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Er...
I agree with the general message, but is it really necessary to imply that the editor is a young child? You are not required to remove the comment, but I'd appreciate, if at least for civility's sake, you struck it. m.o.p 15:57, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
- No. Being a young child is certainly not the same as acting like a young child; a young editor behaving inappropriately would be grounds for someone to take them under their wing and either show them the ropes or quietly and privately explain why and how Misplaced Pages differs from Reddit and Myspace, whereas an grown adult with two years on Misplaced Pages behaving inappropriately is a totally different matter. – iridescent 16:05, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
- I understand the distinction, and I'm by no means saying Technical's behaviour is acceptable. I just don't see remarks like that as necessary - they don't contribute anything to the message. It's just kicking the person while they're down. Again, whether or not you remove it is your prerogative - just thought I'd ask. Best, m.o.p 16:11, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
- A declined unblock is pretty much by definition kicking a user when they're down. Since the point of the block-request-unblock cycle is to indicate to the user in question what needs to change, it needs to explain what the problem is, otherwise the blocking admin may as well just lock the talkpage in every case. In this case, the root problem is "acting like a child having a tantrum, when you're experienced enough to know better"—as the hints-and-whispers dropped by previous commenters have failed to get the message through, there comes a point when it needs to be said in plain speech, otherwise the user in question just gets frustrated as to what they've actually been blocked for. (I'm not the first in this case, either.) – iridescent 16:31, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
- I understand the distinction, and I'm by no means saying Technical's behaviour is acceptable. I just don't see remarks like that as necessary - they don't contribute anything to the message. It's just kicking the person while they're down. Again, whether or not you remove it is your prerogative - just thought I'd ask. Best, m.o.p 16:11, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
About your decline rationale...
Hey, Iridescent, I saw your rationale in declining Technical 13's unblock; I just wanted to mention that Technical 13's email to Anomie and me (he emailed Anomie at my suggestion, and forwarded me a copy) were to apologize for accusing Anomie of making a comment he never made. There was nothing inappropriate about the email, and indeed, it made me hopeful. I don't think now's the time for him to try again, so I don't disagree with your decline, but perhaps in time. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I haven't experienced and don't know of anything untoward as far as email goes, and your suggestion otherwise might be a little wounding to him. Writ Keeper (t + c) 15:57, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
- Actually, maybe I misread your post; I think I see what you're getting at. Writ Keeper (t + c) 16:00, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
- (edit conflict) I've removed it; without context, I assumed it was an "I want you to unblock me" email. If it was a solicited request for information, that's obviously a different matter. – iridescent 16:01, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
- Yep, no worries, I can see why you'd think that. Thanks for removing it! Writ Keeper (t + c) 16:02, 3 April 2013 (UTC)
TY, and
Thank you for your input Iri, much appreciated. If you see something you think would be better as far as lay-out or presentation, please feel free to sort, move, adjust, format, etc. as you think best. I'm hoping to push it out to a public area with a RfC listing by maybe the beginning of next week; so the cleaner it looks and easier it is to use the better. Thank you again. — Ched : ? 03:44, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
- Unless Misplaced Pages has drastically changed in my absence, a formal RFC on infoboxes isn't a good idea. While there are certainly good-faith, reasonable people on both sides of that debate, in practice the dispute is driven on one side by two of Misplaced Pages's most toxic personalities—aided-and-abetted by a gaggle of serial sockmasters venting old grudges—who will refuse to compromise in any way and if any decision goes against them will resort to trying to bully opponents off the project until the numbers are back in their favor, and on the other side by a clutch of highly-strung people who will overreact to perceived provocations and escalate minor disputes into full-blown battles.
- Unless you can persuade Arbcom to issue a ruling by fiat—and I can't imagine there's any enthusiasm on their part to get involved in MOS issues*, since they're all familiar with Mabbett, Malleus, Mattisse et al and will have no desire to renew the acquaintance—the only way this firework could be extinguished once lit is either by total capitulation to every demand of the "Misplaced Pages as spreadsheet" hardliners, or by long-term blocks, since experience has shown that two of the users involved in particular will refuse to compromise on anything and thus the usual discussion/consensus cycle isn't possible.
- If you haven't already, you should probably speak to User:Tony1, who's familiar with the previous occasions in which there was a petty MOS dispute where one side took a "death before dishonor" attitude and preferred to try to take the temple down with them rather than compromise. (Date delinking is the most notorious, with an honorable mention for en-dashes, but there are plenty more.) I don't always (or even usually) agree with Tony, but his analysis of the failings of Misplaced Pages's decision making process is generally spot-on. – iridescent 11:59, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
- *They all watch this page; I dare say Brad or Risker will pop up in a moment to make the same point in more diplomatic language.
