Editorial control

An interesting comment, and a point I think worth some discussion. But perhaps a bit of a tangent to the discussion here. Could we explore this further at, say, your Talk page?

As to the key point here: do you still stand-by your statement that "WP:LOCALCONSENSUS is all fine and dandy when consensus is actually reachable"? ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 22:53, 29 July 2015 (UTC)

Begin new material. Ping: J. Johnson.

Re: 'Could we explore this further at, say, your Talk page?' – Sure. As I recall, it was about the notion that regular editors at an article should have more control over what it says than anyone else. (Actually, I included all that material in the collapsebox above.) It's "your go" for rebuttal on that thread.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  08:45, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I'm going to take a little time for a good review. BTW, the ping - {{U}} - didn't work, it's not clear why. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:11, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Pinging seems very brittle. Been trying different templates to see if some work better. I think it may have something to do to proximity to a new sig by the poster.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  03:43, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

On LOCALCONSENSUS versus CONLEVEL

The main reasons that MOS and all our other guidelines on content exist are because the CONLEVEL processes frequently fail to produced usable results, leading to interminable conflict on a particular issue, or broader conflict between clusters of editors on the same issue, that are not resolved until addressed in a site-wide manner with broader input from the editing community. This really has nothing to do with MOS in particular. It's how all our policymaking works, it's why WP:RM exists, it's why WP:RFC exists, it't why all the WP:XFDs exist. You can denigrate these as "centralization" all you want (though you seem to only do this with MOS) but they're centralized by definition not by some kind of authoritarian conspiracy. They're centralized for the same reason your liver cells are centralized in your liver instead of randomly distributed throughout your body, and for the same reason your friends are centralized at your house when they come to your party, and are not still sitting in their own living rooms.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  08:45, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

"Centralization" and "freedom"

As cofounder of various wikiprojects and a participant in lots of them, it's not like I'm unaware of or can't understand topically "local" desires for micromanagement of style issues. I really do get all of that. It just does not work here, for the same reason that having writers randomly make up their own styles in the Enclopaedia Brittanica, the New York Times or the journal Science would be a huge FAIL. Every other professional-grade publication in the world has a house style to produce consistency for both readers and writers/editors. I already provided an "your right to swing your fist ends when it hits my face" refutation of the "freedom" argument, over at WT:MOS, but that might be less distracting to go over here. Might even just move it here.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  08:45, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

My thanks for your impressive work in assembling the background discussions. I think there are several concepts here worth a good discussion (which is why I have taken some time with this), which might take a little work to disentangle, but they're all related to CONLEVEL.

I must immediately clarify something which seems to be hitting a nerve with you (and I don't wish to do that!). You seem to feel that I am "denigrating" certain policies as "centralization", that I see centralization as "authoritarian conspiracy", and that I take the MOS to be some kind of "shackle" on editorial personal freedom. Please! You have mis-taken my views; I am a lot more nuanced than you may have teken me. E.g., I am sure you understand that insisting on across-the-board adherence to some decision (however and where ever made) implicitly reduces the "freedom" of individual editors to decide differently. This is a classic centralization vs. decentralization situation. But please note: I am not saying "centralization is always evil". I have said that it is not always good, and I am sayng that it is not always necessary, but I am not opposed to centralization where it is proper or necessary. (Nor even in some cases where it is merely convenient.) I allude to these other views because others hold them, and I think they need to be addressed, but I am not asserting them.

I would also disabuse you of any notion that I am any kind of "MOS opponent ... bent on its dissolution". Not at all!! I favor having the MOS; my efforts are intended to improve it.

And I am running short today, so must return later. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:56, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

I'll keep all that in mind. But MOS opponents in favor of total or near-total decentralization definitely exist, so keeping your views distinct from their make take some careful wording (I don't mean with me, but in general). It's similar to the factor by which editors in favor of some kinds of adminship reform become difficult to distinguish from opponents of the adminship system existing, unless they write very precisely about what they see the issues as and what solutions they'd support for what problems.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  09:23, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

What you refer to attests to how how touchy many edtiors have become on these matters. I generally try to be precise in what I say and avoid ambiguity. Though it is often wasted effort with some who don't pay attention, and annoying when people who haven't paid close enough attention run off in a totally irrelevant direction. And it is frustrating dealing with those inexperienced in critical thinking. Which is why we meet here instead of at WT:MOS.

BTW, I should probably also mention that this "shackling" effect of centralization is not unique to the MOS, and clarify that I did not raise it in order to bash the MOS. I raised it because it is pertinent to the development and application of the MOS. To the extent I am bashing any parts of the MOS it is in order to make improvements of those parts.

My view of how consensus is applicable at different levels follows from the appropriateness of allowing discretion – that is, the freedom to make decisions – at different levels.

There are some decisions, such as affect the organization directly, which should be not only decided at the top (centrally), but are properly excluded from being re-decided or modified at any other levels. These include legal matters such as copyright and libel. In such matters ordinary editors and even admins have no freedom to do otherwise, and this is proper.

There are other matters not so critical that WMF gets involved, but are left to "the community". While I think some invocations of "community" are improper, yet there are matters (such as uniformity of appearance) properly decided at this level. But it should be noted: there has never been any decision where the entire community was involved. Decisions on this level are invariably by a small group of editors (perhaps a dozen, rarely more than a score) who, as you said, "care enough to participate". They are NOT "the community", but, lacking objection (ratification by WP:SILENCE), such decisions are accepted on behalf of "the community". This is reasonable, because not everyone can, nor (given general lack of knowledge, experience, interest, etc.) should, participate in every decision. Even if (or especially if) everyone was equally competent and interested in deciding a matter, it would still make a lot of sense to have a many sub-committees handling a few decisions each than everyone trying to decide everything.

All of the above I grant. But it is proper (and necessary, in that no bureaucratic apparatus can do it all) that some decisions are made at the lowest level, by individual editors. These are usually where something is dependent on some aspect of the subject, and therefore cannot be done properly without some comprehension of the subject. Neither the "community" at large, nor even groups of editors "that care" generally but lack specific familiarity, should presume to assess matters where they lack necessary knowledge. This is where I say de-centralization is most proper. It is not permission for anarchy, it is respect for the knowledge and assessment of others (when the exist) who are best informed on some point. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 23:24, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

@J. Johnson: Agreeing with much of that. I'm going to editorialize a bit; this is kind of a draft essay (probably two essays) rather than an argument against you, for the most part.

While of course I agree that, e.g., WP:OFFICE matters can't be dealt with in a decentralized manner, it doesn't automatically follow that everything that does not rise to that level must be decentralized as subject to "local" control. There are several reasons for this, the two biggest being that a) WP has a strong interest in consistency (not just of styling of text in articles, but of application of rules and best practices generally), because this entire project is the largest cat-herding exercise in history and will run off the rails in many ways if not funneled productively; and b) WP has a strong interest in strife reduction, such that the vast majority of the time it's better to codify a "this has already been consensus-decided previously, so do what we already did" rule/guideline/example – when it is feasible to do so because the decision can actually be generalized without "reader-hateful" results – than remain silent on it and allow the debate to re-re-re-recur, page after page. And there are more long-term-stategic, project-survival reasons I'll touch on later.

External authors writing about Misplaced Pages have observed that the entire place, top to bottom, is run by whoever bothers to chime in at any given moment; this applies top to bottom. So our apparently shared perception in this regard is confirmed by reliable sources, as it were. That doesn't mean that centralized decision making about WP:POLICY (in the broad sense, including guidelines) is a bad thing. If often actually is not the case that a change with a small consensus sticks; such things often get reverted/overturned, and for many processes we have counter-processes expressly for this purpose, e.g. WP:MR to undo bad WP:RMs, and WP:DRV to undo bad WP:XFDs, etc. So there doesn't seem to be a general problem in this regard; we have proof against WP:FACTIONs doing short-sighted things that do not actually reflect the larger community's values (even if that defense has a few holes that have to find and patch from time to time). It's remarkably successful (the only comparable example is probably the free software movement, which is actually possibly more effective because it's a meritocracy; while "anyone" can contribute in theory, not literally "everyone" can in actual practice be a part of GNU/Linux and the like, because incompetence will get you kicked).

Obviously, some things are local decisions; the bulk of our editing is case-by-case application of site-wide norms, and not-so-common WP:COMMONSENSE and (again) competence. We end up with a usable "product" because of the site-wide rules. Given the same five sources, you and I would write superficially very different new articles, but if we're both good Wikipedians, an analysis would show that they cover the same basic points, use the sources in the same ways, have a comparable balance and focus, and follow a similar style, even if every phrase in ever sentence is different. (If the topic is controversial or very complicated, they versions would diverge more the more this is true, with additional input by other editors pushing them toward equivalence over time; the norms would later be reinforced – almost forced – by the GA/FA processes.) Centralization of best practices where feasible is what makes this possible.

Where problems arise is when (most frequently in the case of a lopsided PoV to push, and for MoS-related issues, it's usually a "specialized" one), concerns for "local" control that would be valid for some content editing matters ("I'm a subject-matter expert", "this issue is complicated and needs special treatment at this article because of the facts surrounding this particular topic", "things are just different when it comes to this culture", etc.) are misapplied to something else that is not a local matter, but a site-wide one: style issues ; how to use sources ; different civility standards ; arbitrary special pleading exemption from sourcing standards ; and on and on.

It most often does not come down to anything like "groups of editors ... lack specific familiarity, should presume to assess matters where they lack necessary knowledge". It takes no special knowledge other than of WP policy/procedures/norms to apply it properly to any topical situation that arises here. The world's foremost authority on rocket science does not know better than anyone else, by dint of that expertise, how to best style an article on that topic for WP's audience, how to best behave when editing it, how to best apply sources by type and value to it, etc. Such an editor may well be able to identify sources that, in their content or the reputability of their authors/publishers are less or more reliable, which real-world programs are collaborative vs. full of know-it-alls who may be initially behave differently here, and whether particular styles are more commonly found in journals on that topic; but this doesn't translate in to a change of rules or how we decided them. (As as side point, per WP:5P, actually all editors should "presume to assess matters" to the best of their ability, or nothing would ever get done; we cannot tag every page with {{Expert}} and wait around. We trust that consensus will sort it out, and that if we collectively err, experts will fix it later.)

To return to MoS stuff: We bend over backwards to try to satisfy demands to follow actual real-world standards (especially at WP:MOSNUM) in various fields, but it takes a lot of experience and attention-paying to separate genuine claims in this regard from improper abuse of WP as a WP:SOAPBOX to push something that does not have real-world acceptance . A "respect for the knowledge and assessment of others ... who are best informed on some point" is very frequently demanded where it does not actually apply. It's the "We're experts on X so everything involving an article on X should be under the control X wikiproject" fallacy (which is ridiculous on multiple levels, not just the ones covered here). An even more insidious version of this is the "I wrote most of this article, so you have no business coming in here and messing with anything" fallacy, which is quite rampant and patently un-wiki. If I could undo anything at all about WP:POLICY I would undo the three (I think) places that guidelines default to a "first major contributor" cutoff, and revise these to something not tied to the editor but the edits, e.g. "state of the article when it stopped being a stub" (but in pithier wording). I think an unbelievable amount of future problems would be forestalled with such a change, but I haven't worked out how to approach it yet.

Anyway, the fact that WP is run, at every level, by those who show up to make the decisions means that local control by self-declared experts will not, cannot work, and demands for it are illegitimate. Besides, we can't actually verify credentials anyway; one of WP's biggest scandals was a "trusted" admin who lied like a rug about academic and professional credentials, before WP had learned to be both skeptical of credentialism and of admins, and exerted a lot of control over a particular content area. One consequence of this is that the Dunning Kruger effect (to which no one is immune – see PS at end of that) occasionally leads to bone-headed decisions by gaggles of cluebags wading into a discussion they are not really competent to assess correctly. This is a necessary and very much lesser evil than allowing self-declared expert factions to set up fiefdoms here (more so than they already have). Such WP:RANDY errors are swiftly corrected when the actual experts notice and revisit the issue.

PS: See lead item on my user page; fiefdom projects are ready-made for hostile takeover by real, no-shit, serious professional/paid/agent PoV pushers representing external entities hell-bent on warping WP coverage to suit their PR/propaganda goals. The WP:BIRDCON thing was actually another case in point of this (the project was effectively taken over, quite rapidly, by hard-core pushers of one organization's wanna-be "standard", and they then started trying to spread that pseudo-standard (only about birds) to cover all lifeforms in all WP articles, such that even "Cougar"/"Mountain Lion" was being capitalized (and this disruptive campaign was spearheaded by an admin, who is still an admin). I am not kidding; see its talk page archives, where fans of the forced capitalization blatantly lied about sources). Similar story at bottlenose dolphin. At one point every single rodent species article had been WP:FAITACCOMPLI-moved to capitalized common names. So were all the primate ones, despite an explicit real-world convention against capitalizing primate vernacular names! It was directly comparable to the Franciscan order quietly taking over the WikiProject Catholicism, bending it to Franciscan-only will, and then for 8 years or so, warring to impose Franciscan stylistic and titling norms on all religion articles. This kind of extraneous WP:ADVOCACY and WP:NOTHERE wikipolitical warfare is a constant threat here; the e-cigs ArbCom case has evidence of four different advocacy camps PoV pushing that entire set of articles. So, yeah, I'm definitely a supporter of "centralized" solutions to things that thwart this kind of abuse of WP resources as a platform for agenda enactment, and more generally for strife reduction of all kinds. Occasional flareups of anti-centralization strife are a sniffle compared to the fatal epidemic we'd have of article-by-article deathmatches without the centralization.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  17:25, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

That is going to take several days to digest! But looking forward to it. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 19:17, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I was afraid your reaction would be "WTF? TL;DR!" Heh. I think there's the germ of both a WP:Centralization essay, and (with other material elsewhere) a WP:Propagandizing essay in here, after logicking it all out and then compressing it sharply into an outline, then working that into prose the average reader would digest. (The Prop. one would need to merge with similar pages, or just be formulated as improvements to one of them, e.g. WP:Propaganda or WP:Advocacy.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  20:02, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Nah, I'm quite good with long, provided it's worthwhile. But I have been rather distracted, so still chewing. (Lots of that log-kicking.) Of course, if all this was obvious there would be no need to sort it out, so of course it takes work. :-0 ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 17:50, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish:. Getting some serious distractions, but will offer a partial response. Subject to revision.

Re WP:OFFICE: strictly speaking that is only about measures where WMF feels the "normal site/community process(es)" must be shortcutted. "These edits are generally temporary measures to prevent legal trouble or personal harm ....". Also: "Neither this policy nor actions taken under it override core policies ...." This is a very minor instance of central action in respect of specific situations. What I have in mind is where "the office" (Jimbo or WMF) decides or determines a policy, such as the Wikimedia:Terms of use, WP:Non discrimination policy ("The Wikimedia Foundation prohibits discrimination ..."), prohibition of "non-commercial" images (per Jimbo; see also WP:FAQ/Copyright), and so forth. This could also include external matters, including legal.

