User talk:Guy Macon

A Wikipedia Content Dispute.

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"Wikipedia's articles are no place for strong views. Or rather, we feel about strong views the way that a natural history museum feels about tigers. We admire them and want our visitors to see how fierce and clever they are, so we stuff them and mount them for close inspection. We put up all sorts of carefully worded signs to get people to appreciate them as much as we do. But however much we adore tigers, a live tiger loose in the museum is seen as an urgent problem." --WP:TIGER

Only 993167290 articles left until our billionth article!

We are only 993167290 articles away from our 1,000,000,000th article --Guy Macon

WTS

(edit conflict) Picking up on the above post, there is an issue here. Putting aside 31.48.73.38's smart arse response at Talk:Transistor–transistor logic (which although unnecessary was somewhat in the same vein as WTS's post - though the latter did contain useful content, it was presented in a smart arse manner). I have no wish to get involved further with that issue.

The real issue here is WTS's almost continuous tirade of abuse directed at editors who chose to edit through an IP address. Examples: [1] and [2] (this last one a legitimate beef that several others have complained about). I do not have the time to document any others but I'm sure you are aware of them. I would be here all night if I tried. These surely must breach WP:CIVIL.

Wikipedia choses to allow IP address editors. WTS may be entitled to his opinion on such editors but he has no right to allow it into Wikipedia agaist Wikipedia's chosen policy. DieSwartzPunkt (talk) 19:10, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

While preparing my response, I see I have been hit by an edit conflict where some user other than yourself has deleted the post I am responding to. I do not want to get into an edit conflict, so instead, I would refer you to the version of your talk page where the post is present [3]. DieSwartzPunkt (talk) 19:17, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

As we have discussed before, I am putting together a case concerning Wtshymanski. It will have to be carefully researched and well-written, because of Wtshymanski's practice of (usually) staying just within the rules with his toes hanging over the line. I will try to finish it up and post it the the appropriate venue this week. The IP editor, an the other hand, is clearly and repeatedly violating policy, so I will be able to deal with his behavior immediately -- simply because it is easy to do. This does not imply that I have forgotten about our long-term problems with Wtshymanski --Guy Macon (talk) 19:23, 2 February 2015 (UTC)

User talk:65.120.149.2

By the way, that IP-address was already Blocked when you left those three Warnings... Shearonink (talk) 02:14, 5 February 2015 (UTC)

Apologies for not doing this earlier ...

... but thank you for your input here. No consensus of one should ever be allowed to stand. —ATinySliver/^ATalkPage 07:46, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

You may find the following to be of interest: Wikipedia:Help desk#Guidelines for the use of Template:Archive top and Template:Archive bottom. --Guy Macon (talk) 08:22, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Yeah. I saw that ... —ATinySliver/^ATalkPage 08:40, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification...

In case you didn't see my reply at Help Desk:What is considered "reverting"?, thanks for the clear, thorough and useful explanation. It's definitely worth taking the time. Cheers. --Tsavage (talk) 05:45, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Power factor

Thank you for your thank you. I meant to drop a note to you yesterday, but unfortunately, time crept up on me. I was going to point out that on this occasion, I had to take Wtshymanski's side in that solar panels in themselves were not a good example of negative power factor. Partly because (as Wtshymanski correctly pointed out), solar panels have no mechanism for absorbing power and converting it into something else (do they actually conduct in the reverse direction?). But also because, the power feed from solar panels into the inverter is DC, so power factor does not rear its head at all.

However, this does raise another age old issue. Wtshymanski was perfectly happy to revert other's contributions ([4] and [5]), but not change it to make it relevant. This is further evidence that Wtshymanski prefers to edit war rather than actually improve anything. As you already noted, it did not require a major rewording to make the example pertinent ([6]). DieSwartzPunkt (talk) 13:30, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

The good news is that my medical issues have improved and I think I will be able to finish documenting these kinds of issues. RFCU is now defunct, and in the discussions leading to the closing there was some talk about users building a complex case in userspace and presenting it to AN or ANI with a link to the userspace research, and then filing an arbcom case if AN once again fails to solve the problem.

There is a lot of material to be gone through in his edit history, even if I limit myself to the last 12 months, and I have every intention of doing my best to document a fair number of those cases where he did good work instead of pushing pseudoscience. I want to be scrupulously fair.

The biggest question in my mind is what remedy to ask for. Are we dealing with one of the the unblockables here? Given his history of responding well to restrictions (in the sense that he constantly pushes the limits but generally stays within them) would something as simple as a general 2RR restriction or a carefully crafted topic ban be enough? Your thoughts? --Guy Macon (talk) 17:17, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

I think we have agreed in the past that fairness has to be the watchword here. I was not aware of the changes to the process of censuring problem users. The administrators' noticeboards are not as useful as they ought to be. Although the WP:AN3 noticeboard attracts swift response and action, the WP:ANI board is much more hit and miss. Sometimes a swift response is forthcoming but sometimes a complaint goes by with no response or action at all. And it is not just complaints about WTS where this happens, it seems to be a general phenomenon. I wonder if passing admins tackle the easy complaints but leave the more complex ones hoping that someone else might take it on.

At the RfC, three years ago, there was quite a bit of support for sanctions of some sort, and if this stood any chance, it might be the way to go. My only reservation is that this was tried (at least in part) shortly after the RfC. You may recall, that WTS was (and still is) deleting vast tracts of articles by merging an article with another article but omitting to merge the material that he wants to delete. After the RfC, there were complaints and the the admins instructed WTS not to merge any more articles. WTS complied with the instruction - for around just one week. Then a single merge was tried, presumably to see if anyone was watching, and when no objection was lodged it was back to merge as usual. If sanctions are to be the tool, then there needs to be a way of enforcing them.

