User talk:Yngvadottir

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Archive of my Did You Knows

speaking of Pratham...

ancient stuff

Actually, since you asked, you might be able to help me convince him to sit down and chat. Maybe leave another message on his talkpage, saying thanks for helping improve wikipedia, listen the the wise words of 74-whatever, their method may seem unorthodox but that is just pillar five of the foundations of wikipedia, lend them your ears.....  :-)   Thanks, see you around. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 21:39, 27 October 2013 (UTC) ((IMPORTANT: NAME IS SPELLED like this: Pratham. My bad, I started off right, then got confused at some point, and confused you. I've fixed up his personal talkpage where I confused you, and my own goofs on the article-talkpage. Sorry.))    Appreciate the help. Of course, I actually don't have much experience with this sort of thing, although it is nice of you to say. And looking at your userpage, you in fact do. Have a ton of experience, that is. Come visiting, if you like. WP:RETENTION, the talkpage of that project-page is where all the fun happens. We can always use another inclusionist that supports anons, and Mark will be *thrilled* to have a philosophy PhD who went to Cornell with us. However, I must warn you, we're not starting a cabal or anything, so if you're into that kind of thing, there's nothing to see here, move along.  :-)    No problemo, whatever you end up doing. Thanks for improving wikipedia! See you. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 02:39, 28 October 2013 (UTC) And feel free to wax this if you need space. I usually assume people will do so, since it's there talkpage after all. From what you've seen, is it actually considered impolite when somebody cleans up like that? I actually just leave mine around... should my IP address go out of style, the old talkpage "cleans itself up" after a fashion, and I can start fresh. However, usually people can tell my by my calling card, the dreaded WP:WALLOFTEXT. Not very many anons have an official policy named after them, you know. <preens> Anyhoo, talk to you later. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 02:43, 28 October 2013 (UTC) While I do take your point on not wanting to embarrass Pratham someday... the truth is, he is totally completely not at all in any way at fault here. WikiCulture is at fault. A new editor shows up, ready to tell the world about a *completely* legitimate and encyclopedic topic, out of nowhere WP:NINJAs start deleting images, deleting text, drastically rewriting Pratham's carefully tuned prose, and in general screwing everything up! With nothing but inscrutable talkpage jargon, primarily composed of three-letter-acronyms which lead to maddeningly inscrutable wikilegalese, page after page after page of it. There talkpage is first template-spammed to welcome them... oh and by the way 'helpfully' give them links to the five bazillion policy-pages ... then quickly fills up with *much* more template-spam, telling them it is *their* fault when somebody *else* deletes their hard work! That's adding insult to injury, and not helpful.     WikiDan is trying their best to help, and in fact *is* helping 100% pure and simple, but with all the officious accusational template-spam flying around, Pratham just sees WikiDan as a distraction to be ignored, HIS WORK IS BEING DELETED AND JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED!!111!!! Anyways, I hope someday Pratham does read our disjointed conversation, once he's accustomed to surviving in the wikiverse. Aside: Pratham, if you do see this someday, when you have a thousand edits under your belt and are an experience pro, go ahead and chuckle a bit. But remember what it was like, when you were inexperienced and frustrated, and try to be kind to others you see in the wikiverse -- maybe they are also just inexperienced and frustrated. Anyhoo, that said, do feel free to clean this up if you the screen-real-estate, Yngvadottir. (And do you have a nickname? That username is a mouthful. :-)   Pratham can always nostalgically review his First.Article.Evah someday in the future, by pulling it from the edit-history, if he wishes. By then he'll know how, which is the whole point, for me -- WP:NICE as the key to WP:RETENTION p.s. I feel I must say, no offense intended, but clearly we do not want any loose cannons in the cabal we are not starting. And as for the WP:RETENTION project, please, if anybody were starting a cabal, which of course we're not, involving loose cannons publishing propaganda like the pocket wikipedia guerilla warfare survival manual, which of course we're not, that bunch of 150 people with the wise and famous Dennis Brown, Dirk Beetstra, Rich Farmbrough, Dougweller, Kudpung, HeatherWalls, and other luminaries of the wikiverse would be an unwitting vehicle to cloak our nefarious schemes in a facade of respectability. Any cabal members would, if such a thing existed, be far down the list, buried and effectively undetectable, or in some cases unlisted. Nobody is making waves about template-spam, either. Don't rock the boat, that's my motto. Loose cannons are a disgrace! We have strict rules around here! You should straighten up and fly right, Yngvadottir, before you get yourself into trouble.  :-)     Thanks for the pointer to Drmies, they just left me a note. Perhaps I'll seek out some respectable not-at-all-loose-cannon-types over there. See you around. If you see any beginners struggling, please ping my talkpage, or direct them to the teahouse, I guess. Pratham actually tried that, but they reverted him, how rude... and somebody from WP:RETENTION at that, who ought to know better. So much to do, so little time. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 15:41, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