Where you say that what is de-central need not be "local": yes; that is a key point of my argument. It is very important to note that while "central" and "centralized" can pertain to matters handled solely at the "center" (or, in a hierarchical organization, at the top), de-central, or not-central, does not mean solely at the bottom: there are multiple middle levels. In brief, it is not a binary either-or. Also, "local" does not necessarily (or at least, properly should not) mean at the periphery or bottom; it means only place (from the Latin locus). The connotation of bottom arises because the "place" most people initially consider is that closest to them (their 'neighborhood"). But "local" can be applied at any level, and properly so. This includes practically all of the "community" level stuff. A good part of my concern is about editors at one level trying to control or preempt discussions at other levels. ~ J. Johnson (JJ) (talk) 21:18, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

Today I am The Concederator

Note to self and WP:JAGUARs: I conceded on two different things in the same debate, pretty much back-to-back:

I sometimes wonder if I should concede points more often. Am I stubborn? But when I review the day's discussions, I find that I generally don't comment without a clearly conceived rationale for what I'm saying (the first example is an exception), and I don't seem to have any difficulty reversing myself, or being shunted into a third option, when I'm clearly wrong, there's a better approach, or I missed something (as in the second example). Still, it's good to spot-check oneself for collaborative collegiality from time to time.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  11:14, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Dictatorship of the proletariat

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Dictatorship of the proletariat. Legobot (talk) 00:01, 8 August 2015 (UTC)

Not factually correct

SMcC, I just saw this edit and the edit summary rationale for it: . Based on your rationale, I reverted the change. A majority of American style guides, the U.S. government, the legal professional and most U.S. newspapers continue to prefer "U.S." over "US," the latter largely being favored by non-American media and British and Commonwealth style guides. If you want to make these changes, please discuss them on the MOS talk page first. I believe you will find that significant percentage of our fellow American editors -- especially those who are informed about American style guides and media usage -- will disagree with your take on this. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:42, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

You misinterpret the point. It has nothing to do with what is or isn't dominant usage in American publications, but with whether MOS should follow its own advice about inconsistent, mixed usage on the same page. I resent your "especially those who are informed about American style guides and media usage" jab. I own probably more style guides than anyone within a 2,000 mile radius, including ones you've probably never heard of, and I don't just cherry-pick media usage data I like, but actually break it down by market segment, etc. (NB: In this regard, American legal usage and U.S. government usage are the same market; the American legal system, like the U.S. military, is an extension of its government.) That said, there are now two threads open about this at WT:MOS, separated into the two distinct issues (MOS following its own advice, and whether what MOS says needs revision).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  08:02, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Snježana Kordić

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Snježana Kordić. Legobot (talk) 00:01, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Hinting At A Block For Me For "Disruption"?

SMcCandlish, reverting your arbitrary, one-man consensus rewrite of an essay that's been here for years is not "disruptive". I can direct you again to WP:CON or WP:EW, but that would be pointless, would it not? We are not going to ignore the rules in favor of a ridiculous thing such as this. Your content does not have consensus, and adding it in repeatedly against consensus is edit-warring. Doc talk 03:02, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

I tend to stay away from dramaboards, because they're not productive uses of time here. Please see WP:WRONGVERSION. Who prefers what title and content version at that article right this moment isn't germane; the move and the content change were made in a single administrative closure of that RM. You and someone else are challenging it, and two three admins have told you at that discussion that trying to revert it while the WP:MR is in process is disruptive and counterproductive.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  05:59, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

You and others are hijacking due process here, and it will all come out in the wash. Doc talk 06:22, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Did you happen to notice how my last revert of Softlavender actually led to them endorsing my opposition to the move? You probably missed it. Do you think it was because I somehow intimidated them? Or do you think that maybe, possibly, you could be wrong here? No of course not. How silly! I bullied Softlavender into submission. Doc talk 08:41, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

You're mischaracterizing. She thinks there wasn't actually consensus for it, and that it should be reopened, or that the essays should be split. This is very different from your position, that consensus runs the other direction and that it's all "p.c. bullshit". And it's not your RM. No one is endorsing your noise there; you rather, are endorsing the motion by the MR filer, as is Softlavender. I'm skeptical I have anything further to discuss with you here.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  12:39, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Hmmm

Found this: Decided not to post it at the article talk, per your excellent advice about DFTT, but figured you'd still be interested in it. I think this letter sharpens the horns of the dilemma in that Mayr denounces racism but actively promotes "positive eugenics," and I suspect therein lies the rub; we view them as one and the same today, at least philosophically. Offering no particular solution or advice, just food for thought. Montanabw 04:50, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

It wasn't an uncommon idea in the era (and, in different terms and forms remains one). No one likes the word "eugenics" now (I feel sorry for people who actually call themselves "neo-eugencists"!) because of its association with some really bad ideas and actions (not just Nazis, but all kinds of things like coerced sterilization in US prisons, etc.). But prenatal screening, gene therapy, GMOs, and a lot of other modern "stuff" are all essentially applications of the same idea. Historically and culturally, it's not right to portray Mayr as racist; he was just a product of his time, using the language and science of the era. In 1971 not that many people had heard the word "eugenics" outside academia (it was actually Star Trek in 1967, in the episode "Space Seed" that probably did the trick, but it was watched 100x more in syndication in the mid-to-late 1970s and the 1980s than when originally aired. :-) So it wasn't unreasonable for Mayr to use the term in 1971 and intend to limit it to a notion of "positive eugenics", i.e. the use of genetics to help humanity, even if it's a term we'd say "WTF?" about today. By way of analogy, when I was a child, it was normal and kind of respectful to refer to African-Americans as Negroes (cf. United Negro College Fund), but the word today is considered racism-laden. Same goes for "Oriental", "women's lib", and various other terms that have taken on a negative connotation (while some have gone the other direction, e.g. "queer" has been adopted as a positive self-label in the LGBT community).

I do really think we should avoid any further discussion of Mayr at that page, and how any of the Race (biology) article is thought/hoped by some people to relate to racism in humans, for now, because the page obviously has one goblin under the bridge already. Talk:Race (human categorization) has way more watchers so if such stuff is shunted there it'll be handled better there. I'm trying, when I get time, to nail down Race (biology) in strict, zero-OR, just the facts style, field by field, and encouraging more of same (e.g. the new birds thread). If the article is sculpted to be precise as to how the word is used in biology, any attempts to worm in human racialist stuff will stick out like a sore thumb. I think this will take months, but so be it. It will probably be hazardous to try to include much if any material about how early use of the word in biology was commingled with Victorian views of humans and misused, until the "what this means in science today" material is nailed down really tight. I do think the article should cover that eventually, or at least mention it, but the more I look at it, the more the history section of the human categorization article might be the best locus for it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  06:33, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

And I wish you good luck! "as to how the word is used in biology". Yes, this is precisely the goal. But everything depends on sources. One book by Mayr tells more about this subject than a lot of other sources you might be able to find on the internet. My very best wishes (talk) 15:45, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Ranters and philosophy pundits on teh Interwebs aren't reliable about Mayr, but Species problem indicates that his model of how to define species is being questioned. He's a reliable source for one definition of species, but not all of them, nor for his being better. He's not a reliable source for how "race" is defined with regard to people today (no sources more than a few years old are). He may or may not be a reliable source for how "race" is used as an informal taxon, if he said anything about that, but that's not what we're quoting him for. Ultimately we can probably replace the Mayr references at Race (biology) with a "here are the modern, conflicting approaches to that question" material, cribbed from Species problem and Species. We only need to touch on that issue.

The real question for this article is "how is a race, in the biology sense, different from other things, like subspecies, variety, forma, subsection, etc." (some of these are only classifications in botany)? This question's answer will differ based on the four classificatory types of races (physiological, geographic, etc.). My next task on that front is nailing down the difference between "physiological race" and "forma specialis" in botany. One source so far hints that they're effectively synonymous but used in different contexts. I can observe from use in papers that the former is used with non-latin names, e.g. "race N1" and is not used as a part of a taxonomic name (though it may follow one), while the latter is used as part of the scientific name and only with latin names (e.g. Frumiosus bandersnaticus f. sp. pacificae), yet is still officially considered "informal" by the ICN (and thus surely by the ICNCP, though I have not checked yet). But this leaves unclear whether the same exact population can have both kinds of name or whether they're used exclusively, or used overlappingly such that a specimen might have both, but both would not necessarily cover all specimens covered by each. Need an actual explanatory source on that, not just extrapolating from observed usage, as it's easy to engage in OR doing that.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  16:01, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Obviously, that's a good idea to collect as many different RS as possible about race in biology. However, to my knowledge, these views by biologists, including textbook definitions of races and species are rather similar to the views by Mayr (if you can prove me wrong with sources, that's fine). In addition, I have never seen animal "races" used anywhere except population genetics and evolution, unlike "strains" and "subspecies" that are widely used for biological classification. Once again, you can prove me wrong by collecting more sources. So, good luck! My very best wishes (talk) 16:48, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Done that already. The mycological/phytopathological use has nothing to do with population genetics or evolution, but host species. Species question already illustrates (with sources) that biologists are divided on the matter, largely along cladistic lines.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  17:22, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

No, this is not done. The cases you included have everything to do with population biology and evolution. In particular, this your source tells in abstract that "The usefulness of race identification as a guide for the grower in selecting appropriate cultivars is limited because changes or shifts in the pathogen population are common." Actually, this is also one of the reasons why race is not very useful for biological taxonomy. My very best wishes (talk) 18:43, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

I decline to argue with you about this, other than to point out when the source tells us that genetics played no role in how they classified these races that's the exact opposite of proof that it's an evolutionary biology matter. I know how to write an article on a biology topic. I have no interest in satisfying you or anyone else in particular, only finding sources and writing proper encyclopedic material based on them. You have a clear agenda to push; that's a WP:POV problem. Assumptions are one thing; I've had to revise my own substantially on this very topic, because the term has much more currency in more fields than I thought it did; but I have no time for your WP:IDHT games.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  19:06, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

I'm comfortable with using Mayr for limited purposes of Mayr can do best, as SMc noted, though newer sources and more updated analysis is best. As a person over 50, I can tell you that mainstream eugenics discussions did predate Star Trek, as literature of the 50s and early 60s (which I was still reading during education years as reference sources and such...) did discuss it a great deal ... law cases such as Skinner v. Oklahoma hit during World War II, yet we still have not explicitly overturned Buck v. Bell either. So the importance of very careful sourcing cannot be overemphasized. Montanabw 19:18, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Right, right. I was thinking "among the non-university-educated unwashed masses".  :-) Re: Buck v. Bell: SCotUS generally won't reverse itself unless given a novel case to work with that lets them doublethink their way around the precedent system, to put it critically. We'd need to have new negative-eugenics laws to test in court. I'd just as soon leave Buck v. Bell alone, ha ha, as long as possible, than see a new wave of forced sterilization laws. What's going on these days is that inmates, especially women, and especially minority women, are "offered" free sterilization in exchange for things, or just browbeaten into it during their incarceration. A Puebloan woman I know in New Mexico (who did not opt in) said they were especially pushing Native American women prisoners to go under the knife, as if trying to just "ethnically cleanse" by way of reducing the available mothers in the population to below a sustainability threshold. Have heard of similar crap in Arizona. But it's "voluntary", see? .  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  20:18, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Which is why we still need lawyers and the ACLU. Not a colorblind society yet at all. Montanabw 21:44, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Yep. True proof I'm a centrist: I'm a card-carrying member of both the ACLU and the NRA. Heh.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  21:47, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

Clearly. I'm not "up" on how to do WP:SPI these days, though. I haven't filed one in years.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  10:38, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Update: Figured it out, opened the case.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  11:54, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

WikiGnomes

Hello. I wanted to ask about WikiGnomes as I see you display the icon and do work in this area. I really enjoy reading articles on Misplaced Pages over a wide variety of subjects, and when I find typos, grammatical errors etc like to correct them. Is there criteria necessary in order to join this group as it seems like an area I could be of service in? Thank you in advance, 79616gr (talk) 23:55, 11 August 2015 (UTC)

@79616gr: None at all! You can just add the {{User wikipedia/WikiGnome}} userbox to your user page, or add the category directly (]). And you don't have to self-identify as a gnome to do this stuff anyway, it's just a nice "show of solidarity". There tends to be a slight bias against editors who work on improving content rather than adding new content, so it's nice to take a step toward erasing that.  :-) If the changes are truly minor, like fixing typos, it's good to use the "This is a minor edit" feature below the editing window so people's watchlists don't get hit with trivial changes. You might also be interested in WP:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors for a more organized approach to improving articles more substantively.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  10:32, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I'll be adding the icon and will check out the the Guild. 79616gr (talk) 13:47, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Most welcome.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  11:53, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Phabricator

Haven't filed a MW bug since they quit using Bugzilla. from HT:CS1. -> You can log in to Phabricator using your MW name and password. Filing a bug is simple: hit the plus sign in the top right, select "Task". And the rest should be easy. --Izno (talk) 00:44, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

See also mediawikiwiki:Phabricator/Help/Reclaim_Bugzilla_and_RT_accounts for after you've logged into Phabricator the first time. --Izno (talk) 00:47, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

@Izno: Thanks. I had difficulty creating an account there last year, due to some kind of database problem they were having, and never did try to resolve that after giving up at some point. Will try again.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  10:25, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Women in Red

Formal merge proposal There is currently a merge discussion at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Women in Red#Formal merge proposal. As you are a member of WiR, this is a courtesy notification in case you want to join in the discussion. Thank you. Rosiestep (talk) 02:51, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

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Please do not refactor other editors' comments

SMcC, per WP:TPO, "The basic rule—with some specific exceptions outlined below—is that you should not edit or delete the comments of other editors without their permission. . . . Never edit or move someone's comment to change its meaning, even on your own talk page. . . . Cautiously editing or removing another editor's comments is sometimes allowed, but normally you should stop if there is any objection.

I have objected twice to your refactoring of my comments, and you have continued to re-organize the main MOS discussion page, including my comments, to your own liking. Hatting the lists of other editors, while not hatting your own, appears to be some sort of attempt to gain an advantage in the present discussion. Re-ordering/refactoring the comments of other editors, after their objection and contrary to WP:TPO is edit-warring in contravention of the talk page guidelines. TPO could not be more clear, and I have quoted it above for your benefit. Please do not continue to do it. Thank you. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 12:04, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

• Again, please do not re-factor other editors' comments. I am now respectfully requesting that you revert your own edit: . You are relying on WP:REFACTOR, an essay. The talk page guidelines specifically state: "Cautiously editing or removing another editor's comments is sometimes allowed, but normally you should stop if there is any objection." I have raised my objection firmly and politely to your refactoring of my comments. Per WP:TPO, please revert your change and restore the original order of the MOS talk page thread. Thank you. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 12:11, 12 August 2015 (UTC)
  • "Again", see WP:REFACTOR. It's explicitly permissible and encouraged to perform that kind of refactoring. This is not a "normal" case because you are revertwarring (destructively, eliminating intervening edits) to preserve unproductive confusion between two different conversations. Please just drop the stick.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  12:21, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

PS: The very reason I reverted my hatting and refactored instead was because while the hatting was justified – your lists were totally off-topic in the thread in question – it occurred to me that it would look like suppression. I therefore merged the source list into the relevant thread and put yours first. Any insinuation of bias is pretty silly.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  12:26, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

• Again, you are relying on WP:REFACTOR, which is an essay. The talk page guidelines per WP:TPO state "Cautiously editing or removing another editor's comments is sometimes allowed, but normally you should stop if there is any objection." SMcC, you have been around long enough to understand the difference between a guideline and an essay, and your reliance on the essay is misplaced in this case, as you well know. The specific guidance of a guideline trumps conflicting advice of an essay every time. You know this already. Again, please revert your refactoring/reordering of comments to which I have firmly objected per the talk page guidelines. Thank you. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 12:29, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

"Again" this doesn't qualify under "normally". How many times do you want to have the same argument on how many different pages? You do not own your posts here. When they're disruptively confusing, its perfectly legitimate to refactor them.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  12:39, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Maybe ask for WP:3O. If it's just utterly intolerable to you to be refactored even when you're posting in the wrong thread, I guess we can hat both threads and start all over again, but I think that would be a total waste of time and effort. In the interim, please stop deleting other people's posts in mass reverts just to get your way. What rationale would you have for purposely reducing clarity, muddling one thread beyond recognition, and reducing the other to half the material it should have? Do you not realize that by forcing your sourcing lists into the wrong thread, you're making yourself look like you're intentionally disrupting the one thread, while you're also incidentally stripping your own position out of the thread where it matters?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  12:33, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

• Again, you are relying on WP:REFACTOR, which is an essay. The talk page guidelines per WP:TPO state "Cautiously editing or removing another editor's comments is sometimes allowed, but normally you should stop if there is any objection." Now you're wikilawyering. You have refactored an entire talk page thread, and inserted additional editorial comments after refactoring, apparently with the intention of making the restoration of the original talk page thread as difficult as possible. The order and meaning of comments has been altered by such refactoring. I have timely, firmly and repeatedly asked you to stop refactoring my comments. You rely on an essay, which you know is trumped by the guidelines. I am not "disrupting" anything. Please restore the original thread. Thank you. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 12:49, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Copy-pasting the same material over and over again is not constructive. There is no "trumping" here because "normally" does not mean "always". WP:COMMONSENSE does not permit you to completely mangle two threads and totally delete others' posts in the process just to get your way.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  13:12, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

SMcC, it seems self-evident that you are "playing to the stands" and attempting to build a case for others to read in your talk page comments here. In light of that, I will be as clear and concise as I can. Ignoring the clear advice of the WP:TPO guideline is not constructive, and 95 out of 100 Misplaced Pages editors would have the common courtesy to drop the stick when another editor objects to the refactoring of their talk page comments. I have repeatedly quoted the relevant portions of WP:TPO, which you apparently did not know existed before this discussion, for your benefit. I am sorry that you find my repeated citation of the talk page guidelines -- the governing guidance on point -- to be objectionable and/or unconstructive. I find your hatting of other editors' lists of relevant references, followed by your complete refactoring of an entire MOS talk page thread to your own liking, highly objectionable, inappropriate and clearly contrary to the quoted passages of WP:TPO. The word "normally" means "normally." There is nothing unusual about the MOS talk page thread that makes it "abnormal," and your attempted wikilawyering of commonly used words is also objectionable, and, well, just plain weird. During your refactoring of an MOS talk page thread, you also inserted several editorial comments, which you now characterize as "deleting others' posts in the process" when your refactoring of the page was reverted. Because you inserted these comments in the midst of your refactoring -- quite possibly intentionally for this reason -- you left the objecting editor with no choice but to remove them. If you would like, I will revert your objectionable refactoring and group your intermixed editorial comments in a separate section for your benefit and to do with them as you like. When you inserted them in the midst of a refactoring to which another editor had already objected, you did so at your own risk.

