Misplaced Pages

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Welcome, correspondents If you're here because I deleted an article you think should be undeleted, please read this first and remember--Most of the time, I didn't write the text that appears in the deletion summary.
N.B. I don't respond well to either fawning or abuse. Talk to me like a peer, assume good faith, and you'll find I reciprocate in my helpfulness.

Functionary Assistance My ability to help as a checkuser, oversighter, or arbitrator in individual matters is currently limited by my positional and non-Misplaced Pages obligations. For non-trivial assistance, especially that which requires extensive consideration of private correspondence, you will likely get a faster response by asking another functionary.

Position Essays may help you understand my point of view with regard to...

• Notability of Fictional Topics
• Articles for Deletion
• Blocks
• My RfA Standards

Administrator Goals Doing my best to improve the tiny little wedge in the top center:

User:Epeefleche

Hello, just pointing out that I seem not to be the only person who has problems with User:Epeefleche's behaviour (including a clear attempt to influence an AfD discussion by page blanking and whitewashing my criticism from his talk page). He has already been banned not once, not twice but three times for offences that seem to range from sockpuppetry to disruption and questionable methods in an AfD. --hydrox (talk) 19:54, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Hello, I am very sorry to return to this subject, but I felt offended by the way you poked your nose to a business that is not really your business and took the side of another user against my actions that I still feel are justified.

First of all, the original complaint ("edit warring" on someone else's talk page) does not hold, because I only ONCE reverted the comment back to show the context, and then on the third edit redacted the context per the user's request. Anyway I made a total of three edits to the user's talk page on the day the alleged "inappropriate" actions took place, which I don't think is considered disruptive by the very policy you stated (WP:3RR).

Whatever comes to article per se, the appropriate forum is of course the article talk page, but I have been able to verify all alleged facts from Internet sources. Your view that I was "entirely off base to suggest they be retained in the article" is both offensive and incorrect, because by the time you left the comment on my talk page those statements had been properly sourced, and are now retained in the article.

I generally comment on AfD debates to benefit the community, by e.g. saving articles from deletion that I feel should be saved, on which I feel I have a good track record if specialist knowledge that I can provide is needed (and which I thought was one of the points of Deletion Sorting). However, I have noticed that more and more users nominate articles for deletion even if they don't know anything about the subject, and editors wanting to save those articles often have to put their themselves on the line, especially in the minority subjects. This is not the first time I have gotten a bad rap but never before have I come across administrative intervention for simply opposing a deletion.

My suggestion for you both as a user and as an admin is to mind your own business, or at least not take sides for/against any one user. --hydrox (talk) 03:38, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry, remind me where this discussion occurred? Jclemens (talk) 03:50, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Nevermind, I got it. OK, so you want a few more pointers? I'm happy to oblige. First off, edit warring is not a matter of multiple reversions: on an editor's own talk page, a single reversion of their removal/archiving of contents is inappropriate. Second, removal of uncited statements is whenever any one editor wants, period. If you don't like it, the find a citation when you add the material back in. And finally, it's not about "sides", it's about educating you, or any other newer editor, on how to conduct themselves most appropriately on Misplaced Pages. I agree that there are plenty of problems with poor nominations and "me too" delete !voters, but the proper solution is to make them feel foolish by demonstrating the encyclopedic value of the content nominated, shaming them into saying "you were right all along" by turning the article from its previous state into one which clearly meets inclusion criteria, a la WP:HEY. Cheers, Jclemens (talk) 03:56, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Gosh, well this is exactly what I have been after all the time. If you look at the article I sourced all those statements in the article, but felt like I was being ignored when I kindly asked the editor to withdraw the nomination, which was when all hell broke loose. And I am NOT a "newer editor", I've been editing here for over 7 years and expect to be treated like that. I respect your work in helping newbie editors, but I think I know what I am doing here. --hydrox (talk) 04:17, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm sorry about that--I assumed, rather than checked, your longevity. Most people who gripe at me for being "an admin" without reference to me also being an arbitrator aren't that familiar with things. At any rate, I empathize with your frustration at trying to demonstrate how articles are appropriately encyclopedic, only to be met with skepticism, disbelief, or even rudeness. It happens far too frequently, but the solution is to never lose our cool. Jclemens (talk) 22:03, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Sock block

