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Unresolved old stuff

Cueless billiards

Unresolved – Can't get at the stuff at Ancestry; try using addl. cards.

Categories are not my thing but do you think there are enough articles now or will be ever to make this necessary? Other than Finger billiards and possibly Carrom, what else is there?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:12, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Crud fits for sure. And if the variant in it is sourceable, I'm sure some military editor will fork it into a separate article eventually. I think at least some variants of bar billiards are played with hands and some bagatelle split-offs probably were, too (Shamos goes into loads of them, but I get them all mixed up, mostly because they have foreign names). And there's bocce billiards, article I've not written yet. Very fun game. Kept my sister and I busy for 3 hours once. Her husband (Air Force doctor) actually plays crud on a regular basis; maybe there's a connection She beat me several times, so it must be from crud-playing. Hand pool might be its own article eventually. Anyway, I guess it depends upon your "categorization politics". Mine are pretty liberal - I like to put stuff into a logical category as long as there are multiple items for it (there'll be two as soon as you're done with f.b., since we have crud), and especially if there are multiple parent categories (that will be the case here), and especially especially if the split parallels the category structure of another related category branch (I can't think of a parallel here, so this criterion of mine is not a check mark in this case), and so on. A bunch of factors really. I kind of wallow in that stuff. Not sure why I dig the category space so much. Less psychodrama, I guess. >;-) In my entire time here, I can only think of maybe one categorization decision I've made that got nuked at CfD. And I'm a pretty aggressive categorizer, too; I totally overhauled Category:Pinball just for the heck of it and will probably do the same to Category:Darts soon.
PS: I'm not wedded to the "cueless billiards" name idea; it just seemed more concise than "cueless developments from cue sports" or whatever.— SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 11:44, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
I have no "categorization politics". It's not an area that I think about a lot or has ever interested me so it's good there are people like you. If there is to be a category on this, "cueless billiards" seems fine to me. By the way, just posted Yank Adams as an adjunct to the finger billiards article I started.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:57, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Cool; I'd never even heard of him. This one looks like a good DYK; just the fact that there was Finger Billiards World Championship contention is funky enough, probably. You still citing that old version of Shamos? You really oughta get the 1999 version; it can be had from Amazon for cheap and has a bunch of updates. I actually put my old version in the recycle bin as not worth saving. Heh. PS: You seen Stein & Rubino 3rd ed.? I got one for the xmas before the one that just passed, from what was then a really good girlfriend. >;-) It's a-verra, verra nahce. Over 100 new pages, I think (mostly illustrations). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 13:41, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
If I happen to come across it in a used book store I might pick it up. There's nothing wrong with citing the older edition (as I've said to you before). I had not heard of Adams before yesterday either. Yank is apparently not his real name, though I'm not sure what it is yet. Not sure there will be enough on him to make a DYK (though don't count it out). Of course, since I didn't userspace it, I have 4½ days to see. Unfortunately, I don't have access to ancestry.com and have never found any free database nearly as useful for finding newspaper articles (and census, birth certificates, and reams of primary source material). I tried to sign up for a free trial again which worked once before, but they got smart and are logging those who signed up previously. I just looked; the new Stein and Rubino is about $280. I'll work from the 2nd edition:-)--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:16, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Hmm... I haven't tried Ancestry in a while. They're probably logging IP addresses. That would definitely affect me, since mine doesn't change except once every few years. I guess that's what libraries and stuff are for. S&R: Should be available cheaper. Mine came with the Blue Book of Pool Cues too for under $200 total. Here it is for $160, plus I think the shipping was $25. Stein gives his e-mail address as that page. If you ask him he might give you the 2-book deal too, or direct you to where ever that is. Shamos: Not saying its an unreliable source (although the newer version actually corrected some entries), it's just cool because it has more stuff in it. :-) DYK: Hey, you could speedily delete your own article, sandbox it and come back. Heh. Seriously, I'll see if I can get into Ancestry again and look for stuff on him. I want to look for William Hoskins stuff anyway so I can finish that half of the Spinks/Hoskins story, which has sat in draft form for over a year. I get sidetracked... — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 14:29, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
It's not IPs they're logging, it's your credit card. You have to give them one in order to get the trial so that they can automatically charge you if you miss the cancellation deadline. Regarding the Blue Book, of all these books, that's the one that get's stale, that is, if you use it for actual quotes, which I do all the time, both for answer to questions and for selling, buying, etc. Yeah I start procrastinating too. I did all that work on Mingaud and now I can't get myself to go back. I also did reams of research on Hurricane Tony Ellin (thugh I found so little; I really felt bad when he died; I met him a few times, seemed like a really great guy), Masako Katsura and others but still haven't moved on them.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 18:31, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
Ah, the credit card. I'll have to see if the PayPal plugin has been updated to work with the new Firefox. If so, that's our solution - it generates a new valid card number every time you use it (they always feed from your single PayPal account). — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 18:37, 18 January 2010 (UTC)
PayPal Plugin ist kaput. Some banks now issue credit card accounts that make use of virtual card numbers, but mine's not one of them. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 19:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for trying. It was worth a shot. I signed up for a newspaperarchive.com three month trial. As far as newspaper results go it seems quite good so far, and the search interface is many orders of magnitude better than ancestry's, but it has none of the genealogical records that ancestry provides. With ancestry I could probably find census info on Yank as well as death information (as well as for Masako Katsura, which I've been working on it for a few days; she could actually be alive, though she'd be 96).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 04:52, 9 February 2010 (UTC)

Sad...

How well forgotten some very well known people are. The more I read about Yank Adams, the more I realize he was world famous. Yet, he's almost completely unknown today and barely mentioned even in modern billiard texts.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:47, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Reading stuff from that era, it's also amazing how important billiards (in the three-ball sense) was back then, with sometimes multiple-page stories in newspapers about each turn in a long match, and so on. It's like snooker is today in the UK. PS: I saw that you found evidence of a billiards stage comedy there. I'd never heard of it! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 15:17, 21 January 2010 (UTC)
Jackpot. Portrait, diagrams, sample shot descriptions and more (that will also lend itself to the finger billiards article).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 01:34, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
Nice find! — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 06:07, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Cite4Wiki

Unresolved – New version for FireFox 4.x not released yet.

Updates to this are very welcome, thanks. One thing though - it doesn't seem to use the vertical form any more, could this be fixed (or added as an option) in future releases? pablo 12:28, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Working on it. Probably won't release until FF4.x is out of beta (if it isn't already - haven't checked in a few weeks). Vertical format will be an option, but one that you have to manually enable. Have no had time to work out the code for actually installing an Otions menu and supporting functionality. Going with horizontal layout by popular demand, though I prefer the vertical format myself. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 01:21, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
Every time I think about messing with it other stuff comes out, and or another version of Firefox hits public beta... — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 16:23, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Look at the main page

Unresolved – Katsura News added (with new TFA section) to WP:CUE; need to see if I can add anything useful to Mingaud article.