older stuff

Pratham has not logged in again. Maybe they are just discouraged, and will come back later, but methinks not. If they never login to their account again, but merely browse as an anon, chances are good they'll never see the messages we left on the talkpage. There are a couple options we have in a case like this. Zeroth, we can wait it out ... like we have been doing ... but how long before they forget their password, or their initial frustration hardens into bitterness-and-evergrudge? First, we could try leaving a message on their IP, but in this case that's not obvious to me from the edit-history, and wikipedia has pretty strong restrictions against trying to figure out a registered editor's IP/location/name/etc. (Which I agree with... and think they are in fact too weak. But we know Pratham's full name, and where he works/somesuch, and all that, so maybe we can ask some super-admin with access to the username-to-IP-tools, and they can post a message for us?) Next, we could -- but will not -- try to figure out Pratham's personal email, or whatever. I'm very much against that; bad precedent, and not what they came to wikipedia for. My actual plan is somewhat dramatic, but under WP:IAR might actually be acceptable. Before I bounce it off of wikidan and eastmain, the two folks that cleaned up the initial article, I figured I would bounce it off you. Is it okay, temporarily, to put a big billboard smack dab in the middle of the article about the school, saying "PRATHAM -- HELP HAS ARRIVED -- WE CAN SAVE YOUR IMAGES -- PLEASE CLICK HERE" with a hyperlink over to the now-collapsed version of Pratham's personal talkpage? Sometime they'll probably browse the page -- or somebody else in the school will browse the page, and tell Pratham. Anyways, I hate to disfigure mainspace with what boils down to a classified advert, but it seems a shame to lose an editor that had moxy and wikithusiasm, signed up to be an admin, and a teahouse host, contested deletion, and fought for page protection. All mistakes, of course, but beginners cannot help it nowadays. Do you have any alternative suggestions, or thoughts on zero/one/notTwo/three? Danke. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 15:06, 29 October 2013 (UTC) No. I saw, and was sad, but since he did not enable e-mail, any attempt to figure out who he is is outing, and that's wrong. In any case it's up to him - he may just be busy with school right now, or he may be holding off till he can get a picture ... he may even have to wait till the picture is developed before he can upload it. Who knows and it isn't our business. And we mustn't disfigure an article with a personal message. What we can do is see if references can be found for the school (and info like you highlighted on the talkpage - which may well be on the school website, and it can be referenced for things like that). I'd have a look today, but see the other sections on this part of this talk page and then add two three tasks not mentioned (I almost forgot this); this is my "weekend" but I have tasks stacked high. It saddens me that we have people leave and it also troubles me that sometimes people come back under a different account and just start afresh, but that's what it is - it's an anonymous internet project, so everyone has the rights of an adult to just walk away or to do it the wrong way. Hopefully no one will AfD the article, because it's comparatively hard to find Indian sources, but I recently did find sources for this unpromising school article (see latest version). Yngvadottir (talk) 15:38, 29 October 2013 (UTC) Yeah, I kinda knew that. Well, okay, I *did* know that, but was resisting acknowledgement of the reality. Sometimes life is not fair. Option zero is our only option, for this case. Maybe we'll luck out, and they'll come back.    But you know, and I know, that the article was effectively killed. Even if you find out the student-count... which I don't want to discourage you over, Pratham will appreciate it if somebody else answers one of the questions that will *help* the article via adding something useful rather than 'help' the article via deletionism... but the figure will go out of date next year, or the next. Nobody *truly* having zero WP:COI problems cares deeply enough about this particular school-article to keep it up-to-date in the long run, yourself and myself included... nobody but an insider can do the necessary legwork easily enough, which would keep the article correct and up-to-date. It will just languish, in the form it is now. Which angers me, and frustrates me, because if I was just a little quicker on the draw, I believe the situation could have been controlled and calmed, without driving away Yet Another Beginner.     Nobody did anything wrong here (well -- Pratham did plenty of things wrong, because of WP:NOCLUE mitigating circumstances albeit). You did fine. I did fine, excepting my transient desire... not acted on... to post a personals-advert in mainspace... sigh... thanks for your calming advice. EastMain did fine. WikiDan61 was *very* patient, and kept their obvious frustration with Pratham's shenanigans from doing any harm; WikiDan deserves a cookie. People who marked the copyvio for speedy, did fine. WP:SNOW on the RfA, better than fine. I might grumble about Pratham's teahouse-host-sign-up getting ninja-reverted, but even that is fine per the letter of WP:BRD procedures. I also might grumble about *every* *single* article ever created being nominated for deletion, as a matter of course, and nobody apparently thinking it the height of rudeness save myself, but that is the way things work nowadays, and changing that will take a fundamental change in WikiCulture, not one grumble. Everybody did fine, and the system worked the way it was supposed to, the article is now a reasonably-encyclopedic one... but with no sources... and no real maintainer... and effectively a stub... which prolly started as a pure copyvio of the school website (even if Pratham works there he does not hold copyright to that text and thus cannot relicense it as GFDL)... and thus will probably be deleted at some point, on the Immovable Object grounds you were worried about. Worse, instead of having +1 editor to swell the ranks of the 30k on enWiki[1][2], we had +1 and then -1 for a net gain of zero... and the bitterness[3] makes it overall *negative*.     So. We follow option-zero with Pratham. Going forward, though, what lessons-learned do we have here? I'm already busy elsewhere trying to change the rudeness of template-message-wording. But how do we lower the response-time of WP:NICE folks? Pratham got into trouble way before you heard about them at RfA (by chance), and before I heard about them at the xLinkBot talkpage (also by chance). Is there some wiki-tool that will give me the list of newly-created-accounts (or even better first-time-anon-editing-attempts), with a count of their edits, and a count of their templates-on-the-talkpage, so we can nip the frustrations of future Pratham-equivalents in the bud? There's probably ten similar happening now, but I don't know how to find them. (And p.s. if this discussion about meta-helping has little interest for you, then no problemo, just let me know. No worries... I'll find somebody to whine to.  :-/    In the meantime, I'll change gears and write something about dogagory, so you'll have yet another wall-o-text to chew through.  :-)    If it becomes too much, please say. p.p.s. I expect my captcha-words will be the word of the day, which is Rrrrrgh. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 17:16, 29 October 2013 (UTC) And, you can just reply over here if you wish. Anons cannot have watchlists, as far as I could figure out -- one of the few punishments that stings -- so if I don't respond promptly, feel free to ping my talkpage. Danke. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 17:31, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

