Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Newyorkbrad (talk | contribs) at 00:28, 8 March 2015 (→Misplaced Pages Signpost/2015-03-04/Arbitration report: typos). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Archives

Index of archives

This page has archives. Sections older than 7 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III.

Coffee

Coffee has email enabled, so you could email him if there are specific revisions he'd like rev-del'd. NE Ent 00:34, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

I've already dropped him an e-mail, although not on this specific matter. If he indicates anything in a response, I will forward it to you. My sincere hope is that he returns shortly and makes it clear here what he thinks should best be done. John Carter (talk) 00:45, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll probably drop him a note too. For what it's worth, I still think the question I posed to Kww should have been asked of Coffee before the talkpage was undeleted. I suppose I won't actually do it, but part of me thinks I should redelete the talkpage now until I hear back from him—partly on the chance there should be revisions-deletions, and partly to see if it would even be possible to turn this weekend's drama-level up from 11 to 12 or 13. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:10, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

No, you shouldn't; it's highly unlikely that was anything other than a lashing out in frustration. I'm pretty sure the drama has peaked based on some heuristics I've developed from reading too many ANI threads. NE Ent 02:37, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Editing for Women's History in March

Hello,

I am very excited to announce this month’s events, focused on Women’s History Month:

• Sunday, March 8: Women in the Arts 2015 Edit-a-thon – 10 AM to 4 PM

  Women in the Arts and ArtAndFeminism Misplaced Pages Edit-a-thon at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Free coffee and lunch served!

  More information • RSVP on Meetup

• Wednesday, March 11: March WikiSalon – 7 PM to 9 PM

  An evening gathering with free-flowing conversation and free pizza.

  More information • RSVP on Meetup (or just show up!)

• Friday, March 13: NIH Women's History Month Edit-a-Thon – 9 AM to 4 PM

  In honor of Women’s History Month, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is organizing and hosting an edit-a-thon to improve coverage of women in science in Misplaced Pages. Free coffee and lunch served!

  More information • RSVP on Meetup

• Saturday, March 21: Women in STEM Edit-a-Thon at DCPL – 12 PM

  Celebrate Women's History Month by building, editing, and expanding articles about women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields during DC Public Library's first full-day edit-a-thon.

  More information • RSVP on Meetup

• Friday, March 27: She Blinded Me with Science, Part III – 10 AM to 4 PM

  Smithsonian Institution Archives Groundbreaking Women in Science Misplaced Pages Edit-a-thon. Free lunch courtesy of Wikimedia DC!

  More information • RSVP on Meetup

• Saturday, March 28: March Dinner Meetup – 6 PM

  Dinner and drinks with your fellow Wikipedians!

  More information • RSVP on Meetup

Hope you can make it to an event! If you have any questions or require any special accommodations, please let me know.

Thanks,

James Hare

To unsubscribe from this newsletter, remove your name from this list. 02:25, 2 March 2015 (UTC)

Just a heads up

I have notified Rationalobserver about the talk on User talk:Anthonyhcole's page, I understand there are wiki politics but discussing a possible sock investigation which is a serious thing without informing the editor involved is just wrong in my opinion. - Knowledgekid87 (talk) 02:45, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Your point is well-taken. Thank you. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:54, 3 March 2015 (UTC)

Signpost interview

Hi Brad, Just to let you know, we plan to run your interview this week. If you would like to review your comments, you may do so here. We plan to publish in the neighborhood of 5 PM EST, I would imagine. Thanks! Go Phightins! 15:52, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Thank you. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:08, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

Question about hoaxes

If something starts as a hoax, like Jar'edo Wens (or however it is spelt), but then is adopted by popular culture or the mythos of something, what happens? Would the article eventually be restored if it gained enough use and coverage? Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 00:59, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Certainly there are historical hoaxes that become encyclopedic in their own right. For examples, see Piltdown Man or Vortigern and Rowena or Cottingley Fairies or Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Hopefully no hoax on Misplaced Pages ever rises to that level. For a short essay I once wrote on a related abuse of Misplaced Pages, please see here. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 01:06, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Unblock

This unblock shows wisdom and common sense -- have you ever considering running for the arbitration committee? NE Ent 03:14, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

"I arrested a man once and he turned out to be guilty; that's why I was made an inspector." — Inspector Cramer. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 03:26, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

If you choose to run, count on my vote. Cullen Let's discuss it 08:17, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages Signpost/2015-03-04/Arbitration report

How pleased are you that the term "Bradspeak" is not only still in circulation, but has entered the lexicon to the extent it can be used in a headline without explanation? Someone somewhere should probably be paying me royalties for the use of it. (Along with "civility police", "facebook for ugly people" and "undefined, not infinite".) – iridescent 07:48, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

@Iridescent: It looks like we have Go Phightins! to thank for the "Bradspeak" reference in the title of the interview.

Am I pleased that the term is still remembered? To give a more serious reply than you might have expected, I suppose that depends on what it's being remembered for? If it's "thoughtful and deliberate written analysis of problems on Misplaced Pages, in a style commanding gravitas and attention" than sure, I'll be glad to be remembered that way, and I'll try to keep at it.

