User talk:Vfrickey

ArbCom Elections 2016: Voting now open!

Hello, Vfrickey. Voting in the 2016 Arbitration Committee elections is open from Monday, 00:00, 21 November through Sunday, 23:59, 4 December to all unblocked users who have registered an account before Wednesday, 00:00, 28 October 2016 and have made at least 150 mainspace edits before Sunday, 00:00, 1 November 2016.

The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail.

If you wish to participate in the 2016 election, please review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 22:08, 21 November 2016 (UTC)

Your draft article, Draft:Kenneth Mahood

Hello, Vfrickey. It has been over six months since you last edited your Articles for Creation draft article submission, "Kenneth Mahood".

In accordance with our policy that Articles for Creation is not for the indefinite hosting of material deemed unsuitable for the encyclopedia mainspace, the draft has been nominated for deletion. If you plan on working on it further, or editing it to address the issues raised if it was declined, simply and remove the {{db-afc}} or {{db-g13}} code.

If your submission has already been deleted by the time you get there, and you wish to retrieve it, you can request its undeletion by following the instructions at this link. An administrator will, in most cases, restore the submission so you can continue to work on it.

Thanks for your submission to Wikipedia, and happy editing. 1989 (talk) 08:05, 16 January 2017 (UTC)

the editor who "... desire to make complex psychotropic organic chemicals at home..."

Despite not being a regular participant at the refdesk until recently, I actually remember this case (unless there was more than one, in which case I remember one of them) and I think your comparison of the recently closed thread to that was was highly apt, and a great way to end the thread. ᛗᛁᛟᛚᚾᛁᚱPants Tell me all about it. 20:36, 13 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for getting my point - we've had odder patterns of questions from a single OP than the guy who obsesses on the awesome motility of his sperm. Not that I considered either case disruptive enough for a topic ban. Just... it was clear in both cases that the OPs enjoyed the attention they got more than they sought after knowledge. I'd like us to have a template urging editors on the RefDesk not to feed the trolls, and if that doesn't work, THEN shake the cage at AN/I. Have a good day. loupgarous (talk) 00:05, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Copying within Wikipedia requires proper attribution

Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. It appears that you copied or moved text from Sleeping gas into Incapacitating agent. While you are welcome to re-use Wikipedia's content, here or elsewhere, Wikipedia's licensing does require that you provide attribution to the original contributor(s). When copying within Wikipedia, this is supplied at minimum in an edit summary at the page into which you've copied content, disclosing the copying and linking to the copied page, e.g., copied content from [[page name]]; see that page's history for attribution. It is good practice, especially if copying is extensive, to also place a properly formatted {{copied}} template on the talk pages of the source and destination. The attribution has been provided for this situation, but if you have copied material between pages before, even if it was a long time ago, please provide attribution for that duplication. You can read more about the procedure and the reasons at Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. Thank you. If you are the sole author of the prose that was moved, attribution is not required. — Diannaa 🍁 (talk) 16:16, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. I was unaware that such copying was in any way restricted under our project's licensing. But, looking up over this editing xcreen, I and other editors are warned "Work submitted to Wikipedia can be edited, used, and redistributed—by anyone—subject to certain terms and conditions." I was obviously negligent in not having followed the link "certain terms and conditions". I note that it doesn't point directly to the relevant guideline in this case, which is WP:CWW.

I ideally ought to have read the source cited for that transferred material and written my own precis of it for the article Incapacitating agent, which would, I think, have eliminated the attribution issue entirely (or would it have?).

A question, however. What about paraphrases of other editors' content? Is attribution required then? I'd say it was under a broad construction of WP:CWW, but the guideline doesn't address paraphrased material specifically. loupgarous (talk) 17:26, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

Re: My self-confessed exclusive focus on right-wing news sites

You, by your own admission, are focused exclusively on right-wing news sites[1]

Umm... what? Can you provide a diff of me "admitting" that?

