(concerning your last post on my talk page) You should definitely speak out and state your case on the featured picture candidates page! —EdGl21:27, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There are two users who voted neutral but clearly like it and lean support, voting neutral only because of minor issues. In this case it's not really a bad thing, since there are a few support votes and no oppose votes. Only a few more days left. —EdGl04:47, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It says on the picture-of-the-day page that "featured images are currently selected in the order they were promoted". So, it won't be on the main page in a while. They have already selected pics up to March 1st. →EdGl01:00, 30 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I made this barnstar myself. I think you qualify for it for your creation of the sewer cover barnstar, and for your tireless efforts to focus linking on targets that are useful to our readers. John (talk) 19:17, 11 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
A kilobyte of thanks
The Kilobyte Barnstar
For your efforts in restoring the industry standard terms for memory size to the Manual of Style (dates and numbers). The IC is an Intel 2708, a 1 kilobyte EPROM made in 1976. SWTPC6800 (talk) 03:50, 21 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you both, for taking the time to leave your comments here (and your barnstar, Xeno). I’m copying this to my talk page. Greg L (talk)00:43, 30 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You’re Welcome sir. It would appear that your Son knows the value of voting; be sure to tell him this story sometime - and that an Air Force ROTC cadet wants him to keep goin'. Fightin' Phillie (talk) 19:01, 1 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I just spent the last 55 minutes reading through your entire userpage. What I found there was really great; from your son's journey in the Navy to your brother's...interesting activities to the humor and seriousness throughout, well, I'm not really sure how else to describe it. Thanks for making the world, or perhaps just my own little world, a better place. NuclearWarfare(Talk)21:15, 20 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hi there. Would it possible for you to set up an archive system? Your page is very hard to open on a mobile browser, or even a slower computer. If you can't be bothered to do it yourself (like me), try bots like User:Cluebot III.
Seconded. Greg, if setting up a bot is a burden, I can do it for you. Or, you can just delete all the older stuff from your Talk page – nothing wrong with that.--Goodmorningworld (talk) 18:52, 17 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Does one just add their name and they are a “member”? Besides putting my name there, how could I be of assistance? Any suggestions for a specific task for me to do? Does that page need to be expanded with proposed “to-do’s’? Greg L (talk)00:56, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know exactly, I just found out about it the other day. The goals seems to be improving the coverage about units of measurements. Since you were involved with Kilogram, and at the MOSNUM, I'm sure you can contribute to that project in some way. Edit articles, assess, comment, increase compliance with MOSNUM, pick your poison.Headbomb {ταλκκοντριβς – WP Physics} 01:44, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, your other "fanboy" (as branded in an amusing incident) welcomes back your technical expertise and straightforward thinking about a number of difficult issues. Tony(talk)13:02, 1 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
The thoughts and opinions expressed above on this user page are not intended to be offensive to any particular minority group (based on race, religion, ethnicity, country of origin, gender, gender identification, disAbility, occupation, meat-eating/vegetable-eating practices, and hobbies—even hunting). Note too that parenthetically mentioning “even hunting” in the preceding sentence was not intended to signal any disapproval of the sport; the author does not wish to disparage the legal, safe, and most humane-possible methods of hunting. This preceding statement should not however, be construed as an endorsement of the sport; the author values all the biodiversity of earth and no animal should suffer at the hand of a human. However, that preceding sentence should not be construed that the author is indifferent to the plight of workers displaced by environmental issues; the author is mindful of the plight of timber workers vs. the plight of spotted owls. The preceding sentence should not be construed that the author thinks there is only one group of workers who have been financially harmed by environmental issues; there are others and not mentioning these others by name should not be construed as suggesting they are any less important than another. The author wishes to ensure all who review this communication that he values diversity and has the utmost respect for the law, government officials, the institutions of the United States, the wide variety of social customs and diversity of its peoples, and the civil treatment of other Wikipedians, even if the come across as assholes. This statement should not however, be construed as being intolerant of others who have contrary or differing values or who might hold the U.S. in disdain. The author embraces the wholesome notion that no person’s or group's values are any more meritorious or valid than another’s, and the author does not wish to suggest that by stating an admiration for America and the U.S. Government, that this ought to be construed as deprecating the many other fine systems of government throughout the world and the social practices of its peoples. Notwithstanding that the author wrote the word "he" three sentences ago, (the author happens to be “anatomically male” by birth) this should not be construed as diminishing in any way, the existence of the word "she" nor does it signal that the author is adverse to the use of the gender-neutral "he/she" where appropriate. Furthermore, the words "he" and "she" should not be construed as being exclusionary or diminishing to the transgendered. This paragraph was not intended to be understood by blondes.
Please stop calling things which clearly are not vandalism by that name (your reverts, your message on my talk page, and elsewhere). Doing so is a personal attack, and you should be well aware that personal attacks have no place on Wikipedia by now. —Locke Cole • t • c17:41, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I spoke with the county coroner over there a month ago. They have about one death a year at that spot. In the case you cited, it was two recreational divers. What I have a problem with is deaths of trainees while under professional supervision. In each case, there is a lack of a dive buddy to render assistance. There is no excuse for such a thing. Greg L (talk)23:11, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
29 April 2007
Disruption at RfC
I agree with you, except that I removed his strike, all the subsequent exchanges, and the 'oppose' votes he put into the votes section. I felt that not to remove them would create confusion which will then be used to discredit the poll. Ohconfucius (talk) 02:13, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. Listen, I noticed you left a comment on my talk page. I don't particularly enjoy people who seem to think I'm an imbecile. I do not agree with some aspects of your "take-you-by-the-hand essay", and that is to be expected with differing viewpoints.
My point is, help articles should be understandable for those who need the points straight, not complex explanations. And that I felt your usage of "take-you-by-the-hand" was an insult to my intelligence.
Thanks. Yes, I hope they attract people to become editors at WP. I recommend a lot of academics and students visit them. Tony(talk)08:55, 3 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
You haven't edited the article in question, but since you are or have been actively involved in the IEC prefix discussion (sorry to remind you of it if you, like me, got tired of the uncivil discussion and wanted to have nothing to do with the issue anymore), I invite you to consider the nomination for deletion of the article JEDEC memory standards, which I believe can fairly be said to have been created only as a hammer for the discussion.
I beg you to try to keep your sentiments about the actual IEC prefix on Wikipedia question out of the deletion discussion and consider the merits of the deletion proposal, namely, notability in the Wikipedia sense (WP:N), regardless of which units you believe Wikipedia should use.
Thanks for the heads-up. You raised an important point. As you can see, my 2¢ was to “conditionally keep”. I would need more information about the full scope of JEDEC Standard 21 to know whether or not the article is misleading or not. Compared to other, profoundly trivial stuff on Wikipedia, the article clearly seems sufficiently notable. But, notable or not, the article can’t be misleading by focusing overly intently on a small portion of the standard to the exclusion of other parts that are just as important. Greg L (talk)23:08, 4 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Just giving him a taste of his own medicine to see if he is galactically clueless or just a dick. I don’t really give a rat’s ass. Greg L (talk)02:39, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
I removed some undesirable additions to your links article. I'm also watching, but don't expect any more interference there because of the number of eyeballs on it now.
While I disagree with the MfD and have opted for keep, I think you should moderate the language of "brain explosions" as that is uncivil to the users concerned. I'm also concerned about the "fuck tards" comment, especially as (so far as I can see) it's actually you yourself that coined the phrase. I'm sure you'll find an appropriate way to address these comments, as you're a reasonable person. Thanks. --Dweller (talk) 12:23, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
“Brain explosions” is a term coined by one of my Wikifriends. It translates to “Epiphanies”. “Fucktards” is a self-deprecating, internal joke. I don’t need to justify any of this; the page is for the benefit of a particular group of editors who find it useful. Tennis expert’s malicious edits were just that: malicious. The page is a resource for relevant links pertaining the the date delinking and autoformatting issue and the related ArbCom. All the links are there for the benefit of our group. If Tennis expert doesn’t like looking at a list of links that are of benefit to us, he doesn’t have to look at it. Tennis expert’s nominating my own page in my userspace for deletion is now the subject of an ANI here. Greg L (talk)18:39, 14 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Another editor and I were the lead proponents of the {{xt}} template. The virtue is when quoting someone who has quoted text within the passage; you don’t have to go back and change double-quotes to single-quotes. The {xt} template also sets off the quoted text better. I used to use italics to help set off quoted text, but then that would neuter quoted text that used italics on selected words for emphasis. The {xt} template preserves all this. You just copy the code, paste it into the {xt} template, and you get well-set-off text with all formatting preserved and you don’t have to mess with quotes. The {xt} template is particularly valuable whenever you are discussing the structure and style of text. That’s why it is now used on WP:MOS. Greg L (talk)02:51, 15 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Oh interesting. Thank you for the explanation... I might just start using it if I can remember to do so, and congrats of the MOS inclusion.— DædαlusContribs02:59, 15 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Lightbot
I have been watching your debate but I can't reply on that page. Here are some comments:
Lightbot is does not currently have authority to delink autoformatted dates. That permission would have to be granted.
I am aware of some of the issues that you mention (e.g. commas). But because Lightbot has never had the authority, I have never invested any time in programming Lightbot to fix them. However, I have solved some (but not all) of the issues with the monobook script that delinks autoformatted dates.
If you created a test page with the critical examples, I could run Lightbot over it. It would not take long to work out which problems remain and whether they can be fixed with code changes.
In the course of reading the ongoing Arb case about the date delinking drama, I came across some comments of yours that were attacked as intemperate. I'd like to offer my congratulations on stating the matter so succinctly, and also my best wishes for the case. I've been delinking on a non-automated basis for years now, and I can't wait until the idiocy of datelinking is fully and finally deprecated...and if it isn't, I plan to submit a formal proposal to simply change the default color of wikitext to blue. 65.190.95.73 (talk) 08:12, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your words of encouragement, I.P. editor from Virginia. You should know that the wishes of the community—which we understood perfectly well before we were dragged into an ArbCom by just one malcontent—prevailed. The formal ArbCom decision is expected any day now.
Wikipedia’s official manual of style (here on WP:MOSNUM) requires that dates not be linked to semi-random lists of irrelevant trivia like they used to. The guideline states that dates should not be linked unless their content is germane and topical to the subject … [and] … should share an important connection other than merely that they occurred in the same year.
Editors who were not parties to the ArbCom need not worry about that ruling; they may continue to improve Wikipedia by manually making its articles MOSNUM‑compliant. In case you haven’t seen it, I wrote an essay on this subject, which clearly explains this whole issue; it is Wikipedia:Why dates should not be linked. Greg L (talk)15:11, 26 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Sewer Cover - do I need to read the lists of references
In reference to the Sewer Cover Barnstar - do I also need to read the lists of references to qualify? I think the answer is either "obviously yes" or "obviously no", but I cannot determine which. Thank you.
If you read both the October 1, 2008 articles too in their entirety (the date this article’s photograph was taken), Greg L will award you your very own “Sewer Cover Barnstar” to show off on your talk page. Your Sewer Cover Barnstar will show the world that you can read anything, don’t even know the meaning of attention deficit disorder, laugh in the face of boredom, and are wasting your talents if you don’t become a patent examiner.
U3, to qualify for your very own Sewer Cover Barnstar, you must read everything written in these four articles: Oct. 1, Oct. 16, 1925, and 2008. Mind you of course, that you don’t have to read all the linked articles, just read aloud what is in all four of the required articles and completely understand what is in each. If you actually read all four, let tell me of your accomplishment and tell me why in the world you did so.
If you get through one article (thoroughly now, no cheating) and just can’t stand the prospect of reading three more, let me know and I’ll give award you an “honorable mention” Sewer Cover Barnstar (same picture; just worded differently). Greg L (talk) 01:42, 10 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]
Good. The bug has dragged out far too long. They should have backed out and regrouped when it was clear they had inadvertently opened a can of “Oh… shit!” Greg L (talk) 19:53, 7 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, Greg L. You have new messages at Wikipedia talk:Edit warring. Message added 23:33, 8 April 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.
Hi Greg, which is the BLP that sparked your primary-source concern, and which material was it exactly? It could be that it would be acceptable without changing the policy, so I wouldn't mind taking a look. SlimVirgintalkcontribs18:09, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It originated at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Aafia Siddiqui and Aafia Siddiqui. Editors who like to do stuff like insert “alleged” into “connections to terrorism” (you know; those sort of edits) then impugned how the shepherding editor had cited some primary sources, like—you know—the actual Sealed Complaint in U.S. v. Siddiqui, by the Assistant United States Attorney, stating that it is “unreliable” unless also published in a secondary source. Simply asinine. What makes perfect sense to prevent unfortunate embarrassment (for both Wikipedia and the subject) in situations like Senator Byrd’s doesn’t fit this circumstance whatsoever. I’m not interested in arguments about how “civil lawsuits” have opposing points of view that can be cited to unfairly dish dirt. That is just one of likely several extraneous details than can be properly addressed with one sentence in a well-crafted section governing notable living figures of world-class infamy. If we want factual information in these sort of articles, we need authoritative and reliable sources. We can do better than require editors run around and find the precise and complete wording of the charges against Aafia Siddiqui without looking to Popular Mechanics and other secondary sources to see if they might include the entire wording of the complaint.
BLP is not currently properly addressing this subset of living people. We all know what the 800-pound gorilla in the living room is here with this issue. I simply want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth in all our articles and hate to see exceedingly germane points totally absent from our articles because of a preposterous application of a policy which had never anticipated these circumstances.
My specialty isn’t terrorism-related articles. My specialty is ridding Wikipedia of retarded practices. It started with our past use of language on half of our computer-related articles that read “The first Macintosh came with 128 kibibytes (KiB) of RAM.” Well, no one but our resident propeller-heads uses that sort of terminology. It wasn’t (and still isn’t) used by any computer manufacturer when communicating to their customer base, nor by any computer magazine directed to a general-interest readership. So I lead the cause to reverse that one and Wikipedia now (*shock*) uses terminology that does not cause unnecessary confusion in our readership. That took three months, too. By tuning our “Common-sense-O-meter” to >50% and working collaboratively and constructively, we can properly address this issue. Greg L (talk) 18:38, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I am only peripherally involved as an editor on this, but the opposing editor complained about primary sources such as Assistant United States Attorney’s complaint, which is Note [8]. For first-hand account of details pertaining to that dispute, I suggest you contact the shepherding editor, Epeefleche. I gave him a heads-up (although I suspect he is watching this anyway). As you can see from the FA discussions, some editors opined that quoting primary sources such as Assistant United States Attorney’s complaint constituted WP:OR and other policies that are clearly inapplicable here. As done there, such practices are simply ensuring accuracy. I know that I, at least, am better comforted by seeing Sealed Complaint in U.S. v. Siddiqui, rather than Seveneen magazine or Bill O’Reilly of Fox News, either of which can contain selected information with a slant one way or another. Greg L (talk) 19:55, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It would be good to know what the disputed edit was, because there's almost certainly another source out there for it. I'm wondering if this has all blown up over nothing. With high-profile sources like that, there would be very little known by journalists that they wouldn't publish so long as it wasn't behind a publication ban. SlimVirgintalkcontribs20:02, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
There are. That's why this is a non-issue, or at worst only a technical issue, IMHO.. The information is already in reliable secondary sources, if she could have been bothered to look. The court reference was there to simply be more authoritative backup to the secondary sources. Whilst it is true that there are instances where facts were cited to court documents only, but it was out of inadvertence, AFAICT. The editor who disagreed with the use of the court documents was looking to blindly parrot the BLP, whilst not bothering to go through the sources to find supporting citations. And frankly, I don't even see why she took it to the noticeboard, and kicked up such a huge fuss about nothing - it seems she just wanting to prove herself right, or be able to come back and say 'Look, you thickos who argued with me, See I was right. There are all those noticeboard bods who agree with me'Ohconfucius¡digame!01:23, 16 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. How have you been, Slim? I received a note on my talk page that brought me here.
To answer your question, the documents objected to as refs (in just this one article .... an editor has been following me, and made similar claims in other articles) happen all to be public records that can be accessed on-line on open sites. I believe the focus was on what are now footnotes 4 (indictment), 5 & 41 (press releases), 8 (complaint), 16, 17 & 93 (court-ordered forensic psychiatric evaluations), 36 (Special Court for Sierra Leone: Office of the Prosecutor: Profile, Aafia Siddiqui), 39 (Biography of Ammar al-Baluchi", Director of National Intelligence), and 89 (Order Finding Defendant Competent to Stand Trial). The editor is militating for deletion of all of them from the article. In glancing through them I see the footnotes now have a couple of errors ... OhConfu has been working on the article, and I imagine they are temporary.--Epeefleche (talk) 20:10, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Why don’t you two take this to one of your talk pages? Give me a holler if you have something that doesn’t leave me aghast about how things can sometimes be done on Wikipedia. I’d prefer to believe (faith) that this isn’t gonna drag out into a three-month-long “kibibyte and mebibyte” thing. Greg L (talk) 20:22, 15 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Personal Comments
This [3] is unacceptable. Article talk pages are for discussion of the article and its content. Personal statements about conduct of other editors outside their edits to that article are disallowed. If you have a problem with my conduct, take it my talk page, or seek dispute resolution.
I also will point out that the ruling you refer to is only a few hours old, was made by one admin personally involved in the dispute, in disagreement with the decisions of two other admins. It has already been challenged. If you want to base your conduct around such a millstone, I can't stop you.
Clean out the remark, or I will file RfC / enforcement.
Very well. You are correct. I shouldn’t have “neener neenered” at that venue. It might have been better to “neener neener” you on your own talk page. ;-) I have refactored my comment. Greg L (talk) 17:32, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Lol, thanks. BTW, I think we're coming slowly to true consensus on the al-Awlaki page. I didn't see anything to worry me in the last set of changes. Fell Gleaming(talk)17:42, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I’m pleased to hear that. I don’t particularly like those types of articles because passions often boil over. I think I’ll leave it to Eppe and Causa to sort out their differences on Awlaki and (no doubt) elsewhere. Happy editing.Greg L (talk) 17:46, 18 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
AN/I: Abuse of sysop tools, and failure to follow consensus – Causa sui
Baffling edits on terrorism-related articles that have no foundation
Causa sui, I simply can not fathom the foundation for this edit of yours where you deleted a category tag to {Al-Qaeda propagandists} with this edit summary: “(no evidence of a connection to al-qaeda)”. The article states (and is referenced to four citations) that Malika was convicted of participating in and supporting al-Qaeda plots in Afghanistan and the U.S. I have here reverted your edit as unsupportable and uncalled for given the clear evidence to the contrary.
The above edit of yours, and one, where you referred to Anwar al-Awlaki—arguably the most dangerous U.S. citizen on the planet (the only U.S. citizen a president has ever targeted for direct military action to kill in order to save innocent lives)—as a “conservative Muslim scholar.” This amounts to misinformation in the same vein as describing Osama bin Laden as a “traditionalist Saudi royal.” But coy descriptions like these are misleading. Surly you must understand that; particularly since you exceedingly familiar with the al-Awlaki article and can’t reasonably argue that you don’t understand the issues that make him notable.
Your edits seem to be clearly and increasingly part of a troubling and persistent pattern of POV-pushing. Please desist.Greg L (talk) 16:11, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You should take a lesson from xeno (talk·contribs) on how to conduct yourself when handling this kind of disagreement. There is absolutely no reason to descend into this kind of dramatic histrionics when you are involved in a simple day-to-day content dispute. Your allusions about my motives are not welcome on my talk page and I am not interested in your mind-reading. We're here to work on article content and polite discussion is a normal -- even essential -- part of that. If you would like to direct your questions to me in a polite, sensible way then I would be happy to discuss them with you. --causa sui (talk) 16:19, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I'm now making this about your pattern of aggressively attacking people who make content edits you disagree with. This is one of many examples. You can't even ask me about an edit without descending into ranting personal diatribes about me, and attacking my character. I'm not the only person who has been the object of your rage. If you were at all interested in having a reasonable discussion about it, you could do it easily. My suggestion is that the next time you have a disagreement about one of my content edits, you have xeno (talk·contribs) approach me about it, because he seems to be able and willing to act reasonably toward others when he disagrees with them about something this minor. --causa sui (talk) 16:38, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, you will not get me to retreat from properly criticizing you editing behavior by falsely suggesting I have “attacked” your “character”. Your stating, as you did here on your talk page, that “edit summaries are small” doesn’t seem to be a satisfactory explanation. Notwithstanding that there is far more room available for edit summaries, you elected to waste your seven short words by stating something “(no evidence of a connection to al-qaeda)” that simply wasn’t at all true. This isn’t the first time you’ve edited in a way that stripped out the legitimate and topical mentioning of someone’s known links to Al-Qaeda or known terrorist organizations, like this recent one, only eight days ago on 2007 Fort Dix attack plot. By no stretch of anyone’s imagination would Anwar al-Awlaki be properly described as a “conservative Muslim scholar.” I’m not saying any of this makes you a bad person; I’m simply saying these are, IMHO, bad edits. Please learn to differentiate between the two. Greg L (talk) 21:03, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, Causa sui. With regard to the category [[Category:Al-Qaeda propagandists]], I note your 16:11, 29 April 2010 post here on your talk page, where you illustrate a point by advancing an analogy via a rhetorical question: Are we going to add Bill O'Reilly to Category:United States Government propagandists? Am I reading you correctly that it is just a matter of ‘moral relativism’ in discerning a distinction between “Al-Qaeda propagandists” and “United States Government propagandists”. Your post clearly suggests that providing a category for one (in relation to someone convicted of the crime) begs the creation of a category that amounts to a counter-point view against terrorism. No? I further note your When we do it, it's public relations: when they do it, it's propaganda. It’s hard to escape the obvious thrust of your argument. Is this really your worldview? Greg L (talk) 18:12, 29 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Greg L - let's go back to the beginning of your complaint here. I can solve part of your bafflement. You say that you: "can not fathom the foundation for this edit...The article states (and is referenced to four citations) that Malika was convicted of participating in and supporting al-Qaeda plots in Afghanistan and the U.S." In your edit summary you say "Reverted as without foundation. The article states she was “convicted of participating in and supporting al-Qaeda plots”: There’s the evidence for the connection to Al-Qaeda"
The fact is, Greg L, the article did not state that. The portions you are quoting refers to the convicted terrorist Vinas. The simple solution, the reasonable and good faith solution, would be to read one or more of the articles cited in the article on Malika El Aroud, then add a supported statement regarding her Al Qaeda membership or propagandizing, and then add back the category. Otherwise, it does indeed seem like pov pushing for you to add or re-add categories that are not supported by the text of the article -- especially when you are at the same time, accusing others of pov pushing. Sincerely, "209" 209.44.123.1 (talk) 09:15, 30 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. I was in error in quoting the wrong text there. What I should have quoted was this:In June 2007 she was found guilty by a Swiss court of supporting radical Islamist organizations via internet sites. The citation (SwissInfo.ch: Islamist website owners found guilty) stated as follows: The accused stood trial in Bellinzona for allegedly letting groups linked to al-Qaeda use internet forums they had set up to exchange information. Ergo, two facts are true: 1) There certainly is a connection to al-Qaeda. And 2) [[Category:Al-Qaeda propagandists]] is highly appropriate. Thanks for pointing out my error. Greg L (talk) 15:21, 30 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Because you've contributed to FPC either recently or in the past, I'm letting you know about the above poll on the basis of which we may develop proposals to change our procedures and criteria. Regards, Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 09:23, 30 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]
New quote
I like your quotes. Here's one from Einstein you might (or might not!) like:
Remember that account who repeatedly misrepresented us and then said they made their last edit [4] when they failed to find any admins to believe that rubbish? Well he is back with a different account. Fnagaton00:33, 1 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Nice guess. Your reasoning seems to be predicated on the assumption that moon phases, celestial happenings, and/or biorhythms factor into the date ranges. Greg L (talk) 17:02, 4 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Roger that. I’ll keep this thread as a reminder, since there are more templates than one can shake a stick at. BTW, I enjoyed the way you concluded your post over there: We become admins by nurturing hundreds of sockpuppet accounts, sucking up to the cabal, offering sexual favours, and making denial of service attacks against Citizendium - or at least that's how I managed it. …“offering sexual favours”… I like people who damn near need a disclaimer at the ends of their posts. ;-) Greg L (talk) 20:38, 7 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
re CSA gif
I can't imagine the timeline, et.al., would be particularly visible at a smaller size. I'd have to remove that. --Golbez (talk) 19:42, 9 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
May 2010
You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Anwar al-Awlaki. Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions on a single page within a 24-hour period. Additionally, users who perform several reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. When in dispute with another editor you should first try to discuss controversial changes to work towards wording and content that gains a consensus among editors. Should that prove unsuccessful, you are encouraged to seek dispute resolution, and in some cases it may be appropriate to request page protection. Please stop the disruption, otherwise you may be blocked from editing. Please be aware that continued reverts will result in blocks. Please discuss the matter on the talk page. Thank you, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 05:47, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Two edits in 24 hours (1 and 2) over two different things. And I did pretty much nothing butdiscuss things on the talk page. And my whole message point was about gaining consensus and not editing against it. And all that was done civily too. That is not an edit war by any stretch. I did everything by the book. Anyway, the I.P. editor settled down, I’m happy with the compromise, and I am done for the evening. I’m not sure about your underlying reasoning for stepping in when you did—in the way you did; but I like the outcome nonetheless. So thanks for the intervention; it cooled people’s jets and no-doubt allowed me to go to bed bit earlier. Greg L (talk) 05:56, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
It came to my attention at WP:RPP where another editor requested full protection of the article due to edit warring. I picked the most recent reverters and warned them because I'm always reluctant to dole out full protection, but as long as it's resolved, we can all go home! HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 06:21, 13 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Greg, just to clarify this. I have never accused you of being a paid propagandist. I am sorry when you misinterpreted it in this way.
