User talk:GTBacchus

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Batch 8

(The following has been copied from above in the belief that you missed it because I neglected to start a new section for it. —Mi r a 09:25, 1 July 2006 (UTC))[reply]

And here's batch eight: 1 2 3 4 —Mi r a 06:20, 29 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Finally finished that bunch, here's the next batch. :) 1 2 3 4 5 6 —Mi ra 03:47, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Could you zap this one away again? Another editor got to it before I did, and it messed things up. Thanks. —Mi ra 08:50, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here's batch ten: 1 2 3 4 5 6 —Mi ra 09:02, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And number eleven: 1 2 3 4 5 —Mi ra 13:54, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Migrating userboxes

Hi GTBacchus, In case you ever find yourself with a userbox that needs migrating to userspace, feel free to add it to the archive at User:Rfrisbie/Userbox. If you do so, please also link it to one of the directories at User:Rfrisbie/Userboxes. If you know of someone else who might be looking for a place to migrate a userbox, feel free to pass this offer along to them as well. Regards, Rfrisbie^talk 17:58, 1 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hookah forum links

I seem to have come along on the tale end of an external link war at Hookah. Problem is, following WP:EL neither of the two links that were being fought over should be allowed to stay-- they're forums. Could you please weigh in at Talk:Hookah? Many thanks, -- Mwanner | Talk 23:59, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, and I'm sorry if I put you in an awkward position. It will be interesting to see if either of the warring parties act on the suggestion to bring the best info from their sites into the article. Cheers! -- Mwanner | Talk 22:35, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I apologise as well to start this all back up again, Bacchus. But it seems to me that the rules do not state to always avoid forums. So what qualifies a forum as un-linkable? The point is to provide a reliable source of information? If we succumb to every little over exaggeration of the rules, we avoid this point. As it stands the people viewing the page in the first place wanted a forum, the second one was to keep that avenue un-biased, and being that matter was already settled previously I fail to grasp the point of what Mwanner is doing. What does it mean if someone goes re-writing rules to be exacts and certainties in every respect just on a whim? In the spirit of freedom and un-censored informational outlets, I urge you to reconsider. The matter may seem small, but the message is anything but. I just think if the guidelines say we should, but not that we should never, what is the exemption? I think our situation was the perfect example of an exemption, as they were posted to keep the avenues of information open and unbiased. Perhaps a debate in discussion should be posed, and the viewers should be allowed to decide? I apologise again for bothering you, Bacchus, and hope I haven't been too out of line. Kuriohara 07:11, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You're not out of line, but none of tha changes the intent of Wikipedia:External links, which is that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and not a web directory. You're correct that the point is to provide a source that we can be certain is reliable. Then you say, "If we succumb to every little over exaggeration of the rules, we avoid this point," which I don't understand. I don't see any exaggeration going on, just a simple application, and I don't see how removing these forum links avoids the point, when the sites in question are, in fact, forums, which are not, in fact, reliable. It's actually a rather straightforward example of just what that guideline is saying we try to avoid.

You want to know what the exceptions are? There could be many. An obvious one in when the article is about the forum in question, e.g., PaGaLGuY.com. A link to a forum could be appropriate if a post or posts at that forum feature in the notability of the subject of the article. There are a lot of special reasons that forum links could be perfectly appropriate, but simply wanting to link to a forum for the convenience of getting people more easily from here to there, that's not one.