I hardly ever edit articles on modern political issues. I contribute intermittently to discussions on ANI and RSN. You'd have an extremely difficult time trying to prove that I am "focused exclusively on right-wing news sites". You'd have to jump through a lot of hoops to connect my main editing area (Classical Chinese poetry) to right-wing news media (not saying it can't be done, mind you).

Either way, kindly drop the stick. I'm entitled to my opinions (whatever you think they are -- I haven't actually said all that much about my own opinions either way), and travelling from ANI to my talk page to WikiProject Editor Retention (!?) to attack me for them is hounding

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:44, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

Forget it. Good bye, and happy editing. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 16:23, 25 March 2017 (UTC)

I admit to careless phrasing when I said "You, by your own admission, are focused exclusively on right-wing news sites". I formally apologize for creating inadvertent confusion.

I ought to have said "When you advocate for sanctione against news sites with arguably unreliable content and right-wing poltical affiliation to their reporting, you focus exclusively on right-wing news sites to the exclusion of news sites with other political affiliations. Your use of POV terms such as 'fake-news sites' which have no rigorous definition is also troubling."

That statement is borne out by these quotes from posts you made in talk:WikiProject Editor Retention, (followed by the relevant link to the current page):

"...Citing right-wing fake-news sites, arguing for the appropriateness of citing right-wing fake-news sites, and especially doing almost nothing but arguing this and actively refusing to do anything but this, are usually pretty good indicators of not being HERE... "

and

"Wikipedia's editor retention problems will not be helped by telling users who cite rightist fake news sites and, over the course of weeks, continue to insist that they are doing nothing wrong. White, heterosexual American men are overrepresented on English Wikipedia, and telling adherents of fascism and the "alt right" that its cool to post their propaganda here is going to make that problem worse, not better. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:01, 11 March 2017 (UTC)" [2]

It's perfectly legitimate to call attention to disruptive behavior in and of itself. You took it a step further by using the POV, emotionally-loaded term "right-wing fake-news sites" in describing sites you wish to impose sanctions on other editors for citing. WP:RS doesn't deal with political alignment as a factor in reliability. And WP:WIAPA prohibits using someone's affiliations as an ad hominem means of dismissing or discrediting their views—regardless of whether said affiliations are mainstream". It's inappropriate to suggest that those who cite (there's no firm definition of this POV epithet) "right-wing fake-news sites" be handled differently than those who cite unreliable sources with different political affiliations.

It's also inappropriate under WP:WIAPA to sanction editors for making cites from or asking questions about the reliability of sources under WP:RS because those sources have a particular political affiliation. I'd be inclined to oppose any such sanctions regardless of the alleged political alignment of the source, on the ground that by citing or mentioning a (insert POV political epithet) news source, you've done something meriting a topic ban on any basis but that source's reliability. The net effect is to violate WP:NOTCENSORED by creating a special class of sources forbidden to cite or even discuss (if you question how their reliability is determined) based on their political content along with their reliability. If we do that for Breitbart, then we must do it for "left-wing fake-news" sources such as the former firedoglake, Crooks and Liars and Media Matters - and you haven't called for that to be done, even though equal amounts of factual distortion and political slant are involved.

When I made a post to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Editor_Retention until I'd read [Editors who cite to BOLD + IGNORE all the rules -> entrapment?] outlining these concerns, you replied:

@Vfrickey: Unlike Endercase, you have more than 2,000 edits to your name and have been editing fairly consistently since 2013. If you don't understand RS and continue to attack other users who do as somehow being politically motivated agitators, then you will not get off with mentoring if you are brought to ANI. (note: boldfacing is mine, for emphasis of a WP:WIAPA-deprecated statement)"

I did not make an attack, I described advocacy for behavior in the project which (for reasons outlined above) is dangerous to the project's goals of creating an encyclopedia with a neutral point of view. Under WP:WIAPA you made the attack in your response.

If we single out citation of sources (or mere discussion of them!) by political affiliation, this has the effect of granting freer license to cite sources of the same reliability (or lack thereof) with competing political affiliations. This is political censorship, and any editor who lets it go without comment is ignoring WP:NOTCENSORED and the central ethic of making an encyclopedia with a neutral point of view. I didn't call you a "politically motivated agitator", either. I simply described your behavior. You threatened me by a groundless accusation of having used an epithet to describe you - again, you violated WP:WIAPA.

