are you reverting the dynamic IPv6 user?

You've done it twice with the rollback tool, (which is only meant to be used for vandalism), and I'd like an explanation. Suspicion of socking/off wiki canvassing is dealt at WP:SPI or WP:ANI. Additionally, what rule did the IPv6 user break. The block reason is 'absurdity' and does not offer any context or reason behind it. Tutelary (talk) 00:57, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

It was kind of you to think of me Tutelary.

I should let Mr. Matetsky speak for his own actions, but I will just say that I have found, over many years of editing Misplaced Pages via IP, that most administrators feel very comfortable taking harsh action against IP editors. I don't mean that cynically or hyperbolically - there is really a large group of administrators who believe that any process-oriented or mildly-negative comment by an IP is evidence of "suspicious" or "trolling" behavior. I don't know why it came to be that way, but I am used to it. 2601:7:1980:BF6:7440:4B16:768B:EE69 (talk) 01:10, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

I stand by my prior action and have repeated it. The impropriety of the edits I reverted is self-evident. I will add that while I didn't rely on IP's likely being a banned editor as the rationale for my reverts or blocks, the gratuituous use of my real name is a strong marker that the IP is one of a small handful of banned editors, none of whom are permitted to make even legitimate edits, much less gratuitously inappropriate ones. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:34, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

OK, I'll drop it, but I do like to ask admins about their actions regarding IPs/brand new accounts especially due to the fact that they may be a legitimate, interested editor which may be bitten by the encounter. Carry on. Tutelary (talk) 01:36, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Tutelary, I appreciate your interest in protecting IPs' right to edit and to enjoy equal consideration of their edits. I first edited as an IP myself, all those years ago, and it was the fact that I felt welcomed into a productive, collaborative environment that led me to go ahead and register an account. It was the specific edits of this particular IP, or range of IPs, that immediately struck me as problematic, and not the fact of his or her IP-ness. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:40, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Indeed, though I would be a bit more precise with your block reasons. 'absurdity' doesn't really say any detail about what happened or why you blocked for it. 'harassment' is better but still needs more context. Tutelary (talk) 01:42, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

You may be right. One gets a bit jaded after dealing with the same handful of trolls for years and years. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:44, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Not everyone who disagrees with you is a troll. Why would a person behaving in an upright fashion seek to prohibit "gratuitous" use of his name? Not everyone with non-mainstream theories is a troll. 2601:7:1980:BF6:24B3:4A6B:5D96:B6CE (talk) 07:04, 5 August 2014 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for July 31

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Misplaced Pages appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Alger Hiss, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Stanley Reed. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

It's OK to remove this message. Also, to stop receiving these messages, follow these opt-out instructions. Thanks, DPL bot (talk) 11:49, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks. Newyorkbrad (talk) 12:14, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Question regarding publicly accessible Arbitrator data

Thank you in advance for your grossly under thanked efforts on the Arbitration committee. I would like to get an initial thought about a project that I've had noodling around in my head. When Arb elections come up with the exception of the candidates statement, there is some information available, we are potentially missing components that would compose performance based metrics. I am toying with the idea of going back over the cases in which an arbitrator has been on the committee and extracting data (Did the arb vote on the acceptance of the case request, Did the arb ever comment in the evidence, Did the arb ever comment on the workshop, How long between the Proposed Decision being posted and the arb's first response to the proposed decision, Did the arb participate in the motion to close). The idea is to get a more immediate idea of which arbs are underperforming and which ones are meeting performance expectations. I know this leaves out an entire different set of data in terms of the private ArbWiki and the committee's mailing list, but the voting public cannot make evaluations on non-pulbic data. Part of this is driven by the perennial promise by members of the committee to be more transparent with its deliberations, yet the promise always being minimally (or never) delivered on. Do you have any thoughts prior to my starting this project? Hasteur (talk) 13:26, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

I appreciate the kind words at the outset of your post.

I'm not sure it would be easy to measure the quality of an arbitrator's performance in statistical terms as you propose. As one example, thinking back on six-plus years of my own performance, sometimes when another arbitrator posts a proposed decision on-wiki I vote right away (presumably that would reflect positively in my statistics) while other times it takes me a few days to vote because I'm traveling or distracted (I suppose that would be a negative if the delay lasts beyond a certain point). But what if I'm following the case closely but am holding off on voting because editors are commenting on the proposals on the talkpage and I want to evaluate what they have to say before I make up my mind—does that put me in the "dilatory voter" column or the "thoughtful, deliberate arbitrator" one? And so on.