Hi,

You blocked Juice Leskinen as a sock, but I couldn't find an investigation. Is it one of those secret ones, or based purely on behaviour? WLU (t) (c) Misplaced Pages's rules:/_complex 21:24, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

It was based off an emailed complaint. Jclemens (talk) 21:31, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Was there an actual investigation and IP check, or was it purely behavioral? WLU (t) (c) Misplaced Pages's rules:/_complex 14:01, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

When a checkuser makes a behavioral block, they will just use a normal template as any other admin can do. That one was entirely tool-supported. Jclemens (talk) 17:32, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Sixty Minute War

Would you mind redirecting that to Mortal Engines Quartet in lieu of deletion, per WP:ATD? I know no one brought up that possibility in the AfD, yet it remains the best policy-compliant outcome... Cheers, Jclemens (talk) 02:16, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

If you feel that's appropriate, please go ahead. Out of interest, when looking at the AfD, I came upon this - I wonder if there are other such real world events which share the name? SilkTork 10:02, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

If there were a disambiguation page for this, I would redirect from the disambig page, but since this appears to be the only Misplaced Pages usage and "sixty minute war" doesn't seem like an established name for the real conflict, I'm good with (and just performed) the redirect to the fictional one. Thanks! Jclemens (talk) 04:12, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

opinion?

Does WP:WEaPOn run afoul of WP:NPA in any way? Noting its odd preoccupation with User:Joedesantis and the material implying that his acts are improper to say the least? Cheers. Collect (talk) 02:17, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

I think if anything it's more BATTLEFIELD than anything else, but I also think that the current crop of paid editing proponents has taken a cue from MLK and the American Civil Rights movement: they're complying with unreasonable and insulting demands, tolerantly enduring assumptions of bad faith, and overall behaving themselves far better than their philosophical opponents. That wasn't always the case. Jclemens (talk) 02:57, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

If Martin Luther King, Jr. is capable of turning over in his grave, your invocation of his name in this context has almost certainly done the trick. No matter how cynical I become or how many times I see it happen, it's always disappointing to see the complexities of an issue ignored in favor of a judgement on the superficial civility of its litigants. MastCell  06:23, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I knew that would probably irritate someone, but it's true, at least on a superficial level: The paid editing folks are making progress because their behavior is winning the hearts and minds of the community, and the most vociferous opponents are losing the PR war through their own failures to see how they are presenting themselves. I make no value judgment on whether this is a good or bad thing, mind you, nor was my statement addressing, let alone minimizing, the complexities. Rather, I was just noting the effects from my perspective. Jclemens (talk) 06:29, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Your choice of words, and of analogies, in your original post conveyed a value judgement very clearly. In your second post, you accurately describe this as a "PR war". Unsurprisingly, it's being won by the PR professionals. It's worth considering whether that's a good thing for an aspiring serious, respectable reference work. MastCell  06:53, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Aspiring and serious? The interesting thing about Misplaced Pages is that it's no one person's work. People write about what they care about, and much of that is neither aspiring, nor serious. If you look at my content creation history, for example, I've spend much of my recent efforts improving a popular, current television series, that, while acclaimed and entertaining (so I hear... I haven't actually seen Game of Thrones, since I don't have HBO), is not what I would call serious encyclopedic content. It does, however, get about five times more pageviews than my serious efforts. The irony is not lost on me that, after spending my time to improve the coverage of a commercial entertainment franchise, my efforts are helping HBO and George R.R. Martin increase their income, and I get nothing for my part in that--which is entirely fine, that's what I signed up for, and I did it based on my own personal interest. Jclemens (talk) 07:10, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Yes, Misplaced Pages aspires to be a serious, respectable reference work. When I started out here, that was an uncontroversial statement of the obvious. In 2012, not even members of ArbCom subscribe to such a crazy idea anymore. Of course, it's impossible to ascribe the exodus of editors to any one trend. But speaking only for myself, I wound down my contributions here substantially when it became apparent that the idea of creating a serious, respectable reference work was increasingly ignored, if not treated with outright disdain.

