Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 23:09, 3 September 2014

Use of Sir prefix in article title

Hi Barney, jsut a polite request, in future could you refrain from using the title Sir (or Dame for that matter) in the title of new article creations. I have moved some of the articles you created previously such as Sir Robert McLean to Robert McLean (engineer). The only exception to the rule is Baronets, where it is generally correct to include their knighthood in the article title, as you correcly did with Sir Robert Pigot, 6th Baronet. Thanks Flaming Ferrari (talk) 14:41, 18 August 2014 (UTC)

Flaming Ferrari (talk · contribs) - thanks for your message. I commit to using the correct name, (i.e. only the full name) in future. Barney the barney barney (talk) 12:21, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

In case it becomes relevant in future, I feel I should note that Flaming Ferrari (talk · contribs)'s advice is not consistent with the guidelines described at Misplaced Pages:Naming conventions (royalty and nobility). Articles about knights and baronets should in most cases be titled simply with the subject's name, without "Sir" (or "Dame") at the beginning or "Nth Baronet" at the end. The exception is when that would be ambiguous with somebody else who has the same name but is not a knight/baronet, in which case the prefix (and suffix, for a baronet) may be added for disambiguation. (I have paraphrased and abridged the guidelines somewhat, so I recommend you to read them yourself and don't just take my word for it.) — Paul A (talk) 02:28, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Paul A (talk · contribs) - I would continue to only create pages with the correct title, but I've been infinetely clocked. Barney the barney barney (talk) 17:51, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Winston S. Churchill

This is NOT repeat NOT just a variant of Churchill's name.

It is very specifically his pen name - he adopted it to distinguish his books from those of the then much more famous (!) American novelist of the same name!!!!!

--Soundofmusicals (talk) 20:41, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

I do not dispute that. Unfortunately for you however, it is entirely irrelevant. Barney the barney barney (talk) 20:45, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

See Winston Churchill (novelist). The "S." occurs ONLY as a pen name - and is therefore only relevant at all in the context of the specific article dealing with Sir Winston as a writer. It is not entirely irrelevant to the "main" article, but it is clear where the primary relevance lies. Sorry about the tiny mind remark - uncalled for, of course. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 21:06, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Getting angry above about it doesn't change the undeniable fact that it needs to go to the main subject. You've also broken WP:3RR. And I hate musicals, especially the one with the singing nuns. Barney the barney barney (talk) 21:21, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Your love (or otherwise) of musicals has, of course, precisely the same relevance to this argument as your (or even my) anger, or even which one of us broke WP:3RR first. Winston Churchill as writer is in this instance the "main article" - since the redirect can only refer to that subject and has nothing whatever to do with the "main subject" of the other article, which is (very properly) primarily about his political career. Is this worth asking for arbitration? --Soundofmusicals (talk) 21:44, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Probably be better for you just to drop it. Barney the barney barney (talk) 21:54, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Reluctant to leave an error that reflects so badly on its perpetrator in place - so out of the purest kindness I am constrained to insist that the correct redirection remain when all the dust has settled. Unless an independent arbitrator deems otherwise, of course ... Actually, it would be better to have no redirect from Sir Winston's pen name at all (just delete the redirect altogether) than have it direct to an article (mostly) about his political career (a rather comprehensively unrelated subject). --Soundofmusicals (talk)

I have formally asked for arbitration on this one. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 00:20, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Oops - I don't dispute much, and I put my request for arbitration on the wrong page! On advice - I have redone this one to WP:3O. I don't think this one had anything to do with your blocking - hope not, anyway. In this instance I am being at least as sarcastic as you - this (for me at least) is good-natured banter - my only dispute with you is the question of where this redirect page should point! --Soundofmusicals (talk) 23:06, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