I appreciate your invocation for freedom and against censorship, and I applaud your dedicaion to these ideals. I would point out, though, that freedom doesn't mean an encyclopedia is a web directory, and applying a guideline that's entirely consistent with our mission to be an encyclopedia, doesn't amount to censorship, just to editorial standards. -GTBacchus^(talk) 12:03, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Consensus 2

I have talked to User:Esaborio for a few days, and it seems his objection to the inclusion is based on the idea that Iraq "didnt really have ties to terror." I have told him this is irrelevant. He has admitted that the War on Terrorism is against those the USA sees as terrorists, and that the USA saw Iraq as a state sponsor of terror. But he continues to revert war. I think this is pretty much what Nescio is at, though he has been trying to get me and Zer0 in trouble for reverting his edits to Wikipedia:WOT and hasnt really talked about the issue itself since the month began. Where does this put us? I really dont see any legitimate objections, it seems to just be the knee jerk no Bush cant be right reaction that they cant get passed, when in reality it has nothing to do with Bush being right... he could have been lying about everything and its still a part of the campaign. Or in the case of Nescio, its simply a refusal to work with me or Zer0, and even you as he has dodged your question for the past week. But do we still have to humor this sort of stuff, and not implement a consensus? Rangeley 18:44, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think of it as humoring. Anyway, for Nescio, there's a very specific argument that he's choosing to not respond to: the proper noun misnomer argument, by analogy to the Holy Roman Empire, and others. I've been online much less than usual over the last couple of weeks, being between homes, so I haven't yet had the honor of interacting with Esaborio. It sounds like he's holding a position similar to Nescio's: that the name is misleading as it implies that the WOT, particularly the Iraq component of it, is actually a war being waged against terrorism. I have a lot of sympathy for that viewpoint (as well as for others), and feel it should be fully addressed. Meanwhile, the lack of that particular bit of information at the top of the infobox for a litle while, when it's fully addressed in the article itself, isn't going to hurt anyone. You gain more in Wikikarma by not reverting than you lose by leaving the article in The Wrong Version for a few days. I'm going to drop by Nescio's talk page with a direct question. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:37, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"Userbox" redirect

A Userbox redirect request... What do you think? Rfrisbie^talk 20:03, 8 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Jimbo on userbox news

On July 8, 2006, Jimbo proposed for deletion Wikipedia:Userboxes/Beliefs with a prod reason of "per the emerging consensus that the German solution is best". See [1]. I've posted this to WP:JOU, WT:GUS, the userbox location straw poll, and to Rfrisbie. GRBerry 02:33, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I posted my offer at GUS and the Beliefs page. I think the structure is in place to make a relatively smooth transition to User:Rfrisbie/Userboxes/Beliefs. Any boxes that need/want moving can go to User:Rfrisbie/Userbox. What else can I do to help?

Rfrisbie^talk 03:29, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Instant deletion of Template:User soul

Hi GTBacchus,

While I was in the middle of bypassing a redirect from Template:User soul to User:Rfrisbie/Userbox/Soul, the redirect page was deleted. I'm sure this is not appropriate by any stretch of the imagination. Would you be willing to investigate this for me? Rfrisbie^talk 05:33, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

For being level-headed. I have a problem in dealing with people who are willing to act unilaterally like this, especially when they have no real desire to communicate. As you being the most level-headed, my question is this though: If they can't properly explain why we get to ignore policy in this, and other cases (like other Usenet articles), what do we do with the article? Whether or not the topic is notable, I can't justify its keep unsourced, and it doesn't appear if they're about to let me ensure that only properly sourced material remains.--Crossmr 21:38, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

And as I expected, he stopped responding to my questions as I still don't believe thats a valid reason, and unilaterally closed the AfD 2 days early.--Crossmr 23:45, 11 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:SirIsaacBrock

Pls unblock my account, I am ready to use it again. Thanks SIB

I've unprotected your talk page. Let's talk there? -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:35, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What is there to talk about ? Either you will Unblock my account as per my request or you will not. I was the one that requested it be blocked, now I want to use my account again. 67.70.71.194 06:48, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What is there to talk about? I dunno, how about whether or not you agree to refrain from doing what got you blocked before? -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:28, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Something that you said