SMcC, the Manual of Style is no one's private playground. Its talk pages are the province of every Misplaced Pages editor who wishes to bring their concerns about style issues there for discussion. Common courtesy, and, yes, common sense should suggest to you that refactoring the MOS talk page comments of other editors is problematic, especially in a discussion to which you are an involved party.

In the ordinary and well-understood precedence of Misplaced Pages policies, guidelines and essay, essay form the bottom rank of guidance. As an experienced editor, you know that guidelines trump essays every time when any conflict arises between their guidance. Wikilawyering the word "normally" does not help your case, because there is nothing unusual in this talk page thread -- other than your attempt to dominate this MOS discussion thread. I would suggest that you begin by respecting the opinions of your fellow editors, and make your case(s) as best you can without being disruptive. Also, please be mindful of what Shakespeare once said: "brevity is the soul of wit"; try not to say in 4000 words what might be better said (and better understood by others) in 40. Regards. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 14:07, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

How am I "playing the stands" by ensuring that your material gets top-billing in the thread in which it's actually relevant? Deadhorsing this into the ground with a text wall (in which you lecture me about brevity!) that just reiterates in longer form what you already said isn't going to sway me. WT:MOS certainly is not anyone's personal playground, so stop treating at your own, for commingling unrelated issues and making a mess out of discrete discussions. You do not actually own your own posts here. Browbeating me with your belief that guidelines always "trump" essays, when the real issue is your attempt to spin "normally" into "invariably" isn't productive. I'm very obviously not the one wikilawyering here; you're the one posting about "jurisdiction" (the word here is "scope"), and trying to make precedence arguments that WP:POLICY is pretty clear to not exist here. Essays that have over a decade of consensus on WP are just as much a part of WP's consensus on best practices as are guidelines, they're just a different kind of document; as another example, WP:AADD is widely relied upon by XfD closers as reliable guidance. PS: I'm just going to ignore the accusation of bad faith ("quite possibly intentionally for this reason") on the assumption that it's just unclear to you that such refactoring is not and never has been controversial. This is the first time I can recall a dispute about it arising in something like 5 years, and I do this regularly because it's helpful to everyone to not have commingled, confused topics trying to discussion unconnected issues.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  14:45, 12 August 2015 (UTC) Expanded 15:03, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

I know why it was rejected. What is it with you re-re-re-stating the same thing over and over? I am moving on. This tendentious niggling of yours keeps interrupting my work. Drop the stick, drop the stick, drop the stick.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  15:35, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Good. Just to be clear on the definition of the word "niggling," it's niggling when I correct your misuse of the word scope" and provide a link to the Mediation Committee policy page, but it's not niggling when you mistakenly attempt to correct my proper usage of the word "jurisdiction?" Did I get that right, or did I misunderstand you in some way? And, yes, I am laughing out loud as I type this.

And while we're "niggling," here's another correction of your various assertions above, directly from the text of Misplaced Pages:Policies and guidelines:

Policies have wide acceptance among editors and describe standards that all users should normally follow. . . .

Guidelines are sets of best practices that are supported by consensus. Editors should attempt to follow guidelines, though they are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply. . . .

Essays are the opinion or advice of an editor or group of editors (such as a WikiProject) for which widespread consensus has not been established. They do not speak for the entire community and may be created and written without approval. . . .

Despite various essays to the contrary, the generally accepted precedence of policies, guidelines and essays is usually pretty clear. Anytime you want to promote WP:REFACTOR from an essay to a guideline, it's that away for an RfC on point. Cheers, Mac. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:33, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Ah! Good point. WP:POLICY has changed since the last time I studied it; my bad. Once upon a time it indicated that any page that accurately encapsulated consensus should not be ignored, including key essays, and information pages (Help:, etc.). It's a shame this has been lost. Re: Niggling: Also a fair point. I shouldn't pick at your legalisms while complaining about nitpicking. I don't think you understood the "jurisdiction" point though; it's not how WP normally conceptualizes this, even if you can find one page to the contrary (aside pages about actual law, and aside from WP:Arbitration; ArbCom uses it because it's explicitly modeled on a court). But WP:RFM does not use this word, WP:MEDCOM and WP:Mediation Committee/Procedures do not mention "jurisdiction" anywhere. Nor does the "Request for mediation rejected" notice below. Nor does the rejection message at the request I made, nor do any of the following: WP:Requests for mediation/Guide, WP:RFARB, WP:3O, WP:DRN, WP:ANI, WP:PNB, or even WP:AE despite it being ArbCom's enforcement. The use of "jurisdiction" outside the context of ArbCom on WP is rare, and it's rare for a reason: The community can determine consensus anywhere it wants to; it usually declines to do so when things are out-of-scope (a.k.a. off-topic) for that page, but no one speaks of "jurisdiction" around here unless they're lawyering. So go ahead and laugh at how clever you are for finding an exception (that could easily be edited right now to say "scope" instead of "jurisdiction" and actually produce a page that better reflects WP's actual operating principles). I just find it sad, but true to form given the nature of this overall dispute, that you're more interested in WP:WINNING on a technicality than being on the right side of things in the bigger picture.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  18:37, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

• No, Mac, let's be crystal clear: it's not about "winning," it's about courtesy. When you say that another editor only cares about winning, it is insulting on at least two levels: (1) first, it's a direct ad hominem attack on the validity of the other editor's argument, i.e., ignore the editor's argument because he is not serious; (2) second, it's an implied ad hominem attack on the other editor's integrity, i.e., they don't care about the substance of the argument. Neither is true here. In the past, you once said that I engage "sport debate," an endemic problem with attorneys in online forums (or words to that effect); that's insulting on three levels, including professionally. I can't with any certainty know whether you intend to be personally insulting when you make such comments, but it's not an unreasonable inference to anyone on the receiving end. If you don't mean to be personally insulting, then I suggest you not make such comments in the future, and I know that your own arguments will be better received substantively and with greater courtesy by others. That's the Golden Rule in practical application. And to be perfectly clear, I am not spending time on your user talk page today because I enjoy the witty repartee; I am quite serious now, and I am not LOL'ing.

• Now for the courtesy part, Mac. Talk page comments are one of the most personal things we do on Misplaced Pages. Comments are how we interact with others, how we make our arguments, and by and large how other editors evaluate our intelligence, logic, literacy, strength of argument, and personal credibility; apart from our article edits, our comments are how our fellow editors come to know us. By re-arranging my comments, separating them from the supporting lists I had taken the time to compile, and then adding a confusing and not entirely accurate introduction to them, you stripped them of their context and minimized their impact. By burying the lists with your own, you minimized the impact of the fact that 85% of the top 20 major dailies in America are quite consistent in their use. And I'm pretty sure that violates one or more of the basic criteria of the REFACTOR essay, too. I wouldn't presume to tell you how to refactor another editor's comments, but it would have been far less aggravating to me if you had not separated my comments from the supporting data that supplied the comments' empirical support and context. That said, you could have avoided the entire episode by extending one simple courtesy to me: you could have simply asked first, and I would have had the opportunity to share the substance of the preceding sentence with you. If you had extended that simple courtesy, I would have accepted less than my ideal resolution because that's what people often do when they are being courteous to each other.

• As for the "niggling," Mac, yes, it is petty, but let's remember that I'm not the one who started the needling over definitions. If you object to being needled about minor points, I have a suggestion: don't do it, and you will receive far less of it in return. Personally, I think jurisdiction is a far better and more accurate choice of words, but that's not really the point. Don't needle others over minor points if you don't want to be needled in return. Again, another simple extension of the Golden Rule.

• And, finally, the idea that an essay trumps the guidelines is misguided. Well, heck, I'll leave that alone. You seem to agree with me now, so there's no need to belabor the point. And I believe I've answered the substance of your question below, with the second half of my second paragraph above. Contrary to what you seem to believe, Mac, I'm really very agreeable. Treat me with a modicum of respect and common courtesy, and don't mess with my talk page comments without asking. Sort of like: "Greetings! I'm a real person, like you. Collaboration improves when we remember this about each other." Easy-peasy. I might even come to appreciate your sense of humor over time. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 20:02, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Taking these in order (and thanks for taking the time to respond calmly and in detail).

1. I'll take all of that in the honest spirit in which it's offered, and give no return criticism or rebuttal on this point other than to say a) that much of what you've posted in this entire debate has appeared like sport argument to me, commingled with unreasonable ire that's clouding whether you getting your way is more important than the threads being sensible for everyone else; and b) I don't recall making such a generalization about lawyers. I spent a long time (almost a decade) surrounded with attorneys I respect a great deal, every working day, and noticed a rather consistent pattern of debate technique that is effective in courtrooms and brief but not conducive to a meeting of the minds. I don't think lawyers are bad or stupid or mean, they just tend, though occupational habituation, to a style of argument.

   So, that said, I will apologize in several ways, albeit without false confession or simpering attempts to emotionally manipulate you with handwringing: I'm sorry if I've come across as just trying to be offensive. I'm not. Constructively critical when it seems necessary. I do concede that a reference to WP:WIN or a similar page can seem like an accusation, even if I mean "see if something on this page seems familiar in this context and might change your approach". Maybe I should try being that pedantic, but I don't want to come across as one of those "civil-attack" types. I'm not passive-aggressive, but excessively genuflecting language tends to come off that way. I'd rather be seen as a jerk than a Wormtongue, if it comes down to being frowned at either way. I also apologize for not taking your objection as seriously as I could have; it seemed totally pointless argument-for-its-own-sake at the time. It wasn't out of malice, but sheer disbelief that you'd want to keep the two threads mingled in such a way for any legitimate reason. And I apologize for niggling at you about niggling. And I admit fault for not having double-checked my assumptions about what the WP:POLICY page says these days; I had trusted that it was more stable than it seems to be (and I'm surprised by this, but that's another matter).

2. Taking all of that at face value, too, I disagree with a few points though not all of it. I accept that you feel this way about your comments. In my experience here that level of proprietary sentiment is unusual, and I don't share it at all. As long as people don't change my meaning or just delete my point, they can do what they like to refactor for forking threads, moving stuff around, collapse-boxing off-topic material, or long lists of stuff, or whatever. If someone incidentally changes my meaning, or (e.g.) moves my !vote to a discussion section, I'll just go in and fix it while also trying to respect their intent, which was probably structural or "on-topical". This is really common. I refactor pretty frequently, without objection. It's just standard operating procedure, and especially routine when moving back-and-forth blather from RfCs and the like into Discussion sections below them. (So feel free to refactor the intro you think isn't accurate! If I signed it, you can take the sig off; don't care.)

   "Impact" is where we might have a more serious sticking point: The impact of your dump of sources on the thread into which you put them them was negative. It was totally off-topic and probably would have derailed the entire thing. It came shortly on the heels of reverting me on some other MOS page (with an edit summary about off-WP usage, not MOS's own internal consistency), and leaving a user talk message for me that implied I was ignorant and unread. (What was that about courtesy again? Reread what you wrote above and apply it to yourself, too.) The implication of your revert edit summary was that there should be a consensus discussion about this, so I opened one at the main MOS page. That thread is about whether MOS should be consistent with itself and not use "U.S." since it's also using "UK" and other non-dot country abbreviations. I even clarified this with A numbered list of the actual relevant question and asked which you were objecting to, and you didn't respond.

   I expected a quiet, civil discussion to ensue about this very narrow question (and maybe whether MOS should use "US" on MOS pages than mention "UK", but use "U.S." otherwise, or whatever – matters that actually pertained to the thread. You effective hijacked it, whatever the intent, into an irrelevant discussion about what the usage is in mainstream American journalism, as if "should we delete 'U.S.' from MOS's advice?" was on the table (and again accused me of ignorance among other insults; see "courtesy" material above again). You agreed yourself that it would be good to review what the sources are doing (this is a "what should MOS advise for articles?" matter). So the obvious (to me, and I think to most editors) thing to do is separate these threads, for two independent reasons, of topicality and of centralizing content. You'll note that I have nowhere said "Dirtlawyer1's actual plan is probably to just to derail the original conversation", an accusation of bad faith (though that's what the effect would have been). Contrast this with your direct insinuation that me going on with more editing while doing what seems to me to be a routine refactor was for the purpose of thwarting you, and see "courtesy" again. Heh.

   Agreed: "you could have avoided the entire episode ..." Noted! I'm just not used to people objecting to topic forks this strenuously, but it will probably change my approach to this. I do also agree with most of the points of the "Comments are how we..." material, even if I don't think it equates to "never refactor" (and maybe you're not even saying "never refactor", but it has seemed that way.) I agree that "85% of the top 20 major dailies in America are quite consistent in their use" is an important point and I'll even go bolster it. I'm being surprised by my own results so far, and had not entered into this with an expectation to find usage this split, with news publications so heavily "U.S.", but dictionaries (so far - more to go through) so heavily "US", and style guides so split (so far, again). I'm not sure how putting this fact and other sourcing material in the thread about sourcing minimizes its impact, instead of leaving it the thread where it's off topic and the only impact it has is to confuse that thread, but my point in saying this isn't to WP:WIN myself, just asking for an explanation how this can be so (related to the question I was asking earlier).

3. Conceded, other than about "jurisdiction" being better. It's a word we don't use here except in reference to ArbCom and external law, other than one page at ModCom, where it appears to be a copyediting error.
4. I've never suggested that an essay trumps a guideline. Rather, the question of "trumping" doesn't exist here, in my view. The guideline says "usually" for a reason, and that reason is given in detail at the essay. If the essay said "never" or "do not", then it would be a trumping matter (well, the essay would just get MfDed). An MfD of that essay would be a snowball keep today, because REFACTOR is SOP. On agreeability/respect/courtesy: Same here, actually. And on the upside, you've gone up many notches in my view by taking the time to talk through things like this; when discussions of this sort happen, I and whoever often end up much better understanding each other and not getting into conflict later (had similar experience with Noetica before the Admin Who Should Not Be Named pissed him off so much he quit the project). What I hope (besides less conflict in the future, of course) is that, for this particular matter, you can adjust your own material (or the intro, or whatever) as you think is needed, without re-mingling the threads, or reintroducing the out-of-band stuff about "American journalism does 'U.S.'" to the thread about MOS being self-obeying. I really did: undo my collapseboxing out of a realization that it would look one-sided (before you said so); refactor the material to make two productive threads, not to try to deny you a voice in either of them; try to keep your material together, other than replicating a small bit of it, with "..." after it, where originally posted; put your sourcing first, out of respect for it having been posted first, having been moved, and representing the prevailing view; do the refactor at all because the unrefactored topic split leading with my own material made it look like I was denigrating you for having included it in the other thread instead of neutrally forking the topics; and finally genuinely approach the second thread from a fact-finding perspective (I've been altering my own conclusion bullet points as I go). You've been so angry with me these attempts at conciliation have apparently been invisible.