I have followed the 30 arbitrator's ruling and relocated this redirect to the original place. Sorry - I'm quite often wrong, but not in this case. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 01:18, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Sorry to see you had to grab that brief window of opportunity to continue this edit war. I honestly thought better of you than that. Appreciate you feel passionately about this one, but could we have just ONE constructive argument on your side. He is simply NOT CALLED Winston S. Churchill anywhere but on the covers of his books. The "S" is not in fact a "middle initial" but part of his full surname (Spencer-Churchill), which again he never used in any other context. All you have said in reply is that this is not relevant - in what way is a pen name of an author not relevant to a discussion of his writings? Much MORE relevant - surely, than to a general discussion of his life, especially when certain aspects of that life are so very much more important. Anyway - if our "third opinion" had come out in YOUR support I'm sure that you would have been most indignant if I hadn't "accepted the verdict" - fair's fair. --Soundofmusicals (talk) 21:17, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Soundofmusicals (talk · contribs) - it takes a very special level of incompetence to redirect a page away from its obvious target, violate 3RR, personally attack people, post an incoherent moan on the talk page and complain about "ew, lack of arguments" - when the contrasted shambling irrelevancies of your so-called arugment" contrasts with the elegant simplicity and undeniable truthfulness of having the redirect to the main article - yet it seems that you have plumbed these depths of utter stupidity. Now, since I can't edit at the moment having been infinitely blocked due to the bahaviour of yet more other idiots, I require that you please point the page back to its correct target. Thanks for your understanding. Barney the barney barney (talk) 17:51, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Sorry mate but do consider that everyone else might just be right here! Forgive me if I find you impossible to take seriously.--Soundofmusicals (talk) 21:30, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Soundofmusicals (talk · contribs) - kindly talk to me here as I can't edit other pages. People who fail to take me seriously will suffer the consequences. You do not seem to understand that I will achieve my aims, and you will not get in the way. Barney the barney barney (talk) 16:48, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

User lies to AN/I, gets me blocked

Thanks DangerousPanda (talk · contribs) - that's extremely useful. Can you please identify what exactly were the "personal attacks"? And which AFD was "disrupted"? In general I follow a policy of apologising for things that I've done wrong so I'd like to know. Barney the barney barney (talk) 23:28, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Oh hang on, I've found it. To clarify, Bearcat (talk · contribs) has now added to his lies by making false allegations at WP:ANI. To clarify what happened, he wrote an AFD nomination that misrepresented the subject as only being a minor , and specifically mentioned the role of mayor. He made innuendo that the role of mayor was unimportant (which is technically true), but failed to mention that the gentleman was a long-time leader of the majority party on the council, and used inneundo to conflate the two unrelated. He also apparently omitted to conduct a WP:BEFORE search for sources because when such a search is performed a plethora of sources are to be found. When I politely pointed out this to him and gave him the opportunity to correct himself, he refused to do this, asserting things that are clearly not true to anyone with at least half a brain (that a leader of a party group is equally as important as a non-leader) and started to make personal allegations against me. He has now compounded his lies by writing further lies at WP:AN/I which have led a productive and editor of good character being blocked. WP:BOOMERANG should have applied to the petty vindictive request of a liar and a troll.

I stated it was my policy to apologise for things that I have done wrong. However, as I have done nothing wrong in this case, no apology will be forthcoming. Barney the barney barney (talk) 23:44, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

If any editor believes that the subject of an article does not indeed warrant an article, they are very welcome to raise an AFD. If their investigation shows the subject to be "minor", then that's their educated opinion. That does NOT make them a liar, and troublemaker, or anything else...it's their reading of the citations. Referring to "anyone with half a brain", and referring further to lies (wholly unfounded), and changing this section header to what you have is an obvious continuation of your personal attacks, and I'll be extending your current block accordingly. the panda ₯’ 23:59, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Nope, I'm sorry, you're the one who's misrepresenting the matter. As I pointed out, repeatedly, in response to your comments, WP:NPOL does not give greater weight to the "leader of a political party" at the city council level than it does to other city councillors — "garden-variety councillor" or "party leader", the person still has to pass WP:GNG by virtue of the quality of sourcing that has actually been provided. Whatever you think about whether the position is more notable in principle or not than a "garden-variety city councillor", Misplaced Pages's inclusion criteria for politicians do not grant the party leader a greater presumption of notability than the garden-variety councillor, if the quality of sourcing is not there to get him past GNG. I did not assert anything about the level of power that the leader does or doesn't have within the council's internal structure — I provided a completely accurate assessment of Misplaced Pages's inclusion standards for local politicians (no matter what role they held, they still have to pass GNG for it) which wasn't even remotely the same thing as what you're claiming that I said.

