I recognize that this user page belongs to the Wikipedia project and not to me personally. As such, I recognize that I am expected to respectfully abide by community standards as to the presentation and content of this page, and that if I do not like these guidelines, I am welcome either to engage in reasonable discussion about it, to publish my material elsewhere, or to leave the project.
My real name is Larry Pieniazek and I like LEGO(r) Brand building elements. Feel free to mail me with comments or concerns if you don't want to post.
Here about a BLP that's persistently getting vandalized and you want me to semi protect it? Leave a note below, (User:Lar/Liberal Semi is no longer in use) and I or one of my TPWs will get it.
Here to leave me a message? Response time varies depending on where I'm active... Ping me if it's truly urgent, or find another admin.
Here about accountability? see my accountability page. Note: The apparent listification of the category (it's back but may go away again) does not change my commitment to my recallability in any way
Please read the two blue boxes :).
A Note on how things are done here:
Being a "grumpy old curmudgeon", I have certain principles governing this talk page which I expect you to adhere to if you post here. (This talk page is my "territory", (although I acknowledge it's not really mine, it's the community's) and I assume janitorial responsibility for it.)
I may, without notice, refactor comments to put like with like, correct indents, or retitle sections to reflect their contents more clearly. If I inadvertently change the meaning of anything, please let me know so I can fix it!
While I reserve the right to delete comments I find egregiously poor form, I am normally opposed to doing so and use monthly random archives instead. If you post here, your words will remain here and eventually in the archives, so please do not delete them, use strikeouts. In other words, think carefully about what you say rather than posting hastily or heatedly.
Edit warring here is particularly bad form. One of my WP:TPW's may well issue a short block, so don't do it.
Interpersonal communication does not work when messages are left on individual users' talk pages rather than threaded, especially when a third party wishes to read or reply.
Being a "bear of very little brain", I get easily confused when trying to follow conversations that bounce back and forth, so I've decided to try the convention that many others seem to use, aggregation of messages on either your talk page or my talk page. If the conversation is about an article I will try to aggregate on the article's talk page.
If the conversation is on your talk page or an article talk page, I will watch it.
If the conversation is on my talk page or an article talk page and I think that you may not be watching it, I will link to it in a note on your talk page, or in the edit summary of an empty edit. But if you start a thread here, please watch it.
I may mess up, don't worry, I'll find it eventually. Ping me if you really need to.
please note this is a personal preference rather than a matter of site policy
OK, happy to oblige. It may not be this very instant but it will be within a few hours. As a procedural note, if the article has been restored, it doesn't make sense to userify it, as it's already been restored to mainspace and userification would thwart the will of whoever decided to restore it. When it's userified, the entire history will be restored as well (unless there are some revisions that need to stay deleted). If someone decides that the deletion needs to be undone completely, they will presumably move it back. So given the state of flux here, it pays to check to see what's going on before acting. I'll check histories, and I'm suggesting that you check before doing a big edit run, so no one happens to move it while you are editing (maybe add an inuse while doing significant editing? not sure).
Alright then, it'll make more check up work but just move the already red linked deletions. In light of the case built up over this I'll wait and see if the others go down too. In all fairness it's not your fault that people are screaming about this, that happens anytime huge changes are made whether they're needed or not, but the way it was done combined with the attitudes of the people doing the deleting (or supporting it cause they can't do it themselves) makes it hard for me and others to believe that it is in the best interest of Wikipedia, Her purpose and primary goal. Good luck with your case. æronphonehome14:48, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I will update this list as I identify what's going on.
My deletions:
Osamu Migitera - this was never deleted, I just placed a PROD tag on it. You can work on it in mainspace, and if you feel it shouldn't be prodded, remove the tag. I'd appreciate you referencing it well first though. If not I may take it to AfD so we can decide what to do.
I can do the rest of these for you, sure... but can you sort out this many at once? Presumably you have enough to do to keep you busy for a bit, I may not get to the rest right away, but I will get to them, probably within 24 hours or less. ++Lar: t/c22:05, 21 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe my sarcasm was too subtle. There is in fact no deadline for anything here, but you guys want it in dress uniform right now or you want it gone. So give 'em to me. I'll build what I can and trash anything I can't. At least I'm offering to DO something, right? æronphonehome02:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes you are. And good on you for doing so. I wish more people would. You have my sincere thanks. These articles sat with problems for 3 years and 11M users didn't do anything while the backlog grew and grew. We need a reordering of priorities here. Sometimes a shock to the system is what's required. That's regrettable, but it is what it is. We gave the shock, and now the community, at last, is responding in a myriad useful ways... improving tags, processes and articles. ++Lar: t/c14:23, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I solemnly agree, but I still maintain that all the effort put into rocking the boat could be used to plug the holes that the rocking is being done for. Just like I was telling Bali Unlimited in one of the first article to go up for AFD, if you spent half the effort fixing the articles as you do yelling about them things wouldn't be so bad. æronphonehome16:36, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'd rather not debate the point here in what is essentially a "work thread". But no. 450,000 BLPs and growing. How many are problematic? No one knows for sure but it's a large number. The backlogs grew and grew and grew. Efforts to do anything less radical were thwarted. Enough. ++Lar: t/c16:48, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Not disagreeing with you, more like lamenting. At least you're being a real person without an apparent social disorder. I guess I just need- *sniff* someone to talk to... ^_- æronphonehome19:00, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
real person, without a social disorder???? [citation needed] ... at least according to some folk. :) Lament away, though. Because I agree. It's too bad it came to this. ++Lar: t/c19:05, 22 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
At least not one you can't handle. I don't like how mass deletion and bad attitudes seem to always go together. I put up a watchlist since I doubt this thing is over and while other people are open to mass deletion I'm open to mass adoption. Thanks for your help so far. æronphonehome18:59, 24 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, that's why I'm keeping this list on your talk page. If you want it somewhere else just let me know. As for the spat with the deletion brothers, what can you do? My last attempts to talk with both of them were simply deleted. It doesn't get any unfriendlier than that. They're both unashamedly crude, but I get disciplined. Gotta really love this place to give a care about it sometimes. Look towards the bottom too, I have a couple of questions. æronphonehome17:55, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Re the list, I'm fine with it here, but fair warning, I archive my talk page monthly and so all the Jan stuff (unless it's sitll active) will get archived away... so you may want to make a list in your own userspace or whatever. I thought maybe you wanted those actually userified. If you do just ask, I am happy to but I need to know, right now I'm not totally clear. As for the other matter, I'l comment below. But I'd again implore you to try to talk to folk first, and avoid edit warring. I think at least one of your "adversaries" thinks you're the one not being comunicative, so maybe a reset and start over might help.... put the past behind you and communicate clearly and hope for the best. ++Lar: t/c20:09, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the list is there in the hopes that you will userify those as well. I didn't want to make a new entry on your talk page every time yet another article went under. I imagine the scope of what I'm asking your help with will be active for a while, so if you archive this section I'll just fish out the ones that still need to be done and put it somewhere else.
OK, I get that the BLP situation has been festering for a long time, and I get the argument that we have an ethical responsibility to cut through the crap and actually do something about material with the potential to cause real-life harm. I was thinking through the implications, and I have a serious question.
Suppose that I've concluded that our medical articles contain a great deal of material that is incorrect, misleading, and promotional; that presents isolated preliminary studies as if they were conclusive truth; and that presents discredited or unproven treatments in an overly credulous fashion. Suppose I had concrete data indicating that regardless of our hidden disclaimer, Wikipedia is among the most prominent sources of medical information (e.g. PMID 19390105, PMID 19501017, etc).
A reasonable person could conclude that erroneous or misleading medical information on Wikipedia has at least as much, if not far more, potential for real-life harm than does biographical-article vandalism or the presence of neutral/positive but unsourced statements. Following this train of thought to its logical conclusion, would extreme measures (of the sort envisioned and carried out on BLPs) not be equally or more justified, on the same ethical grounds, in our medical articles? Again, this isn't a trick question - it's a serious train of thought sparked by the recent BLP flap. MastCellTalk19:12, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, that's a good question all right. A snap answer is that there isn't necessarily an equivalence between incorrect BLPs and incorrect material of other kinds. Incorrect medical information is a very serious problem but it's not causing harm in quite the same way.
If I (or my doctor acting as my agent) choose to use unverified information and it causes me harm, that's negligence. My negligence. It's information I actively sought out and then misapplied (or my agent did). ON the other hand if I'm detained by the TSA for days, or fired from my job, or my reputation is damaged, because of misleading information about me in a BLP, it's not my negligence that caused it. I'm the innocent victim.
A subtle distinction perhaps, and perhaps a meaningless one, but I don't think so. It thus argues that it is reasonable to ask for more responsibility for BLPs, because the BLP victim isn't the consumer and has no control over what others do with the information.