   I agree with you that at the very least the American press and TV usage is mostly "U.S." I'm also amenable to more facts showing it is dominant in other areas; maybe my data so far on NOTPAPER news sources, and even the tech press, is actually skewed; I had not spent much time gathering that, since I was mostly looking for paper-related websites. I'm being much more programmatic about the style guides, dictionaries, etc., cracking a book at time (was going to add Blue Book/Red Book next, which is of course "U.S."). My main motivation in this regard is not having "special exception" rules without very good reasons, because they generate ire, GAMING, calls to revolt, "gimme my own exception" demands, and "MOS should be sourced word-by-word" proposals, etc., etc. If we make an exception it should be for defensible rationales based on periodically reality-checked evidence (on the talk page, not by citing stuff inline in the guideline). See my IEC prefixes posts lately at WT:MOSNUM in the same vein. But I wasn't actually going to open that discussion at all until probably 2016, and didn't expect anyone else would want to either, except maybe for the One Who Wants to Source Every Word of MOS.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  22:32, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

I've asked you this question three times, on two pages, in different forms. Still awaiting an answer.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  15:37, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

I know it may be hard for others to understand, but I contribute to Misplaced Pages in between actual work for pay. For me, it's a hobby, not a full-time job, and absent some sort of crisis, I think we both know that the paid job should always come first. You've been busy this morning, and your various activities have occupied a good bit of my job and hobby time, but I will try to get you a reasonable answer to your question today. Hopefully, that's fast enough for you. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 16:33, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Fine, of course (though I wonder how WP equates to work time). My point isn't that I demand an answer. I consider the entire issue moot, frankly, and a waste of both our time. If you show up later still pressing this, I would then expect an answer since it's central to this whole issue. This is a conflict between "what talk pages for, whom they serve, and how" and "Someone demands to never have their posts here touched". I'm pretty sure I know what the community's rede would be on which of these concerns has precedence. The fact that WP:REFACTOR (a {{Misplaced Pages how to}} page, not an opinion {{Essay}}) has been non-controversial for over 11 years tells us pretty clearly. WP:TPO tells us it is permissible to sometimes refactor posts; WP:REFACTOR tells us when and how to do that. The refactoring I did fulfills all four of the criteria at the top of that page, and as a "POV" matter it actually strengthened the prominence and relevance of your own material. Cf. WP:Don't spite your face.

If this is not really (as it seems) coming from a "don't you dare refactor me ever" standpoint, and is really something more along the lines of "I think the American news writing sources I dug up, which are at the top of section below, also mean that MOS should also use 'U.S.' whether we advise this in articles or not", how hard would it be to just add that statement to the thread? If you're thinking that, even further, "MOS should say to always use 'U.S.' in American WP:ENGVAR articles", or even "MOS should say to always use 'U.S.' in articles", that would be a separate proposal, probably best done as an WP:RFC, and probably advertised at WP:VPPOL since it would affect at least hundreds of thousands of articles.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  18:01, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

DRN

Formal mediation has been requested

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Restart

@Dirtlawyer1: Instead of framing this in terms of whose interpretation of what page's wording is right, let's try a completely different approach. What benefit for reader-editors of WT:MOS do you see in re-moving sourcing material about "U.S." vs. "US" usage, out of the thread to which it pertains (what MOS should advise in this regard, based on real-world usage today), and back into a thread to which it does not pertain (whether MOS needs copy-editing to agree with its own advice, regardless what that advice is)?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  14:55, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Shit (disambiguation)

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Shit (disambiguation). Legobot (talk) 00:02, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Talkback

Samuel Tarling (talk) 00:05, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Request for comment

An editor has asked for a discussion on the deprecation of Template:English variant notice. Since you've had some involvement with the English variant notice template, you might want to participate in the discussion if you have not already done so.—Godsy_CONT) 07:10, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Shoutbox sidebar

Template:Shoutbox sidebar has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:55, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Small favor

Hi, Mac. I just saw your RM thread posted to Alakzi's user talk page. I would be grateful if you would just delete it. Alakzi has been blocked for a week for incivility, etc., arising from the conflicts over several essay RMs in which he has been involved. Anything we can to help pour oil on the waters, we should do. Posting to his talk page about heated RM discussions in which he cannot participate for another week is not going to help reduce the emotions involved here, and that have led to the present debacle. Can you see your way to agreeing with me on this one? Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 19:55, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

It shall be so. I wasn't really trying to prolong an argument with him, or prolong his argument in that MR, but just move a discussion off the MR page. If he can't/shouldn't participate for now anyway, might as well self-rv.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  21:02, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Mac. This whole thing with A may have just taken a turn for the weirder. You may want to read Floquenbeam's post at ANI. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 21:24, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Will do. I actually have started checking into the background dramahz, and agree a little that the 5-hour closure on the userspacing move was excessively short and looks like a supervote. But in a sense that's just PR + bureaucracy, as an argument, since it's very, very clear it would have continued to snowball. A. was definitely being WP:POINTy as well as seemingly irrational (or maybe it was just failure to parse), tagging for speedy deletion as an attack page the SPI page that exonerated him from sockpuppetry. It's puzzling, really.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  21:34, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

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Concerning a comment of yours

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Hi, I wish to clarify a certain topic here concerning your comment at: Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Editor_conduct_in_e-cigs_articles/Evidence#SMcCandlish_response_to_S_Marshall. The fact is that the two editors who reverted the addition were 1. SPACKlick and 2. A banned editor acting under a sock-IP (I will soon provide full evidence of this). For that reason I persisted in reverting what I percieved as vandalism (sock-IP).

But the central point is that I misinterpreted your comment to support the dab. I realize this was a lapse on my side, but I had the belief that consensus was on my side (you, me, QG against SPACKlick reverting without presenting proper arguements). You will clearly see I did not persue it any further once you had made your clarification. -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 16:02, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

@CFCF: I'm not sure I raised an objection relating to your reverts. The actions I recall being disruptive were WP:IDHT/WP:COMPETENCE pursuit of disambiguation exercises that do not comport with WP's disambiguation policies and guidelines, no matter how much the problem with your proposal was explained to you by multiple parties, and pursuing it in a way that many of us were convinced was WP:POINTy, intentionally confusing two distinct topics with the goal of linking e-cig "vapor" to the concept of cigarette smoke, when there is no biomedical connection between them. The topics are as distinct as breathing in gasoline fumes and mold spores. NB: I do not refer to WP:COMPETENCE here in the snide way that some users do, to imply "you must have some mental problem", but in in the literal meaning: You have not yet achieved a competent understanding of WP:POLICY as applied to disambiguation.

That said, the "standard exception" to WP:EDITWAR/WP:REVERTWAR applied to vandal/sock fighting does not apply absent evidence of vandalism/socking. You do not get a free pass for engaging in warring if it incidentally turns out later that your suspicions about someone being a sock puppet were correct. Get the proof first.

Anyway, I just re-read every word of my post you linked to above, and I said nothing about your alleged revertwarring. I also did not submit my issues with your DAB-related stuff as actual evidence, I only posted about them on the talk page, and I don't think I need to convert it into evidence, or I would have done so already, probably.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  18:05, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

I would argue – by that reading of WP:COMPETENCE noone is competent, as we all run afoul of some policy from time to time – but that is beside the point. I am here because I respect your editing and would not like you to see me as unreasonable, not because I believe the actual incident is of any major concern.

As for the socking editor, by the very nature of dynamic IPs and WP:SPIs that process is too slow to catch a dedicated sock. This makes it impossible to present in beforehand anything but circumstantial evidence – which is why I am hopeful for an alternative solution by ArbCom. -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 18:54, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

That's not how to interpret WP:COMPETENCE, but I think you know that. The WP:COMMONSENSE interpretation is that when multiple editors are clearly explaining to you why your interpretation of a particular policy or guideline is not competent, you need to listen to them, re-read the relevant material, and reassess your approach, and that when someone habitually refuses to do this, they may have another competence problem, one of not having learned how to work well in a collaborative environment, which requires compromise, instead of always trying to WP:WIN. Your "by that reading of WP:COMPETENCE noone is competent" take is not a plauslible conclusion, or the essay would simply be deleted as patent WP:NONSENSE; it is not reasonable to assume that the stupidest and craziest possible meaning is the one intended by its authors; that's the fallacy of reductio ad absurdum combined with a veiled version of ad hominem.

I agree with your assessment of the difficulty in proving socking, but that doesn't change the fact that you'd can't avail yourself of any "immunity against charges of editwarring" on the basis that your opponent is "probably" a sock. And again, I never accused you of editwarring. You're basically making a case against yourself of editwarring, and doing it rather effectively by implying that you definitely did it but that you feel it was justified on the basis of this sockpuppet theory (which is another failure on your part to properly understand and apply policy, BTW). Especially given that I mentioned this conversation in evidence now (mainly to indicate I was accepting your good-faith explanation for the DAB-related incident), I have to strongly suggest that you not pursue this angle any longer or it will backfire: Others involved are reading this thread.

I also think it would be a good idea for you to get a lot more experience reading, internalizing, and studying the application of WP policies before wading into them vociferously. It can literally take a couple of years to get this stuff right (which is why I almost invariably vote against noob candidates at RfA; they cannot possibly do it right yet). You, and they, remind me of first-year law students who think they're already prepared to take on legal cases. :-) PS: It's not ArbCom's job to reform WP:SPI; that's the community's job.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  19:07, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

CFCF, you probably should not post further here; to anyone examining the case it may look like some kind of "collusion" with regard to ongoing RFARB, and I don't need further dramahz. I've said what I needed to say at the RFARB (and maybe there'll be room to add some of it back off its talk page later).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  11:47, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Ping

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

The ping only works if you resign. QuackGuru (talk) 18:58, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Derp. I thought I did. Thx for the note.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼ 

The word limit for other users is just 500. QuackGuru (talk) 00:35, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

I thouht it was 1000 and being asked to be upped to 1500?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  00:36, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

In bold on the page it says "The standard limits for all evidence submissions are: 1000 words and 100 diffs for users who are parties to this case; or about 500 words and 50 diffs for other users."

Involved parties are allowed to go up to a 1000. I asked to go up to 1500. You could ask on the talk page to go up to 1000 before they tell you to shorten it. There will be the workshop where users can respond. QuackGuru (talk) 00:46, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

At this point I don't know if they'll consider me "involved" or not because of the participation in the RFC/RM, another talk discussion, and my comments in this RFARB. I'll just let the clerk know if they think I should restore some of what I said to the evidence page, or leave it on the talk page where I've moved it. I think these word limits are counterproductive and I've said so.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  00:51, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

For this complex case I think they may grant you up to a 1000 words. It does not hurt to ask.

There is a note at the top of the talk page. "...all editors must create a section for their statement and comment only in their own section."

That seems a bit strange to comment only in one section. QuackGuru (talk) 00:55, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

I already posted on the talk page in support of the 1,500-word limit. The "online in their own section" thing is weird (for WP) but has been that way for a long time. It's to prevent tit-for-tat, gimme-the-last-word threaded discussions.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  01:09, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) I am staying away from that topic other than to buy popcorn and watch the show! But I have to deliver noogies to you, SMC - I am shocked, shocked that you need more than 500 words to make your case, as your brevity on WP is one of your most noted traits! (LOL!) Montanabw 05:42, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Oh, it was agonizing. I trimmed and trimmed and trimmed, and it was still huge. The weird thing is, I can slice and dice article text down to bare minimal verbiage with ease. Debate vs. encyclopedic writing are as different as songwriting vs journalism to me. My background as a policy analyst and activist (career I took when realizing academia wouldn't suit me, though I think I'd like it now) is probably why. Every single point of the other side must be analyzed for flaws; much like in legal briefs, so often not brief. But an alert has to be like ad copy, and highly compressed.

PS: See below for another LOL; we've been over before the "is the WHO a reliable source?" thing, ha ha ha.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  06:33, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

4 different users will require 1500 words for me. There is circumstantial evidence. WHO is unreliable and it is vapor? QuackGuru (talk) 06:00, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

The long section was moved to a subpage but the paragraphs were not a summary. He claimed it is a behavioral issue, but no editor made any specific proposal about anything. There was no discussion about anything specific. I summarized the Electronic cigarette#Construction section. Editors do not have to discuss making a change before making a change. QuackGuru (talk) 06:15, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

I know. My longest post-Preliminary comment was deconstructing SPACKlick's accusations about you. (I don't have a personal bone to pick with SL, but his arguments were poorly supported and reaching/fishing.)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  06:33, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

The strange thing is that it was OR. Why is this being used as evidence against me when another editor replaced sourced text with OR. QuackGuru (talk) 06:47, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

I trust that the ArbCom will see through the bogus arguments. Two years ago I wouldn't have said that, but the composition of the committee has changed significantly, and the two Arbs that stood out in my mind as most unsuitable for the position are no longer in there. Multiple editors have backed up your actions, even if criticizing some aspects of your approach.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  07:04, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

According to the talk page: "Personal attacks against other users, including arbitrators or the clerks, will be met with sanctions."

Making "bogus arguments" is a personal attack, yet I do not see any sanctions. Nothing is being done about the misleading accusations. QuackGuru (talk) 07:22, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Making bogus arguments isn't a personal attack; read WP:NPA closely. If you accuse others at RFARB of personal attacks that do not qualify under NPA, you'll likely be WP:BOOMERANG-sanctioned.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  11:44, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

QG, you probably should not post further here; to anyone examining the case it may look like some kind of "collusion" with regard to ongoing RFARB, and I don't need further dramahz. I've said what I needed to say at the RFARB (and maybe there'll be room to add some of it back off its talk page later).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  11:47, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

Sic

Hello Stanton. I was wondering if you could take a look at Talk:Stuart C. Lord#Uncalled-for reversion. From looking at the sic template history, you may be able to shed some light on the hide=y parameter in the sic template. Drmies, clever fellow that he is, bowed out of the discussion, but I'm still tilting at windmills. If you want to respond here instead of commenting on the article Talk page, that's fine - whatever you think best. Or you could just stay out of the whole thing if you wish. Thanks.--Bbb23 (talk) 21:55, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

The para. is used to have the template be invisible. It's used that way to prevent editors or bots from "fixing" things that are not really typos (or are, but are in quotes), but where we don't want "" to appear in the article, e.g. because it's not needed, will seem PoV, etc.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  05:22, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Miss Cleo

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Miss Cleo. Legobot (talk) 00:01, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Moving deprecation comment would remove the appearance of impropriety

The placement of your recent comment under Support (Yes, deprecate the template) in the revisitation of the English variant notice deprecation makes it look like two separate people have supported the deprecation. It would probably be best to move your recent comment just beneath your original one, indented. Then even someone merely skimming the conversation would be able to see that they were made by the same person. Darkfrog24 (talk) 00:31, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

I didn't post a !vote in either case, just a procedural objection and a clarification of intent. Both clearly signed, and labelled as to what they are. Edit summary clearly stated I refuse to !vote in an invalid, forum-shopping pseudo-RfC. The comments there are not numbered, just bulleted. I don't want to indent the clarification because it's more important than the original post (which I would have just replaced, but someone else !voted based on what it said). A claim of impropriety would be silly and look foolish.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  05:22, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, they're bulleted, but people count them anyway. Someone just entering the conversation will scroll past and think that four different people support deprecation instead of three. At least remove the bullet point so that it looks like a response to the previous person. That's what it is, anyway.