Secondly, I said nothing in the entire discussion that was in any way an allegation or personal attack against you. The worst thing I said about you at any point was that you were arguing with a strawman instead of with what I was actually saying, which is not an actionable comment (and you threw the word "strawman" at me too, so if it were an actionable comment you'd still be blocked right alongside me anyway.) You, on the other hand, called me an outright liar, which you're simply not allowed to do. And if you're allowed to characterize yourself as a productive editor of good character, then I'm allowed to point out that I most certainly have a reputation as a productive editor of good character as well — I've been around here since 2003, and do not have any sort of reputation as being a liar or a troll or a dishonest editor. (I've never once, for example, accumulated a single behavioral block in that entire time, not even a ten-minute timeout. If I were half as bad an editor as you seem to think, I'd have been banned years ago — but in reality, I'm actually a pretty well-respected contributor who's never once in an entire decade had to be formally sanctioned or disciplined with anything more than a minor "hey, you screwed up here, so be more careful about this next time, okay?")

Thirdly, I most certainly did do enough WP:BEFORE to be aware that the volume of available sourcing out there is not as strong as you're claiming; there are a fair number of reliable sources which mention his name in passing, but I did not a find a lot of sources which were about him in a substantive way. And at least one other commenter in the AFD discussion has also pointed out that they didn't find much substantive sourcing on a Google search either. And as I also pointed out, I am Canadian, and do not have access to the resources necessary to do a really comprehensive database search of past British media coverage — I can only go by what comes up on Google, and what I saw on Google was a lot of sources that just namechecked him in passing as a former councillor, and not a lot that actually constituted substantive coverage of his career while he was in office. If you think there are enough sources out there to get him over GNG, you're certainly more than welcome to find them and add them to the article — I said, right from the start, that the article could be kept if the sourcing were improved — but you're not entitled to just namecall and insult anybody who happens to disagree with you about the current state of the article.

And finally, just for the record, I asked for nothing in the ANI post except for somebody to review the situation and make their own decision about who was or wasn't at fault. I'm sure I would have been blocked or at least warned if Panda had read the discussion and decided that I was the one at fault, but that's not what happened. Bearcat (talk) 00:44, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks Bearcat (talk · contribs) - thanks to your efforst I've been lbocked from editnig for the past 4 days. Bet you feel proud of yourself.

However, no, piling lies on top of further lies won't help your cause. You are clearly quite delusional, a calculating liar and should not be allowed to edit Misplaced Pages.

A leader of a council is more important than a non-leader. This is an indisuptable fact that you choose to ignore mostly because you're a complete idiot. Barney the barney barney (talk) 10:24, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Obviously I'm going to have to try this again: I said nothing at any point about whether a leader of a council was or wasn't more important than a non-leader in principle — I said that Misplaced Pages's inclusion rules for city councillors don't give the leader a greater entitlement to automatic inclusion in Misplaced Pages than the non-leader gets, and that regardless of whether the person is a leader or a non-leader of the council their entitlement to a Misplaced Pages article depends entirely on your ability to demonstrate that they have passed WP:GNG as an individual. Which is absolutely, unequivocally true as far as Misplaced Pages's inclusion policies go.