I dunno, Lar, I think from a purely legal perspective you are ignoring the fact that killing someone harms not only that person, but also the people who were otherwise positively impacted by their life - spouse, kids, parents, whatever. Those individuals did nothing wrong, but because our medical disclaimer is A. Buried and B. Never Enforced, they lost their sole breadwinner to the fact they believed colloidial silver could cure AIDS. Hipocrite (talk) 21:56, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well that's a good point. But that is a knock on effect, and there is still someone (other than an anonymous and hard to track down editor) to hold responsible. Bears more thought. ++Lar: t/c22:05, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Just lurk here on occasion, but wanted to weigh in that Wikipedia is what wikipedia is, and really, as far as medical advice goes, there are plenty of fringe lunacy sites out on the web that look mainstream and have totally bogus information that lack even the editability of wikipedia. Anyone who takes medical advice (or any other kind of advice, legal, psychological,e tc...) off of the internet -- and not just wikipedia but also including WebMD or the Mayo clinic!-- without vetting it through a trusted licensed professional is sort of an idiot. (Anyone remember Laetrile -- and that scam predated the internet) That said, I noticed that there was a big BLP dump into WPEQ for us to fix, and it made me thing about how the notion of verifying sources and getting stickier about having references is not entirely a bad thing...maybe WP Medicine has the personnel to start a similar project to that of the push to verify the BLPs. Just food for thought. Back to lurker mode now — Preceding unsigned comment added by Montanabw (talk • contribs) 19:12, 28 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, if some project wanted to do such a drive, frankly, it would be awesome. And for people who don't want to work on BLPs but still want to make things better in a meaningful way, it's a good project! I'm just worried about BLPs and have been for a while. ++Lar: t/c03:37, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
What about other topics that can cause harm?
I wonder what the standard would be for medical articles, as another lurker around here. With BLPs, off the top of my head, we remove potentially damaging material that's poorly sourced. It's easy enough for most people to understand. Could something as simple be devised for medical articles? There may be intricate issues relating to pseudoscience and what weight to give it, but I get the feeling MastCell is talking more about direct statements about procedures or the medical benefits of certain treatments. So perhaps an analogous provision would say, for instance, "Poorly sourced statements about medical treatments should be removed immediately, not subject to 3RR." I am not following the current discussions about BLP, admittedly, so perhaps there are stronger protections like flagged revisions or whatnot that you have in mind. This would seem to sharpen the question of how an adequately narrow standard could be created (would it go so far as to cover all medical information?). The next question that pops into my mind is whether there are other fields or topics with similar risks. How to repair your circuit breaker, maybe. It's an interesting question, I agree. Mackan79 (talk) 06:19, 30 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Of course, the problem is that you really can't idiot-proof anything. You make a good point: medicine can be dangerous, but so can electrical repairs, tree-trimming, truck driving, who knows where it will end? I suppose a distinction is that a poor BLP hurts a specific individual, while a poor article on medicine or home electronics hurts no one simply by existing, it is simply inviting people who don't use common sense to self-nominate for a Darwin Award! Montanabw(talk)07:43, 30 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, we think of defamation as a harm that flows more directly from something being written, whereas other types of statements usually require someone else to cause the direct harm. And yet, people rarely die from being lied about. Do people neglect to go to the doctor because of bad advice on the internet? It seems plausible to me that removing potentially defamatory statements is just a much simpler problem to deal with than improving the quality of medical information on the internet, or at least that each may require a different approach. Mackan79 (talk) 08:27, 30 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I think fixing BLPs is (at least in terms of what needs to be done to fix them) easier than fixing the accuracy problem in general. But whether there is will in the community to fix them is a different question. The RfC seems to be losing steam, as they often do. We shall see. ++Lar: t/c03:03, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
WMC's civility probation
Hi Lar, I am a bit flummoxed as to what to do, I know you were involved in the additional civility probation condition wording a couple of dayd ago, I have an issue with the way it is being administered by User 2over0 and I am just not getting a satisfactory reply from him. I reported the issue at the probation page this morning and User 2over0 closed the thread without discussion as no action I felt this was not correct and I moved my question to his talkpage, WMC replied there with what appeared to me to be more uncivil comments compounding the issue, Admin 2over0 has edited but has not replied to my question, I am at a loss as to what to do for the best, I hope you don't mind me asking you to have a look at my report and please comment or suggest how I can best deal with my report.
User 2over0 acting in his capacity as an Administrator has imo failed to act regards the requests asked of him in regards to Climate change, my specific complaint is his failure to act on a report I made to him in regards to William M Connelly incivility after a probation report in his name this morning , it is important imo that the issues around global warming probation are dealt with in a fair way, imo this report is a clear violation by WMC or his recent additional probation, in my opinion WMC has failed to take the new conditions on board and is continuing in the same manner. Here is the report that I feel has not been acted upon when imo it is a clear violation of WMC's additional civility probation.
(note from Lar: the above was posted by Off2RioRob at 16:11, 29 January 2010}
Demeaning names
I would have thought that considering the only very recent additional civility conditions applied to WMC in reference to demeaning other editors that this edit on his talkpage from yesterday is a violation of those conditions, he clearly refers to editors as the idiots. Could you let me know your opinion as regards this edit, thanks. Off2riorob (talk) 11:33, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Especially in regard to these two parts of the recent closing report from yourself ... he (WMC) is further warned to refrain from using septic and similar derogatory termsand Please be careful when throwing around terms that might be interpreted to refer to your fellow volunteers - even if a subtle dig falls within the letter of WP:Civility, it can still sting and contribute to the level of dysfunction at those pages.... I would have thought that whilst in discussion with User Short Brigade Harvester Boris about the Skeptic editors on his talkpage that WMC referring to them as the idiots is a clear violation of the sections of the report that I have posted here. Off2riorob (talk) 21:11, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'd just like to second these concerns. Admin:2/0 has edited numerous times since the questions were posed to him by multiple editors. He's only given a passing nod to the concerns about Gavin Collins' draconian 3 month article ban, while ignoring completely the concerns about his leniency toward WMC. This has to stop. UnitAnode21:20, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Third. I too have multiple open questions to 2/0 that he has simply ignored; meanwhile, he is more than willing to act with force on Gavin Collins. And I also echo the concerns of others about BozMo, who absolutely should NOT be acting as a neutral admin there. ATren (talk) 23:08, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
He has commented on his talkpage to my question but he has not answered it, is makes me feel awful, I have made a request from the administrator that is claiming to be the overseer in this issue and I haven't even had the respect of a straightforward answer, awful. Off2riorob (talk) 00:45, 30 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My thinking here: There are a lot of sharp elbows being swung in this area. It comes from all sides, but the "AGW defenders" as a group may have a bit of a bunker mentality. (1) And I agree that perhaps the reporting and enforcement may have been somewhat imbalanced at the sanctions page. But I think focusing on civility misses the crux. Civility is important, but what is more important is whether the articles are balanced properly, are written in a proper NPOV tone, and give the appropriate amount of coverage to the mainstream view without either overweighting or unfairly excluding other views. As an outsider looking in I think things are tilted a bit. That's concerning. Especially because that sort of thing tends to turn off those who share mainstream views but are disinclined to get involved because of the high levels of hostility. ++Lar: t/c03:16, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
1 - see, for example the threads just above where it seems some members of that "group" seem intent on taking me to task while being unwilling to answer direct questions.
Thanks for commenting Lar, if your going to impose sanctions then good balanced management of them is important or they become of no help with the issues, but saying that I think that as the issue has been brought to peoples attention that it appears generally to be improving, as in that old motto, keep your head down or you'll get it shot off. Off2riorob (talk) 14:10, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In all honesty, if a topic I cared deeply about was beset with >500 sockpuppets of a single agenda-driven editor, on top of the usual drive-through agenda accounts that beset every controversial corner of Wikipedia, not to mention being attacked in published opinion pieces which display an ignorance of Wikipedia's basic workings... I might develop a bunker mentality too. I can see why people are worked up about heavy-handedness on the "mainstream" side, but I think there's a corresponding lack of interest or empathy for the conditions that create the bunker mentality in the first place. The bunker mentality is real, but the dominant mentality on the other side is at least as toxic, if not more so. If you try to address one half of the problem in isolation, you're unlikely to succeed.
I'm curious where, specifically, you belive that climate-change articles are "tilted". The scientific and mainstream press, when it has noted these articles, has been quite positive about their presentation. A 2005 piece in Nature, aimed at encouraging experts to participate on Wikipedia, cited climate change articles as an area where "skeptical" editing threatened the project's scientific respectability ("In politically sensitive areas such as climate change, researchers have had to do battle with sceptics pushing an editorial line that is out of kilter with mainstream scientific thinking." Nature 2005 438(7070):890, PMID 16355169). A rather famous piece from the New Yorker also commented on the climate change articles:
For all its protocol, Wikipedia’s bureaucracy doesn’t necessarily favor truth. In March, 2005, William Connolley, a climate modeller at the British Antarctic Survey, in Cambridge, was briefly a victim of an edit war over the entry on global warming, to which he had contributed. After a particularly nasty confrontation with a skeptic, who had repeatedly watered down language pertaining to the greenhouse effect, the case went into arbitration... It can still seem as though the user who spends the most time on the site—or who yells the loudest—wins. [2]
The climate-change article also received high praise from experts in the field in a 2006 Denver Post article ("a great primer on the subject, suitable for just the kinds of use one might put to a traditional encyclopedia." [3]). I know it's fashionable at present to depict these articles as some sort of embarassment to Wikipedia, but the fact is that they are not perceived as such by reputable, mainstream observers. And when these observers comment on the associated conflicts, it is usually to say that "skepticism" is given excess prominence, rather than suppressed. That's not to say that there aren't real behavioral issues, and the editing atmosphere definitely needs work all around. But you argued that a focus on civility misses the point, and it's more important to assess whether we're achieving our goal of producing content worthy of a serious, respectable reference work. So you can breathe a bit easier in that regard. :) MastCellTalk21:46, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Briefly... You're citing stuff from 2005 and 2006. I think things have changed since then.