The whole article could not be more biased and has even the smell of paid propaganda.
That refers to the article Aafia Siddiqui as a whole and anybody can have a look at it and make up their own mind about the article. Let me repeat it again I never accused you of being a paid propagandist. I am sorry when you misinterpreted this sentence in this way. IQinn (talk) 23:13, 16 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I must say that I found the 1925 article to be much more interesting than 2008 (apparently I'm only interested in history I didn't live through, even though I don't pay much attention to news so I don't really know recent history in the first place). I'll also opine that, while significantly less useful, date articles are so much more interesting than years. I think that your page might very well be the most interesting essay, or whatever you want to call it, that I've come across on Wikipedia. VernoWhitney (talk) 17:33, 21 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Geez, all that buttering up and I don't even get a sewer cover to hang on my wall? What is the world coming to? Mostly kidding; but I'd hate to think that after getting a job that wasn't wasting my talents I couldn't apply such skills here too to some benefit. VernoWhitney (talk) 20:02, 24 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, that would be my fault then, I did read them all since I had Friday unexpectedly free last week. I guess I just assumed that not that many people come around talking about sewer covers, even here. My mistake. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:48, 24 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for letting me know about this. I had no idea there was even such a thing as “Valued Pictures.” I think I’ll stay out of the voting on this one as I am so new to the venue. I sorta like to know what the “group-think” is before I either reject the conventional wisdom or embrace it. (That’s a fancy way of saying I don’t want to go there and sound stupid.) Greg L (talk) 01:09, 26 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Scratch that. The rules are really simple. The picture clearly illustrates the article content particularly well so I voted “support.” Greg L (talk) 01:15, 26 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You will see no visible effect in that article in isolation. But when it is transcluded to Wikipedia:Valued picture candidates, not how the page-flow tag prevents crowding and interference with editable sections below it. Try reverting my change (∆ here) and go back to the VPC page to see what I’m talking about. Greg L (talk) 00:00, 27 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Highway Picture
Hi Greg, just wanted to let you know I've nominated another image of Highway 401 for featured picture since the other one isn't going so well. Link: [5]. Hopefully the third time will be a charm! Haljackey (talk) 04:06, 31 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, well… just pardon me all over the God-damned place. Even though I voted “oppose” on that image’s FPC, I took an interest in an image you cared about and invested the time to download it, pull it into Photoshop, and clean up piles of dust in the scan. I then uploaded the cleaned image to here and also offered a suggestion on your talk page to make it easier to update more articles faster. It wasn’t “commentary”. If I knew I was dealing with someone prone to theatrical and adolescent behavior, I wouldn’t have bothered. Greg L (talk) 00:03, 1 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Greg, you misunderstand. I am about the least experience picture guy who comes by WP:FPC. I am saying that it does not really sound right to just copy it over the old one and I would not really know if it is. Thus, if you put your instruction on the discussion page, people who know what to do will comment.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 00:22, 1 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
OK, sorry. One wouldn’t simply change the file if it A) the edit won FPC but the original did not, or if B) the original won FPC and the edit was frowned upon. But if the entire nomination goes down in flames, the distinction between the two doesn’t matter. I’ve had dillweeds totally ruinthis image of the IPK by lightening everything until the blacks looked like a 60% gray and changing the original even though there are some 30 foreign-language versions of Wikipedia that use that very image of the Kilogram (rather than create a new file). As for creating a new file, I took this pile of poo (Anwar al-Awlaki original), and created this version. Check out what that article used to look like. However, in a simple case of dust removal and contrast cleanup, it doesn’t take an Act Of Congress to simply update the image—like as Fallschirmjäger already did, (though I can’t see the difference); all it takes is a consensus amongst those who care about the image (that may not be official, but its the practical way things work because it is uncontroversial). Now that I have uploaded the distinct version to the FPC, we wouldn’t want to do it now and would wait until the FPC is resolved one way or another. Then we can just make the darned change because the simple improvement should be entirely uncontroversial. Greg L (talk) 00:41, 1 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
FYI
I will be disengaging from the article, Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. I helped to do some research and add a bunch of sources which was fun, but it was taking up a bit of time and focus, and now it will be interesting to see what direction it takes subsequent to the event. Hope you are doing well. Feel free to keep me informed if you wish. Cheers, -- Cirt (talk) 23:16, 1 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
401 picture: Colour
Hi greg, I just wanted to let you know that the evacuated 401 pic is now in colour as an alternative. Could use your feedback when you get a chance. [6]Haljackey (talk) 15:28, 3 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I know you voiced support for your colour edit, but would you also support the colour alternative? Just a few more votes and it hopefully it will pass. Thanks for your input on all the 401 candidates! Haljackey (talk) 15:24, 6 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Greg, because you contributed to FPC's recent review, I'm letting you know that the results of the poll have been posted. We appreciate your contributions to the first stage and hope you take part in this next step, here, to move towards implementing several changes to the process. Regards, Maedin\talk18:34, 4 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Greg, further to your recent comments at the EDMD talk page, there is currently a discussion touching on the option of using collapsed galleries at the content noticeboard, so you might want to weigh in. Cheers, --JN46613:38, 10 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Text size in graphics
Hi Greg, thanks for explaining re text size with File:Hematopoiesis (human) diagram.png at its FPC. Are you saying, then, that all graphics should have text that can be read at thumbnail? What about other FPs such as those at WP:FP/Maps and /Diagrams? There are many there whose writing is too small to be read at the thumbnail or even at full resolution if you don't zoom in.
I'm not saying that the Hematopoiesis image should be featured because those other ones are, or that those others should be delisted, I'm just trying to understand better :) Thanks, Matthewedwards : Chat 14:55, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No, not at all. If one can make a graph usable as a thumbnail (by making the thumbnail as big as possible in the article and via layout of the graphic), then that is always best. In some cases, like yours, there isn’t so much material that it couldn’t be made perfectly usable at the first stage of enlargement at only 1018 pixels across. When I was doing an animal study at a university recently, I was outside of the P.I.’s office and in the hallway was a cork board-size graph of the chemical pathways of metabolism. It looked a bit like a lineage graph for a village in England dating back to 1650. That sort of thing would necessarily be usable only at full zoom. As for the others FPs that one must zoom in to, I wasn’t around when they were nominated. If they could have been attractively revised to make them usable as a thumbnail, that would have been my position. Greg L (talk) 15:02, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, thank you. I understand what you're saying, now. I haven't decided which way to !vote yet. I'm waiting until my questions to the author can be answered first. Matthewedwards : Chat 15:24, 14 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Reviewer granted
Hello. Your account has been granted the "reviewer" userright, allowing you to review other users' edits on certain flagged pages. Pending changes, also known as flagged protection, will be commencing a two-month trial at approximately 23:00, 2010 June 15 (UTC).
Reviewers can review edits made by users who are not autoconfirmed to articles placed under flagged protection. Flagged protection is applied to only a small number of articles, similarly to how semi-protection is applied but in a more controlled way for the trial.
When reviewing, edits should be accepted if they are not obvious vandalism or BLP violations, and not clearly problematic in light of the reason given for protection (see Wikipedia:Reviewing process). More detailed documentation and guidelines can be found here.
Thanks for the alert – I had not noticed, as I've been rather occupied with defending the integrity of Wikipedia, specifically the neutrality of point of view and other quality concerns in our new article IHH (İnsani Yardım Vakfı). I intended to come back to the issue at some time in the future – but in a fit of insanity I promised a presentation at a workshop two weeks from now, and all I have at the moment is a title, so I don't know when that will be. In any case, there was little risk of the innocent reader being deceived by the section, as it was "not even wrong" (i.e., totally incomprehensible). I think a comprehensive encyclopedic survey should say something about the concept of weight in GR, but clearly not what we had there. --Lambiam20:50, 16 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Greg, can you be a bit more precise: to you, what would be the actual disadvantages of using wikitags instead of their html equivalents in this 'special case'? To me, looking at the disposition of the pages in read mode, I see no difference whatsoever. It's really a bit like insisting on using <i>italics</i> instead of ''italics'' or <b>bold</b> instead of '''bold''' - I really don't see therefore why you would want to derogate from the Wiki standard in any of those cases. Ohconfucius¡digame!09:09, 21 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Quoting you, Oh, To me, looking at the disposition of the pages in read mode, I see no difference whatsoever. Indeed, you won’t see a difference when looking at historical versions because the [edit] tags disappear in historical views. To see how there was a perfusion of [edits] all crowded up against the photo, go to an older version, go to edit mode, copy the text, paste it into a blank sandbox page in your userspace and hit save. Go ahead and try it; I’ll wait. Then come back to this page…
♬♩ (*sound of elevator music*) ♬♩
Now do you see what I mean? Page layout should look cleaner than that. There is no compelling need to be able to edit such short sections. I had originally wanted to keep those subsections in the table of contents. After the pleasure of dealing with OnePt618 (who sure learns the ropes and wiki-lingo fast for someone who’s a “newbie” editor with only 20 edits), I decided there wasn’t really a need to have the subsections in the table of contents. Thus, the matter is resolvable by making those sub-section titles regular text. Greg L (talk) 16:53, 21 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Please refrain from spreading misinformation about me. I do not have 20 edits. I have 1,436 edits (893 of which are in article space). (See [7] for more details.) I don't prefer to tout numbers, but you're casting aspersions based on bad information.-- φ OnePt618Talk φ 18:59, 21 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oh… well… just pardon me all over the place for misconstruing what you meant when you wrote (∆ here), this: …lambasting me for being insincere, making "God-damned rude accusations", along with threats of taking me to ANI if I edit his page again. I readily admit that I am a newbie editor (been here ~20 days) but I think I have a lot to offer… So if there is *misinformation* or *bad information* being spread, you have no one to blame but yourself for indicating you are in any way a “newbie editor” if you actually have 1,436 edits. Nor do I care to now hear your asterisk-like small-print caveat for what you really meant when your wrote “20 edits”; your facility in wikilawyering to exact a *win* at all cost amount to games and needless wikidrama that I will not join in. Please go away and leave me alone; I don’t appreciate your style and find it to be a disruptive distraction if you are to persist any more at this pettiness. I suggest also that you read what the other editors are saying on your Wikiquette alert; there is a message there about “cause & effect” that you might find instructive if you take it to heart. Greg L (talk) 19:25, 21 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I see what you mean now. I think that the idea was conceived that all headers were to be separately editable. Your change, though you may consider not necessary, is a break with that convention, and creates an oddity. OTOH, if you really insist that those which are currently at L4 be uneditable, perhaps you should consider simply bolding those headings with the ';' (semicolon) at the start of the line. The font isn't as large, there's no click-through in the TOC, but as they are, as you said, such small sections, the lack of individual click-throughs should not matter so much. Having said all the above, it seems that there is nothing inherently wrong with using html tags. Ohconfucius¡digame!01:33, 22 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
NOTICE I will not engage editors in multiple venues on this matter. Further posts on anything related to this issue can be made on the Wikipedia:Wikiquette alerts where editors’ posts can be inspected and sanitized by the sunshine of more thorough public inspection. Greg L (talk) 19:46, 21 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Man oh man, I just remembered about a whole cumulative year of my childhood. Wikipedia should pay people like you rather than dole out the prestige of pissants to pissants over who can piss the highest arc. Yalk (talk) 05:55, 8 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
With mind on auto pilot, I read your [response] and wonder, "What's so special about Miley Cyrus and Februrary 30th, is it her birthday?" Then I went outside to pull weeds, "Ah, I get it!" Very clever response. Gut Monk (talk) 23:42, 12 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Wolf Point because that article has only one photograph and the camera is pointed straight at—and is largely dominated by—Wolf Point. Greg L (talk) 02:03, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I do not understand all the issues you raised on my talk page. You may want to try to renominate this again now, yourself. I think the two high-EV articles are pretty well-developed.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 21:30, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Not me. Your turn to nominate. All I mean with that illustrated post I left on your talk page is that the Chicago eL picture was a nighttime photo that had extensive post-photo digital manipulation so it looked nothing at all like it really would at night. By comparison, a photo that is a simple long-duration exposure so it begins to show star trails—like just about any long-duration photo—shouldn’t be maligned based on the fact that it brings out dark-area detail; not when we consider the manipulation given to the ‘Chicago’ pic. Greg L (talk) 21:53, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
FPC comments
Hey there Greg. I just closed Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Xantho poressa female, and I just wanted to make a comment on your !vote. "Snapshot" is a pretty general term, and may not help the photographer know exactly what is wrong with the photo. Would you consider being a little more detailed in your comments? I hope that you take this in good faith, as I don't mean to badger, and I do appreciate many of the comments and contributions you have made at FPC. JujutacularT · C13:47, 15 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. I see that the FPC page requires that “All objections should be accompanied by a specific rationale that, if addressed, would make you support the image.” So I can imagine that “Picture sucks; one that sucks far less would be better” wouldn’t provide much guidance for the poor photographer. ;-) I’ll be more specific from hereon.
Thanks for that. And yea, I wasn't really offended by the PC jibe. By the way, I love the anecdotes for every argument :) Happy editing indeed. JujutacularT · C22:26, 16 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the recommendations. I've started a draft RFC in my userspace User:OpenFuture/Request_For_Comment/Pmanderson. If we can show that at least two users have tried to resolve the issue (so we need one more except me) we can file it. I did unfortunately file a Mediation request just earlier today, as per Chasers request, so we might have to wait for a response on that one first. --OpenFuture (talk) 08:06, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You are certainly welcome. I hope one or more of the others there can help; I have limited personal dealings with PMA. Greg L (talk) 16:53, 18 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Greg L has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, so I've officially declared today as Greg L's Day! For being an great person and awesome Wikipedian, enjoy being the star of the day, Greg L!
I’m sorry. I didn’t spend sufficient time studying how the image was being used in articles. I have to agree with the others there. I am sorry for misleading you and then pulling the rug from under you. Greg L (talk) 17:15, 9 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Its ok. At first i only nominated it beacuse it looked cool but when i looked more it had not much EV. This time im going to let it fail on its self and with out me withdrawing it. Spongie555 (talk) 00:30, 10 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your comment on the nomination but i think the other voters probably will argue for EV.But that what i thought of the picture Spongie555 (talk) 12 September 2010 (UTC)
Yes. I know. Even though you leave messages here and Ckatz deletes them, (no net change), the process still leaves an orange banner across the top of any Wikipedia page I visit. And this is the second time you’ve come here. It appears you have been banned from Wikipedia and that is why you are strafing user-talk pages as an I.P. I don’t have time to find out whether your banishment was just. The community assessment is that it was. Sorry. There’s already enough “vigorous debate” (translation: bickering) here without I.P.s adding to the mix. Please don’t leave another message here for me unless you are legitimately registered. Greg L (talk) 14:49, 7 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Two points re RfC at wp:link
Per this edit. Can you point me to where I have been "outspokenly in opposition" to the guidelines as written. Also, if you'd actually read what I'd said, I did comment on the supplementary question - something that I do not believe is disallowed in an RfC - but just not with a firm "yes" or "no". And can you please focus on addressing any substantive points rather than making broad sweeps about people's motivations or what they should or shouldn't be doing or have or haven't done? N-HHtalk/edits18:32, 7 October 2010 (UTC)
ps: nor is it helpful to characterise my views as "extreme". And, of course, the point of an RfC is to find out what other editors actually think, so perhaps let's wait and see what "the majority of Wikipedians" think.[reply]
“Response” is fine. But I expect a response in the proper place. And just so you might gain some perspective, I’ve been active on a number of terrorist-related articles like Anwar al-Awlaki and Aafia Siddiqui and found the editors on those talk pages to be less… uhmm… *passionate*. Greg L (talk) 18:56, 7 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Greg, I did a major update to the Motorola 6800 mictoprocessor article (86 references). I did a section on semiconductor yields, Motorola had poor yields at first. Could you look at my unit conversions, all of the technical literature at the time used inches and mils. I wanted to use mils in describing the trade offs on size. If you listen to an IC design engineer from the 1970s, he can tell you the dimensions in mils of every chip he worked on. To the typical reader, all the chips are tiny. A 160 unit thingy is smaller than a 212 unit thingy -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 05:17, 28 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You sure did put some effort into those series of edits. I checked the direct conversions and the one that listed two dimensions in mils and gave the square millimeters. Everything looks good. I would only suggest that the one that goes as follows:
160 mils x 160 mils (16.5 mm2)
…be given some consideration as to whether “(4.1 mm x 4.1 mm)” would be more directly equivalent and possibly less confusing. It gave my neurons a *!* neuron interruption. It was a pleasure to help. Please don’t be shy to ask again and don’t be a stranger. Greg L (talk) 19:49, 29 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Fox news is not a valid source of news. The Taliban have as much right to be discussed impartially as anyone else. If you have a strong opposition to other cultures, why not edit a domestic encyclopedia? This is meant to be an international project, and patriotic support of the USA should have no place here!93.96.148.42 (talk) 02:36, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for sharing your opinion, I.P. editor from England. I am all for an encyclopedia impartially and accurately and factually discussing the Taliban and how they burn down girls schools and blow their teachers’ brains out with an AK‑47s because they don’t want girls being educated(*sound of audience gasp*) and how they flog women in the street for showing too much skin under their burkas. Indeed, accuracy should rein supreme on Wikipedia.
As for en.Wikipedia being an “international project”, no; en.Wikipedia is an encyclopedia for people whose first language is English. You are confusing simple-English.Wikipedia, which is compromised to accommodate the needs an international readership. There are scores of Wikipedia in different languages to serve the needs of those speakers; you don’t see me running over to the Iranian Wikipedia (for instance), trying to influence what appears in their Wikipedia.
As for all this *international* goodliness you speak of, perhaps we need more input from those on the Persian-language Wikipedia used by Iran; where they have user pages featuring “Death to Israel” slogans and pictures of SCUD missiles being launched (an admin from the Persian-language Wikipedia actually came over here to get advise from our admins on what to do about that problem over there). Yeah… maybe we need more of their input to achieve balance here. (*sigh*)
Invariably, this *English-thing* of ours leads to a Western POV where crazy sounding ideas like “Leaders shall govern only with the consent of the governed” (rather than “the guys with the most AK‑47s rule”) and “let girls be educated just like boys” becomes sort of a world-view underlying basic assumptions that affects writing style.
But, perhaps we should be more “international” with our articles; instead of writing “murdered the girls’-school teacher”, we should use the term “killed” because that doesn’t mean anything was necessarily illegal or *wrong* in any way—perhaps that would help make en.Wikipedia more “international” (i.e., you like it). Maybe, instead of “beating a woman”, perhaps it should be “reinforcing a religious education.” I suggest you go to our ‘Taliban’ article and correct that caption; some sheltered, English-speaking Westerner who doesn’t subscribe to the notion of pure moral relativism must have written that one. And maybe that stick is way lighter than it looks.
As for my views on Fox news, you didn’t understand my points on the talk pages elsewhere on this project about Fox and how their op-ed—which I pointed out is inherently biased—needs to be treated differently from news. So I won’t waste my time on that point since I have free will to decide how I may devote my time on Wikipedia and there is no rule that requires that I now devote oodles of effort trying achieve a meeting of the minds on that point; we’ll just have to agree to disagree, m‘kay?
Instead of spamming my talk page with rhetoric as an I.P., try registering first. Doing so helps you to have a greater voice on en.Wikipedia while helping us to keep a lid on POV-pushing of yours, including solicitations that it be done by proxy.
Oh, I didn’t comment on your …patriotic support of the USA should have no place here! Bravo. I’m sure you’re doing your very best to fix that! (my own exclamation point). About the only part of your post I agree with is The Taliban have as much right to be discussed impartially as anyone else. In fact, I agree with that sentiment 110 percent. I suspect we differ a tad in what that means. So, just pardon me all over the place for not being concerned about your activities; there are more I.P.s on en.Wikipedia than one can shake a stick at and it is all too easy for a community consensus to revert them. Greg L (talk) 15:01, 10 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You supported the photograph of chlorine in a quartz ampoule and acrylic cube. The nominator has indicated no replacement photograph will be available in the near future, and has instead cropped the original file and uploaded over the top, leaving us with two alternative crops. Could you please indicate which of these you prefer? Thanks. Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 16:28, 11 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I’m sorry. I don’t have a Facebook account but I am honored you feel that way. I see you are from the Philippines. Was it my Navy SEAL stuff that got you interested in this page? Greg L (talk) 19:14, 17 November 2010 (UTC)[reply]
email
To answer your question on Epeefleche's talk page (since that line of discussion was closed before I could respond and assuming you are still interested), I have used the email feature just once (to my recollection) to send an email. This was due to oversight issues when I was subject to email bombardment from a sockfarm that was intent on unvieling the identity of a fellow editor. Aside from that bombardment, I have received few emails, none of which I have responded anywhere other than on-wiki. All in all, I have never (until now at least) thought that is is generally for covert use as you describe, so have seen no reason to disable the feature. Hope that satisfies your curiosity. wjematherbigissue00:09, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I appreciate your taking the time to honestly weigh in here. Of course, it is exceedingly likely that others taking Epeefleche to task conduct oodles of behind-the-scenes discussions and strategizing with their wiki-brethren. Greg L (talk) 02:06, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hello, a while back you helped get the picture File:Kingdavidkalakaua dust.jpg to featured status. I noticed that it was removed from the Kalākaua article and replaced by one that looks similar in some ways. If you could spare a minute, would appreciate your opinion on the talk page. Thanks. W Nowicki (talk) 22:22, 27 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Other plans proposed?
Just curious, since you're familiar with PMA's history... why support a plan whose scope is limited to just actual page moves, an area that amounts to only a small fraction of the problem. Did you see the other plans proposed further down? Thanks, Born2cycle (talk) 23:29, 2 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia has many mechanisms for sanctioning and restricting editors, not the least of which is ArbCom, which like the Inquisition, has the power to amputate body parts. I’ve seen far too many knee-jerk reactions on Wikipedia where the remedies were out of proportion to the violations. The problem with PMA is he has gotten away with too much for too long. The sanctions I voted for are limited and should send a message from the community that PMA hasn’t received in a long time. If he doesn’t smell the coffee this time around, there will be ample opportunity for more draconian remedies. Greg L (talk) 02:21, 3 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Response to your "facts" as presented at CCI
Fact 1: We are not just talking about a few sentences or fragments in a single article. There are many, many articles with problems ranging from a few sentences to entire articles, especially from Epeefleche's early contributions, as already evidenced in the CCI and also listed at Wikipedia:Copyright_problems/2011_January_7. True Epeefleche and I have butted heads on a few occasions, as they have done with several other contributors, but I would absolutely not call it feuding. Epeefleche's seems to always react negatively to any changes I have made to an article they have been involved with, even more so if reverts an addition they had made and will refuse any compromise. To me, Epeefleche appears to be the one holding a grudge borne out me raising concerns I had regarding NPOV, original research/synthesis, coatracking and giving undue prominence to recent incidents in various unrelated articles. Persistent accusations of hounding as a core component of every edit summary or contribution to a discussion do little to promote a collegial atmosphere. I have to ask, who is really causing any friction? Hounding is clearly defined, and my indentification of clear policy violations absolutely does not fit that definition.
Fact 2: "Epeefleche is an attorney". Yes, so they keeps saying, but their actions and responses shed serious doubts on that claim. The repeated dismissal of the notion that copying, word-for-word, sentences from a copyrighted article may be a violation of copyright is perhaps the most damning. That and the fact that some of their earlier article creations were virtually 100% word-for-word copies – you don't need "three decades (nearly) of practicing law, including intellectual property law, in the applicable jurisdiction" to know for certain that is a copyright violation.
Fact 3: Your comments speak for themselves. Instead of focusing on the issue at hand, i.e. copyright violations, you chose to defend Epeefleche and label the report a bad faith one, despite clearly not having read though the complaint in full. In the process you mistakenly repeatedly state that I had quoted policy, and based on that misconception claim that I was using it as a stick to beat Epeefleche with. I can only guess that you are standing by this unfounded accusation since you have not retracted it.
Fact 4: Evidently this is a recurring widespread problem. More recent problems were highlighted in the report, and further problems have already been uncovered since the case was opened. Half a dozen or more articles from Epeefleche's early history have already been blanked as foundational copyright violations, and there are several others I have spotted, but have not actioned as yet – I will probably notify those currently involved in the cleanup rather than dealing with them myself. Epeefleche was made aware of problems in this regard many times over the past 12 months, yet it kept happening again. I really don't see how you can still doubt that this is a longstanding, recurring and extensive problem that needs a concerted effort to fix.