I think we're talking at cross purposes with regard to "serious". It doesn't mean that we only cover "serious" topics. I'm fine with articles on Game of Thrones, or Pokemon, or Lost characters. Those subjects can all be treated seriously. I mean that we need to take seriously the idea of summarizing and conveying knowledge—a goal which seems obvious and central but typically gets buried in wikilawyering over content policies and civility.

Our content policies are usually interpreted to mean that "it was published in print, so it needs to go in our article", or "we need to present every crazy idea credulously and let the reader decide which is correct". Both of those ideas are antithetical to the creation of a serious, respectable reference work. But they're the dominant interpretations of WP:V and WP:NPOV, respectively, at both the community and often the ArbCom level. MastCell  18:48, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

MSU Interview

Dear Jclemens,

My name is Jonathan Obar user:Jaobar, I'm a professor in the College of Communication Arts and Sciences at Michigan State University and a Teaching Fellow with the Wikimedia Foundation's Education Program. This semester I've been running a little experiment at MSU, a class where we teach students about becoming Misplaced Pages administrators. Not a lot is known about your community, and our students (who are fascinated by wiki-culture by the way!) want to learn how you do what you do, and why you do it. A while back I proposed this idea (the class) to the community HERE, where it was met mainly with positive feedback. Anyhow, I'd like my students to speak with a few administrators to get a sense of admin experiences, training, motivations, likes, dislikes, etc. We were wondering if you'd be interested in speaking with one of our students.

So a few things about the interviews:

• Interviews will last between 15 and 30 minutes.
• Interviews can be conducted over skype (preferred), IRC or email. (You choose the form of communication based upon your comfort level, time, etc.)
• All interviews will be completely anonymous, meaning that you (real name and/or pseudonym) will never be identified in any of our materials, unless you give the interviewer permission to do so.
• All interviews will be completely voluntary. You are under no obligation to say yes to an interview, and can say no and stop or leave the interview at any time.
• The entire interview process is being overseen by MSU's institutional review board (ethics review). This means that all questions have been approved by the university and all students have been trained how to conduct interviews ethically and properly.

Bottom line is that we really need your help, and would really appreciate the opportunity to speak with you. If interested, please send me an email at obar@msu.edu (to maintain anonymity) and I will add your name to my offline contact list. If you feel comfortable doing so, you can post your name HERE instead.

If you have questions or concerns at any time, feel free to email me at obar@msu.edu. I will be more than happy to speak with you.

Thanks in advance for your help. We have a lot to learn from you.

Sincerely,

Jonathan Obar --Jaobar (talk) 07:17, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the offer, replied in email. Jclemens (talk) 17:47, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Talkback

{{talkback|Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of Guardians of Ga'Hoole characters}} -Michaelzeng7 (talk - contribs) 22:07, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, but I don't need talkback notices. 22:16, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

We quote things with the variant spelling used in the source, period

"We" quote things with the variant spelling used in the source, "period"

The "we" was exceptionally patronising. The "period" was not quite so patronising, but still very patronising none the less. You see the usage of "we" implies an 'Us v. them' mentality which designates anyone who isn'yt complaint with YOUR viewpoint 'one of them'. I suppose Misplaced Pages can be forgiven for not having a proper vetting process for those promoted to the higher level as it's a relatively new entity and it's political structure has not yet matured. Consider the polar opposites of 'Advanced C programming' and 'Retarded Z personality'. Brian W. Kernighan would be disappointed really. Although I suspect Dennis Ritchie, from my relatively few meetings with him would not have cared much as long as your voids were placed correctly. EOF Vexorg (talk) 07:56, 13 February 2012 (UTC)

"We" is Misplaced Pages, including you in that group since you contribute here. Is it patronizing to tell an editor in an edit summary that direct quotes need to be quoted directly? It was not my intent to be patronizing, but to communicate clearly and directly that your intentional corruption of a direct quote is not acceptable. There is really nothing to debate about, and certainly nothing requiring a "please" in the process of fixing an inaccuracy you introduced. The first edit was excusable, if you weren't familiar with the American spelling of the word. The second was simply not acceptable--regardless of your intent, it came across as petty, in addition to being the knowing reintroduction of an inaccuracy. If you have suggestions on what edit summary I should have used to communicate the appropriate level of disapproval for your edit, I'm all ears. Cheers, Jclemens (talk) 08:03, 13 February 2012 (UTC)