As for where things are tilted in article space, one area that comes to mind easily is all the churn about what to name the article on the email hacking incident. There are others. In userspace, one quick example would be the exchanges above where the "bunker inhabitants" seem to be trying to trip me up somehow, but won't say what they really mean, and won't answer questions. I think that sort of behavior alienates folk who might otherwise want to step in and try to hep keep the articles properly balanced. I know it turns me off. You take a sample of those folks views on dozens of fringe science questions and then of mine and you're going to find congruence. And yet I'm the enemy, apparently, because I don't care for their tactics. The ends don't justify the means. The articles have to be kept balanced but at what cost? This is not a new problem. We saw it with ID, with homeopathy, with cold fusion, you name it. It's not merely a focus on civility that's needed, it's a focus on overall editor behavior. ++Lar: t/c21:57, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Things have changed since 2006, but not in the way you're implying. The centralization of power and deference to "established" contributors was much more ingrained in 2006 (when I started editing) than it is now. The sort of policing that used to be practiced on the global-warming pages - and, I might add, which produced the work spoken of highly by Nature and the New Yorker - would never be possible today. Compared to the medical articles I worked on in 2006, where an editor could aggressively push nonsense more or less indefinitely, that sort of thing was stomped out quickly on climate-change pages. One checkuser used to run a huge number of queries on "skeptical" editors of climate-change articles, a practice which has since ceased due in large part to community uproar. I'm not saying we should go back to those days - in many ways, the current level of accountability is a huge improvement - but the bottom line is that any "suppression of minority viewpoints" was worse in 2005-2006, when these complimentary reviews were published.
I think we're in agreement with a lot of the "bunker mentality" stuff; certainly I see your point in your second paragraph. There's no question that people on the "mainstream" side are alienating the reasonable middle by overreacting. I would like that to change, but that's unlikely to happen if this is tackled solely as a problem of misbehaving "vested contributors". MastCellTalk22:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
MastCell, with respect to your last concern about it being "tackled solely as a problem of misbehaving vested contributors", I would suggest that the "other" problem is already being tackled, and has been for some years. Scibabies are efficiently rounded up (even without the omnipresent checkuser), and overly tendentious "skeptical" editors are usually dealt with using topic bans and blocks. The remaining problem, as I see it, is that similarly tendentious editors on the other side are not dealt with. This is in evidence on the probation page, where skeptic-leaning editors are banned much more quickly than proponent editors.
So, what may appear to be "solely dealing with vested contributors" may actually be leveling the playing field and treating both sides equally. ATren (talk) 23:06, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Your argument assumes that, absent administrative bias, "skeptics" and people who accept the mainstream scientific view of climate change would be sanctioned at an equal pace. I don't know that I agree with that a priori assumption. The goal of our scientific coverage is to provide an outline of topics that accords with current mainstream scientific thought. When editors consistently move us away from that goal, then they may well be sanctioned at a greater clip than editors who don't, regardless of politeness. The playing field is level - everyone is being judged by whether their contributions help achieve the project's goals. But I suppose that's a philosophical question where we differ, as reasonable people sometimes do. MastCellTalk23:52, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think we need to hand out sanctions exactly equally. That misses the point. What we need to do is hand out sanctions in a balanced manner. Right now the playing field isn't level, that's my view. If everyone were in fact being judged by their contributions, I think things would be a bit different. ++Lar: t/c15:53, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
MastCell, I think that many of the questions being debated (such as due weight for sourced claims) are sufficiently "gray" that it's not possible to make an objective judgement as to which editors in the debate are moving us closer to "the goal". It may be that no single editor is 100% correct in their analysis. For such situations, clarity is obtained only after respectful discussion between reasonable editors - but this is impossible in a hostile atmosphere, and that is why civility is important. Again, this assumes that the disruptive and tendentious elements are removed, including the "Scibabies". But we also must remove (or reform) long term editors who refuse to acknowledge and respect reasonable editors who happen to disagree on the fine points. ATren (talk) 00:42, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with pretty much everything in your post. I have a healthy respect for the subjectivity of most judgments about blocks and bans. The only thing I would add is that it's unreasonable to expect someone to treat you with more respect than you show them. To be clear, I don't think that banning a greater number of "skeptics" is the answer. I would like to see someone - anyone - commit to taking the high road. That means ignoring petty name-calling or insults directed at oneself, and ceasing to dish them out to others. If a few people on each "side" were willing to do this, the problem editors - on both sides - would find themselves effectively marginalized.
Lar, without trying to be difficult, I'm not sure what about the thread in question makes you queasy, nor what about it suggests an uneven playing field. MastCellTalk04:10, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm going to go out on a limb here: William M. Connolley will never be "marginalized", no matter how bad his behavior becomes. He has far too many supporters who rationalize and justify the way he treats people, no matter how bad it is. UnitAnode04:14, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
MastCell, I'm not sure why you don't get why I'm discomfited by the rhetorical approach in the thread ref I gave you. Read it again... Consider the part that starts here. A quick review: SBHB turns up to criticise my evenhandedness, and uses the term "the consensus perspective". I ask him what he means, exactly, and he answers (with a somewhat snappish/snarky edit summary " OK, I'll play along, though I may eventually regret it...") and when I ask for clarification by way of giving an example that I think cuts to the heart of the problem... a person who accepts pretty much everything the "bunker guys" do about how the world is, except who has some qualms about some things, his response is "I give up" with edit summary "indeed, yes, now I regret it"... no real attempt to engage. This goes on for pages and pages with several other members of the "bunker guys" participating, and I never do get a straight answer. Again, I thought my hypothetical was worthy of investigation, it was a great example of someone that is their ally in all but exact, slavish adherence to their tactics. But they displayed the very tactics that I'm concerned about in a conversation that I was trying to use to get at what the problem is. And you wonder why I'm queasy? Really? ++Lar: t/c
As one of the bunker guys, I'm happy to answer any question you might have. Apparently, your question was "What is "the consensus perspective"? Is that a POV of some sort? And who are "those editing against" it?"
The "Consensus perspective" is the broad and basically unchallenged perspective held by the vast and overwhelming majority of informed experts regarding climatology that a human-driven increase in atmospheric CO2 has, is, and unless reversed, will lead to an overall increase in global surface temperature, and that that overall increase in global surface temperature will have negative effects of varying (but substantial) degrees on the quality of life of humans. There is a tiny minority of dissident scientists whose roundly ignored views are excluded from scientific articles, per "generally, the views of tiny minorities should not be included at all. For example, the article on the Earth does not mention modern support for the Flat Earth concept, the view of a distinct minority." Note that I am refering only to articles about the science of global warming. More to come.
The "Consensus perspective" is not a POV of some sort. It is the only significant viewpoint that has been published by a reliable source with respect to the science.
However settled the science might be, the politics are quite different. Because the creation of atmospheric CO2 is an externality, it creates rent seeking behavior in beneificiaries of the externality - specifically, CO2 producers. In this case, that rent-seeking behavior has been opposition to introduction of pigouvian taxation and coasean bargaining via political manuevering. Specifically, some of the future rents created by restrictionless generation of CO2 are allocated to individuals known as lobbyists whose job is to influence public opinion and the opinion of political figures. Part of this involves riling up less than fully-expert individuals about how a giant cabal of evil scientists is trying to take over the world and turn off their air conditioning units. Suitably riled up, those individuals are mad, and try to poke holes into the science, alledging all kinds of nefarious controversies - see global warming controversy and Climate change denial. Now, those riled up amatures and experts in the wrong fields have no effect on the science, but a great deal on the politics. The problem is that those riled up individuals sometimes show up at Wikipedia and try to edit the articles on the science to conform to their view. Is everything clear now? Hipocrite (talk) 15:28, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Nope. The question that has been dodged, is not the one you answered in detail. As a note I already knew everything you answered in detail, having been a Libertarian for years and knowing quite a bit about rent seeking, externalities, lobbyists, and the conceptual tragedy of the commons, but it's a good set of references nonetheless, thanks for typing it out.
Rather, the question that has been dodged was the one that was posed by me at 03:30, 28 January 2010 (UTC) That question is rather more specific to the situation here at WP, instead of the wider world. And thus subject to less moralization or regurgitation of already known things. ++Lar: t/c15:47, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Having had the fortunate opportunity to participate in the Military History project early on in my Wikipedia sojourn, I know what effective and congenial collaboration looks like and feels like. I think all of us do. When it happens, we have a feeling that everyone involved is making an effort to build a balanced, complete, neutral article. We feel that their contributions are sincere, honest, and without guile.
Knowing how this feels, we can also tell when these attributes of effective collaboration are missing, such as when fellow participants use subtle but unmistakably condescending, insulting, and/or patronizing edit summaries, make demeaning or evasive comments, and/or use delaying tactics on discussion pages. Such tactics earned a number of editors long topic bans from the Palestine/Israel articles. I think Lar knows what I'm talking about. If anyone else is unsure of what I'm talking about, I'm sure I can find some examples of effective and honest collaboration which could be used to contrast with what we've been seeing in the GW articles for the past several years. Cla68 (talk) 16:05, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's it exactly. This topic area is not collegial. Thank you, Cla68, for expressing this so clearly, and with such a cogent example... Milhist is disproportionately rich with Wikipedia's best work. ++Lar: t/c16:14, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hipocrite: A swing
I think I'll take a shot at the second question, which was "(1. OK. So what other "perspectives" are there?) (2. If I, for example, think that man's impact on climate and the environment is sharply negative, and is of serious concern, and that it's likely that it has caused warming, and will cause serious harm to us and the rest of the organisms on earth, and that something ought to be done about it, but I don't necessarily agree that all the data presented by certain parties (c.f. the email scandal for example) as supporting this view necessarily does support it, or has been collated appropriately, or necessarily agree with the relative emphasis given to certain articles here on Wikipedia, does that means I am "editing from the consensus perspective" or not?) (3. What exactly does this consensus cover?)"