Something that you said (and repeated a few times) made me wonder, so I checked. From what you said, I half expected to find complaints about me all over WP:ANI. Actually I found very few, in view of the number of disputes I deal with. The most recent seemed to be SPUI deciding that using WP:ANI as a megaphone would be preferable to actually approaching me personally. I agreed at once that calling him a troll had been out of order. Before that was, a few weeks ago now, Fahrenheit451 not liking being warned about his personal attacks on Terryeo. And the Alienus thing of course, which you know. And apart from the people who get fidgety if someone edits their signatures that's about it. I'm doing a lot of stuff on AfD and DRV at the moment, but that's not making a noise outside DRV, and things there seem to be moving very much in the right direction. . The usual moans about unorthodox closes, but 'nothing we haven't seen before. I think the signature people have given up complaining, which is nice.

So by and large I think you were exaggerating quite a bit. --Tony Sidaway 07:14, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Museum_of_the_history_of_the_K._May_school

3 contribs and the writer creates this in a single edit. Might be worth checking to ensure its not recreation of deleted content.--Crossmr 15:28, 13 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Batch 11

I moved this from above again, don't worry about leaving me waiting or anything, I've been happily editing away elsewhere. —Mi ra 10:21, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Here's batch number eleven: 1 2 3 4 5 —Mi ra 13:54, 9 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Again, no need to worry about getting these done urgently, but here's batch twelve: 1 2 —Mi ra 07:25, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Blogs as sources

Since you're interested in this topic, I thought you might like to give input on this new page I created born of a discussion on WP:RS. Wikipedia:Guidelines for Blog Citation, our aim is to create good objective guidelines that can be used to test whether or not a blog can be used as reference and what the scope of that reference can be.--Crossmr 21:11, 17 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

RfAr involving Zero

Apparently mediation does not improve the current conflict I have with this user. Since I am at my wits end I have filed a case at ArbCom. This is to notify you should you wish to comment there. Nomen Nescio^{Gnothi seauton} 11:05, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Updating

No, updating it, we have changed our name. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Joebb11 (talk • contribs) 11:40, July 20, 2006 (UTC)

Yes, we will be updating our web site soon.

See http://ddh.atomizeus.co.uk/ for our new web site.

ED article

I just wanted to stop in and say thanks for your involvement in the ED article. Even if I disagree with your judgement, your method of discussion is far more helpful then what has been going on there in the past couple of days. I'm sure your intervention will help bring about a civil, well-thought out decision as to the direction of the article. See you in the ED talk page, Karwynn (talk) 14:48, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Please read

Please read this, and consider changing your mind about whether or not I was "fishing" for an IP confirmation. Karwynn (talk) 20:45, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

So, you're saying you hadn't caught any yet? I mean, the comment you linked to could quite easily (try to see this...) ...could quite easily be taken as a last ditch attempt to get a confirmation that it's his address. How is that not fishing? How is talking about which IP addresses might or might not go with which contributors not fishing? I honestly don't understand how you're thinking of this. -GTBacchus^(talk) 20:50, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's not fishing because there was evidence being considered that both MONGO and this IP address engaged in innappropriate behavior. THat's what the whole evidence page was about, in fact. But forget it, my good faith use of Wikispace to organize evidence rather than rushing into an RfC and creating potentially unnecessary Wikidrama is only giving me grief. Believe whatever you wish at this point. Respectfully, I must agree to disagree with you and your consideration of the circumstances in general, and I won't bother you anymore about it. I hope I have not accidentally conveyed any animosity, I've just been so frustrated over this automatic rejection of an unorthodox good-faith RfC consideration. Karwynn (talk) 20:57, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No worries. I hope I haven't conveyed animosity, either. Wikipedia can be very frustrating, sometimes. -GTBacchus^(talk) 21:10, 20 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Concensus and vandalism

I've seen numerous articles where someone tries to push PoV disputed content over and over and is subsequently blocked for vandalism, and i've seen such behaviour referred to as vandalism multiple times. Perhaps thats just a poor choice of words on the part of the blocking admin.--Crossmr 06:01, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Remember you?