--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 03:37, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Since you don't appear to have seen this near to the time I left it, it might be a little cryptic without explanation. Masako Katsura was today's featured article on January 31, 2011.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 20:26, 1 February 2011 (UTC)
Supah-dupah! That kicks. WP:CUE's (and your?) first TFA, yes?! And yeah I have been away a lot lately. Long story. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 01:22, 18 February 2011 (UTC)
Indeed, my first, though I have another in the works (not billiards related). I think François Mingaud could be a candidate in the near future. I really wanted to work it up to near FA level before posting it but another user created it recently, not realizing my draft existed, and once they did realize, copied some of my content without proper copyright attribution and posted to DYK. I have done a history merge though the newer, far less developed content is what's seen in the article now. I'm going to merge the old with the new soon. Glad to see your back.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 16:15, 20 February 2011 (UTC)
My front and sides are visible too. ;-) Anyway, glad you beat me to Mingaud. I'd been thinking of doing that one myself, but it seemed a bit daunting. I may have some tidbits for it. Lemme know when your merged version goes up, and I'll see what I have that might not already be in there. Probably not earthshaking, just a few things I found in 1800s-1910s books. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 16:21, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Some more notes on Crystalate

Unresolved – New sources/material worked into article, but unanswered questions remain.

Some more notes: they bought Royal Worcester in 1983 and sold it the next year, keeping some of the electronics part.; info about making records:; the chair in 1989 was Lord Jenkin of Roding:; "In 1880, crystalate balls made of nitrocellulose, camphor, and alcohol began to appear. In 1926, they were made obligatory by the Billiards Association and Control Council, the London-based governing body." Amazing Facts: The Indispensable Collection of True Life Facts and Feats. Richard B. Manchester - 1991; a website about crystalate and other materials used for billiard balls:. Fences&Windows 23:37, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! I'll have to have a look at this stuff in more detail. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 15:54, 16 July 2011 (UTC)
I've worked most of it in. Fences&Windows 16:01, 17 July 2011 (UTC)
Cool! From what I can tell, entirely different parties held the trademark in different markets. I can't find a link between Crystalate Mfg. Co. Ltd. (mostly records, though billiard balls early on) and the main billiard ball mfr. in the UK, who later came up with "Super Crystalate". I'm not sure the term was even used in the U.S. at all, despite the formulation having been originally patented there. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 21:04, 17 July 2011 (UTC)

WP:SAL

Unresolved – Not done yet, last I looked.

No one has actually objected to the idea that it's really pointless for WP:SAL to contain any style information at all, other than in summary form and citing MOS:LIST, which is where all of WP:SAL's style advice should go, and SAL page should move back to WP:Stand-alone lists with a content guideline tag. Everyone who's commented for 7 months or so has been in favor of it. I'd say we have consensus to start doing it. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 13:13, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

I'll take a look at the page shortly. Thanks for the nudge. SilkTork 23:19, 2 March 2012 (UTC)



New stuff

Chapeau

... for this one! Cheers - DVdm (talk) 20:20, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! I actually like hats. :-) Your readability tweak was a good idea. I was a little concerned about it myself, but I'm not a cards editor, so I wasn't sure if there was a typical way of making hands more legible. (Also not sure if people conventionally use the card symbols that are available in Unicode, etc.). I do edit a lot of games articles, but almost exclusively in cue sports and related. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 12:49, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
I specially like hats when there's a set of dice under them :-)
Perhaps you don't know, but overhere we use the name chapeau for the cup and, by extension, for the game itself. As you can see here—als je Nederlands een beetje in orde is—, we play an entirely different game with it, a game where one can practice the fine art of subtle bluffing, downright lying, assessing oponents' behaviour, and accurately estimating probabilities. We also play the "Mexican" variant, which is even subtler. Check it out and cheers! - DVdm (talk) 18:26, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
I didn't know that, about the chapeau. I thought you were awarding me a virtual hat. :-) . I am familiar with the bluff game (possibly the Mexican version, since I learned it in California), but have always played that one with regular dice. Anyway, if you like what I did in the English version, certainly feel free to "port" it to the Netherlands Misplaced Pages. I may be able to work through the Dutch enough to add something about the other variants to the English article here, since it is rather paltry. Heh. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 04:04, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
Actually, it was meant as a virtual hat award as well - I had seen a hat on your user page :-)

Porting from there to here could be a bit problematic, as there's not many sources around, alas. - DVdm (talk) 17:40, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I'll have to dig through my game encyclopedias and stuff. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 17:45, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
Ok, if you find something, please let know. I'd be glad to work on it together. Cheers and happy digging. - DVdm (talk) 20:20, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Barnstar comment

You have new message/s Hello. You have a new message at Djathinkimacowboy's talk page.

Don't delete this! -

The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
For behaving in a genteel fashion, as if nothing were the matter, and for gallantry. --Djathinkimacowboy 03:27, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
Sankyu beddy mush! Hardly necessary for me just behaving properly. Heh. But I appreciate it anyway. I left you a note at your page about that Guidance rename idea. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(ل)ˀ Contribs. 04:43, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
Shou ist werie velcum. I think the 'Guidance' name and the way you simplified it into a short statement is very good! And people should give out more barnstars. They are very merited and it isn't as if they cost us anything.--Djathinkimacowboy 10:19, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Heroic Barnstar

The Original Barnstar
For your recent work at WP:MOS: A model of unflagging effort, precise analysis, institutionally broad and historically deep vision, clear articulation, and civil expression under great pressure. Unforgettable. DocKino (talk) 06:14, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I do my best. At this point I'm being attacked on multiple pages in a concerted effort of harassment, and suspect that their goal is to get me to simply quit the project. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 18:17, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Cheers!

A beer on me!
for all of the thoughtful posts through the extended discussion at MOSCAPS. I've appreciated it. JHunterJ (talk) 13:52, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Thank ya verra much! I was thirsty. >;-) — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒〈°⌊°〉 Contribs. 15:10, 10 February 2012 (UTC)

Barnstar

The Barnstar Creator's Barnstar
Thank you for your submission of the Instructor's Barnstar. It's now on the main barnstar list. Pine 15:11, 26 February 2012 (UTC)

Keen beans! Thanks.

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Thanks for helping make Misplaced Pages better. Enjoy your research! Cheers, Ocaasi 17:22, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Yay! — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 10:50, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Random Acts of Kindness Barnstar
This comes as a recognition of your kindness in developing the Firefox Cite4wiki add-on. It has been helpful and a great resource. I was also happy to learn you contribute to Mozilla which I do as well :) ₫ӓ₩₳ Talk to Me. Email Me. 18:28, 31 August 2012 (UTC)
Thanks, though some others deserve more credit than I do, especially Jehochman (talk · contribs) for the original concept, and Unit 5 (talk · contribs) for the bulk of the code still used in this version. I mostly just added the ability to customize the output for specific sites, and fixed some consistency issues, as well as set up the WP:Cite4Wiki page for it. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 21:01, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you

The Socratic Barnstar
In recognition of your general fine work around the 'pedia, and the staunchness and standard of argumentation on style issues. And if for nothing else, I think you deserve it for this comment  Ohconfucius  02:07, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
<bow> — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 07:59, 13 November 2012 (UTC)

Adminship

Also, on a completely separate note, have you recently thought about adminship? Mkdw 00:24, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Not really. I think I'm too outspoken for a lot of people. I think it's been 2 years or so since I went to RfA. Maybe even 3, I don't really remember. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 00:48, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Circa

Unresolved – Need to file the RfC.