There are no other reliably sourced perspectives on the science. There is a reliably sourced other perspective on the politics, which is that the science is bunk, but, to be clear, that perspective is not at all related to the science, and such should be made clear in our articles.
Your views on data are not relevent, as you are not an expert, nor are you published. If you want to discuss how climate science is somehow wrong, you'll need to find relevent reliable sources to back your views on data. There are not yet reliable soruces on the science that show that the emails have done anything to the science, because the emails have not done anything to the science. Reliable sources for science are not single primary papers, or the rantings of physics professors, or newspaper articles by journalists, but rather review articles and influential, multiply cited academic papers. Wikipedia is not the way to change science to reflect what you want it to look like, but rather reflects what the published literature reflects - which is that this email scandal has not made it's way into scientific literature. If you want to discuss what the emails have done with respect to public scandal, that's great, and I don't think anyone is stopping anyone from doing that - except to stop them from saying that the emails have totally discredited climate science.
The consensus view covers the science of global warming, across all articles. It mandates that we not include the tiny-minority view that climate science is wrong. If you have a specific edit you'd like me to explain with respect to the consensus view, or a specific editor who you feel is being inapropriately lumped in with a group of people trying to edit science articles to reflect political opinion, I'm happy to do that, also. Hipocrite (talk) 16:42, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That's certainly true, but the first mention of "concentration camps" is from Lar, and it's from before I wrote "Holocaust." I'd hate for us to get caught up in this side issue, however. Hipocrite (talk) 18:02, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
No you wouldn't, I suspect (although who knows for sure?). Side issues are exactly the ticket to distract folk from the main point. ++Lar: t/c18:21, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
This is a side issue about a side issue, isn't it? The main point is several side issues away now. Maybe that was the point. ++Lar: t/c18:40, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Was wondering when you'd turn up. You're a canonical example of the problem, you know, since you so often indulge in snark to the exclusion of anything else in these bunfights, just like a good enforcer. With that as a preface, you know that wasn't what I meant. Didn't you? ++Lar: t/c18:21, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure I agree that was his likely intent, but YMMV. As for the first question, I calls them like I sees them, and I've never seen much snark free input from dave souza. We may just hang in the wrong places, I'm sure he's a charming dinner companion. ++Lar: t/c18:38, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Please assume good faith, I gave you an out, you prefer to confirm that Hipocrite was right in assuming that you'd started the Godwinning. If you read my sense of humour as snark, I find that regrettable, but I do hope you will find that I've made some snark free input here and there. . . dave souza, talk18:50, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"I gave you an out, you prefer to confirm that Hipocrite was right in assuming that you'd started the Godwinning."
False dichotomy. I neither thought we were talking about the Boer war nor was I Godwinning. I suspect you knew that already. But why let that stop you? ++Lar: t/c19:42, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, so I was going to go to Lar's talk page and tell him the first person to not respond to this thread would win the game, but then I looked and I was already at Lar's talk page, and I had just lost the game. Hipocrite (talk) 19:45, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Lar steps up to the plate, and staggers from the tilt of the field
Trying again, there are loads of controversial topics that Milhist has dealt with successfully and by and large they've remained collegial, produced more than their fair share of great articles, and are a lively, vibrant, non exclusionary community. The science cabal, (of course [[WP:TINC|it's just a turn of phrase) on the other hand, drives away people from whatever topics it touches. Are you lot just socially inept, or is it a deliberate control mechanism? ++Lar: t/c18:21, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I'm socially inept, quick to anger and mostly unwilling to suffer people I consider fools gladly. But, I'm trying to work on that. However, I think to play fair, you do need to note that the articles that you attribute to the "Science Cabal," are viewed by some of the participants in those articles as having real life higher-stakes, and both sides are far more motivated to "win," than in a typical millitary history dispute. I wonder what advice you would give to the "science cabal" that would help us make good articles that serve to inform the populace - that is, you know, the goal of scientists. At the same time, you should probably help the "anti-science cabal" to work with the science cabal, and accept that their fringe views can get airing in articles about their fringe views, but the consistant attempt to push relativity denialism in speed of light isn't helpful or productive. Hipocrite (talk) 18:30, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Suffering fools gladly isn't one of my strong suits, either. :) If you really mean what you're asking, try WP:Writing for the enemy as I said above. It's really hard but it works really well. And if you do it, make sure you ask the other side to do it too (and if they won't be fair about it, just revert out your awesome prose). That's my best idea right now. ++Lar: t/c18:34, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
MilHist is by far the most successful WikiProject we've got. I would, however, be curious to be pointed examples where they had successfully improved an article or group of articles to high quality in a collegial environment in the face of active, bitter political controversy, where people involved in that controversy were recruited and egged on to edit Wikipedia by external partisan outlets, and where massive agenda-driven sockpuppetry was the rule of the day. I suspect that approaches which might be successful when collaborating on a biography of Admiral Nelson might fare less well at 2006 Lebanon War or 2008 South Ossetia war, for example.
I know that in the Medicine WikiProject, we have a much easier time getting acute myeloid leukemia or paracetamol to FA status than we do with Lyme disease, chiropractic, or autism (though the last is an FA, against all odds). I'm not trying to denigrate MilHist - like I said, they're the gold standard for WikiProjects. I would really like to see examples where topics with this degree of external political involvement have been handled collegially. I'm just not sure that you can extrapolate techniques that have worked on less controversial articles to this particular problem without acknowledging its particulars.
I also don't think you're being totally fair to people who work on science articles. After all, 95% of the work they (we) do is uncontroversial and collegial, and scientific coverage is one of the very, very few aspects of Wikipedia that has been singled out for external praise from serious, reputable sources. I don't think that science articles could reflect that kind of credit on Wikipedia if they were written and patrolled by an angry, insular, socially inept cabal. MastCellTalk23:00, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hipocrite: and a miss
I'm afraid that still missed the mark. Except perhaps to highlight the difficulty in working in this area. Answers like that are what chase like minded (as far as the science and the politics go) folk who are not keen on your methods away. ++Lar: t/c16:51, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Is that the best example you've got? The matter of exactly what the causes and impact of global warming are isn't quite as clear cut as that. Using strawman examples like that undercuts your argument and worse, makes you look more bunkerish. A more instructive example might be how Milhist dealt with controversy over the use of the atomic bomb. Or coverage of concentration camps. Those are both very controversial topics with significant minority views, and yet by and large that group of editors worked together, and remained collegial and non exclusionary. ++Lar: t/c17:06, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Are you saying our holocaust article should note the minority view that it didn't happen? Have you reviewed the treatment of Holocaust denial in the article about the Holocaust? I think that's an excellent analogy here. You alledge that editors "remained collegial and non exclusionary," but you seem to be forgetting all the people that got banned right out of there. Of course, denying the holocaust is more offensive than denying global warming, but it's certainly just as wrong.Hipocrite (talk) 17:15, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Furter, I think you are giving short shrift to the revisionist stance on the atomic bomb by saying they have less evidence than the global warming deniers. At least they have all kinds of real academic historians getting published about it - including some who are not just a little bit respected. Hipocrite (talk) 17:20, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Wow, this gets better and better. You raised a strawman argument about some completely ludicrous theory of animated skeletons used in an ancient war that maybe 3 people in the entire world even have heard of much less given credence to. I rebutted you with two examples that (I think) bracket this topic in their percentage of adherents and you go off on holocaust denial. Way to miss the point completely. Look, milhist does a far better job of dealing with reasonable disagreements about the amount of coverage to give something, in general, than you guys do. You can't worm away from that. And you especially can't get away with trying to twist the arguments around to try to cast aspersions on me ... not here, that just won't fly. Try again, or better, admit that there's a problem. Or go away. But whatever you do, stop being hypocritical. ++Lar: t/c17:38, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't deny for a second that MilHist appears to have a better track record. Of course, they are entering from a far easier set of starting circumstances. Clearly we are talking past eachother - You stated "Or coverage of concentration camps." I responded to that. There are about as many qualified historians who deny the camps as there are qualified climatologists who deny AGW. The difference is that there are a lot of politicians and corporations and cranks who deny AGW, and no politicians and no corporations but a lot of cranks who deny the Holocaust. I certainly don't intend to cast aspersions on you - if you could point out where you see me doing that, I'd happily redact. I've admitted there's a problem multiple times, and I've admitted it's from both sides - diffs on request. The only difference I see, however, is that the badness from one side is at least moral. Of course, I'm certain the other side sees it that way also, but, of course, both you and I think they are wrong, per your earlier statements? And, for the record, let me further note that the incivility on this page didn't start with me, wasn't continued by me and was all directed at me. You ask that people start at home, I hope, by being civil and respectful. Please convince everyone here to do so. Hipocrite (talk) 17:53, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"the vaunted MilHist group" vs. "I don't deny for a second that MilHist appears to have a better track record" ... so are they worthy of your scorn when you call them "vaunted" or do they actually have a better track record, one that you could learn from? When was the last time you tried WP:Writing for the opponent, for example? ++Lar: t/c18:25, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Vaunted (adj) highly or widely praised or boasted about. I thought it was an appropriate moniker. I don't have any scorn for MilHist - none at all (well, some of the members use MilHist as a stepping stone to level up, but that's not the project's fault). I think I wrote for the other side about 15 minutes ago when I removed this per a request from the other side, which I suspect will be opposed by at least one on "my side." There's also the page where I suggested that WMC be given a real final civility warning - that was what, 5 minutes ago? But, if you can think of an article where it would be approprite for the "other side" to have a bit written for them, I'm happy to give it a go. Can you suggest a spot? How about something in economics where the Austrians are under-represented, because then I'll actually be speaking in my speciality. Hipocrite (talk) 18:38, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thought that was a good edit. I think it's not just about reverting or quick changes, though. If you have time you might try writing something that really tries to redo areas where there has been contention. ++Lar: t/c16:17, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'd further ask that you review the articles I linked to in my first post in this subsection, as it was adressed to MillHist's passing the buck with respect to the atomic bomibings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hipocrite (talk) 17:59, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