I never said anything about whether a leader of a council is more important than a non-leader is in principle — but Misplaced Pages's inclusion rules do not grant the leader a greater presumption of notability, in the absence of any substantive sourcing about him, than the non-leader gets. Leader or non-leader, a city councillor still has to pass GNG as an individual to qualify for an article on Misplaced Pages — and your point about the leader being more important in principle has no bearing on my entirely correct point, which was that Misplaced Pages's inclusion standards for politicians do not grant the leader of a city council a greater entitlement than any other city councillor gets to keep a poorly sourced article. My point began and ended with a completely accurate statement of what Misplaced Pages's inclusion standards for politicians do and do not accept as sufficient notability to warrant a Misplaced Pages article — I never, not even once, said anything even approaching what you're claiming that I said. And the fact that you repeatedly refuse to see the huge difference between those two things suggests far more about you than it does about me. You're absolutely free to believe that our inclusion standards should be different than they are, on the basis that the leader of the council is more important than a regular councillor, and you're absolutely free to try to pursue a consensus to add that to the notability guidelines as an NPOL-satisfying claim of notability — but you're not entitled to claim that someone is "lying" about whether a politician passes NPOL or not, if their argument is based on NPOL in its actual current form instead of some alternate version that exists only on your own personal wish list.

And also, again, I did not ask for anything from ANI except for an uninvolved admin to review the situation and decide for themselves how to handle it. I did not ask for you to be blocked; Panda made that decision on their own after looking at the situation with their own eyes and deciding for themselves what the appropriate response was to the matter. So as unfortunate as this may be for you, it's not my fault either. Bearcat (talk) 01:12, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

I've told you before, Bearact (talk · contribs) - piling new lies on top of old lies doesn't make the old lies less false. I hate to have to repeat this remarably simple fact to you . No, your "nomination" did not contain *any* coherent arguments to delete, just lies and innunendo. Anyone with half a brain (which excludes you and DangerousPanda (talk · contribs) should realise; you can't argue that x+y=x, where y>0, as you have tried to do. Repeatedly. And finally, yes, you did ask for me to get blocked merely by whinging about it to AN/I (and no doubt getting your pet admin to do the job for you). I predict that this will be sorted soon however.

August 2014

DangerousPanda (talk · contribs) - before I ask for unblocked, I ask politely that you undo your unjusitifed actions. Barney the barney barney (talk) 10:38, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

By your own admission, you have been consistently violating two key principles of Misplaced Pages: WP:AGF, and WP:CIVIL. A block is intended to be a last resort when someone refuses to follow the rules as they are laid out. The first block is supposed to be final part of the learning curve. Unfortunately, while blocked, and now AFTER your previous block, you continued down the same path of insults and ABF. As such, it's apparent you either a) cannot learn to act within the behavioural norms you agreed to on this private website, or b) you refuse to abide by those same norms. This block is for your continued behaviour outside the expected norms, and is unfortunately quite justified. We cannot allow any editor to continually refer to another as a "liar", "delusional", or any such actions the panda ₯’ 11:00, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) Comment. It would be a significant loss to wikipedia if this situation, BBB remaining indefinitely blocked, were to continue, um, indefinitely. His contributions where he and I intersect have always been constructive, sensible, and ultimately of benefit to the project. What should be done to help reverse this situation? Can I do anything? -Roxy the dog™ (resonate) 11:23, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Roxy, I typically agree - content edits are not usually the problem; behaviour towards others is. Behaviour is not something a mentor can handle. Indef blocks are not infinite - they are "until the community is convinced the behaviour will not recur". At this point, this block is for continual recurrence of a set of behaviours. How does one move forward if every word typed is basically an insult to someone? the panda ₯’ 11:34, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree totally to the rules. I have always abided by the reules. Barney the barney barney (talk) 17:51, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Really Barney?, over a city councilor? A wiki break, even if not voluntary, may be a good thing to help you get your perspective back. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 03:18, 30 August 2014 (UTC)

