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Concerning Ahmadinejad

Hello,

please forgive my audacity to start writing in your (unused?) user page. Delete my message if you like.

I also (for now!) oppose the categorization as antisemitic.

I admire your politeness and persistence to write good arguments. (Don't get me wrong : I don't think he is the greatest president either). What I wanted to ask you here, on calmer grounds, is : What is the best source for antisemitism you have found (directly or indirectly because of what the pro category people have written)? Because I am worrying about the persistent referring to an abundance of proof that I cannot find?? Greetings,Evilbu 00:06, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Lol no problem. I wouldn't call it audacious, just bold (and bold can be a good thing!)  :) I'm glad there are people like you here on wkikpedia that don't just sit back when they see POV editing.

Anyway, the most inflammatory quotes that I have seen to date are the ones here: http://www.adl.org/main_Anti_Semitism_International/ahmadinejad_words.htm In fact, I think you are the person that placed that on the talk page and nobody responded. I'm sorry if you were looking for commentary from me, but I didn't think I had much of importance to say that wasn't said already. I will include the quote you were asking about and give my analysis here:

"The Zionists and their protectors are the most detested people in all of humanity, and the hatred is increasing every day."

Because of the structure of English, "most detested people" is actually just refering to the beginning of the sentence ("The Zionists and their protectors"). It doesn't imply a reference to any ethnic group in particular, so in your language I think people would be equated with mensen in this case.

Of all the sources, that one is the most concise and has plenty of different quotes from different places. Many are taken out of context, but that website added appropriate clarifications, so they seem to be credible. The most interesting thing is, the website those quotes are on is trying to push the idea that he is anti-Semitic, but those quotes are the closest they could find to support that sentiment. When people refer to "abundance of proof," these are the kind of quotes that they are interpreting as anti-semitic. Markovich292

Well, I was actually hoping for pro-categorization people to enthusiastically elaborate (providing translations, maybe official ones from the Iranian government itself,etc...). I was very surprised when the "Duh it means..."card was pulled immediately. I was trying to prove that I was inviting comments and was prepared to change my opinion, and even giving them the tools to do it... What irks me is that they constantly refer to "that proof" or "everything has been said", why can't they just paste a bold, cold, hard link right there, right now, when they refer to something? Note that I haven't touched the article itself at all up until now.Evilbu 23:46, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I see where you are coming from. They use all sorts of tactics, from insults to ignoring statements that support our point, so they don't have to address why the quotes supposedly support their claims. My theory; they know that if they try to explain the quotes, they will have to use expressions like I think that or in my opinion. When I read the following, I felt like pulling my hair out because of frustration:

anyway, like i said - "every holocaust denier = anti semite" without any exception, so that's it for me. Amoruso 21:57, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

And like almost everyone else has said, that is an opinion that you are trying to push in the article... Markovich292 23:32, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

it's not an opinion. It's simply telling the phenomena of holocaust denial for what it is...the agenda behind it is crystal clear to the humankind. Amoruso 02:48, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

From comments like these, I have concluded it is they who are immobile on the issue. That is the problem with this "debate": they are so firmly entrenched that no amount of logical reasoning will make them think anything other than what they already do.

Your interpretation

Wow. Your interpretation of my explanation to Yas about categories is so far off (as I explained on talk:Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that I have to ask, is English your native tongue? Perhaps you misread or something. Regardless, I really, truly think you need to take your own advice and step back, for anyone who can interpret an explanation into wikipedia categorization into a sweeping statement about the article, in my opinion, either typed before fully thinking the issue through, or has other motives. Regardless, the application of WP:AGF completely went out the window. Go to the talk page, read what I said another few times, and please see how you, perhaps unknowingly, twisted what I said into something I agree is ludicrous. Thank you. -- Avi 19:11, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I didn't mean to make you feel like I was attacking your views by questioning your logic. In my opinion you were NOT intentionally trying to compromize the facts or anything, so I did not assume you were acting in bad faith. The statements I made were based on more than just your explanation of categorization, please read my comments on the main talk page.