All that being said, I suggest that you speak with Paul August, who kept track of this sort of statistic for several years. I believe Carcharoth did some of this sort of thing too awhile ago, but I may be misremembering. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:34, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Ideally my project would have been more of making the data more accessible, not to pass judgement on the data. I envision the data as more a drill down per arbiter that has the digested data per case, and then a summary section per arbiter that gives average delay and percentage of the "Yes" to the binary questions. I would see this as potentially useful data to people who write the arbitration voting guides in the sense that they could focus on whatever criteria to determining the good/adequate/bad thresholds for response. I would also see this data as useful when looking at ways to streamline the Arbitration process because I believe that 3 months for a case single threaded is far more deliberation that SCOTUS gives it's cases. Hasteur (talk) 16:46, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

I understand. I suppose the other relevant consideration is how many of the sitting arbitrators will run for reelection. (I have no information except that I'm not.) I'd be reluctant to see you put umpty-ump amount of time into creating a database to help decide which arbs should be returned to office or not, and then it turns out that few of the sitting arbs seek another term. But there's probably no way of knowing that until at least October.

Frankly, at this point the importance of ArbCom these days is widely overstated; as you've noticed I'm sure, we decide a lot few cases now than we used to (for reasons I've blogged about), so the role of ArbCom is decreased relative to that of community/noticeboard decision-making, which has been under-studied. But that is a different discussion.

Finally, I absolutely agree that three months is too long for the ArbCom to resolve any case. (How long it takes the Supreme Court to decide a case is a different discussion we won't start here.) Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:03, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

The activity reports referred to above are at the ArbCom history page: Misplaced Pages:Arbitration Committee/History#Activity reports. I did that half-yearly one back in 2009. It looks like Paul August did stats for the years 2008-2011. Whether he did more than that, I don't know. Hope that helps. I've sometimes thought that individual arbs should keep their own records of what they do, as they are best placed to do this. Carcharoth (talk) 21:13, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

The 2011 data is the type of data I am interested in bringing to the surface and making easy to read for end users considering candidates for Arbitration (or re-election of expiring arbiters). Thank you Carcharoth Hasteur (talk) 22:59, 31 July 2014 (UTC)

Really?

Not sure what happened here, but I hope that was an accident? Risker (talk) 08:01, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Risker: See the next edit on that page. Sorry. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 09:03, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks!

		The Signpost Barnstar
		Thanks for writing this book review! Ed  13:13, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Agree, after reading: thanks! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:27, 2 August 2014 (UTC)

Many thanks for your thoughtful review :) Pundit|utter 09:32, 3 August 2014 (UTC)

Just read it, great job.--S Philbrick(Talk) 19:13, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Friendly warning

You have been marked as a target by 4chan. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 01:09, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Geez. The gallium of these people. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:13, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

As I've said in IRC: I love how petty 4chan is. It's endearing like a little cousin smearing his poop all over the walls. ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 01:19, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

You know, I appreciate the sentiment, but I'm not sure that your posting that is going to help the situation.... Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:20, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

The thread 404'ed anyways. They just "mentioned" your account but focused almost exclusively on me. *shrugs* ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 01:25, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

That's good. I just had my userpage painted.... Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:31, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Note to interested talkpage watchers

I have a book review in this week's Signpost. See here. Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:43, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Jacqueline Fernandez

Regarding your comment on Misplaced Pages:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Jacqueline_Fernandez. I understand that it is a waste of time, but should I just stand by and let Hell Bucket remove the sourced information, and then watch others add back the wrong information? How do you deal with editors like him and Red Pen, who think they are serving the community best by strict adherence to the letter of the policy law above all normal reason and consensus? I suspect that these two are even the same editor, but not strongly enough yet to go sock puppet with it. BollyJeff | talk 12:42, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

First of all, both of the editors you mention, User:Hell in a Bucket and User:TheRedPenOfDoom, are well-known, experienced editors and they are definitely not the same person, so you don't need to worry about that.

In general, I would agree with you that if Reliable Source A says "Jane was born on March 1" and Reliable Source B" says "Jane was born in 1970", then we have a basis for writing that "Jane was born on March 1, 1970." That is common sense. The response is that in the area of "celebrity" (actor/actress etc.) birthdays, there is a lot of misinformation floating around, some generated by poorly researched sites and some (I'm not saying in this instance) by the subjects themselves. So it's an area where we want to be careful.