You also seem to be free with accusing editors of WP:canvassing for disagreeing with you with no evidence to back it up, an infraction of WP:WIAPA.

You falsely accused David Tornheim (talk · contribs) and me by implication of canvassing in this post:

"@David Tornheim: Are we done here? Could you retract your OP comment and tell Vfrickey to knock it off? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:11, 25 March 2017 (UTC)"

Apparently, disagreeing with you at all is enough to make you violate WP:AGF, because all I did was disagree with your apparent pushing a political agenda in the project. David Tornheim and I have not exchanged email, user page posts or any other comment save for David Tornheim thanking me for an edit I'd made to a topic ban discussion in AN/I.

Then, in your struck-through comments above in this talk page, you also made the false statement:

...travelling from ANI to my talk page to WikiProject Editor Retention (!?) to attack me for them is hounding"

WP:Hounding states: "The important component of wikihounding is disruption to another user's own enjoyment of editing, or to the project generally, for no overriding reason. If "following another user around" is accompanied by tendentiousness, personal attacks, or other disruptive behavior, it may become a very serious matter and could result in blocks and other editing restrictions."

I didn't even know you existed when I posted to WP:AN/I and nowhere in those posts referred to you by name. The overriding reason for those posts was to oppose the topic ban proposed for Endercase (talk · contribs), to state my grounds for doing so, and to comment to Endercase (talk · contribs) and counsel him to take the opportunity to read the discussion in order to understand the case against him, and change his behavior.

I then responded to a notification from you regarding my OPPOSE vote on the topic ban. The edit summary you wrote for the post linked to the notification read "Proposal: Topic ban: Fixing comment that was altered after being responded to. Please refrain from doing this, as it makes it look like others were misquoting you". The overriding reason for that post was to state I did not alter a comment after being responded to, and to courteously request you make separate edits to prevent the problem from recurring. It wasn't a gratuitous or malicious post, contrary to your statement that it was done to WP:HOUND you.

Then I followed a link in that topic ban discussion to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Editor_Retention until I'd read [Editors who cite to BOLD + IGNORE all the rules -> entrapment?]. I had no more intent to follow you around or WP:HOUND than you did to WP:HOUND David Tornheim by posting replies to his posts there.

The first post I made there addressed legitimate concerns under WP:NOTCENSORED.

The second post addressed your statement "@David Tornheim: Are we done here? Could you retract your OP comment and tell Vfrickey to knock it off?" which implied improper communications between Tornheim and me. This is an ad hominem remark deprecated by WP:WIAPA.

So your accusation that I WP:HOUNDED you from AN/I to your user page to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Editor_Retention until I'd read Editors who cite to BOLD + IGNORE all the rules -> entrapment? is false and without any foundation in fact - against the fifth bullet point in WP:WIAPA.

I thought about simply archiving your post under WP:DENY as you said you did when you deleted this remark you made to my user page:

"By the way: if you act out on the threat implied in You really ought to de-escalate this disagreement [...] or make the charge formally before WP:AN/I. you will likely not get the result you want. I have literally no idea what most of your comment was on about: I never said you and David "coordinate[d] [y]our actions" or anything of the sort; I merely requested that David strike the long and needless rant about how a certain user was (at that time, though clearly no longer now) getting mistreated by me and several other users so that the section could be closed and you would stop with the wanton personal remarks about me. If by It might be a welcome opportunity to address the issue of politically-motivated calls for sanctions against editors here in the project. you meant to refer to the cases of open racism I had referred to directly above ... well, if you want to appeal those blocks you can go right ahead, but I certainly wasn't the only one, as you say, making "politically-motivated for sanctions against" those editors. But your comment seemed so far removed from what I had actually written that I have my doubts you even read it. falsely accusing me of breaking the project's rules was completely pulled out of thin air: I made no such accusation, and you should probably strike that remark as it likely falls under the fifth bullet point of WP:WIAPA. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 16:06, 25 March 2017 (UTC)" [3]

I've already mentioned above your infraction of the fifth bullet point of WP:WIAPA, "Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence. Serious accusations require serious evidence. Evidence often takes the form of diffs and links presented on wiki.", by implying David Tornheim and I had improperly colluded to attack you.