- Suggestions on further articles that do not play well with infoboxes (this from someone who generally does use them on articles I edit) - Middle Ages, Norman conquest of England, Carucage, Epikleros, and Jersey Act. A number of other articles where I've just dealt with the incompatibilities - Hubert Walter, William Longchamp, Nigel (bishop of Ely) - where they all have two infoboxes because others have insisted. (Note that Gerard (archbishop of York) has managed (so far) to avoid the dreaded second infobox.... lets see how long this lasts...) And I like infoboxes - but there is no denying that there is a group of folks who push them all-the-freaking-time. And there is also a group of people that seem to feel that every-single-detail-needs-to-be-in-the-infobox - have you checked out the insane number of fields in Template:Infobox person??? "Net worth"??? "Agent"????? Is that really necessary? I highly doubt that any person is noted for their agent, so why do we need that field in an infobox? And if it exists, someone will think it's needed... Ealdgyth - Talk 12:17, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
- Arthur Galston- he's noted for his agent.Ning-ning (talk) 20:07, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
- Thank you all for the input. I see I have a TON of work to do as far as reading, and will try to absorb everything as quickly as possible. I'll likely be doing more reading than typing for a bit - but I will be paying attention. Iri, for email - is your "Email this user" link to the left still the accurate one to use? — Ched : ? 20:22, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
- Quick note: Being a person that loves irony - I did notice that Microformat does not have an infobox. I can fully understand the "why", still, how can you not appreciate something like that? — Ched : ? 20:43, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
- The "email this user" link will still reach me, although I don't check it very often. Regarding how Google searches work, there's a fairly good explanation at Google Panda, and a (probably over-technical for Misplaced Pages's readership) explanation of the old system at PageRank. Needless to say, neither has anything to do with infoboxes or metadata, which is a piece of puff spun by the "every article needs an infobox" brigade; the only way metadata would affect a Google search is in the unlikely event one was searching for a phrase present in the metadata/infobox which wasn't present in the article proper.
- (For TPSs baffled by this thread, it's a continuation of this draft RFC, which I'll reiterate that I think it would be a Very Bad Thing to send live, unless you're really in "hasten the day" mode and have a blinding urge to see old scores being bloodily settled in your userspace. I can save Arbcom three months of their time and tell you now that the result of the case will be "preserve the status quo", but at least three of those involved—I can even give the names—will come out of it sitebanned.) – iridescent 21:01, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
- I'd love to see an email about that list of who'd be banned. Curious if it agrees with my list. Ealdgyth - Talk 21:25, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
- You've got mail. – iridescent 21:41, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
- I'd love to see an email about that list of who'd be banned. Curious if it agrees with my list. Ealdgyth - Talk 21:25, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
- Arthur Galston- he's noted for his agent.Ning-ning (talk) 20:07, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
- Suggestions on further articles that do not play well with infoboxes (this from someone who generally does use them on articles I edit) - Middle Ages, Norman conquest of England, Carucage, Epikleros, and Jersey Act. A number of other articles where I've just dealt with the incompatibilities - Hubert Walter, William Longchamp, Nigel (bishop of Ely) - where they all have two infoboxes because others have insisted. (Note that Gerard (archbishop of York) has managed (so far) to avoid the dreaded second infobox.... lets see how long this lasts...) And I like infoboxes - but there is no denying that there is a group of folks who push them all-the-freaking-time. And there is also a group of people that seem to feel that every-single-detail-needs-to-be-in-the-infobox - have you checked out the insane number of fields in Template:Infobox person??? "Net worth"??? "Agent"????? Is that really necessary? I highly doubt that any person is noted for their agent, so why do we need that field in an infobox? And if it exists, someone will think it's needed... Ealdgyth - Talk 12:17, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
- The LAST thing I want to see is ANYONE site banned. The more I read the less anxious I am to go the RfC route. My original intent was to put out a few of the fires that have been flaring up lately, but the more I read the more unsure I am of how to accomplish that. I will likely drop you an email in the next few days, when I do I will note it here as well. Thank you all again. — Ched : ? 22:19, 6 April 2013 (UTC)
Since Iridescent suggests that I might have something to contribute to this discussion, here I am. Suffice it to say, though, that I don't have strong views relating to infoboxes, nor do I want to comment on any of the user-conduct issues since the entire situation may come before ArbCom at some point. (I'd love to know whom Iridescent is referring to in his comments on both past and hypothetical future cases, but I'd better not ask.)
"Should there be infoxes" on a given class of articles is often treated as a single question, but in reality, I think the objections to them fall into at least two major categories:
- Objections based on formatting of the article, and the view that a summary box messes up either the aesthetics of the formatting or the structure of the article or both.
- Objections based on the oversimplified nature of the information that can be included in an infobox. We recently had a request for arbitration over the infobox in Continuation War, which is our article on the war between the USSR and Finland from 1941 to 1944. Everyone seemed to be in agreement that the content of the article itself was balanced or at least acceptable, including in its discussion of the outcome of the war—but we had rampant edit-warring over whether the infobox should describe the outcome as a "Russian victory" or a "limited Russian victory" or a "split outcome" or whatever. This is the inevitable result of trying to reduce complicated historical issues to a sentence fragment, and can be extrapolated to infoboxes on other topics.
As against these objections is the response that infoboxes make straightforward, uniform summary information available across the great range of articles, and that while there are exceptions, for the most part the sort of information contained in infoboxes is purely factual and won't typically be subject to dispute. (E.g., birth and death dates, term dates for politicians, coordinates, and so forth.)
One possible way of reconciling the competing interests, which would be a compromise and therefore would probably please no one, has been obvious to me for years: where the desirability of an infobox is disputed, put the infobox on the top of the talkpage. No one cares about the aesthetics of a talkpage, and any disputes about the content of the infobox could be addressed with a footnote saying that for more detail, one should consult the relevant section of the full article.
One counterargument to this modest proposal is that readers (as opposed to veteran editors) won't think to look at the talkpage, but that's the best solution I've been able to come up with so far. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:40, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
- (watching) there's an infobox on the talk page of Bach - and a discussion (that brought us here and to my first ANI appearance) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:59, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
- Interesting—but there (as I read it), someone has posted the infobox there to start a discussion about whether to include it in the article. My tenative suggestion here is the different one of hosting the infobox on the talkpage permanently. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:23, 9 April 2013 (UTC)
April Metro
Simply south...... eating shoes for just 7 years 20:36, 6 April 2013 (UTC)