That's a good question about seeing newly created accounts and first edits. Ask elsewhere. But I'm sure you realize what a flood of both there is, and that it includes people who do mean mischief. On nominating new articles for deletion: I've found my own most useful roles are through AfD watchlist categories and WP:Pages needing translation into English. The Article Rescue Squadron made too many enemies and was done away with; a net loss from my point of view, but I'm not a pure inclusionist: I've nominated some articles for deletion (mostly with success) and I often stand back and let the process take its course, particularly with articles about companies. The project is attracting an increasing amount of promotion. I also have a great deal of sympathy for new page patrollers. The speedy deletion categories are an alphabet soup and I personally find disconnected letters and numbers hard to remember, plus there are types of article that some speedy categories don't apply to - I always double check before I speedy delete, making me a very slow admin indeed. And a couple of years ago there was a breaching experiment that led to the resignation of a large number of experienced new page patrollers - that was one of the first things that soured me on the WMF, but more importantly, new page and vandal patrol have a tremendous potential to damage the encyclopedia if done badly, not least by driving away good-faith contributors, and experience is really to be desired there; since that breaching experiment NPP has been mostly inexperienced, trigger-happy people, despite intelligent and caring efforts to fix the problem, and vandal-fighting will always be that way. Yes, we have a problem. But we also have a problem with new articles that probably are not notable remaining because everyone's busy - I can sort of understand making it their main activity to nominate things for deletion when I consider the promotional company articles, including things like this - I translated it, removed the promotional inline links and links to where to buy it at the end and tagged it as of dubious notability, but I should maybe have PRODded it. We have to recognize that some people do not wish the best for the encyclopedia. I use the warning templates you object to, for two reasons: first, a standardized process of escalating warnings provides a clear basis for an admin to determine whether to block; second, the wording has been decided on by wise heads over a long time and is both as polite and as clear as we can make it, and the escalating levels of warning provide an alert to someone who may just be having fun and may not even have thought about the consequences of putting silliness in an encyclopedia article - most vandals who get the full series, or the "stop now!" BLP warning, do indeed stop short of the blocking point. But perhaps you didn't mean those, but only the "marked for speedy deletion", PROD, and AfD templates? Those could probably be made kinder and clearer, yes. But do look at Special:New pages and see the silly stuff that's mixed in with the premature saves and the purely bad English notable topics. And at the sheer speed with which pages are being added, at least at some times of day. It's ... daunting when you look at the top of the queue. Yngvadottir (talk) 17:55, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

