User talk:Andrew Lancaster - Misplaced Pages

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Welcome!

Hello, Andrew Lancaster, and welcome to Misplaced Pages! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Misplaced Pages:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome! --{{IncMan|talk}} 08:13, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Please explain to me why you think r1a is a domainant haplogroup in Southcentral Asia.

You said that I was trying to dismiss r1a in Southcentral Asia by calling it a pocket. If you look at the map that is clearly what it is. There is a corridor from Russia to Southcentral Asia that ends in a "pocket" or "bubble" or round shaped geographical area, of which the center, where r1a actually reaches more than 50% is an extremely small area compared to the European R1a.

R1a is not a Dominant Haplogroup in Southcentral Asia. There are Tribal groups that have high percentages of R1a because they do not mix with other groups in the area. There are no countries in Southcentral Asia in which R1a reaches a much higher level than 20% except Kyrgyzstan. This article is written in such a way that would imply that R1a is a dominant Haplogroup in Southcentral Asia, when in reality, R1a only accounts for a small fraction of Southcentral Asian men.Jamesdean3295

Maternal origins of European Hunter Gatherers

This may be of some value in these articles....Genetic Discontinuity Between Local Hunter-Gatherers and Central Europe’s First Farmers (Found in Science Express)

Nonetheless, it is intriguing to note that 82% of our 22 hunter-gatherer individuals carried clade U . ...... Europeans today have moderate frequencies of U5 types, ranging from about 1-5% along the Mediterranean coastline to 5-7% in most core European areas, and rising to 10-20% in northeastern European Uralic-speakers. . .

Kant, nous, intellect

Hi Andrew, I'm not a Kant expert, in spite of my limited knowledge of his thoughts on reason. And I don't really have time to get into an in-depth discussion of intellect vs. mind vs. nous vs. reason. However, as I understand it, for the Greeks, nous was the highest possible metaphysical ideal or form, because it was pure form, and true knowledge for the Greeks was the knowledge that revealed the form that was represented in things. John Dewey wrote a great dictionary entry about nous in 1901:

Nous : Ger. Nus (K.G.); Fr. intelligence; Ital. nous. Reason, thought, considered not as subjective, nor as a mere psychic entity, but as having an objective, especially a teleological, significance.

We owe the term, as a technical one, to Anaxagoras. He felt the need of a special principle to account for the order of the universe and so, besides the infinity of simple qualities, assumed a distinct principle, which, however, was still regarded as material, being only lighter and finer than the others. To it, however, greater activity was ascribed, and it acted according to ends, not merely according to mechanical impact, thus giving movement, unity, and system to what had previously been a disordered jumble of inert elements. Plato generalized the nous of Anaxagoras, proclaiming the necessity of a rational (teleological) explanation of all natural processes, and making nous also a thoroughly immaterial principle. As the principle which lays down ends, nous is also the Supreme Good, the source of all other ends and aims; as such it is the supreme principle of all the ideas. It thus gets an ethical and logical connotation as well as a cosmological.

On the other hand, nous gets a psychological significance as the highest form of mental insight, the immediate and absolutely assured knowledge of rational things. (Knowledge and the object of knowledge are thus essentially one.) … In man, however, the νοῦς assumes a dual form: the active (νοῦς ποιητικός), which is free and the source of all man's insight and virtue that links him to the divine (θεωρειν), and the passive (νοῦς παθητικός), which includes thoughts that are dependent upon perception, memory -- experience as mediated through any bodily organ. The distinction (of Kant, but particularly as used by Coleridge) of REASON from UNDERSTANDING (q.v.) may, however, be compared with it, but the modern distinction of the subjective from the objective inevitably gives reason a much more psychological sense than nous possessed with the ancients.

The distinction between knowledge, or understanding, and reason in Kant therefore mirrors the distinctions between is and ought, or nature and freedom. Nikolas Kompridis similarly connects the knowledge/reason distinction to the discovery in Kant of practical reason's connection to possibility vs. experience:

The great innovation of Kant’s critical philosophy was to reconceive reason as spontaneously self-determining, or self-legislating, such that reason
frames for itself with perfect spontaneity an order of its own according to ideas to which it adapts the empirical conditions and according to which it declares actions to be necessary even though they have not taken place and, maybe, never will take place.

As distinct from the rule-governed activity of the understanding (whose rule-governed spontaneity is internally consistent with its concept), reason is a possibility-disclosing activity, proposing ends (‘‘ideas’’) that go beyond what is already given empirically or normatively. This much Kant already understood, if not fully appreciated, which is why he distinguished the possibility- disclosing activity of reason from the rule-governed acquisition and exercise of knowledge: ‘‘as pure self-activity ’’ reason ‘‘is elevated even above the understanding . . . with respect to ideas, reason shows itself to be such a pure spontaneity and that it far transcends anything which sensibility can provide it.’

