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User talk:JohnValeron

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Chelsea Manning categories

(In future, please consider a little BRD.) When there's a sub-category that helps diffuse a category we don't usually keep it in both categories, per WP:SUBCAT. I agree there are some situations you want to keep everybody in all related categories, but not here.

In this case, the category for people who were convicted is helping organize the category for people who were charged. If all the convicted are in their own sub-cat, it's still clear that everybody was "charged" (all people in the main cat and all people in the sub-cat). If we keep all the convicted in both cat and sub-cat, there is no easy way to see who many articles involve people who were charged and not convicted. Your way is actually less informative.__ E L A Q U E A T E 05:35, 17 August 2014 (UTC)

Persons convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917 is a non-diffusing subcategory of Persons charged under the Espionage Act of 1917. Just as, in the example given at WP:SUBCAT, not all Film actors are Best Actor Academy Award winners, so too not all Persons charged are convicted. It is uniquely helpful to have a standalone list of all persons charged, whether or not convicted. If you want an "easy way" to see articles involving the subset of people charged but not convicted, you ought to create a new Category:Persons charged but not convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917. As is, you're trying to artificially restrict a more comprehensive parent category for your decidedly subcategorical purpose. JohnValeron (talk) 06:11, 17 August 2014 (UTC)
No, "convicted" is not non-diffusing. It is more like Category:People indicted for war crimes and Category:People convicted of war crimes.

Instead of two clearly understood categories of about thirty each, where the sub-cat is logically a part of the larger cat, we now have one with thirty that's useful and one that duplicates so we have seventy and gives slightly less information than if we had it separated like the war crimes example.__ E L A Q U E A T E 06:22, 17 August 2014 (UTC).

And you say so too not all Persons charged are convicted. That's the wrong end of the stick. All persons who were convicted were logically also charged! That's why "convicted" is a sub-category of all those "charged". You're saying that your way involves creating a brand new category to find the information that could be had just by properly diffusing the main cat per WP:SUBCAT. You're overcategorizing all of those articles.__ E L A Q U E A T E 06:29, 17 August 2014 (UTC)
No, I'm saying that Category:Persons charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 corresponds to Category:People indicted for war crimes, and Category:Persons convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917 corresponds to Category:People convicted of war crimes. In your first comment, you said you want an "easy way" to see the subset of those charged but not convicted. Where is the subset of those charged with War Crimes but not convicted? JohnValeron (talk) 06:35, 17 August 2014 (UTC)
Category:People indicted for war crimes does not contain duplicates from the sub-cats of all articles of people convicted of war crimes. There are 42 people and two sub-cats under indicted. We have over a hundred articles in "convicted". That means "convicted" is diffusing. That means that the 42 articles that didn't make it into a "convicted" sub-cat, and are sitting in "indicted" are mostly the people who were indicted but not convicted for some reason.__ E L A Q U E A T E 06:46, 17 August 2014 (UTC)
Please bear with me. I'm trying to understand. Let me ask this another way. If Category:People indicted for war crimes does not in fact list all Misplaced Pages articles for People indicted for war crimes, but lists only those indicted and not convicted, where can a reader find a list of all Misplaced Pages articles for People indicted for war crimes? JohnValeron (talk) 07:01, 17 August 2014 (UTC)
No problem. Category:People indicted for war crimes does contain all articles for people convicted of war crimes, because it has contains both the sub-categories and everybody who doesn't fit the sub-categories. Right now if I go the folder "charged under 1917" and I see a little folder called "convicted under 1917" I don't know initially see that most of the names I'm looking at in "charged" are also repeated in "convicted", A super-list of everybody with any connection can be seen as useful, but it's slightly more useful to have people more definitely and specifically sorted. Let me give you a more specific example: Take a look at Category:People indicted for crimes against humanity, there's Augusto Pinochet. It wouldn't necessarily be more informative to see him on a giant list with everyone that was also convicted. In fact, if there was a super-list, I might not immediately note that he wasn't convicted.__ E L A Q U E A T E 13:26, 17 August 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. I think I'm finally beginning to see your point. As the parent category, Category:Persons charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 should not actually be populated by any names. It should simply be an umbrella under which subcategories shelter. Category:Persons convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917 is obviously one such subcategory. Another would be Category:Persons not convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917. If you concur, I will use the Misplaced Pages:Article wizard/Category to request creation of a subcategory with the latter name. Once it's approved, I'll go through Category:Persons charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 and, where appropriate, re-tag each who belongs in the new subcategory. At the same time, I can remove all tags pointing to Category:Persons charged under the Espionage Act of 1917, since that will be a shell category containing only the two subcategories and linking to no individual articles. Please advise. JohnValeron (talk) 21:26, 17 August 2014 (UTC)
Follow-up I have identified the 23 articles listed in Category:Persons charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 that would populate the proposed new subcategory Category:Persons not convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917.