The two main issues that I do have with WTS, is not so much his attempting to hammer in fringe theories (think: Power factor here). I have amassed sufficient evidence that that is not the driving factor. The driving factor is that WTS will change his viewpoint to facilitate whatever edit war he is trying to persue at that time. He has argued the entirely opposite views in separate talk pages (when he does discuss) to support two unrelated edit wars. I have several examples of this. On one occasion he did it in the same talk page in adjacent discussions. The other issue is that WTS routinely reverts or alters any edits that are made to the articles that he seems to monitor that are made by IP address editors - which is what really drew it to my attention. Reverting vandalism I can accept, but this happens to good faith edits as well. The revert is often for the most tenuous of reasons. DieSwartzPunkt (talk) 13:07, 16 February 2015 (UTC)

Guy, I have started to keep a track of good faith edits made by IP address editors that get 'auto'-reverted by WTS on tenuous grounds. Naturally, reversion of vandalism will not be included as won't any where WTS may have a valid point (because it does happen).

I am not going to document them all here, but just as an example from today is this reverted by WTS within half an hour here. Edit was clearly good faith and a more or less correct claim. Reverted as, "ungramatical and out of place". The grammar is easily fixed (and WTS himself is more than able to do so) so no excuse for that. And it was not out of place having been added to the very section to which it applied.

Another editor contributed this substantially comprehensive article on Electrolytic capacitors. English was clearly not his native language because the English is nowhere near top notch (not a critism of the editor as he clearly knows a lot about the subject). WTS reverted to the vastly less comprehensive earlier version here claiming it was superior (I suspect that he was referring to the English because the content certainly wasn't). Nevertheless, the newer version was reverted, and with the magic that is co-operative editing, the English has been considerably cleaned up in a bit over a month. And to be scrupulously fair: even WTS himself has made some contribution. DieSwartzPunkt (talk) 18:36, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

w:mr embassy page

Hi, Thank you for your message on w:mr. There indeed seems to be a filter on the embassy page that disallows non-Marathi twxt. Personally, I believe that is wrong but the community seems to have agreed to it. I will ask the Question again and try to remove the filter after a consensus. I will need a bit of time to do that, familiarize myself with filters, then remove it. I ask for a little patience in this matter.

In the meanwhile, please do not hesitate to post on my talk page there if you need to convey a message to the w:mr community.

Thank you.

अभय नातू (talk) 22:55, 19 February 2015 (UTC)

Admin, 'crat

Marathi WikipediA

p.s. lol@picture caption

Thanks! --Guy Macon (talk) 04:37, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

IP request for help

I'm at a loss - if I email info-en-c@wikimedia.org with EoRdE6's so-called fair use, am I making a legal threat? Would you take a look at User_talk:EoRdE6#Train_derailment and suggest a course of action? His position seems to be that he does not have to properly identify the copyright holder or inform them, and that by my informing them of "fair use" of their material, I have made a legal threat. He has warned me that I may be blocked. - 173.16.85.205 (talk) 18:35, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Looking into this now. I should have some sort of advice and/or resolution for you later today. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:20, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Sorry to impose and thank you for taking the trouble. - 173.16.85.205 (talk) 21:38, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

No trouble at all. I love helping people.

Here is how I advise handling this sort of issue:

• First, post a polite note on the user's talk page. There is no need to get into an extended debate if he disagrees; you just want to make sure he was notified.
• If that doesn't work, post a polite question on the article talk page. Again, no need for extended discussion if anyone disagrees; you just want the folks who edit the page to know that there might be a copyright issue.
• If that doesn't work, post a polite question to Wikipedia:Copyright problems (for text) or Wikipedia:Possibly_unfree_files (for images, sounds, etc.). Then disengage and move on to other things, knowing that you did your part.

BTW, the legal threat accusation was just blowing smoke. Ignore it. --Guy Macon (talk) 23:06, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Well, if the Associated Press has no objection to use of their image File:Mount_Carbon_Derailment.jpg with The Columbian mis-listed as copyright owner, then the issue is moot. I feel step one has been done to the user's smoke blowing annoyance. EoRdE6 got notified. I would like to go directly to disengage and move on, but 2 is possible - I may post a polite question on the article talk page. As for 3, files that are tagged with a non-free template should not be listed at Wikipedia:Possibly_unfree_files according to that page, so since the argument is fair use, that's the wrong place to go. It was kind of you to respond. Thank you. - 173.16.85.205 (talk) 01:22, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

m:Global user pages

Thought you might want to know about this, since I saw you were creating them by hand. (You can request at m:Synchbot to have the ones you created deleted). --Rschen7754 19:14, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks! I do know about the global settings, but I have been testing the various Wikipedias for bugs (because I am a high-functioning autistic, I find this sort of repetitive work to be very relaxing).

So far I have discovered:

• mr.wikipedia.org has a filter that forbids non Marathi languages, and it stops post to the Embassy page -- the page that is supposed to be the place for users of English and other languages to get help. One of the mr.wikipedia.org admins is working with me on fixing this.
• ak.wikipedia.org has an edit filter that thinks that secure.wikimedia.org is a harmful site. I haven't tried to get a local admin to resolve this yet, but it is on my list.
• yi.wikipedia.org has a problem with LTR text. It puts the icon on the wrong end of https links but gets http links right. he.wikipedia.org, for example, has no such problem, so I need to talk to the developers and see if there is some sort of configuration issue or whether this is an actual bug that needs to be reported through bugzilla.

--Guy Macon (talk) 20:16, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

There are no admins on ak.wikipedia.org - maybe try asking at m:SRM to see if someone who knows more about abusefilters knows more about what to do? --Rschen7754 20:29, 22 February 2015 (UTC)