(Nikolas Kompridis, "The Idea of a New Beginning: A romantic source of normativity and freedom" in Philosophical Romanticism, p.34, 47)

References

Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. and eds Paul Guyer and Allen Wood (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) p. 541.

Teleological argument

Misplaced Pages:NOENG#Non-English_sources "Translations published by reliable sources are preferred over translations by Wikipedians".Tstrobaugh (talk)

Aspersions, photos of private mails, etc

collapsed records

@EdJohnston: you made me think about WP:ASPERSIONS, and I realized this is being cited to me for trying to defend myself from some, which no one seems to have questioned. So just for reference...

The decisive post on the Administrator's Noticeboard by Krakkos:
14:31, 28 February 2020	Comments by Andrew Lancaster
EdJohnston> Now that the 24 hour limit on 3RR at Goths has expired, Andrew Lancaster is back at it with his reverting.	At least 2 misrepresentations, 1 of which is quite serious and blatant. Which reverting? (or similar); which 24 hour limit? which 3RR? No diff was given.
He does not appear to be abiding with Jens Lallensack's compromise solution.	Seriously misleading, and part of a gas-lighting strategy - i.e. aspersions that any editing by me was somehow known to be somehow like an edit war. This refers to an informal proposal by the GA reviewer, within a good faith discussion. The sentence implies lots of things which just did not happen.
He is removing, against consensus, a citation from Professor Joshua J. Mark, which was added by me.	1 blatant misrepresentation. The link to consensus shows no such thing; there was no consensus or support from others. This is One edit. Not a controversial edit, nor a revert. There had been a lot of talk page discussion about this controversial source, and also about the problem of Krakkos adding up to 14 sources per sentence. note 1 long run questionable strategy in progress: Krakkos has been criticized by editors for creating articles for non-notable sources he wants to use, then posting lots of blue link and red link names in talk page posts to show his sources are better.
Why is he continuing with this behavior one might ask?	1 "Leading question" normally considered a deceptive form of argumentation; e.g. When did you stop beating your wife? BTW Which behavior? Above, nb, there is a link to one edit.
Because it works. At Germanic peoples, Andrew Lancaster flagrantly violated 3RR, and got away with a warning.	Unfortunately yes once I technically broke 3RR without realizing it; because Krakkos started editing at the same time; this is still being used against me. As mentioned there: Hmmm. Just looked in detail and I see Krakkos is counting some earlier edits as reverts. I had not even noticed that because earlier in the day I was working on shortening the article as called for by Krakkos . Some of the material I removed, among many edits, was new HOWEVER, if we are talking history, Krakkos should also mention what happened a few days later when a new attempt to claim edit warring was quickly rejected: Krakkos, in other words, has a systematic tendency to try to make false claims of 3RR or catch people out on technicalities.
After continuing the edit war, he simply received another warning, and the article was protected for two weeks.	2 misrepresentations at least Both of us were told we were "teetering on the edge". As mentioned above and below, 3R is something I technically did by accident on another article, at a different time, but in this very different context the teetering on the edge comment of Doug Weller is being twisted here.
As soon as that protection expired, he escalated the edit warring even further.	links to nowhere; presumably it shows 1 edit; I believe there was NO edit warring
I refrained from edit warring and tried to resolve the situation at the talk page,	no normal person will agree with this description Just look at the "drastic" title of the section, which was misleading in itself. Below, furthermore, Krakkos complains that I was very active on the talk page. Krakkos was unconstructive, received no support from others, and started to look ridiculous, using strong words but then unable to define realistic edit proposals, and also being caught misrepresenting sources. Krakkos soon gave up completely.
and my concerns were shared by several other editors.	at least 2 blatant misrepresentations diff1. TrynaMakeADollar (not a regular editor on the article, but interacted with Krakkos in category work in the past) whole post: "I agree with Krakkos on this one specific issue." Note this second post "@Andrew Lancaster, I appreciate some of the things that you've done for this article". diff2. Srnec a regular editor of this article and many others I work on, and probably also Krakkos. There is a discussion about one sentence, where I was asking for advice and received it, and a change was made. I had no strong position. This is how normal editors work together. diff3. Another broken link! How does this keep happening, and why did no admin check any links?
Andrew Lancaster meanwhile flooded the talk with dozens of long sections, thereby creating confusion and discouraging other editors from participating in the discussion.	at least 2, arguably 3, blatant misrepresentations diff1. Post by user Ermenrich, agreeing with a post by user Austronesier, on Doug Weller's talk page. Both editors were writing in a neutral manner to an admin, concerning the disputes on the Germanic peoples article. Both editors supported and advised in big rewrite which Krakkos objects to, as can be seen at various places such as diff2. Talk page of user Florian Blaschke, who has history working on articles with Krakkos. The cherry picked remark is a short expression of frustration about the debate in general: "I can't even tell what the hell you two are arguing about". After my reply, trying to explain my ideas, the response starts was: "Obviously I agree ... But the differentiation and delineation of the topic is the whole problem here." . Has not been active in such discussions since then or before.