After that day in Cleethorpes? How could I ever forget? LOL!

How's the god of wine?

XXX--Galaxybabe 22:43, 21 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

None

Actually, the word "none" traditionally takes the number of the word in which modifies it, and is not strictly singular or plural in number. I should have explained that in the edit summary rather than just doing a quick VP revert, so I apologize for that. -- H·G (^words/_works) 06:38, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm fairly certain that "none" isn't considered a condensed form of "not one" by most schools of thought. I just pulled an old style guideline book out (MLA) which backs me up on this. Again, sorry I wasn't more clear about the edit, no bad intentions here. -- H·G (^words/_works) 06:48, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
- In the phrase "None of these friendships," the object "friendships" is plural. "None" is one of those indefinite pronouns that takes the number of words/phrases that modify it, so it also is plural since the prepositional phrase "of these friendship" modifies it. According to my old college text, this is true for any, all, some, half, and most too. I only know this because I was an English teacher at an earlier stage of my life; I probably shouldn't know so much about pronouns! Cheers, -- H·G (^words/_works) 06:55, 22 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Done

Hey, I was just looking through all of the userboxes I've moved, and I think we've taken care of all the ones I did improperly. Thank you so much for all of your help. —Mi ra 04:37, 25 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Haven't a clue

Hi again, it is telling me you've left me a new message but I can't find out where it is :-/ I am adding BBC news links to the "Recent Deaths" section, just to see if I can ;-) I have no idea how to sign off my name, - I saw the thing in brackets but I don't know what a & and the numbers mean??? I will try ~~Galaxybabe~~ but I am not sure that will work. Have a great day! Hugs, Annie/GB

Edit: Well - that didn't work so let's try: Galaxybabe 08:58, 25 July 2006 (UTC)Galaxybabe[reply]

Woo-Hoo! Galaxybabe 08:58, 25 July 2006 (UTC)Galaxybabe[reply]

Your clock is wrong by the way, it's not 08:58 in England, it's 09.59 (10:00am now) Galaxybabe 08:59, 25 July 2006 (UTC)Galaxybabe[reply]

License tagging for Image:GTBacchus.jpg

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Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/User:Karwynn/Compiling_Evidence/data_dump_to_be_sorted

I'm a bit surprised by your comments on this discussion. The page was an obvious speedy and no discussion was merited (indeed, discussion could only draw more attention to the attack). --Tony Sidaway 12:18, 27 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

User:01001 & Human height

I see you've recently edited Wikipedia talk:No original research. User talk:01001 seems to be grinding an axe about OR (with regards to Talk:Fox News Channel controversies), on Wikipedia talk:No original research and elsewhere. This user recently had a bunch of OR edits to Human height reverted [2], whereupon he (nine minutes later) deleted a paragraph [3] explaining on the talk page that "it is OR" [4] because he felt that a study cited in the paragraph (published in American Journal of Epidemiology) did not accurately support the statement being made (generalizing childhood disease effects to the general population). It seems that this editor has a thing about OR and V, and I suspect his deletions are a WP:POINT. In any case I restored the four sentence paragraph, with a bit of rewrite, and added two more published papers (each sentence in the section now supported by a seperate reference), and he reverted again, deleting the entire section [5] with the complaint that the one reference was off the point. His complaint is off the point, and he clearly hasn't read the text he reverted. Pete.Hurd 06:17, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Getting there...