This edit explains how to write "ca.", which is still discouraged at ], WP:YEAR, WP:SMOS#Abbreviations, and maybe MOS:DOB, and after you must have read my complaint and ordeal at WT:Manual of Style/Abbreviations#Circa. Either allow "ca." or don't allow "ca.", I don't care which, but do it consistently. Art LaPella (talk) 15:41, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like a good WP:RFC. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 17:52, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
It's been hard to get opinions on circa in the past. Anyway, can I undo that edit, until when and if someone wants to edit the other guidelines to match? If we leave it there indefinitely, nobody will notice except me. Art LaPella (talk) 20:17, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
I don't care; this will have to be dealt with in an RfC anyway. — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 20:44, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
Done (now I don't need to wonder if the RfC will ever be acted on :) ) Art LaPella (talk) 21:08, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Stop now, please

Resolved – Issue cleared up at WT:EQUINE.

You have just screwed up over a dozen horse breed articles and yet more categories and you need to stop now and let a consensus build at WikiProject Equine. We have had a longstanding, stable (excuse the pun) consensus on breed naming conventions, categorization and other issues that you are going in and mucking around with. We have over 350-400 breed and "type" articles and without understanding what you are doing, you are creating a complete mess. Please cease renaming, moving and changing categories until we have a consensus on what, if anything needs to change. Montanabw 23:26, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

I disagree with your characterization, but recognize that you are objecting to my edits on these in this vein. You can lay off the personal invective. "Your" articles are not in a stable, consistent state, they are grossly inconsistent and messy, both in their naming and language and in their sloppy, misleading categorization. A very large number of them have factuality problems, like presenting landraces as formal breeds, uncritically mislabeling as "breeds" coat colors/patterns that are not breeds but just have some random yahoos with a studbook claiming they're a breed, incorrect disambiguation style that violates WP:AT and WP:DAB, and many other problems. The fact that your project has settled on being satisfied with such a ridiculous mess, which violates several policies, and doesn't like its boat rocked doesn't mean no one's going to rock your boat. Even if it was not a mess, as long as it directly conflicts with WP:AT and other major policies and guidelines, all you have is a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS which is overridden by site-wide rules anyway, again as a matter of policy (and previous ARBCOM decisions that rein in recalcitrant wikiprojects). If you want to make a case that my attempts at cleanup have been unhelpful, feel free to do so, and maybe you are right. Good bloody luck making any kind of convincing case that a major cleanup effort isn't needed. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 23:42, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
I have opened the discussion at WPEQ, let's keep it all there. I agree there is some inconsistency, but your changes are going in the wrong direction. Montanabw 00:00, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Oh, and on "random yahoos with a studbook" please see color breed which explains that some breeds that are all the same color are real breeds, and yes, some aren't and are just "random yahoos." (My personal favorite amongst the latter was the now-defunct Bay (horse) registry -- arrgh!) The Appaloosa folks put it well: it's a breed with a color preference. Same thing for the American Paint Horse. Some colors can be bred to be a homozygous trait and thus "fixed" within a breed, so long as other colors are not introduced; it's why the Cleveland Bay is always bay, the Friesian horse is almost always black (there are a few individuals who remain heterozygous black and thus the occasional chestnut (coat) slips in there) and the Haflinger horse is always chestnut. On the other hand, if you are talking about the Palomino, which is a coat color that is an incomplete dominant and so can never "breed true" - but that didn't keep them from having a registry, then I happen to completely agree with you on that. It has occurred to me that you really should not be so critical of WPEQ when you consider all the cruft that we have actually kept OUT of wikipedia! Montanabw 22:24, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Sorry, I thought I'd been clear that I recognize that some "color breeds" are in fact real breeds in the conventional sense, like Apps and APH. Many dog, cat, etc., breeds also have color/pattern restrictions. I can't think of any other wikiproject that's been mixing these and things that aren't really breeds in a "color breeds" category, though. It strikes me as not just unhelpful to readers, but directly misleading, and it may encourage more of the yahoos to add more wannabe-breeds to WP. I'd have to look at Palomino in more detail to form an opinion (and picking on a particular alleged breed isn't my goal; general cleanup was, and I'm not singling horses out, I just went there next after cats). There are recessives in cats that lead to breeds that have formal recognition in virtually all cat registries, and are derived from long-standing landraces, but which do not breed true for their most defining trait. The Manx is one. (Short version: You can't breed two completely tailless "rumpies" together or the kittens are not viable. When bred properly, some of the cats will have tails, from stubs to full-length, and these non-rumpies are needed, or the breed would be extinct in one generation!) I apologize if I've been too critical. I was a professional activist for a decade, and have a "fix it now!" attitude about problems I encounter, which sometimes makes me forget that complaints and criticisms and less-than-polite suggestions are not always comfortably received. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 10:43, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
PS: We used to get along so well! :-) — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 13:46, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

