User talk:Geometry guy

Welcome to my (rather minimalist) user and user talk page: please leave comments, questions, complaints, or just general chat below. Please provide direct links to issues you raise. I am contributing rather sporadically at present and can't promise to reply, but if I do I will reply here: if I take a while and it is important, I will drop a note on your talk page.

Archives

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20
21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30
31, 32, 33, 34, 35

Always precious

Ten years ago, you were found precious. That's what you are, always. I remember you for explaining with unbelievable patience. - Sorry, we didn't have "your" day this year, so I missed it, on top of being absorbed in Prayer for Ukraine. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:38, 2 March 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It is you that are precious, Gerda, for always remembering and caring about the people element of Wikipedia. Geometry guy 22:55, 6 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

also, yes, - happy to see you here! flowers to come but now I'm hungry --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:50, 7 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Miss you

I hope all's well with you and yours these days. I wonder if you'd like to un-subscribe from the admins' newsletter? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:15, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hi WhatamIdoing, I remember working with you. The admin newsletter helped me to know whether I was still an admin or not. Apparently now I am not, but was kicked out for doing nothing when I was busy with life. Well, if that is how Wikipedia treats its most dedicated contributors when they have a break from contributing, then I think you will have to get used to missing me. Geometry guy 23:12, 6 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I am delighted to see your name on my watchlist! Wikipedia seems to think that inactive admins loose there skills, - just tell the bureauctrats that it's not true for you, and you will be reappointed without major effort (no RfA, I mean), - I've seen that happen, and would happily support. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:48, 7 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't followed the re-sysopping, but I suspect that it's easier if you made ten thousand edits a year, missed the inactivity for a year and a day, and then reapply, than if you've been mostly off wiki for several years. I know another long-time editor who makes one or two edits a year just to avoid this (they've told me that this is their plan for the foreseeable future, and that if they ever loose admin rights, they will never re-apply).

Although I've been active throughout, I feel like there have been some pretty big changes in the community during the last few years. I don't think it can all be put down to the pandemic, though there are certainly some new names now, and some old ones missing. I think there's more desire to follow rules rigidly. There's more of that feeling that you're not just having a conversation with another human; instead, you're playing a kind of virtual card game, and using different WP:ALLCAPS shortcuts in the discussion scores points for your side. (The problem that Wikipedia:Nobody reads the directions still exists; we will always have people who cite SOMETHING without realizing that they've linked to a discredited userspace essay, or that they've linked to a page that bans that thing, instead of supporting it. As an example, there is a pretty extensive problem with people, especially editors who started in the last couple of years, believing that uncited is an exact synonym for unverifiable. I had a chat with one of these editors a couple of years ago about "The capital of France is Paris", and he didn't appear to realize that I quoted the example straight out of the Wikipedia:No original research policy. He claimed that any fact added without a citation would be a NOR violation, despite that exact example being explicitly authorized as non-NOR in the policy itself.)

There's maybe a bit more sense that we have enough content, and the primary job is to exclude new contributions. As an example, I know several editors whose net contribution to the mainspace is a negative number of bytes. All they do is revert other people's contributions and then argue about it on the talk pages. These aren't RecentChanges patrollers looking for obvious vandalism; these are people who have picked a subject and police the articles to make sure that nobody adds the Wrong™ POV. Wikipedia:Ownership of content isn't new (after all, that page was written in 2003), but back in the day, I didn't know editors who only rejected other editors' contributions from a set of articles, without trying to add their own.

With all of that in mind, maybe if you've got some time again, the thing to do is to improve some article content. So long as every new paragraph contains an inline citation, you're unlikely to run into any drama, and it's the content that ultimately matters. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:12, 7 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you so much for writing to me at such great length. You really understand the system, and I would trust a GA review written by you. It does not matter to me much if I am banned: my spirit survives in GA Geometry guy 00:31, 9 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Recognition

Too often our processes can feel so impersonal, and even if canned thanks responses weren't used on BN or the pre-notifications were delivered by a real person instead of a bot, it would still probably be impossible to avoid the appearance that it's all merely pro forma.

It hurts to let some things go, that's true even when there's time to prepare for what inevitably happens to all good things. Making people feel treated like spreadsheet entries instead of individuals certainly doesn't help either.

Anyway, there aren't all that many editors who can contribute as extensively as you have at say Penrose tiling, and you've also done some excellent work behind the scenes with reviews and assessments that has not been forgotten, it's a quite tedious area and not many have the time or experience needed to help out that area. Whatever happens, your assistance will always be appreciated.