Hi again :-) Yes I figured out the signature :-P although I can't see me being seduced by this place, I still have a lot of articles to write for h2g2. I'm doing well, I'm now a sub-ed and Scout, and I have 66 solo edited entries with 7 *pending*. We have badges for our Personal Space now, to display "25 edited entries" and 50 and 75 and 100. When we reach a hundred, we get to design the Front Page for a day! <grin> Galaxybabe 11:03, 30 July 2006 (UTC)Galaxybabe[reply]

Re your comments on Wikipedia talk:T1 and T2 debates

Was reading your comments on this topic and you asked how you would go about removing something if you felt that it was directly harming wikipedia. The answer is incredibly simple yet purplsely avoided in my honest opinion. You simply return to Jimbo and seek further clarification and explaination of T1 and T2 to the point where absolutely nobody could misread the policy. Curious how admins are happier to take it as it currently is, such that it is ambiguous enough to use when it suits them but when given a clear path to make it absolute they refuse to do it... my educated guess is that they would be afraid they couldn't continue deleting things from their own POV if they had it clarified. Care to prove me wrong? Enigmatical 22:26, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I've been completely offline for several days now, and only just got your note on my talk page. I admit the whole T1 issue hasn't quite got my foreground attention right now, but I'll attempt to reply to what you said. Your suggestion is to get Jimbo to clarify exactly what should get deleted and what shouldn't - you want the Deus ex machina solution. Problem 1 is that Jimbo has been asked repeatedly and is apparently unwilling to do that, and I think he's smart to leave it as a problem for us to work out over time. With an appropriate level of patience and perspective, you realize that nothing here is permanent, and letting things work themselves out at their own pace is often the correct approach.

You go on to suggest (your "educated guess") that some admins prefer the rules hazy because it allows them room to abuse the system by deleting according to POV. Although that must happen inadvertently to some degree, no matter how unambiguously you try to phrase a "rule", I think your suggestion that it's actually the motive behind many admins positions to be paranoid and unrealistic. If some particular admin is deleting things according to their POV, then you should bring it up directly with them, because that's unacceptable. Otherwise I don't know to whom your allegations are supposed to apply, and speaking for myself and the admins with whose work I'm familiar, I can say they don't apply at all. If you want to know why I think it's smart to avoid having very concrete and specific "rules" for how to run the Wiki, you should ask me.

Regarding your last question, I don't know what you're talking about. If there's something you want me to do, please ask directly. -GTBacchus^(talk) 22:21, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome back. The use of the word "paranoia" is a very funny thing. When one believes that a claim is unsubstanciated then the term is used incorrectly, yet the clear difference between paranoia and perspicacity is only discovered after evidence comes to light. How many times have people thrown the term paranoid at others only to find that their concerns were fully justified? In this case it seems convenient that Jimbo refuses to answer and that everyone is told to look at "precident" which is multiple pages long and where every attempt to try and gain conscensus or clarification results in absolutely no movement at all. It appears this debate has been going on for a long time and there is absolutely no progress on it. When those are the circumstances is it not prudent to start to think that perhaps there is some as yet unknown factor which has not been considered? You say that if you think something has been unfairly done then talk to the admin who did it. Do you not believe that has been done? Every time this is taken to an admin (Transhumanist, Christian, etc) they simply ignore you. How can you seek any kind of resolution with a person who just blatantly refuses to take part in rational discussions? All they simply need to do is find "some" way to fit T1 and T2 to a template they dont like and instantly it is gone with absolutely no attempt to find conscensus and it is not done as a result of any complaint or division. That they choose to do this at a slow pace, randomly deleting userboxes every now and then gets them around Jimbos decree of "don't go on a deletion spree".