Request for arbitration on Israel

Dear Editor, since you have been involved in editing the Israel article in the last days, and that article has been the subject of long ongoing edit wars, your name is listed in the Request for Arbitration on this matter. You can make a statement here: Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_arbitration#Human Rights in Israel. Due to the large number of editors involved, however, I would to ask you to keep your statement concise and to the point. If you feel you have not been substantially involved in the disputes surrounding the Israel article, please do not remove your name from the Arbitration request, but rather make a short statement there explaining why you feel you have not been involved enough to be part it. To understand my reasons for requesting Arbitration, please read my statement on the Requests for Arbitration page. Best regards, --MauroVan 10:12, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for notifying me. I had hoped that my commentary would help to resolve the issue. Since the situation has not improved, I submitted my statement for review. Markovich292 01:23, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi! Yes, I took a break from the discussion there because it looks like the watchdogs will never accept any serious change if done by me and there's no chance that the issue could be arbitrated in a determined way in the present moment (as you have seen, most people simply didn't give his opinion on my RfA, and the watchdogs acted smartly in depicting me as somebody who did nothing to sort it out). I must add to that my opinion that the section is now much better than before (as I honestly admitted on the talk page too) and indeed a sort of a compromise has been reached even if it's still biased towards their POV.

I have prevented them from completely denying the existence of another side of the tale, at least. The issue seems to be fairly frequently debated and at last a non-biased version will stabilize, I hope. The arbitrators need to see that the issue irritates some more people before they decide to intervene directly on the watchdogs, so I would rather like to wait and see. My presence there was useful for a period but is now more a damage to the solution of the issue than vice versa, because it makes the whole story look like a personal problem of myself.

I'm checking the talk page frequently and when useful I will say something. I would not take the POV tag away but it's true that it's much less POV now than before.

Ciao! --MauroVan 08:29, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

AGF

I see that you are a new user. I don't know what made you angry and why you do not assume good faith towards others. So far I was ignoring your direct attacks on me, but you make it increasingly hard for me to keep assuming good faith towards you. We may have disagreements in political views and still it is possible to keep it civil. ←Humus sapiens 02:46, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Direct attacks? Hmmm, pointing out less than wholesome behavior is generally not considered a "direct attack." And honestly, angry? People do not have to be angry to make comments on behavior that is supported by the facts. The facts are that you repeatedly remove sourced material, just because it is unfavorable to Israel (i.e. whitewashing). It is not political views that are the issue here; I simply object to you engaging in that type of behavior.

I have made it a policy to follow WP:AGF. Not only does that mean I automatically assume good faith, it also means that I take it seriously when it says: "Assuming good faith also does not mean that no action by editors should be criticized." AGF, as a policy, was not designed so that people can hide behind it when they continually show a pattern of behavior that is inconsistant with the goals of wikipedia. Markovich292 04:20, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Sounds like some serious misconduct that should be promptly reported and punished. Finally the world can rest assured that someone upholds the goals of wikipedia. ←Humus sapiens 08:19, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

A token of appreciation and admiration

Barnstar of Diligence

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		For your tireless efforts in refuting the bias and POV re Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's inclusion in the anti-semitism category. The battle for objective truth has not been won, but you have substantially egged it along the way. Tanzeel 17:38, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Your RfA

I strongly urge you to withdraw your RfA. You seem to be a productive editor on the right track but frankly there is no chance that an RfA from a user with almost no Misplaced Pages space edits and not many article space edits. Furthermore, nothing you mentioned in your answer to question 1 requires any admin tools. JoshuaZ 06:03, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