Tour edit summary

"It didn't occur to me until after responding to this that I was fighting an uphill battle against a Fox News devotee. Best just WP:DENY" [4]

violates the second bullet point of WP:WIAPA, "Using someone's affiliations as an ad hominem means of dismissing or discrediting their views—regardless of whether said affiliations are mainstream."

As I've shown, your posts have consistently violated this Wikipedia standard of conduct, as have your descriptions of the sources they wish to cite or even discuss in talk pages (nothing in WP:RS or WP:NOTHERE mentions political affiliation, and WP:WIAPA forbids "using someone's affiliations as an ad hominem means of dismissing or discrediting their views"). loupgarous (talk) 13:55, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

There's no way in hell I'm reading through all that, but I'll just correct you on one point that happened to catch my eye: I didn't falsely accuse you or David of canvassing. I requested that David retract his original comments in that thread and tell you to knock it off. That has nothing to do with canvassing. Anyway, please drop the stick already. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:25, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

Hijiri88 you know their arguments are valid right? I have seen people go down in AN/I for way less. You have a history of edit warring and demeaning behavior. In addition, you are also a rampant POV pusher strongly opinionated and constantly and consistently fail to observe assume good faith. A good number of your arguments fall under False consensus effect and you constantly believe that you are right and try to convince everyone else with little to no evidence get upset when users claim you are wrong. While I do appreciate you and your efforts to make me a better editor, you are kinda a wp:jerk and never really pay attention to other users' arguments, and don't really participate in consensus except to push your own POV. In the last year how many times have you actually changed your mind in a wiki-debate? Please make an effort, at least read their post. Endercase (talk) 01:53, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Woah, woah, woah, while I agree that a certain reading of Civil and Hounding Suggest that Hijiri 88 is in violation, I also propose that all of their actions have been (in their opinion) "for the good of the encyclopedia" which is the basis for all of our "rules". Now I do agree that they would likely be better suited by not accusing other peers of "crimes" quite so often, they are acting in Good Faith based on my extensive interactions with this user. Moreover their input in various articles is very valuable, and that should be considered moving forward. Now it is important to remember that accusing another of violations is a POV and any accusation should be followed by convincing other users of your stance to form a consensus with a large enough Quorum (to do something about it). I Firmly Oppose taking any punitive action on Hijiri 88 based on their comments directed to me or about me as such I would like to make sure that these are not included in your argument or cited as evidence moving forward; if there were any "crimes" inherent in those comments the "victim" would be me and as I have not taken offence no real "crimes" have been committed. Now, you do appear to have some personal disagreements and grievances with Hijiri 88, those are of course valid. I would appreciate it greatly if you try to assume good faith moving forward, and attempt to convince Hijiri 88 the of the harms inherent in their actions. This would be a more intensive approach but I do not feel like Hijiri 88 is beyond help in these matters. If you are able to convince them that their specific actions were harmful to the encyclopedia I am certain that they would change their behavior moving forward. This would require that you stop focusing on specific policy violations and instead discuss directly how their actions were harmful to the encyclopedia. This is a very different approach that may help lead to consensus even with someone who has a very different initial POV than yourself. Anyway that is my proposal. Delete it, reply to it, or ignore it, or what ever you want with it - we are building consensus. Endercase (talk) 15:35, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

In response to your comment "If you are able to convince them that their specific actions were harmful to the encyclopedia I am certain that they would change their behavior moving forward. This would require that you stop focusing on specific policy violations and instead discuss directly how their actions were harmful to the encyclopedia", I simply gave Hijiri 88 the cites and links that editor requested, showing what I meant by that editor's focus on "right-wing fake-news" as opposed to all other unreliable sources.

