User talk:Grace Note

My RfA

Thanks for taking the time for voting on a self-nom, even if you didn't support. Howabout1 ^{Talk to me!} 01:03, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

VfD

FYI Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Perverted-Justice.com SlimVirgin ^(talk) 01:12, July 20, 2005 (UTC)

Logging on

We've noticed you're not logging on much. I hope things didn't discourage you. If you'd like to discuss anything, on- or off-line, feel free to ping my Talk page or drop me an email. You're welcome to vent, rant, or even call me names. The Choir sounds better when all voices sing....even if they sing different notes.--ghost 01:51, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

thank you for your opinion on my RfA

Hello, just a quick note to say thank you for voting, even though you were not convinced of my experience. "From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." (Luke 12:48, NIV) Never was a truer word spoken. I feel empowered, yes, but not in the "oooh cool delete button!" way I was kind of expecting. Already I feel the weight of the responsibility I have now been entrusted with, a weight that will no doubt reduce given time. Perhaps I am ready for it, or perhaps, as you say, I am not. I hope that in the coming weeks and months I can prove you wrong, but no matter what I thank you for giving your honest opinion, it is really important to me. Thank you. :)

Oh and if you ever feel like expanding upon the negative impression you have of me, please feel free to tell me about it. If it's something I did, if it's something I said, if it's something I could do or do better, I would be delighted to know what it is so I can avoid or remedy it in the future if at all possible. Thank you. :) Garrett^Talk 11:05, 22 July 2005 (UTC)

Howabout1's RfA (again)

Hi. I am copying this message to everyone who voted on my last RfA. By some strange twist of fate, I have been nominated (within 48 hours, it's probably a record). Please vote again. Howabout1 ^{Talk to me!} 21:05, July 24, 2005 (UTC)

Shehzad Tanweer

Just wanted to thank you for not only offering opinions, but editing the page to make it NPOV and sticking around - appreciate not being alone in the field, the world's a scary place, wikipedia moreso =Þ Anyways, much thanks and good luck with all your endeavours :) Sherurcij 05:26, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

Acknowleging contributions to Quotes page; Disclaimer of adding quotes; Thanks and appreciation for help

The is from the Wikiquotes abortion talk page -with my reply:

---

I am busy with other things, and if I don't talk to you all in a long while, I wish to thank all of you for your hard work and for being good neighbors. Have a nice day, and cheers.--GordonWattsDotCom 04:17, 28 July 2005 (UTC) I've removed several quotes from the "Indefinite" section. The page is titled "Abortion" and quotes should be on that subject, not statements that antichoice POV pushers think reflect on the subject. It's particularly egregious to quote people and thereby impute positions to them by the context. If Dr Seuss had said "Naughty doctors with their nasty knives/ are taking poor foetuses' precious lives", you could justifiably cite him. But in fact he didn't, did he? He said nothing at all about abortion. Nor did Edmund Burke! Perhaps you'd like to explain what is the evil being done here, and how it is not an expression of POV to suggest there is some being done? -- Grace Note Hello, Grace Note! Long time no see. I did not add those quotes you deleted -at least I don'r recall adding them; however, I did rearrange the page. While you seem to be in a persistent vegatative state (humor) regarding your Terri Schiavo edits in WikiPedia, your edits here look good. (For those who did not get the inside joke humor, Grace_Note has insisted that Terri be described as PVS, when NPOV mandates that we make no judgments one way or the other.) Thank you for your work, Grace_Note; This page is good but needs much work, and you are welcome to help. Have a nice day.--GordonWattsDotCom 05:02, 28 July 2005 (UTC) PS: You typed: [http://en.wikipedia.org/User:Grace_Note Grace Note], but you probably meant: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Grace_Note Grace Note].--GordonWattsDotCom 05:08, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

--GordonWattsDotCom 05:15, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

The return of the toccolours

See Template:Infobox Pope. 64.12.116.66 10:38, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

RfC Cberlet & Willmcw

This edit was yours, right? I'd like to know if you were referring to my usual passive aggressive bullshit in a general sense, characterizing me as a contributor, or just my usual on that RfC? Anyway, I disagree that I wrote any passive aggressive bullshit on that page, it certainly wasn't my intention. To begin with I was trying to comment civilly, and after Rangerdude's attacks on those comments I was trying to write aggressive bullshit. You must have a pretty high standard of "passive". Bishonen | talk 04:01, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Func's RfA :)

Grace Note, thank you for supporting my adminship! I'm glad that your conscience found no objection to me! :)

Please never hesitate to let me know if you have concerns with any administrative action I may make.

Func( t, c, e,  ) 19:20, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

Changing

A user has unilaterally been changing Template:Infobox Pope to his preferred version. Feel free to comment. FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 00:43, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

"Crap articles are a bad thing but..."

"My view is, and always has been, that crap articles are a bad thing but good ones, even about the "non-notable", do no harm."