My concerns were ignored and the article was completely rewritten to its present poor state.	It was re-written based on those dozens of discussions which Krakkos expresses such anger about. Krakkos stopped posting to that talk page or editing it. Krakkos has repeated constantly, on other articles etc, that the article is now "mutilated" etc (Krakkos always like dramatic language) and I have asked several times for him to give constructive feedback at that article, to no avail.
The lesson learned from the Germanic peoples dispute is clear and simple: Edit warring, stonewalling and gaslighting works.	major misrepresentation What caught Krakkos off-guard apparently was the strong consensus, and the straightforward policy-based, consensus-based, step-by-step approach I took. Needing to cooperate with others, Krakkos simply gave up on all participation and went looking for other articles to try to instill with the same POV vision. So the words used here match no events, not even debatably. You can't edit war, stonewall or gaslight someone who is not even active on the article. It seems to me the words gaslighting and stonewalling describe the complaints Krakkos gets from other editors though. See the Goths talk page for examples of stonewalling: constantly saying the same disputed things over and over.
Andrew Lancaster is applying this lesson flawlessly at Goths. As soon as the GA-review on Goths started, he began complaining about the quality of the article, and made fundamental rewrites of key parts of the article. He had never edited the article before becoming aware that i had nominated it for GA. This is obviously WP:HOUNDING. In the last few days, he has started more than a dozen new sections at Talk:Goths, posting long walls of text containing the same arguments and attacks over and over again.	This story, as a story, actually does not sound very similar to what I supposedly did on Germanic peoples. This new case sounds more like a classical article ownership claim? For the record, Goths is one of a large group of articles about Germanic peoples, in which I am one of the main content contributors. Krakkos certainly sees it that way because apart from being very busy on categorization, Krakkos's unique editing style often involves placing the exact same footnotes, sources, sentences, into a whole group of articles at once. Also note that Krakkos also portrays the Goths dispute as a continuation of the previous Germanic peoples dispute which is an article I have a longer history editing that Krakkos. I was surprised to read I had not edited Goths, but don't see it as relevant to this long dispute which is about patterns of similar editing on many different articles, also in the future.
He has yet again violated 3RR.	major misrepresentation Actually this is the first time I think anyone has said I violated 3R? I thought the "edit warring" accusation was being made on some kind of subjective "everyone knows it when they see it" basis, and not revert counting. I certainly don't believe I was edit warring, or violating 3R. I also asked several times for someone to look at those diffs and confirm if they can really be called edit warring. It is very frustrating that Krakkos can post this ASPERSION, and not have the claims examined.
Because of his habit of completely rewriting quality articles, and apparent immunity from sanctions, many productive members of the community are afraid of him. His editing style has already successfully driven away a number of long-time productive contributors.	. blatant misrepresentations diff1. User Obenritter. "Some of the behavior exhibited by Krakkos in creating offshoot articles is a result of your intransigence " Obenritter expressed frustration at the debates several times and has not been editing much. But Krakkos will certainly be aware of the comments on the RfC which Krakkos started such as, "Agree with @Ermenrich: entirely here, while concomitantly disagree wholeheartedly with Krakkos", or this discussion: "you have been correct in many of your rebuttal edits and deletions to contributions made by Krakkos" ...and... This page and the associated Talk Page have become so convoluted that it's hard to tell which direction to go and yes, I find Krakkos culpable for much of this. His carte blanche approach to editing the Germanic peoples Wikipage has indeed, mutilated this article, taken some of the information out of context, and created an editorial conundrum. Not sure what to do about all of this and so frustrated with the incessant bickering that I decided to just step away from this one. Other high-caliber editors like Florian Blaschke, Austronesier, Joshua Jonathan, Ermenrich, Carlstak, or Johnbod may be able to untangle this, but I don't have the sufficient bandwidth right now and my this has gotten on my nerves–meter is pegged. I am surprised no admin remarked about the two png files that are posted.
As long Misplaced Pages continues to reward his edit warring (as happened at Germanic peoples), he will grow even bolder, and additional productive editors will be driven away. Something needs to be done about this, but adding a protection template (as happened at Germanic peoples), will only give him more encouragement and make the situation even worse.	WP:Aspersions anyone?