One of the reasons gardens are walled

Looking at Montanabw's reaction, I think sometimes you fail to look through the eyes of the editors in a narrow field, and end up with enemies instead of friends. I actually left off editing horse articles years ago because of the controversies, and the hammering out of consensus in that project has been decidedly non-trivial. It's important to remember that a local optimum is always optimal, locally, and that getting to a global optimum can involve considerable work, work that many editors thought they had already done. To me, the best way to start out is always "Here are some more general issues I perceive; I see that you do things differently. How can I help you deal with your problems in a way that will meet my goals?" In the case of the bird folks, this probably wouldn't have worked, but I think It's always a good place to start.--Curtis Clark (talk) 18:13, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree in the abstract, but I've never been good at that sort of politics. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 10:25, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
PS: This may sound like a "my logic is bigger than your logic" nit-pick, but I consider it a serious issue: A major and worsening problem on WP, especially as the generalist editorship continues to decline in numbers and activity levels, is that wikiprojects are becoming increasingly balkanized into stand-offish blocs. Despite several ARBCOM decisions against projects bucking consensus and making up their own conflicting rules, and despite a comparatively recent but clear policy against it, at WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, they continue to do it anyway, with increased feelings of righteousness. Per WP:OWN, no topic or field on WP is a walled garden, but some projects do not appear to believe this. I don't know what the solution is, but I have serious misgivings about what WP is going to be like 5 years from now in this regard if something doesn't change. One idea I've had, inspired a bit by the undoing of WP:Esperanza and a CfD several years ago that move all the wikiproject "members" categories to read "participants", is to propose that we abandon the term "wikiproject" entirely, and use something more verbal, that doesn't sound like a club, or worse yet a militia, one can join. Maybe "wikiwork" or something like that: WikiWork Botany, WikiWork Cats, etc. PS: My Granny's garden wasn't walled, but sprawled all the way to the mailbox at the sidewalk. :-) — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 11:22, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Some are more interested in methods, others in results.
Certainly, WP:OWN is a problem; otherwise it wouldn't have a shortcut. Randy in Boise is also a problem, and editors' reactions to that often appear from the outside to be WP:OWN. And over time they can turn into WP:OWN, when an editor starts to believe that's the only way to counter the Randys.
One approach is to wade in with policies, guidelines, and sanctions, whip up support from editors who have an abstract interest, and make life so miserable for the Randys and the "owners" that they leave Misplaced Pages. In my experience, the most knowledgeable editors are the first to leave (I almost wrote "best editors", but one solution to expert retention is to not care, and only retain compliant editors).
It seems that a lot of the pushback you are going to get at WP:EQUINE is over WP:COMMONNAME issues. You only meant to sweep the floor, but you knocked over a chess game. The word that immediately comes to mind is "inefficient".
My most memorable walled garden was the atrium in the house of Maurice K. Temerlin in Norman, Oklahoma, filled with lush greenery. My first thought was that it provided a safe place for Lucy, but as far as I could tell, they only let her into it under supervision.--Curtis Clark (talk) 16:31, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
You're right that my cleanup efforts have not been efficient when it comes to horses. (They have been in other areas, including donkeys, with direct cooperation from Montanabw, curiously enough, and in domestic cats, among others.) It is difficult to predict what projects will find article naming and categorization cleanup controversial, and on what points.

I understand the WP:RANDY problem, but I'm not part of it; WP:Manual of Style/organisms could not have been written by a Randy. One problem to me is that too many alleged experts treat everyone who disagrees with them about anything as a Randy, often very insultingly so. And by no means is every editor who claims expertise actually an expert; many, especially in biology projects, are simply fanciers, and others may have studied zoology or botany as an undergraduate, but that's it. I have a degree in cultural anthropology, but would never call myself an expert in that field. Large numbers of, e.g., WP:BIRDS editors don't even have that level of qualification, but will fight to death to get their way on capitalization (and on a faulty basis – they continually claim that the fact that bird field guides capitalize common names means that the mainstream publishing world is honoring the IOU's convention, when in reality all field guides on everything have always capitalized this way, as ease-of-rapid-scanning emphasis, since at least the 1800s, long before IOU even existed; it's a coincidence, and they know this but pretend this fact was never raised.

Another related issue is that WP:Competence is required – not just competence in a particular field, but online community competence to work collaborative toward consensus. Not all academics have this, and many are extremely competitive and debatory. Sometimes the only thing to do is not care if this sort leave the project (or even be happy that they've gone). The vast majority of expert editors are a boon to the project, but being such an expert is not a "Get Out of Jail Free" card in Wiki-opoly. As one example, several years ago, one alleged (and probable) expert on albinism was extremely disruptive at the page that is now Albinism in humans. He considered himself to be a reliable source, and basically refused to do the leg-work to provide source citations for the material he wanted to add, nor to show that material he wanted to remove was obsolete or otherwise wrong. I bent over backwards to try to get him to understand WP:V, WP:RS and WP:NOR, but he just would not listen. Myself and others kept having to prevent him from making the well-source if imperfect article a mostly unsourced mess, and he eventually left the project is "disgust" at other editors "stupidity", much to a lot of people's relief. The article today is very well sourced and stable (aside from frequent "ALBINOESES LOOK STOOPID" vandalism). The disruptive expert's absence was a boon. I feel the same way about WP:DIVA expert editors who threaten wiki-retirement, WP boycotts, editing strikes, mass editorial walkouts and other WP:POINTy nonsense. We all know that in reality academics have zero problem adapting to in-house style guides of whatever venue they're writing for. Pretending that doing it on WP is onerous is a abuse of WP as massively-multiplayer online debate game. We really need an "intro to Misplaced Pages for academic and professional experts" guide, to help prevent incoming specialists from falling into such pitfall patterns (not to mention the one identified at WP:SSF). — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 20:45, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Just wanted to let you know that I did read this, started an unproductive reply, and then decided I needed to think about it a while.--Curtis Clark (talk) 02:40, 7 January 2013 (UTC)

Botanist input

Hi, sorry to take so long to reply. I'll be more-or-less offline for a while (travelling). I think it would be a good idea to open up the discussion to WP:Plants, because several editors there may have useful input. I don't think it's likely that I'll get a chance to go over your draft in detail for a while (there'll probably be a backlog of vandalism to revert by the time I get back to wikipedia) Yes, we've certainly crossed paths before in the cat world, not an area where I've done a lot of work though (my efforts have been almost entirely related to their genetics). Best wishes, Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:35, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

I agree about WP:PLANTS; I think it's ready.--Curtis Clark (talk) 22:04, 3 January 2013 (UTC)
Good. They may well be the first project to invite, then. I don't want to "spam" all the biology projects at once or the "fix this, disagree with that" influx will be too much to manage all at once. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 10:28, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

Tortoiseshell cat

...sigh.. Well, with all the dramatic colic that has been kicked up with WikiProject Equine, it just makes me want to take a nerve pill. I could just cry. I cannot become a bigger fish to be fried, so by the time you see this I will have deleted the section on "Tortitude". I have no ownership to that article nor that section. I just made an edit to rescue the section which had (as it turns out) been properly deleted as ‎ →Tortitude: no references. Makes no sense. No evidence for any part of this paragraph. (from edit history). I discoved the page by the deleted section tag. Happenstance. By the way, just in case you believe by my user name that I am a rabid cat fancier, my name only tangentially has anything to do with cats per se. It is a veiled allusion to a scene in the movie Primer (film). I feel sure that I don't fit into any of the demographics you can categorize me into but I do have an entire toy box full of alphabet letters to match yours. Regards. Fylbecatulous talk 22:49, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I really flipped out some people over there at the horse project. I think I'm simply going to have to work around them, like the birds project, and just try to get everything else on WP consistent on these things. There are some strongly entrenched opinions in some of these projects, and as Curtis Clark points out in a thread above, people tend not to like to be told they need to revisit a process they've already been through and try to come to a new consensus, especially in response to demands that seem overly critical. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 10:21, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks, and wishing you all the best. Peace. Fylbecatulous talk 16:33, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

American (cattle breed)

Resolved – Answered.