You're so vigilant about propriety yourself that you've brought up votestacking. This would show that you hold yourself to similarly strict standards. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:18, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

It's standard operating procedure to add additional, later notes with Clarification:, Comment:, Update:, etc., etc. No one but you has any problem with this. It's been this way for at least a decade. You're confusing numbered, actual votes (like RfA) with RfC comments. They're different. There is no impropriety here, and no one will ever think there is one. And it doesn't matter anyway. No one can tell MOS:ENGVAR editors that MOS:ENGVAR editors did not deprecate this misapplication of MOS:ENGVAR. The only result of this canvassed forum shopping is going to be to either confirm the deprecation, or to produce an extremely questionable counter "not-deprecation" that can be weighed against the deprecation at TfD. Finally, my Clarification is of the entire thing not of my own comment, and is not a response to the prior person at all (I didn't even read their comment); I'm speaking about the nature of deprecation and of TfD, because everyone in the oppose section is panicking and making incorrect assumption that they were lead to by the opener of the discussion. Please stop pestering me about this trivia.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  16:31, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Well you've clearly heard me out, but if you're going to complain about being "pestered," remember that Godsy's as convinced as you are that he/she did nothing wrong, and you've made very vocal accusations of improper behavior and bad faith that are far less gentle than the requests I've made here. Darkfrog24 (talk) 16:41, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Godsy knows where WP:ANI is and is welcome to try to make a case that I've abused his honor or something, while the community examines his WP:PARENT actions in detail. Given that the matter is already being discussed on one Administrators' noticeboard page, my assumptions are that he's smart enough to know how WP:POINTy it will look to open a redundant one, and that it would WP:BOOMERANG. It's not your job to raise Godsy's complaints for him; he's already verbally defended his actions in multiple places. And has been missing the point in doing so. This isn't about whether he's nefariously intending to shop, canvas, and thwart consensus (I even said "regardless of the intent" myself), it's about the result; this is a disruptive attempt to immediately overturn a consensus discussion on the basis that he (and people he thinks would back him up) didn't get to chime in. It's a classic example of what not to do. I'm surprised this has not already been shut down. If it were an RM right on the heels of a previous RM it would have been shut down instantly. Same goes if it was an AN discussion seeking to overturn a just-concluded ANI discussion or vice versa, and so on. The only reason this is still open, I suspect, is because no one G's an F about these stupid templates, or pays any attention to misplaced and mis-formatted RfCs in VPPRO.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  17:03, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

PS: Proof of the votestacking is in the votes: No one (or nearly no one – I'm not going to monitor it hour-by-hour, though I checked again recently) is commenting but the canvassed parties. Q.E.D.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  19:15, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

X one-sentence paragraphs and very brief sections

Mac, I need a little help locating the pertinent MOS section on point, which generally advises against the use of one-sentence paragraphs and/or very brief sections and subsections with separate headers. I found it three or four weeks ago, but cannot locate it again now that I need to reference it. I would be grateful for any help you can provide. Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:17, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

@Dirtlawyer1: No prollem:

• WP:BETTER: "Paragraphs should be short enough to be readable, but long enough to develop an idea. ... One-sentence paragraphs are unusually emphatic, and should be used sparingly. Articles should rarely, if ever, consist solely of such paragraphs. Some paragraphs are really tables or lists in disguise. They should be rewritten as prose or converted to their unmasked form."
• MOS:LAYOUT: "Very short or very long sections and subsections in an article look cluttered and inhibit the flow of the prose."

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  18:33, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

• Thank you, MAC. That's exactly what I was seeking, although I remembered a somewhat less detailed version of WP:BETTER. I was always taught to avoid single-sentence paragraphs, except when doing so for emphasis on rare occasions. Or as one composition instructor said, "You get one of those per semester." Sad to say, but many of our backwater articles consist entirely of one-sentence paragraphs. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 21:32, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

YW. I think it mostly comes from writing outlines, and then never getting around to expanding the outline. Partly also from junior high school English comp lessons ("one topic per paragraph"), and a bit also from later palimpsestuous insertions/deletions. WP does have way too much of it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  00:37, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Some light reading

http://evolbiol.ru/ancestor/ancestor.htm#082 222.237.12.104 (talk) 11:50, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, I have that one. Might be worth a few citations, but mostly at Race (human categorization), not at Race (biology).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  15:56, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

As long as you're collecting smart things said on Misplaced Pages

One of my favorite Misplaced Pages observations is the caption of the top image at User:Beyond My Ken/thoughts. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:42, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree with the first sentence of it, but I spend enough time on policy and talk pages to disagree with the second part. Many edits are internal, not public-facing, but nevertheless necessary. If the statement were revised to pertain to edits to articles in particular, I'd agree with it. When people change article text for PoV-pushing, to revert someone they don't like, or other lame-ass reasons, instead of to improve the content for present and future readers, yes, it is counterproductive.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  18:33, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

Aren't your internal edits ultimately intended to bring about benefits for the readers? bd2412 T 18:05, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

What about this conversation? :-) Only in the most abstract sense does it do so (i.e. by increasing communication between editors in a tiny way, that might theoretically improve collaboration on some user-facing edit in the future).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  18:45, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Apology

Apology for not enough care at Talk:Podosphaera fuliginea. I got frustrated with trying to follow the details and having them not match, and did not give attention to the usernames. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:37, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

@SmokeyJoe: Oh, thanks, and no worries. Honestly, I get frustrated at the amount of conflict you and I get into over interpretational and procedural matters, especially since we so often agree on them, too. I've been trying to work this stuff out with various people, and you were on my list of those to approach in that regard, so might as well start now. :-) So, I apologize, too, for the snappish point-by-point response. Working for a decade surrounded by (and writing with) lawyers has tended me toward nit-picking and over-analyzing, and I know it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  01:18, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Sometimes, in trying to be clear, I can be very blunt. Yes, I sensed some frustration, it was unexpected, I was expecting you to be in more humour. On your part, I never sensed point by point responses as snappish of offensive, especially as the points were valid. The other failing I have is commenting only half engaged. I'll try better. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 09:25, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

I shall be mindful, too.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  16:08, 19 August 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject China

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject China. Legobot (talk) 00:03, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Good thing...

... Jayaguru-Shishya isn't watching , or he'd mass-revert you, forum-shop for an admin to scold and DS you, demand that you enumerate and justify every change, and argue endlessly about who shouldn't have reverted who and whose job it was to open the discussion. EEng (talk) 16:57, 20 August 2015 (UTC) Good work, BTW. Most of the <! -- --> notes you're engaging are ones I put there about two years ago‍—‌good to see someone finally noticed.

Well, I don't antagonize J-S. Level of interpersonal conflict seems to have a lot to do with how apt people are to revert. As for "finally noticed", this is hint that HTML comments generally don't work very well for this sort of thing.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  21:41, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Antagonism had nothing to do with it. He didn't know me from Adam when he started mass-reverting. As far as I can tell the Html comments are working very nicely, in that an intelligent editor has appeared to resolve most of them, which I couldn't do myself. EEng (talk) 23:34, 20 August 2015 (UTC)

Well, as you saw, some of your edits in that spree were controversial anyway. As for the second thing, my point is that it might have taken 5 years for anyone to get around to your HTML comments, or someone might have just deleted them. It's blind coincidence I'm bothering to try to resolve them. Lots of editors just delete them as "noise" if the issue appears to be unresolved for a long time. "Take it to the talk page."  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  00:15, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

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Invitation to join the Ten Year Society

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Best regards, Sarah 01:00, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I manually added myself the other day. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  01:04, 21 August 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style

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The problem I keep running into

It's happened again, just so you have an example of my recurring whine on the topic: saying "race" instead of "breed". (This time, apparently a French translation). Just sharing the pain. Montanabw 23:20, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

That's arguably a correct usage, though perhaps an archaic and/or confusing one. It's not talking about breeds, but about distinct semi-feral populations within a landrace/type. I'm skeptical that modern English-language sources would prefer "race" in the context of mammals, though. After a month of looking around for sources, I'm mostly seeing "race" used in mycology/phytopathology, ornithology (not too often), entomology, and caudatology so far; it seems to be avoided for mammals these days (this was my impression when I started, from prior schooling, and it's been reinforced by not finding modern sources so far using it for mammals, just ones that go back many decades). In your article in question, it would surely be permissible to replace "distinct races" with "distinct populations", or "distinct variations". At a guess, it might even be two landraces within the type, but that's a specific enough claim a source would be needed for it. Labelling them "breeds" would, too, though, especially given that the sources tell us these are only somewhat-managed, semi-feral populations. That seems to contraindicate "breed".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  23:39, 24 August 2015 (UTC)

It's a landrace, so same diff (landrace breed, feral beed, standardized breed), the point is it's clearly not a species or subspecies... and in the context I've seen it in othe articles (PSanish and German examples out there I've mentioned at various times), they use it to mean "breed". I think I used the phase "group" or "type" in my fix, the term seems to actually cover a body type as much as anything, not unlike pony. Montanabw 20:26, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Should work.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  20:29, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Flags and the FINA championships

Mac, please take a look at the use of flags in the 2015 World Aquatics Championships. Perfectly justifiable under the present language of MOS:ICON and all other versions of the guideline that have existed in the last 6 years. While permitted, it's also self-evidently excessive and visually overwhelming. When we were arguing about the use of flags in sports articles, I always said that it was ridiculous that editors were arguing against a single 7mm flag icon in the infobox of an Olympic gold medalist or other national sports team member. Well, we're past that now, but the truly excessive uses of flags continue in many corners, and many of those excessive uses were always permitted. I've been doing best to curtail the secondary use of flags in swimming articles (geographic locations, host nations, non-national team swimmers, etc.), even while reinforcing the legitimate use of flags for national teams and their members. I'm looking for logical rationales to limit the excessive uses while maintaining the core uses.

Anyway, I'm thinking out loud and I'm not looking for an immediate answer. Think about it, and let me know where your spit-balling takes you. Thanks. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 03:26, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

I tend to agree on that one. The use in the table makes sense, because it helps people find the data they're looking for. In the list below the table, it seems to serve no purpose but confusing decoration, and actually makes the list harder to read. Not sure what codifiable principle emerges from that, though.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  03:56, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

You thanked me

Oh, I wasn't expecting that.Curb Chain (talk) 05:06, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Trying to use that feature more. It's helpful for reminding people that small cleanup edits are often of value. Also good as a "no hard feelings" gesture if someone you've had a disagreement with does something you agree with. And it's useful for quietly agreeing with a WP:SPADE post without dog-piling onto it. As well as the obvious use for thanking someone for big, difficult content work, of course. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  05:13, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Joseon

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Joseon. Legobot (talk) 00:02, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Invitation to WikiProject TAFI

Hello, SMcCandlish. You're invited to join WikiProject Today's articles for improvement, a project dedicated to significantly improving articles with collaborative editing in a week's time. Feel free to nominate an article for improvement at the project's Article nomination board. If interested in joining, please add your name to the list of members. Thanks for your consideration. North America 08:16, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

I'll think about it, but it's not really my style. I tend to single out problematic stubs, not stuff that needs to be pushed a little to reach GA/FA. I have respect for that work, but it's "sexy" enough of a lot of editors focus on it, while hardly anyone works on really weak stub articles that could but do not yet have much encyclopedic value. I'd rather make a "2" into a "6" than an "8" into a "9".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  09:09, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for considering it. The project has gone through some recent changes. We previously worked on several articles weekly, but after talk page discussions, we whittled it down to one per week in hopes to maximize participation. I'm also a fan of expanding stubs, performing this type of work from time to time. North America 09:27, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Might help if there were a way to "subscribe" for notices of certain topical ones (biology, music, whatever), but maybe that's too much infrastructure for something that happens once a week. I dunno.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  09:48, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

You can subscribe to receive project notices, which includes the weekly selection, at the project Notifications page. However, it is not topical in nature. North America 09:51, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

OK; seems a good compromise. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  10:09, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your input, and for the notifications sign-up. North America 10:11, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  10:12, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

...and for joining the project (missed that initially). Cheers, North America 10:13, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

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Hello.

Lets talk I'm good.

b — Preceding unsigned comment added by Babbitholed (talk • contribs) 03:51, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

About what?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  08:16, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Talk:Gangsta.

I changed the bolding format of your post at RM a moment ago. You can either revert or modify. --George Ho (talk) 06:09, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Right-o.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  08:16, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

You're invited! Women in Red World Virtual Edit-a-thon on Women in Leadership

You are invited! → World Virtual Edit-a-thon on Women in Leadership ← Come and join us remotely!

World Virtual Edit-a-thon on Women in Leadership Dates: 7 to 20 September 2015 The Virtual Edit-a-thon, hosted by Women in Red, will allow all those keen to improve Misplaced Pages's coverage of Women in Leadership to participate. As it is a two-week event, inexperienced participants will be able to draw on the assistance of more experienced editors while creating, translating or improving articles on women who are (or have been) prominent in leadership. All levels of Misplaced Pages editing experience are welcome. RSVP and find more details →here← --Ipigott (talk) 09:31, 30 August 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Template talk:Nazism sidebar

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This week's article for improvement (week 36, 2015)

A Old Colony Mennonite family observing the practice of plain dress Hello, SMcCandlish. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection: Plain dress Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Historic house • Soufflé Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations Posted by: EuroCarGT (talk) 00:10, 31 August 2015 (UTC) using MediaWiki message delivery (talk) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions

Re: Trolling

"Greetings! I pretend to be honest but mindlessly follow WP's ad populum model of truth. As such I edit known falsehoods into articles, such as "orthodox" race beliefs based on demonstrable academic fraud. Being a collaborator improves when we remember this about each other. I also call people who disagree with my nonsense "trolls", pretending they are winding me up insincerely, for want of any valid points." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 115.92.221.62 (talk • contribs) 04:48, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

That an "interesting" view of my editing, approach, and thoughts, but wrong on every point, and ill-informed. There is no academic fraud you've demonstrated. I have not edited any known falsehoods into articles. If I were to do so, it would be to attribute them to those who made them (if the views were notable enough to include), and then refute them, also with attribution to those who have published the counter-arguments, per WP:UNDUE. If you read what I've posted at Talk:Race (human categorization) (an article I don't really even edit except trivially, just do sourcing for that others can use as they will), you'll see this clearly. I label as trolls those who engage in trolling, like changing people's statements on their talk pages in an attempt to piss them off. Doesn't work on me. I find your antics silly and amusing, your anger misdirected, and the point you're trying to make unsupported and unsupportable, but feel free to try. If it's you who has been leaving me links to places like Conservapedia or whichever it was, I don't care. Whatever point you are trying to make with them, a) I already understand it, being well aware of the master-race rantings of far-right groups, and b) Misplaced Pages doesn't care what the "anti-Wikipedias" publish anyway, since they are user-generated content we can't use as sources. Cite some real sources. Show us reputably published reliable sources presenting real research.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  04:21, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

You mean Rightpedia? There are plenty of references on that page Sir. The patent falsehood referred to is Lewontin's fallacy, described as responsible for the "orthodoxy" you mention. Is it not a fallacy? I can go into more detail. A "troll" is defined as someone writing entirely to annoy his opponent for fun, rather than someone who is correct trying to correct his opponent, possibly with a derisive and mocking tone. 175.124.157.54 (talk) 14:05, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't trust Rightpedia (or Conservapedia, or Metapedia, all of which might as well just merge) to do proper research. They have no equivalent of WP:NOR and WP:NPOV, but are all on an explicit mission to push an American conservative right-wing viewpoint, cherry-picking their (largely unreliable) sources and excluding any that contradict them. We still can't use Rightpedia, etc., as sources no matter what sources they cite, because of WP:UGC. I have no problem, of course, with people citing some of the same sources here, if they're actually WP:RS, and are being used within the bounds of NOR, WP:UNDUE, etc. Undue weight is often the issue here. The fact that one guy, A. W. F. Edwards, published one paper criticizing Lewontin is unlikely to be significant enough to include at the race-related articles, but it might be significant enough to mention at the article on Lewontin (it surely already is, but I'm not interested enough to go look). If a lot of stuff has developed from Edwards's paper since its publication (in actual peer-reviewed journals, not ranty political blogs), maybe there enough "there there" to either include counterpoints to Lewontin at race-related articles, or remove Lewontin from them, or whatever, as the case may be. My own posts at Talk:Race (human categorization) included critiques of Lewontin (and critiques of those critiques), but it's not my personal WP mission to work on that article or related articles; I really don't care much. I did sourcing to address a then-ongoing controversy, nothing more. You're coming from the viewpoint of a detractor of the ideas behind the uneasy and increasingly challenged consensus in the life sciences against biological human race, and you imagine me to be a supporter of those ideas. I'm not. I'm an observer of the fact that external RS tell us that it's an uneasy and increasingly challenged consensus in the life sciences, and of what the pro and con arguments are with regard to the rationale for that consensus and for the challenges to it (the one coming from medical research is particularly weak because they keep changing their definitions all the time, and can't tell the difference between "race", "ethnicity" as a politician might define it, "ethnicity" as an anthropologist would define it, and "ethnicity" as people self-select on questionnaires that often have pigeonholing problems, and so on). Pestering me personally about this is a waste of time. I have other fish to fry. Where you and I do seem to differ is you appear to be convinced that "race is a social construct" is some lie, and that race is definitively biological. You seem to be on a mission to have WP say this. But the evidence doesn't support this, and it's not WP's job to prove or disprove it anyway, but to report that the RS tell us it's a consensus, what the challenges to that consensus are, and what the challenges to those challenges are. What the sources do support, in my view, is that the question is both complex and kind of pointless. There's a lot going on, that ranges from some traits being particular to certain populations for unknown reasons; other traits being particular to any population that has lived for tens of thousands of years within a particular latitude range or other environment despite being geographically isolated from one another; certain traits being tied to other traits regardless what population they arise in, others not so; evolutionary psychology evidence that we innately want to define people in a racial way (i.e. the social component of race itself may have a universal biological underpinning that it separate from race but determinative of why the idea is so ingrained); conflicting evidence on race and IQ tests; a lot of evidence that IQ tests are culturally biased and thus don't tell us anything useful; confusion between the ethnicity-related concept of human races and the biological, taxonomic use of the term; and add a dozen other things here. As a conceptual model, "human races" is nearing the end of its usable lifespan, if it's not already a zombie, staggering along on autopilot because it science-dead body is being animated by politics and sociological patterns. You can shake your fist at me individually all you like, but it won't change anything.