Fact 5: I have no interest in indiscriminately removing anyone's contributions. As above, I will most likely report any violations that I discover to one of the agents cleaning up this mess rather than dealing with them myself. wjematherbigissue23:11, 8 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Very well. Now, how about you and I butt out and sit back and see how the community deals with the facts and settles upon an appropriate remedy? Greg L (talk) 01:04, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, it is unnecessary to add further to the background discussion since that step has been completed. Incidentally, the appropriate remedy has already been determined – perform cleanup on all affected articles. That is why the full CCI case was opened by VernoWhitney. wjematherbigissue01:20, 9 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You are most welcome. I appreciate your taking the time to let me know my effort was appreciated. It makes up for those times when I come to my talk page to find someone who is annoyed with what I had done and started a WQA because I further stated that someone’s edit didn’t deserve a smiley-faced gold star and used plain-speak while doing so. Greg L (talk) 19:06, 13 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hey man. We got the "Wilmer-tiger" cleaned. Take a look and see if that can get you from "mild oppose" to "neutral" or maybe even swing the needle just into the "mild support" region. Also, I'm right on with you about EV for articles. I'm not some photographer, far from it. Am an article writer and just fell in love with the pic after getting the BYU Library to part with it. Was pleasantly surprised to see it go into the lead of the Taxidermy article (would not have expected that, came out of the blind, one of those neat things about the Commons). Then I got a wild hair and stuck it into the BYU Life Sciences Museum article. So it's supporting three articles pretty strongly. I even juiced the caption on the Featured Pics page, just a tad to try to make it have more rationale (see it).
Yeah, it has two elements in it, not one. But well. I still love it. And the tiger is stuffed! Just cool looking cause it was so well preserved. And the man is a link to a heritage of herpetology from the 30s. I am semi-serious about instigating an expedition to a remote region that he collected in, and it would be a hoot to ask the guy some questions before sending the herps off into the (literal) Sierra Madre! TCO (talk) 19:42, 16 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, TCO; I am disinclined to vote ‘support’ on this one. We’ve got a nearly two-year-long queue waiting for their turn as a Featured Picture for-the-day on the Main Page. Let’s see if we can come up with some extraordinarily eye-catching images. Greg L (talk) 00:20, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
British versus American spelling
Hi Greg. I noticed that you amended Pressure to change the British spelling gauge to the US spelling gage. Please be aware that the Wikipedia Manual of Style endorses the principle of retaining the existing variety, including retaining the first substantive variety of English spelling. See national varieties of English. In particular, the Manual of Style does not advocate exclusive use of American English spelling. See retaining the existing variety. Happy editing. Dolphin(t)06:22, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I am entirely familiar with WP:MOS and ENGVAR. I looked over the article and didn’t see any other words that had British spelling and assumed it used American spelling throughout so I made reversed the “gage” vs. “gauge” order to make the article consistent (which ENGVAR asks for). Was I wrong about which dialect is used? Greg L (talk) 19:15, 18 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your prompt response, and thanks for the Talkback banner. I see that in 2006 you and others debated the subject at great length at Talk:Pressure#"Gage" v.s. "Gauge" Pressure (Spelling) and reached a position where gauge would be accepted. ENGVAR certainly invites Users to edit articles so that a word is spelled consistently throughout an article. I see nothing on Wikipedia that invites Users to edit an article to change every occurrence of a word from one spelling to another in the belief that one widely-accepted spelling is somehow preferred over another widely-accepted spelling. Cheers. Dolphin(t)01:38, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The “invitation to users to edit an article” [for spelling] is made clear Wikipedia:Mos#National varieties of English which prescribes Each article should consistently use the same conventions of spelling, grammar, and punctuation and When an article has evolved sufficiently for it to be clear which variety it employs, the whole article should continue to conform to that variety, unless there are reasons for changing it based on strong national ties to the topic. Greg L (talk) 01:46, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks Greg. The essence is that if you see an article with some words spelled with British spelling (or American spelling) you don't need to feel obliged to change everything to American spelling (or British spelling). If you want to change the spelling, that is a different matter and you are at liberty to be bold. Dolphin(t)06:23, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I would advise you to leave Wjemather alone for the time being, since it was a comment to you that at least partially resulted in the block and the block is intended to dampen the flames. I fear your presence on their talk page may serve to throw petrol on them, regardless of how well intentioned your edits were. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 01:59, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well… I worried it might be taken that way. (Didn’t think anyone could stand nine-foot-long scroll bars) Understood; will do. Greg L (talk) 02:01, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for alerting me to that other editor’s heartfelt concerns and his suggested remedy (which I felt came up short). That’s like waking up to bowl of corn flakes with a steaming turd sitting on top. I sat down to the computer with a fine cup of home-made mocha cappuccino in my right hand and the keyboard under my left. The coffee must not have taken full effect when I responded there. Here’s the link to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents to report all the shocking plain-speak I left on Talk:Kilogram. I was in a mood to say what I actually thought there rather than doll it up with a bunch of Wikipedia-style “Good gosh golly; were you displeased by seeing “inch”?” Greg L (talk) 21:03, 6 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Do you have a reference for the chamfer of the IPK? I intend to build a model using Blender. Blender is not a CAD program, but it can easily create an image that is accurate to within one pixel, which is the best we can reproduce in an image. If I cannot find a precise definition for the chamfer, I will try to fake it from the BIPM images. The advantage of Blender is that I can publish my model under CC-BY-SA and others can use it. I'm thinking in terms of an "IPK" sitting next to a golf ball and a ruler, all sitting on a two-color (grey-and-white?) checkerboard with 1cm squares. The ruler would show both inches and centimeters. I am a Blender newbie, as you can see at b:User:Arch dude. I feel that I am a serious contributor to Wikipedia (15,000+ edits, 100+ articles) and to other Wikimedia projects, notably Wikisource as s:User:Arch dude. -Arch dude (talk) 00:24, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I’ll be exceedingly candid here. I’ve now exchanged a hundred e-mails with the guy at the NIST working on the new kilogram. As part of that, some of the materials he sent me contained the blueprints for making the Pt-Ir standards. There were dozens and dozens of hours of research that went into that article before I happened upon that little jewel, which details the four-angle chamfers on both edges. To me, this feels just like Chinese manufacturers calling up Sylvania and saying “Our tungsten filaments don’t last anywhere near the 1500 hours the label on our box says they do. Please make our job easy and quick and give us your data and tell us all your tricks so we can replace your product with ours.”
(Oh… joy.)
As you can no-doubt understand, I take pride in that contribution and certainly enjoy seeing it used by many other-language Wikipedias—which is a small reward for making that contribution. I don’t understand why you would expect me to be excited about what you are doing. Greg L (talk) 00:52, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. But I did, just now, get through providing the chamfer blueprint to another editor. He’s also using Blender and is intent on doing much the same as you. Greg L (talk) 01:06, 8 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Mentioned you at my RFA
Heya, just to give you a heads up that I mentioned your comments in one of our previous encounters (in a positive way!) in my answer the question #3 of my RFA. I know notifying people of RFA's is frowned on strongly, but I felt that it is only polite to mention my use of your comments :) If you'd like to to remove them or clarify/retract parts then please let me know. --Errant(chat!)11:56, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to see how my words were being used in your RFA. You did not do a faux pax by contacting me here on this. The quote from me was an accurate reflection of my attitude at that time and your use of it now in your RFA takes it in the proper context. I wish I was more familiar with you than that one incident so I could weigh in on your RFA. Best of luck. Greg L (talk) 20:43, 11 February 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Epeefleche has had ample opportunity to fix a simple problem, and is being given a further (probably unwarranted) chance. The project would be better served if you simply advised Epeefleche how serious copyright should be taken and urged them to just fix it instead of creating unnecessary drama. It seems to me that the pair of you are again trying to provoke me into stepping over the line but I will not be taking the bait this time, and will simply request that you stop now. Thanks. wjematherbigissue14:58, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Me thinks thee doth protest too much of thy sweet innocence. After being blocked once for harassing Epeefleche, you thought you’d personally take it upon yourself to look at Epeefleche’s contributions and identify some sort of shortcoming. And you discovered how he had failed to provide a proper copyright tag as he tries to build the project (nice detective work).
Showing the image of a book cover in an article on the book (The Power of Half) is done all the time on Wikipedia (as is also the case with movie posters and CD artwork). But editors must be sufficiently savvy to know what copyright rationale to add to the page. Even relatively experienced editors fail to appreciate the rigamarole / boilerplate / technobabble that is required.
You know, it occurs to me that in all probability, you know full well what boiler-plate fair-use rationale to copy over to that page, yet you elected not to do so, which would have solved the shortcoming for the project in far less time than you’ve devoted to this issue so far. It’s quite clear that you like wikidrama and love making it.
And then, rather than let any of dozens of other editors who routinely watch over this sort of thing address the issue, you thought it exceedingly wise to jump in and badger him about how it had been some 20 hours since you first notified him about his error (something I rather backed you up on) and demand action pronto. You concluded that second post with This is the final warning you will receive in this regard. All you failed to do is figure out some emoticon to append to the end of your post representing an authority figure with pouted lower lip and brow raised in amused disinterest. Again, Bravo; you should be so proud.
Perhaps it wasn’t all that wise for you to have come here to my page to posture and leave your alibi notes, trying to rationalize how your motives are pure as the driven snow. Does your feud with Epeefleche and desire for comeuppance blind that much? You should have just stopped looking at Epeefleche’s contributions after your block.
Now you don’t seem to like what you’ve got yourself into and I’m certainly not going to let you off the hook and let your lame excuses go unanswered as to how you had nothing but sweet innocence at heart when you landed again at Epeefleche’s talk page with that “final warning”-bit. Why not go posture somewhere else? Or, alternatively, you can keep weighing in here, digging your hole even deeper. Greg L (talk) 16:18, 20 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Mather flagged it as a minor, easily correctable issue, including suggestions as to how to solve the underlying issue. It was a bit nit-picking of a complaint, but not one that warranted the drama that seems to have followed. Usually, it could/would have been ddealt with by a simple "oh, thank you. I'll fix it". However, given the previous history between the two, it was somewhat predictably taken as hostile from the onset. --Ohconfucius¡digame!03:40, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No kidding it was taken the way it was. Given their extremely tortured past history, it was the equivalent of two business partners who sued the pants off each other in court, and months later, WJM rang Epeefleche’s doorbell to point out how his fence was a foot too tall per local ordinances. We all know WJM did as he did and it’s natural that Epeefleche didn’t appreciate it. As for who’s at fault for the wikidrama and time devoted by the community in trying to separate those two, we just don’t see Epeefleche following WJE around trying to raise cain with messages of “Final warning”; it always seems to be the other way around. WJE can put down his binoculars looking for something to hassle Epeefleche about and flipping furiously through the code book to see if his fence is OK; the rest of the community is perfectly capable of handling those sort of things without WJE on Epee’s arse making wikidrama. I’m not buying this *innocence* game at all here. I’ve been around the block several times in life and have been around on wikipedia to see simple human nature at work here. And it’s disruptive. Greg L (talk) 11:53, 21 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
comment
Hi there Greg. i noticed you've made many attemts to argue on the ethnic groups gallery articles...i only recently saw your commont ont the spanish american article about the gallery use of raquel welch (i wouldnt of included her unless she didnt mention it in an interview, see interview here)..its also important know that of the latin american-born population in the USA, in th 2009 American community survey 29% choose spaniard as their ethnic ancestry ie not directly immigrating to USA from Spain....
As we've seen bulldog has gone around nearly all articles attempting to completly get rid of the montages which is adds alot to an article, colour and not to mention the most obvious examples of showing that so and so is irish american for example...I was the one who did the spanish american collage and afew others including the european american one which has now been changed by bulldog which i see as fine....even though it was seeming to be difficult to get a consensus on. Hispania2011 (talk) 22:49, 23 March 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This will be the second time I ask you to stop following me around, aspersing me on every page I edit, and - in general - harassing me on wikipedia. If you want to be the bigger man, you will take this to heart and stop. These will officially be the last comments I ever leave to or about you. After this, I cease to consider your presence or ever reference you - in any way - positive or negative - again. I hope you will do the same for me. Bulldog12318:23, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Where did you get the notion that those who edit disruptively may do so with impunity? That is a fallacious notion. You have no entitlement to be disruptive on Wikipedia and then criticize those who might try to mitigate the damage you do.
…and once again find yourself in a situation where you are editing against consensus.
I’ve seen you editwar over these tags and I quickly found the proper remedy: merely discuss on the relevant talk page whether your tag—or any tags are warranted, arrive at a consensus with other editors, and if they aren’t warranted (which is typically the case), they get deleted. You don’t like it when that happens. That can’t be helped.
You don’t like it when I point out that you have a history of tag-bombing articles and appear to be a single-purpose account. But such information is entirely germane to those discussions so the whole truth is considered and is part of a properly-arrived-at consensus. You don’t like that either. And again, that can’t be helped either.
You seem to be operating on the premiss that you may edit disruptively and tendentiously on Wikipedia with impunity and drive away those who disagree with you via incessant baiting and personal attacks. Such tactics don’t work with me—as you’ve clearly discovered.
And now you’ve got an admin, Bearian, frustrated beyond all comprehension with your activities (this thread on his talk page).
Your edit history (500 edits ≤March 2011, here) shows that you are clearly a single-purpose account. Even a rudimentary perusal of your edit history reveals that your activities are disruptive and are invariably at odds with the consensus view.
If you want to come here and do some more of your classic posturing, by all means, I’m happy to respond with truth and facts. That so much conflict swirls about all your activities comes as no surprise to anyone because your own words show that you are vehemently opposed to articles that classify and segregate humans into categories (e.g. Jewish men in sports, Black Golden Globe winners) whereas the consensus view on Wikipedia is simply not in alignment with your wishes; ergo, you now flit about from article to article, trying to get your way in bits after having failed at global RfCs over this sort of thing.
As for my “constantly following” you “around”, like you wrote at the bottom of this thread here at Wikipedia talk:Biographies of living persons, such accusations are nothing but a big game you play on Wikipedia, where you play everyone for fools—apparently in hopes that everyone is too busy to actually go back and pore over the discussion threads to discover the real truth behind your false accusations. Like I wrote at WT:BLP when I was supposedly following you around: That was pretty funny, because you had posted 27 comments there over five days before I bothered to even take a look at goings-on there. I made one post. And you objected to that. So… just pardon me all over the place for having the hubris to weigh in like most everyone else there and actually disagree with Bulldog123 (*sound of audience gasp*). Greg L (talk) 19:19, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand. Are you asking me to stay off your talk page now or are you just going to randomly delete comments I leave you here [9]? If it's the former, then move the conversation to User talk:Bulldog123. Bulldog12319:53, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I didn’t ask you to stay off my talk page and it wasn’t a “random” deletion. My edit summary (∆ edit here) was perfectly clear: “delete baiting”, which it was. But now I’m asking you to stay off my talk page—on this thread, at least—unless you actually have something legitimate to say because right now you are just playing more of your games (playing the clueless innocent here) and I’m tired of your disruption, as are a couple of admins whom you’ve managed to get their eyeballs rolling today. Greg L (talk) 21:15, 3 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
With regard to our disagreement at deletion review, I didn't want my response to you to get overly long. But suffice it to say that the examples I gave were just the tip of the iceberg. I think that if one were to engage in an exhaustive review of sources, one would find a bevy of support for my position, and the sources undercut your position. I don't think that the idea of some line in the sand is a bad one. I simply think you've misplaced the location of the line, as to the subject at hand, for the reasons indicated.--Epeefleche (talk) 19:31, 4 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Greg. The RFC is probably a good idea, but it looks like you have done it rather "informally". There is a specific template, which should be used in order for the RFC to be published. Please have a look at WP:RFC. Favonian (talk) 15:44, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe some people are more sticklers for protocol and maybe things have changed, but not all RfCs have to be queen’s-rules and much has been accomplished in the past in an off the cuff manner to address relatively minor points. Greg L (talk) 17:47, 9 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I seen it before. It looks like a hunk of pure garbage, all the way from the small things to the big things. Kids trying to be futuristic. Wikipedia doesn’t do well for things like that. Greg L (talk) 04:25, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Tibibytes
Greg, Your RFC notifications are clearly biased. Nowhere in the table is the word Tibibyte used. The only purpose of such a headline is to bias the incoming editors. Futhermore, don't you have anything better to do then follow my contribs and copy what I'm doing?--RaptorHunter (talk) 18:41, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oops. Spelling error. It’s not “tibibyte” but is “tebibyte”. It’s the “gibibyte” one that has two “i”s beside the “b”. All of them cause English-language spell checkers to flag them so it’s hard to see when one doesn’t properly spell these words that hardly anyone has heard of. Sorry I’ll fix that; indeed, those ought to read “Tebibyte (TiB). Come to think of it, I’ll revise to Gibibyte (GiB). Both of those are in the table and that is squarely what this issue is about, the use of that terminology, which is utterly unknown to a general-interest readership and isn’t used by the vast majority of RSs. By the way, how you’d find out that I was posting RfC notices with a misspelling? By running around doing exactly what I was doing and stumbling across it? Or by looking at my contribs. If the latter, please stop stalking me. If the former, that seems like a case of the kettle calling the pot black. Leave me alone unless you have something legitimate to say; wikihounding isn’t legitimate. Greg L (talk) 19:14, 10 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
ANI and 3RR violation
You should note that in my response to the ANI I have requested sanctions against you for a number of reasons including but not limited to violation of the WP:3RR rule. Tom94022 (talk) 22:23, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Your tactic of a “the best defense is a strong offense” is quite clear there. It will be interesting to see if it saves your skin for editing against consensus and being tendentious. Your argument is rather funny—even—given that I clearly pointed out at the ANI,five edits by you, four of which are reverts. That contrasts rather poorly my three total edits, which do not exceed the 3RR limit and were all in defense of the community consensus that you were editing against. Greg L (talk) 22:25, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
By now I hope you may have noticed that RH has reverted your last reversion. You are already in violation of the WP:3RR rule. I chose not to report you, preferring instead to include your disruptive behavior in my response to your ill justified ANI. I will report you if you revert again. Tom94022 (talk) 22:58, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am not in violation of the 3RR rule but you are by a wide margin. As for the article, Diego has other ideas. Now, your posturing, baiting, and misrepresentations here are not welcome. Nor will such tactics help you to save your skin at the ANI I filed against you. Please desist with this childishness and stay off my talk page now. Greg L (talk) 23:01, 27 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am compiling examples of this user's behaviour, for an RFC/U to be started shortly. I wondered if you wouldn't mind adding your thoughts (and any examples the RFC does not currently cover) to this discussion. Parrotof Doom07:56, 9 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not even sure about how not to edit a past revision of a page, apparently
Well, I have been down the rabbit hole and have come to this user page all the way from Dante's Divine Comedy (which I found to be quite good) through Daedelus and Icarus, past nonsense and silliness (I also found that to be quite good), twisting through Fuzzball, and lastly down the sewer hole. I quickly decided I would NOT read those pages associated with dates, as they are not even very good dates, and was pleased to see that the whole reason for that was to make a point about not linking dates. I am awfully glad I did not read the date pages and run back here like a dog with thrown stick and a wagging tail to find that point made. I read the user page of Wetman and others, all talking of THE Greg L. I was impressed with the fundamental usefulness (read as quality) of your featured content, except for the Jack-in-the-cube, which I neglected to read out of spite. Coming to the end of your page though cause me to wonder if I would not have wasted less time, and perhaps derived the same enjoyment, from simply reading the 4 date-link articles and left it at that. I am a long time user and promoter of Wikipedia, but a new editor (in fact, don't even look at my edit list) and I am glad to see that such a volatile beast as this is in the hands of the wise and skilled. Similarly I will for the rest of the evening derive some deluded vicarious satisfaction from the inclusion of MY comments on THE Greg L's user page, even if they do not belong here, and especially if they are removed. I agree with VernoWhitney in that the Sewer page is very interesting, and propose that the interest it generates defeats its purpose. I am tempted to put a link to the page on the actual "Manhole" page, thereby refuting the point of your sewer cover's meaninglessness, since it is indeed a fine example of an actual sewer cover, which is a rather ingenious device. Something in my gut tells me this link already exists, but if I check and find out that is true I will have to delete all those sentences I just typed. Well the length of this edit is now begging for deletion, but do my thoughts on these topics not give some enlightenment or use to other readers? Truly though, thanks for the great work on this fine project, and the wit with which you executed it. Jake Papp (talk) 22:28, 31 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Greg, I'm sorry but it seems that you were somehow offended by my apparent attacks upon the Anwar Awlaki Talk Page, I did not intend any offense. I only wish to point out what my third-grade student has, that the article is not neutral.
(2) I had no part in writing the comments from the IP in Las Vegas (?).
(3) I do not understand why you think I should simply accept the statements of the Gov't regarding who is a "terrorist" and who is not, considering the history of how the US State Dept. hangs and removes that label from persons and groups when it is expeditious to do so.
The 'facts' -- allegations -- you outlined in your screed against "Mr. IP" do not prove that Awlaki or OBL is a terrorist. Even former S.O.S. Condoleeza Rice admitted as much when she stated remarkably that "even a member of a terrorist group is not necessarily a terrorist." Elsewhere, Rice also claimed that the incidental killing of an American citizen in a CIA missile attack "does not raise a constitutional question."
<pov> These people including Mr. Obama are evil.</pov> -Stan
Stan Battles (talk) 20:20, 6 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Fair use rationale for File:Cobalt Drafting Assistant demo.ogv
If you have uploaded other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on those pages too. You can find a list of 'file' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "File" from the dropdown box. Note that any non-free media lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If the file is already gone, you can still make a request for undeletion and ask for a chance to fix the problem. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 20:33, 21 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I guess I should have looked up “perverse” (Google search here). The top-most definition reads “Showing a deliberate and obstinate desire to behave in a way that is unreasonable or unacceptable, often in spite of the consequences.” Well… there you go! I guess we at least partly agree on this *Latin thing* of yours after all. Greg L (talk) 02:30, 30 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]
No personal attacks
You wrote: "I caution IQinn, who has a long and distinguished record of editing articles in favor of Islamic extremists"
That is absolutely false i edit these article in a NPOV. Your accusation is false and i demand you strike this in your comment. IQinn (talk) 20:31, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It’s absolutely true. If you want to make a big deal of it, be my guest. Your edit history is a matter of record. But tell you what, I’ll go back and make it clear that that is my opinion based on my reading of your edit history. Just pardon me all over the place for having an opinion. Greg L (talk) 20:35, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It is absolute false and you should prove it by diffs. I work in a controversial field and i try to implement NPOV. This is an personal attack on rather that an opinion unless you provide diffs. I suggest you stay away for the debate on Aafia Siddiqui as it is clear that you can not assume good faith and if this is your opinion that there is no way at all for you to discuss in a civil way what is obvious to see in that debate. Ridiculous you are so wrong and i highly suggest you get out of here as you clearly can not WP:AGF. Best. IQinn (talk) 21:31, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As I wrote there, it is my opinion of the quality of your edits. I said nothing about you having bad faith. This is the grown up world now; there is no requirement that others admire your edits as much as you do nor are others to give you an A+ for effort when they really think your work is POV-pushing nonsense. BTW, stop edit warring against consensus over on “Aafia Siddiqui and its talk page. You are totally out of control there. The consensus could not be clearer; no one there is in agreement with you. Now you think you can be tendentious here and get into my face in yet another venue? Stay off my talk page now, please. Greg L (talk) 21:41, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
With regard to the Aafia Siddiqui article, The consensus was quite clear on the talk page, here at #BLP that the picture of Siddiqui wasn’t a violation of BLP. Just minutes after losing on that thread, he tagbombed the article with a {POV} tag. Knowing what kind of editor IQuinn is (tendentious), we patiently went to the next step (starting #Is iQuin’s {POV} tag necessary?) and arrived at a consensus that the tag was just flotsam left over from the photo issue, amounted to editwarring, and should be deleted. He hoped to use the tag as graffiti to force continued discussion. So he started edit warring on the tag. He’s been blocked before for misusing tags. Why was IQuinn not at least warned about editing against consensus? Greg L (talk) 23:11, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, thanks for the note. Our approach toward dispute resolution is evidently different. I am hesitating to make content disputes like this one into personal issues about individual people, as that tends to alienate fellow editors and poison our collaborative atmosphere. It's important that everyone feel included, and that we recognize good faith even when it is masked by editing habits that we disagree with. That's not to say that it's never necessary to show someone the door -- but it is important that we treat it as a last resort. Specific to this situation, ordinary dispute resolution channels may prove useful here, as the disputing parties may benefit from neutral and fresh perspectives. Regards, causa sui (talk) 23:44, 12 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Your response made no sense to me until it this Dispute Resolution Noticeboard incident where User:Epeefleche pointed out that he had given you—and admin—royal in-your-face grief at this ANI. And, it turns out, I had joined in at that ANI against you with 34 posts (oops).
Now it’s over one year later. In this discussion thread on Aafia Siddiqui, an editor with a history of tag-bombing articles after losing a consensus discussion (and had been previously blocked for such editwarring antics) was clearly editing against consensus… again.
Your writings above (It's important that everyone feel included, and that we recognize good faith even when it is masked by editing habits that we disagree with) undermined two bedrock principles of Wikipedia that editors respect and abide by the consensus and not editwar.
Then I find out at Dispute Resolution Noticeboard about how A) I had been in your face before at an ANI (something I forgot about since I have a busy “real life”) and B) he has been accusing you of wikihounding him. You were clearly an involved admin. As an uninvolved editor commented at the DRN: Involvement is generally construed very broadly by the community, to include current or past conflicts with an editor (or editors), and disputes on topics, regardless of the nature, age, or outcome of the dispute.
Just pardon me all over the place for saying precisely what I think. You blew it. Four editors were dealing with an editor who is one of Wikipedia’s most obnoxious, tendentious, combative editors of all time. That editor complains about how Wikipedia’s articles on convicted terrorists amount to “hate crimes,” writes disjointed English prose, is tendentious beyond all comprehension, and has views well outside of the mainstream. At Aafia Siddiqui, he was editing against consensus, knew full well what he was doing, and was happy to do so because it’s clear that he considers “talk” as being for the weak; all he understands is the sword and force (ANI). Rather than just block him for 48 hours for once again editing against consensus, you slyly used PC pablum like suggesting we endeavor to make that character “feel included” (*sound of audience going “Awwwwe” *) to put lipstick on a pig and try to pass it off as a prom date. The result was to afford that editor a greater platform from which to disrupt and served to produce protracted wikidrama and escalate tensions rather than defuse them. You wanted to see if you could use your trappings of power to frustrate Epeefleche and exact your revenge.