I hope this helps in some small way at least. 74.73.224.126 (talk) 04:23, 7 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've heard of you, Geometry guy, because you used to do great work with good article reviews, that made sure people read the article and made sure it met the right criteria. You don't have to be an admin to write articles, and actually writing lots of GAs and FAs is far harder than going into AIV and blocking a vandal. Substantially and significantly harder, in fact. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 15:34, 7 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you both for your kind words. My philosophy as an admin was always to use the tools as little as possible, and I believe this was part of the reason I was trusted to use them wisely. I think Wikipedia is making a mistake to make blanket removal of admin tools for inactivity, but there are worse things going on in the world. I'm happy about the path I help GA create. Perhaps one day I will work a bit more on Penrose tiling. Geometry guy 23:17, 8 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I ultimately think the reason for the increased inactivity policy is to weed out the "bad apples"; there have been several Arbcom cases over the past year or two when somebody who passed RfA before 2008 used the tools in a way that flatly contradicted day to day practice, and then either doubled down or stopped responding, leading a desysop but only after a lot of discussion and disgruntled editors. I think it will weed out some "good apples" too, but I would suspect that if they ever got back into regular editing, they would pass RfA again eg: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Jackmcbarn 2.

Also, I know a couple of longstanding editors who have no interest in becoming admins, and who wouldn't pass RfA because of a complete lack of activity in the maintenance areas - and yet it would be these editors who I would greatly miss as they make enormous contributions to the encyclopedia. And, for the record, I don't think people would be able to guess these editors unless they looked closely at what articles we both contributed to. Ritchie333 ^(talk) ^(cont) 11:32, 10 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is a trend that I have increasingly noticed in our society. Because it is difficult to sanction individuals for breaking some rules, it is easier to make a mass sanction so no one can break the rules. Such authoritarian behaviour needs to be opposed, which is one reason that I did not accept my current situation gracefully. Geometry guy 23:31, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

PS. My experience of Rfa is that it is not a good selection process. Geometry guy 23:41, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

April songs

As promised: flowers and personal links. - I made an exception from my DYK abstinence for Good Friday, - see my story today. Interesting to compare a hook 2023 style to one in 2012 (they don't want to pass knowledge these days, just hook by something that can be tangential to the subject, - in this case it is not tangential, but that is also an exception). - I sang, including chorales from Bach's greatest Passion. I recently listened to one by Homilius: a discovery! - For a long time I had your "Every editor is a human being" in my edit notice, until Raymond died, and I needed his advice even more strongly - myself. -- Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:13, 7 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Gerda, thank you, you are one of the warmest human beings I have ever met, both in real life and on Wikipedia. Any wise person who meets you should marry you in a second. I can be a bit more strident and confrontational, but sometimes it is important to tell people that they are fucking things up. Geometry guy 23:35, 8 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

(blushing) - My story today, Messiah (Handel), was my first dip into the FA ocean, thanks to great colleagues. - a few pics added, one day missing --Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:03, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Today is the 80th birthday of John Eliot Gardiner. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:03, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations/Archive 30

Thanks for your comment here. I'm from a much more recent generation of active content editors (I was rather young in 2007 :) ) and have an interest in wikihistory. Around the time of that archive, I was running a GAN backlog drive that led to, so far as I can tell, the statistically largest decrease in the project's history, and reading a lot of archives of GAN-related talk pages from the 2007-2009ish era to try work out a historiography of the process. I coincidentally noticed that comment recently and was excited to notice you were still looking around. If you have a longer answer on that, I'd love to hear it, but the short answer is of great value as well -- I noticed the same tendency reading those late-2000s archive, and it's interesting to try trace the history there. (I was surprised to find out how contentious "GA icons on articles" were.) Vaticidalprophet 11:33, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Nice to meet you Vaticidalprophet: I'm impressed by the most recent GAN backlog drive, and that now 1 in 174 articles are GAs. With your interest in wikihistory, you probably know more about GA project history than I can remember accurately. For example, you may already know about the Featured Content Dispatch Workshop. This is no longer active, but a list of articles it produced can be found at Template:FCDW.

The articles most closely concerning GA are Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-05-19/Dispatches, Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-03-15/Dispatches and Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2010-11-15/Dispatches.

I can understand your surprise about how contentious GA icons were in 2008, as I felt this at the time. I think the problem in part was a polarization of positions (similar to what we see in US politics today) where one side (mostly GA reviewers) insisted that GA deserved the same recognition as FA, and another side (mostly FA reviewers) insisted that it had not earned such recognition. Moderate positions are boring, but there were moderate editors on both sides, who put forward the view that a GA icon should not be a big deal, but GA needed to improve its quality control.

I suspect GA Sweeps, which checked all early GAs for quality, had a significant impact on the ultimate acceptance of a GA icon. However, you can also see around 2008 that many editors (such SandyGeorgia and myself) already saw that we were on the same team regarding article improvement, and GA and FA came to understand and respect each others' processes.

I have not been active on Wikipedia for a while, but it seems to me that GA and FA are islands where editors care about article quality above ideology and social status, and hope that the collaboration and common interest between the projects remain good.

I will be happy to say more about the history as I recall it, but perhaps you should write down the results of your researches somewhere, and ask for comments. Geometry guy 23:17, 21 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Howdy

Glad to see you're occasionally active. Hope you're doing well; would be good to see you around more. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:44, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Nice to see a familiar name after so much time. Geometry guy 22:43, 22 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]