The issue here is the idea that we can import the meme of "right-wing fake-news sites" with NO consensus at all and use it as a basis for decision-making in wikipedia. We're not the press, and we have no consensus or ethic for adopting their memes and business practices as a basis for editing wikipedia and sanctioning editors. A few days ago I did not even know Hijiri 88. Some WP:AGF on that editor's part would have spared us this entire wall of text.

That said, I felt obliged to make my case. I have not taken anyone else's arguments against Hijiri 88 in making my case - it is based (as I've stated) out of a desire to preserve wikipedia's neutral point of view ethic - an impossible task if editors don't push back against every attempt to impose the commercial press's values on wikipedia. We don't have a definition of "fake news" either in the project or in journalism that survives logical scrutiny - if there is "right-wing fake-news", there must logically be "left-wing fake-news", and even "centrist fake-news" (I nominate The National Enquirer and other churnalism venues as examples of that last category). Wikipedia's strong (up to this point) NPOV ethic requires we not have one set of criteria for sanctioning people for citing (or discussing!) some informational sources for one political affiliation, while failing to do it when people discuss sources with other political affiliations (or none at all).

I personally am a libertarian. I disagree with a great deal of what is published in Breitbart and other news sources labeled outside wikipedia (with no internal consensus here) as "right-wing fake-news" sources. I disagree with a certain amount of what's said in the rest of the press, too. We ought to stick with WP:NPOV and not adopt the press' tortuous narrative of which news sources can be trusted and which cannot be trusted.

Hijiri 88 has the right to assert views on that issue. So do you, and so do I. But Hijiri 88 and other editors framed a consensus under which you were subjected to sanctions, in part, for questioning how some news sources are regarded as reliable and others are not. This was done with disregard of WP:WIAPA, for the political affiliations of the sources you asked about were prominent in the discussion leading toward your topic bans, and Hijiri 88 followed each OPPOSE vote and dissenting opinion expressed in that discussion with comments which were strident, un-WP:CIVIL, and specifically transgressed the guidelines in WP:WIAPA. The whole "right-wing fake-news" narrative was entangled in the discussion of topic bans proposed for you with other editors' involvement with Nazi-ism to an extent which ought to have led me and other editors to mention how Godwin's Law figured in how your case was being discussed, again in ways deprecated in WP:WIAPA. A discussion of sanctions for breaking our rules ought to obey our rules.

Since wikipedia is increasingly used as a source of information world-wide, the people who rely on us for information should understand how politics (it's a more understandable term than "consensus") shapes what they read here. Hijiri 88 obviously has strong consensual support from other editors. That whole process ought to be exposed to sunlight, which, after all, is the best disinfectant. The "consensus on demand" model in which some editors can break rules like WP:WIAPA in describing other editors and draw no sanctions because "we reached a consensus" sets precedents which are dangerous to wikipedia's own credibility. People who read us for information ought to understand how decisions on what goes into an article are reached.

I tried to engage Hijiri 88 in a discussion on how the term "right-wing fake-news" that editor used repeatedly in your topic ban discussion was one-sided and POV, but as you can read in this talk page, that editor responded in a defensive, and at times obliquely threatening manner. I'm leaving this discussion up as evidence of that. If, in the future, I'm brought before WP:AN/I for discussing the un-discussable, I will push back against anyone trying to insert journalistic POV from any political polarity into wikipedia. And if there's a consensus to sanction me for questioning this process, that's also valuable information which wikipedia's user community ought to have. Hijiri 88 has described efforts like Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Editor_Retention as "disrespectful to the consensus" - I'd like to discuss exactly when consensus replaced wikipedia's original ethical guidelines, such as WP:NPOV.