More aspersions

collapsed records

Krakkos	remarks
Andrew Lancaster and i have been warned several times against edit warring.	diff1 Germanic peoples case in January. See my comments here. Krakkos leapt on my accidental reverts which happened because Krakkos was editing while I was editing. Krakkos later tried again soon after, but was rejected. And of course recently Krakkos pulled it off on Goths, by edit warring and then complaining, but without demonstrating any edit warring by me, only editing. diff2 Doug Weller 20 Jan wrote "you and User:Krakkos should probably stay away from that page" and I was doing that anyway. I saw it as practical advice and it was similar to my own thinking. diff3 This also refers to 20 Jan and same case with Doug Weller.
I subsequently refrained from further edit warring, while Andrew Lancaster completely rewrote the disputed page.	I did a lot of work writing drafts and using talk pages etc to try to get as much consensus as possible
Rather than fixing that page further, Andrew Lancaster has now began to hound me, and sought, through edit warring, threats, personal attacks and casting aspersions, to remove my contributions entirely.	deliberate distortion. No diffs are given here (and see below for other diffs) but in effect, as can also be seen by other Krakkos posts, what Krakkos is referring to here is that I started trying to work on Goths. To be clear, what Krakkos wants is that I not be allowed to work on that
He's threatening my "exit from Misplaced Pages and the removal of all" my edits.	blatent and serious misrepresentation and aspersion
He's been hounding me at articles he has not edited before, such as Early Germanic culture and Category:Romance-speaking countries.	deliberately misleading aspersions Apparently any editing at all can be called hounding (and/or edit warring). Germanic culture, just as one example, is an article that at that time was effectively a new split off from Germanic peoples!
Most recently, the same thing happened at the article Goths, and i complained once more at WP:AN3. User:EdJohnston\|EdJohnston warned us against editing warring and personal attacks, and forbade us from additional editing at Goths.	Missing back story! In effect, Krakkos was arguing unclearly, using misleading diffs, that any editing by me on Goths should be seen as "edit warring". This succeeded. EdJohnston, refused requests by me to give any examples from the diffs which could show me edit warring and said when pushed that he had inspected as much as policy demands.
Andrew Lancaster was later specifically warned against casting further aspersions against me.	Deliberately out of chronological order, which makes one event look like several, and has nothing to do with here. Also, the description is wrong. EdJohnston said that the "language" or "phrases" could mean my post could be interpreted as a personal attack. No mention was made of WP:ASPERSIONS to me. EdJohnston mentioned to Krakkos that he might have a case if he tries to use that against me.
After EdJohnson's ruling, Andrew Lancaster posted a bullying message at my talk page, accusing me of "shameless dishonesty", said that i "lie and screw others", and that he and his "community" would cause my "exit from Misplaced Pages" and "the removal of all" my edits.	blatant (indeed shameless) misrepresentation; here are two of the quotes in longer form: "Of course I'd be happy to work with you if you DON't do that, but I will, in any case, work. I will call in the community quicker also whenever you so much as post a single lie about a word in a footnote, and believe me I was avoiding doing that until now, and could have been MUCH harder. I see myself as a rare case of someone who has worked with you, but still wants to give you a chance." "I really wonder what you think happens next. On Germanic peoples you did the same thing, and it created a situation where you felt there was no point even trying to edit any more. It seems you can only work alone and this is going to lead to your exit from Misplaced Pages and the removal of all your edits eventually?"
At Talk:Goths he later calls me a "sycophantic bully boy"	blatant misrepresentation. I said that a specific bit of text in an article used "sycophantic minor book reviews" and achieved "deliberate tabloid quality partisanship" making Misplaced Pages itself into a "sycophantic bully boy" for the favored hero of Krakkos, Peter Heather, who Krakkos openly demands to be the only source used to decide what is in or not in the article.
and has accused me of "hypocritical abuse".	crude misrepresentation: deliberately leaving out the rest of the words which show why Krakkos is not the sort of editor who normally gets taken this seriously: "your hypocritical abuse of WP:RS never ceases to amaze. Despite all your supposed concern about the low academic status of Christensen, you have no problem citing two very minor book reviews of him, despite there being so many positive big name reviews, which happen to defend Peter Heather!! , Do you realize how crude you sometimes appear? This is cherry picking from weak sources while you are STILL censoring the best known sources. The use of these reviews in this biased way is not something for a lasting and stable version. We are not writing an article about the beliefs of Peter Heather. We should not take his side on every issue, or censor or caricature any people who disagree with him."