I am hoping that lack of edits won't discourage people, because in what I have done I have proven to be a neutral editor. Since I am already very familiar with policy and there is a large backlog, this offer couldn't hurt. One thing I mentioned (helping with unblock requests) requires admin tools. I also added a few of the things I am thinking of helping with but didn't originally put on the list. Markovich292 06:22, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Hello, I posted a question on your RFA. As always, user questions are optional. Also, I posted a preliminary oppose based on the traceable edits from Special:Contributions/Markovich292. If you know the IP you edited under previously and want to disclose it, it might give other us a better picture of your earlier contributions. I share Joshua's pessimism about the chances for success of your RFA, but for editors who act in good faith even unsuccessful RFA's can provide good and useful feedback. Take care, ~ trialsanderrors 06:57, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

As far as edits go, most were made from a school network last year. Unfortunately I do not have the same IP again this year, so I'm not sure what the old address would have been. Anyway, thanks for looking at my request. Markovich292 07:24, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Markovich. As I posted on your RFA, you seem like a great editor. But your edit count and your answers to some of the questions really suggest that you don't quite have the experience to be an editor. I see that you want to help out with POV-disputes, but you don't need admin priveleges for that. Admins have absolutely no greater authority than other users in content disputes or decisions on Misplaced Pages policy. If you want to help resolve disputes, have a look at articles listed under Requests for Comments, or if you want to try being a mediator have a look at the unofficial Mediation Cabal. If you're still ambitious to become an administrator in the future, I suggest you help out at some Recent Changes Patrol and participate in some AfDs. These are quite important parts of adminship as a great deal of admin chores involve blocking vandals and deleting articles that should no longer be here, and you really need some good understanding in those areas. If you want to learn just general content, well, just go and read some articles in the area that you are interested in, and just apply some general fixes as you're reading, maybe try to obtain or create some open licensed images, or maybe do some research yourself in some area which needs more content; there are also a lot of WikiProjects specified in specific areas. Misplaced Pages is a huge place, and there is A LOT to do and learn here, adminship is not really a higher level of helping - it is just being trusted with some tools to help out with some specific areas.

So we're glad you are here, I hope you can help us, but you're just not ready for Adminship yet, nor do I see how you actually need it for your desired tasks. Once again, I recommend you withdraw from the RfA before anyone decides to go sour on it (happens with RfAs all the time). I wish you happy editing at Misplaced Pages, and feel free to ask me for any help or advice you may need. --Konstable 09:47, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I am not looking at being an admin because I think they hold special authority to strike down a POV dispute. I am just looking to be available for requests to lock pages during a dispute and remove tags/blocks on pages that have been resolved. I am currently a student so really I only have the time to address things like that, or to review topics for admin intervention that I am interested in anyway. I don't think mediation is exactly the job for me because, as I have found, POV disputes can take a long time and I just can't get into that long type of situation again. If I found one going on, maybe I could give a paragraph of advice, but thats about it.

I hope it came across on my RfA that since I use wikipedia, I feel that I might as well do some cleanup chores at the same time. To me, it made little sense to wait to apply since there is stuff that I can be doing in the mean time. If my RfA fails though (and sadly it looks like it probably will), what is actually needed next time? IMHO placing so much emphasis on gigantic edit counts sort of excludes people that have less time available but still can be "slow and steady" in admin duties. It would be over a year by the time I make the thousands of edits that some people want, which is a year that I couldn't be helping to clean things up. Markovich292 20:44, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I am writing to let you know that I have closed your Request for Adminship as it had become clear that it was going to fail and people were beginning to jump on you unnecessarily. I agree that some people expect too much of admin candidates, but unfortunately your edit count of 200 really is too low to assess whether you know everything you need to know to handle the admin tools wisely. There are still a great many areas in which you can help Misplaced Pages without admin tools, and working in these areas will most definitely help you next time you decide to stand. You might want to look at Misplaced Pages:Cleanup, Category:Misplaced Pages articles needing copy edit, or Misplaced Pages:Pages needing attention. Working in these areas will really help us, and will be of real benefit in demonstrating your ability to handle the admin tools. If you have any questions, pleae feel free to ask me. Yours, Rje 23:02, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Cookies and a comment

Hi, Mark!