Trolling: Your definition is one definition. It's not the one we use here, which more broadly includes antagonistic editing designed to get attention, generate controversy, anger people into off-topic responses, or otherwise disrupt business as usual. On WP it's most often done with some particular PoV purpose in mind, not simply for "fun". It's about constructiveness vs. nonconstructiveness. Whether you genuinely find the trolling fun or not is immaterial; if its effect is just pissing people off unnecessarily, without much chance of improving the article, then it's trolling.

I wouldn't be surprised if your posts here get reverted anyway, because you're indeffed (if you really are Mikemikev; I've had my other suspicions), and using IPs to keep posting. I don't really care either way. Your mission is not my mission and doesn't relate to my interests.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  22:41, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

You're invited! Smithsonian APA Center & Women in Red virtual edit-a-thon on APA women

Asian Pacific American Women World Virtual Edit-a-thon

Dates: Friday-Sunday, 4 to 6 September 2015 Location: Worldwide/virtual Sponsor: Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center "The Smithsonian APA Center invites you to attend the 2nd annual Misplaced Pages APA an editathon for cultural presence, which will be held during the month of September 2015. We are thrilled to invite you to Misplaced Pages APA, an editing event for improving and increasing the presence of cultural, historic, and artistic information on Misplaced Pages pertaining to Asian Pacific American ("APA") experiences. The second Misplaced Pages editathon dedicated to APA content, this project will occur as physical events during September 2015... as well as remotely, with participants taking part from all throughout the world." Facilitator: Women in Red (WiR) Did you Know that 15% of the biographies on Misplaced Pages are about women? Not impressed? WiR focuses on "content gender gap". If you'd like to help contribute articles on women and women's works, we warmly welcome you! WiR will be hosting one of this world virtual edit-a-thon. The 3-day event will focus on improving Misplaced Pages's coverage of Asian Pacific American women and their works (books, paintings, and so on). For more information and to RSVP: → click here← --Rosiestep (talk) 03:23, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Probably mostly outside my editing range, but it jogs my memory to update articles like Pan Xiaoting and other women cue sports player articles from Asia, some of which probably haven't had much attention in several years. I guess most of them are not Asian-American, though, aside from Jeanette Lee (pool player), which I already was updating a bit the other day.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  04:40, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks

Just wanted to thank you for your comments here. Very decent of you and I appreciate that you took a solid and neutral look at the situation, then called it as you saw it. Montanabw 04:28, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

NP. I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  04:35, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

Just noticed the user got indeffed. Kind of a sub-optimal result, but the overall pattern seems unconstructive enough that I guess it's a reasonable enough response. Would have rather seem a community close with the probable topic and interaction bans. An indef like this, especially given that the user has socked before, almost certainly means they'll just create another account and be even more recalcitrant. If the account is effectively "dead", there's no incentive not to just restart, while if the account is just a bit restricted, there's an incentive to get in better graces and keep the account going. Oh well.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  06:22, 1 September 2015 (UTC)

The Fall

Reading into things--reason?

Are you okay? You've been reading a lot more problem into posts than is actually there for weeks, both with me and with Curly. Did something happen? Not offended if you delete this. Darkfrog24 (talk) 13:42, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm fine. What's happened is my patience with tendentious editing, civil-PoV, and slow-editwarring patterns has finally reached a limit. No one who is doing problematic things thinks they are. One cannot self-assess whether one's behaviors are problematic, since it's others who perceive the problems. One who will not listen to others when they raise objections about the problems one is causing, is doomed to keep causing problems until people's tolerance for the behavior pattern runs out.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  22:23, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

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Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you, Harej (talk) 17:49, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Scanian dialect

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Scanian dialect. Legobot (talk) 00:02, 3 September 2015 (UTC)

Topic-ban

For edit-warring on WP:MOS and several other pages related to your fight with User:Darkfrog24 over quotation styles, together with your pattern of long-winded, aggressive filibustering on the related talk page and noticeboard threads, including incivility and personal attacks and displaying at least as much "IDHT" as the behaviour of the other party you complained of, I am imposing a topic-ban from WP:MOS and related discussions on you for a period of two months. This is done under the provisions of the discretionary sanctions rules for the MOS topic area, and in light of the previous sanctions and warnings you received in that context (quote from a DS ruling in 2013: "SMcCandlish is prohibited from making bad faith assumptions about other participants; strongly advised to avoid commenting on contributor, particularly with regard to WP:NPA and WP:CIV; and encouraged to keep his contributions to a reasonable length"). For the avoidance of doubt, under the "widely construed" rule, the edit-war in article space at Quotation marks in English is included in this sanction. I would have imposed a similar sanction on the other party, except that I can't find evidence the necessary "alerts" have been given to them. Fut.Perf. ☼ 08:30, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

@Future Perfect at Sunrise: I'm not going to whine about receiving a temporary topic ban as onerous, and I concede some of these points, but this action is questionable to me for multiple reasons, and raises some concerns about the future of the affected pages, and for dealing with any future disputes, as well as what I can and can't legitimately do in the interim. I'm not asking just to be a pain in the butt or to debate you, but because your reasoning behind the admonitions, and the decision, are unclear to me, and a remedy doesn't remedy anything, really, if the one it's applied to doesn't understand it.

Whatever the intent, this has the effect of "punish more who ever posted more or more loudly" decision (which, if so, plays directly into the hands of civil-PoV gaming, and to the tactic of refusing to address refutation and just re-re-re-stating the same premise over and over again, generating additional refutations until the culprit can claim it's the refuter, the one with the sources and facts, who is being the problem, rather than the fact-denier and OR-spinner).

I would like to work on the article in a sandbox in the interim. I've done an enormous amount of recent sourcing for it (only some of which I used in the MoS thread, and haven't used any of it for the article yet), and spent several hundred US dollars on acquiring sources with which to do so . The article is so bad, The Guardian publicly criticized us for it, and it's actually gotten worse, not better, since then (markedly so).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  14:44, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Just for the record, I'm going to observe that I've asked repeatedly over two weeks for this TB to be clarified and narrowed, and have no received any response at all.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  09:34, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:India

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This week's article for improvement (week 37, 2015)

Hello, SMcCandlish. The following is WikiProject Today's articles for improvement's weekly selection:

High diving

Please be bold and help to improve this article! Previous selections: Plain dress • Historic house Get involved with the TAFI project. You can: Nominate an article • Review nominations

Please comment on Talk:Warminster Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania

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Thank you

Hey. I just wanted to say thank you for your comments here without my askance. That was very kind of you and I was relieved to see an editor actually being neutral and not taking sides. Best regards, Pixarh (talk) 18:15, 11 September 2015 (UTC)

YMMV

Re. Special:Diff/680761745 - I don't recall having been reverted, but I've been called out on it on a few ocassions, like here. Our readers must've been thrilled to know about the merge proposal of {{Colorbox}} with {{Color box}}. Alakzi (talk) 00:55, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Meh. It's lame, we (as a community) are doing it less and less, and if there was ever a consensus to bludgeon our readers with TfD notices, it was when most of our readers were also our editors. This is now one of the top-5 most used websites in the world by the general public. WP:CCC and all 'at. Maybe someone will revert that change, but if they do we should probably have an RfC about this, and demonstrate that the consensus changed a long time ago. I have not (intentionally) allowed a mainspace template's TfD notice to be transcluded in so long I can't remember, and people bitch about it all the time when others do it, especially to frequently used templates and inline ones.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  01:00, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Idolatry

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This week's article for improvement (week 38, 2015)

Service awards

In the main WP:Service awards page, I see that each level, even the senior ones, has in the right-hand box a note on the lines of "Incremental service award ribbons are also available, starting at 53,250 edits and 7 years 3 months of service." I presumed that for levels above Yeoman Editor those had been added recently, and that I should remove them as part of the clear-up after Misplaced Pages:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Incremental service awards (Ribbons); but looking at the history, I am surprised to see that they have been there since 2010 or earlier. Was there some earlier version of these incremental awards that was abolished and re-invented by Alex?

Unless you see any reason to keep them, I think those notes for levels above Yeoman should go, anyway, since they ain't true now. JohnCD (talk) 20:33, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

That solution sounds right. I'm not sure what the full history is. As far as I know, some incremental awards were added some while ago, to the lower-level awards only, as an incentive for new editors (mostly students). Then along came someone who added similar things to every single level (with numbers that conflict here and there), and this is what has been objected to, as unnecessary. If you go back to 2010 or earlier, all bets are off, because people were just randomly messing with this stuff constantly; it was very unstable. What we had last year or so is probably a better guide.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  20:44, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Not for the first time, I have been confused by a transclusion. That part of the page was transcluded from Misplaced Pages:Service awards/Table where, indeed, those notes for the higher levels had been recently added. I have reverted, so they are gone. Sorry you've been troubled... JohnCD (talk) 21:03, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

No prollem!  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  21:43, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:The Valiant Little Tailor

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Please comment on Talk:Hijra

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This week's article for improvement (week 39, 2015)

 I had some input on it, though not a lot.

Category:Welsh-speaking sportspeople DRV

Hello; I recently closed a discussion for the above category CFD here. A deletion review of the decision has been opened DRV here. I'm notifying you because you participated in the CFD. Thanks, Good Ol’factory 23:48, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

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This week's article for improvement (week 40, 2015)

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You're invited! Women in Red World Virtual Edit-a-thon on Women in Architecture

Congratulations

If you like you can add this userbox to your collection.

. Buster Seven Talk 15:06, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Congrats, SMC. Montanabw 23:54, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, folks. The sick thing is, almost none of that 100K is WP:AWB; I haven't used it in years, and only for cleaning up small categories of articles like Category:Cue sports.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  01:41, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Update

You don't know me, but I just wanted to let you know I replied to your excellent comment from six months ago that you posted at the bottom of this talk page discussion. Have a good day. Czoal (talk) 19:37, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I commented there and suggested at WP:ANRFC that it be closed per WP:SNOWBALL.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  01:38, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

My pleasure. Yes, there was quite a snowstorm in that RfC. By the way, that debate actually stemmed from this condescending lecture I got from an editor on my talk page after I moved the template from the bottom of an article, where he had placed it, to the top. In any case, thanks for requesting the close. Czoal (talk) 08:12, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

Are you sitting down?

Believe it or not, I'm popping by because I think your perspective may be useful here: Talk:Feral_organism#Requested_move_2_October_2015. Montanabw 20:11, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

LOL. I'll have a look at it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  22:12, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

I went with Sminthopsis's idea, which retains all the info, but puts the animal stuff in its own article.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  01:37, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 41, 2015)

Please comment on Talk:Special administrative region

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Wikigroan listed at Redirects for discussion

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Please comment on Talk:African American

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This week's article for improvement (week 42, 2015)

MOS:IDENTITY is being revisited: How should Misplaced Pages refer to transgender individuals before and after their transition?

You are being contacted because you contributed to a recent discussion of MOS:IDENTITY that closed with the recommendation that Misplaced Pages's policy on transgender individuals be revisited.

Two threads have been opened at the Village Pump:Policy. The first addresses how the Manual of Style should instruct editors to refer to transgender people in articles about themselves (which name, which pronoun, etc.). The second addresses how to instruct editors to refer to transgender people when they are mentioned in passing in other articles. Your participation is welcome. Darkfrog24 (talk) 02:41, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

As I think you know, I'm temporarily unable to contribute to that discussion. Thanks for the notice, anyway; I doubt that the issues surrounding the specific page section in question will resolve themselves somehow in a single month, so I'll probably weigh in on it after the TB expires.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  03:12, 14 October 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Battle of Britain

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Flags redux

Flags to right of them, flags to left of them, flags in front of them, flutter'd and wave'd.

SMcC, FYI: . I trust you agree that tagging Russian ballet dancers with national flag icons is an inappropriate use. It's kind of funny, but whenever there's a MOS:ICON dust-up on the talk pages, it's always a sports-related article that is trotted out. Personally, I think national flag icons for ballerinas and dinosaur fossils are a lot more egregious, but I suppose there are those flag-waving apatosaurs and raptors that espouse nationalist tendencies too. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 09:20, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

@Dirtlawyer1: Can't do anything about it right now (see on-hold note).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  18:55, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

Understood; I was thinking your t-ban only extended to editing MOS provisions, but broadly construed this obviously touches on MOS. Sorry to bother you. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 18:57, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

No prob. I'm hoping the frequency with which people keep asking for my input on matters blockaded by the TBan will get the TBan lifted early, but so far the request has been sitting there for weeks. My guess is the TBan will expire before the request is acted upon. . As for "broadly construed", the admin in question did in fact extend it directly to at least one article (even though that appears to violate the scope of WP:ARBATC), so I'm not taking any chances. The closest to a chance I'm taking is commenting on style matters in article talk from a strictly external-sources perspective, e.g. what Oxford /Hart's and Chicago say about comma usage.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  00:19, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Done, now that the TBan has been voided (and it would have expired by now anyway).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  03:08, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Denali

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This week's article for improvement (week 43, 2015)

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Tribscent08 and Universal Medicine

Tribscent08 is a WP:SPA with ties tot he cult. Frankly, we need to start topic banning the two or three SPAs on that article, because all they ever do is beef about how it's not promotional enough neutral. It's a cult, it makes batshit crazy claims, Benhayon's daughter claims to have given tens of thousands of pounds' worth of swimming coaching as a donation in kind, in the UK chaorty accounts, but without any trace of any meaningful number of people actually using the swimming facility. It really is a scam. Guy (Help!) 22:46, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

@JzG: I don't doubt you (on any of that). I was just doing due "in case it's an earnest noob not an SPI" diligence in explaining how proper sourcing works here. :-) If only it were as easy to deal with lo-o-ong term "civil PoV pushers". Obvious promotionalists are way easier to get the community to do something about than more subtle WP:GREATWRONGS activists on long-game campaigns to manipulate our coverage (see, e.g., top item on my user page re: Pakistan). There's a lot of that going on with regard to GMOs, e-cigs, even linguistic matters.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  23:34, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Oh yes, this is very much the case. I am increasingly convinced that there will eventually have to be a body on Misplaced Pages that can make binding decisions on content. Guy (Help!) 23:57, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Surely. And we have a countervailing problem that all of the dispute-resolution mechanisms under WP:DR cannot be used except in a content dispute, other than running to ArbCom and spending a month pretending to be an attorney with a bunch of people pretending to be a court, or throwing the dice at ANI, where you will win or lose based on how popular you are with whoever shows up that day, and mostly as a factor of how good you are at being concise and sweet-sounding for the 15 seconds you have people's attention. This dual problem is insanely gameable. If you're a NOTHERE PoV-pusher, you can use one set of tactics and approaches to weasel and skew the content, dancing around the usual DR processes, but ultimately immune to ArbCom as long as you're good at the "civil-PoV" game; meanwhile using a different set of tactics to warp policy and processes (especially to make it easier to keep doing what you're doing to the content), knowing that there's almost no DR recourse available to stop you. All it takes is patience and skill at verbal manipulation to get your opponents to look like the bad guys, and political acumen in persuading people you're not really doing anything wrong. If this double-backdoor is not closed, it will eventually be the death of WP, because all the paid advocates, fringe loons, and propaganda agents will slowly become admins and take the place over, as they gain ground and force out actual encyclopedist editors who oppose them. This is an already ongoing, slow-motion coup d'état.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  06:05, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Blue Army (Poland)

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‎Requesting guidance

Greeetings

It seems you have been working on culture related some articles too. I am requesting your kind guidance for change of name of one article. When I started working on a new article recently, presently named Poles in mythology actual article name was some thing different, actually due to some misunderstandings some one changed name of the article to Poles in mythology. Matter of the fact is I wanted to cover cultural aspects and festive celebrations as an umbrella article and wanted to have historical mythological, worships wherever concerned as a small part of the main article.