Note: In compiling the above list, I could not figure out where to insert category tags for Keith Weissman and Lawrence Franklin—who are included in Category:Persons charged under the Espionage Act of 1917—to add them to Category:Persons convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917. All told, there should be 73 charged, 50 convicted (including Weissman/Franklin), and 23 not convicted. Any help re Weissman/Franklin would be much appreciated. JohnValeron (talk) 01:37, 18 August 2014 (UTC)
I appreciate that you're looking at this with good faith and looking closely at the article involved. I think you'll find a category like Category:Persons not convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917 would get deleted pretty quickly as other editors would argue that most people in history have been "not convicted". A category like Category:Persons '''charged but not convicted''' under the Espionage Act of 1917 would be more precise.

Personally I think the easier option would be to just keep "charged but not convicted" in the "charged" cat, and put a descriptive sentence at the top of Category:Persons charged under the Espionage Act of 1917 that says if they were convicted they should be moved into the more-specific "convicted" sub-cat". I won't stand in the way of either solution, though, as both help show who was "charged but not convicted". I found this useful in the War Crimes example, because it helps show that most of the "indicted but not convicted" occurred because the accused was so old they died were considered too sick for some reason. I think that helps show interesting connections between articles, and aspects of this kind of accusation. Thanks for thinking about how to make this navigate better.__ E L A Q U E A T E 13:06, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

I appreciate that you have far more experience than I, and a much deeper understanding, regarding Misplaced Pages categories. So I value your advice. Of course, you're right that Category:Persons not convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917 is overly broad and liable to be misconstrued as applying to everyone not charged under the Act. Your alternative suggestion Category:Persons charged but not convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917 is much better. I'd like to think about your reply a bit more, but am leaning towards submitting your alternative subcategory for approval. If editors reject that approach, I can live with whatever the community decides. Again, I'm grateful for your patience and guidance on this matter. I'll continue updating this Talk section as new developments warrant. JohnValeron (talk) 14:58, 19 August 2014 (UTC)

Not Done Regrettably, my request to create Category:Persons charged but not convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917 was today declined by User:Bellerophon, who explained: "To categorise people who have not been convicted of a crime seems at variance with WP:BLPCRIME." JohnValeron (talk) 21:18, 21 August 2014 (UTC)

In July and August 2014, disruptive edits by an anonymous user of Congressional IP address 143.231.249.138 garnered widespread unfavorable press coverage.

The preceding list documents the extent to which an anonymous serial abuser of the Congressional IP address 143.231.249.138 has exploited this platform to publicly humiliate both the United States House of Representatives and Misplaced Pages over the span of just two months. JohnValeron (talk) 00:50, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

Abuse resumed in September 2014

JohnValeron (talk) 14:19, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

On troll food

Some bored dudebro staffer in the Rayburn Building is absolutely relishing the attention he's getting right now, and building a shrine to his accomplishments doesn't help that. (Keep in mind the House is on recess right now, so his claims of being "authorized" by a Congressman are pretty clearly bunk; I doubt there's much of a scandal beyond a single bad apple.) The MediaWiki platform already provides excellent transparency, the IP's contributions being easily accessible and its user talk page clearly identifying it as a House IP; if there were a coverup, surely we'd have revdeleted everything! The best strategy from this point forward is to just leave things alone, and nonchalantly block again if the problems come back again in thirty days. --Fran Rogers (talk) 03:05, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