<undent>Do not compare disagreeing about AGW with holocaust denial. It's offensive and vulgar in the extreme, and a symptom of the problem at related pages. UnitAnode17:18, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I certainly hope you're not adressing that at me, given that Lar brought it up, and to my knowledge, the only gentile in the room is you. Hipocrite (talk) 17:21, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
To add my own tuppenceworth on the topic you seemed to be discussing, I have no expertise on the significance of AGW, but all I've seen is explicit that the majority scientific view is that it is of considerable significance. Our articles should give due weight to that, and if more editors accepted that policy we might see peace in our articles. . . dave souza, talk17:58, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As you ask, the scientific consensus is that human contributions to global warming are shown by scientific studies, and are a serious problem. Everyone should expect that due weight will be given to that position, and minority views shown in relation to that position. If newcomers are educated in that requirement, it could reduce talk page squabbles. Thus, we may show that the political majority view supports inaction, while still being clear about the scientific consensus. Hope that's clearer. dave souza, talk18:57, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Let's assume that I know what the scientific consensus is about AGW, shall we, since so many people keep explaining it (when I have never said I didn't know what it was, or given any indication that I didn't). Still didn't logically parse your statement though, since it assumes the conclusion it's trying to show. It's not clear to me which articles in a general interest encyclopedia need to have their weight governed by the scientific consensus, other than ones that are purely concerned with the science (and completely omit any discussion of social, economic, or political aspects). Speculation on what the scientific consensus view of AGW implies for us (and I agree it's dire pretty much across the board, and something needs to be done, and soon) is OR, so all we can do is report on what others say. ++Lar: t/c19:48, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Glad to. The social implications, economics and politics of AGW, for example, inevitably involve acceptance or rejection of the science. The articles should be clear about the scientific consensus [as shown by rs's] wherever points about the science are made. The articles about the science of AGW should briefly mention the other aspects in summary style, with links. As you'll know, evolution is an example, and intelligent design makes the scientific consensus clear as well as describing the social and political phenomenon. Hope we agree on this, won't trouble you any more with going over what must be old ground for you. My optimistic opinion is that more acceptance of these principles would lead to less acrimonious argument, ymmv. . dave souza, talk20:22, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with the goal you outline but I suspect that we don't agree about which articles bin where. Nor about the methods you use to try to achieve the end results. The ends don't justify the means. And that's the real point, in my view, of the N kb of stuff in all these sections. ++Lar: t/c23:18, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Good catch. The difference though, is in whether it's exceptional action (a one time deletion run to sort a few BLPs) to deal with an extraordinary problem (the biggest problem facing the project) or routine everyday action (article control of the entire GW/climate topic area) to deal with ... what? Keeping a particular POV? Not the same thing at all. ++Lar: t/c02:22, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In this situation, you are decrying a lack of collegiality; in the other, stating that people should "lead, follow, or get out of the way". It is your opinion that the unsourced BLP issue is supremely important, and that the problem with the GW articles is that one group is trying to control them to keep out a particular POV. I am merely pointing out that not everyone agrees with you - I agree with you concerning BLPs for the same reason that I disagree with you concerning the GW articles, because I wish to see articles based on good information. On the one hand, any unreferenced article is not knowledge, merely a set of unverified statements, with the added detriment of being potentially damaging in the case of BLPs. On the other, an article that, for example, uncritically weights blogosphere reaction to a paper on the thermodynamic impossibility of the greenhouse effect equally with the enormous body of research that supports the accepted consensus on it, is also valueless as a source of knowledge. Hal peridol (talk) 15:57, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Brief Response to Hipocrite
This sounds very suspiciously like SPOV, which is not policy.
This is an appeal to authority, as it assumes that the science is untainted by the misbehavior brought to light in the email scandal, simply because the scientists behind the science say so.
Treating those who disbelieve in some portion of the AGW theory as FRINGE instead of a significant minority does your position no favors.
If there was a significant minority, clearly a substantial number of trained climatologists would be dissenting from things. Where are they? Where are their articles? Why isn't there a scientific debate, if the science is so uncertain? Are you honestly telling me that there is some big lie out there that all of the trained climatologists are part of? Hipocrite (talk) 17:07, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I believe that portions of the emails dealt specifically with your "where are they at" argument. They're actively shut out of most of the peer-reviewed journals. It creates a catch-22 for scientists who are skeptical: publish in non-peer-reviewed places and be derided; or submit to peer-reviewed journals and be shut out altogether. UnitAnode17:16, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
So you're saying that there are a lot of academic climatologists who are publishing articles in non-reviewed journals sceptical of the scientific consensus on AGW? I'd love to read some of those articles - could you forward them to me? Hipocrite (talk) 17:25, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Your uncivil condescension aside, I never said there were "a lot of academic climatologists", though your creation of a false requirement that appropriately skeptical scientists be "academic climatologists" is noted. With that, I'm disengaging, s conversing with you is pointless. UnitAnode17:40, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Look, I'm not a climate change expert. I don't follow the literature. I thought you were saying there were people publishing outside of the typical peer review - and I wanted to get a look at it. Please don't assume that I was being snide or incivil. I'm not, I'm just not up to speed on the entire corpus of information. I'm also not making a false requirement that skeptical scientists be academic climatologists. I accept anyone in the dicipline they studied. However, I don't think there's a lot of value gleaned from looking at econometric analysis by mathematicians, nor from chemistry by anthropologists, nor from climate modeling by physicists. Further - to your deleted item - Lar said "concentration camps" before I said "Holocaust." Hipocrite (talk) 17:57, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, so many sections. A problem with the topic is that a lot of publicity is given to retired amateurs and claims that their work overturns the academic consensus. Until such overturning becomes the scientific consensus our articles should give due weight to the current consensus as the majority view. . . dave souza, talk18:03, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Does that mean excluding all dissent? Would that be the ideal in your view? And is scientific consensus the only valid way to determine the weight of articles on the political aspects of the overall topic? It is not Wikipedia's place to Reveal Truth, it's rather to report what other sources say ... and let the reader draw their own conclusions. ++Lar: t/c18:28, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Of course not - the political articles should be weighted based on the political debate as evidenced by reliable sources for politics, like newspapers. Hipocrite (talk) 18:40, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Denning, the Monfort Professor of Atmospheric Science, said he was pleasantly surprised how the main [global warming] articles 'stick to the science and avoid confusing the reader with political controversy.' Students who want to study up on the controversy, however, find plenty of links if they want them." (Denver Post 2007). It can be done - in fact, according to reliable sources, it is being done. MastCellTalk23:08, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think you were answering the question I was asking. Further that is from 2007. Didn't we already talk about older sources? ++Lar: t/c23:13, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You asked how the science could be successfully separated from the political controversy. I'm suggesting that our existing article structure provides an answer to your question. Because I am a pseudonymous screen name, I don't expect a simple statement of my opinion to carry much weight; hence, I cited an expert in the field, as quoted by a major U.S. newspaper, making the same point. We did talk about older sources; since the article structure of global warming and its content forks is largely unchanged since 2007, I don't see the age of the article as negating its underlying observation. MastCellTalk23:23, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I feel the need to remind Dave (and Hipocrite), that we as a project are not controlled by WP:SPOV, as your continual issuance of decrees regarding what must happen in the articles based on "scientific consensus" implies. There is far more to this debate than just the science of one side of the issue -- even if that side currently claims "consensus." UnitAnode18:32, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I understand that it is common practice to do this, as I see this form of maintenance performed every day. Well, I wanted to know if you were aware of any policy or guideline that instructs this to be done... is there such a thing? I ask because I've now entangled myself in a dispute with a person who is pretty unhappy about it and has tripped a 5RR as a result (see WP:AN3#User:AeronPeryton_reported_by_User:JBsupreme for details). I've left what I felt were calm and level headed comments on the editor's talk page but was greeted with a less than civil response in return. JBsupreme (talk) 00:11, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry to be bothering you with this shit, really... I took your earlier advice to heart and felt like it backfired. I'll continue to try and keep an open mind here. JBsupreme (talk) 00:18, 31 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Redlinks are a source of growth for the encyclopedia, but only when it makes sense to have them. I don't know of a requirement that removals be done, but I agree with you it's common practice, and that it makes sense if it's not likely that the article would come back. I'm sorry that things went pearshaped. I've commented a bit up (at User_talk:Lar#Userify_request, very last section)... Dunno if that's helpful or not. And it's no bother, don't worry on that score. As for your comments on his talk, I thought they were pretty measured. But I can't find the other half of the conversation so I can't tell... was it on your talk? Best. ++Lar: t/c03:00, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm. I think Aer means well but may not be assuming enough good faith of others. He's working to fix things up, or so it seemed when I reviewed what he was doing before, which is why I was willing to userify things for him. But that talk page post wasn't very friendly, was it? ++Lar: t/c03:44, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Please read and comment on my observation of extensive vandalism to Nate Kaeding's article two weeks ago, and on my request to semiprotect all the articles of players in Super Bowl XLIV for the next two weeks until a week after the game ends. Chutznik (talk) 03:44, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Amend recent WMC refactoring ban to explicitly exclude own usertalk?