I just saw your RFA and all of the comments posted on it. I won't vote; the consensus seems to be developing. Anyway, I think you should probably withdraw at this point. It's just not worth all the stress. You probably will not succeed right now because of your low number of edits (kind of ridiculous, I know, but it's the way things are). RFA can be a horrible experience: very stressful, very insulting, very demeaning at times. Your record is on display: it's about the same as being elected Pope. _{(Side-note: Did you know that there are two cardinals who have to investigate every candidate's personal life in detail?)} If you've done one thing wrong or inadequately, BOOM, there it all goes. You're doing great without the admin tools for now, but in a few months, if you're still interested and work on some vandal-fighting, I'm quite sure somebody will nominate you!! You're a great editor and I hope to see you around often. If you need anything at all, please leave a message on my talk page. Have a great wikiday! :) Srose (talk) 20:21, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Re: RfA questions

I agree that there is often too much emphasis on edit counts in the RfA process. But edit count or no edit count, an administrator should understand well pretty much all the aspects of Misplaced Pages. And while you have participated in a lot of discussions it seems, I doubt you would have much experience in areas regarding dealing with vandals and policies regarding article deletion. These are two of the most important tasks of an admin, and you really need experience and understanding in these areas. As the structure is now, you can either be an admin or you can't be an admin - i.e. you should have enough experience and understanding to perform all the admin tasks, not just some. If you want to help out with backlogs, the non-administrative backlogs, here: CAT:BACK, are much larger than the administrative backlogs (CAT:ABL). There are plenty of ways to help out with maintenence tasks apart from being an administrator. But if you still want to be an administrator, just keep editing and help out in a variety of areas, you have already got over 200 edits in just over 2 weeks here! At 100 edits per week would get you to over 3000 in just half a year! And if you do some vandal patrol, this would probably grow much faster. Have a look at just some of my my edits just yesterday for example: Thats 50 edits in just 22 minutes (there is A LOT of vandalism coming in). But again, it's not just about your edit count, it is what most people have mentioned when they opposed you, but you really need to have a good understanding and experience to help with the admin tasks, so don't go blindly trying to edit just for the purpose of increasing your edit count. Cheers.--Konstable 05:10, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Just to let you know that I have read your message, but I have no time to respond to it just right now, maybe in 12 to 14 hours =) --Konstable 08:18, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

It is hard to say what exactly you need to do to become an admin, everyone voting has different oppinions on who should be admin - some people are rather strict, some are rather lenient. I guess the best way is to just hang around WP:RFA for a while - read through the candidates and the reasons why people oppose/support them. Generally it comes down to being able to demonstrate experience and being trusted. Participation in Mediation specifically is not really a big part of RFAs I think, but I guess it could help you become better known and demonstrate that you can be impartial and even-headed. As for the length mediation takes, I have only mediated officially once myself, but I would think it would vary quite a lot depending on the problem and stubborness of users to reach a conclusion. With RfCs I don't have much experience myself as I have never commented on any where I didn't have my own interests (so I only commented in just two I think). And of course admins don't do every single admin task, but generally on RfA there is opposition to people who can't perform some task or the other, because when you get adminship you always get the ability to perform all the tasks anyway. So if you were trusted to delete images and you got elected, you could still go around blocking people - something which you thought you wouldn't do but were given the power to do anyway. There have been some debates to separate the admin powers (e.g. blocking separate from deletion), but as far as I know usually these have been quickly struck down because people don't want even more extra layers to permissions. So ya, generally you have to be trusted enough to do all those things, but it doesn't mean you have to do all of them once you're admin. I hope that helps. Cheers.--Konstable 20:38, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

oops/thanks

Here I didn't even think to thank you on your userpage for awarding me a barnstar. Silly me. Well, thanks for the award! I didn't even know what barnstars were until just a bit ago. Thanks again! --LifeEnemy 05:54, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Please Remain Civil too

This section was made as a response to my post found here.