Hello SMcCandlish. I did the technical move as you requested. What do you think about the surviving redirect from American (cattle breed) to American (cattle). Is it superfluous and should it be deleted? Thanks, EdJohnston (talk) 02:48, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

I would make sure nothing links to it, and then toast it. This can be trashed as well: Lucerna (cattle breed). — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 03:21, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 22:34, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Speaking of an article about something of dubious notability, sigh... It's not really even a cattle breed, it's a bison hybrid. But I'm not going to dive into that one. (Nonetheless, if you wanted to merge with Beefalo and make a new article on bison hybrids, I would not object in the least, though someone else might-- doubt anyone would, though, as the WP:Agriculture folks are all pretty mainsteam and I'm the only member in bison country, I think. Montanabw 22:48, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Apteva and friends

Resolved – Moot; Apteva has been topic banned, as I predicted.

Evidently, you are of the opinion that the point for any sort of compromise here has long been passed; I am not so sure that I disagree with you any longer. Still, would it be possible at all to give the four users who you've suggested be banned a chance to voluntarily abstain themselves from the dash dispute? I understand you're not sold on Apteva's willingness to do so; I actually think he's sincere. At the very least, could it be tried with Enric Naval and LittleBenW? dci | TALK 20:41, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Sure, with regad to Enric Naval and Wikid77, but I would like to see the latter at least administratively warned. I already struck Enric Naval out because he publicly disavowed Apteva's position and behavior . As I said plainly, I think he stills suffers from some of the consensus confusions and attitudinal "I'm gonna prove you wrong!" WP:WINNING viewpoints, but maybe that will wear off. Yes, there is no more room for compromise with Apteva. He's simply playing with us now, making sport of the whole situation and continuing to make his point, wiki-suicidally, while saying he's dropped the matter and won't raise it again out of the other side of his mouth. He is provably already not being genuine, and the AN hasn't even closed yet! It's downright pathological. Those of use who have been dealing with him for longer have already seen this act before. LittleBenW is in the same boat. He got topic banned for doing exactly the same thing but with regard to diacritics only a week or two ago. I'm if he gets topic banned on this, he'll probably just pick capital letters, or semicolons, or italics or whatever, to start more psychodrama about and continue doing this until he just gets banned. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 23:30, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Well, I guess all I have left to say is that I sympathize to an extent with you and those others frustrated by Apteva's party. The fact that there is such a "party" in itself is problematic. But, as I've said before, I'm just not comfortable slapping him down with a topic ban when I still think voluntary, self-instigated change can happen. At any rate, I am finished with this discussion unless it boils over into some other forum; it's best now to let a consensus be determined sans any more long comments, proposals, and subsections. dci | TALK 23:40, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Unless he's lying, they'll amount to the same thing. If he's topic banned voluntarily or involuntarily it still amounts to "Apteva will stop beating this dead horse and go do something constructive". The only reason, really, to oppose the involuntary ban is if he intends to ditch the voluntary one (even stigma isn't a reason - the stigma is already there, from being RFC/U'd and WP:AN'd with landslides against him in both cases). Honestly, I kind of think you should not get involved in AN and AN/I discussions if you are that uncomfortable with topic-bans, since they are a standard sanction agreed upon there. It's a heat/kitchen thing, if you see what I mean, or "if you don't like beef, don't bite the burger". — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 00:19, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Regarding topic bans/voluntary abstention, I really have no issue with topic bans or sanctions in general. In most cases that they're given out, they are the only reasonable alternative given the sanctioned editor's disruptive or unhelpful behavior. However, I think that even late into disputes, voluntary resolutions are better than topic bans, etc. In Apteva's case, I'm also a bit uncomfortable with the intensity of some of the opposition to his "party", which strikes me as the development of a battleground. Also, I don't share the skepticism that he's automatically going to go against the terms of a voluntary abstention. There's other reasons, of course, but that's the gist of my opposition to a topic ban when other solutions are possible. dci | TALK 00:31, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
The only way you could come to this conclusion about Apteva, I feel, is lack of direct experience of his nearly year-long campaign of canvassing and tendentious, verbal aggression, but I'm disinclined to try to convince you any further. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 06:34, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

You post at Misplaced Pages talk:FAQ/Copyright

That page looks like a hinterland (you go back two users in the history and you're in August). Are you familiar with WP:MCQ? By the way, did you see my response on the balkline averages?--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:54, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Yeah, I did a bunch of archiving yesterday. This page was HUGE. It'll get there again. I'd forgotten MCQ existed. Can you please add it to the DAB hatnote at top off and "See also" at bottom of WP:COPYRIGHT? Its conspicuous absence is precisely why I ened up at Misplaced Pages talk:FAQ/Copyright! Haven't seen your balkline response yet; will go look. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 21:34, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Please comment on User talk:PortlandOregon97217

Disregard – Just abuse of RfC tag on someone's user talk page.

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Hee Haw

Yeah, we did get along on Donkeys. And probably will get along on some other stuff again later. Best way to handle WP is to take it issue by issue and then let bygones be bygones. I'm finding some interesting debates over things like the line between a subspecies, a landrace and a breed. Just almost saw someone else's GA derailed over a "breed versus species" debate that was completely bogus, we just removed the word "adapt" and life would have been fine. I'd actually be interested in seeing actual scholarly articles that discuss these differences, particularly the landrace/breed issue in general, but in livestock in particular, and particularly as applied to truly feral/landrace populations (if, in livestock, there is such a thing, people inevitably will do a bit of culling, sorting and other interference these days). I'm willing to stick to my guns on the WPEQ naming issue, but AGF in all respects. Truce? Montanabw 22:40, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