A user pointed out at my talk that after Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation/Requests for enforcement#William M. Connolley: on refactoring comments and civility (note that I changed the title of that section - it is the merged discussion that recently closed with a refactoring ban and a warning), User:William M. Connolley has removed whole comments from his own usertalk. Personally, I did not consider this when discussing the close, which omission I view as an oversight. Removing comments from one's own usertalk is generally given wide latitude, and given the purpose of that page I do not think that it violates the intention of the prohibition. Prodego already expressed here that they are okay with such removals. Would you mind if the refactoring ban is amended to specify that such removals are not included in the prohibition? I have also asked User:LessHeard vanU as the other admin commenting on that thread. Regards, - 2/0 (cont.) 16:20, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Although it's given wide latitude in general, I'm not sure I agree in this case. Can we talk this through there for a bit first? ++Lar: t/c17:21, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Posilutely. I do not think that we should disinclude editing another editor's post to his own talkpage or misrepresenting what they have said, just straight removal with an edit summary that is not uncivil. - 2/0 (cont.) 19:50, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not aware of any case where an unblocked user has been prohibited from removing material from their own usertalk page (and certainly we've had much worse than WMC come through these parts). Are either of you aware of any case in which such a restriction has been placed? MastCellTalk21:53, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A key feature of Wikipedia is that we constantly try new things out to see if they work. This restriction, were it to be placed, would be a new thing, I think. That is not, itself, an argument either for or against it. ++Lar: t/c22:01, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
My thinking is if we are trying to persuade WMC to act according to the standards and practices expected of all editors, then we shouldn't be disallowing what other editors find commonplace. Hmm? LessHeard vanU (talk) 22:44, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't want to quibble but blocked users have less leeway than most editors, they can't remove material that the blocking admins left them, for example. But I'm ok with this. ++Lar: t/c23:39, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Blocked users are absolutely permitted to remove material left by the blocking admin, or by anyone else. If a blocked user wants to blank his entire talk page in a huff, that's fine, too. As long as the blocked editor isn't being abusive or disruptive, his privileges to edit and archive his talk page aren't suspended. (Merely deleting a block notice, for instance, doesn't qualify as 'disruptive'.) If you're not sure about this, feel free to confirm at WP:AN — but I'm surprised that you're not already aware. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:46, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Blocked users who wish to be unblocked, are not. Hiding the circumstances of their blockage is not allowed. They can go off in a huff if they want, or wait their block out, but as long as they are dialoging about being unblocked, rugsweeping is disruptive. I'm surprised that you're not already aware. ++Lar: t/c02:40, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If you mean that they can't blank a rejected {unblock} template in order to place another one and pretend the first one never happened — yes, I agree. That would be deceptive, disruptive behaviour. In general, however, blocked users are welcome to remove content from their own talk pages while blocked, including notices from the blocking admin. I agree that an admin reviewing an {unblock} request would probably take a jaundiced view to any 'rugsweeping', but even then there are no hard and fast rules. In any case, I was concerned that you were espousing (and encouraging) the mistaken view that blocked editors are not permitted to delete material from their talk pages — full stop. Your comment didn't talk about best practices for a blocked editor filing an unblock request; it plainly stated that blocked users weren't permitted to remove the comments of the blocking admin. That flat, unqualified statement was not correct, which is something I think we both agree on. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:16, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Policy at WP is descriptive. Not prescriptive. No flat, unqualified statement is ever correct. Including your last sentence, in fact. ++Lar: t/c03:19, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'm really not looking to start a fight here. I just don't want the already-heated situation surrounding WMC to get more inflamed through the introduction of incorrect information. Under the narrow circumstance of 'the blocked editor's {unblock} was turned down', the blocked editor can't remove the rejection. Otherwise, they have a pretty free hand to remove material from their talk pages as they see fit. I agree with you that it is often inadvisable for an editor seeking an unblock to remove the original block notice, but even that's not a hard rule. (Let's say an editor violated 3RR and was blocked. He had an otherwise clean record and history of good contributions, and blanked his talk page out of embarrassment. A few hours later, he posts an unblock request along the lines of "The blocking admin is right; I screwed up and shouldn't have been reverting like that; I'm sorry for the trouble, and I'll stay away from the article for the next couple of days until things cool down" I wouldn't be surprised if the {unblock} were granted.)
Your statement above, "blocked users...can't remove material that the blocking admins left them" just wasn't correct. I was concerned that you genuinely didn't realize that, because it's a mistake that a surprising number of admins seem to make — even some fairly experienced ones. It leads to the ugly situation where an admin starts edit warring with a blocked editor just to keep a scarlet letter on the blockee's talk page. I'd much rather correct that sort of misconception here and now, rather than have to deal with the fallout on AN/I after some future block. Since it seems you just misspoke, I'll not bother you further. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:46, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Two things, first can you read the first couple of paragraphs of WP:REDLINK at tell me if I'm crazy or not? It starts by saying why red links exist, how important they are, and then it says when bad articles are deleted one should make any link to it go away. It seems contradictory so the way I interpret that is the backlinks should be removed only in the case that it's glaringly obvious that the article will never return. If an article is deleted about a notable or important subject and it was simply not conforming to guidelines and no one was willing to help it do so then I believe, and am supported by WP:REDLINK in thinking, that red links should stay there for future reference and work.
There are figures on Wikipedia that aggregate red links to tell how wanted a non-existent article is. Removing red links on purpose prevents people from getting an accurate reading that way. And what happens when an article is reintroduced that is done proper? You'd have to do a plain text search of Wikipedia to re-link the term or subject manually. What a waste of effort. If that is how the guideline should be interpreted then it seriously needs to be re-evaluated and revised to be clearer of its intent. Otherwise you have what JBSupreme and I had. Is there a process in which policy and guideline can be introduced for overview and discussion?
Second, when an article is created for a person is there a limit to discussing only one single person per article? I was considering taking all the individuals who may not meet notability on their own and wrapping their bios into List of Bemani musicians. The article would assert the person's importance in the series specifically rather than their importance to world in general. If one or more of them are notable enough to have their own article then a stub section in the list would simply link to their own article and give a brief overview of that person inline. I have spent just about no effort on Wikipedia making BLPs so I know next to nothing about the protocol with them (even less so now with this pitchfork riot) so if you can, I would appreciate your help. æronphonehome18:08, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Ok on the first part, I agree with you, the page wording is conflicting. But that is the way of many wikipedia policies. We expect people to use common sense when applying them. What is that page really saying? It's saying that redlinks are good, except when they're bad. They're good if they link to pages that we ought to have, because they're on topics we don't have yet but should. SO link them so the project can grow. They're bad when they link to pages that we ought not to have, because they're typos, misspellings, or (more importantly) on topics we know for sure, or we already decided, we shouldn't have, and it's not likely that will ever change. SO don't link them so people don't get confused and create pages we know not to create.
Where things have gone awry here is that there is a disagreement on certain pages... they were deleted. Normally that's a sign that we shouldn't have a link, and that's why policy says get rid of the links. But in this case they were deleted not because we are sure we should never have an article, they were deleted because they were unsourced and we were playing it safe. Strikes me that some of the redlinks here might well come back as articles, and soon, as soon as they get sourced.
All THAT said, things went in the weeds because edit warring broke out. As soon as that happens, it tends to break down communication. As I said above, I'd try communicating again. I can have a word with JBS if you want. ++Lar: t/c20:42, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
In response to what you said above, I did try to talk to both of them. When you approach someone with logical rationale (however cynical) and they respond with deleting what you wrote it's pretty obvious who's being uncooperative. I chose to continue reverting the bad idea changes because I see them as just that, and I asked for arbitration (literally), though nothing got intelligently discussed there either (I was blocked by someone involved in all the deletion, surprise surprise). Even though, I can't think of anything you would say to either of them that would change their behaviour for the better... though perhaps you could do something about this? Bali has been doing this to several articles in and not in the process of AfD. Is he trying to bolster his edit count? æronphonehome21:10, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
As for your second question I honestly don't know. Seems a good question to me. I know we do similar things with songs that don't merit articles, they get described in the album article, and albums, they get described in the musician's article.... Hope that helps. ++Lar: t/c20:42, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Oh yes, I'm clearly trying to inflate my edit count. What else could explain my decision to quietly remove a post to my talk page that said I "behave in a manner that goes against the spirit of the Wikipedia project and you barely actually contribute to it so that makes your existence here almost worthless" and that I clearly "have no time in your busy life to be a nice person or to aid and contribute and instead want to see categories of information removed on the grounds of your personal (Oxford-like?) tastes." I was of course thoroughly convinced by your logically devastating statement (demonstrating a mastery of classical rhetoric) that all that was why my "bad faith edits to List of Bemani musicians has been reverted as will anything else that goes against the purpose of this project that I contribute to while you cynically critique."[6]. Of course, a rational contributor in good faith would have responded positively to your edit summaries on your fourth revert calling my efforts "vandalism" [7] and your fifth revert calling them "bad faith."[8]. Well played, sir! I can see why you've declined defending the maintenance of entirely unsourced information about living people on the article's talk page... your case has already been succinctly and irrefutably made. And if that wasn't enough, you finished with a logical flourish: "As for my excuse for exhibiting 3rr behaviour, again, I do not believe that their edits are in keeping with good faith or even good ideas. It feels as though they simply want to delete and bury everything for good."[9].