As I wrote, I had forgotten who you were. I marched all fat, dumb, and happy to your talk page and asked why you did as you did on the Aafia Siddiqui talk page. For some reason, you elected to take my post, which I put on your talk page, and transplant it here with your response. Now I’m leaving this thread here to remind me of who you are. Consider yourself from hereon as “involved” when it comes to edit disputes involving me from now on, m’kay? And remember, the definition of “maturity” is doing what is expected of you rather than what you would like to do. Greg L (talk) 15:43, 19 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
After you said “If there are no objections” and the only people who responded all objected because that wasn’t the proper venue? Oh… joy. As you can see in retrospect, your dragging that vortex of wikidrama to the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard was a wonderful exposition of truth and fact, the outcome of which seemed not to your liking.
Beating around the bush with stuff like “Well, let’s assume he had good-faith intentions when he deleted stuff against consensus and stuck a shank in you. M’kay??” is for 16-year-old kids hoping to apply for their admin privileges.
And some good came of it. The disruptive editor who fancied that tag-bombing articles was way-cool, thought that once placed in an article, tags can’t be removed unless he agrees to it—even if there is a consensus to do so. He pointed to some way-bad text in the {{POV}} tag documentation that actually said that! As you can see, I got that goof corrected, here. There will hopefully be less editwarring all across Wikipedia because of less tagbombing articles now. Greg L (talk) 17:12, 18 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for response. It's about removal of the whole letter, not its italicization. BTW, in my current disambiguation investigation, there might not be any new stuff for G-suit article, after all. PeterWD (talk) 15:41, 2 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. Have you noticed my perverse, irreverent streak yet?? Just having fun, not taking any of this too seriously, and trying to get something done that needs to be done so we can all go back to enjoying our hobby a bit more. Greg L (talk) 20:44, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don’t understand your message. If you meant it in a good way, please explain. If you meant it to have a hostile or ominous or threatening tone and chose to keep it slightly ambiguous as to your exact meaning, please be advised that this is a no bullshit zone. Just say what’s on your mind. If you can’t do that… Greg L (talk) 21:02, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, darwinbish posted here? Sorry! My socks are getting out of hand. That's the way the evil twin talks, I'm afraid. I'm always having to run after her and apologise. I assure you there was no hostility, threat, or for that matter ambiguity intended. I didn't even realise there was room for such a supposition. I'll keep the twins in their own zone in the future (=their own pages and mine). Bishonen | talk21:27, 18 August 2011 (UTC).[reply]
Oh. I see. Sorry. I’m not as experienced a wikipedian as one might think. I’m slow when people are pulling my leg; the car is usually speeding up the road ready to bash the next mailbox as the rear-seat passenger is waving my torn-off leg at me from out the side-door window as a trophy. I’m up to speed now. Greg L (talk) 22:37, 18 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, Greg. I think these things go better when you just let a contribution like Locke's roll by. He already knows that you know that a closing admin knows about content and not just numbers. He's also probably pretty sure you're not his biggest fan. You can just let it happen. -GTBacchus(talk)02:22, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I know he knows. He knows I know he knows. I wanted to make sure everyone else knows that something fishy maybe kinda sorta might be going on there. Greg L (talk) 03:27, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Everyone knows all about Locke, and you look a lot better when you're letting it roll by. Trust me, please. It makes it look like you're haranguing people for not agreeing with you that haranguing people is wrong. It doesn't matter if that's your intention; ANI has its own logic. You can't do anything right on there sometimes. -GTBacchus(talk)03:39, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I’m done there. It seems there is clearly a consensus to do something with him this time around, but no consensus on what to do with him. Getting away with what he does so often only seems to embolden him. Greg L (talk) 03:47, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
ArbCom? Oh… joy. For mere mortals, going to ArbCom is like going into the Inquisition, which has the power to hack off body parts if your theology ain’t straight. That applies to the asshole, as well as all his cronies, his wife, his mistress, even his trash collector if he once said something blasphemous at party; they can all be turned into toast or their tongues removed. For you, no problem. Not in the least. If I were PMA and was being hauled off to ArbCom, I’d think about having a testicle surgically removed and frozen in liquid nitrogen for post-ArbCom reattachment. Keep up the good fight. Greg L (talk) 04:31, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Heh. Thanks for the vote of confidence. I understand there's a fair amount of red tape involved. I don't even know who to list as parties to the dispute. I usually work in areas where all I have to know is what I'm doing... -GTBacchus(talk)04:44, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Listing parties to an ArbCom dispute. (*sound of deep sigh*) That’s sort of an art form. Oh, sure; there are probably guidelines for that sort of thing. In cases that the police would call “mutual combatants,” members on both sides of a dispute generally have body parts removed. In those sort of things, naming parties is often met with a first post that reads “I HEARD NOTHING!” from those who can read the handwriting on the wall.
This PMA-related issue is quite different. Those who are fighting mad and indignant with PMA will for the most part want to be named. A sort of informal metric that comes to mind is anyone who debated (as opposed to simply making a !vote) in the ANI would generally be named.
But I don’t pretend to be an expert on these sort of things; been there once for the full-meal-deal, and been named once in one wherein said I wanted nothing to do with it. I really like your style and think you will do a perfectly fine job starting off an ArbCom. Just take your time and ask around for advise.
Like John Lennon wrote: Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. Enjoy the ride. Wikipedia is a place where learning important life lessons and debate skills can be had without any real harm whatsoever. My motto is “Be bold and always do the right thing; even if it is unpopular with the clique into which you would like to ingratiate yourself.” That’s my 2¢. Greg L (talk) 05:06, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Not wanting to ingratiate myself anywhere makes that last part easy. You realize I could never pass an RFA today, right? Not a chance in 9 circles+Limbo. I'll ask around about parties to the dispute. I think I see the lay of the land pretty well. -GTBacchus(talk)05:15, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Greg: "if I were PMA ...". If you were PMA we'd all be in a helluvalot of trouble. As Linus of Peanuts said: "Why, the theological implications alone ...". Now, if I may address our over-industrious colleague here (since this should be of general interest):
Bacchus: Great work! I'm glad all of that detailed explaining at your talkpage is over. Good to have it on record for future use. I did not join in the Google talk at WP:TITLE. Too preoccupied and too fed-up with that whole deal. But I'd like to tackle the issue in a sustained and systematic way sometime, since it's central to choice of titles and to the proper conduct and assessment of RMs – as we've seen amply demonstrated. I'll be in touch about that.
I want to query the tone of at least one of your recent posts at the ANI on PManderson, in which a flippancy and certain humour is on display in a serious thread. It appears to me to have been most unhelpful to the participants and the job of the closing admin. Tony(talk)09:20, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I’ve noticed in the past that I seemed to have an outsider-like influence on PMA since I am less often as frustrated with him as you and certain other editors. He seemed to have listened to me a tad. Not much of that attribute was in evidence on the ANI. That I started the ANI clearly had something to do with that. Hey, you are most welcome for my efforts to finally address this issue, which has obviously been an annoyance for much of the community but not so much for me.
Anyway, back to your point. You are, of course, correct. I’m done there. See the above thread. It appears that GTBacchus was advised that the proper place to take it next with PMA is to ArbCom and he’s running with that. As you can see, I told him ArbCom is a powerful venue with the power to hack off body parts. If it goes there, I won’t be taking the lead and certainly won’t be engaging PMA directly; I’ve given up on him. Greg L (talk) 13:07, 20 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Diacritics
I see you are also annoyed I did not answer your e-mail. I don't always; but the principal reason I didn't is that I think the recent RfC dealt with the problem as far as it can be dealt with now. There is no consensus to always use them, Hans Adler's claims aside; there is no consensus to follow the sources (fifty editors have objected); there is no consensus, and is never likely to be, to abandon them.
All that can be done is to point out, case by case, what the English sources say, and see if this makes any difference; if this is generally accepted in practice, then there will be evidence to show that our practice is to follow the sources. SeptentrionalisPMAnderson17:21, 22 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]
A Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets
In all seriousness, if it interests you and you haven't seen it before, have a look at A Synopsis of the Astronomy of Comets. My interest is more in the history of astronomy (and science in general), and I see from that discussion that you have an interest in amateur astronomy. If you ever wanted to work on an astronomy article, I'd be happy to do that. And I apologise for the "waste of time" comment. I do have a personal standard I try and maintain (not very well) to read and try and improve an article (or suggest an improvement) if a name change is being discussed. Just to keep things a bit more grounded than it can be in an endless whirl of naming and style discussions. One article I'm pointing out a name issue on at the moment is Georg Forster. Just me and the editor who brought that to FA at the moment. Would you be willing to give a second opinion at that article's talk page? Carcharoth (talk) 00:00, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much for taking the time to clarify your interests and objectives and patch things up. I also appreciate the overture to help on an FA.
At the very time my MediaWiki e-mail beeped on my iMac, I was deep in real life working on a 20-patient protocol for a medical trial that is expected to be performed in Germany. You seem to gravitate towards things-technical and to—as Sara Palin might say—things that “are *scientificy* and all that.” Working on this protocol, I occasionally need to know technical details about arcane-things-German, such as whether the placards in a German hospital warning about ‘high magnetic fields leading into MRI rooms might affect cardiac pacemakers’ are always written only in German or also have English-language translations (since English is so common as a second language throughout Europe). I routinely correspond with an American living in Germany who has excellent command of the German language but is A) not *technical*, and B) not German and is therefore not intimately familiar with all-things-German. Do you know such an individual?
Oh, I think I know the answer to the placard thing (they are only German language). But I’m sure that isn’t the only thing about German customs and practices I need to know about. Greg L (talk) 00:15, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I do know some people in Germany, and I also know someone who (funnily enough) worked in the area of translating technical documents between German and English (and the other way as well, I think), but I'm English and live in London. You'd be better off finding someone who lives in Germany (there are several Wikipedians I could point you to if you like). Georg Forster was fluent in both English and German, but he is (a) dead and (b) might struggle with new-fangled stuff like MRI machines and cardiac pacemakers. :-) Carcharoth (talk) 00:54, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Quoting you: but he is (a) dead… I hate it when that happens. Please, I would greatly appreciate someone who is a) is alive, b) is very technical minded, c) is a native German, and d) is comfortable communicating in English. Do any of the ones you were thinking of meet all those criteria? Greg L (talk) 01:06, 6 September 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Creating a section for your proposal starting with "Blocks are meted out not as retribution but ..." I would support that formulation as well, but you added it not as a proposal but as an "oppose" vote. Have mörser, will travel (talk) 02:52, 18 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I have a sense of bad ‘cess over there because this is not a right-or-wrong issue and notions of political correctness are intertwined with fact and reality. In other words, that venue has too much “nonsense quotient” for me and I am liable to write “fuck off” to someone since I am busy in real life and have too little patience right now. Everything on Wikipedia—including its talk pages—is in the public domain. You are most welcome to take my proposal and advance it as a motion of your own. Let me know how it turns out. Greg L (talk) 03:01, 18 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, I just joined wikipedia. I really enjoyed reading your comments in the Talk page of the Anwar Awlaki article. You're ability to cut through the attempts of others who use policy to POV-push is inspiring. If I knew how to give stars, I's give you one.
Rock on brah!
TheLittlestTerrorist (talk) 13:17, 4 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for dropping me a line and your kind words. I am rather surprised anything of mine is still there on Talk:Anwar al Awlaki because that was quite some time ago; I’ll go look now to see what I was up to then… Greg L (talk) 03:53, 5 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. Jeez, you must have dug back to Archive #2. Such fun. You know: debating I.P.s who write yodaisms like “such flaws this article has, the Western press biased it is labeling Anwar a terrorist who is not”. Greg L (talk) 04:08, 5 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Notability of ice hockey players
Concerning your recent comments made at Talk:Dominik Halmosi, please know that all of the ice hockey players mentioned on this page meet one or more of the criteria for presumed notability as listed at WP:NHOCKEY. Like all of subs listed at WP:Notability (sports), this notability standard has been determined through consensus of all interested editors. If you feel that the criteria of NHOCKEY needs to be addressed, the proper place to bring this up would be at Wikipedia talk:Notability (sports). Cheers. Dolovis (talk) 17:56, 11 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I am disinclined, Dolovis, to tread anywhere near WP:HOCKEY since it appears at the moment to be populated by a club that does not understand how Wikipedia works and just wants to do whatever it likes. I’d have to be out of my mind to waltz all fat, dumb, and happy into a like-minded club busy doing what they want and tell them they are not permitted to do what they desire. There would be far too few sensible editors who would even know of what you guys were up to who could back me up. Most of the rest of Wikipedia doesn’t know or care about hockey and couldn’t possibly care about Czech hockey players playing on Czech hockey team in the Czech Republic and neighboring countries. Trying to inform the rest of the wikipedian community of what you guys are doing would just run afoul with WP:CANVAS. That’s one of the Catch-22s of Wikipedia and is why aberrations like this occur; Wikipedia is a big place.
It appears there is an avid crowd of hockey fans currently active the last few months over on WP:HOCKEY who have been responsible for unwise things and it is just getting them into all sorts of hot water. That is bound to frustrate them because so much that seems important to them now will prove frustrating and futile in the end. Per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. That phenomenon has clearly taken root on our hockey-related articles. All of Wikipedia’s articles must comply with WP:NOTABILITY—yes, hockey stuff too, Dolovis (really really).
Fans of Czech hockey teams can’t run off and hold little baby-RfCs and decide to turn the English-language version of Wikipedia into a venue for paying homage to such players when they are effectively unknown in the English-speaking world. All that means is that a cabal that desires to flout fundamental principles of Wikipedia does not constitute a consensus; it is just a cabal that breaks rules.
We had exactly that sort of thing (local cabals ignoring more global principles of Wikipedia) occur five years ago when a fewer than a dozen editors, who struck me as worshipers of Wesley Crusher who wanted to speed Earth’s adoption into the United Federation of Planets, decided that Wikipedia should no longer follow the way the real world worked and ought to write The computer came with 256 MiB of RAM (rather than the “256 MB” the entire rest of the planet uses). They had Wikipedia doing that (writing “kibibits” and “mebibytes”) for three years. Indeed, local cabals can do unwise things in the short run, like run afoul with WP:RS and other fundamental guidelines. I’m sorry, but I just can’t support what you are attempting to do. Happy editing.Greg L (talk) 18:08, 11 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
That RfC (perma-link here) is an RM, on the talk page of a single Czech hockey player, where the question at hand was to put Slavic-language diacritics in the names (body text and titles) for ten different articles (on ten different players). I was in support of that, BTW. Their names have not been effectively Anglicized through frequent and familiar use by the preponderance of most-reliable English-language RSs. As I was about to add my “support” !vote, I pondered why their names had not been effectively Anglicized and realized it was because those ten players are not in the slightest bit notable in the English-language press.
As you can plainly read there, I wrote that that an admin should speedy-close the RM and a new RfC should be started there on that same page of that one Czech hockey player to delete the articles for all ten Czech hockey players. What’s good for the goose (RM) is good for the gander (delete) because they all share a common issue of lack of notability. It is inappropriate to have articles about those Czech players in a general-purpose English-language encyclopedia. Greg L (talk) 19:24, 11 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Copyright
You were involved in a discussion here, which has been alluded to in a new discussion here. I'm letting all editors in that first discussion, other than those who are already participating and one who has been banned from interacting with me for hounding, know of this newer discussion.--Epeefleche (talk) 21:36, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I think so. The phrase certainly fit the circumstances of that post to which I was responding. I’m glad you appreciated that line and took the time to say so. Greg L (talk) 20:19, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Seriously. This is the quality of writing I expect to see coming from the folks at the Daily Show (anyone who watches that regularly knows it's a complement). I can hear Jon Stewart utter that line in any number of contexts. LOL 2 days in a row. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:29, 5 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
yoghhhhurt
I just added his nick to the beginning of my paragraph (do you think that is sufficient?). It was originally a edit conflict with you, and i was too lazy to change it around by that point. Generally I don't like to resort to using an editors name over and over in place of 'you' and 'your' because sometimes it comes off as sort of dickish. -Kai445 (talk) 21:09, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Understood. All’s well that ends well; both for that little thread with PMA (who really shouldn’t be on that page at all) and for the move, where the “support” voters share a common and consistent premise for their position. I would not have fared well in the communist Soviet Union. A younger me would have been indignant about not being able to cry foul over “the few having dominion over the many” and I would have been busting rocks in a gulag for ten years. Fortunately, this is Wikipedia where good and bad outcomes are virtual ones (even though many editors get too wrapped up in it and make it their own reality). It has been a true joy collaborating with you and some others on all of this. Happy editing.Greg L (talk) 21:19, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. I think it's clear that you were offended by my posts in the yogurt discussion. I understand that my !vote was made in a tone and manner likely to cause offense, and I have retracted what I believe to be the problematic part of it. You were right to call me out, and I'm sorry for being an ass.
If my amended post is still offensive, please let me know, so can further edit myself in accordance with good manners and good taste. It is important to me to avoid alienating other Wikipedians, and I very clearly screwed up. I'm sorry. -GTBacchus(talk)22:35, 6 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
As I wrote at Talk:Yoghurt, it takes a truly big man to apologize and not all wikipedians (regular or admin) are capable of doing so. Your gesture means a lot to me. Thank you. Greg L (talk) 01:17, 7 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
KiB
Hi Greg. There's a lot of KiB usage in the tables at Pentium#Pentium-branded processors. I've never heard those units used to measure cache size, so it's strange that someone thought it okay to use them there. Before I change them, could you confirm that you think they should be changed? Thanks. GFHandel♬19:12, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Confirmed; they must be changed. Per WP:COMPUNITS, the IEC prefixes are not to be used on Wikipedia to denote the value of binary capacity and may only be used in articles directly discussing the units, such as “Megabyte” and “Mebibyte.” The units are entirely unfamiliar to a general-interest readership because no chip manufacturer, no computer manufacturer, and no computer magazine uses such terminology when communicating to a general-interest readership. Even for a high-end enterprise product directed to IT professionals, like the Dell Precision™ WorkStation 330 Dell uses “MB” for system memory. It’s notable too that Intel themselves (that’s a citation from our “Pentium” page), use “MB” to denote the cache capacity of their processors.
All this is to say is that nothing has changed in how the real world works when a widely participated (huge and contentious) RfC on this issue settled the issue a few years back. I don’t know why the “Pentium” article is attempting to communicate capacity in “MiB” and the other IEC prefixes, but I have a strong hunch that issue has been visited on its talk page. Regardless, per WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. Let me know when you make the change and/or if you get push-back and I’ll try to help you. Wikipedia policy is perfectly clear here. Greg L (talk) 21:01, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
It was a civil misunderstanding there (perma-link here). I was not editwarring and I was not making personal attacks on anyone else there. In fact, I was telling another editor to not be uncivil. An editor was telling another editor he couldn’t make edits on that page because of *who* he was. I at first thought he was telling me that he reverted my edits there and was telling me *I* couldn’t edit there. As it turned out, he was telling another editor he couldn’t edit because he was overly involved. My position was that we never tell other editors in good standing that they can’t edit and only focus on another editor’s edits. As it was, it was all over two editors complaining to each other about an edit on yet another article (WP:LAME). So I made what I thought was a middle-of-the road edit to that article to make peace. And the response to that effort of mine? User: Boing! said Zebedee, who had already struck the offending text in his original post (regarding how an overly involved editor can’t edit) and responded Looks good to me. And yes, all just a misunderstanding - but all's well that ends well. Cheers. Greg L (talk) 23:57, 11 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This is rather odd. I see no evidence of Greg being warned prior to being blocked , nor any evidence of a blockable offense. Disruptive editing? What or who exactly was being disrupted? Comments on a talk page are disruptive? Granted there was a misunderstanding, but it was clearly an honest (and kind of funny, IMHO) misunderstanding, which was resolved by those participating quite civilly. I find this baffling, actually. This is how editors are supposed to behave, AFAIK. If this doesn't get immediately reversed, I will take this to AN/I. --Born2cycle (talk) 00:04, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with Born2cycle. This is bewildering. I support taking this to AN/I as the block appears to be a misuse of the tools (that has to be explained to the community). GFHandel♬00:45, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, so it was intentional! Without a warning or explanation (until 3 months later)? I suggest that kind of block is much more disruptive than whatever he thought Greg was doing. --Born2cycle (talk) 04:32, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The ANI discussion resulting from the block mentioned things like "one off" and "account compromise", however now that we know that not to be the case, perhaps the ANI discussion needs revisiting? Note that this is not 2over0's only suspect block, e.g. this. GFHandel♬05:46, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think it's crucial that there be consequences for this kind of abuse of power. But my experience with AN/I is that unless there is an immediate problem that requires admin assistance, they ignore it. That said, I don't know where to take this. Maybe AN? --Born2cycle (talk) 07:21, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you B2C: notwithstanding your sense of what is righteous and good, what actually happens on en.Wikipedia with rogue admins is another matter altogether. The foul must pretty much shock the conscience of the admin and ‘crat community for a rogue admin to be desysoped. In my opinion, the problem here with 2over0 are three-fold:
His comment at the bottom here on his talk page shows he is effectively immune to social pressure;
His comment that I was “spewing vitriol across a number of conversations,” where no other editor, admin, or bureaucrat remotely shared that view, demonstrates he can resort to hyperbole to defend the indefensible;
His lengthy absences (two weeks before my block) and then briefly materializing like a phantom from a parallel universe to make a block out of the clear blue that baffles everyone else and just as quickly disappearing suggests he is not engaged in Wikipedia until someone alerts him via email and asks him for a no-questions-asked block.
As I recall, he specifically denied #3, above. His explanations weren’t in the least bit credible given the evidence. He hadn’t been active on the discussion thread (hadn’t ever been on that page before as I recall), never showed an interest on the Yogurt article content itself, didn’t leave a warning on the Talk:Yogurt discussion page, didn’t leave a warning on my talk page, and didn’t even hang around on Wikipedia long enough to respond to questions on Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard when the community was going “WTF?!?”
2over0 isn’t the first admin who lost interest in Wikipedia but he is a bit rare insofar as his apparent willingness to serve as a hired gun for his old peeps. I continue to believe the long-term remedy for this kind of phenomenon is to bring the English-language version of Wikipedia in conformance with the other-language versions and develop a procedure for the community to desysop admins that doesn’t look like the procedure to remove the Pope. That is how we best serve the interests of the editor community and—in turn—that is how we best improve the process of building the project.
It has been three months since this bad block was resolved. Its being revived here… now—apparently in response to yet another bad block by 2over0—while understandable, is less than ideal. I would prefer if you two (B2C and GFHandel) discussed this further on your respective talk pages unless you have a specific question for me. It’s nice to hear from you both though. I’ve been very busy lately in real life. Greg L (talk) 17:31, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Still can’t edit though
I tried to write “Thanks, gents” at the ANI but I am still blocked (notwithstanding the splendid green color of the above block notice). Should I be patient? Or has something slipped through the cracks? Maybe someone can point this out to Horologium. Greg L (talk) 01:08, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
If this block was the result of someone hacking an admin’s account, then I have a hunch what it was about: touching upon a “nuclear” hot-button issue. I got involved this evening in a hot-button issue over the IEC prefixes (“mebibyte = MiB”, etc.) and made “Pentium” compliant with WP:COMPUNITS (∆ edit, here). That battle over the improper use of the IEC prefixes here on Wikipedia for three years resulted in some editors being banned and a couple who threw themselves on their swords. It might be that one or more of these old editors have come back as I.P.s in order to keep at it. What with my edit at “Pentium”, this block may indeed have been a hack by one of these editors. Greg L (talk) 01:22, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that this is a hacking concern, yet. I think that the boilerplate disclaimer on 2/0's user page is receiving undue attention here. Unless there is another indication of a compromised account, I don't think we need to worry about it at this time. Horologium(talk)01:27, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps. It seems odd that he would have one, single edit (to block me) after two weeks of inactivity and then immediately become unavailable again without a peep of a response after other editors inquire on his talk page. I am impressed with the community’s response at the ANI over this block. Greg L (talk) 01:31, 12 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Dolovis. If a block has a modicum of merit, then it can indeed suck to be blocked. But this one elicited a “Whaaaat??!??” reaction from me. The unblocking admin wrote There was no reason for him to be blocked at all, especially without any sort of warning or discussion from the blocking admin.The ANA over it even resulted in an RfC to de‑sysop the blocking admin. It was a drive-by-blocking that reflected poorly only on the blocking admin, who—as if this writing—was still electing to not respond to inquiries from four members of the wikipedian community asking that he explain himself.
It used to be that the process for becoming an admin amounted to showing the club that you possessed one of their Ovaltine decoder rings; editors nominated themselves, answered boilerplate questions they themselves posed to themselves (stuff that was as about as in‑depth as “Do you love puppies, appreciate what Wikipedia adds to the known universe, value diversity, and respect authority?”). After answering “Yes” a half-dozen times in a row (was that tricky??) they were admitted to the club.