Truce, certainly. I'm not here to pick fights, just improve the consistency for readers and editors. I don't think there will be any scholarly articles on differences between landrace and breed, because there's nothing really to write about. Landrace has clear definitions in zoology and botany, and breed not only doesn't qualify, it is only established as true in any given case by reliable sources. Basically, no one anywhere is claiming "This is the Foobabaz horse, and it is a new landrace!" That wouldn't make sense. What is happening is people naming and declaring new alleged breeds on an entirely self-interested, profit-motive basis, with no evidence anyone other than the proponent and a few other experimental breeders consider it a breed. WP is full of should-be-AfD'd articles of this sort, like the cat one I successfully prod'ed last week. Asking for a reliable source that something is a landrace rather than a breed is backwards; landrace status is the default, not a special condition. It's a bit like asking for a scholarly piece on whether pig Latin is a real language or not; no one's going to write a journal paper about that because "language" (and related terms like "dialect", "language family", "creole" in the linguistic sense, etc.) have clear definitions in linguistics, while pig Latin, an entirely artificial, arbitrary, intentionally-managed form of communication (like an entirely artificial, arbitrary, intentionally managed form of domesticated animal) does not qualify. :-) The "what is a breed" question, which is also not about horses any more than cats or cavies or ferrets, is going to be a separate issue to resolve from the naming issue. Looking over what we collaboratively did with donkeys – and the naming form that took, i.e. Poitou donkey not Poitou (donkey), I think I'm going to end up on your side of that one. It needs to be discussed more broadly in an RFC, because most projects use the parenthetical form, because this is what WT:AT is most readily interpretable as requiring. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 00:12, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
I hate the drama of an RfC, particularly when we can just look at how much can be naturally disambiguated, but if you think it's an actual issue, I guess ping me when it goes up. As for landcraces, it may be true ("clear definitions") but you would be doing God's (or someone's) own good work if you were to improve landrace which has few references, fewer good ones, and is generally not a lot of help to those of us trying to sort out WTF a "landrace" is... (smiles). As for breed, that is were we disagree: At what point do we really have a "breed" as opposed to a "landrace?" Fixed traits, human-selected? At what degree, at which point? How many generations? I don't even know if there IS such a thing as a universal definition of what a "breed" is: seriously: or breed or . I think you and I agree that the Palomino horse can never be a "breed" because it is impossible for the color to breed true (per an earlier discussion) so we have one limit. But while I happen agree to a significant extent with your underlying premise that when Randy from Boise breeds two animals and says he has created a new breed and this is a problem, (I think it's a BIG problem in the worst cases) but if we want to get really fussy, I suppose that the aficionados of the Arabian horse who claim the breed is pure from the dawn of time are actually arguing it is a landrace, wouldn't you say? And what DO we do with the multi-generational stuff that's in limbo land? Montanabw 00:41, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
I'm not really certain what the answers are to any of those questions, another reason (besides your "STOP!" demands :-) that I backed away rapidly from moving any more horse articles around. But it's something that is going to have to be looked into. I agree that the Landrace article here is poor. For one thing, it needs to split Natural breed out into its own article (a natural breed is a selectively-bred formal breed the purpose of which is to refine and "lock-in" the most definitive qualities of a local landrace). This in turn isn't actually the same thing as a traditional breed, though the concepts are related. Basically, three breeding concepts are squished into one article. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 00:52, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
Side comment: I tend to support one good overview article over three poor content forks, just thinking aloud... Montanabw 23:01, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
Sure; the point is that the concepts have to be separately, clearly treated, because they are not synonymous at all. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 02:07, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Given that the article isn't well-sourced yet, I think that you might want to add something about that to landrace now, just to give whomever does article improvement on it later (maybe you, I think this is up your alley!) has the "ping" to do so. Montanabw 21:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Aye, it's on my to-do list. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 22:25, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Although I have been an evolutionary biologist for decades, I only noticed the term "landrace" within the past year or two (in reference to corn), because I work with wildland plants. But I immediately knew what it was, from context. I'm much less certain about breeds, beyond that I am emphatic that they are human constructs. Montanabw and I have discussed my horse off-wiki, and from what I can tell, breeders are selecting for specific attributes (many people claim to have seen a horse "just like him"), but afaik there is no breed "Idaho stock horse". Artificially-selected lineages can exist without anyone calling them "breeds"; I'm not sure they would even be "natural breeds", and such things are common even within established breeds (Montanabw could probably explain to us the difference between Polish and Egyptian Arabians).
The good thing about breeds wrt Misplaced Pages is that we can use WP:RS and WP:NOTABLE to decide what to cover. Landraces are a different issue: if no one has ever called a specific, distinctive, isolated mustang herd a landrace, is it OR for Misplaced Pages to do so?--Curtis Clark (talk) 16:21, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
I have been reluctant to use landrace much out of a concern that the concept is a bit OR, as I hadn't heard of it before wikipedia either (but I'm more a historian than an evolutionary biologist, so what do I know?): Curtis, any idea where this did come from? It's a useful concept, but I am kind of wondering where the lines are between selective breeding and a "natural" breed -- of anything. And speaking of isolated Mustang herds, we have things like Kiger Mustang, which is kind of interesting. I think that at least some of SMc's passion comes from the nuttiness seen in a lot of the dog and cat breeders these days, am I right? I mean, Chiweenies? Montanabw 23:01, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
The first use of the word that I saw referred to different landraces of corn growing in different elevations and exposures in indigenous Maya areas of modern Mexico. I haven't tracked down the references for the use of the word, but the concept seems extremely useful. My sense is that landraces form as much through natural selective processes of cultivation or captivity as through human selection, so that if the "garbage wolf" hypothesis for dog domestication is true, garbage wolves would have been a landrace (or more likely several, in different areas). One could even push the definition and say that MRSA is a landrace. But I don't have enough knowledge of the reliable sources to know how all this would fit into Misplaced Pages.--Curtis Clark (talk) 01:01, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Landraces form, primarily and quickly, through mostly natural selection, long after domestication. E.g. the St Johns water dog and Maine Coon cat are both North American landraces that postdate European arrival on the continent. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 20:16, 9 January 2013 (UTC)
I see some potential for some great research on this and a real improvement to the articles in question. Montanabw 21:55, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Yep. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 20:16, 9 January 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for January 8

Disregard – Bot brainfart.

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Misplaced Pages appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited William A. Spinks, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page William Hoskins (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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Um, no I didn't. I put that link in there years ago before the DAB page existed. Stupid bot. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 22:24, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Please comment on Misplaced Pages talk:Copying within Misplaced Pages

Resolved – Done.

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An invitation for you!

Resolved –  Too many projects already.

Hello, SMcCandlish. You're invited to join WikiProject Today's article for improvement. If you're interested in participating, please add your name to the list of members. Happy editing! Northamerica1000 01:54, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, but I'm already in too many "article improvement" projects as it is. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 09:44, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Resolved – Responded at WT:AN.

Did you mean to use a different link in your message? It's not a big deal, as I found what seems to be the right discussion at the noticeboard. dci | TALK 23:52, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

You didn't answer my questions there; they were not rhetorical. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 01:07, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Flag icons, etc.

Resolved – Fine by me.

SMC, I have noted your requests for a structured RfC with subparts that lend themselves to quick comments and !voting. Given that this issue has festered for four years since the current MOS:FLAG language was added, I think it's important to let every concerned editor give vent to as many perspectives as possible. Quick !voting does not lend itself to in-depth discussion. I am inclined to permit editors to continue to comment for another week or so, but I am also already preparing a more structured RfC that will provide examples of flag icon use in multiple contexts (e.g., athlete infoboxes, infobox medal tables, team infoboxes, event infoboxes, player rosters for team and event articles, lists of world records, event locations, different sports, etc.), and that will permit definitive !voting for each example. Personally, while I support the limited use of flag icons in some sports contexts, I also believe that other uses are either simple overkill or completely inappropriate. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 04:19, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

The very fact that the unstructured discussion has rambled on and on and on for four years with precisely zero motion toward a conclusion is virtually empirical proof that is needs to be re-cast in the structured way I suggested, so I'm glad you're working on that. Another week or so of rambling argument won't kill anyone, I guess. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 01:06, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
Yes, SMC, it is important to give everyone the opportunity to vent, especially when few of the concerned parties were given a real opportunity to express their opinion four years ago. If we want settled guidelines and a real, lasting and stable consensus, we have to give everyone who has an opinion the opportunity to express it and be heard. Most people are willing to accept a decision with which they disagree when they have had their say and the process is transparent. Many people are willing to fight to the death, even in a losing cause, when they sense the game is rigged by insiders. In the words of WP:CONSENSUS,
"Misplaced Pages has a higher standard of participation and consensus for changes to policies and guidelines than to other types of articles. This is because they reflect established consensus, and their stability and consistency are important to the community. . . . The community is more likely to accept edits to policy if they are made slowly and conservatively, with active efforts to seek out input and agreement from others."
Clearly, MOS is one of those guidelines to which a "higher standard of participation" should be applied and for which "active efforts to seek out input and agreement" should be sought to achieve a stable and long-lasting consensus. What was done four years ago fell far short of that participatory standard and simply perpetuated the underlying dispute. A small tactical victory led to long-term strategic stalemate, and did precious little to curtail the more egregious uses of flag icons. Dirtlawyer1 (talk) 14:44, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
I can buy that, except your last clause (MOS:ICONS has actually been very effective; I remember in detail what a lot of articles looked like before it, and how many of them that looked like such farcical messes of icon decoration). — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 23:28, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:List of people who have been called a polymath

Resolved – Done.