You hit on a lot of points here, which I'll try to touch briefly. Knowing my knack for verbosity, that won't work too well.  :-)

quick listing of many of the various and sundry problems wikipedia faces, often perennially

1A. seeing newly created accounts and first edits nipping trouble in the bud will save *everybody* time... look at Pratham's history! 1B. realize what a flood yes, there is a flood. WP:RETENTION is the answer. We need 1M active editors, not 31k. 1C. includes people who do mean mischief sure... but we *have* plenty of wiki-tools to hair-trigger badguys. We just need more sherriffs 1D. new articles for deletion my current scheme is to merge-delete all of AfD, into the new&improved AfC process. 1E. Article Rescue Squadron which is a very sneaky way of reviving this ARS cabal. Who were their enemies, and why? 1F. attracting an increasing amount of promotion comes w/ being a top-ten-site that consumers trust; what is your bright-line[4] position? 1G. sympathy for new page patrollers there are too few of them... another WP:RETENTION silver bullet... combining with AfC helps too. 1H. speedy deletion categories are an alphabet soup *this* crapola must die... it is wikiCop jargon, for the promotion of the wikiBureacracy, and especially propagation of the caste-system-based wikiCulture. I intend to crush the caste-system-culture, and replace it with my WP:NICE not-a-cabal. 1I. I always double check before I speedy delete, making me a very slow admin which is called Doing The Right Thing... as opposed to lazy cut-corner slackers busy-busy typical admins. Again, solution is WP:RETENTION, if we had 300k vandal-fighters instead of 30k, it would *really* help. 1J. breaching experiment that led to the resignation of a large number of experienced NPPs yes... surprise breaching pop-quizzes are stupid... but we *do* need a metric, that gauges how well our NPP folks are doing their work... I have an AfC-fka-NPP-related software-app[5] scheme for that purpose. 1K. things that soured me on the WMF welllll... I knew they were wasting money and spinning wheels... but the VizEd fiasco is what turned me into a Crusader To WP:RGW. Damn thing cost millions, and is not even wrong.

NPPs, wikiCops, AfC-reviewers: on the front lines to *protect* wikipedia... and *serve* when not too busy-busy

2A. new page and vandal patrol have a tremendous potential to damage the encyclopedia if done badly correct 2B. not least by driving away good-faith contributors *very* correct 2C. experience is really to be desired there subtly incorrect: what matters is WP:COMPETENCE. Some people with ten mainspace edits and ten days as an editor will be naturals at the NPP game... whereas other people with 10k edits and ten years will suck at it and WP:BITE plus cause cascading-busywork correcting their mistakes. We must test *skill* via primary criteria (see software-app above), not fuzzy editcountitis-based 'experience' in general. Edit-count can prove *commitment* and in some sense *morality*, but that's no substitute for being able to shoot straight. We need wikiCops that satisfy both orthogonal criterion. 2D. [NPP nowadays] mostly inexperienced, trigger-happy people this is partly because WP:ABF about anons, and partly because no automated metric 2E. vandal-fighting will always be that way. why? what distinguishes vandal-fighting from sending an AfC-submission back for another round of improvements before it's pronounced ready for mainspace? (Hint: our assumptions about the intent of the submitter! but we must really really WP:AGF) 2F. Yes, we have a problem. no arg here 2G. But we also have a problem with new articles which can be solved by WP:RETENTION... and by the software-app thingie. 2H. that probably are not notable the queue is several weeks long! 2I. remaining because everyone's busy again, WP:RETENTION... plus merging NPP with AfC, and AfD with AfC, pooling 2J. consider the promotional company articles these can conceivably be an asset: More Editors Is Possibly Good... who *will* work hard cause they're paid to! ... we just have to 'incentivize' them with our apps and our rules, so as to tend to make them do their work in a way that improves the encyclopedia, rather than detracting from it 2K. some people do not wish the best for the encyclopedia weasel words. citation needed. WP:AGF. most people are good, and the bad eggs are also mostly not smart enough to get around bohts. We just need two things: first, WP:RETENTION to get the good eggs to become-n-remain active editors, and second, wiki-tools that we mostly already *have* for letting the good eggs keep the nest clean, so to speak.