Someday, I predict, these admins who were grandfathered in will be subject to a new process of revalidation where they will have to show they enjoy the support of the community. I’ve long embraced a worldview that leaders shall govern only with the consent of the governed. This is a principle currently lost on the English-language version of Wikipedia. Greg L (talk) 18:33, 15 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
To me, the real-life analogy is a policeman who purposefully arrests and jails someone innocent for no legitimate reason whatsoever... a career-ending action. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:23, 15 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
On Wikipedia, a drive-by blocking by an admin who hadn’t been active for two weeks, somehow managed to stop by Wikipedia long enough to dish out a bad block, and then goes back to real life (watching “Wheel of Fortune”) means he’s gonna have to not respond to inquisitive and indignant editors on his talk page with the expectation that they eventually get bored and the hubbub dies down (which it eventually does). He learned a lesson, nonetheless. Greg L (talk) 19:37, 15 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
File permission problem with File:Handle with TransMagic add-in in Inventor.png
Thanks for uploading File:Handle with TransMagic add-in in Inventor.png, which you've sourced to Screenshot - Autodesk Inventor. I noticed that while you provided a valid copyright licensing tag, there is no proof that the creator of the file agreed to license it under the given license.
If you created this media entirely yourself but have previously published it elsewhere (especially online), please either
make a note permitting reuse under the CC-BY-SA or another acceptable free license (see this list) at the site of the original publication; or
Send an email from an address associated with the original publication to permissions-enwikimedia.org, stating your ownership of the material and your intention to publish it under a free license. You can find a sample permission letter here. If you take this step, add {{OTRS pending}} to the file description page to prevent premature deletion.
If you did not create it entirely yourself, please ask the person who created the file to take one of the two steps listed above, or if the owner of the file has already given their permission to you via email, please forward that email to permissions-enwikimedia.org.
If you have uploaded other files, consider checking that you have provided evidence that their copyright owners have agreed to license their works under the tags you supplied, too. You can find a list of files you have created in your upload log. Files lacking evidence of permission may be deleted one week after they have been tagged, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. You may wish to read the Wikipedia's image use policy. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Ronhjones (Talk)15:29, 27 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, trying to improve Wikipedia with images is one of the more difficult and frustrating things about trying to contribute to the project.
I created the solid model shown in that image, made the screen capture, converted the image file it to the most compact format possible (png), and uploaded it to Wikipedia. I followed the directions during the uploading process when the wiki‑system asked “Did you create this entirely be yourself?” and used the preferred license it suggested (cc-by-sa-3.0). Alas, I still screwed up somehow. (*sigh*).
I can only imagine that the problem is one of the below two possibilities:
Some bot cruising for copyright violations didn’t believe me when I said I create the image and license it under creative commons; or
This is about how one can see some menu items in the program I used at the top (showing how one can import files from AutoDesk Inventor and they will come out looking the same) and I failed to say something like There are some visual interface elements showing in this image to enable the reader to discern that AutoDesk Inventor is being used to export the original solid model. AutoDesk’s rights aren’t infringed when simple visual elements are illustrated because there is no accompanying output code or source code. Displaying such basic visual elements to show something is considered fair use in order to offer an encyclopedic treatment and critical commentary of the software in question and how it accepts solid models from other programs.
I’m just guessing that it might be one of the above two problems. If it is the #2 issue (a 58-pixel-high area at the top of the image showing visual elements of the program I used), then perhaps I shouldn’t have checked the checkbox that I created the image myself and should have instead said the image was the work of someone else. Or perhaps I should have checked the box that came closest and then hunted over Wikipedia for images showing screen captures of software being used, snagged the fair-use template there, and added it to my Creative Commons license allowing others to use the image of my handle.
I have absolutely no idea if my above-conjectured fair-use rationale cuts the mustard because I didn’t take any courses in copyright law before trying my hand at being a wikipedian. Greg L (talk) 20:59, 27 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I've tidied them up - I'm still awake... The main purpose is to make sure they will stay, if they got moved to commons, then (sadly) you get no notifications of any deletion requests! They go to whoever did the move, be that a move bot or a user. I've removed the CSD#F11 tag as permission is not applicable for non-free. The cc-by-sa had to go as that is the item that makes it "all free media", the non free template is best as "Non-free software screenshot", also removed the "Move to commons" template for you. Images now show the hidden cats as "Hidden categories: Non-free Wikipedia files with valid backlink : All non-free media" as expected. Ronhjones (Talk)01:10, 28 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
And I've found out how to attribute just your handle image - just add some text - a CC declaration does not have to be a template - they are convenient for most purposes, but not for split usage. Ronhjones (Talk)01:28, 28 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I was wondering if you could spend a few more words on why you think this: "... embarrassing steaming pile and I can see why it has proven to be essentially impossible to improve it over the years." about Cold fusion. I just want to understand. I thought it was interesting how you presented yourself in the first few edits on the talk page and how you took another approach after you had read a few sources. Thanks anyhow --POVbrigand (talk) 18:38, 28 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
The YouTube video of the presentation by U.S. Navy scientists made me realize that there may be some cold-fusion reactions occurring in their apparatus. That, however, is far cry from having 5 megawatt CF reactors commercially available, which is simply absurdly crazy talk and there is no and can be no truth whatsoever to such claims. Yet there are wikipedians and I.P.s who believe such nonsense. And they can create a user account, wait a few days, and edit away and argue on the talk page until the heat death of the universe. While there on the talk page, these “faithful” complain about the unfair skepticism of the mainstream scientific community and badger other wikipedians like EdChem and me. I don’t need that in my life; it’s a discouraging because how things unfold on the talk page is not determined by the merit behind arguments, but by a numbers game where the number of editors with a profoundly limited understanding of physics and science exceed the number of editors who do. And it seems that the editors who don’t have a proper grasp of science have more time on their hands and are more prepared to push the limits of tendentiousness.
These naive editors have been hoodwinked by CF charlatans making false claims and don’t have the scientific acumen to see that. My assessment of these wikipedians has nothing whatsoever to do with failing to assume they have Good Faith intentions—people who think magical leprechauns are real have good faith intentions—but is instead a criticism that they don’t understand the subject matter they are attempting to write about. Though that opinion might shock the conscience, that’s just too bad because Wikipedia does have a requirement that editors be competent. Many young and aspiring technical writers descending on Wikipedia had grown accustomed to teachers giving them an “A for effort” even when they turned in real stinkers for homework. Wikipedia is part of the real world. Here, people aren’t paid to inflate Dick’s or Jane’s self-esteem and there is no politically correct requirement for others to admire what they write as much as they do.
As I wrote on the talk page, our “Cold fusion” article is painful to read. I’ve looked at all parts of it up to the pain threshold and intently focused on some areas. Because of the effort of the many CF proponents (believers) to get various CF claims into the article, which are then parried with counterclaims by others to point out that the claims weren’t as they appeared, the article has a pronounced battleground quality to it, just like our “Race and intelligence” article. It reminds me of Irving Berlin’s “Anything You Can Do” song (♬♩“Yes I caaaan!” “No you can’t!” “Yes I caaaan!” ♬♩). It has an abysmal Flesch reading ease of only 14.9% and at well over 8000 words just in the body text, it is too lengthy. The article is in sore need of a total rewrite to make it worth a crap as an encyclopedic bit of technical writing.
In my view, the only way to fix the article so it reads in a linear, encyclopedic fashion with proper technical-writing techniques and is properly grounded in mainstream science with citations only from genuine, mainstream, peer-reviewed reliable secondary sources is to assign volunteer editors with a long history of contributing quality work to a wide range of scientific articles and locking the amateurs and CF-faithful out for a period of time.
You wanted to understand my basis for writing how the article is an embarrassing steaming pile and I just told you my views. Yes, I softened my personal scientific opinion and now suspect there might be some low-energy nuclear reactions occurring in some types of CF apparatus. But that can easily be explained as the product of the statistics underlying the kinetics of thermodynamics—the Maxwell–Boltzmann distribution-effect. That is far cry from believing people have seen their apparatus explode due to run-away CF nuclear reactions or how 5 megawatt commercial reactors are now available to buy at two bucks per watt (preposterous). Over and over it has been amply demonstrated that Fleischmann and Pons made numerous errors in their assumptions and measurements. It’s a very simple experiment and after 22 years, people would be making thousands of watts if there was any merit to it. And none of this personal speculation on the underlying science and what might actually be occurring has anything to do with the quality of the technical writing in that article, which is lousy and makes the article the steaming pile of crap it is.
I won’t be dragged further into this cold-fusion morass. If I see anything written by anyone here on this thread or a following thread that ticks me off, I will either delete the thread or delete the offending post. This is a no-conflict zone. If you want me to engage in debate on cold fusion, take it up on the Talk:Cold fusion-page (which I ignore so don’t hold your breath). Wikipedia is an all-volunteer, collaborative writing environment that is supposed to be an enjoyable hobby for those who participate; there is no requirement that I get embroiled in wiki‑drama or complaints over how the mainstream world of science is dissing cold fusion. Greg L (talk) 20:46, 28 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
And, FYI, I’ve done research with palladium coatings and studied their micro-textures with scanning electron microscopes. And wrote a patent application covering that topic. There is a surprising amount of overlap between fuel cells and cold-fusion research. I find it exceedingly frustrating having to argue with people who get their fill of baloney from bogus cold fusion sites and buy it hook, line, and sinker; for instance, the stuff seen on LENR‑CANR.org, which appears to me to be a vanity site run by Jed Rothwell. On that vanity site (this is all my opinion, now Disclaimer), he has documents like “Cold Fusion and the Future” in which he writes of “Robot Chickens and Other Prodigies”. I suspect User:EdChem has similar sentiments underlying why he’s largely thrown in the towel on our Cold fusion article. Greg L (talk) 03:45, 29 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Your open letter to Aliens
I was just reading through your user page when the above title (or something similar) caught my eye and I felt compelled to read it in its entirety. I found it quite amusing and thought I would stop by and let you know. --Kumioko (talk) 19:49, 29 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You won't believe this but the Extraterrestrial Embassy is in my street: Google Maps. Sometimes I walk past it and have a quick glance, but I've never seen anything unusual (but that's probably what they want me to believe). :-) GFHandel♬20:08, 29 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Oddly I believe I even see the dubious outlines of a Black sedan peeking from behind the garage and I'm sure its just a coincidence that there is a place for Coaching managers and mentors a short distance away...Very interesting. --Kumioko (talk) 20:40, 29 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
A couple of streets north-west of the embassy is my local watering hole (appropriately named Grumpys). They sell alcoholic beverages there that allow you to forget that only 200 metres (660 ft) away there might be extraterrestrials getting their passports stamped. We could use lots more observant people such as yourself in the area, however if you do visit please bring enough aluminium to make your very own tin foil hat (because there's no way you're getting mine). :-) GFHandel♬21:03, 29 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
An update: Google has removed the text "Extraterrestrial Embassy" from the map picture (as linked above). I can confirm the address as 5 Garnet street—which is indeed the house with the black car parked out back. They have a Facebook page that includes their mission statement as: "We strive to provide communicable environments for all EBE and locals to get along, we will endevour to improve the life of any humanoid through diplomatic and direct means". I live way down the other end of the street, but I suspect that I am still well within the impact crater that will result if they manage to upset the wrong EBE. GFHandel♬23:30, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Kumioko, for taking the time to let me know you enjoyed “An open letter to extraterrestrials.” The WWII- Vietnam-generation divide had been on my mind for quite a few years and I felt compelled to get them written down so I could give the issue a bit of a rest in my mind. My childhood’s friend’s father was really the epitome of the “Archie Bunker” character from “All In the Family” (YouTube clip). He was very simple minded and bigoted. Since “All In the Family” was playing in primetime during this period, the parallels were unmistakeable and striking. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I met the very first WWII-generation guy who would have been Tom Brokaw’s and Steven Spielberg’s paradigm of the Greatest Generation; someone about whom a hagiography would properly be written. Greg L (talk) 20:34, 29 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
You’re welcome, and it seems to tie in nicely with the similar themed story abit above it. Together these would make a good story in a variety of magaizines IMO. Great reading. --Kumioko (talk) 20:40, 29 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate your sharing that sentiment.
P.S. My aunt was a pilot before the war and taught Navy pilots how to fly during the early part of the war. She met Eleanor Roosevelt in the ladys’ room at Felts Field here in Spokane. My aunt had done her thing in the stall and got out of the stall to zip up her flight suit. Eleanor saw that she was a female pilot and struck up a conversation—I assume about what, exactly, my aunt was doing for the war effort.
Later, my aunt got work as a test pilot during the war. B‑25 planes were sent stateside for refurbishment at a plant in the southwest. Her job was to take the planes up immediately after refurbishment and make sure everything was in working order. She wrote my mother during this time and said they needed workers in the plant. So my mom drove down and got a job refurbishing oil-pressure regulators. She’d push a cart under the work line as mechanics dropped the pressure regulators off the engines. Then she’d take a few dozen of the regulators to her workbench and refurbish them. If she didn’t get all of them refurbished by the end of her shift, she hid them from the next shift because she didn’t want anyone else working on “her” regulators. I never knew any of this—about either of them—until decades after my aunt died. My mother, as I write this, is 89 years old and wintering in Arizona.
It’s no mystery why there was no WWII memorial built until recently. The WWII generation didn’t think, “Hey, let’s build a memorial to us!” Everyone was involved in the effort and the only novel aspect worth raising a statue to was one celebrating that the war was finally over.
In my travels, I’ve taken the time to look at Civil War and “Great War” (WWI) memorials. They invariably have plaques mentioning when they were erected. Typically, they are erected about 25–35 years later by a thoughtful and appreciative “next” generation. Clearly, the Baby Boom generation had their reasons for waiting. That we had to look around and see our parents’ generation dying off to finally see things in historical context is unfortunate.
The Confederate Air Force periodically flies a B‑17 bomber to Felts Field and they have an evening dinner (I forget how much per plate—but not much). The last time we went, we did so with our best-friend couple. From what my wife told me afterwards, I had a goofy smile on my face at times during the dinner. They played Glenn Miller music in the early evening with the B‑17 parked diagonally on the tarmac nearby as the last of sunset clouds faded black. I was lost in history. Greg L (talk) 20:58, 29 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
This may surprise you but I share your sentiments. I have had the honor of doing a number of things that have allowed me the ability to reflect on the happenings of several of the Wars including my father (he was at Pearl Harbor when it was bombed). By strange coincidence I was stationed or visited a couple of the places he was stationed including Pearl Harbor (I was on the military color guard when the parked the Missouri there and when the decommissioned it in Bremerton, Wa). I have been fortunate to hear the stories and reflections of quite a few of the people who lived through those unfortunate events. Its a shame that more people today don't realize the things they take for granted. --Kumioko (talk) 21:16, 29 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
"Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence", such as the opinions of my behavior expressed by you here at WT:RM, are personal attacks. See WP:NPA#WHATIS. Why you think any of this is appropriate at WT:RM is beyond me.
Please remove all your comments about me and my behavior from that talk page. If you have an issue with my behavior, take it up in an appropriate forum, like my talk page, please. Thank you. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:03, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You changed another editor’s post by improperly hiding behind the apron strings of WP:NPA (perma‑link here). His was a legitimate post, was not a personal attack, and you have no leg to stand on. And if you really thought that when another editor improperly makes a personal attack that one should raise the issue on that editor’s talk page, then you would have gone to GTBacchus’s talk page and politely asked him to refactor his post. But no, you baited him by changing his post with a B.S. claim of deleting something that was a personal attack.
The recent MfD on a dirt‑file page you created on someone shows that you have an uncanny ability to use Wikipedia’s policies in a lopsided manner. And your arguments there show that you choose to exhibit a profound resistance to understanding what others are saying; either that, or arguing is a game of acting clueless—a game of “blind man’s bluff.” For that, Beeblebrox (yet another admin) dished you a nice trout. Now…
You are cruising for a WQA if you keep being tendentious and disruptive. Considering all the enemies in high places you’ve made lately, you may not like the outcome of a WQA one bit. Were I you, I’d cool your jets. I personally think that you fancy your participation on Wikipedia not as collegially helping in a collaborative writing environment, but as a contest and game of brinkmanship where you feel you must get your way at all costs. Greg L (talk) 19:14, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
If that's really your opinion, it makes me sad. The very idea of anyone being in a "high place" relative to other editors is contrary to the essence of WP, and your choice of words reveals much about you, which is sad. --Born2cycle (talk) 19:33, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
(*sigh*) I’m referring to admins, who have a lot of what I call “practical power” on Wikipedia, if not “paper power.” Wikipedia is part of the real world; wake up and smell the coffee. You are ticking off admins and regular editors galore with your tendentious brinksmanship; it’s disruptive and if it doesn’t stop, we may well find ourselves in a situation to gauge whether there is a community consensus to put an end to it. Greg L (talk) 19:50, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
P.S. I note this response GTBacchus left you on his talk page:
I'm not going to remove my comments, because they're relevant to how requested moves work - do we continue to tolerate behavior of the sort you're displaying, or don't we? Relevant issue.
If you want specifics, I'm happy to provide more details, but the evidence is precisely the section in which I posted. My use of the pronoun "this" indicates that the dispute at hand is evidence of your tendentious behavior. You don't let a thing go, but instead fight every decision you disagree with as far as you can, like a lawyer bent on reaching the Supreme Court, or so it has appeared to me over the months I've seen you do your work. You want a list? Such behavior is contrary to our cultural norms, and is harmful to the project.
You are fulfilling my prediction to a 't': tendentious complaints, and no evidence of self-examination. Apparently, you just don't consider that your behavior might be a problem. I suggest you consider it, very, very carefully.
If you feel that I'm out of line, there are appropriate fora to drag me to, and I'm sure you're fully aware of them. If I make a list of your problem behaviors, with detailed evidence, it'll be an RFC/U, because I'm not going to waste my time doing it twice.
Good day to you, sir. -GTBacchus(talk) 19:12, 16 January 2012 (UTC)
What you guys don't seem to notice is that I push only when the decision in question is obviously problematic to a significant number of other editors besides me. Recent examples of this include Yogurt, Catholic Memorial School and Sega Genesis. I suggest in all three cases, the CMS one being ongoing (the other two longstanding issues now finally and probably permanently resolved, which is my goal), my efforts have ultimately contributed towards improving the encyclopedia (final/permanent/amicable resolution of contentious issues), yet my behavior there is exactly what you guys are complaining about. I don't see what it is you think I'm doing that's inappropriate or problematic. Let's just say your accusations are markedly absent of links to diffs. --Born2cycle (talk) 20:24, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
As was amply demonstrated at the recent MfD on a dirt‑file page you created on another contributor, chasing your arguments and refuting your fallacious misdirection and wikilawyering point-by-point is a colossally time-consuming endeavor. Wikipedia is supposed to be a fun hobby for those who wish to collegially work with others in a collaborative writing environment. Your tendentious wikilawyering and willingness to argue things until the heat death of the universe are not a fit for such an environment. I will no longer play your games nor jump over straw-man hurdles borne of your imagination; dealing with you will be done on my terms from hereon. As to your Let's just say your accusations are markedly absent of links to diffs, I will take precisely the same approach as GTBacchus; he said If I make a list of your problem behaviors, with detailed evidence, it'll be an RFC/U, because I'm not going to waste my time doing it twice. Now, stay off my talk page for at least two days; all you are doing here is further annoying me and is just digging a deeper hole for yourself. Greg L (talk) 22:10, 16 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. That seems to be what GTBacchus is also saying is the best way to handle this if B2C doesn’t do a 180 in SOP ASAP. Thanks. Greg L (talk) 01:45, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Please stop wikilawyering. Posturing as you did here does not impress. Both your above diffs are to perfectly legitimate edits of mine, such as reverting your edit of another editor’s post—and he’s an admin who is limited in his ability to whack you. I’m not following your around as you do your thing to Wikipedia and making life difficult for you. And I’m not even going to your talk page to *point things out to you*, like you’ve charmingly done to others (∆ edit, here).
If you are going to the talk page of an admin whom you drove clean off of RMs because of your tendentiousness, and flutter your eyelashes with a “Gee golly, what could I possibly have done wrong??”-line, don’t act all surprised when you later go there and discover evidence (with links) of precisely what you did wrong. What did you expect? Do you really expect everyone there has agree with your statements that amount to how you are pure as the driven snow? Just because you can imagine wild things does not make it incumbent on all rational beings to accept them. That includes ponderings from you such as All I can figure is that you're annoyed by my ability to successfully build consensus. Gee, I’m sorry but that conjecture missed the mark.
You have much to learn about Wikipedia. Your tendentiousness has driven other editors away from certain areas of Wikipedia. In order to protect itself, the community is prepared to go to an RFC/U and you may not like the outcome of that. Greg L (talk) 23:29, 17 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Time to move on?
I'm not fully in support of everything B2C has done, but the latest post (at MfD) looks like a serious attempt to apologize, and start over. I don't think it is helpful to pile on with accusations of lying. Please consider moving on. B2C accepts that (s)he has a writing style that has created problems, and is asking for advice, and trying to do better. I don't pretend I've followed all of the interactions, so maybe I'm seeing only a portion of the issue, but I think it would be nice to let this go and see if problems re-occur. FTR, I think the decision to delete was wrong, but in the grand scheme of things, not worth the battle to review the decision. I urge you to overlook some possible inconsistencies in the responses, accept that B2C is trying, and move on.--SPhilbrick(Talk)18:50, 20 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Greg, I note the link at AN to your proposed RFC/U. I haven't looked at it yet, but I already can say I'm happy for it to be done by someone other than me (I had proposed action at the same AN thread, very tentatively). It should only be launched if there's very good diff evidence. Tony(talk)06:41, 21 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know if it is your purpose, and I don't doubt you're acting in good faith, but to me, and perhaps to an outside observer, these comments, placed where they are, seem designed (perhaps unconsciously?) to undermine me in those particular discussions. Whatever your motivation, they are harassment, and I want you to stop commenting about me and my behavior in these settings where it is inappropriate.
Harassment is defined as a pattern of repeated offensive behavior that appears to a reasonable observer to intentionally target a specific person or persons. Usually (but not always) the purpose is to make the target feel threatened or intimidated, and the outcome may be to make editing Wikipedia unpleasant for the target, to undermine them, to frighten them, or to discourage them from editing entirely.
Please also be aware that these confrontational comments and personal attacks on multiple pages are evidence of wikihounding.
That said, constructive criticism is always welcome... on my talk page or in appropriate venues. But unsolicited advice on the talk pages of policy pages, articles, or those of other users, where, again, their purpose appears to be to undermine me, is not welcome. I hope that's clear. Thank you. --Born2cycle (talk) 05:05, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My above edits were done either on the talk page of an administrator, User:Elen of the Roads, or I directed her attention to a post. You haven’t been threatened nor have you been intimidated. You’ve just been asked by the community to not edit tendentiously (which is in violation of WP:Tendentious editing) and which is a form of disruption (in violation of WP:Disruptive editing). You should be mindful that many other editors and admins (User:GTBacchus, User:Tedder, User:Elen of the Roads) have been trying to get you to understand this.
Disruptive editing is a pattern of editing that may extend over a long time or many articles, and disrupts progress towards improving an article or building the encyclopedia. Disruptive editing is not usually considered vandalism, but vandalism can be disruptive.
Note also that what you label “harassment” at WT:AT (∆ edit here), read in total as follows:
Born2cycle, here are the number of posts by editors here on this page as of this writing:
Born2cycle: 98
Kotniski: 74
Dicklyon: 72
Greg L: 38
JCScaliger: 30
Blueboar: 23
Ohconfucius: 9
Kwami: 6
Well, if one wanted to be “Number one”, you’ve got it… in pure edit count, anyway. If you truly posses great facility to use facts, logic and reason to explain something to people who apparently just can't get it, (∆ edit for this claim, here), perhaps you might lighten up on keyboard pounding (there is no requirement that others admire your writings as much as you apparently do) and allow your logic to persuade instead of making everyone have to scroll further. There’s clear evidence here that if you were to back off with your edit counts, probably a full half of everyone else’s edits would disappear since a lot of us here find ourselves compelled to respond to your saying the same thing over and over in a vain effort to merely stem the tide of all your keyboard pounding. Greg L (talk) 01:09, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
It was a legitimate observation that you writing an awful lot there—more than your fair share. Perhaps you should consider your impact on the community and tone it down a tad??
Please note that admin GTBacchus, in User talk:GTBacchus#So sick of this bullshit also wrote “unsolicited” advise to you while explaining why you drove him off of Wikipedia. That reads as follows:
Wikipedia is not made of policies and pages that might or might not adhere to the policies. It's not made of arguments that might or might not be consistent or valid. It's made of human beings, with feelings, volunteering their time because we enjoy this and find it fun. If your actions make others stop finding it fun, then you're hurting the project, because you're making people not want to contribute. You've sucked the fun out of it for me, Born2cycle, and that's why I get kind of sick when I see your name.
You don't get it. You don't get when you're driving someone to the point of hair-pulling frustration, that maybe you should back the fuck off, and that maybe some things are more important than making clever, detailed arguments. If you drive off other volunteers, then you're doing net harm to the project, no matter how cleverly you clarify a rule about a trivial titling matter. I hate you, because you're more interested in being right than you are in whether other people can stand to interact with you. Please stay off my talk page. You make me sick.
Thanks for pissing in my corn flakes, you self-centered prick. Now drag me to WQA, like the officious fuck that you are. I'm just about fucking sick of this project, because people like you are allowed to run rampant. I spend years, trying to do my very goddamned best at being an admin, and trying my very goddamned best to be pleasant to everyone while doing it, and I'm largely successful at it... until you come along with your revolting attitude, and never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER, EVER, EVER, EVER let up, no matter how ROTTEN you make other volunteers feel about giving their hard work and time to a project they used to love. I'm ready to throw in the fucking towel.