I'm deleting the entire section on my page since I don't double discuss - it's enough to have it at one place (you can delete too if you wish of course), and the discussion is also over as far as I'm concerned. Please don't write these things down in my discussion page or I'll consider it as vandalism. Amoruso 02:54, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Please don't go around filing bogus claims and to adminstrators especially after removing comments from your user page like here : Amoruso 15:34, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

The edit you point to was a personal attack, and I was well within my bounds to remove it. As for the "bogus claim," well all I have to say is that the admin didn't see it as bogus. You certainly seem to like that word, but I don't appreciate when you use it repeatedly to describe my actions that are clearly NOT "bogus." Markovich292 17:19, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

it wasn't a personal attack, it was an accurate description of your actions. It shouldn't be "buried under the rug" but at the very list archived. Amoruso 17:24, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Amoruso

I warned him. And yes I am very much against removing comments from talk pages. --Woohookitty 12:27, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Konstable's RfA thanks

Hi Markovich292, thank you for supporting me in my RfA, which was closed as successful last Wednesday with a unanimous support of (47/0/0). I will do my best to help keep Misplaced Pages clean, green and vandal free. Once again, thank you! --Konstable 14:50, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Just wanted to say hey!

Hey, I saw you on the Ahmadinejad article. I just wanted to say that I'm an Eagle Scout too, and I've been to Philmont twice. It's always good to see another eagle scout. I've also dated a girl from Minisota, I just love the accents. Keep up the good work pal!Kitler005 22:28, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

The first time we went to Mount Phillips and the second time Mount Baldy. The first time we ended the hike by going over the Tooth of time into basecamp. That was the best! The second time we ended in the pony place (I forget the came, but it's the horse camp) and we were so pissed off that they didn't have peanuts. They charged us like 3 dollars or something for a quart of root beer too, which was way pissy too cause the first time we were in some camp (i forget the name, but it was a Spanish name, maybe La Hacienda? I dunno, but it was the one with the Canteina and the Burro races) and they only charged us 50 cents for a quart of root beer. That camp was our tenth camp out and I swear we all got drunk off the root beer. It's amazing what ten days without sugar or caffine will do to you. We drank so many root beers we had trouble getting back to the camp! Pretty crazy adventures, my favorite Boy Scout Memoiry I think. The first time caused me from going from beign a boy to a man (i was 13 at the time and the smallest person on our team). How about yourself? Have you been to the tooth? Nothing beats watching the sunrise at the tooth and then taking a piss down one of the cracks ;)Kitler005 04:23, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Student Ambassadors Program - neither a non-profit nor a for-profit

Hi. I wanted to discuss our respective changes to the People to People Student Ambassadors Program (PtP-SAP) page. The last thing in the world I want to do is get into an edit war. I'd much rather see if we can come to some common agreement on what information is accurate, and how to phrase it from a neutral point of view. I believed my information about which organization is a for-profit and which is a non-profit was accurate because it was what I was told in a telephone conversation with Roseanne Rosen, who's the Senior V.P. of Administration at People to People International (PtP-Int). As you observed in one of your edits, http://www.ptpi.org/about_us/history.jsp indicates that PtP-Int has a 501(c)(3) designation from the IRS - i.e. they are a non-profit. Based on what their V.P. told me, I wrote that PtP-SAP is a for-profit corporation. You changed that to say it's a non-profit organization, but added a note "". Given the statement near the bottom that it's "managed by Ambassadors Group, Inc." (AGI) which is publicly traded on NASDAQ, I couldn't see how PtP-SAP could be a non-profit. The fact that AGI is publicly traded is confirmed at http://www.ambassadorsgroup.com/EPAX/default.htm. To the best of my knowledge, non-profits are never listed on any stock exchange.