Jens Lallensack tells him that he will not participate in a discussion characterized with such personal attacks, but Andrew Lancaster refuses to stop.	Lallensack was never involved in article writing, but indeed made a complaint into the middle of a content discussion that I should not say that Krakkos "abuses" his OUP access privileges when he constantly claims that a dictionary article behind a paywall justifies everything, AND (incredibly) that ONLY this source should be used! Lallensack claimed, I believe wrongly, that WP:NPA says that "It is irrelevant whether or not an alleged abuse can be demonstrated." A bit debatable? Context a bit relevant?
This makes it impossible for Lallensack to continue his WP:GA review of the article, which he earlier considered in "good shape" and wanted to improve.	By the accounts of Krakkos and Lallensack themselves, it was the successful fake edit war complaint of Krakkos which disrupted everything, not me. There is something I must be missing about this whole GA review thing. If it was in good shape when the review started why did Krakkos (certainly not me) then proceed to totally change the article? In fact, the timing connects only to Krakkos giving up on Germanic peoples, and this goes together with numerous spin-off actions by Krakkos jumping to related articles, or moving materials from Germanic peoples to other articles. Lallensack was disappointed in the situation generally.
As a result of the continued personal attacks, i post a complaint at the talk page of EdJohnston. EdJohnston gives Andrew Lancaster another warning for his blockable personal attack, and instructs him to make a revised post without personal attacks.	Sort of. EdJohnston said it was debatably blockable, and suggested a reworded version. I can't prove it, but I actually already wanted to do that. BTW, this specific event is reported twice in the listing of Krakkos. See above.
Andrew Lancaster rather makes a non-apology apology, doubling down on his attacks, trivializing them as "colorful rhetoric", says that he is "willing to defend" them, and concludes that i should "just stop trying to work against WP policy".	My expressions of real concern, pointing at real events, and asking how to work in the future are clearly not ad hominem personal attacks. EdJohnston's message to me was that the language or phrasing, on its own, made my message debatably a personal attack. So indeed it was a good idea to separate the language use, and the actual "accusations" concerning verifiable editing, talkpage and noticeboard facts. Krakkos should not deliberately try to re-confuse things or fabricate, if Krakkos has positive intentions.
He further states that he is just trying to "help Krakkos be a normal editor". He also states that "the recent "win" at the edit warring noticeboard is going to make Krakkos a worse editor", that " the "win" is not a real win.', and that he will "have to be far stricter and less trusting of Krakkos". This suggests that the WP:BATTLEGROUND behavior behavior is far from over.	Twisting my words. Obviously I was explaining that I think the battleground behaviour of Krakkos is far from over.
Even after EdJohnston's repeated warnings against personal attacks, he writes that i have "a systematic tendency to try to make false claims" and "misrepresent facts".	Correct. And nothing says "your can trust me to be honest" like forum shopping for admins to try to put other editors out of action
EdJohnston long ago considered Andrew Lancaster's personal attacks blockable, and has recommended me to file a complaint elsewhere. The previous failure of such complaints to deal with the problem, has however convinced me that only an Arbcom ruling can effectively deal with the situation. A member of Arbcom has privately encouraged me to contact this committee.	"long ago" was on the same day as Krakkos wrote this text. Furthermore this is another case where one incident is being described as if it were several incidents.
The poisonous atmosphere has discouraged or driven away productive editors from editing the subject area,	serious misrepresentations. Concerning Obenritter see my comments about similar aspersions here. The second diff is yet another attempt to double or triple mention various incidents, and it refers not to a content editor, but the GA reviewer again.
which is in the process of degenerating into a one-man show.	blatant rewriting of history. Krakkos ran away from the article because no one agreed with Krakkos. While the article was protected I worked a lot with others on the talk, and a special drafting page, and read a lot, posting constant updates notes and proposals. So I had a lot to add, and many people had helped contribute to that - including Krakkos, whose input when (rarely) it is constructive, I always try to take into account.
Terrified editors have contacted me about this privately, but are afraid to do it in the open, because they fear they will become the next target. I request the Arbitration Committee to review this unfortunate situation, in hope of having some sort of WP:IBAN imposed on Andrew Lancaster or even the both of us.	"People say..." This type of constant performance of over-dramatic dishonest aspersions is not really normal. But apparently it has worked in the past? The record of Krakkos should be looked at by more Wikipedians to check.