template-spam: how 'polite' with-all-due-respect messages killed actually-WP:NICE messages of authentic respect

3A. I use the warning templates you object to, for two reasons: Sure, and there's nothing wrong with you using them... I avoid them for philosophical WP:AGW reasons, not because I don't *want* to use automated-wiki-tool-templates.  :-) 3B. first, a standardized process of escalating warnings I agree that the standard process should be retained... but as hidden-html-comments, not user-visible unfriendly your harmful action has been stopped continue and be destroyed 3C. provides a clear basis for an admin to determine whether to block; from personal experience, only a few admins pay *any* attention to 'process' ... they follow pillar five, and get-er-done. Also from anecdotal observations, users (Pratham only being the most obvious) respond *badly* to being pigeonholed into an officious, painful, slow, buggy, asinine bureacracy. The process, as implemented today, is a big fail. 3D. second, the wording has been decided on by wise heads over a long time consensus can change.  :-)    But especially with boht-messages[6] and template-wordings,[7] you are dead-on correct: there is a caste-system in place, who derive *pleasure* from issuing officious warnings, and take pride in their *status* as high-caste insiders. I don't even think that the folks I argued with over at meta about the antispam-template-spam (define irony) and the antivandalism-boht were that bad; at least they gave me the time of day, and found a test-case where I could make my crazy changes without messing up their world. But they *are* assuming bad faith; the 999 bad guys, for every one good egg, has colored their thinking. That's the wikiCulture at work. Consensus will be a bitch to change, and will not come easy. 3E. and is both as polite and as clear as we can make it, you are asserting that current wording is optimal for wikipedia's survival and thrival, in some kind of absolute sense? "as we can make it" is an *extremely* strong statement. And where does pillar four say 'polite'? It specifically says *respect* and WP:NICE. 3F. [escalation] provides an alert to someone who may just be having fun sure, but why not have the first N levels *be* fun, themselves? why not make *constructively* editing be MORE fun than getting lulz by screwing with mainspace? This is the key to everything -- if we can make editing wikipedia fun again, WP:RETENTION will skyrocket, and our other problems will be solved by the vast influx of new good eggs. The current approach, which makes it *zero* fun for bad eggs out to do mischief, is also exactly what's killing off the good eggs stumbling around doing their best to improve the encyclopedia in some way: we get 1000 new editors every single month, and lose 1050 editors (not all of them new) every single month. We've got to start keeping those good eggs around. 3G. most vandals who get the full series, or the "stop now!" BLP warning which is the same exact stop now or be destroyed message we give to false-positives... 3H. do indeed stop short of the blocking point. ...which is pointless, right? Because vandals *should* be blocked. We should immediately block pillar-four violations with a 1-minute timeout. Next pillar-four violation, 2-minutes. Keep doubling until they learn their lesson. Blocks should be per browser, using cookies, not per IP or username. Prolly these would have to be called 'love taps' or something insipid, and implemented differently than actual blocks/bans, since the language around those is already settled. "We never use blocks punitively". Oh reeeely? Pretty sure that wikipedia *only* uses blocks punitively, except in very rare cases like Pratham, where if we temp-block him, it will be to forcibly open up a talkpage-dialog with him.

in which a solution is suggested, the Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator, for the good of the wikiverse