Finally, it dawned on me -- I think we're both wrong. Here's the explanation. PtP-SAP is not a for-profit corporation. But it's also not a non-profit corporation. It's not a corporation at all! It's a program. (Duh! Boy do I feel stupid! I knew they must have had some reason for calling it a program.) The program is connected to two different business entities: PtP-Int and AGI. A few minutes ago, I found a webpage that said that PtP-Int has an agreement with AGI to allow AGI to operate PtP-SAP. Unfortunately, I didn't save the URL, and now I need to search for it again. PtP-Int seems to have a number of other programs they run, but it seems that they've outsourced the running of this one to the for-profit AGI. So, what would you think of changing the sentence from:

"The People to People Student Ambassador Program is a non-profit organization based in Spokane, WA that offers international travel opportunities to elementary, middle, and high school students."

to:

"The People to People Student Ambassador Program, operated by Ambassadors Group, Inc. on behalf of People to People International, offers international travel opportunities to elementary, middle, and high school students."

Sorry about making that change without checking the talk page. I just added the new content and sources and thought you would change the "non-profit" part if you had a reliable source that I didn't. It did occur to me that people might read this and think "well if the program is run by a public company, how can they be non-profit?" I just added "non-profit organization" (I avoided corporation because I know they are not "free-standing" so to speak) because even though the Student Ambassador program is managed by AGI, it technically is still a subdivision of PTPI, which is itself non-profit.

Anyway, I'm glad you thought of something that sums up the arrangement in one good sentence. I am in full agreement that your new sentence is the best solution. I'll leave that change to you, and I will make a few additions/changes to the PTPI section to elaborate a little on what they do. I was hesitant to do this at first since the article is "People to People Student Ambassador Program," but I guess this is the best place for it. Markovich292 20:45, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

The Halo's RfA

Markovich292... Thank you very much for your support in my request for adminship. Ultimately, no consensus was reached, and I failed to be promoted, but I am very grateful for your support. Markovich, thanks for the support. I hope that, with the help of your encouragement, I can now improve as an editor. Yours, Thε Halo 22:52, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

You're very welcome! I regret that a lot of people did not think your edit count was high enough to "promote" you. IMO, that is one of the failings of the RfA voting; a lot of people care to much about quantity of edits and not quality. Anyway, you seem like a great wikipedia user, so I hope you will re-apply for adminship a little while down the road. Markovich292 01:38, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

This is not a pretty case

I have had a glance through your problem, it seems you're quite deep into it. I really can't say how it could affect your chances for future RfA's, it depends on how everyone sees your handling of the matter. Best thing I can think of suggesting to you is to try to stay cool no matter what they throw at you.

I see your Mediation Cabal case seems to have not gone well, and with WP:RfM having been abandoned by the official mediation committee I see no easy clean way to resolve this. I don't think there will be any administrator willing to set blocks for this as it is, as though they have made some nasty bad faith assumptions against you but really no big blatant personal attacks as I see it, and this is all part of a too big of a dispute for one administrator to overview and make judgement on.

For the article itself I think the best think you can do is to try to reach some sort of compromise. If you feel that the behaviour of the editors themselves is the problem you could try to file a User conduct WP:RfC against them, but keep in mind that this is not meant to be any sort of "punishment" against them but rather a way to get community comment on their behaviour. If that doesn't help and you feel that there is nothing else left and absolutely no hope of resolving the dispute otherwise, and that it is important enough, you could try WP:RfAr, though I would strongly advise you to keep away from Arbitration as much as you can as this would involve the arbitrators making some final judgement and disciplinary actions which cannot likely be reversed - arbitration is an ugly process.

So yeah, I suggest you try to find a compromise. And if the other editors are really a big problem and you feel that they have violated some user conduct policies, file a user conduct RfC. Hope that helps. Cheers.--Konstable 08:07, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Pudding Pop

Hey dude, could you help me edit the Pudding Pop article? I like your style and think that the pudding pop article could use your helps. Thx :) Kitler005 02:01, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Please help - inclusionism is "absurb" now

Sorry to bother you, but as an things are getting desperate and I need to appeal to your for help. We are facing a situation where a deletionist admin is free to declare inclusionist arguments "absurd" and ignore them at will. If you don't agree with this situation, please share your opinion here. Kappa 02:51, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

• Inclusionist Wikipedians