On the other hand, if "Bradspeak" is construed as "longwinded, legalistic, complicated, hard-to-understand prose in wikispace," I'm less honored. Believe it or not, in my real-world legal career, I'm a strong champion of writing legal documents that are readable and interesting, with as few unnecessary complexities and legalisms as possible. (That's one of the main reasons I participate here.) I never set out to achieve a different style in my wiki writing. Anyone reading through a few weeks of what I've written on WP:RFAR or sometimes at ANI or wherever could probably guess that I'm a lawyer (to the best of my knowledge, D--- B--- was the only person ever to doubt it), and that sometimes I think complicated thoughts. But it was never a conscious stylistic choice to write in complex and tangled sentences for its own sake.

I've actually been criticized for "complicated, awkward sentences" ever since high-school and college freshman English, and I suppose I've improved only marginally. My writing method is often to think the substance of an analysis through, but then to type quickly and get my thoughts down on the page. In my RL briefwriting or my scholarly writing, I try to root out unwanted complexity and other indicia of bad writing by writing a brief or an article sometime before it's due, and then returning to it a few days later. I can then not only fix the typos and copyedit but also hone and simplify the prose. In addressing a Misplaced Pages dispute, that generally can't be done—one needs to comment timely to influence the dispute, and only a limited amount of time can be spent—and so the first draft is the only draft. That, more than anything else, explains some sentences that leave even me, when I look back, asking "why the heck was I so long-winded about this?" And at times the writing style had the side-effect of leading knowledgeable critics, in their more Eva Destructive moments, to infer that I was substituting pomposity for analysis, which was never the case (or at least not consciously!).

As a sidenote, in the past few weeks I've tried not to spend too much time peeking at the arbitration pages. But I did look at the workshop in one of the cases after I left the Committee, and I found that my style was writing style. One of the arbitrators borrowed (with minor tweaks) a principle that I drafted in the Noleander case (and which passed unanimously, including your (Iridescent's) vote): "An editor must not engage in a pattern of editing that focuses on a specific racial, religious, or ethnic group and can reasonably be perceived as gratuitously endorsing or promoting stereotypes, or as evincing invidious bias and prejudice against the members of the group." That's not a sentence that makes me cringe in retrospect; it says exactly what I meant it to say, including precisely the intended amount of ambiguity. But there's no doubt that it's complicated. Someone on the workshop page fed my sentence into the Flesch reading level meter, and it yielded a readability score of something like six hundred forty, meaning that the sentence can be understood only by advanced German-literature graduate students under controlled conditions, or something. So I suppose it will be simplified. And after all, it could be more-or-less paraphrased to "Don't be a bigoted asshole if you want to edit here." That would have worked as a principle (I'm not saying as a finding of fact) in the Noleander case too. Bestspeak, presumably, has a formality level somewhere in the middle.

I suppose this is Bradspeak at its worst again—answering a throwaway comment about longwindedness with an overly long reply. But I'll continue as I began and just leave it here rather than try to edit or truncate it. Make of it what you will. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:37, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

In some defense, if you read the original quote (I know you did, as you commented in the thread) it was When one always has the knowledge at the back of one's mind that anything you say can be taken as a public pronouncement and waved at one of the drama boards in support of some wiki-crusade or other, it forces one to be very measured and pedantic with the wording of anything said for public consumption; Bradspeak is a virtually inevitable consequence. and in the context of a discussion about the need for functionaries to speak politely but without ambiguity, it was actually a defense of Bradspeak as the inevitable product of someone trying to bring clarity to a multicultural project. I've made many criticisms of you, but the use of language wasn't one of them. – iridescent 21:18, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

@Iridescent: Thanks very much ... I suppose I'll have to be self-critical without you this time. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:30, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

BTW, regarding your comments two threads up, policy is very explicit that unlike the other drama boards, there's no requirement to notify the parties in a sockpuppet investigation. If you think that should be changed, Misplaced Pages talk:Sockpuppet investigations would be the place to go, but there are a number of good reasons why this is the case. – iridescent 07:48, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

I'll have to admit that the SSI pages haven't been one of my wiki hangouts (the last time I really enjoyed a colloquy on WP:RFCU, which was the predecessor of SSI, was when Mackensen and Thatcher131 (as he then was) were bantering about the templates. That must have been around 1995 or so. So, I have no opinion on how that page should work. Regards again, Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:37, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

I enjoy witty titles, so I thought it was worth a shot :-) For the record, I have always found Bradspeak to mean the first possibility you mentioned -- careful, deliberate analysis. Go Phightins! 20:41, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Was it only 1995? Gawd. Mackensen (talk) 20:42, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

If you strive to write legal documents that are readable, I wonder if you've ever cited Dr. Seuss, as another lawyer recently did ? NE Ent 21:09, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

I had little interest in sock investigations—my attitude was always "unless they're being disruptive or working around a sanction, it's better to leave them in situ so you know what their current account is". The comment was more for the benefit of others reading your talkpage—you have Font Of Wisdom status in some circles, and don't want to be indirectly endorsing incorrect advice. – iridescent 21:18, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

I largely agree with you (about sock-chasing, that is, not about "Font Of Wisdom status"). Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:30, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Peter and the Wolf

Tell me how "absolutely no sourcing found" and "fails WP:NALBUMS" are "pointless, worthless nomination". WP:NALBUMS even says that, just because the artist is notable, does not mean the album is automatically notable. I would think you would know that WP:NOTINHERITED is a thing. If you think it's notable, how about you show me how it passes WP:NALBUMS? It didn't chart, so that's out. It hasn't been reviewed by anyone of note, so that's out. Ten Pound Hammer • 22:01, 7 March 2015 (UTC)