I agree with you that in general it is good to avoid concrete rules, but I also think then when something is clearly not working, and then numerous editors are constantly complaining about admins actions and those admins simply sit back and point to the ambiguous, arbitrary and subjective phrase "divisive and inflammatory" then no amount of time is going to ever resolve this issue. It is clearly an issue based not on objectivity but on subjectivity and when that happens conscensus is never reached and conclusions are never found (Without absolute proof, will they ever resolve whether there is a god or not? Course not, its subjective). In light of those facts it would save so much time and effort to simply clarify the meaning so that it is harder to abuse by those who want to follow their own agenda. This is why I believe that it is purposely left ambiguous. If as you believe nobody is purposely leaving it hazy, then clarifying it wont change anything right? Thus if what you say is true, admins should have no problem in wanting to see it clarified. If however certain admins do in fact want to use its deliberate ambiguity for their own purpose then they would make every attempt possible to avoid clarification because then that makes it harder for them to make certain deletions. If Jimbo wants us to sort it out on our own, I can absolutely guarantee you that in 5 years time the subject will still be unresolved, people will still be complaining about certain admins speedy deleting userboxes on a whim and we will be no closer. If this is not the case, then why isn't there a push from the admins to find a mechanism by which this can be resolved and done so in a timely manner? Set a date, come up with a way to achieve the goal and get it sorted out ONCE AND FOR ALL. So if you need me to ask you to do something directly then that would have to be it. Work out how this issue will be resolved, set a timeline (heck, make it a year if you have to), determine the best mechanism to achieve it and get a resolution. Surely that would be the most time effective answer which would allow editors and admins to get back to the task of providing useful information rather than wasting so much time on this issue while constantly having to worry if some admin is going to make opinionated speedy deletes stating a purposely ambiguous term as the reason (And I say puropsely ambiguous because even Jimbo doesn't want to clarify it). Enigmatical 22:48, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hello again. I'm finally back online with some degree of regularity, and able to give Wikipedia some actual time and attention. It's nice to find not much has changed, in my absence.

I hardly know what to say to you, though. If you think that someone is using the abiguous state of the "rules" to push a particular POV, then I won't know what you're talking about until you get specific: give me a name and a supposed political agenda, and I'll cheerfully look into it. Until then, then only agenda I know of relating to userboxes is to get rid of all of them forever (excepting Babel and project-related ones), which is an agenda I agree with.

You predict that, if Jimbo doesn't do the Deux ex Machina solution, then in five years we'll still be arguing about it. I predict that in five years, people won't remember userboxes, because they'll be long gone by then. That's what we're working towards. We're just doing it slowly instead of all at once, because that makes fewer waves. Frankly, the problem is cultural, so the solution will be cultural and gradual, and trying to address a cultural problem by edict is short-sighted and foolish.

If you oppose userbox deletion, then your best strategy is to actually convince other people that userboxes are a good thing. I've seen all the arguments on all sides, as far as I know, and frankly the userbox crowd hasn't convinced me that userboxes are necessary or good. If you can persuade me that userboxes are cool for Wikipedia, then you'll be one person closer to being right. Until a lot of convincing goes on, the general sentiment among more experienced Wikipedians is that most userboxes are frivolous at best, and damaging at worst. I'll be pretty impressed if you can even correctly repeat back the arguments against userboxes - I don't think I've ever seen a userbox supporter get it right.

The current state, as I understand it, is this: a few GUS people are running around userfying a bunch of boxes. A few admins like Cyde are keeping up the deletion pressure. This means that more and more userboxes are living in user space, and fewer and fewer in template space. This means that new users are entering a Wikipedia in which, as long as they can remember, there's been momentum in the direction of deprecating userboxes. Fewer and fewer people will be drawn to the whole userbox fad, because more and more people will sense that it jumped the shark a while ago, and in about a year, once it's already been the status quo for months that userboxes don't live in Template space, someone will add it to a policy or guideline without raising any remark except for "I thought that was already a policy."

There's your timeline and mechanism for how the issue will get resolved. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:50, 29 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Continuing discussion on Userboxes

Thanks for getting back to me. In order to convince someone of something, there has to at least be room for convincing. There is no use in trying to convince someone who is adamant before anything has been said. A person wishing to stick to a particular point of view will never change that point of view because being subjective, we humans can find whatever we like to support our own goals and agendas. Just as you wont convince me they don't believe, I wont convince you that they do... to then argue people need to be convinced is done specifically becuase you already know the answer to that. Funny how you construct the answer to specifically meet your own POV... is that what a good administrator should do?