Please explain why did you remove my definition from this page

the page i am talking about is the this page. why did you remove my definiton of common sense? Adityaverma8998 (talk) 05:41, 2 May 2024 (UTC)

I am not the person who reverted that specific change, but most of your changes are low quality, badly proofread, somewhat incorrect, and leave the article in a worse state than it was in before you edited them. LitanyOfBoredom (talk) 05:59, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

May 2024

Please stop your disruptive editing.

If you are engaged in an article content dispute with another editor, discuss the matter with the editor at their talk page, or the article's talk page, and seek consensus with them. Alternatively you can read Misplaced Pages's dispute resolution page, and ask for independent help at one of the relevant noticeboards.
If you are engaged in any other form of dispute that is not covered on the dispute resolution page, seek assistance at Misplaced Pages's Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents.

If you continue to disrupt Misplaced Pages, as you did at Talk:Genetic studies of Jews, you may be blocked from editing. Drmies (talk) 19:36, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

@Drmies: please explain what you are referring to. If I am not mistaken, aren't you referring to something where you are the main editor who has repeated the same unorthodox and now disputed edit several times? I don't see any justification for this threatening and confrontational threat. You only explanations so far for your drastic deletions has been explained in short edsums. If you have a better explanation give it properly.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 20:44, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

You have twice reverted my removal of talk page content started by the sock of a block, racist editor; as an administrator, I think that WP:DENY applies perfectly well here. Now, if you have a better explanation than "there is no emergency here", thereby giving legitimacy to a blocked user who thinks that Misplaced Pages is his own webhost, well. If you want to start a discussion about the wording in the article, feel free to start a thread on that. Drmies (talk) 21:02, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

@Drmies: I have done that. But admins do not have special power to threaten good faith editors in order to get what they want into Misplaced Pages. You should not be brandishing your admin status at all! Admins are not managers or super-editors. Your edit was disputed, and the only (undeleted) discussion was in edsums. My two reversions are based on the idea that you had done your edits in a rush, and that is still my hope. Your deletions of my edits, and the edits of other good faith editors, are clearly NOT justified by DENY (which you cited), unless it is stretched to the point that it becomes meaningless. Extremism and oversimplification of WP certainly won't lead to a better encyclopedia. There is a very clear tradition on WP that the deleting of whole threads of discussion involving long term good faith editors is a very big call. There is another tradition that when a good faith editor gives a reasonable objection, you don't just make threats and start acting aggressively. You need to take those community positions at least as seriously as the aim of reducing the impact of trolls? Admins should support editors, and not start fights.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 21:21, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Eh, everything you say about me, I can say about you: you reverted without a good argument, and you thereby gave a platform to someone who's blocked indefinitely for all the right reasons--but you actually haven't said a word about that. And what do you even mean with "your edits"? You hadn't contributed to that conversation. Drmies (talk) 21:43, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

@Drmies: there is clearly a difference. I am a long term editor of that article, and that talk page. I also made no threats to abuse the system and try to make trouble for you for disagreeing with me. I also did not delete the edits of good faith editors. (Deleting is a much bigger call than restoring?) Those are big differences between us. The article you have barged into is clearly a complex and difficult subject which has needed a lot of careful consideration of wildly different opinions which are often associated with controversies. We can't just ignore every aspect of those controversies. I would never dream of coming into such a situation making major deletions and threats.

Our main mission here is to solve those types of editing and balance problems. Troll chasing obsessions should only be a supporting task? The concept of "contamination" which was used to delete the posts of good faith editors does not belong on WP, and I know of no guideline which mentions it. (I hardly ever hear mention of DENY. I don't see it as something with anywhere near the support and consensus which some of the principles you've broken have.) POV pushers do sometimes need special actions, but they have also traditionally sometimes pushed WP editors to see where there might be problems in articles like this. Just calling all such POV pushing editors trolls and deleting everything they "contaminate", including the posts of other editors, is not a good idea IMHO. Threatening people who object to this approach is even worse.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:20, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