I pretty much mostly agree with you. It is what I personally think about articles about high schools, street intersections, "fancruft," etc. As long as a reasonable amount of work went into the article, as long as it is reasonably thorough, and not just written off the top of the head with unattributed "facts" that someone is pretty sure he read somewhere.

Well, if you allowed that the article in question could be short, if there's not much to be said about the subject, I'd agree entirely.

Someone wisely pointed out a long time ago that bad articles that nobody reads do no harm, and bad articles that many people read are likely to be improved.

That's more or less my approach. Bad, short articles that readers stumble on are also likely to be edited. They can be editor lures! It's how I started.

(But, again, where I part company with the inclusionists is I believe that bad articles should be deleted if there is no credible prospect that someone is going to improve them. I don't approve of leaving them to fester on the assumption that they will magically improve themselves.

Perhaps you could improve them instead of deleting them ;-)

Similarly, I think it is irresponsible to create a substub if one has no serious intention of coming back to do more work on it. The responsible thing is to put in an article request instead).

A substub yes, I agree. A well-written stub is a jewel though.

I part company a little bit in the case of articles that are promotional. The fact that anybody can insert material into Wikipedia makes it a tempting target of abuse for people trying to publicize things.

Yes, I agree with that. I'd be in favour of stronger approaches to advertising. Perhaps not deletion, but a page for alerts at least, and a coordinated effort to "de-ad" articles that are nothing but.

The go-getter boys quickly insert material about themselves, their health theories, their businesses, their soon-to-be-produced movies, etc. anywhere on the Net that permits it. A Wikipedia article is great way to boost a Google rank, and it often comes up in mirrors as "Encyclopedia article about..."

Yes, that's true, but we have policies to protect against these things. Okay, they don't always work but they exist. I don't think there's anything wrong in itself with writing about your own company (or yourself) but the content ought to meet the standards we set for any article. So if you write ad copy, you must expect to be heavily and summarily edited. If you resist it, then I think there should be scope for action.

I think that it does damage Wikipedia if we do not have a firm community consensus that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and that articles in it must be "encyclopedic," even if it is very, very hard to establish just where the borders lie.

I think you have to accept that views of what is "encyclopaedic" are going to vary a great deal. Some see Wikipedia as nothing more than a bigger Britannica. Others see it as something much grander. I'm in the latter camp. Working for Britannica doesn't enthuse me. Jimbo's vision does.

I also have a strong feeling that all articles must be written at least partially with the intention of serving some putative readership, not just satisfying the self-actualization needs of the contributor.

Yes, absolutely. I take the readers first view too. I also get very annoyed when people put less effort into an article than they do into their homework! But that's why we're here: to fix that and to make up for others' slackness. Okay, it's sometimes painful (and it's work that is not given much credit -- elsewhere today I read a snippy comment that I make "minor edits", when largely what I do is fix crap articles).

So, there's no bright line. Very obviously an article about Stephan Kinsella does not damage Wikipedia.

So long as Kinsella himself stays within the bounds of our policies. Frankly, I'd like to see the line drawn on the grounds of quality and informativeness, rather than notability. Write an article about your dad if you like, but you can only include what is notable about him. If he is a policeman, you could say that: "Joe Smith is a policeman in Chickpea, Illinois". End of article. I can't see that that harms. What harms is to continue to give details of his career, a list of arrests and so on.

However, allowing pitbull-tenacious self-promoters to use WIkipedia as a publicity medium does damage Wikipedia. I don't know if you were involved in the the Shawn Mikula business, but it was fairly ugly. This was a grad student at Johns Hopkins with no obvious notability who was just plain insisting on using Wikipedia for his vanity page, repeatedly re-creating it over and over, etc.

I think those cases would be a lot easier to approach though if you did not say "you must be notable" but said instead "you must only write what is notable about you", be it ever so little. Make the policy "no shit" rather than "be notable".

So, I'm fairly mellow about good articles on most topics, but I tend to be somewhat more picky about categories of articles that are intrinsically likely to be abused by self-promoters. That would include biographies. Dpbsmith (talk) 22:22, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

You know, we agree at least 95% on this subject and yet we draw such different conclusions! Still, it's a pleasure to chat about it without the usual heat of VfD. Grace Note 00:24, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

rfc against user:jayjg

I have launched a rfc against this user for his censorship of the condition Aposthia from wikipedia. I feel this user has finally gone too far in his pro-circumcision stance -- to the point of eliminating a medical condition? If you would like to endorse it, please sign at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Jayjg.