Poles in mythology is altogether a different subject when I am doing research and writing cultural aspects of festive celebrations are also coming up simultaneously and I am coming to a conclusion that for covering cultural aspects of festive celebrations of 'pole' we need to have a separate umbrella article altogether so we will not have more confusions and misunderstandings. Either we need to change present article name or split and create a new cultural aspect related article.

Please let me know your openion and if you are positive to my suggessions what should be the new articles name ? In fact you can join in discussion at Talk:Poles_in_mythology#Change_of_article_name

Looking forward to your kind guidance

Thanks and warm regards Mahitgar (talk) 10:56, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Sofia

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This week's article for improvement (week 44, 2015)

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Please comment on Talk:Johann Sebastian Bach

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Arbitration proposed decision posted

A proposed decision has been posted in the Editor conduct in e-cigs articles arbitration case, which you are listed as a party to. Comments are welcome at the proposed decision talk page. For the Arbitration Committee, L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 12:48, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

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Halloween cheer!

Hello SMcCandlish:
Thanks for all of your contributions to improve Misplaced Pages, and have a happy and enjoyable Halloween!
    – North America 01:29, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

• Happy (belated) Halloween! North America 01:29, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. It's still very much ongoing in my time zone, what with Halloween falling on a weekend. My neighbs are partying loudly and will probably be at it for another 4 hours. Guess I'll watch zombie movies. I usually go next door and join in their parties, but don't feel like it this time around. Will take too much effort to work out a costume from the stuff in my wardrobe. Last time, I did a smoking jacket, an old-fashioned hat, and a cravat, as the Thirteenth Doctor, but that lazy pseudo-costume only works once. I'll just wait until they have a non-Halloween party, heh.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  09:27, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Inventions and Sinfonias (Bach)

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This week's article for improvement (week 45, 2015)

Topic ban belatedly lifted

Hi, I realize this somewhat late, but the discussion at Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/Archive275#Request_to_lift_temporary_topic-ban has been closed and the ban formally lifted. As far as I'm concerned, you are retroactively unbanned as of a month ago. I realize that this is small comfort, since the ban only had 2 more days to run, but I don't think maintaining unsupported sanctions just because we're too lazy to lift them is a valid reason.

Happy editing.--Aervanath (talk) 21:07, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

@Aervanath: Thanks. I appreciate it, "just for the record" if nothing else. It was a pretty silly situation. Unfortunately, I'm eyeballs deep in "real work" right now, and don't actually have time to work on the WP stuff that I did have time to work on a month ago but couldn't because of the TBan. LOL. So it goes. Hopefully I can get back into that stuff in a week or so. The bulk of the source research is done, but the actual content writing will take considerable effort.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  11:39, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

• Also just for the record, I only now realized (that's how little I hold grudges!) that Future Perfect at Sunrise, who issued the TBan that was just vacated, is the same admin who issued me a bogus short-term block last year, predicated on false facts and assumptions, and then pulled the no-response act, dragging it out until it was moot, despite being reminded multiple times "Administrators are expected to respond promptly and civilly to queries about their Misplaced Pages-related conduct and administrator actions and to justify them when needed." This is the second time the same admin has used punitive WP:AC/DS to muzzle me, after a dispute had already wound down, and did so in heavy favor of my opposite party in a content dispute (the first time, on the direct request of that party). Both times, the one-sided sanctioning action was taken on the basis of false accusations of wrongdoing and a total lack of understanding of what was actually happening. In both cases the admin refused to provide evidence of their accusations against me, to respond to my requests to clarify, and to respond to multiple other parties' (including other admins') requests for justification. This is not exactly a trust-inspiring pattern of admin tool use, and there's a procedural remedy for dealing with that which I'll avail myself of, for the first time in my ten+ years here, if it happens again. Many editors would already have done so, but I trust that it will simply not be repeated. We all have better things to do here.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  16:21, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Arguments in News discussions

Can you create an essay WP:Arguments to avoid in News discussions or an essay about arguments in WP:ITN/C discussions? --George Ho (talk) 02:02, 5 November 2015 (UTC)@

@George Ho: Someone could, but I have almost no contact with ITN, so I wouldn't be familiar enough with the "frequently made arguments" there. I'd be more in a position to write WP:Arguments to avoid in style discussions. Anyway, see WP:Arguments to avoid on discussion pages for starters. Are the ITN problems ones that are not already catalogued there?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  11:44, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

You can do an essay about arguments in style discussions... What are style discussions? George Ho (talk) 16:15, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

WT:MOS and the talk pages of the other style guidelines, and similar discussions at other pages. Discussions about writing style, punctuation, grammar, spelling, tone, dialect, layout, and other presentation style matters.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  01:22, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Infoboxes and mobile

Just for info - Infoboxes are visible in mobile (at least in the version I'm using which I think is beta). They appear as a link "Quick facts" which expands to display the whole infobox including images. It's sidebars, navboxes, stub templates, hatted stuff on talk pages etc that are the problem! PamD 06:38, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, the solution adopted for infoboxes can probably be adapted to the other cases. Might even just be a matter of applying some existing CSS classes, though I have not looked into that yet. I don't spend much time on WP in mobile (meaning phone) browsers (lots of netbooks use regular browsers; "mobile" is a poor word choice, really, better describing the method of networking than anything to do with the display). If I'm hitting WP on my phone, its usually to look something up in the lead of an article. I've only tried editing WP from a phone a few times; not a pleasant experience. I think I did see something last month about all collapsed content being permanently inaccessible in the mobile skin. That's obviously a problem that needs fixing. It doesn't make any sense that the clickable widget to expand it would disappear in that skin. 06:56, 5 November 2015 (UTC) Ping: PamD.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  11:46, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Alternative theories of the location of Great Moravia

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Please comment on Talk:Political correctness

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This week's article for improvement (week 46, 2015)

E-cigs PD talk page

Hi SM, Could you please to move your comments in Awilley's section to your own? I think it might be easier if you do it yourself rather than me moving them around. If you don't (want to / etc) let me know and one of the clerks will. Thanks, Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 07:26, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

@Callanecc: Okey-dokey.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  23:52, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

TAFI talk

• Hello SMcCandlish:

You are invited to participate in this discussion at the TAFI talk page regarding improving the automation of project processes and management of the project. Your input is appreciated.

Hello. You have a new message at Misplaced Pages talk:Today's articles for improvement's talk page. Message added 14:07, 11 November 2015 (UTC).

Request to revisit the discussion. North America 14:07, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Done. I opened a thread, Misplaced Pages talk:Today's articles for improvement#Pre-bot streamlining, on ways to improve the presently iffy usability. The page is on my watchlist.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  17:02, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Infoboxes; DS alert

If you want to issue DS alerts to all participants in infobox discussions who called their opponents something unpleasant, you will be a busy man ;) - thanks for logic I find convincing, btw. I use {{infobox person}} for all people, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:07, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

I've resolved to deliver them henceforth every time I see WP:ARBATC transgressed in a way that can't be denied, particularly in instances of imputing that another editor has a mental problem (insanity, fanaticism, obsession, etc.) Not because I think the recipient is a WP:JERK, but because this tendency to treat WP talk pages as if they were webboards or Usenet newsgroups (venues for sport debate and flamewarring) is decidedly anti-collaborative (and I say that as someone historically far too flamey). I expect this to have two long-term results (other than some additional being people irritated with me): a general increase in civility in these discussions, and an increase in awareness that the {{Ds/alert}} system is pointless bureaucracy that should be abandoned in favor of assuming that WP:AC/DS can be applied to any regular participants on pages / in processes subject to DS, on the basis that they can't help but know the DS apply after enough participation. I'd like to see the DS, at least in this topic area, either abandoned, or applied 10x more frequently, but more moderately (e.g. 1-day blocks, 1-week narrow topic bans). The present practice of singling out a small number of editors for lopsided punitive treatment has to end one way or the other.

Back to IBs: I default to {{Infobox person}}, but it's often not suited to topical bios where some particular convention has evolved. E.g. the typical snooker bio infobox (as at Ronnie O'Sullivan) has a large number of parameters that do not pertain outside snooker, and which would be onerous if manually coded as custom fields. I'm a little put off by the {{Infobox composer}} one, because it's clearly been "shaped" by a single editor to "forbid" certain kinds of information that would routinely be included (e.g. notable relative, unless there's a separate article on a whole "dynasty" of them). On the other hand, its limitation of the use of the works parameter to only be used for a link to a "list of works" article instead of someone's cherry picked inline list of favorites, is a great idea that should be propagated to other infoboxes, other than for subjects notable only for a very short list of total works. I'm not a "let a thousand flowers bloom" guy when it comes to interface elements and presentation methods, preferring a consistent user experience, but I favor "let 1,000 ideas get tested, and implement the best ones broadly".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  08:51, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Learning. Compare the first approach (Bach's 2013 birthday, archived) to the recent one which people could support. The arbitrators thought they could manage ib discussions by simply taking Andy and me out of the game, - as we see now nothing was solved. The belief in the influence of a single editor is amazing (and wrong). It is not one person responsible for a gender gap, and not two people the cause of unrest in composer ib wishes. Ask the future arbitrators questions about it! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:13, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I know. At least three admins appear to be convinced that if that damned SMcCandlish is muzzled that disputes about style matters will stop. It's a fantasy. I quit WP for an entire year, other than to pop back in and answer some questions or respond to attempts to undo my template work when others notified me about it in e-mail, and nothing at MoS changed at all, other than for the worse. When it wasn't largely moribund, it was bent in project-unhelpful ways by people on various short-sighed pet peeve missions. The WP:BIRDCON brouhaha (which has notably resulted in a massive amount of calm about article title capitalization after the dust settled) was blamed on / credited to me, but was set in motion by an RM that happened while I was still away during that time, and kicked into high gear by a pro-capitalization editor who launched the RfC on the matter against my advice to let it lie (I'd returned by that point), and after threatening me with DS, by the way. All I did was provide the bulk of the evidence and logic against the pro-capitalization side. And I got sanctioned for proving the case against them because someone took me to AE for statements I made about their tactics that were already proven in their original contexts, and I wasn't given time to re-prove them at AE with another pile of diffs. We call his "railroading". I do more to resolve style disputes, in lasting ways, than I ever do to start any of them. It's just that some people get pissed off and raise holy hell if such a dispute isn't getting resolved their pet-peeve way.

In fairness, I was more vociferously argumentative ca. 2012–2013. But no amount of Judge Dredd admin behavior has changed my attitude toward how to approach content and policy disputes here. What has changed my mind is editors with sometimes opposing viewpoints, like Peter Coxhead, and Dirtlawyer1, taking the time and effort to suggest where I was too debatory and what some better approaches might be. Having people like Montanabw, and earlier Noetica, both of whom I had seemingly intractable long-term disputes with, come around and agree to truces was also very helpful. It takes two to argue, but also two to mend the fence. I'm willing to mend fences with anyone, even people I've not been able to see eye-to-eye with much for a decade. All it takes is some mutual effort. With a few, this doesn't seem practical, though I try to verbally support them any time I agree with them on minor stuff, even if I have to debate them on other things, so it doesn't seem like I'm opposing them just to oppose them. It's all to easy to respond only negatively, an effect that newspaper and PR people have know about for a century (if every letter of praise received represents the views of 5 to 10 times as many as a negative one, because people are spurred to action mostly when they're angry or afraid, not when they're content).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  10:15, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

I think you - kind of neutral - might be able to "mend" between those who think an ib is as normal to an article as images, and those who believe any ib damages the article. You met a few, and there are not many more. The Sibelius talk is probably not the ideal place to hold talks about the editors who take an article to GA/FA. Sibelius is none yet. The principal editor is Ipigott, not a fighter in the battle. Mirokado supports ibs. Sgvrfjs has good ideas on ibs for his compositions, see Talk:The Oceanides (GA). Those who commented so much last night after I had given advice how to avoid it barely touched the article. - Some neutral space for discussion the extra rights of people creating extra quality might be a good idea. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:43, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree that proposing extra rights for some editors should be discussed elsewhere; I was just responding to the suggestion that they somehow already had extra rights. On IBs, I'm not all that neutral, and favor them, except for stubs that don't have enough info to bother with yet, and I'm "wikipolitically" opposed to wikiprojects trying to blockade the addition of infoboxes to any of 'their" articles, so I have two dogs in the same fight, as it were. Not sure I can be much of a moderating factor.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  18:23, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

No question that they believe they already have extra rights, including reverting an IB that was there for years (but talk about respect for a history without one), --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:37, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

In a nutshell: Talk:Joseph (opera). I have potential arbitrators look at it. They tell me they are not brave enough ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:33, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

I'd thought there was a previous discussion about removing the old box, not just someone removing it. But I haven't dug into the history much. As for mediators not wanting to get involved, I'm not surprised. Admins in general seem to be increasingly avoidant of anything controversial; as much as I have an issue with 3 or 4 of them, most of them mean well and do pretty well, but take a lot of crap for it. That said, the classical IBox dispute doesn't seem all that bad, it's just tedious and drawn out.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  12:17, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

I just had reason (two questions by different users) to enter the minefield of Mozart, looking at the history. That of Joseph was easier: I inserted in 2013, was reverted, a bit of discussion, - now - with less restriction, I'm on parole, DYK? - I tried again going over the old cases. I should have looked at the history and the talk, but might have liked to check anyway if some people learned in two years. Of all operas reverted in 2013, Joseph is the only one which still is like that. - I think you could run some RfC about the extra rights of principal authors in general, where infobox is only one topic. There's also citation style, for example. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:27, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Citations needed tags on MoS pages

Hi, I hesitate to invite you to enter MoS discussions, given recent admin actions, but I'd like your opinion. I strongly object to the addition of "citation needed" tags to Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Pronunciation. This is the thin end of a very long wedge, it seems to me. You have more experience than I do in these matters; I thought there was a clear consensus that MoS pages don't need citations to support decisions recorded there, although they can be added for information. See also Misplaced Pages:No original research/Noticeboard#Improper tagging.