4A. But perhaps you didn't mean those, Oh, I definitely meant those. I mean all the messages. Time to turn wikiCulture on the ear. WMF cannot save us. The 634 633 active admins cannot save us. Everybody -- well not moi but everybody paying attention -- has known about the peak in active-editor-retention,[8] and the peak in RfA success,[9] for *years* now.[10] But the change must come from the bottom up, not from the top down. 4B. but only the CSD, PROD, and AfD templates? I want to get rid of all these, completely, not just modify them. Instead of seeing "your article has been nominated for deletion at AfD" instead you would see the far more pleasing "your article has been nominated for a free round of improvement at AfC". Best of all, instead of getting raked over the coals by deletionists, looking for any loophole in the rules to G387 your butt and kick you out of wikipedia forever, instead you could have a nice chat with librarian and computer programmer Anne Delong, who will incisively point out ways your article can be improved, and then sent over to 74 who can kickstart the process. 4C. But do look at Special:New pages and see the silly stuff there is actually a scheme I've been considering, the Silly Stuff Hall Of Fame, which might help divert this from being a problem, into being borderline-constructive.[11] "I am not about to accuse you... of being involved in the apple industry...." 4D. that's mixed in with the premature saves Boy, I've done *this* before. Wikipedia needs to have a way to *easily* work on a draft version of the article, in your personal sandbox, which keeps itself sync'd up with the mainspace version (without trashing your changes), and then a merge-tool that permits you to submit when you are ready. Ideally, you would ping somebody to glance over your suggested changes *before* they went into mainspace. Right now, all this is possible, but painfully manual. Maybe there needs to be AfE services? (Articles for Editing). 4E. and the purely bad English notable topics. Surprisingly, this actually is a key part of my not-a-cabal. There are a *ton* of simple spelling-fixes and grammar-fixes and clarification-needed problems, over in the AfC queue... and there are *zero* WP:NINJA folks waiting to swoop in and revert anything a beginner dares to touch, then template-spam them (or just insta-ban them). I think the best way to get immediate WP:RETENTION traction is with fun-quick-teaming; I'm working on a five-person proposal, but here[12] is the initial[13] two-person-proposal. We need to make editing fun again, to achieve WP:RETENTION of a million people. 4F. And at the sheer speed with which pages are being added, Sure. Tough with 31k editors and 633 admins for enWiki; no problemo if we have 250k editors and 25k admins. As long as they are Good Eggs, that is. But we have 500M readers a month: surely one tenth of a percent of the readers are good.

Later update -- well, it was pretty damn verbose. So I'll chop it up into three four mini-tables, rather than one huge honking big table, and collapse each of them separately. Hope this helps clarify. And, as usual, although this is obviously a blow-by-blow reply to your specific question, with footnotes to justify my answers and everything, I'm really writing it for *my* use, not just for your edification. If your wiki-gumption, or your desire to be edified about my sekret skemes to revamp the wikiverse, is drained by looking at these four massive walls, then you are WP:REQUIRED to totally skip reading them.  :-)   I will not be offended in the least. Thanks for improving wikipedia, see you around. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 05:54, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, Pratham has returned, so that's good... more than once... but the flip side is that he now seems resigned to avoiding talkpages entirely. He knows *how* to use them, but sees engaging in dialogue as pointless, presumably. Is there some way that we can force him to the talkpage, short of actually blocking him? The copyvio-templates are harsh enough, but the block-template is positively eeeevvviiillll. Not sure we have another option though; maybe we can replace the stock you-have-been-blocked template, with something like the pratham-please-respond-to-the-question-about-how-many-students-are-in-the-school template? Or maybe, you have some trick up your sleeve, that we can pull? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 05:54, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. Well, I'm glad he returned. Some of your suggestions scare me, personally - too much software, not enough accommodation for personal styles. And have you seen the Village Pump: Proposals proposal for a Draft space to replace AfC? More thoughts tomorrow, particularly on the assumptions aspect; I am in the middle of rewriting Mogden before bed. Yngvadottir (talk) 06:38, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Charles IX, "King of ???"

You edited the article about King of Kvenland but your given source does not write anything about Charles IX calling himself with the title "King of Kvens" as you claim. Would you please include a source where the given information can be checked? Thank you in advance.Finnedi (talk) 20:55, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Now I do have to say you need to read the section. It argues that he used a term that some historians have considered a synonym of Kvens. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:01, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Please, a claim that the word "Kven" has something to do with "Caijaners" - something we don't know - does not entitle anybody to write that Charles IX would have called himself "King of the Kvens", which of course is an entirely different title. I'm sure everybody agrees here.Finnedi (talk) 21:11, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Look again at the scholarly argument referred to - and the sources cited. There's more on it in the Kvenland article. Then take it to one or both article talk pages. I referenced the actual title adequately; beyond that, it should be discussed there, not in edit summaries or on personal talk pages. Yngvadottir (talk) 21:14, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Well, per WP:IAR, *I* discussed it on a personal talkpage, *and* in an edit-summary.  :-)     See the User:Thomas.W talkpage, and my insertion of a qualifier after the see-also link in Charles IX of Sweden. Nobody has reverted me yet, but the day is young. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 19:28, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