Wish I could sign this as I've been having problems with user:jayjg over on the Eustace Mullins page. You could say he's having some real problems maintaining NPOV when it comes to any topic relating to Jews (to put it mildly). Unfortunately, it appears that I would be breaking Wikipedia rules by signing this at the moment :-( Amalekite 12:28, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Re: Wikipedia:Savoir-faire

I wrote: Keep. Interesting portal. What harm is it actually doing? Grace Note 04:04, 20 July 2005 (UTC) You wrote: None, but we are supposed to "stick to our guns" as far as upholding our established rules are concerned, even if, as you say, there's no harm in it. We can't go making exceptions or they might set a precedent. GarrettTalk 12:17, 20 July 2005 (UTC)

The "rules" are just what we agree (barring the foundation guidelines set by Jimbo). If we change our minds, the "rules" change. Precedents are set all the time. I agree that they are often detrimental -- particularly when the arbcom invent new policy on the fly and then cite themselves as they use it to punish dissenters -- but wikis should have a bit of flexibility. Grace Note 01:26, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with all that, but recent events have made me very cautious. I've recently had to help deal with the Wikiversity mess on Wikibooks. We've had some policy-breaking projects started on WB that seem to have been inspired by Wikiversity's rule-breaking, so precedents are a very real concern to me as I'm seeing bad examples of them. I'm afraid that things like this sometimes make me act unnecessarily cautious. :(

But thanks for replying and all, I'll try to be more optimistic... thanks for the reminder! :) Garrett^Talk 03:11, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Aposthia

I see you voted to delete Aposthia in its recent VFD. I've now substantially rewritten the article, removing the dubious POV statements and (I think) sourcing everything. I had to wade through several pages of Googlecruft to get any decent information about it, but it is out there. The fact that so many of the top Google results are highly biased anticircumcision sites makes it all the more important that Wikipedia has an informative and neutral article on the subject. Hopefully you can be persuaded to change your vote! Thanking you, Soo 17:30, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Well said

I think those cases would be a lot easier to approach though if you did not say "you must be notable" but said instead "you must only write what is notable about you", be it ever so little. Make the policy "no shit" rather than "be notable".

I don't think I've seen this point made before, and it's a very good one. And it focusses attention on the article's content, rather than the article's topic. Dpbsmith (talk) 22:43, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Ril

Thank you for your comments. Your point is valid. I believed that a block was in order because Ril was creating problems in many parts of the project and showed an unwillingness to change. Policy wise, I believe that there is a growing community consensus for a ban, at least until the AC is through with the case. Wikipedia, IMO, is far too indulgent of people who have no intention of working together with other editors. The Uninvited Co., Inc. 17:25, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Fun on VfD page

Thanks for getting back to me on that misunderstanding about the zero-population towns. It hadn't occurred to me that you were talking about Rambot...and I wholeheartedly agree. Things are taking up server space with little-used info that can easily be retrieved from other internet sites. Didn't mean to bite you. If I came off that way, it wasn't my intention and I offer a gazillion apologies. - Lucky 6.9 07:06, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

Not called "bean curd" down under?

Google before you speak!  ;) [1][2][3][4] Badagnani 07:31, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Do you live in Australia? It's funny, I play in one of the only North American "bush bands" (similar to Melbourne's Bushwhackers). I'm the fiddler/accordionist (and tofu eater!). Wish I could visit there too. We'd love to be invited to perform at Tamworth or some similar folk festival Down Under. http://www.riverbottombushwhackers.com/ Badagnani 05:44, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

All very nice of you to share. Yes, the air fare is the main problem but we've had a few fellow bush bands say they'd like to have us at their festivals. Woodford sounds nice--is that on what they call the Gold Coast? We've got a fair number of bands in your area on our links section [5]. Also looks like Woodford QLD needs a Wikipedia article! :) Badagnani 06:11, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Mediation

I am greatful for your offer to mediate between me and EB. I've asked him to drop a note here if he is willing. Thanks again, Sam Spade 14:56, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

What exactly is "informal mediation"? Look, to put it bluntly I have no confidence that this exercise will accomplish anything in terms of improving relations between me and Sam, or in terms of changing Sam's approach to editing certain topics. Why should I bother with this? Exploding Boy 19:51, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

I've answered this on EB's page. Grace Note 22:44, 14 September 2005 (UTC)

Please have a look @ Wikipedia:Requests_for_mediation#User:Sam_Spade_and_User:Exploding_Boy. Thanks, Sam Spade 13:32, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for stepping in to mediate on this one. Let me know if you need the page unprotected when the matter is resolved. --fvw* 20:59, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for your support of my RfA, which I have formally withdrawn. The full text of my withdrawal and statement of appreciation is on the RfA page. Best wishes, Leonard G. 03:42, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Thank you

It looks like EB won't accept you as a mediator after all, but I appreciate your efforts. I'm not sure where we disagreed in the past (like you I don't keep an exacting list of names and my judgements of them), but you seem like a nice guy. Let me know if I can help you out sometime, or if you just want to talk. Cheers, Sam Spade 20:25, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, GN. (You seem to be getting a lot of that.)

Thanks for your supportive words and revert assists at Occupied Territories (Israeli). It's sad that Wikipedia has come to this. Do you know of any way to get Jayjg removed from the Arbitration committee he's on? I actually think he writes pretty well, and on matters on which he is neutral he seems to be pretty level headed. But on matters where he has a dog in the fight, he's basically a Stalinist. Anyway, thanks again. Marsden 18:04, 19 September 2005 (UTC)