I'm sorry, I only sort of understand what you're saying here. When you say "you won't convince me they don't believe," who is "they", and what exactly are they believing or not? Are you saying in the above paragraph that I'm not open to being convinced? What evidence do you have of that? I'm actually having this conversation, listening and trying to give you my best and most honest answers. What do I need to do to convince you that I'm listening? Why not try getting to the point, and see how I react? The reason I suggest that you need to convince others has nothing to do with trying to suit "my POV" - your attempt to read my intentions is failing. I suggest you need to convince people because I have this idealistic belief that such is how progress occurs. You'll note that my activities in the userbox affair so far have been mostly limited to trying to honestly convince others of what I genuinely believe to be right. I'm a deletionist, but I'm not a deleter - I suspect you've noticed that. I'm a discusser - talk to me.

You have your own photo on wikipedia and it is in the photobook. Don't you consider it a complete and total contradiction to do something as "frivilous" as that and then bemoan how useless userboxes are? I see people playing hangman, doing personal topics and many other things here... so why do userboxes get the flack? I believe that until you are consistent in your POV, and that you automatically share your view with all things on Wikipedia that are frivilous then you truely don't have a right to be "divisive" against one particular aspect of wikipedia.

First of all, my photo is not in the facebook. I uploaded one, but I seem to have failed to grok the appropriate copyright rule, so it's gone. Secondly, I don't think of the facebook as frivolous. I think it's a useful tool to assist Wikipedians locating each other in offline events, which I sometimes attend, and I'm happy for people to be able to recognize me in those cases. Thirdly, I don't "bemoan how useless userboxes are"; I point out how I believe they are specifically damaging to Wikipedia. I have never cited frivolity as a reason for deletion; if I have, please show me where, and I'll eat my hat. As to your question "why do userboxes get the flack?", I believe I've answered it quite thoroughly, but I'm quite happy to do it again: They reinforce a culture of partisanship, which is directly antithetical to what I see as the defining vision of Wikipedia. Like Jimbo said, they give people the wrong idea of what it means to be a Wikipedian. I would hope that most people would react to this suggestion by opening a frank and honest discussion about what it really does mean to be a Wikipedian, but it seems that many people would rather chase red herrings. I find that sad.

Prove to me first that you are open-minded and willing to accept all possibilities, and I will gladly share with you what my point of view is in the hope of finding a proper solution. (in return I will also be open minded in listening to why it should be removed, and why it should be done in contrast to other useless content). Deal? Enigmatical 03:25, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Uh, deal. I don't know what kind of "proof" you need that I'm open minded... how about my saying so: I'm open to what you have to say. Please tell me what your views are, and please don't assume that you already know what my views are, but please be open to finding out. -GTBacchus^(talk) 18:55, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You said: "I suggest you need to convince people because I have this idealistic belief that such is how progress occurs". I was saying that you cannot convince people who do not believe there is any answer other than their own. Progress cannot occur when you come into the discussion with an already fixed point of view. The fact that you call yourself a delitionist means you have already prescribed to that view and I dont believe that even if there was sufficient evidence to "convince" you otherwise that you would in fact change that view. Do you not agree?

Your points about the facebook completely and absolutely just proved my point about convincing. Does not a name badge give just as much information to locate people at meetings? Why then do we need a facebook? Its this kind of reasoning where you "justify" your view, somehow many it appear to be totally different to userboxes and somehow manage to maintain that difference in your mind that just shows that no amount of truth will ever have you see differently. Does playing hangman give the right impression of what wikipedia is about? Yet you use this "excuse" for userboxes but totally ignore the other parts of wikipedia that have just as much encyclopedic content. You see userboxes as being partisanship, I see them as giving people an opportunity to learn more. When a person views someone elses user page, they see what their interests are. If they find an interest they don't understand they click on it and go and read about it. Thus instead of being divisive they actually allow people to associate with others who share similar interests (which strangely will be other editors on the pages they edit together), as well as provide them an avenue for learning things they didn't know exist. Its absolutely no different to someone writing in their user page "I like subject X", accept it is more visually stimulating which is something human beings require (and the whole reason we use images on wikipedia instead of just straight text). But none of this will matter to you, there will be some reason why this is irrelevant, why this doesn't matter but hangman is perfectly valid wikipedia content and userboxes are not.