As I wrote above, the Kvenland article is where you'll find the summary of the historians' argument. Personally I dunno - I know a lot about some things, and have a couple of fancy pieces of paper, but unlike some academics I admit when I'm not very up on something '-) I've responded to you on one minor point at User talk:Thomas.W, but on the way to finding that I saw you say you got blocked??? I'd been wondering why I hadn't seen you around recently. Ouch. Sorry that happened. (For talk page stalkers I should note I just finished an exhausting work week and then I had to try to figure out what on earth to do about Passage du milieu. Bed soon, after I do an off-wiki task involving Old Norse.) Yngvadottir (talk) 19:50, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I did read through the Kvenland stuff, that's how I wrote up my see-also portion, which explains that Kings of Kvenland is included in the Charles article because he called himself King of the Caij from 1607 thru 1611 (but the successor dropped the title). I *believe* that was the underlying objection Finnedi was making: that Charles never called himself of-the-Kvens specifically, and thus the see-also was misleading. Anyways, you at least know *something* of the matter, whereas I know nothing.

   I'm just going on general principles, which you brought up over on the Thomas-page, namely, that in Ye Good Olde Days there was often not a very firm distinction between Kvens and Kvenland, or between Cajuns and CajunCountry. There are Some (still-anonymous in the prose I point out) Historians that claim Caijainie==Kven==Finnish and therefore CaijainieCastle==Kvenland==Finland, fair enough. But we should not oversimplify, and list Charles IX as flat-out one of the 'Kings of Kvenland' which is what the bare-see-also implies to the everyday reader ... unless we have WP:RS which says flat out "Charles IX was the Nth king of kvenland" in exactly those words, scholarly consensus with no conflicting sources saying otherwise. Anyways, my drive-by-editing career in ancient swedish-and-maybe-finnish royalty is over now. I leave it in your capable hands.  :-)

    p.s. Appreciate the talkpage ping, and the wish-you-were-here-concerns; on the former subject, I'm about fed up with lacking an automated watchlist (as opposed to a list of URLs maintained and polled by hand) that I'm planning to write a wikipedia-javascript-gadget to do it for me. If I can write it, are you willing to be the 'owner' of the gadget-code, under your username? On the latter subject, I've actually been writing you not one, but two walls-of-text for your very own, offline. Bet you just cannot *wait*, huh?  :-)   Don't worry, you'll get to open at least one of your presents before Kvenmas. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 14:28, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

p.p.s. the sad tale of when 74 was oh-so-wrongfully banned, woe is moi, woe is moi

In other news, oh yes, boy howdy was I blocked, for 168 hours to start with, no talkpage dialog required! You are in discussions with a notorious wikiCriminal, bub -- so watch yer step.  ;-)     It was a false-positive. Somebody made a joke that struck me funny, and posted a link to one of the old "cabal-approved" humourpages, and I pulled the satirical definition of 'collaboration' therefrom, and reformatted it as song-lyrics. It was a completely satirical bit of satire, but I prettied it up with plenty of boldface, a mention of WP:NICE nazis (self-referential! but not necessarily clear to the uninvolved drive-by admin).    Plus, well, I added a naked picture of Jimbo Wales.    ...and, um, an edit summary in allcaps.    And -- yeah.    So, uh.    Well. Ahem. You see.. nevermind.    Guess I can understand why Thomas reverted my comment with Twinkle... but later, he thought twice since it was not *totally* obviously vandalism, and self-reverted-his-revert, which was appreciated (when I finally found out about it 36 hours later). Meanwhile, either because of their twinkle-alert-watchlist, or because they watchlist the Bishzilla talkpage, AGK pulled out the ban-hammer, and gave me 168 hours for 'clearly WP:NOTHERE' aka 'generic disruptive editing'. But lacking a relevant diff (the ban-template does not require the banning admin provide any diff whatsoever ... per WP:AGF in one direction only), or any clue what specific sort of disruption I was being accused of, I could not unblock via the nearest random admin; you specifically have to explain, during the unblock, that you understand what you did wrong (which I did not), and promise not to do it again (whatever "it" was). Double-extra confusing, I knew who AGK was, having emailed them some time ago about one of their Arbcom votes, making me wonder if this was some sort of delayed fallout from that.    Anyways, it all turned out okay. Somebody who's in a content-dispute with me, but is a genuinely nice fellow despite being Totally WRONG (heh -- burn!), went to AGK's talkpage in my defense, and I posted on my own talkpage the usual wall-of-text (my disease) explaining that I did not understand why I'd been blocked. Anyways, AGK provided the diff to, the uh, naked man and the nazi thing, ahrmm, and I explained it was ha-ha-only-serious, and they unblocked me. Took 24 hours, instead of 3 hours, due to timezone-mismatch (Anthony is in Scotland). Might have taken under an hour, if AGK or Thomas.W had sent a diff my way, template-spam or otherwise, pointing out their concerns, so I would not be obliviously ignorant-and-thus-blissful, but WP:REQUIRED, which I still fully support. Anyways, no harm done.    But get this: AGK is a sitting member of ArbCom. That is correct -- you are speaking with the IP that fought The Lawz, and the IP won! Woo!  :-)   But that's the last time I post nekkid pix of the One And Only True Founder Of The WikiVerse.... 74.192.84.101 (talk) 14:28, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for November 4