It is understandable that some contributors to the 💕 have strong feelings about liberty. However, those who have to deal with the inevitable long-term abusers have strong feelings as well. Your comment at Talk:Genetic studies of Jews (diff) was unnecessarily provocative and off-topic for an article talk page. You may not care if an IP was associated with trolling but it is not helpful to use an article talk page to say so. You are free to raise any points that you believe need consideration but you should focus on article content and sources. Do not encourage POV pushers by mentioning them. Johnuniq (talk) 09:23, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: I accept that others can have strong feelings, and I do care about trolls. Caring about trolls is not the same as disagreeing about how to handle specific cases. Accepting that people can have strong feelings is not the same as accepting that threats and admin credentials should be bandied about whenever someone disagrees with an edit. The "provocation" you refer to is in fact that I objected to receiving a generic threat for disruptive editing because I tried to preserve a question which needs more discussion. My 2 editsums explain this to Drmies, who I clearly thought might not have understood. That is not very "provocative"! It should be possible to have reasonable differences of opinion on matters like this without dramatization and escalation. --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 14:05, 8 May 2024 (UTC)

At least half of your comment (see diff above) talks about an IP and how you don't care about trolling and you are wondering if the IP was correct. That is the provocation because it encourages long-term abusers. If you think there is an issue regarding article content, talk about the issue—text that is in the article, or which should be in the article. Johnuniq (talk) 01:29, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: thanks for looking at it further, but I'm afraid that is not correct. First of all the threat above was posted before my "provocation" (as you call it), and so you are reversing cause and effect by using the term "provocation". It was a reaction. The provocation is above. Secondly, and connected to that, either you are deliberately twisting my words, or you need to read that post more carefully. "I honestly don't care if the point was raised by an IP associated with trolling." In other words, once again my post is about something and has to be read in context. It says that I think threads involving good faith editors should not be automatically deleted because of association ("contamination") with someone who has been declared a troll. Trolls can in fact make valid points. Obviously we can't have admins going around deleting arguments because trolls might agree with them? I hope you agree, but even if not my opinion is obviously quite different from saying that I don't care about trolls! Hopefully we can agree on that at least.

Perhaps you will also note that there is also an implication in my post that I question how this POV pushing IP was designated as a troll and described as racist. Honestly, I am still wondering about that. Is that "provocative"? The Elhaik article which the IP editor wants to give more emphasis to is controversial, and has been a source of awkward discussions for years. However, I don't think it should be called "racist", as @Drmies: seemed to in the initial edit . Many of Elhaik's specific conclusions are out of date, and were controversial from the start, but that's clearly not the specific point the IP was pushing. Looking for triggers among the IP's priorities, it is not racist to question the idea of there being a single biological Jewish race. I don't think Elhaik, who is an Israeli, is controversial for believing that. The IP's constant references to the influence of "Zionism" are certainly over the top, and tone-deaf, but I also don't think this term is automatically racist. This is clearly the type of article where it can sometimes be referred to in its proper sense. Academics rightfully question whether any ideologies have influenced studies, and such concerns are certainly important in articles about "race". Drmies might have seen something else, but I could not see it at first sight. All or most of the edits of this IP are just pushing the same basic ideas AFAIK. As far as I can see concerning the small edit war on the article, which Drmies entered into with 2 reversions, it was not really a very controversial edit. Perhaps Drmies does not realize that. It involves adding a short summary into the lead, about some information which is in the article already. However, as far as I can see, the decision to designate this POV-pushing IP as a "troll" might even hang mainly upon that little edit war? In any case Drmies gave no specific evidence to justify the strong terms "racist" and "troll". To me, POV pushing is different from trolling, and the different meanings of words in cases like this are worth being cautious about, even if we have "strong feelings" about trolls and racism. Note that I am not sure about the background thinking of Drmies, but I do feel uncomfortable with serious words like this being used in ways in order to quickly get the edits we want. If we are serious about the word "troll" then we won't use it to get the edits we want.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 07:47, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

I don't know what "is not correct" refers to. I was explaining my earlier "was unnecessarily provocative and off-topic"—I was not referring to any provocation you may have experienced. Debates concerning philosophies of running a website are not productive and agreement is unlikely. The take-home message is that there are now two admins warning you that encouraging long-term abusers will result in a block. Johnuniq (talk) 09:03, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: by now you clearly know very well that you misleadingly described me as saying that I do not care about trolls. Instead of changing the topic or threatening me, an apology would be fine. My post was also certainly not off topic, so you could apologize for that misleading remark too if like. Up to you. Concerning the question of whether I "encouraged" "racists" or "trolls", I think this is obviously deliberately overdramatic. If an editor I do not know deletes a whole thread and claims "racism" without citing any evidence then similar situations can occur? As I noted from the beginning I looked around quickly to for any signs of an "emergency" and did not see any. The editor involved could have chosen to give the evidence after that. At this stage I still have not received any. Instead I received a threat. I would still like to know whether this decision about the IP the result of a community decision, or just a quick decision by one editor?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 11:55, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Please do not hold your breath for an apology. If you cannot see how your actions can embolden a longterm troll, then you have a lot to learn. That you didn't see an "emergency", whatever that is supposed to mean, is not a yardstick for my administrative actions. Drmies (talk) 13:20, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