By peremptorily deleting my comments posted to another user's Talk page—as you have done yet again—you are abusing your authority as a Misplaced Pages admin. JohnValeron (talk) 03:18, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
Fran Rogers is still at it: arbitrarily censoring my comment posted to another user's Talk page. This is clearly an attempt to suppress free and open discussion of how to deal with an abusive user. JohnValeron (talk) 15:39, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
Pot, meet kettle 88.104.23.102 (talk) 17:11, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
Do you seriously not see the irony in this thread, where you've just complained about "attempt to suppress free and open discussion", that you're removing my own attempts to discuss it? 88.104.23.102 (talk) 17:55, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
I apologize for deleting the two preceding good-faith comments by IP 88.104.23.102, whom I mistook for vandal IP 88.104.20.79. Please see discussion here for context. JohnValeron (talk) 19:38, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
No, it's an attempt to deal with a delicate situation with careful nuance. The press is already turning this into a "Misplaced Pages vs. Congress, zOMG!!!1" story, instead of the "bored troll vandalizes from his workplace, gets workplace blocked" story that it is; there's no need to fan the flames further. (Organizations like NCTE and HRC, to their credit, are already pressuring Congress to deal with this abusive use of taxpayer resources—that's their job, though, not ours.) --Fran Rogers (talk) 00:16, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

Heads up

You are quoted and your user page is linked in a short New York Times piece today. best, —Tim /// Carrite (talk) 13:37, 26 September 2014 (UTC)

Congrats! -- BullRangifer (talk) 01:58, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Grammar question: a or an?

I'm wondering about your reversion of my grammar fix. Maybe there's some rule I'm missing here. I'm American, but have lived in Europe for most of my adult life, so I do make some mistakes! Although I'm a 64 year old health care professional, to keep up I take American college courses by web (some medical subjects for the fourth time in various languages), and still get top grades. I get comments like this: "I’d say you are in the top 5-10 students I have taught in 13 years here." (Psychology professor)

I want to get this right for future use. Here's the current situation:

  • "an NYPD spokeswoman" (your version)

The subject is "spokeswoman", which begins with a consonant. (Even if it's NYPD "New York PD", it would be a consonant.) Wouldn't that normally be preceded with "a" ("a NYPD spokeswoman")? That sounds better to me, but I could be wrong. -- BullRangifer (talk) 02:25, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

  • User:BullRangifer, since you're a health care professional, here's a source you may respect: The APA Style Blog, which is the official companion to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. "The trick here," we are advised, "is to use your ears (how the acronym is pronounced), not your eyes (how it's spelled)." In the instant case, NYPD is an initialism, meaning an acronym pronounced as a string of letters rather than as a word. Note in the APA's fourth bulleted example the distinction between a NICU nurse and an NPO order. Like NPO, NYPD requires an. I realize this seems counterintuitive, but bear in mind that the letter N—while a consonant—is considered to have a vowel sound because we pronounce it as if it were spelled EN. JohnValeron (talk) 03:18, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Great answer! Thanks. So with NYPD, we should think of "eN", and treat it as a soft, vowel, sound. I was initially thinking of NYPD as an adjective, with the "a" being attached to the subject "spokeswoman", but I suspect that this would also be a case of "use your ears, not your eyes". -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:30, 16 March 2015 (UTC)
  • While I've got you here, I was thinking of the HuffPost ref as better coverage than some of the other refs (great visuals), but there isn't really that much difference, so no big deal. Because of the visuals, it might be better than one of the others. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:33, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Thanks for your Grant Shapps edit.

Zen78 (talk) 19:55, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Blocked

Checkuser makes it very clear you are using the User:WikiCVU in a bad hand/good hand manner, even over the same article. The things that account did were utterly unacceptable, and I fully believe you knew that, and chose to direct them through a different account knowing that. Given that the other account's block is directly to ArbCom only, so is this account's. If you wish to contest this block, arbcom-appeals-en@lists.wikimedia.org is the way. Given the unacceptable nature of the other account's edits, I have also removed your talk page access on both accounts. Courcelles (talk) 21:03, 21 March 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Civility Barnstar
Thank you! I was really impressed by the constructive and non-acrimonious tone and contributions from everyone involved in the recent AFD discussion on the Alliance of Women Directors article. What could have been—with the wrong editors involved—a very nasty debate, turned into a very positive discussion. Even editors who strongly felt that the article should be deleted worked hard to find sources and fix problems with it. This is the kind of positive collaboration people don't hear a lot about in Misplaced Pages-land and I'd like to recognize it. Carl Henderson (talk) 19:50, 3 April 2015 (UTC)