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Regarding changes made to the article on the National Security Agency

Hello. I noticed you've reverted the changes I made to the aforementioned article, and would like to say the following:

The subject of the sentence in question, pasted below for your convenience, is "bugging [electronic systems] and [allegedly] engaging..."

"The agency is authorized to accomplish its mission through clandestine means, among which is bugging electronic systems and allegedly engaging in sabotage through subversive software."

The word "and" requires that both verbs — "bugging" and "engaging" — be considered the subject of the sentence.

When it comes to recognizing the subject of a sentence, I've always found that rearranging words, as well as disregarding prepositional phrases and other supplementary information, is a useful strategy.

For example, the sentence can be reorganized such that it reads, "Bugging electronic systems and allegedly engaging in sabotage through subversive software are among the clandestine means through which the agency is authorized to accomplish its mission."

Again, doing so allows for much easier identification of the subject within a sentence; however, the sentence can be simplified even further, as is demonstrated below.

"Bugging and engaging are among the clandestine means through which the agency is authorized to accomplish its mission."

Hopefully, this lengthy explanation of my edit has proven comprehensible.

I'll await a response before I revert to my edit.

Thanks,

~zziccardi (talk) 01:51, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

You're right of course - I didn't see the "and" and second subject after the ref. I've reverted myself. Yngvadottir (talk) 01:57, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Thanks, again. ~zziccardi (talk) 23:12, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Please could you check my references fo 2 pages Lupton family and Conyers baronets cheers Mike — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.219.138.209 (talk) 02:28, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Yngvadottir. You have new messages at Rubinkumar's talk page.
Message added 15:30, 11 November 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Rubinkumar^Talk 15:30, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Could you plesae check Gibside page and Family of Duchess of Cambridge page Thanks so much Mike — Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.219.138.209 (talk) 10:44, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for November 13

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November 2013

Hello, I'm BracketBot. I have automatically detected that your edit to 2013 Valdresekspressen hijacking may have broken the syntax by modifying 2 "[]"s. If you have, don't worry: just edit the page again to fix it. If I misunderstood what happened, or if you have any questions, you can leave a message on my operator's talk page.

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• 30156082/ "'Tilfeldig' at asylsøkeren drepte tre kvelden før tvangsutsendelse"], ''Dagbladet]], 5 November 2013 {{no icon}}</ref> He hijacked the bus the day before he was to be returned to

Thanks, BracketBot (talk) 05:23, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

so do you know the server-lowdown? and care to tell?

We know, we know. We still don't have deleted edits. Try annoying Coren to tears and pressure labs into speeding up the process if you want to see it happen since toolserver is shutting down on 1/6/14.

...toolserver is shutting down? What is the replacement? Are the tools being moved, or what, exactly? --74

Hi again 74, you get around :-) WMF labs. It is a tortuous tale of politics and funding. The current edit counter is at labs, see the url and the message at the top. /me waves to Coren.Yngvadottir (talk) 13:04, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Maybe this tale is unwritten, or maybe there is a WMF document that explains such things. But I would like to know at least the rough outlines, I guess, of the story. As you know, I have it in for some of the bohts around here. But besides the installed-in-mediawiki-itself extensions like AbuseFilter, there are also plenty of 'actual' bots such as SineBot, which run on the main wikipedia servers from what I can tell. Then there are semi-off-wiki things like toolserver, which I always assumed were privately funded, but it sounds like not. Finally, there are "rogue" bots like the one being run by archiveDotIs folks (semi-allegedly). Danke. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 03:31, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Ok, I'm sorry 'bout that. I'm known to be a little bit of a troll.BuBBLeSGiRL209 (talk) 14:32, 18 November 2013 (UTC)