In fact, the creation and maintenance of unsourced articles on living people has to stop. There are strong ethical, real world reasons for this. There are strong research and verifiability reasons for this that need to be the core of any encyclopedic project. And it's all well-supported by wikipedia's policies. I'm not particularly interested in educating you if you can't be bothered to read and figure it out for yourself. Perhaps Lar will be more patient. One last bit of advice: being nice does not mean "letting you have your way." I was willing to let the edit warring slide after the fourth revert as i informed you on your talk page. That was me being nice. I'll make you a deal: You can do as much original research and unsourced editing as you like to the Dance Dance Revolution walled garden without any interventions from me so long as you leave living people out of it. Any creation of articles on people (or aggregating lists about living people) that are unsupported by reliable sources independent of the subject and that fail to pass any of the notability guidelines, will draw my attention.Bali ultimate (talk) 21:34, 1 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Goodness. So much to try to keep an eye on. Why do all these pots boil at the same time? A piece of unrelated advice. Try to do your best to stay on the high road... or at least higher those you find arrayed against you, or it may trip you up. ++Lar: t/c19:37, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
If the proposed sanction mean I must have "consensus" before reverting then I'd like that clearly defined due to some people saying "no" all the time with inadequate and constantly changing excuses. Also, I'd like to apologize for the edit warring; from what I'd seen that seemed to be the way things are done on these articles and nobody has made much of a fuss about it before. TheGoodLocust (talk) 20:30, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I agree that WMC should have to explain his reverstions in talk, regardless of whether he reverted first not. Otherwise, SBHB, SS or KDP will simply revert before him so he won't be bothered with it. TheGoodLocust (talk) 20:32, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, something more than just standing athwart and saying "no" is needed to establish there isn't consensus. I'll mention it. ++Lar: t/c20:38, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I'd rather you didn't lobby me here. Asking for clarification is one thing. Lobbying maybe not so much? Lobby on the page itself. ++Lar: t/c22:26, 2 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I put my money where my mouth was - where's my change?
I put my money where my mouth was - I crossed the bunker Here, and engaged in collaborative editing with editors who are on the other "side" here.
In response to all of this good faith and major attempts at civility on my part, here's what I got - and it's not even exaustive:
My attempt to deescalate on a talk page was described as "talking in thinly veiled terms to antagonize his fellow editors."[10]
The talk page where editors were almost working together to improve the article is just as worthless as ever thanks to 142.68.92.131 (talk·contribs) and 142.68.95.166 (talk·contribs), with reports about this going totally ignored at the enforcement page.
Of course, this is just one day of sampling. If you want to know why there's a bunker mentality and no civility at climate change? Because when people try to fix things by doing right they get shit on. Hipocrite (talk) 18:03, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Do you want me to go look at this and say something? I think maybe changing the mentality will take more than just one person, just one or a few times. It may take multiple tries by multiple people working at the same time, together. Keep trying, please! ++Lar: t/c19:45, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The IP activity is being dealt with I think, see the enforcement page, 2/0 has it I think... I ran a CU to determine collateral damage at 2's request. I'm sorry, I did not look at GoRight. I will try to, today. ++Lar: t/c14:22, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for helping with the IP. The GoRight section that you should review was not the proposed unblock request, but rather the proposed unblock request in light of [11]Hipocrite (talk) 14:35, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've commented on the request (perhaps not exactly as you might have wished) but also I told GoRight that his peanut gallery stuff was not at all helpful. Because it's not. Everyone needs to be building bridges, and at least trying to work with the more reasonable folk on the "other side" or we won't get anywhere. ++Lar: t/c15:05, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Your attempt with UA was appreciated but next time perhaps also encourage him to go straight to an editor if he has a problem with them rather than post on a talk page they might not see. --BozMotalk18:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I figured that an enforcement admin would most likely be watching the talkpage of that enforcement. And my comments "above the line" were being snowed under by other stuff, so I posted it there. It seemed (and seems) wholly appropriate that I did so. UnitAnode19:13, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
- And, lest it be seen I'm crapping on everything, it appears that Nightmote, who I think is on the other "side" and I made substantial positive changes to the article. Hipocrite (talk) 20:04, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
On filibusters
@Lar, you seem to take offense at something when I thought I was being matter of fact. Explain what and you win a free apology. --BozMotalk18:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"Lar trying to introduce KDP into this looks to me like some kind of filibuster", "But it was certainly you, Lar, who picked out KDP from that discussion and introduced KDP below the line into the uninvolved admin discussion of results. I am not that bothered by what is unquestionably process dysfunctionality, life is short and we have to be pragmatic but it seems strange of you to dispute what you clearly did from the edit history." ... Actually, the edit history shows that someone else (UnitAnode) introduced evidence of who was edit warring on that page. I reviewed that evidence, saw many more names than you brought forward, and thought that KDP needed adding too. I raised that, but you seemed to dig in. I'm not offended, no, but I'm not particularly impressed either. Using terms like "filibuster" is not really quite collegial. ++Lar: t/c19:45, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Glad you are not offended but also surprised at your interpretation which seems a clear misreading of my comment. Equally therefore, sadly, not particularly impressed since my previous encounters of you had been positive. --BozMotalk19:55, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
How exactly is it possible to misread "filibuster" as anything other than disparagement? Feel free to explain. Or apologise, as you offered. ++Lar: t/c20:04, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps I should do both: (1) My only knowledge of the word comes from Filibuster#United_Kingdom where it is not broadly disparaging but technical and tactical. People celebrate filibusters as essential for democracy, a triumph for democracy. In this instance my point was that you were forcing the debate wider than addressing the only issue actually raised. I had made it clear [12] that I was after a quick sanction for an offence on a narrow terrain and wanted comments from the floor only on whether the offence was correctly presented. Unitanode said involve KDP, Nutley said "no, he took it to talk unlike everyone else" etc etc but this was not within the question which I asked, and in strict terms those comments were out of order. I effectively asked the floor only whether I had those offences correct. Regardless of irrelevant comments we could have just nailed this quickly and moved on rather than using more time discussing the sanction than they spent discussing the page. But, clearly, by widening the debate to include not only KDP's edits on that page but (by the comment along the lines of if he is innocent it is only by luck) also including the rest of KDPs edits (which had been raised from the floor but procedurally you should have ignored) effectively you ensured that the origin motion for a quick and decisive rap on the knuckles for a clear offence could not proceed. Given my limited time frame, it meant the motion timed out on my available time. That, technically, is a filibuster, pretty much to a T. Now, I have not in all this said that it was a bad call. You have concerns about KDP which you want to deal with and bundling him into any nearby action may well be overall the best decision. But it was not the original issue or the original action. From my point of view (as the person who raised the issue) once we are not on a action for an issue I have to drop out, because I am very busy with Haiti and have no time to form a balanced judgement across probation space on who is being a bad person and who not. So I said, effectively, drop this motion, raise a more general one and deal with this as part of it. This motion has been filibusted. (2) I apologise if the term caused you offence because you took it as disparaging. It was intended to be technical. --BozMotalk20:42, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Well, this isn't a parliament, nor is it a democracy, so we don't do filibusters here. That's what caused my raised eyebrows. The motion now is set to proceed I think. (2) Apology accepted. ++Lar: t/c21:18, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
By the way doesn't [13] contradict [14] or did I misunderstand "I can't sign off" to mean something other than "we can't"? Really, this is no big deal I am sure I got the wrong end of the stick somewhere but I suspect it was understandable to some degree. --BozMotalk21:12, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"I can't" != "We can't". It means I oppose the consensus, not that consensus can't be reached without my agreement. ++Lar: t/c21:25, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Filibuster - "to impede legislation by irregular or obstructive tactics, esp. by making long speeches." Just thought I'd clarify for Bozmo just how pejorative his use of that word is when referring to another administrator. UnitAnode20:38, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Are you being intentionally obtuse, here? By definition, you claimed that Lar was willfully "impeding" the process by using "irregular or obstructive tactics, esp. by making long speeches." How is it even possible to not understand how pejorative that is? UnitAnode21:16, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
<undent>And, good grief Bozmo, it wasn't "nearby action", he was directly involved in the current edit war problem. That was clear from the evidence page I drew up. That his name failed to appear in the thread title was a mere oversight, and I think you know it. UnitAnode21:18, 3 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've finally lost my temper
Fences&Windows accused me of being lazy in his support vote. I lost it a bit. I don't think I actually attacked F&W personally, but I went off more than a little bit. Where does he get off calling me lazy? UnitAnode02:28, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Just try to stay calm. I thought F&W was out of line there. But remember meatball:DefendEachOther... and try not to let people get to you. (it may be what they want) You're doing important work. As a note, though, if people ask you to slow down a bit because they can't keep up sourcing things, that's a reason to slow down... we want the articles fixed after all. Dunno if that helps. ++Lar: t/c02:37, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know, Lar. I haven't been working that quickly. And, not many of the people who have challenged me have actually been sourcing things. UnitAnode02:40, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Then don't worry about it. But on the other hand remember that you cannot solve this whole problem by yourself, and maybe the RfC will come up with a better process, with better automation. It might be worth waiting to see. ++Lar: t/c02:48, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I've actually been keeping to the 242 articles I initially worked on last week. I'm trying to clean up the ones which were deprodded, and sorting them for usability. That's what makes me so crazy about this whole thing. I'm not even adding any more articles to the supposed "workload." I think some people just like to gripe. UnitAnode02:53, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Nod. Maybe invite GWH over here, or to your talk page, to talk about it. He can be reasonable from time to time. ++Lar: t/c02:56, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I posted about the 242 thing there, and I was (I think) quite under control in my response to his "strongly urge" commentary. UnitAnode03:03, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I am so frustrated right now that I don't trust myself to talk to GWH right now. Can you perhaps ask him what the hell he means by "there is a 19:17:1 consensus to topic ban"? For one thing, I don't think he understands what the word "consensus" means. It doesn't mean, 50%+1. But right now, I'm just completely frustrated with this whole fucking process. I've already made it clear that I'm not working outside of those 242 articles. I've also made it clear that if people let me know they plan on sourcing the articles within a VERY brief period of time (minutes or, at the MOST, hours) I won't remove the material again. I'm also willing to use the {{tl:BLP unsourced}}, as was suggested to me. That's as far as I'm willing to go. I'm out for the night anyway, and I don't even know how much time I'll have tomorrow, but would you try to rein in Gwh's strange view of what constitutes "consensus" at least? UnitAnode04:15, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I will talk to him, I think he misspoke. But go re read the AN/I thread. I think a compromise here is achievable, close even!!! Wikidemon just agreed to something very very important. PLEASE accept the olive branch and reciprocate, it's very crucial. ++Lar: t/c04:36, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
"You want a pig," said Roger, "like in a real hunt."