Is anybody listening? -GTBacchus(talk) 05:31, 19 January 2012 (UTC)
That’s a serious bit of advise and I’m not sure you are really taking it to heart.
P.S. I let Admin:Elen of the Roads know about your concerns (at the bottom here) to make sure your concerns receive the due diligence they deserve. Anytime there are hard feelings and one editor feels that he is being threatened or intimidated, such concerns should be carefully looked into. Greg L (talk) 06:04, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Like. This feels much more constructive. Thank you. I'm well aware of my issues and I'm attempting to fix them. But I made my pledge two days ago - those statistics you cited were from edits made prior to then. At any rate, every page has someone who has made the most edits. I'm not sure that making about 35% more edits than the #2 and #3 contributors (especially considering my propensity to make "fix/tweak/clarify" edits - a characteristic I note that you share) is necessarily indicative of a problem.
I suggest about 80% of the current text of WT:AT wouldn't be there if those few objecting to my Dec 21 edit would have engaged in substantive discourse about the change and their objection, rather than stonewalling in favor of the status quo. Status quo stonewalling (a new essay I just started still in early draft form - your contributions are welcome) worked to prevent the move of Yoghurt to the more naturally stable Yogurt for eight years, and now it's being used to object to the restoring of half a dozen words to the Recognizability criterion which clarify what recognizability actually means on WP (that we strive to make our titles recognizable to those familiar with each respective topic, not to those who are unfamiliar with the topic, which any dozen clicks on SPECIAL:RANDOM can readily confirm).
I note that the edit warring on WP:AT today did not involve me - so it's not all about me as some like to argue in order to justify dismissing my points. --Born2cycle (talk) 06:12, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You are under a microscope… an electron microscope, right now. I am now going to back WAY off and let you sink or swim. If the next community action against you bites you, it won’t be from me. Greg L (talk) 06:17, 23 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Community input required: lowering delist bar at FPC
You are receiving this because of your current or past association with the Featured Pictures project. Following on from several cases where closers did not observe the prescribed minimum votes required for a delisting, there is now a motion to entirely dismiss the requirement for a minimum. Please participate in the discussion as wide-ranging changes may arise.
This is what you wrote at ARBCOM: "Not too long ago, I wandered in, saw the conflict, and inquired if someone could explain the distinction between the two versions being advocated. The first time around, my inquiry was met with the sound of crickets chirping. "
In short, will someone please explain what this is really about? Greg L (talk) 17:43, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
Unfortunately, the distinction between V. 1 and V. 2 seems superficially innocuous. ... Greg L (talk) 22:33, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
Hmm. Did you read the opening comment of WT:AT#Clarification_of_recognizability_lost? I think it's all there... the difference is that V1 restricts the scope of recognizability of a given title to those who are familiar with the topic in question, while V2 omits that restriction in scope. The implications are huge. With V1, obscure topics with unique names can have just those unique names as their titles, which is how articles have been named traditionally in WP (click SPECIAL:RANDOM about a dozen times for probably at least six examples); V2 indicates more descriptive information should be added to such titles, which is contrary to what is actually normally done: only when the additional descriptive information is actually needed for disambiguation per WP:D and WP:PRECISION. ... --Born2cycle (talk) 22:56, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
I answered your question, explaining the distinction between the versions, succinctly and completely about five hours after your first inquiry. How is that "crickets chirping"? --Born2cycle (talk) 03:14, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think I had asked that same question earlier. Perhaps it had been archived, or perhaps it is there higher on the page, or perhaps I remembered that incorrectly. I suspect it either of the first two options since I recall having to ask the question again. Greg L (talk) 03:23, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, you were right. I should have gone back and carefully studied War and Peace, Part Deux and dug to the bottom of it. I’ve corrected my statement. Thanks. Like I wrote there, you are bright. Good catch. Greg L (talk) 03:33, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! You probably won't like hearing this, but whatever the hell was going on at that MfD discussion, it felt like the same kind of miscommunication. In this case I was actually trying not to repeat myself in explaining the distinction to you since I had already done so in the explanation that I posted when I made the original edit, so I linked you to it:
It appears they did not understand they were changing the meaning of the criterion by implying it needs to be broadly recognizable to meet the criterion, rather than simply be recognizable to those familiar with the topic, which is a huge change. The long-standing original wording emphasized that titles don't need to be "universally recognized" to meet the criteria, but only have to be recognizable to those familiar with (though not necessarily expert in) the topic.
I did repeat it as quoted above after you said you still didn't get it. Unfortunately, you didn't get it after my second explanation either, so I think I gave up (in an already extremely frustrating situation, this was really difficult for me - and is also why I was so shocked when a few weeks later you had a much clearer understanding of what was going on - though you apparently didn't realize you were looking at the same distinction between the same two wordings).
Anyway, I see you left this in your ARBCOM report: "Part of this “not being able to explain”-phenomenon is that the partisans are often loath to openly admit what certain wording means because the wording being discussed is purposely ambiguous and wholesome sounding but has hidden meaning; openly explaining the practical effect would expose the individual’s agenda."
I agree this is exactly what Dick, Noetica and Tony are doing, because on the one hand they revert efforts to change the wording, but they also deny there is much difference in meaning (then why fight it?), much less explain what the difference is. I, on the other hand, noted from the outset that it was a "huge change", and explained what it was. So I take deep offense if there is any implication that your statement applies to me, because say what you want about me being too wordy (and I'm probably doing it now), but one thing I definitely never do is not "admit what certain wording means because the wording being discussed is purposely ambiguous and wholesome sounding but has hidden meaning". To the contrary, I try to be clear to a fault. It might be TLDR, but don't say it's not there!
By the way, your 600-word limit idea is probably a good solution to help me with my problem, but it doesn't address the Dicklyon/Tony/Noetica issue at all. Have you looked at what they said about your poll? They don't accept it either. They were less willing to disrupt something you were trying to do than something I was trying to do, and your word limit rule helped too, but I don't see any acceptance of community consensus on their part. That's why I recommended what I did at the end of my comment. What do you think of that?
And I actually got more people responding and supporting the same wording a month ago - it just wasn't in a concentrated formal poll format, and nobody but Kotniski and a few others took the time to read through the three sections to find all of them. But it was also unanimous.
I also note that neither of our efforts to show consensus support for the edit has effected a change in the actual wording. The stonewallers are still succeeding; I might need to add a paragraph on the "take it to ARBCOM" delaying tactic to that essay.
One last questions if you don't mind, and it is important. You write: " However, [B2C's] manner of going about his business to make that point drives others away from the discussions. " What did I do specifically that you think drove others away? Why, for example, do you think no one participated in the poll I started a few days before you started yours? Mine is at WT:AT#Recognizability wording Poll/RFC (you have to click show to see it). Thanks! --Born2cycle (talk) 04:11, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Responding to your last paragraph and the question it concludes with, I’ll turn that question back on you like Counselor Troi on Star Trek TNG : why do you think no one responded to your poll but came out of the woodwork at the one I shepherded? Don’t answer that one just yet; sleep on it (genuinely so). Respond after you’ve showered, shaved, and eaten breakfast. Greg L (talk) 05:07, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
after you’ve showered, shaved, and eaten breakfast Done. I don't know. while our polls weren't presented in the same manner, I don't believe there is anything in that difference that explains the difference in response. But I might be wrong, which is why I'm asking. Of course, your poll came out after there was a few days of discussion about my poll, so that might have made a difference. What do you think? --Born2cycle (talk) 19:02, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Another theory: Because of my tendency to write posts that are TLDR - many are accustomed to ignoring what I say, regardless of how sound and civil it may be? --Born2cycle (talk) 19:09, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Your *other* theory. Precisely. Let’s go to movies again. Have you seen the 3D animation The Polar Express ? Do you remember the Know‑It‑All‑Kid? Even Santa Claus gave him a mild dressing down for being like that. At the ArbCom request, did you see Johnuniq’s comment? It’s the one that goes I have occasionally attempted to work out what the dispute was about, but have always been driven away by the pointless walls of text. Besides TLDR (long posts), people also don’t like responding to something, only to have to see (or listen to) retort after retort (speaking to GTBacchus’s “ever, ever, EVER”…” comment). In other words, besides a “wall of impenetrable text,” people don’t wan to be further frustrated by responding to something only to be met with still more walls of text; it rapidly induces Wikipedia:Don't-give-a-fuckism. So what are people going to do about choosing where on the project they want to engage? So…
Back to The Polar Express. People who understand what the Know‑It‑All‑Kid is like, don’t even want to sit beside him on the train. Where do they go? To an empty seat or one occupied by someone else. When discussion and debate is ongoing, time is limited, you only half-way care about the issue anyway, and you want to get in and get out having accomplished something, who amongst these 12 Angry Men would you like to briefly discuss an issue and try to get it resolved? Juror #3? He’s pushy and opinionated.
Brevity. I write letters to the editor of our paper. Something like 13 of my last 14 letters over many years were published (and the one they elected not to publish didn’t surprise me since I had pushed the “provocative” boundary pretty hard). They limit you to 200 words. I’d write letters in MS Word, kept it damned short, do a word count, and discover I had 260 words. Amazingly, I was always able to squeeze it down to 198–200 words. It’s a good exercise.
I think you truly are like Sheldon Cooper. Has anyone who has met you in person made that observation?
I think it is best to pursue these “personal development” discussions off‑line via email. If you care to email me, I will be more than pleased to offer you observations and suggestions. Greg L (talk) 20:52, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Appalling emails received
Personally I think that's disgusting, and once the case is opened you should definitely forward them to Arbcom - noone deserves that. If you forward them action will be taken.
If you don't know who sent them the other thing you want to forward is all the email headers. Google for "show all headers" for your email service and send Arbcom those as well. -- Eraserhead1 <talk> 09:14, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
It was private correspondence from editors I know well and who clearly totally lost their heads over this ArbCom stuff. Thanks very much for your concern though. Best wishes. Greg L (talk) 09:20, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
This post. One would think you would have every right to be pissed with me. Instead, you react like Sheldon Cooper: “Well, where is the logic in thaaat ?”
Oh, you've made me angry. I just see little point in expressing it in cyber communications. No one in real life has compared me to Sheldon Cooper, by the way. I'm much more emotionally expressive in person than I am in cyber life. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:57, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
And that is maturity, which, when mixed with tendentiousness, is a force to behold. ;-) I agree 100 percent with your views and goals on the objective facts of wiki‑business. But I disagree 100 percent with the manner in which you try to influence others. As you’ve seen too clearly, you defeat yourself. Greg L (talk) 22:00, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding of his position is that WP:AT needs a rewrite to say what he believes it should it say and in the way that he believes it should say it (more or less). He believes the incremental changes it has been having are damaging and inhibit a revolutionary (my word) type of change that he favors. As far as I can tell, everything he says and does, including supporting a year lock on the page, support this theory of his understanding. For example, with the lock-down idea, I think he's looking at it as a way to stop all energy and effort made at incremental/evolutionary changes, presumably so focus can be given to a more substantial rewrite that he favors.
Greg, your post of 15:52, 4 February 2012 (UTC) is the best and most lucid explanation of the problem I have yet seen. I would hate to see this post disappear into an archive, and I hope you will at the very least develop it into a formal essay linked from Article titles.
I had elsewhere started to write a rejoinder to Ravpapa's earlier post about "power", but decided to leave well enough alone, and never posted it there. If there are any ideas or phrasing of mine with which you agree, and that you feel might be usefully integrated into yours, please help yourself to them:
I disagree with Ravpapa's post about "power". This discussion isn't about "power", though it can seem to devolve into that. It's really more a problem of WP naming policy being a Procrustean bed for specialties like ornithology or classical music, where a field of study has developed guidelines that best suit their specific needs, and then here at Wikipedia they get pushed and pulled to fit into schemes that are not just foreign to them, but by their lights simply don't work as well. That's how I see it anyway. But then I also have my own bete noir concerning encyclopedic tone as someone tried to describe it. I truly believe that if we are attempting to be authoritative we should also try to sound authoritative, and not "dumb down" to the lowest common denominator of readers. Redirects do all the work, and the wording at the start of an article's lede assures immediate easy access to any and every wanted article. More properly formal article titles are noticed by most users, and do serve a valuable purpose in at least offering to a reader a concept of how the topic fits into a more general scheme, rather than reinforcing his/her limited view of the article in isolation.
Thanks for dropping me a line. I have four thoughts:
If you hope my post on WT:AT has the greatest possible chance to influence others’ opinions, it would also be helpful to weigh in underneath my post that you support the points I made. Accompanying that sentiment with cogent reasoning of your own in support of it goes even further.
With regard to Ravpapa’s post, (perma-linked here), I note his comment about power of the policy clique as well as the two other times in that same post where he mentioned about how disagreement over the guidelines governing titles is fundamentally about “power”. Since my *candid* streak has apparently surfaced (again) this evening, I’ll tell you that the very first thing that crossed my mind is that this guy, who is asking for *two* tin‑foil hats, likely also shares those sentiments.
I learned a new word: “procrustean” and “procrustean bed.”. However, it is an adjective-modified noun and I think Websters has it correct; it is lowercase.
“Procrustean bed” sounds better than “Generalist editors with little-to-no understanding of the world’s thousands of specialty fields, hoping to apply simplistic rules to bring harmony and consistency to a complex and diverse world. And they clearly think that when Wikipedia bucks how the experts handle things in a particular field of endeavor, the experts will bang the sides of their heads and exclaim ‘Wow, those volunteer wikipedians sure are right!’ ”
If I may WP:JAGUAR ya for a sec, there are other reasons for not capitalizing "procrustean"; see WP:MODLANG (search for "platonic" to find the entry). Also, it's fallacious, and assumptive of "neutral, ignorant" faith at best, to suggest that those who prefer consistency over rampant specialist nit-picking are "generalist editors with little-to-no understanding of the world’s thousands of specialty fields". Many are specialists themselves, who, for the greater good, simply put aside their job-related stylistic conventions instead of insisting on them and smacking random readers in the face with them. >;-) — SMcCandlishTalk⇒〈°⌊°〉Contribs. 18:50, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
A Barnstar Point
A Barnstar Point
Awarded for remarkably pithy commentary: "If a high-profile [Wikipedian] poll is conducted that brings in widespread participation from editors who had previously stayed away from [the] venue, and the holdouts who had been stonewalling and preventing progress merely slouch, stuff their hands in their pockets, and walk away, then that proves that they knew full well that their arguments were not sufficiently persuasive, or didn’t have sufficient numbers, or both. ... Trying to now torpedo the current consensus by stating that certain people somehow didn’t have an opportunity to participate is nothing but sour grapes ... On Wikipedia it’s called ‘wililawyering’ which is disruptive and mustn’t be rewarded." 00:49, 10 February 2012 (UTC), Wikipedia talk:Article titles thread "Why no action on implementing community consensus", which made my list of "Smartest things I've seen on Wikipedia". — SMcCandlishTalk⇒〈°⌊°〉Contribs. 18:50, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Indeedy. I almost took an unhappy wikibreak over all the recent argumentation, a day or two ago until someone barnstarred me for putting up with it all. >;-)
I actually just cited your quote near the bottom of WT:MOSCAPS, where someone is saying that MOS, generally, doesn't have widespread consensus (as in, at all), despite him never having gone to WT:MOS to file an RfC or to VPP to broadly make such a claim for community examination (the sour grapes part). People have been "slouching and walking away" with regard to MOS like this by sticking to some of its sub-guideline talk pages in (frequently successful) hopes of shifting the WP:LOCALCONSENSUS there in favor of their interests, because hardly anyone watchlists there, and their ideas get shot down at WT:MOS proper because they're weak. Then they claim some new consensus against what MOS says (doubly absurd here, because they're arguing for keeping language that MOS itself intentionally deleted several years ago! D'oh!) I couldn't make this stuff up. It's not really about caps or no caps, but about guideline consistency and how consensus actually works around here. — SMcCandlishTalk⇒〈°⌊°〉Contribs. 05:35, 11 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Greg L. I am currently conducting a study on the dispute resolution processes on the English Wikipedia, in the hope that the results will help improve these processes in the future. Whether you have used dispute resolution a little or a lot, now we need to know about your experience. The survey takes around five minutes, and the information you provide will not be shared with third parties other than to assist in analyzing the results of the survey. No personally identifiable information will be released.
Please click HERE to participate.
Many thanks in advance for your comments and thoughts.
Steven, I greatly appreciate your efforts to make the dispute resolution process responsive to community feedback. I was named in “involved editor” in the latest ArbCom action over what occurred over on WT:Article titles but was not one of the key actors who were named by the admin who became frustrated beyond all comprehension and filed the complaint.
This latest ArbCom was a far cry from my previous experience, where I was an actor and where there was widespread sentiment at the end of it all that ArbCom had acted like the Inquisition and that various victims had their tongues and other appendages hacked off with red-hot swords.
I tried to fill out your survey but am busy in real life. I must take you to task for an innocent misrepresentation or miss-assessment you made above in your template. There is simply no way that survey can be filled out in five minutes. In addition to scores and scores of checkboxes, there are many text boxes to fill out with narrative descriptions of opinion. The only way one could possibly fill out your survey in five minutes would be to whiz through the checkboxes and, in each of the text boxes, paste “Kilroy was here.” And even that would likely take more than five minutes.
Also, there were a number of checkbox matrices for which I simply didn’t know the right answer. So I tried to just leave those blank. But at the end of it all, I found that your survey tool wouldn’t accept the form until every single checkbox line had one of the boxes selected. You might consider a “Duknow” button at each line; doing so would give you better science since I have a healthy suspicion that many editors will just fill in a series of “Sometimes” from top to bottom because it is the nearest thing to “Yadda-yadda” in their minds.
I would also think you will get better science and stats if you give a more realistic disclosure of how much time commitment will be required of participants. If many a candidate participant looks at his or her wristwatch (or cellphone for the younger crowd) and thinks “Well… I’ve got five minutes now,” only to discover they are looking at several times that time commitment, what may seem like very poor survey participation may actually be the product of many people starting on your survey and bailing in the middle of it. Oh…
BTW, I thought rather highly of the latest ArbCom. I also addedtried to add that I thought the whole scene would have been entirely unnecessary if the admin who—after WT:Article titles was locked down—committed to ride herd on the kindergardeners there had been more bold and decisive. It seems to me that the really bad admins on en.Wikipedia are given far too much slack and the clearly good ones fear losing face so much by being second guessed they are nearly paralyzed into inaction. Greg L (talk) 22:30, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Greg. I probably have mis-assessed the amount of time required to do the survey, it would likely take ten minutes. As for the questions themselves, I had a few people do a test survey and answer only the questions that had an asterisks in it (required question) and they didn't have any issues, so I'm not sure what happened when you tried to fill out the survey. I can't really change the notices I've sent to people, but I'll add a note to the survey about the required time. If you can't do the survey, that's ok. I appreciate your comments here, and feel free to email me any comments you have. With some options that have a multi-select (like, how effective do you think x DR forum is) I've noted that if you have no opinion, you can leave the question blank. Google Forms is a bit restrictive, but it's the only free tool available approved by RCom. So far, about 20% have responded, and that's within the first 48hrs. Not doing too bad. Thanks again. StevenZhangDR goes to Wikimania!22:45, 6 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
On the Diameter of the Sewer cover in front of Greg L’s house
Well done, Guy, on your exploration into the discipline of TDOTSCIFOGLH. You seem to have an engineering bent in your makeup as you have properly touched upon real-world shortcomings and omissions in the measure (precision, implied tolerance, accuracy, calibration, traceability, etc.). I can tell you that—though American—I am all-things-metric and have been for decades; I used a tape measure from a major manufacturer that was marked in millimeters. Thus, the millimeter-based value was not the product of a conversion.
As for the weight of the cover, GFHandel, due to your previous prompting, I actually went out there in the middle of the road one day armed with a prying tool and quickly realized it was a monster. Only recently did I read that manhole covers were disappearing in some U.S. city so they could be cut up and sold to recycling centers. They apparently weigh nearly a hundred kilos. I had been planning—if I could budge the thing—to weigh it using a Salter/Brecknell electroSamson,100 lb × 0.1 lb (45 kg × 50 g) digital hanging scale left over from weighing a lab animal. That wouldn’t have worked and I might have torn a muscle trying. Greg L (talk) 17:35, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
A movie that I remember enjoying when young was The Out-of-Towners (1970 film) staring Jack Lemmon and Sandy Dennis. There are many good scenes, but one that I'll never forget was when the manhole cover Lemmon was just standing on blew up. I suspect it was a lightweight prop, but I still think it was quite daring of him to attempt it. I don't think they would ask a movie star of today to get quite so close to something that isn't computer-generated. You can see the scene in the first ninety seconds or so of this clip on YouTube. GFHandel♬22:44, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
For an Aussie, you are extraordinarily up-to-speed on your americana. That manhole cover would have sent him to the hospital just for clipping his shoes. I suspect there were two covers: one going up and one going down. And both would have been made of balsa wood. My guess is they used a wire on the near edge to pull the cover up (and keep it there), and a stage hand dropped the other one. It also sounds like the foley dubbed in the sound of a stove-top cooking pot falling on the floor. Greg L (talk) 22:55, 17 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I just came across a mention of and link to 'Gibibyte' in Flash memory, and would ask your advice as to what I ought to do with it, or more's the point how I would convert it into a value and measure that's comprehensible to the general reader. To find it, search for the string "64 [[GiB]]" in your browser. Cheers, --Ohconfucius¡digame!06:12, 23 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I would delete the "(64 GiB)" text in that article since it means nothing to the average reader (and is not a term used for such measurements by the industry). The area around that text is also too folksy (e.g. "In reality,"), and should be simplified based on the reference given at the end of the paragraph (of which there is none).:-) GFHandel♬06:59, 23 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I fixed it. The claim was wrong to begin with, the "GB" in e.g. "8 GB" on a flash drive or an HD-replacement SSD does not mean 1024 cubed, it means 1000 cubed. That makes "GB" the right thing per the product makers' packaging, per IEC and SI recommendations, and per WP:MOSNUM. How about them apples. Jeh (talk) 07:14, 23 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, thank you, Jeh. Unless the article is directly discussing the subject of the binary prefixes, WP:COMPUNITS proscribes use of units like gibibytes and mebibytes (as well as their unit symbols) to denote the magnitude of binary capacity because the units are virtually unused in the real world for communicating to a general-interest readership. The conventional prefixes for multiples (“giga” in gigabytes and “mega” in megabytes, etc.) are ambiguous and may mean a power of 1000 or a power of 1024. That comes under the “awe… shucks” heading but that is the reality of the computing and computer publishing world; Wikipedia follows suite. If the subject under discussion is RAM, then the measure is always assumed to be a power of 1024. If the subject is mass storage—whether solid state or spinning disk—they are often taken to mean powers of 1000. WP:COMPUNITS suggests various ways to disambiguate the precise magnitude of the measure if unusual precision is required.
This issue keeps coming up because well meaning editors (and I wish them health and happiness for their intentions) hope to effect change in how the world works by putting Wikipedia in the position of trying to lead by example in its use of these new units (called the “IEC prefixes”). We tried that for three years and the units were being as ignored by the computing world and its trade press as soundly at the end of that three-year period as they were at the start. The IEC’s proposal has received nothing but a deafening silence from the real world. Failed proposals for new standards are nothing new; the IUPAP once proposed the “uno” and its various prefixed forms to replace terminology like “ppm” (which would be replaced by the microuno). I personally thought the “uno” proposal was cool beans but it too was greeted by the real world with a resounding “meh.”
Our three-year-long experiment with using the IEC prefixes here while the rest of the world wasn’t following suite merely confused our readership since their only exposure to the terminology was here and the “lesson” was never reinforced anywhere else on this pale blue dot; that flies in the face of basic principles of Technical Writing 101.Greg L (talk) 21:01, 23 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
just FYI: the expression is "follow suit", borrowed from trick-taking card games like Bridge, in which other players must play cards as the same suit as the leader (if they have them). Jeh (talk) 21:50, 23 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I have nothing thought-provoking to add to that, though I did add a parenthetical to the second paragraph of my previous post. Greg L (talk) 00:30, 24 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I removed a citation need tag in the lead section Binary Prefixes about the slow adoption of kibi.
What are kibi, mebi, and gibi?
Weird? You bet! And you can probably why this change is slow to happen and many in the computer industry are reluctant to adopt the new term. If and when it happens and knowing about it becomes important, you can read about it in a future edition of this book.
That's wild. You know what the scary thing is? Some workshop pages end up at twice that length. I'm not sure how this process is supposed to play out, but yea, the process is not for the faint of heart. Homunculus (duihua) 23:47, 25 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
For the record, Homunculus is referring to this request for ArbCom action. It took me 37 pressings of the “page down” button on my 27‑inch iMac to navigate to the bottom of a 1290‑pixel-width window, which is roughly ten meters of eye-glazing reading. And the festivities just got started. Wikipedia, which affords individuals infinite electronic whitespace to create infinite bastions of bureaucracy within a bureaucracy, has so far accommodated unnecessary wikilawyering.Greg L (talk) 03:19, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Yea....I went into this with a naive expectation that people would post self-explanatory evidence on the evidence page—supported by diffs—and then corresponding findings of fact and proposals on the workshop page. That didn't happen; instead we saw the crafting of elaborate narratives that would have been incapable of standing on their own as diffs or evidence. I think this may partly have been due to the arbs being tied up with another, even more ponderous ArbCom case. By the way, I think you had it right before [13]. Homunculus (duihua) 03:42, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I think ours was pretty tame by current standards, unfortunately. Check this one out [14]. It's roughly 70,000 words long. And after spending 10 or 15 minutes nibbling at the top of it, I could not even figure out what it was about. When it comes to self-referential meta disputes, Wikipedians are simply unrivaled. I pity the wives and girlfriends hearing "But someone's wrong, on the Internet!!" TheSoundAndTheFury (talk) 03:48, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, guys. Note the above barnstar that someone gave me; they were appreciative of some comments I made regarding POV pushing on our Barack Obama article. What I wrote at that time can be applied to the Falun Gong article as well. I wrote as follows:
I stumbled across this issue and thought I’d offer my thoughts on two major points to help prevent further unnecessary conflict here.