TheRedPenOfDoom (talk · contribs) - this has never been about me. It has always been about Bearcat (talk · contribs) starting a disruptive AFD with lies, then rather than retracting those lies, adding further lies on top of those original lies, and then craftily getting his pet admin DangerousPanda (talk · contribs) to back him up. It is quite clear tat the wfong peron has been infintely blocked here and I resent the dispersions cast against my character. Barney the barney barney (talk) 17:51, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Bearcat is not the one calling other editors idiots and liars. This is about you and how you are handling this situation- which is turning out to be "in a way that results in you getting blocked and getting your block extended." And it doesnt have to be that way. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 17:56, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks TheRedPenOfDoom (talk · contribs) - it's quite clear who started this. It's quite clear who escaleated ths and it wasn't me. Now, I could pretend to be sorry however that would be in effect an admission that Bearcat (talk · contribs) didn't lie and wasn't being disruptive. However, I have principls, and cannot take this action as it is unprincipled. I am not sorry, and cannot retract my statements about Bearcat (talk · contribs) because simply they are true. Barney the barney barney (talk) 18:02, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

i could tell you that no matter who started it and who escalated it, what happens from here on in depends mostly upon you, but I think you already know that. I hope that you are able to find a way to keep your principles in tact within the Misplaced Pages framework so that you can return to editing. (And maybe you can add to your principles "I will never call anyone an idiot or liar on Wiki again - i will just have my dog think it at them." )-- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 18:18, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

I don't think you have to say you're sorry or that you apologize. You don't even have to agree that the rules are fair or applied equally. All you really have to do is say you understand how you broke the rules, that you've read the relevant guidelines and will abide them. And mean it. At that point, you bury the hatchet and try to move on and either avoid or play nice with people you don't like. Some days you eat the bear, some days the beat eats you. I doubt you really want to leave here or get forced out. Msnicki (talk) 18:35, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

And the upshot to all this is that the AfD was closed with no consensus. I like the bold approach by Tripod to advising BBB - it does appear that you are backed into a corner with no exits except biting the bullet. I don't know you well enough to be less circumspect in my comments. I think the onus is on you now to find a way back. Please try. Best. -Roxy the dog™ (resonate) 00:54, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

And yet again. Whether you like it or not, Misplaced Pages's inclusion guidelines do not offer the leader of a city council an automatic right to keep a Misplaced Pages article on the basis of a single source which merely namechecks their existence — no matter what role a city councillor holds (plain old councillor, leader of the council, one year in the ceremonial rotation of mayors, head of a council committee, whatever), the only criterion in WP:NPOL that any city councillor can ever satisfy just because of their city council position alone is "major local political figures who have received significant press coverage" (i.e. who have passed WP:GNG as individuals in their own right). So if you cannot explicitly demonstrate that the significant press coverage is there — it cannot simply be assumed to exist, but must actually be shown — then they do not get a Misplaced Pages article regardless of what role they held on the city council. This is not a "lie"; it's a completely correct and accurate and true assessment of what Misplaced Pages's inclusion rules for politicians say about city councillors.

But you persisted, and still persist now, in ignoring the "Misplaced Pages's inclusion rules for politicians" part of my comments, and putting words in my mouth which I didn't say. You're claiming that I cast personal aspersions on him as an individual — but I didn't. You're claiming that I'm failing to understand that "a leader is more important than a regular councillor" — but that distinction does not make a difference to Misplaced Pages's inclusion rules, which whether you like the fact or not do not grant the leader of a city council any greater entitlement to have a Misplaced Pages article than any other city councillor gets. Any city councillor, leader or not, has to pass GNG to qualify for an article on here. And at no point in the entire discussion did I say even one word about anything beyond the question of Misplaced Pages's inclusion rules.

You're entirely within your right to believe that our inclusion criteria for city councillors should be different than they are, and to pursue a consensus discussion to try to get them changed to your liking. But you're not entitled to call someone a liar for accurately summarizing what the current consensus is for the inclusion or exclusion of city councillors.