@Drmies: I am not a new editor, and I can survive without the apologies, but your attitude towards accountability and collegiality needs work IMHO. This is not because of my ideals, but because of what works. Please be more careful about little things like accusations and threats when intervening into situations like this. Rapid escalations and obviously overdramatic attacks on good faith editors, can in fact embolden bad editors, and create more angst (and new trolls) out there in the internet. I agree that there is no point talking about this in circles. However, we should all be able to live with reasonable levels of disagreement, and I hope you can agree with that principle.

FWIW, I've now gone to look at the old SteveBenassi account, which you apparently see as the same editor. There is a familiar pattern and there are many people out there who struggle with these topics about DNA, races, ethnic groups etc., and they will keep coming because of all the nonsense on the internet. We obviously don't need such people as editors but some of the issues they raise can help us to consider points in the article where we need to explain carefully. Carefully written articles on WP can help reduce disruption, because they reduce misunderstandings, and potential disruptive editors can see their questions are handled. You are also right that people concerned and confused about these issues also look at talk pages looking for signs of censorship and so on. I personally try to avoid words like racist and troll except in very clear cases, because both of them require knowledge of what people are thinking. This is just good practice at all times IMHO. You can ignore all of this advice but I offer it in good faith and hope it can help you - at least in understanding my own thoughts on this.--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 19:47, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

Yes, that is the same editor. I am going to refrain from giving you advice, and I have no intention of coming back here, so there is no need to ping me. One last thing: you seem to think that "racist trolling" is a function of intent; it is not. Drmies (talk) 03:24, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

> "misleadingly described me as saying that I do not care about trolls"I said nothing misleading. I gave diff in which you said "I honestly don't care if the point was raised by an IP associated with trolling.". In my 09:23, 8 May 2024 comment above, I summarized that as "You may not care if an IP was associated with trolling but it is not helpful to use an article talk page to say so." Johnuniq (talk) 08:10, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

@Johnuniq:. FWIW compare: I do not care if this point was raised by X (my sentence); I do not care if the person who raised this point was X (your rewriting). Can you see that these are two different statements? One is about the point. The other is about the person. So I do care if the IP was a troll, and I never said otherwise. My "provocative" proposal is that we have to be allowed to say that "1+1=2" both before and after a troll says it. Our central mission demands this absolutely. Apparently you disagree (or perhaps don't care), and that's why I fear mission creep which is apparently in conflict with WP's main mission. Secondly, you also wrote this: At least half of your comment (see diff above) talks about an IP and how you don't care about trolling. I presume that you forgot that wrote that? In any case, by now you seem to have accepted that it is not true? --Andrew Lancaster (talk) 13:38, 10 May 2024 (UTC)

So you care if the IP was a troll and you still thought it a good use of an article talk page to write a comment featuring them. Admins do not need to persuade someone to agree with being blocked and my warning stands. It is simply not helpful to take actions that do the opposite of WP:DENY. If you think there is an issue regarding article content, talk about the issue—content which is, or which should be, in the article. Do not talk about contributors, and particularly do not talk about them when there is reason to believe they are a long-term abuser. Johnuniq (talk) 01:17, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: you came back to my talk page to argue unconvincingly that you have not been twisting my words. Please do not keep trying to twist things. Yes, we are both concerned about trolls. We disagree on other points, and you said you don't want to discuss "philosophies of running a website" (your words). FWIW though, better WP articles really are still our main aim AFAIK, and luckily, the better they are the less they tend to attract trolls. To make better WP articles we often need to talk about past controversies on the articles. DENY is OTOH an essay. It is being interpreted in an extreme way by you, as shown by the fact that you keep resorting to saying you are an admin. And what is the "opposite" of DENY? Your aggressive dismissal of the need for accountability and transparency is something I find very worrying. If there are going to be forbidden topics, then there needs to be an agreed list of them that everyone can easily know about by editors, and if necessary reviewed. Banning absolutely ALL reference to all blocked editors would be a new approach AFAIK, not demanded in DENY, and it would lead to ridiculous and confusing talk page discussion in this type of article where the same topics come back each year, and we want to get better each time at handling them. As editors we sometimes need to discuss repeating controversies, as repeating controversies. There needs to be some common sense and collegiality when it comes to DENY?--Andrew Lancaster (talk) 10:08, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

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