(Another concern, though it hasn't been raised here, is that there are a lot of people who don't want their exact dates of birth publicized out of concern for the possibility of identity theft.)

With regard to this specific dispute, while Twitter isn't a reliable source (to say the least), a date of birth given on Twitter by the person herself is sufficiently reliable if it hasn't been challenged. And I gather there is no real dispute as to the year? If that is the case, my personal opinion is that giving the complete date should be all right. That being said, this could all be mooted by finding a better source (which might perhaps not be in English?) Newyorkbrad (talk) 13:43, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

The second source for the date is a video of her saying "I was born on August 11, not June 2". It cannot be any more clear. You saw what red pen said about the year, but the new sources that I provided are reliable newspapers. If you agree, would you please say so on the noticeboard? I would hope that that would be the end, but these editors are known (by me at least) to be stubborn and not follow consensus, so there may still be trouble. At least I will have grounds to restore the date. BollyJeff | talk 13:57, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

Sunday August 17: NYC Wiki-Salon and Skill Share

Sunday August 17: NYC Wiki-Salon and Skill Share

You are invited to join the the Wikimedia NYC community for our upcoming wiki-salon and knowledge-sharing workshop on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Sunday August 17 NYC Wiki-Salon and Skill Share (RSVP). 2pm–5pm at Yeoryia Studios at Epic Security Building, 2067 Broadway (5th floor). Afterwards at 5pm, we'll walk to a social wiki-dinner together at a neighborhood restaurant (to be decided). We hope to see you there!--Pharos (talk) 15:57, 4 August 2014 (UTC)

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WP:JSTOR access

Hello, WP:The Misplaced Pages Library has record of you being approved for access to JSTOR through the TWL partnership described at WP:JSTOR . You should have recieved a Misplaced Pages email User:The Interior or User:Ocaasi sent several weeks ago with instructions for access, including a link to a form collecting information relevant to that access. Please find that email, and follow those instructions. If you were not approved, did not recieve the email, or are having some other concern or question, please respond to this message at Misplaced Pages talk:JSTOR/Approved. Thanks much, Sadads (talk) 21:18, 5 August 2014 (UTC) Note: You are recieving this message from an semi-automatically generated list. If you think you were incorrectly contacted, make sure to note that at Misplaced Pages talk:JSTOR/Approved.

query

DId you revisit my responses ] Hell in a Bucket (talk) 16:09, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

Not yet. I've been spending my wikitime for the past day or so trying to come up with some proposals to workshop in the Media Viewer arbitration case (which I hope to do later today or tonight). I've shared my personal input in the thread and above, but another administrator might be able to move this issue forward sooner than I'll be able to. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:41, 6 August 2014 (UTC)

cunt, queer, nigger

Hi, NYB, and my apologies for the above manner of getting your attention. You seem to indicate in your statement at the civility bigotry case request that you think the case is about censorship. It is not. Perhaps it would help to look again at the actual comment diff, with a few items highlighted for reference.

The central assertion is that words do not matter, and that racial and ethnic slurs are completely acceptable. The message is delivered in the most racist, misogynistic, and homophobic language possible, and reinforced by an army of intimidating vulgarities, f-bombs, and personal characterizations. This type of bullying, exclusionary language has no place on Misplaced Pages and there should be no question at all about removing it.

I can understand why the Arbcom would want to run away from this case, but it did not run away from the issue in http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Manning_naming_dispute#Equality_and_respect the Manning naming dispute: "Misplaced Pages editors and readers come from a diverse range of backgrounds, including with respect to their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sex or gender, sexual orientation, and gender identity or expression. Comments that demean fellow editors, an article subject, or any other person, on the basis of any of these characteristics are offensive and damage the editing environment for everyone. Such comments, particularly when extreme or repeated after a warning, are grounds for blocking or other sanctions." If the Arbcom walks away from this with the comments that have already been left there, it will be declaring open season on blacks, women, and gays. And no further disturbances? HIAB has now posted yet another template on my talk page, after I specifically dis-invited him from my talk page. This time he has added an f-bomb. Regards,—Neotarf (talk) 22:03, 6 August 2014 (UTC)