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Your comments at the admins' noticeboard

Resolved – Fixed.

I think we can both acknowledge our disagreements on how best to resolve the dash issue and the related disruptions. I am not particularly offended by your remarks; however, I admit that I was surprised by your accusation that I have "written in support of the same anti-MOS, anti-dash nonsense as the parties subject to this WP:AN case." I have not, and I have no idea why you might think that. If it's because I mentioned that Apteva &co. have "legitimate" concerns in userspace conversations, I can clarify that I never stated (nor do I believe) that they are correct. Nor have I, at any time, defended their disruptive approach, and I am not part of some conspiracy to "wipe the slate clean" for them. Thank you, dci | TALK 17:53, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

D'oh! That was a mis-paste; I was writing a response to you and someone else in same edit. Will go fix it! — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 23:09, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
No big deal; thanks for clarifying. DCI2026 (unsecured connection) (talk) 00:47, 13 January 2013 (UTC)

Please comment on Misplaced Pages talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)

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Cite4Wiki

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Hello

First I apologize for my English. I want to tranlate the tool Cite4Wiki in French but I dont know where to download the source code. Can you help me?

Regards. Rabah201130 (talk) 22:57, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

It is still being re-written for compatibility with newer versions of Firefox. A beta version is available; see Misplaced Pages talk:Cite4Wiki#Cite4Wiki and Jetpack for a link to it. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 01:24, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

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Arbitration enforcement warning: Manual of Style and article titles policy

File:Yes 
The Arbitration Committee has permitted administrators to impose discretionary sanctions (information on which is at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions) on any editor who is active on pages broadly related to the English Misplaced Pages Manual of Style and article titles policy. Discretionary sanctions can be used against an editor who repeatedly or seriously fails to adhere to the purpose of Misplaced Pages, satisfy any standard of behavior, or follow any normal editorial process. If you continue to misconduct yourself on pages relating to this topic, you may be placed under sanctions, which can include blocks, a revert limitation, or an article ban. The Committee's full decision can be read at the "Final decision" section of the decision page.

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This warning is made as a result of the arbitration enforcement request made on 27 January 2013 concerning Noetica. Please take care, in future disputes concerning the issues mentioned above, not to misuse the arbitration enforcement noticeboard (or other fora) to cast aspersions against others or to otherwise continue personalizing stylistic disagreements, as directed by the Arbitration Committee's reminder. Regards,  Sandstein  21:19, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

I dispute the applicability of your warning and the accuracy of your characterization of my edit at the cited discussion, and your interpretation of the discussion itself, as well as the ArbCom discretionary sanctions you are misapplying.

Here's the text of my comment at that AN filing, in full:

Comment by SMcCandlish

  • I, too, find it disconcerting that SarekOfVulcan does not seem to understand that WP:INVOLVED applies to admins in particular, not random editors, that he seems unclear that his statements and actions in this matter are not comparable to Noetica's, and that he's been so heavily involved administratively in something he's also been so heavily involved in as a stakeholding editor. Anyway, this request for enforcement by Apteva is a WP:POINTy farce. PS: I agree with the criticism that Noetica's "if you sanction me, I quit" smacks of WP:DIVA. That said, of all the "wiki-sins" one could commit in this extended brouhaha, that seems to be the least of all. I take it as a simple expression of frustration, and of bewilderment that Apteva has been permitted to carry on so disruptively for so long. His (and Wikid77's & LittleBenW's WP:TAGTEAM) tendentious-to-death-and-beyond nonsense makes me want to quit, too, sometimes. — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 09:09, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
You mischaracterized these comments of mine at WP:AN as "serv no useful purpose with regard to deciding whether the reported edits are sanctionable, and...also mainly concerned with casting aspersions on others, further personalizing the underlying dispute(s)." There are several issues to address with regard to your warning and your expressed reasoning behind it. In summary, they are that you have clearly misinterpreted all of the following:
  • My post (it did address the issue at hand, was not a misuse of WP:AN, and was not a personalization of any dispute)
  • The nature of the AN filing in question (it was Apteva lashing out to be vengeful, and had little-to-zero merit of any kind)
  • The nature of the debate at AN (it's about forumshopping, tendentious disruption, soapbox advocacy and refusal to get the point, not about style)
  • WP:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Article titles and capitalisation#All parties reminded itself (it's about pointless, angsty argumentation over style matters, not factual reportage of problem editors to WP:AN for action to restrain their abuses, successfully and on the merits), which you have here misapplied (I have not in fact violated the provisions of that arb sanction, broad and discretionary though they may be).
In more detail, I have to note all of the following problems with your warning:
  1. Misconstruing the nature of the AN filing: You seem to be missing the fact, as noted by the majority of respondents to that bogus AN report, that it was simply filed in retaliation as a WP:POINT against Noetica by Apteva, just for Noetica having dared to file an entirely legitimate AN report against Apteva (one which successfully resulted in a block against Apteva, I might remind you, with the overwhelming majority of respondents supporting a block, and a majority also supporting blocks of Wikid77 and LittleBenW, though those were not enacted). Apteva's AN counter-filing was simply lashing out at Noetica. Very few respondents to it found any merit of any kind in it, and even those that did found them insufficient to take admin action.
  2. Misunderstanding and mischaracterizing my statements: There is nothing disruptive, incivil, attacking or otherwise a "misuse" of WP:AN about either of the following:
    1. I observed a demonstrably inappropriate admin response to an AN filing: I noted that an admin on the admin noticeboard who has involved himself in that AN filing had both a clear conflict of interest in the filing and its background issues, and also did not appear to understand the difference in applicability between admins and non-admins of an important guideline, but was attempting to hold the subject of the AN filing accountable for not adhering to an admin-only rule. It was a salient and entirely appropriate comment about the process the AN filing was undergoing, and had nothing to do with style disputes.
    2. I expressed a belief that an AN filing was frivolous or vexatious, and on what basis: I reminded AN watchers that Apteva is being AN-reported for disruption, of such a magnitude that many editors are frustrated to the point of leaving, and suggested that Apteva is just filing counter-reports at AN to be vindictive. The consensus was in favor of sanctions against Apteva already (note also that I had already demonstrated in the original AN report, with piles of diffs and beyond any shadow of a doubt, that Apteva was tendentious, forum-shopping, tag-teaming, and disruptive on this issue). Labeling Apteva's constantly spewing firehose of noise on this topic "farcical" and "disruptive", when one can and already has proven it and consensus already agrees, is not "personalizing the debate", it's short-circuiting yet another Apteva attempt to ask the other parent by abusing WP:AN as a point-making platform.
  4. Discounting my statements as irrelevant to the AN filing when they were clearly on-point: My comments did in fact serve a "useful purpose with regard to deciding whether the reported edits are sanctionable" (namely pointing out that they are not, and that the process being applied had COI and other problems). Noting which parties are doing what in a dispute is not "personalizing stylistic disagreements" at all. AN and AN/I cannot function when parties are not identified.
  5. Confusing the MOS/AT style debate with the AN behavior debate: Neither of the related AN filings (Noetica vs. Apteva and vice versa) have anything to do with style intrinsically, but only user behavior; the background debate could just as easily have been about whether the Van cat is a breed or a landrace, or what George Balabushka's real name was. More to the point, Apteva could turn out to be correct about the style matters he editwars and forumshops over incessantly, but this would still not excuse his pattern of grossly abusive and disruptive behavior, which is what he was taken to WP:AN about; the ends do no justify the means. Apteva's counterclaim against Noetica, which consensus did not support, was also about alleged behavior, not style.
  6. Misidentifying me as the source of the problem: It's ironic to be labeled (publicly on WP:AT, not on my user talk page) as "battlegrounding" by you when myself, Noetica and various other parties successfully reined in Apteva's actual battlegrounding, in the related AN report immediately above the one you're castigating me about for no reason. It's as if you did not even read the original AN case, but only the one against Noetica.
  7. Misapplying the ArbCom style-debate sanctions simply to protect a fellow admin from criticism: I have to wonder how much the fact that I criticized an admin's judgement in my quoted post, above, weighed in your decision to issue this inappropriate warning to me. I have to think that it is the principal reason you did so, and will show why. My comments about Apteva's editing pattern were directly relevant to both AN filings and already proven with evidence. My comments about Noetica were that while I agreed that his response to the bogus AN case wasn't helpful, it was easy to see that it was just the product of frustration and not serious; this isn't any kind of actual criticism, but a request for forgiveness. My mention of Wiki77 and LittleBenW is supported by already-cited proof of tagteaming, which a consensus of respondents in the original AN subsection about it found compelling. That leaves only my comments about admin SarekOfVulcan for you to use as the basis for this warning! The problem here, though, is that nothing I said with regard to SofV's clear conflict of interest in the outcome of the AN filing or his attempt to apply admin rules to the non-admin subject of the AN filing have anything at all to do with style, the MoS, or the ArbCom case you are citing as justification for warning and me and thereby threatening me with a block. My comments with regard to SofV were 100% about, and about nothing but, WP:AN process as it applied to that particular filing at AN!
  8. Effectively censoring my legitimate participation by misapplying rules and process to make a threat under color of admin authority: This may not matter to you, and it might not have been your intent, but I now feel palpably and unmistakeably threatened by you with a punitive but illegitimate and undeserved block, should I ever participate in an WP:AN, WP:AN/I or similar noticeboard discussion, in which any MOS-related issue happens to be involved, and in which I necessarily identify any other editor; and similarly threatened should I ever criticize another admin's judgement in such a forum. Only one other party at AN suggested you make this sort of ArbCom-related warning, against me or anyone else who commented there, and did not provide reasons, just a "me too", so your action to do so is essentially unilateral and does not represent any kind of consensus at WP:AT to do so. I.e., you are directly chilling my expression and participation in basic WP procedure, in an entirely out-of-process way, without consensus to do so, and based on nothing but a string of misinterpretations of everything from ArbCom sanctions to the messages and debate at issue, with the result if not the outright goal of hampering my ability to continue doing some of what I do best here, which is help prevent random pet peeves of fanatical editwarriors from getting enshrined in, and/or threatening the stability of, our Manual of Style.
Feel free to explain your rationale, clarify what your threat really means, or better yet just rescind it.
— SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖכþ Contrib. 05:43, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
Hi. I maintain the warning. While I can't reply to all of the above because of its length, here's my comment about the gist of your remarks:
I am not sure why you talk at length about some WP:AN filing. I have not participated in, or even read, any AN thread related to this matter. My warning relates to your comment at WP:AE which you reproduced above.
WP:AE is not a general purpose dispute resolution noticeboard. Its purpose is not to resolve any ongoing, underlying disputes. That is the province of the normal dispute resolution process. AE is there for one purpose only: to help admins decide whether the specific edits that have been reported warrant an enforcement response. This means that allegations about misconduct by people not party to the request at issue (as subject or, at most, as filer) are unhelpful to begin with. For instance, the AE request did not concern the conduct of SarekOfVulcan. Therefore, criticizing that editor's conduct in the AE thread serves no useful purpose at all. If you have a problem with it, you should discuss it directly with SarekOfVulcan, or in an appropriate discussion forum, or file a separate AE request if you believe that SarekOfVulcan's conduct is so problematic as to warrant enforcement action.
Particularly, the Arbitration Committee's reminder I linked to above reads: "All parties are reminded to avoid personalizing disputes concerning the Manual of Style, the article titles policy ('WP:TITLE'), and similar policy and guideline pages, and to work collegially towards a workable consensus". In light of this, it is especially unhelpful, as you did, to make the following comments: "... Apteva has been permitted to carry on so disruptively for so long. His (and Wikid77's & LittleBenW's WP:TAGTEAM) tendentious-to-death-and-beyond nonsense ...". These are just broad allegations of severe personal misconduct on the part of several editors, two of which are in no way concerned by the AE request at issue. These allegations are unsupported by any useful evidence. They would have been inappropriate in any forum, not just AE. That's because you don't resolve disagreements by flinging broad accusations at one another in community fora. You resolve disagreements by working through the dispute resolution process in direct contact with the editors involved, focusing on the substantial disagreements (about hyphens and dashes, for instance) rather than on any personal conflicts emerging from them. That's what the Committee's reminder is about, and what I ask you to keep in mind in the future.
I would like to emphasize that I have no opinion about, and frankly at this time no interest in, whether the various people you criticized have in fact engaged in any misconduct. They may well have, and if so, that should be addressed in proper form (i.e., with evidence, no broad allegations!) through the dispute resolution process. But as I said their conduct is not within the scope of an AE request that is not about them. Whether any of these people are administrators is of course immaterial with regard to the dispute resolution or AE process, except in that I personally expect administrators to adhere to a higher standard of conduct than other editors.  Sandstein  08:27, 2 February 2013 (UTC)
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