NPOV tags and other I-Don't-Like-It tags may be removed whenever there is a consensus to do so. The “consensus” may be based upon a common-sense reading of pre-existing discussion threads (a lone hold-out, for instance, who slaps such a tag in the face of a clear consensus against his or her wishes). Or the removal of the tag may be done by consensus over whether the tag is unnecessary, irregardless of whether the underlying dispute has been resolved with a clear consensus. Consensus rules on Wikipedia. At all times. For all things. The only tags that may not be removed without follow-through are AfD and MfD tags; that is not applicable here.
Wikipedia’s “anyone can edit” principle of collaborative writing makes for a widelydiverse editorial base where there is bound to be someone who believes that gold is a really bad thing. Because of that, it is not the job of mere wikipedians to don their powdered wigs and presume to debate over tea with their little fingers held in the proper position as to how history ought to be judging a sitting president. We look towards reliable sources for facts and we rely upon most-reliable mainstream sources such as The New York Times, Newsweek and The Washington Post for guidance as to how much weight should be given to the positive and negative issues and to help identify what those issues are. Since Obama hasn’t finished his presidency, there will be relatively few most-reliable sources that have undertaken all-encompassing historical examinations of his tenure.
Uh, well, I don't entirely see how this relates to the Falun Gong articles, though it's a good sentiment. I agree that we ought to rely on the most reliable sources and give weight to different views in a manner commensurate with their quality and notability, and that's what myself and the other established editors on those pages do. Cheers. Homunculus (duihua) 16:40, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Let me help you to see how the above relates to the Falun Gong article. Note the second sentence in ¶2: “…we rely upon most-reliable mainstream sources such as The New York Times, Newsweek and The Washington Post for guidance as to how much weight should be given to the positive and negative issues and to help identify what those issues are.” Mere wikipedians have no business pretending to be cigar-chewing editors at a major metropolitan newsroom barking inquiries as to the whereabouts of Jimmy Olsen and pretending that it is within our dominion to debate what Falun Gong-related issues are notable; articles in most-reliable sources serve as our guide. We follow them.
Doing so spares the rest of the community from needless wikidrama, avoids the need for everyone looking on to have to research Falun Gong issues to see whom among the combatants in your little sandbox on the playground seems to have the keenest intellect and finest journalism skills. Abiding by this simple principle also liberates our admins to sit in judgement of more pressing, decorum-related issues as the combatants try to *out-Girl-Scout-cookie* each other on matters such as whether referring to a group as “Falun Gongers” was intended as a sly epithet and is something over which rest of the community should spill our Earl Grey tea.Greg L (talk) 19:47, 27 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Believe me, I would have liked to be spared this process myself. But problems arise when one group of editors rejects what the most reliable sources say, and resorts to edit warring and name-calling instead of collegial content discussions. Anyways, I like the imagery. Homunculus (duihua) 00:55, 28 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I really appreciate your taking a whole day to show me places of interest in Chicago when I was there in October of 2010 conducting a month-long medical trial at a nearby lab. I still have the video where your voice can be heard in the background expressing concern over a Secret Service guy who had begun marching towards us from a block away, apparently intent on shooing us away from the sidewalk near (in the vicinity of) Obama’s house. Who knew Michele was there for the weekend?
I haven’t frequented the FPC/PPP universe in a long time, but my impression back in the day was that PPP was about as inhabited as Kennedy Island in the Solomons. Yes, Raeky has high expectations. Perhaps though, you remember my oft stated sentiment about the ginormous queue of FP-awarded pictures awaiting their turn on the Main Page sometime. The tail end of the queue will hit the Main Page sometime between the year 2030 and the heat death of the universe.
Were I you, I would treat critical commentary at PPP (or Raeky’s talk page) as an opportunity to quickly find pictures that can sail through FPC. Greg L (talk) 04:04, 4 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The Olive Branch: A Dispute Resolution Newsletter (Issue #1)
Welcome to the first edition of The Olive Branch. This will be a place to semi-regularly update editors active in dispute resolution (DR) about some of the most important issues, advances, and challenges in the area. You were delivered this update because you are active in DR, but if you would prefer not to receive any future mailing, just add your name to this page.
Steven Zhang's Fellowship Slideshow
In this issue:
Background: A brief overview of the DR ecosystem.
Research: The most recent DR data
Survey results: Highlights from Steven Zhang's April 2012 survey
Activity analysis: Where DR happened, broken down by the top DR forums
DR Noticeboard comparison: How the newest DR forum has progressed between May and August
Discussion update: Checking up on the Wikiquette Assistance close debate
I was wondering if I could possible get the code you used to produce your translational motion image.
.
I am a graduate student working on a side project to model the interaction of blood cells in an artery. I am trying to model the cells as points undergoing elastic collisions with each other. My current model does not seem to be calculating the momemtum transfer correctly when the cells interact. This led me to wikipedia and your image. I am not sure how you created this image, but if you still have the code I would love to take a look and see whether it might help me with my code.
I believe I have my account set up to accept email messages. If not, feel free to leave a note on my talk page and I can send you my email.
I'm sorry about not getting back to you sooner, Adhanali. Real life became extra-real in the last year.
A chemistry professor with whom I corresponded possesses (or once did posses) the source code. I forget the exact details, but I recall that he made a special version for me with five red balls rather than just one. I seem to also recall I had custom control over the sizes of the balls. You could set the number of balls and because each session was salted with a random seed to scatter things, no two sessions were identical. What I had really wanted was a way for his software to output frame-by-frame screen captures so I could make the movie. As it was, it took hours and hours and the help of a friend with a super-fast Mac in NY and even more hours to get a super-compact video with very little compression artifacts.
I would tend to do that sort of thing (deal with Ph.D. experts) when I was more active on Wikipedia. Dr. Steiner, who once worked on the watt balance replacement and with whom I had extensive correspondence while greatly expanding our Kilogram article (which used to be pathetic and colossally error ridden) just a week ago emailed me that a major scientific paper of his (“History and progress on accurate measurements of the Planck constant”) was recently published. There are about 20 more days to get free access to it; you have to first register though to download the paper. Greg L (talk) 20:42, 22 December 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You mean, that the “yoghurt / yogurt" issue was brought up (again—a year later) and resolved (to “yogurt”) without wikipedians throwing themselves off cliffs over a spelling issue or writing stuff like emboldened some editors to expand the battlefield to other articles? ‘Bout time. No; I didn’t see it. Thanks. Greg L (talk) 17:09, 21 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you!!
Here is the cutest possible kitten for you
Thank you so much for an hour's spent reading your marvelous user page and the entry on your sewer cover, etc. I had so much fun reading all that! What a lovely sense of humor and thank you also for the first person story of Mount St. Helens. Fascinating! I remember the news media at the actual time was very blase, "oh yes, volcano" and then a couple days later when they could actually see what had happened, it became a whole different story. Thank you again for the interesting reading!! Ellin Beltz (talk) 17:19, 25 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
You are most welcome. I am very pleased to hear from wikipedians who not only enjoyed my user page, but took the time to drop by here on my talk page and leave a note. Greg L (talk) 13:51, 29 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hey! High, Oh. Yes. All is well. I've been super-busy in real life. I occasionally edit on Wikipedia but avoid it due to the time inevitably wasted dealing with others in a collaborative writing environment where the contributions by Ph.D.s are reverted by a 7th grader who read something in Popular Mechanics. Greg L (talk) 15:45, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I have insufficient data to know for sure because I so seldom edit anymore. I used to author like I’ve always engineered: I get to the bottom of things in minute detail. I remember, while editing one of Wikipedia's articles on thermodynamics, corresponding with a Ph.D. who had published a paper. (They may seem unapproachable, but they aren't.) This Ph.D. asked why I was asking such questions. I told him I was authoring a Wikipedia article. He was aghast. “Why would you spend so much effort writing an article where some kid can revert you??”, he asked. I don’t remember how I responded, but his incredulity made me feel like I must have had an imbecile-like streak in me. I’m quite sure I didn’t respond with “Because being a Wikipedian is an astonishingly good way to learn about a subject. Moreover, the discipline hones one’s writing and debating skills.” Thinking back, I should have. Greg L (talk) 18:23, 9 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
If we only look at stuff that annoys us here on WP, I'm sure we'd give up soon after we started. Yes, it's a good way to learn about a subject, like a person's penchant for facepainting, or how many dogs they have and what breed they are. I've found that for some of our fellow editors, every current affairs article "needs" its flagcruft and blind rhetoric; every person who appears on more than one reality TV series is "entitled" to a WP bio, and no bio is complete without some tabloid cruft (not even GAs are spared). But in those moments of doubt, I always remember your saying (but not the exact words), that if you manage to stay around long enough, you'll eventually see your enemies' bodies float past you.
I'm not sure about the first one. I left it there for a long time because I've been busy. But I stared at that one yesterday, pondering what to do with it. If it was an [I Don’t Like It] tag, I decided it was high-time to make commentary about what fun that sort of thing is too. Greg L (talk) 11:32, 10 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
New version of a file
The file File:Translational motion.gif doesn't lag at the beginning of the animation but starts lagging more and more further into the animation. I'm guessing it's because it was made in such a way that the computer does computations to calculate where the molecules should be later starting from the specified initial state. I think that to prevent lag, you should upload a new version of that file where those computations are done before the file gets made and the computeer just memorizes where each molecule is supposed to be at each time. Blackbombchu (talk) 15:28, 22 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds like you are using Safari on a Mac. I created that GIF on a Mac. But Safari doesn't handle GIFs well and will do that. If you are using a browser/OS other than Safari/OS X, let me know as I am curious. Greg L (talk) 21:00, 27 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
How did you create the Brownian simulation?
Dear Greg L,
I am eager how you created the simulation for the Brownian Motion? I am very eager as I wish to create a simulation myself for a particular work of mine. Please feel free to write to me at my email-Id. at gmail with same user-id using all lowercase letters.
Regards, Bkpsusmitaa (talk) 04:59, 27 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. It's been a long while so I will need to dig to find the details on my main work computer (I'm using a laptop at home). But that video was a collaboration. It originated on a Hyperphysics-like website as a Javascript-based animation as I recall. I contacted the Ph.D. and he had a grad student make a custom version featuring five red balls instead of just one as used on their website. They emailed me that version so I could run it as a stand-alone. I then used video-capture software to grab some of its animation. Using GIF-creating software, I chose a section for the clip where a red ball came to a complete stop; that was to better illustrate the Maxwell distribution. By the way, I wrote most of that article. That GIF software allowed me control of bit depth—that animation has only four colors: pure black, pure blue, pure red, and pure white; thus, the file size is nice and small. The harder part was doing the math to figure how the 371 frames and their loop-repeat of ~20 seconds (on a reasonably fast computer) relates to the velocity of real atoms (helium atoms at a phenomenal 1950 atmospheres of pressure shown slowed down two trillion fold when viewed at 55 ms per frame). Greg L (talk) 05:51, 27 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I'll wait till you have found the source file. The simulation is beautifully done!
Sorry, I did forget. You reminded me at just the right time because I'm on my main work computer; the one I used when I was working on Thermodynamic temperature. I cannot find an email exchange with the Ph.D. who helped me on that movie. But, again, my recollection is that the original place (I think it was Hyperphysics) provided me with a customized version of a Java applet, which I somehow ran on my computer. All I have now are various work-in-progress files, such as giant video-capture files (from which I cherry-picked the segment I wanted). I suggest you contact the people here at ChemConnections.org. What you see there on their website is also a Java applet—and appears uncannily similar to what I originally had to start with. Perhaps it will serve your needs as is, because it is far more customizable than what I had to work with when I made my animation. If not, they might be able to help you in some other way. Best wishes. Greg L (talk) 01:02, 3 September 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, hello to you! Checking your contribs, I see you are right in the middle of it on computer-releated stuff. Greg L (talk) 00:05, 9 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Greg L, I found it was you who added the note about the English variety in the Kilogram article. You might be interested to know there is a discussion about converting the article to British English on the article's talk page, and actually the article has already been converted without much discussion. Irn Bimba (talk) 21:47, 18 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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BRAVO! That is a truly outstanding job! It should serve as a paradigm on how to wade into a broken article and make it useful. In the second section, Introduction, your addition of the graphics and animations is, editorial-wise, serious heavy lifting that greatly enhances the article.
I propose that you focus next on the first section, the lede. In my opinion, it could benefit from your attentions. I would not look towards Standard Wikipedian Practices for inspiration on this article because spacetime is such a profoundly difficult-to-grasp concept. The lede should be “accessible” to a high school freshman on his or her first foray into the subject. Wikipedia is many individual's first stop when trying to grasp the essentials of an unfamiliar topic; Wikipedia’s ledes have been famous for their pithy summaries.
If necessary, links to explanatory articles ought to be sacrificed in place of preemptive explanatory plain-speak custom tailored for the job. For instance, take this current text from the lede:
I would propose the below, instead. The below example is longer (akin to See Spot chase the butterfly! Spot barks at the butterfly. Spot is funny!) but is far more accessible and requires no Click To Learn from our intended readership. By using simple explanatory plain-speak to obviate the need to click a link and spend time in an entirely different article, and then come back to the original article, we save the reader a huge amount of time and effort and make the learning process more enjoyable. I'm sure you can take this example and run with it.
It had long been assumed that the 3D geometry of the universe (the “up-down, left-right, forward-backward” coordinate system that describes locations, shapes, distances, and directions), was distinct from time (the measure of when events occur within the universe). Einstein’s 1905 theory of special relativity showed that both the shape of space and the measurement of time changed for an observer who made measurements and then accelerated to a very high relativistic speed and repeated those measurements in the new “inertial frame of reference.” Einstein’s theory mathematically described precisely how measurements of space and time varied between different reference frames. Three years later, Hermann Minkowski built upon Einstein’s work by combining space and time into a unified four-dimensional “spacetime” known as Minkowski space.
By the way, my criticism of the state of that article before you waded in, while arguably “pungent,“ couldn't have been more true. You took my comments and rolled up your sleeves.
Thanks! I'll wait for comments from others from whom I had solicited opinions before I tackle the lede. I had retouched the lede slightly, but it still smelled bad. Stigmatella aurantiaca (talk) 19:34, 26 March 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Your comments on spacetime article
Hey, I wanted to say a few words to you personally about the recent discussion on the spacetime article, because you expressed your waning interest in Wikipedia. I have had similar feelings, so I think I can say that I can sympathize.
My intention is certainly not to undo your effort, as you have suggested. I've spent a little time looking at your work in general, and I think it's well-motivated, and going in the right direction in general. At times, though, you seem to be setting yourself up for failure. Bigger contributions are more likely to be amended, and it seems that that is an area you have focused on. It seems self-defeating, then, to be sensitive to changes to large edits.
I have also noticed your interest in lessening jargon that can be a problem for novice readers. That's wonderful! We have a shared interest in this. But this is an area that is fraught with problems, as it is difficult to maintain a neutral tone and also be non-threatening to novices. But Wikipedia is getting better with time.
I've seen some comments you've made about Click-and-Return, and I've had similar concerns about some articles--some articles hide "the meat" of understanding from the reader behind jargon and condescend to anyone that doesn't understand that jargon. That's a problem. But again, there is a balance to be had. Most articles could easily stretch into entire books if given the opportunity. But as with before, the longer it gets, the more opportunity for someone to find deficiencies. 47.32.217.164 (talk) 19:16, 20 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Hey Greg. I saw you post on Yobot's talk page. You could make use of {{spaces|n}} instead of n . Just a suggestion. You may also be interested in other inline spacing templates (navbox/category), such as {{0}}. — JJMC89 (T·C) 20:29, 28 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@JJMC89:Hey! Thank you very much! I checked wp:tabs and some other guesses and couldn’t find what I needed. Man, this project is big; your links are very helpful. Greg L (talk) 20:42, 28 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
@JJMC89: Wonderful! Much cleaner; see this ∆ edit. Now that would be a useful job for a bot: count the number of spelled-out instances or their straight-typed instances (insanely easy on a Mac) and replace them with {{spaces|n}} (without mixing in regular breaking spaces). Much appreciated. Greg L (talk) 20:58, 28 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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This is perfectly normal. It is why we have comment threading. You have been on Wikipedia long enough to know that, so obviously this was just a petty response to the argument you lost. Do better. -- Scjessey (talk) 13:42, 1 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Scjessey: So, you decided that the wise thing to do is come to my talk page and mix it up with an inflammatory taunt, did you? Because you ended it with an obnoxious command (“Do better”) that you had to know was provocative.
The issue over on Donald Trump is the number of liberal POV pushers who are currently trying to *own* the article. So it's good that neutral editors try to help out there to help bring balance to the article and help guide things on its talk page.
But I do wonder; when I wrote on the talk page that we should look towards the RSs and cited The Washington Post as a paradigm example on how to handle an bit of editorial practice, I added that was despite the fact that The Washington Post is “arguably” a left-leaning paper. In response to that, you wrote this (∆ edit perma-link): The Washington Post endorsed 44 Democratic candidates and 3 Republican candidates in 2014 because the other Republican candidates were awful, extreme examples of the species. So, do explain:
Do you have objective evidence from an RS that the 44 “Republican candidates were awful, extreme examples of the species”? Did The Washington Post say they were all “awful and extreme” or did you come to that conclusion on the 44 candidates based on your own research?
Do you feel that comments like that established you as an unbiased, neutral editor who isn’t POV pushing on the article?
Do you feel that coming here to my talk page and concluding a post with a command (“Do better”) was a mature and right thing to do?
I note that the tenor on the Talk:Donald Trump is quite toxic and it drives good editors away. Are you trying to make things better, or worse?
Now, be advised: Please do not modify my posts here (or anywhere else); by adding your text right into the middle of them. And bear in mind that you are on my talk page. Your conduct and comments must be interesting, mature, and civil. If you can't rise to the occasion, you will not be welcome here.
I'm just going to put this here because it'll irritate you, and it's the only bit I'm interested in answering (since you deleted my other stuff). I will continue to use threading on article talk pages as intended, since it is not "modifying" your posts (although this example obviously is). If you don't like it, take it to WP:ANI. Anyway, I'm done with you now, so you needn't waste your time replying. I'm not monitoring this page anyway. -- Scjessey (talk) 13:36, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Fascinating. After being offered a forum in which to debate maturely, you squandered a perfectly good opportunity. You could have refuted the perception that you have an extreme bias against the Republican party (and Trump by extension), that your personal biases influence article content and the tenor on the talk page, and that you needle others with your “I’m a big fish” bossing of anyone and everyone who disagrees with you. You not only lost this round—big time—but you've worn out your welcome here; do not come back. Like User:Maleroosterwrote on Talk:Donald Trump: @Scjessey, please take your own advice and stop commenting here unless you can control your clearly biased commentary, thank you. Greg L (talk) 14:24, 2 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
No. Your very next rant here (∆ edit perma-link) in which you evaded the above points and mentioned how you were tempted to use profane language came up way short of my requirements for you to post here so I deleted it for what it was. You seem to fancy yourself to be an unbiased editor but your conduct and words (like The Washington Post endorsed 44 Democratic candidates and 3 Republican candidates in 2014 because the other Republican candidates were awful, extreme examples of the species,) betray otherwise. Perhaps you are accustomed to driving off other editors with your behavior—I don’t know—but you can't come here and keep at that sort of thing. Now…
If you want to discus and/or debate ideas here, you must first address each of the points enumerated above; ample digital white space is provided below. Only intellectually stimulating, mature discourse is permissible.
And please remember the wise words of Eleanor Roosevelt: Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. Greg L (talk) 18:29, 1 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Your user page
Hi there, Greg L. As part of the WP:Linter project, I have been working to remove lint errors from Wikipedia. I edited your user page and removed hundreds of lint errors. I tried to preserve the appearance as best I could. Except for the Quotations section, the appearance is largely indentical. In the Quotations section, the paragraph spacing is changed a bit here and there. I hope this is OK. —Anomalocaris (talk) 09:56, 20 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
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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.
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@Tony1: Righty-o, mate. Thanks for the welcome. My name was referenced on MOSNUM, which generated an alert. I see Locke Cole, Thunderbird2, and you here. Time warp, dude. Did anything change while I was gone? Greg L (talk) 04:50, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Locke Cole: Hello. “Gibigibi-a-gibits a-that’s all folks“ seems like it is being discussed in various places. I hope we can let the tendentious ones make a go of it for a while until the community tires of their shenanigans. Reach out if what they’re stirring up actually needs any of my help. Greg L (talk) 00:53, 6 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like they're trying to push the idea that the kilo/mega/giga terms are "deprecated" at Template talk:Quantities of bytes#Deprecated, and they're currently edit warring to include the "deprecated" term in the table there, as well as the "bits" variant. They haven't touched the other table that is linked at WP:COMPUNITS yet, but that seems like the next logical step (and their backdoor way of listing the traditional units as "deprecated" at COMPUNITS). If you could take a look, I'd appreciate it. —Locke Cole • t • c19:06, 21 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Heavens, Welcome back! Nah, your name's been referenced loads of times, and your talk page must have been blinking non stop that I wonder how you've resisted coming back . But seriously, I guess that means I can delete my fork of your delightful script which I copied for maintenance purposes, and get back to being idle. -- Ohc ¡digame!06:46, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
First, I feel like I'm missing part of the humour there, and reading over those interesting pages several times (George Bernard Shaw? Cool : ) - didn't clear it up for me. What (besides a plea to not link to dates) am I missing?
Second, just thought you might like to know that several of your external links are dead. I hope this helps : ) - jc3703:00, 6 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for dropping me a note. I’ve been mostly retired from the “social” and “drive change”-aspects of Wikipedia. The ‘sewer cover’ page was about not over-linking. Part of the over-linking at that time was people linking a date to “On this date in 1087, Bruno the Hun set eastward and eight years later saw the Ural Mountains” (and a hundred other such things that only Rain Man would memorize).
Since I wrote that, I’ve gone back and fixed some links, but as it was a page intended to drive change in project-wide editorial practices, I no longer attach much importance to it. I now spend my time in select articlespace, where I focus for weeks and months on a single article dedicated to a subject that I want to thoroughly master… and hone my writing skills. I need to ever-improve my writing skills given since I am a senior engineer at my work and rely heavily on technical writing to get anything done. Greg L (talk) 03:31, 6 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much for explaining.
And I think I understand how you feel. There are things I look at, at Wikipedia, that I once thought to be worth standing up and defending or opposing, on principle. Things which prolly are still important "in principle", that with a view from now, looking back (or forward, I guess) just don't seem worth the effort, or at least, not worth prioritising.
And yet, for all this, when I take a look at Wikipedia from a "forest" perspective (rather than a "trees" perspective), I still am a bit amazed at it all, not the least of which that it it is still here. I suppose I will ever-always continue to be re-drawn in to helping out, here.
Thanks for uploading File:Cobalt Drafting Assistant demo.ogv. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).
Hello! Voting in the 2021 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 6 December 2021. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
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.
Hi Greg, before you get yourself all wound up about the word approximately when describing flight levels, I suspect you misunderstand what flight levels are. Flight levels represent the level an aircraft flys at, at a standard altimeter air pressure setting, unless the air pressure outside the aircraft is exactly that standard pressure at any time the aircraft at each flight level are NOT exactly at the corresponding altitude. The actual flying altitude (of all aircraft at each flight level) will vary as air pressure changes. This is why it is called a flight level and not simply an altitude as it is at low altitudes where flight levels are not used. Hope this helps. Andrewgprout (talk) 01:54, 17 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Andrewgprout: I never suggested that flightlevel 340 means 34,000 AGL or AMSL. Flight level 340, is nonetheless defined a precise pressure altitude of 34,000 feet (which closely means 34,000 feet AMS at one standard atmosphere of barometric pressure on the ground or sea below the plane), and is never defined as a pressure altitude of 10,000 meters. If you don’t believe me, you might actually read our own Flight level.
You simply don't know what you are writing about and edit tendentiously and squat on articles like you own them, and annoy others with nonsense as they try to correct articles and make them internally consistent. That’s OK with me because there are too many editors like you to shake a stick at. Don’t bother me again; just go on and screw up articles with your nonsense. 07:00, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
Hello! Voting in the 2022 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 12 December 2022. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
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.