I said all along that the article could be kept if enough sourcing were added to get him past GNG — but instead of adding sourcing, you simply dismissed the incontrovertibly true fact that NPOL does not confer an automatic presumption of notability on city councillors as "lies", and attacked me instead of the real problem (the quality of sourcing). The discussion's now been closed "no consensus", but the reason that happened is because another editor ponied up with some actual sourcing and content improvements. You were the only person to vote keep before that improvement happened, and your rationale was a personal attack on me in which you failed to engage the fact that the article didn't satisfy any of Misplaced Pages's inclusion rules in its original form. It got kept because the article got improved, not because anybody (least of all me) was "lying" about anything.

And as for this stuff about "my pet admin", I don't know where you're pulling that assumption from either — I don't recall that I've ever interacted with Dangerous Panda before in my entire Misplaced Pages career, so it's not possible for them to be my "pet" anything. Bearcat (talk) 16:27, 1 September 2014 (UTC)

I seem to recall Bearcat (talk · contribs) that *YOUR* refusal to acknowledge indisputable basic facts was teh root cause of teh disruption YOU initiated at the original AFD. Although I do enjoy watching your squirm in your little hole trying to justify unjustifiable actions, it is gettting slightly tiring now. You are clearly incapable of understanding and my guess is 50% of both of your braincells are malfunctioning. You lied. Then you snuck to the teacher. Admit these facts now and we can deal with this sordid little affair appropriately. Barney the barney barney (talk) 16:46, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Respectfully, DangerousPanda, I think this was unhelpful and I hope you will reconsider. You should at least have let another uninvolved admin review the situation before ratcheting the sanctions again. There's starting to be an appearance you could be too WP:INVOLVED, that it may have become personal to you that, gosh darn it, you are going to make Barney behave.

But also, a block shouldn't turn into an announcement that we'll hold him down while anyone who doesn't like him gets to take a free swing. Yes, of course Barney's response is insulting and unhelpful. But frankly, I'm more appalled by Bearcat's behavior here. Why is he here picking at a scab on Barney's own talk page? Why does he get a free pass? He also needs to learn how to drop the stick and slowly back away from the horse. The right outcome here is that these two editors, who obviously don't like each other, can learn either to avoid each other or at least play nice. The right outcome is not that one of them gets to pick fights and the other isn't allowed to respond, not even on his own talk page. Msnicki (talk) 20:38, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

@Msnicki: That's the most ridiculous paragraph ever written in the English language. 1) There's no humanly possible way of calling me "involved"; 2) I have no desire to "make" anyone do anything: Barney agreed to the rules, and no personal attacks was one of them, no matter what the situation; 3) I've obviously monitored the discussion, and you cannot honestly be suggesting that Barney is allowed to make snide remarks and insults towards Bearcat, but that Bearcat is not allowed to return to discuss rationally and politely their side of the story? Give your head a shake if that's what you're really saying. If Barney had focused on their own behaviour and how it violated community norms, Bearcat wouldn't have had to come near this page...and Barney likely would have been unblocked by now, wouldn't they? Instead, false accusations and personal attacks were the words of the day ... and thus, protection was necessary. the panda ₯’ 22:48, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

@Msnicki:Appreciate sticking up for a fellow editor - I have been attempting to do something similar myself, if a little less directly. But read through the thread above this one (Winston S. Churchill) - especially his last post - if you don't think our Barney is skating around the edge of deserving a truly "life-time" ban. I just don't believe that his "disputes" have anything to do with this project at all anymore (if they ever did). As he says himself "nothing will get in the way of his aims". Well, that really sounds very negotiable, doesn't it? If I have any sympathy left for Barney at all - it is as a person with severe problems that I wish I could help - not as a fellow Misplaced Pages editor (since he has evidently given up on this role himself). --Soundofmusicals (talk) 23:09, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

Message

-Roxy the dog™ (resonate) 11:15, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. Barney the barney barney (talk) 17:51, 31 August 2014 (UTC)