Finally, any disagreements I have had with Hijiri 88 aren't "personal". I have the right to disagree with Hijiri 88 without having my ideas dismissed publicly by Hijiri 88 with comments such as "It didn't occur to me until after responding to this that I was fighting an uphill battle against a Fox News devotee. Best just WP:DENY". That's not a "personal" thing, but a breach of Wikipedia's central guidelines. if WP:WIAPA means anything, it ought to mean the same thing regardless of who's breaking it. And if anyone, not just Hijiri 88 wishes to argue that journalistic practices which aren't compatible with WP:NPOV ought to be used as a basis for forming consensus on which sources cannot even be discussed without triggering sanctions, I have the right to argue against that, as long as I, myself, present evidence to support claims I make about others' behavior. I've done that. (noise: mike being dropped). loupgarous (talk) 03:22, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

I simply am not that interested in discussing politics and news media with you. I contribute to RSN and ANI discussions from time to time, but I personally do not want to edit Wikipedia articles on these topics. The claim that I am focused exclusively on this topic is ridiculous. I don't care what your political views are, what you think of Breitbart and the like and what your opinion of some things I posted on several long-since archived threads on ANI and RSN. I don't understand why you would care either. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:30, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Which is, of course, why you said in an edit summary when you deleted responses to me on this general topic, "It didn't occur to me until after responding to this that I was fighting an uphill battle against a Fox News devotee. Best just WP:DENY." Which is an ad hominem comment deprecated in WP:WIAPA.

I don't want to discuss politics with you, either. I want to discuss how our discussions ought not to include evaluation of editors' political affiliations - for such remarks are deprecated in the WP:WIAPA guidelines. You accused me (with no evidence) of calling you a "politically motivated agitator". If my comments caused you to believe that, I regret it.

But my discussion was on your concentration on "right-wing fake-news". None of the project's guidelines support use of political affiliation as an epithet, and WP:WIAPA goes so far as to include Godwin's Law as part of its guidance against bringing politics into our discussions. "Right-wing fake-news" is such an epithet. We don't hear about "left-wing fake-news" despite many Web sites such as Crooks and Liars and Media Matters being funded specifically to promote the same kind of political slant and occasionally hateful rhetoric deplored by some press commentators in Breitbart and similar Web sites in support of the progressive leftist agenda.

If NPOV means anything in wikipedia, we ought to focus not on a source's political affiliations, but on the reliability of its content. And that ought to turn on proof that a given source is unreliable, and that only.

I want to discuss how, if wikipedia's ethic of NPOV is to survive, we cannot have our discussions on whether or not to impose sanctions on editors to turn on the political content of sources whose reliability they wish to discuss. I want those discussions not to have such staccato repetition of memes such as "right-wing fake-news" that they resemble totalitarian show trials. loupgarous (talk) 04:17, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

Godwin's Law can't be invoked when dealing with literal Nazis (i.e., people who declare allegiance to naziism on their user pages). It's clear that you have no idea what you are alking about, and I have no more interest in discussing this with you. Go edit he Fox News article, if you see so fit. I don't even care anymore. Just leave me alone already. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:41, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

By the way: I am well aware that when you say I am "exclusively" focused on right-wing news media, you probably mean "as opposed to providing equal criticism of left-wing news media", and that this is why you keep bringing up Media Matters and other American news media with which I am not especially familiar, and about which I don't much care. When a discussion about the reliability of one media outlet is brought before me on RSN, I have no obligation whatsoever to append my opinion with "But Media Matters is just as bad" or some such. I don't care what you think about various media outlets or political issues. They were not brought up on the RSN discussions I was commenting on. I find it ironic that you would accuse me of Godwinning a discussion by pointing out the problem Wikipedia has recently experienced with a surge in literal Nazis (read: editors with explicit Nazi propaganda on their user pages) and other far-right editors (read: SPAs who replace words like "pro-slavery" and "pro-lynching" with "Democrat"), clearly indicating your ignorance of the problem itself, while at the same time insisting that I recognize a false equivalence with supposed hard-left editors citing supposed left-wing fake news sites. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:45, 27 March 2017 (UTC)

FYI, I see my name is mentioned above, but I didn't get any pings. Not sure what went wrong. I only found out because I saw this, and I wanted to look at the discussion. I haven't read it all, but it is intersting. --David Tornheim (talk) 14:19, 27 March 2017 (UTC)