I thought your post was good. Apparently, a user who had made three edits considered it to be a "sanctimonious right-wing blowhard glad-handing and congratulating himself over his conservative political beliefs", and I am not quite in the mood for edit-warring to include it, but I thought you should know that I appreciated it and thought it was a worthwhile addition to a talk page otherwise filled with mindless shitflinging. jp×g22:57, 10 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
JPxG: Thanks for your comment. The user didn’t find offense with my post other than somehow my new post deleted a new post that other wikipedian made. You can’t click the edit history because the “history” will show the conflict sometimes, and won’t at other times. It was a “we’re having a technical problem”-type issue because I had clicked the “New Section” tab… and the edit comment for my first draft reflects that. The wiki engine must have had a hiccup with edits done around the same time. I’m pretty sure this is an issue with the multiple servers that operate the wiki engine are struggling to stay in sync. Greg L (talk) 01:56, 11 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Jumping in here: it's probably better to discuss the issue with the editor on their talk page. If they've asked you to stay off of it, or if they're repeatedly reverting any attempt to communicate, WP:AE or WP:ANI would be the appropriate place if there's a chronic or unrepentant behavioral issue present, but I don't think continuing the conversation regarding people deleting your comments on the article's talk page is going to bear much fruit. — Red-tailed hawk(nest)05:56, 11 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
User:Red-tailed hawk: I did inform Soibangla on his talk page. He immediately deleted it (diff) with the following edit comment: “HAHAHA”. So it’s clear that we have someone on our hands who is disruptive and doesn’t mind being so. I’m done for the evening. My hope is that Soibangla can’t control himself when the community is heading in a displeasing editorial direction and needs to study his naval and reflect on what he’s done to himself tomorrow morning. Greg L (talk) 06:08, 11 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Greg. I saw the kerfuffle at Talk:Twitter Files. What a mess. While your post was indeed a mild (but large) violation of NOTFORUM, it was a pleasant one that I wouldn't have deleted. Since it was deleted (technically the correct move), the resulting edit war and discussion ended up wasting a lot of time and bandwidth, creating lots of disruption on the talk page, and that's exactly why even a pleasantly mild NOTFORUM violation can be disruptive. Sorry about what happened to your post, but it would have been best for you to not insist on restoring it. That really took us down a rabbit hole. Edit warring isn't good anywhere, even on talk pages.
Regarding your accusations against Soibangla, you should read what's on this page (in exactly this spot in the page history) to see what happened. It was Twittler, not Soibangla, and the language is very unlike Soibangla's. I'm rather surprised you weren't blocked for attempted outing when you talked about Soibangla's purported location and IP. (That kind of discussion is best done in a private email to an administrator.) Outing is a big sin around here, and even those with checkuser priviliges aren't allowed to mention the IPs of registered users, even when the checkuser proves the IP is connected to a registered sock puppet account.
I'm not sure exactly what ticked people off, but it might have been your use of Newsmax, a horrible source of constant far-right propaganda. It's worse than Fox News, which pushes Rupert Murdoch's top-down corporate agenda against democracy. (Many countries consider him and Fox News a serious threat to democracy because he buys up major news media and tries to dominate all other voices and POV in the news with his right-wing, dictator-friendly, agenda using the "firehose of falsehood" technique, which is also used by Trump[15] and most of the right-wing autocrats he has praised and admires, leaders like Duterte, Putin, Saddam Hussein, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, Erdogan, Mussolini, Gaddafi, Jair Bolsonaro, and Orban.[16][17][18][19][20][21] (I could add Hitler to that list as Trump has studied Hitler's methods and is known to have kept Hitler's speeches on his bedside table. That explains why he is so defensive of far-right neonazis. He admires violent strongmen and envies their power.)
My main point is to be more careful and back off when you meet resistance. Even your well-meant attempts can be misunderstood. Right now your threads are still up there on the talk page, but any more discussion on them should be discouraged as they are still a distraction from the purpose of the talk page. If there is any more discussion there, your threads will get hatted as they don't contribute to improving that article. -- Valjean (talk) (PING me) 18:29, 11 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
User:Valjean: Wow! Where to begin?? Nothing you wrote holds water. I’m not going to delete your above post; you said your piece and I’ll honor it by allowing it to be memorialized here. Note though, that I am a big believer in “The proper response to bad speech is better speech,” so I’m going to do my best, below. Thrust; parry: it’s fair.
Quoting you, above: I'm not sure exactly what ticked people off, but it might have been your use of Newsmax. I didn’t “use” Newsmax as a source in the article; I merely mentioned it on the talk page to break news that the fourth release of the Twitter Files had been made. If the mere mentioning of the word “Newsmax” triggers people, or made them “ticked off,” as you put it, then something has gone way wrong with the culture here on talk pages.
Besides, the mere mentioning of “Newsmax” isn’t what triggered Soibangla; he was deleting that postseven hoursbefore I mentioned the “Newsmax” hurt-word, so that had nothing to do with it.
As for “outing” Soibangla, he outed himself when he logged out and came back in as an I.P. to engage in more deletions since he had run up against his three-per-day quota. It’s all there in the talk-page history, like a doorbell cam, for the world to see. So don’t try to deflect blame from the porch pirate to the homeowner for leaving packages on the doorstep to tempt thieves.
We can’t ignore the 800-pound gorilla in the room here: Soibangla is a single-purpose account (his last 500 edits), dedicated to slanting articles to pro-Democrat/anti-Trump positions. Single-purpose tendentious editors cause untold and persistent havoc on Wikpeida. They are immune to peer pressure because if someone gently tries to correct them on their talk pages, they just delete them, like Soibangla did with JPxG, here and here with me, where his accompanying edit comment was an oh-so mature “HAHAHA”.
It’s interesting that as of 07:26 on Dec. 11, I didn’t see that you had visited his talk page, trying to give him gentle guidance this morning; you saw fit to come to me and take me to task for mentioning the word “Newsmax” on a talk page. Why is that?
I note that you wrote this on the Talk:Twitter Files:Attempts to delete the page: It makes sense to delete this nothingburger. Hmmmm. What Twitter did to suppress conservative voices is a very big deal. You just can’t make something like that go away, Valjean, by throwing around dismissive words like “that was debunked long ago” and “this is a complete nothingburger”. But you tried, didn’t you? I completely understand that you’d be upset with the status quo of the wider wikipedian community not going the direction you’d like. And I can understand you’d have a problem with those who might have some influence on the course of events. You can chalk that up to a big “WAAAH-burger.”
Thereafter, Soibangla’s sole purpose in life was to hover in The Twitter Files articlespace and act as a Great Wall of Censorship by deleting anything that impeached Twitter’s old behavior, like this deletion and this one. And when he actually manages to add material, it is to act as a Twitter apologist by slanting the article with “explainers” like this edit. It’s pure unadulterated obstruction.
Single-purpose editors like that have to resort to breaking the rules. True to form, he ducked out when he’s not able to silence a voice and came back with socks and I.P.s. That is pure crap and he lost all credibility over it.
Now let’s further analyze what you wrote above, which I find to be 2022’s best whopper. You wrote this: using the "firehose of falsehood" technique, which is also used by Trump[22] and most of the right-wing autocrats he has praised and admires, leaders like Duterte, Putin, Saddam Hussein, Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un, Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi, Erdogan, Mussolini, Gaddafi, Jair Bolsonaro, and Orban, and since your own user page has this: Donald Trump is a lunatic: Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, I’ve got your number; you are as partisan and biased as they come.
And further pondering the way your mind works, I note this doozy from above: I could add Hitler to that list as Trump has studied Hitler's methods and is known to have kept Hitler's speeches on his bedside table. Thus, you affirmed Godwin's law, which “is an Internet adage asserting that as an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 1.” Oh. By the way, Franklin Roosevelt read the original German-language version of Mein Kampf. Yeah. True thing.
The next time someone writes “The proper response to bad speech is better speech,” try harder. Now, please stay off my talk page. And for God’s sake, stop flitting about with the excess self esteem of an individual who fancies himself as a wise and unbiased voice of sound reasoning who must counsel other wikipedians. If I want to deal with you, perhaps I’ll see you on Talk:Twitter Files. Happy editing. Greg L (talk) 20:06, 11 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Fighting the good fight.
I recently had my IP address changed by my provider (not due to anything I did) and am outing myself on your talk page as the IP editor formerly known as 71.190.233.44, I was doing a cursory stroll through the talk pages of some articles and saw your back and forth on the Twitter files talk page and thought you really deserved this. I have found myself discouraged by the very clear slant and what I would call bird-dogging of a series of current events pages by a small but very clear group of editors with an agenda that flies in the face of WP:NPOV, I saw you did not rise to the bait and stood your ground eloquently and logically in the face of that and I congratulate you for it. You deserve this. 96.246.137.168 (talk) 15:05, 23 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you very much, I.P. editor. I think your description of the events there hits the nail on the head as to what’s going on. It only takes a small handful of like-minded agenda-driven editors to hijack Wikipedia’s articles. It’s a passion-driven phenomenon and most middle-of-the-road editors just don’t have the necessary level of passion to self-organize to oppose the bias and undo the damage. Greg L (talk) 16:55, 23 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
This is a joke, right? You are probably one of the 5 worst and most brazenly ideological editors on the entire site; you literally do nothing but post inspirational Alexander Hamilton quotes and 3000 word essays on your banal political views. Just make a blog, man. No one here cares. Wise and Beautiful Editor (talk) 17:46, 23 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I also find it quite interesting that only 52 minutes after I responded here, lickety-split, you land here to plant a silly little rant. While flattering, I find it to be somewhat obsessive.
Though I have no proof that you aren’t anything other than a bonafide independent solo wikipedian, that sort of behavior is sometimes seen as the product of sock puppets of other editors, possibly the oh-so agitated ones who wanted that discussion thread, which made them look like fools, to be closed. Alas, your closure was quickly reverted by someone with maturity and understanding of Wikipedia’s policies.
This is all so seriously funny. As this is my talk page and I had the right to delete your post, I won’t; I’m a firm believer in “the proper response to bad speech is better speech.” Accordingly, I’m going to memorialized your little rant here for all to see and respond with what I think is a better speech. ’Twasn’t hard.
And now you can stay off my talk page and run along and play somewhere else. I know who you are, how you think, how you operate, and—just forgive me all over the place—I’m not impressed. Greg L (talk) 19:38, 23 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Why am I not surprised. There’s too much of this behavior going on currently on Wikipedia and it isn’t being addressed by the Administrators. It’s really problematic as Wikipedia is now becoming more of a joke than anything else. A good friend of mine, a women who was a lawyer, had a part in writing the constitution of an Asian nation, worked in government and knew quite a few of the political figures whose pages are staked out on Wikipedia once took me to task about the site because as she said, anyone can write something. In the years since her point has only been exemplified more and more much to the site’s detriment. 96.246.137.168 (talk) 01:21, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I came across this WP:TROLLFOOD and the editor who commented is a perfect illustration of the same. I long ago recognized what was going on and had this up on my old user page: [23]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0P4Cf0UCwU The projection that goes on is simply astounding but again I credit you for calling it out. The unfortunate thing of course is that Wikipedia really doesn’t do more to rein in this type of behavior and many WP:GAME Take heart though, people do notice and appreciate the effort to try and bring this project back to a WP:NPOV even if there are people who want to push an agenda and lie to themselves. Stay the course! 96.246.137.168 (talk) 00:19, 24 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for that video and the encouragement to “stay the course.”
What Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia said in that video you linked to is occurring all over Wikipedia and is obviously occurring on Twitter Files. It was apparent when the article was created and within one hour had been nominated for deletion; the very editor who was behind that AfD has been an actor on that article since.
There are a lot of institutions that feel deeply threatened right now and are in panic mode. They somehow believe that merely by hijacking the narrative on Twitter Files, their problems in real life will go away; they’re tilting at windmills and pissing in the wind; this story is too big to make it go away just by saying “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for.”
Whenever I wrote over on Talk:Twitter Files that a Republican-lead House of Representatives will conduct very many, very probing investigations, with witnesses under oath, and that the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth will eventually come out, the denizens on that talk page were quite triggered and started doing transparently stupid antics like using sock puppets to delete my messages. Oh… hell; it didn't take much at all to trigger them. All I had to do is show up and say some sensible sounding stuff there in the town hall for them to get their nickers in a knot.
It’s silly of them to expect me to have a worldview that is otherwise. If anyone reads the portion of my user page about my son trying to get into the SEALs, they’d expect nothing else. What no one here knows (until just now), is that for many years my son not only got into the SEALs, but got into DEVGRU (a.k.a. Seal Team 6), where he achieved the rank of Chief. He’s leaving there in a few weeks for a lower-stress job elsewhere in the Navy where he can spend more time with his family.
Regrettably, Thatcher is ancient history to recent high school grads. Moreover, important concepts about civics and economics are no longer being well taught, resulting in underdeveloped paideia (good education and formation of character) in new members of society. This is even more regrettable because, as Plato taught, for there to be an enduringrepublic—a form of government where its citizens are governed by laws enacted through elected representatives and there is no monarch—the electorate must have a well-developed paideia. Without that, the electorate is susceptible to the hyperbole of Hitler or, at the other extreme, neosocialists like Bernie Sanders and AOC.Ideological certitude, where leaders purport to be able to easily address a country’s woes by demonizing a segment of its own citizenry, is one of the great weaknesses of mankind. Such ideologies are the tools of bad leaders; their allure, the refuge of weak minds.
One product of a lack of paideia is rampant self esteem and a strong sense of entitlement… we see that at my work where I am a senior mechanical engineer; we frequently have 20-something floor workers who wonder, after only months on the job, why they haven’t yet been promoted to a level where their advice is passed along to the Vice President of Manufacturing. It’s a widely felt perception throughout American businesses today; the now-93-year-old cofounder of Home Depot, Bernie Marcus, recently gave an interview to the Financial Times, in which he stated that “[Nobody works anymore] because of socialism. Nobody gives a damn. ‘Just give it to me. Send me money. I don't want to work. I'm too lazy. I'm too fat. I'm too stupid’,” Marcus said of the sentiments of workers nowadays.
It’s a sad fact that a standard test of self esteem that has been used for decades shows that today’s high school graduates have the same level of self esteem as did major Hollywood stars of the 1950s. This manifests itself early on, as the BBC covered, as an ever-increasing level of narcissism of U.S. students before they even graduate. In an effort to stay in power, the Democratic Party decided they must dig down and find more electorate with even poorer formed paideia; Pelosi in 2019 backed legislation to allow 16-year-old children to vote in Federal elections. They actually brought it to a vote but failed.
Some of the behavior you and I are seeing over in Twitter Files articlespace and on the talk page strikes me as the product of what Sanger said is for-a-fact occurring all over Wikipedia: there are people from institutions whose power, money, and influence are all at risk of being lost; I find some of those to be here now on Talk:Twitter Files and they have a stealthier, more mature, laid-back approach with a lighter touch. But they are not very knowledgeable about Wikipedia’s processes.
Finally, the political polarization since 2020 has produced some wildly extreme behavior here on Wikipedia, where some editors can’t develop a proper theory-of-mind of others. There was behind-the-scenes discussion (elsewhere in WP:-land) about the above barnstar you awarded me. Another editor was convinced that you (an I.P. editor), had to be me congratulating myself. With specific regard to your barnstar comment about the partisan cabal on Talk:Twitter Files, one editor wrote that your comment wasn’t even a valid concern: "bird-dogging of a series of current events pages by a small but very clear group of editors with an agenda that flies in the face of WP:NPOV," is not a "valid opinion." Translating to political-speak: “Suggestions that there is bias in the ‘Twitter Files’ article are nothing more than debunked conspiracy theories.”
Consequently, wikipedians who object to violations of Neutral Point of View in Wikipedia’s articles are told their objections have no merit and are dismissed out of hand… and this is from editors who have anti-Trump/anti-Republican slogans on their user pages; they aren’t the least bit shy about being partisan because they have absolute conviction that their worldviews and opinions are “The Truth.”
The combination of these hyper-liberal activists and the institutional editors with an agenda are undermining the credibility of Wikipedia to such an extent that, as Larry Sanger laments in the YouTube video you linked to, “I no longer trust the website I created.” That’s so very sad.
As regards WP:TROLLFOOD, indeed. I learned on my own all about that long ago. I could very succinctly summarize my philosophy on dealing with tendentious and uncivil single-purpose editors in a sentence or two, but then I’d be giving away too much; my writing speaks for itself and you noted the end result and encapsulated it well in your kind barnstar award.
The last two-and-a-half years (2020, 2021, and first half of 2022) have been suck-ass ones due to a confluence of poor checks and balances in an all-Democrat Washington, D.C. combined with COVID. It’s going to be an interesting 2023. Cheers and Merry Christmas. Greg L (talk) 18:50, 30 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Awareness of discretionary sanctions
Hi again, Greg. I don't mean to bother you, but after I placed a couple of discretionary sanctions alerts on this page, you added the {{ds/aware}} template to the top of the page, presumably in order to not be bothered about ds again. But I'm afraid the ds template needs parameters; it doesn't work if you just leave it that you're aware of ds in general, as you can probably see by how it came out. As it said in my alerts, you have to "place {{Ds/aware}} on your user talk page and specify in the template the topic areas that you would like to opt out of alerts about" (my italics). That means you need to add, inside the template, the codes for the topic areas you're actually aware of. These codes are fairly intuitive (ap for American politics, blp for biographies of living persons, etc), and a list of them can be found here. So, for example, to indicate that you're aware of the sanctions for post-1992 American politics, you type {{subst:Ds/aware|ap}}, which shows on your page as
This user is aware of the designation of the following topics as contentious topics:
post-1992 politics of the United States and closely related people
More topic areas can be added to the template as you become aware of them. I hope this is clear; if it's not, please ask, and we can fix it together. Bishonen | tålk03:25, 28 December 2022 (UTC).[reply]
Thank much, @Bishonen: I very much appreciate your (multiple) efforts here to give personal attention to me in this case, all because I didn’t take the time to completely read how to handle the {{subst:Ds/aware|ap|blp}} templates. With your additional guidance, I’ve added them. And I’ll leave your post here for a while so you can take a break from taking care of me.
I tried mightily on Talk:Twitter Files to keep the “pedo” business regarding Musk and his tweet, CNN’s interpretation of that tweet, and its effect on Roth out of articlspace as that would have been an egregious BLP violation. I haven’t checked in on the article lately, but I’d be surprised if anyone decided to slip that into the article since there was a clear consensus to keep it out. Thanks again. Greg L (talk) 04:25, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, you have used some much more complicated code at the top of this page than the one I suggested - not sure where it comes from - and which I can only imperfectly understand. But what I can see is that it's not working as intended. There is still no mention of which ds area(s) you're aware of. In your code, I see the term "gender", so I assume you want to opt out of receiving alerts for gender-related disputes or controversies or people associated with them? If that's right, please just use this template: {{Ds/aware|gg}}, which is of the right form, and contains the topic code "gg" for gender. That'll work. (I apologize for including the confusing "subst:" business before; I thought it was necessary, but it just seems to mess things up. Just ignore it. Man, I hate templates.) Bishonen | tålk09:03, 28 December 2022 (UTC).[reply]
@Bishonen: Crap. I was multi-tasking yesterday and wearing glasses with a brand-new prescription so I now have an eye-strain headache. Nothing I did yesterday worked all that smoothly. Three times over my career, I’ve had to tell a boss I was heading home because my brain just wasn’t working; consider this my fourth. I’ll forgo the templates at the top and don’t mind occasional reminders. Thanks for the assistance,
Beyond alerts to editors active on flame-war-inducing articles, I hope the admins—and bureaucrats too because there are partisan admins out there—keep a keen eye out for cabals on political-related articles, where the denizens give atomic wedgies and drum newcomers out of the ranks, after those “outsiders” land on a talk page and endeavor to correct biases in articles. As you no-doubt know, some of the tricks used to gang up on those with disfavored views included creating numerous sockpuppets to give the appearance of consensus where none exists.
Bias is rampant in other articles besides Twitter Files. I once weighed in on the talk page, probably discussing Michael Avenatti (Stormy Daniel’s attorney now in prison), which at the time had a lede that read as follows:
Michael John Avenatti (born February 16, 1971) is an American attorney and entrepreneur. He has appeared on broadcast as well as in print media as a legal commentator and has represented parties in a number of prominent lawsuits, including cases brought against the National Football League, various celebrity defendants, high-ranking business executives, and Fortune 100 companies. He is also a professional race car driver, having participated in races in the United States and Europe.
Editors active on that article forgot to mention the part about where he volunteered in his spare time to assist Mother Teresa with washing the feet of the orphans. This was well after his legal problems for stealing client money had started, which was far-and-wide what made him WP:NOTABLE.
Somewhere in relation to Avenatt (I can’t find it now), I made a point about the rampant bias in our political articles and made the point that Wikipedia’s article on Trump has a whole section on “False Statements” whereas Biden has no equivalent section, nor one covering concerns over Biden’s mental fitness. As I recall, an admin active on the article responded with something along the lines of “That’s because Trump lies and Biden doesn’t.”Ohhh! You mean it’s that simple?!? Fortunately, that single !*! neuron responsible for initiating an emergency reactor SCRAM that protects the brain from a cognitive-dissonance seizure kicked in. I dropped it; at least on Wikipedia, politicians who are Democrats don’t lie.
To correct the bias, we need to ensure that those endeavoring to give proper balance to our articles aren’t met with (literally) responses along the lines of “The suggestion that there exists bird-dogging on a series of current events pages by a small but very clear group of editors with an agenda isn’t even a valid opinion.” → Is not a valid opinion.← And that’s from an editor who has “Donald Trump is a lunatic” and “Republican kamikazes” on their user page. If one ponders the implications of that, one may find irony. Greg L (talk) 19:33, 28 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Hello! Voting in the 2023 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 11 December 2023. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once.
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.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Wikibooks expert. Further, just in the interests of transparency, Wikibooks is not a very frequently hit project, and there's a lot of half-finished garbage there. That said, it is free webhosting in a wiki format, so theoretically it can just be copy-pasted on over. The intent is for exactly this kind of material, textbook-y like educational resources but much more freeform and book-like. It'll still have access to all the pictures on Commons. And... there's nothing stopping it from being linked, maybe even prominently, at the end of the Wikipedia article. If nothing else, if there are certain parts that others really insist on taking out of the article, you can possibly preserve them by just porting it to the Wikibooks link I offered. Since there's not a lot of activity on Wikibooks, the good news is that people are unlikely to complain, although the bad news is that people are unlikely to help out either. If you looked at Wikibooks:String Theory, you probably saw that there's not a lot there, so... yeah, green fields at least? SnowFire (talk) 04:32, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@SnowFire: Thank you very very much. I could do a simple Google search to learn more. But I agree, something like I created for Fuzzball (string theory) sounds like Wikibooks is a more suitable venue, despite what you say describe as the generally poor content over there. But our science articles are in a shambles over here on Wikipedia; have you seen our Neutron star article? Except for paid publications like Scientific American, pretty much everything-science is in a poor state; you get what you pay for. Getting Wikibooks to have a better reputation can only begin by making it better. I think I’ll just do a transplant. Any idea about links to Wikipedia from there? It seems they would all have to be external (single brackets) links. Greg L (talk) 05:02, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Alas, I'm not a Wikibooksian. If you use the source editor (rather than the visual editor), you can drop in wikilinks to Wikipedia articles with [[:w:String theory|String theory]] (or [[:Wikipedia:String theory|String theory]] for a long form) and the like via using a preceding ":w:", but that sure seems annoying to have to keep doing that. Not sure if there's something cleaner and faster. SnowFire (talk) 07:16, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I can use MS Word to do a search and replace to make all that faster. I have the article over there now. Thank you again, SnowFire. Greg L (talk) 07:20, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
P.S.@SnowFire: There seems to be only two templates that I used quite a bit but don’t exist over there: {{solar mass}} and a quote template. There are easy work-arounds for those… and I can even use MS Word to expedite the process. And, though I haven’t had time to look in detail, there appears to be a template-grabbing tool over there; I’m not sure what it’s about, but I might look at it closer. Fortunately, the {{val}} template was transferred over and works. By the way, I was the guy who originally evangelized back in the day for {{val}} and collaborated with a template author to create it, develop it, and proof the thing on various web browser and operating systems. Previous ways of writing complex values were barbaric before {{val}}. Greg L (talk) 07:44, 5 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
User:Greg L, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Greg L and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of User:Greg L during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. बिनोद थारू (talk) 04:36, 20 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
--The Fiddly Leprechaun · Catch Me! 18:17, 11 December 2008 (UTC)
You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Anwar al-Awlaki. Note that the three-revert rule prohibits making more than three reversions on a single page within a 24-hour period. Additionally, users who perform several reversions in content disputes may be blocked for edit warring even if they do not technically violate the three-revert rule. When in dispute with another editor you should first try to discuss controversial changes to work towards wording and content that gains a consensus among editors. Should that prove unsuccessful, you are encouraged to seek dispute resolution, and in some cases it may be appropriate to request page protection. Please stop the disruption, otherwise you may be blocked from editing. Please be aware that continued reverts will result in blocks. Please discuss the matter on the talk page. Thank you, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 05:47, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
VernoWhitney (talk) 20:02, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
on me. Papa Lima Whiskey (talk) 21:19, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
Like Now there's the GTB I know and love. --Born2cycle (talk) 23:56, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
wikimedia.org, stating your ownership of the material and your intention to publish it under a free license. You can find a sample permission letter here. If you take this step, add {{OTRS pending}} to the file description page to prevent premature deletion.
wikimedia.org.
Done. I don't know. while our polls weren't presented in the same manner, I don't believe there is anything in that difference that explains the difference in response. But I might be wrong, which is why I'm asking. Of course, your poll came out after there was a few days of discussion about my poll, so that might have made a difference. What do you think? --Born2cycle (talk) 19:02, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
--Born2cycle (talk) 22:25, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
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There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Phantom Hoover (talk) 21:57, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
User:Greg L, a page which you created or substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; you may participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Greg L and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of User:Greg L during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. बिनोद थारू (talk) 04:36, 20 December 2023 (UTC)