User talk:Beyond My Ken

"Beware of the 'innocent' man who plays his part too well."

Old theatrical proverb

"Having an open mind doesn't mean you have to let your brains fall out."

James Oberg (paraphrased)
via Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World (1995)

"A sense of humor is just common sense, dancing."

William James (attributed)

"He used . . . sarcasm.
Oh, he knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor,
bathos, puns, parody, litotes and satire."

"The Piranha Brothers"
Monty Python's Flying Circus
Episode 14, "Face the Press" (15 September 1970)

It is The Reader that we should consider on each and every edit we make to Wikipedia.

(Thanks to Alan Liefting)‎

Emailed you

Thanks. Dougweller (talk) 06:14, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

January 2014

Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to Corruption Perceptions Index may have broken the syntax by modifying 2 "()"s and 2 "{}"s likely mistaking one for another. If you have, don't worry: just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.

List of unpaired brackets remaining on the page:

• is impossible to measure directly; instead, [[Proxy (statistics)|proxies]] for corruption are used.{{cn|date=January 2014))

Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 11:56, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

 Done

Your move of Broadway (New York City) has been reverted.

There is a longstanding and established consensus at Talk:Broadway (New York City)#request move for this page to be titled Broadway (New York City). Therefore, any move requires a move request and a new establishment of consensus. I may be remembering this wrong, but seem to recall that you have made some controversial page moves without discussion in the past. Please note that Wikipedia:Requested moves states that you must initiate a move request discussion "if there is any reason to believe a move would be contested". To clarify this point, there is good reason to believe that a move will be contested if it is either a longstanding title, or if the title has a large number of incoming links. In short, please do not move any longstanding or heavily linked page without first initiating a move discussion. Cheers! bd2412 T 15:13, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

That's life. Make sure you revert all the redirects I changed. BMK, Grouchy Realist (talk) 15:25, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I'll have a look. A bot will correct all double-redirects. I'm not looking to pick a fight or dissuade you from editing - we're all trying to improve the encyclopedia here. It's just important to keep in mind that bold moves can stir bold responses, and it's always worth checking to see whether there has been a previous consensus against such a move. bd2412 T 15:37, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I've got no grudge. Since the previous consensus discussion was 2 1/2 years ago, and the result was hardly overwhelming (!), and the question keeps coming up every couple of years, I think the better choice on your part would have been to allow the discussion to continue (as a de facto RM) rather than short-circuiting it, but people are different and make different choices - so be it.

Maybe you'd like to take a look at the mess on Talk:Lap dance, where an editor has taken an extreme ownership position on the article, calling any changes to it "virtual vandalism", ignoring the comments of myself and other editors, and vilifying those who dare to disagree with him. BMK, Grouchy Realist (talk) 15:45, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

To avoid fruitless irritation, I think just about all moves ought to be announced days in advance in order to invite dissent. Exceptions would be articles small, new, and with few inbound links. Which, yes, often stalls the process and lets me walk away to less contentious actions. Jim.henderson (talk)

@BMK, the move discussion has not been closed. I'll have a look at lap dance tonight or tomorrow, when I'm in an environment more conducive to material of that nature. bd2412 T 16:03, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

In effect, you did close it, since the request to move to "Broadway (New York)" came about because I moved "Broadway (New York City)" to "Broadway (Manhattan)" - but, yes, you are correct, the RM is still open, just not the de facto RM for the move I made, as opposed to the move Epicgenius suggested.

I understand about waiting to look at Lap dance. See what you think when you're situated for it. BMK, Grouchy Realist (talk) 16:10, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

{{Ethnic New York City sidebar}}

This should be added to the neighborhood articles, so that there are links to the actual cultures (e.g. Puerto Rican migration to New York). Epicgenius (talk) 16:56, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Use the navbox, please, it's much more comprehensive. BMK, Grouchy Realist (talk) 16:57, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I'll do that. Epicgenius (talk) 17:37, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Some thoughts

I'm not used to be on the opposite side of an issue from you, so wanted to explain my position. Part of my thinking is that I support reasonably broad leeway on user's page (ironic since I believe I removed something from a user page today for the first time ever, and may catch heat for it), but that isn't my prime motivation. My prime motivation is that I see symptoms in MM that are consistent with someone more interested in playing Wikilawyer than actual building an encyclopedia. I hope I'm wrong, but I get that sense. One course of action is to confront such tendencies, as they are energy sapping, and push for change or retirement is change is not forthcoming. Such an approach may be the best option, but it isn't my preference. I'd like to bend over backward to make sure that if someone is really angling to get thrown out, and hoping to amass a list of plausible grievances, we'd be better off to limit the number of instances where an outside observer might think he was unfairly targeted. I will fully understand if you see if differently. I don't see this as a clear right and wrong, I see it as a choice in tactics, and I can't say for certain that my tactic is best. While I feel fairly strongly that he ought to retain talk page access, my preference for restoration of the removed material is a weak preference. Just wanted to make my position clear; I'm concerned that we have one editor sucking up valuable resources.--S Philbrick(Talk) 23:14, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, and the explanation. I do see it somewhat differently, in that my concern is more with protecting the project (which is not to say that it isn't your primary concern as well, I'm certain it is) than with maintaining a perception of "fairness" that is rooted, I think, in Angle-American jurisprudence. Things that I would be screaming bloody murder about were they to occur in the real world, where rights and fairness have palpable meanings and can prevent great harm from being done, just have little relevance, I feel, in the context of this project. In that respect, I'm a hard-liner in regard to participation here.

In the best of all possible Wiki-worlds, there would be a metric which weighed each editor's beneficial contributions to the project against their non-beneficial ones. Editors with a high WikiQ would be rewarded with more user rights and their opinions would carry more weight in discussions; they would also get a correspondingly greater "benefit of the doubt" when conflicts arise. On the other hand, editors who are, essentially, free-loaders, who spend all their time talking and debating and don't contribute productively would be warned when they reach a certain level of non-productivity, and kicked out when they didn't straighten up and fly right. Note that this is different from banning and blocking on the basis of misbehavior, I'm talking about making "pulling one's weight" a pillar of the place.

That's all fantasy, and, of course, will never happen, but I do think it illustrates my take on how I feel editors should be dealt with when they, as you say, suck up too many community resources. I've long been concerned that Wikipedia may be an example of the Tragedy of the Commons, and that we're in danger of destroying what is most important to us simply by not taking steps to protect it.

In any event, thanks for your thoughts, I don't see this as a big deal. I was going to post in my last comment on MM that if someone restored it I wouldn't be put out (for some reason I've been somewhat mellower in the past few days, after going through a pretty crank patch before), but decided not to say so explicitly - but, as I said, no big deal. Best, BMK, Grouchy Realist (talk) 23:44, 6 January 2014 (UTC)