"Or someone to pretend," said Jack. "You could get someone to dress up as a pig and then he could act — you know, pretend to knock me over and all that —"
"You want a real pig," said Robert, still caressing his rump, "because you've got to kill him."
"Use a littlun," said Jack, and everybody laughed.
04:55, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
File:Firm but fair.pngThe firm but fair award, for providing simple justice instead of grabbing the taser!
The award-designer presented the award criteria, not I, and the apparently relaxing tiger is a form of potential energy...but if you prefer:
Not MY breath snuffed! LOL! And grabbing prey by the throat kills by suffocation, not stragulation, actually. Grab by the throat and hang on until the prey stops kicking. THAT takes patience! (Immediate piercing of the jugular is far faster, but less opportunity for rectifying a mistake!) Montanabw(talk)17:07, 4 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
The Military history WikiProject Newsletter : XLVII (January 2010)
The January 2010 issue of the Military history WikiProject newsletter has been published. You may read the newsletter, change the format in which future issues will be delivered to you, or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Thank you. This has been an automated delivery by BrownBot (talk) 04:04, 5 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. I would be grateful if you would run your eye over Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Climate Change#Initial conclusions, regarding a dispute over a section in the Climatic Research Unit hacking incident article. Can you see if there is any fault in my logic, and its application, or a misrepresentation of other editors actions or my understanding of policy? Although I would be grateful if you would note if you concur with my findings, at that page, I would understand if you didn't. I would also be grateful if you would note any dissent or disquiet in regard to my comments, again at that page. Cheers, LessHeard vanU (talk) 00:24, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
I skimmed it. It's convoluted, isn't it. I suspect it will take some considerable thought. You know my attention wanders :) ++Lar: t/c02:10, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, well, the information I originally requested is now starting to come to light once I posted my initial findings.... My logic is impeccable, I submit, except the newly available data may or may not deprecate it entirely or in part! ;~/ LessHeard vanU (talk) 02:19, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Are you going to shit, or get off the pot?
Lift assist
You wrote "PS, I do think mimicking a warning back to the editor who warned was unnecessarily snarky. An admonishment for that seems in order. ++Lar: t/c 18:04, 6 February 2010 (UTC) " The mimicking is still there. An apology has not arrived an admonishment has not happened? You want to know why I've hopped back in the bunker?
Because I got shat on and unprotected for trying to play fair, but an editor who has made zero attempt to comrpomise, but has an account since 2005 (though, of couse, his only edits are PoV pushing and BLP vandalism against people who don't like his policitcs) can make a copy-paste move of an article and then, as opposed to him getting smacked down HIS MOVE IS BEING TAKEN SERIOUSLYHipocrite (talk) 01:27, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
That action isn't closed. I won't approve closure unless he's admonished. I'm just one voice. Yelling at me won't help, although it may make you feel better... Do you have a link for where the move is "being taken seriously" ? Ithought it had been pretty much roundly condemned. But I'm over voting on Meta and then I have to pack for my flight tomorrow... I may not get to this right away. ++Lar: t/c01:57, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Hey Lar, please see me comments [[15]] as to why I a feel an apology for my "snarky" warning is not appropriate. Just want to make sure you are seeing both sides of the issue. Sirwells (talk) 03:00, 9 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
A comment or two might be appropriate
Hi, as you are aware of the tensions between these two may you have the time to bring more light than heat with what is going on? Maybe I errored in commenting back but I am pretty sure I know how Wildhartlivie is going to react to this. I find it to be needless poking to gain a negative response and said so. Would appreciate it if you could stop this in it's tracks before things get out of control again. Thanks, --CrohnieGalTalk17:19, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Please see the comments here. I have to admit that I am my wits end with all of this. I don't like being talked down to like this. She has continued battle behavior and I personally don't like it. We cannot edit and enjoy it when an editor picks fights like this. I hope that you will finally be able to take some control here before more editors get upset by all of this. Thanks, sorry to bring this back to you because I know you are busy with other things but you are the only one I know of that knows the history of this, --CrohnieGalTalk19:44, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Left an identical message at both their talks. We shall see. Because this needs to stop. I don't care who started it. ++Lar: t/c22:22, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Lar, I've been following these ongoing issues with SRQ for several months, and have had my own run-ins with her in the past. While I've kept out of the current saga, I have been watching. I'm concerned over this message, which SRQ left on the talk page of an IP editor with whom WHL is currently involved in a dispute.[16] I'll ask the obvious question: Why does SRQ need off-wiki communication, to share "pertinent information" regarding a user with whom both editors are in dispute? -FeralDruid (talk) 02:36, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
You're assuming much again, FD. If you want to know something about someone's motives, why would you ask a person who couldn't possibly know the answer? Why not ask the person whose motives you're questioning? --SkagitRiverQueen (talk) 02:49, 8 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
Excuse me all to hell, here, but this is out of hand and I have done nothing to warrant the above post. (Made to my talk page by you). It is far past time for something to be done about this person. Ever since my block, she has made snarky, hateful talk page posts. Last night, she pushed an issue on Talk:Charles Manson, where an edit she had made was grammatically incorrect and made no sense, and continued to revert my changes. She has camped out on that article and insists on the talk page that any issues with her edits be brought up there before changing them. If you will please look at what was going on, she kept reverting to a poorly phrased and ingrammatical sentence, insisting in the edit summaries nothing was wrong with what she'd written and then came to template me for WP:3RR. Just after that, another administrator stepped in, reverted her changes as "clean up" and she shut up. I removed the template she pushed it to, and noted WP:DTTR. Her first action was to post this to my talk page. Please note, up to that point, I had made no posts to her talk page and there was no valid reason for her to leave that hateful post to my talk page. I have not tried to engage this person, as your post to me stated, and what I did do was notify her to stop posting commentary and that further posts would be considered harassment and would be reported as such. I begged you to do something about her long ago, and you put me off until "later", which never came even after I wrote to you and asked "when" later would be. Her response was to posted the above in reponse to my notice to stop posting to me. I do not engage this woman. Other editors did notify you about her behavior, and if you will look at Crohnie, other editors have tried to defuse this with her. I begged you, Crohnie has begged you, I am simply sick and tired of this treatment from her and I fully expect administrators here to step in and stop her. Am I supposed to sit back and let her post such crap to my talk page, mistreat me and other editors, all in the name of "being honest"? Well, excuse me, but that is just so much rhetoric in the face of outright attacks such as she launches. I'm supposed to take this from her? What is the remedy besides getting posts such as yours when I have not engaged her beyond a notification that further posts would be treated as harassment. This is harassment and it was my understanding that administrators here are supposed to deal with this sort of behavior. The complaints I made to you before, the complaints that others have made to you, are not fabrications or our imagination. When will something be done about her treatment of other editors? I was under the impression that once someone served their blocks, it was supposed to done and over with. How is that possible under these circumstances? Does this have to go to ArbCom? Wildhartlivie (talk) 22:38, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
She's not to post to your talk page, you're not to post to hers. You're not to comment on her further, she's not to comment on you further. If I see it continueing, I'll take it to AN/I to get it formalized and if that fails then yes, ArbCom is a very real possibility. This is a big wiki. Find something else to do, ok? "She started it" won't fly with me. ++Lar: t/c22:46, 7 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]