Am I right in my view about previous consensus? Peter coxhead (talk) 12:14, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Right. {{citation needed}} is a WP:V template, and that policy applies to encyclopedia content, not internal documentation like policy/guideline pages, which are a matter of consensus. I thought there was only one editor who didn't understand this, but now it seems we have a pair of them . I refactored the editor's concern (which may be valid) to the guideline's talk page. We do sometime use citation templates to provide external links when MoS is explicitly following a third-party standards document (see, e.g., footnotes at MOS:ACCESSIBILITY). But they are not "sources" for why MoS says what it says; the only existing or needed source for that is WP's own talk archives.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  13:59, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I think I need to add Category:Tired Wikipedians to my user page too. It does get tiring when we go over the same old ground time and time again. I think that the editor concerned may have a point, but the point is whether this a helpful convention for the English Misplaced Pages to use to represent English phonemics in its articles, given that some of it seems to be unknown elsewhere, not whether OR is involved or citations are needed. Sigh... Keep calm and carry on, I guess. Peter coxhead (talk) 17:15, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Muammar Gaddafi

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Muammar Gaddafi. Legobot (talk) 00:01, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Template talk:Infobox language

Just a head's up, since you've been involved in this kind of thing, we (I) might have a problem with wording where our sources do not provide (reliable) data on the number of native speakers. Would value your opinion. — kwami (talk) 21:58, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I chimed in, and it reminded me of something else, too.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  06:51, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 47, 2015)

EBSCO request

Hi SMcCandlish, I had tried to send you and email on 15 October regarding your application for access to EBSCO, but it looks to me like there may have been a problem with the email. Have you received it yet? I would be happy to re-send it if it hasn't gone through. -Thibbs (talk) 01:13, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

@Thibbs: I don't seem to have it; checked my spambox, too. I do have the "Email this user" featured turned on, and even got a notice that you'd left this message here.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  07:34, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm currently conducting follow-ups for those who haven't responded to my first email. When I email applicants I usually retain a copy for my records that I can then re-send if there are problems but for some strange reason I can't find a copy of my original email to you. So it's quite possible I never sent it in the first place... If that's the case then I apologize for the lengthy delay. Anyway I just sent the email so we should be back on track now. Thanks for your patience. -Thibbs (talk) 11:25, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the followup. :-) I've submitted the form.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  12:12, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I sent you a similar email for OUP but don't see a form response there either - did you get that email? Nikkimaria (talk) 17:13, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

@Nikkimaria: Oh, yes, it just got mis-filtered. I submitted the form just now.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  17:36, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Larry Sanger's NPOV

They have not wandered off. In fact, they want to rewrite the articles as lifestyle products. QuackGuru (talk) 19:33, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Good quote; using that on my userpage along with the Pakistan news. This is a much bigger problem than e-cig article manipulation. With WP in the top-5 sites in the world, and the world's most-used encyclopedia and general "databank", there are tremendous stakes involved, seeking to worm their way in for outright propaganda purposes.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  09:09, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

They are very active. There are socks everywhere. The problems are way too big. Nothing has been done about the problems on Misplaced Pages. They are accusing me of things they did. They do something against consensus and then they accuse me of what they did. They are accusing me of things I did not do. An editor is being accused of being a meat puppet account for agreeing with me. What would Larry Sanger do? I added about 90% of the content to the e-cig page this year. Now they want me gone rather than collaborate. Once I am gone they will rewrite the e-cig page and related pages. I have seen things like this before. I does not matter who is right or wrong. Larry Sanger's NPOV has been forgotten. QuackGuru (talk) 18:54, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Azov Battalion

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Azov Battalion. Legobot (talk) 00:01, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Ahem

Re: I'm hoping that based on you own reverts you might be open to the possibility that this is quite unlikely to be either wiki-laywering/gaming. Having this in the middle of the discussion probably isn't going to help keep things focused. If you can find a solution that you're comfortable with to that, it would be really appreciated. —Sladen (talk) 21:52, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

@Sladen: I'm objecting to the "proceduralize this to death" approach. It does smack of wikilawyering. It doesn't matter why we arrived 8 years ago at something. It's been stable and has resisted change so there's a consensus for it. Consensus can change, but it does so by presenting a new rationale for why that change should happen, not second-guessing why a decision was made that long ago. We do not have a time machine and cannot go back and re-examine the entire decision-making process. The breadcrumbs left though old discussions are an incomplete snapshot of what the thinking was. We do not need an endless raft of people showing up at MoS claiming they can't find a decade-old consensus for some line-item that triggers one of their personal pet peeves. Nothing would happen at MoS every again, pretty much, other than dealing with people raising bogus procedural "appeals" against every single thing in MoS they want to change for their own personal reasons. The specific rules in MoS are less important than its stability. Zero editors agree with every single line-item in MoS, and zero line items in MoS have universal agreement. What we do agree on is to operate under it because any project of this sort has to have a style guide, which will necessarily contain many arbitrary things simply to settle disputes and prevent inconsistent usage. Every sport, by analogy, has to have a ruleset, and not everyone will always agree that each of them is perfect, but the game does not go on unless people agree to play by the same rules. If you have evidence that that rationales for the rule against the (for me, nearly impossible to make out) unicode ellipsis character are faulty, then present that evidence. It's a waste of time to try to "re-litigate" an eight-year-old consensus discussion on the merits of the arguments 8 years ago. If nothing else, it's a WP:DGAF matter. No one cares whether the arguments were good 8 years ago. We care what MoS should say now, based on arguments that make sense now. I see no case really presented for the benefit of using that character today. It's hard to read, hard to type, and may well still present font problems on some systems. Even if that last point is no longer true, it is not the only (present-day) rationale against that character. This is part of a wider-ranging set of issues, e.g. about using Unicode fraction characters and so on. Just because a character exists does not mean it is the ideal representation of something in an encyclopedia.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  22:39, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the very long reply. I particularly agree with "We care what MoS should say now, based on arguments that make sense now.", and I'm hopeful that conversation can focus on this. —Sladen (talk) 22:43, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

A drive-by thank you!

I truly appreciated your thoughtful and accurate explanation at ArbCom, re:GMO case. Atsme 04:30, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

I do my best.  :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  11:20, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

...which is exceedingly good. Thanks for sharing yourself. petrarchan47คุก 20:06, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

YW!  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  18:14, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Welcome

... to the cabal of the outcasts! You will have seen that there's WP:QAIPOST for news of project interest, such as: are the recordings of BWV 38 better as a list or a table. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:58, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

St Cecilia's Day

A Boy was Born

Music in your ears and heart! (in a box) - ideas? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:21, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

ps: What is it showing the image strangely displaced? Here a simple link, or see my talk today. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:25, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Looks okay in my browser, if the intent was that it be floated to the right.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  10:50, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Compare for example this, - when I added to your page, the image alone floated left, while the frame was right. I'll try. Now it works in preview, but it did before. Perhaps some html code in a message above?

Btw: I usually archive my talk when I get to 50 messages ;) - Did you see the revert on Sibelius? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:15, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Now it works, the image that was removed from the article as pointy. Pointy yes: it points at the fact that our article name is not good. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:18, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Pings can't be fixed

Hi -- having seen your edit summary, I thought it might be useful to point out a "gotcha" that many editors fall into: it is useless to fix a malformed ping. The reason is that pings are only activated when the auto-signature at the end of a message is rendered. Once that has happened, the ping won't have any effect no matter what you do to it. Best regards, Looie496 (talk) 20:29, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Which itself is only a necessary condition. You actually need to start an entirely new block of text to ping a user. --Izno (talk) 20:54, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Ping: Looie496, Izno – So, if you fix the username in the ping, it won't work even if you remove your sig and make a new one?  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  03:39, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't know. Looie496 (talk) 04:27, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Correct. Other fun bits at mediawikiwiki:Manual:Echo. --Izno (talk) 05:40, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, butt-nuggets. I guess next time I'll have to self-rv the entire block of text, then put it back in with a new ping and sig in a separate edit. This is really sub-optimal.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  12:33, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

As if it's a hack to deal around having wikitext talk pages. No, couldn't be that. ;) --Izno (talk) 19:46, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Iranian peoples

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Iranian peoples. Legobot (talk) 00:02, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Saw a comment at naming (persons)

I'm curious; do you know of any recent central discussion regarding the play of (particularly) WP:STAGENAME with WP:LOWERCASE (since STAGENAME as well as WP:TITLETM are probably the most likely to cause odd capitalization)? There's a guideline discussion related where I've been asked my preference whether odd capitalization is something to capture in article titles. Neither of the above really capture "go with RS", though you seemed to have an opinion on that that may or may not differ from the guidance of the above. --Izno (talk) 06:13, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

@Izno: Not right off-hand. I got a bogus topic ban from AT/MOS, and while it was lifted on appeal to WP:AN, it took most of Sept. – early Nov. to get that result, so I'm way behind on these topics. There's some amount of faintly related discussion at both WT:AT and WT:NCP, about rendering of nicknames and pseudonyms, and the gist of it is "follow our conventions, don't do what entertainment industry magazines do (they lack independence because their advertising dollars come from labels/studios, so they do what those $ sources tell them to), and don't do weird stuff to names/titles on WP unless general-audience sources almost invariably honor the weird style, as with "iPod" and "Deadmau5", but not "KISS" or "Ke$ha". See also the ongoing RM at Talk:JIRA, and the talk page and archives at MOS:TM, and quasi-recent RM and WT:MOSCAPS and WT:MOSTM discussions (Aug.–Sep.?) about overcapitalization in song titles. Not sure where else to look for recent material. Where's the discussion you're talking about? Sounds like one I'd want to put my $0.02 into (and I'm asking, so you wouldn't be canvassing :-).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  12:44, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

It's a listed RFC to which I've contributed in the past few days... it shouldn't be hard to find it through some basic stalking. :^) --Izno (talk) 19:32, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

What exact name to use varies on a case by case basis, so all this "Option 1", "Option 2" stuff is a waste of time. A more succinct statement of my position on the 'naming' point. :^) --Izno (talk) 16:31, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

I guess I did find it, then. Heh.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  10:45, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Bot automation at Misplaced Pages:Today's articles for improvement

Greetings WikiProject TAFI members!

Over the past two weeks, there has been extensive discussion on introducing bot automation to assist with maintenance of the Today's Articles for Improvement project. A bot has now been approved for trial and will carry out the weekly duties. The bots first run will occur around 00:00, 22 November 2015 (UTC) (midnight on Sunday).

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Updating the accomplishments and archiving selections is still done manually, along with daily tasks such as adding approved entries to the articles for improvement page. These will become automated in the near future.

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Posted by: MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 19:48, 21 November 2015 (UTC) on behalf of WikiProject TAFI • Opt-out instructions for all project notifications

Read this... thoroughly!

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Don't you EVER put something back on to my talk page that I have removed. Ever.

I never even read whatever you added, nor will I.Cebr1979 (talk) 22:31, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

@Cebr1979: LOL. You need to actually read and understand the guideline you're citing like a weapon. No one owns their own user talk pages; they exist for the sole purpose of facilitating editor–editor communication to improve the encyclopedia via collaboration and to resolve inter-editor conflicts. It's entirely permissible to refactor something temporarily to simply enable a reply. We all know that you nuke everything off your talk page. You know that others find this disruptive and anti-collaborative when you do it so fast and so WP:POINTedly as to make communication difficult. No one takes seriously, for five seconds, your patent WP:GAMING attempt to WP:WIKILAWYER the user talk guideline to make other editors, attempting in good faith to use user talk pages for their intended purpose, look like bad guys and raise a bunch of WP:DRAMA; it's the very WP:LAMEst possible form of conflict generation. I don't know if it's going to take a week or a year, but the predictable ultimate result of this behavior, combined with all the other behaviors that lead people to rarely post anything on your talk page but objections and warnings, is an indefinite block for WP:COMPETENCE / WP:NOTHERE / WP:BATTLEGROUND / WP:DE patterns. I'm pretty sure everyone can see this but you. I think that result will be unfortunate, because some of what you've done here has been constructive, and it would not take any real effort on your part to stop this (It takes excessive, unproductive effort, however, to act as hostile and isolationist as you have been). The community has had no compunction in the past closing the gate to sometimes-productive editors who seem unable to get along collaboratively and who treat Misplaced Pages like some kind of deathmatch game. It doesn't matter whether you refuse to read what people post to your talk page; per the very WP:USERTALK guideline you cite, your deletion of such posts constitutes acknowledgement and understanding of them. There is no provision anywhere for "banning" anyone from your talk page if they have a legitimate reason for posting here (pointing you to applicable guidelines and policies, and their meaning, in the wake of your own excessively hostile, policy-misconstruing post on my talk page is a legitimate reason, and more to the point so is suggesting how to avoid further trouble with other editors here). The WP:ICANTHEARYOU game you're trying to play is a failure before it even begins. Finally, you have no business demanding that others read your talk page posts "thoroughly" if you make a point of ignoring everyone else's. See WP:KETTLE.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  18:49, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Don't you EVER come to my talk page again!

I have said that to you before and this is your last warning! You understand "weapons" (as you called it) as much as you understand the English language (which is not at all, you're a joke both ways). Read this. NOW. And then stop acting like you know wikipedia (and the English language). You're an editor, not a scholar on anything. "LOL..." as you like to say (even though intelligent people are the ones actually "LOL-ing" at you and your nonsense. One more reminder: don't ever come to my talk page again. Cebr1979 (talk) 04:10, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

@Cebr1979: I'm not sure on what basis you're making assumptions about my level of scholarship. I never made any claims in that regard anyway. But it's a straw man fallacy; your grammar and punctuation behaviors, in those cases, are wrong because published style and grammar guides uniformly say they're wrong; denial of this fact, and pretense that it has anything to do with my personal views, doesn't make it go away.

Re: your demands: Again, you have no power to "ban" people from your talk page if they have legitimate business there. You'd be best served by abandoning this quixotic quest to treat your user talk page as if you own it. You do not, as a matter of clear policy at WP:NOT#WEBHOST, and as explained in further detail at WP:USERTALK. Some disused essay at WP:DRC (did you write that yourself? I can't be arsed to check) that no one but you seems to cite with any frequency doesn't trump mainline policies and guidelines, so your complaint is still invalid. Since it's not a valid dispute, I'd appreciate it if you'd stop leaving these weir, histrionic demands on my talk page. Feel free to use it if you have a legitimate editorial issue to raise, though. And if it makes you feel better, I have no intention of posting at your talk page henceforth unless I have another legitimate reason to do so. The rest of your venting doesn't appear to need to be addressed in any way other than by reference to WP:TEA and WP:MASTODON.

PS: You can, under especially egregious circumstances, get the community to genuinely ban someone from your talk page and otherwise from interacting with you; this is called an interaction ban or "iban", and you can seek one at WP:ANI. I would discourage you from doing so, since your complaint will not be taken seriously, and you'll get WP:BOOMERANG sanctioned for wasting ANI's time with a frivolous and vexatious demand. Your consistent hostility level toward all who approach you with dispute resolution attempts probably guarantees that at some point another editor will seek an iban against you, however, so you might as well know that the process exists and what it's for.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  10:44, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

This week's article for improvement (week 48, 2015)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Misplaced Pages arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:08, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Phaedrus (dialogue)

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Phaedrus (dialogue). Legobot (talk) 00:03, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Wikicode on WT:MOS

At 22:21, 26 November 2015 (UTC), you added 43,506 bytes to Misplaced Pages talk:Manual of Style, and something has disrupted the wikicode of the last section (Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style/Supports). I suspect that a few nowiki tags are not matched with /nowiki tags. Please try to find and remedy the problem.
—Wavelength (talk) 01:14, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

SMC, look at the paragraph following the phrase 'these journo stylebooks'. It appears that the wiki formatting has been lost in that paragraph (there are lots of naked square brackets). EdJohnston (talk) 02:31, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

 Fixed with this edit. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 02:43, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you both for your help.—Wavelength (talk) 02:55, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Pings: Wavelength, GeoffreyT2000, EdJohnston – Sorry about that; I was running late for a Thanksgiving party, and didn't preview closely enough.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  05:16, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Atlantis

The feedback request service is asking for participation in this request for comment on Talk:Atlantis. Legobot (talk) 00:01, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Succinct

Seriously, to be effective, get the message across quickly and succinctly. I've asked you to do this before, but it seems to have fallen on deaf ears. For what it's worth, I know nothing about the machinations of Arb sanctions, unlike you I spend a good portion of my time on Misplaced Pages improving articles and away from the drama boards, so your message was, frankly, wasted on me. Have a great weekend and remember, less is more. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:11, 28 November 2015 (UTC)