You wondered how to prove you were open minded... and what I got was the distinct impression that you are not, which was clearly shown by the fact you ignored mention of hangman altogether, found a poor reason why a facebook has reason to exist. I wont try to tell you what your views are (appologies if I do, its an expediant way of one person relating to another what they think the other is thinking... I call it a form of information sharing), but if you can gain absolutely nothing from what I have just said above then again you have proved my point.

Just to show you that I am open minded (as promised), I do see that "some" userboxes can be detrimental and damaging, but I don't think you can generalize in such a way to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I would even go so far as to say that any userbox that doesn't serve a specific purpose of either identifying a concept, directing to an article or expressing a belief which can generate associations between editors then it has no point being there (ie userboxes which say "I like userboxes"). Enigmatical 23:57, 30 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, first things first: The fact that you call yourself a delitionist means you have already prescribed to that view and I dont believe that even if there was sufficient evidence to "convince" you otherwise that you would in fact change that view. Do you not agree? No, I don't agree at all. I started out as a userbox supporter, and changed my mind because of reasoned arguments that I saw presented. I firmly believe that it can happen again, and I continue to invite userbox supporters to communicate with me.

I'm sorry you're convinced that I'm not open minded. I would like to be open minded, and I'm totally willing to let you teach me what I'm not seeing, but if you're going to dismiss me without attempting to do so, then I'm not the one forfeiting the discussion. I'm standing here with my ears open saying, "please share, please communicate, please teach". Will I not seem open-minded to you until I say "yeah, you're right about evetything"?

Regarding the facebook and hangman, (which I still know nothing about). I think the facebook has a small reason for existing. It's not particularly useful, but it's not actually damaging either, as far as I can tell. Playing hangman sounds like something people don't need to be doing on Wikipedia servers. It sounds very slightly harmful, but at least it doesn't have the disadvantage of contributing to a partisan atmosphere, so if I had to rank these activities, I would say the facebook is the least of a problem, hangman next, and userboxes next. Regardless, I have a limited amount of energy to put into Wikipedia, and frankly the only reason I'm talking about userboxes at this point is because you initated this discussion. If your impression is that I'm campaigning against userboxes while letting other things slide, then your impression is mistaken. I'm not doing a thing to campaign against anything here right now. I'm editing a few articles, having this conversation, and considering an essay I want to write about how to avoid edit wars.

You seem to have missed my main point in the facebook paragraph, which was this: I believe that partisan userboxes actively harm Wikipedia. I'm aware of the arguments that userboxes aren't harmful, but are in fact a good thing, but I'm not convinced by them. I would be happy to discuss with you precisely what those arguments are and what I find lacking about them. I would also like to see that you know what the arguments are on my side. If we can mutually understand each other, then a lot of other problems just go away.

Can we drop discussion of which of us is more open-minded, and actually just talk about the pros and cons of userboxes? In response to how you predicted I'd react to your argument: (But none of this will matter to you, there will be some reason why this is irrelevant, why this doesn't matter but hangman is perfectly valid wikipedia content and userboxes are not.), you're incorrect in at least two ways. First of all, I don't think that hangman is perfectly valid Wikipedia content. Direct me to a deletion discussion, and I'll put my money where my mouth is. Secondly, I don't consider your arguments irrelevant. I consider them absolutely central, and worthy of respect and detailed consideration. Now, do you want to keep second guessing me, or can we have a real discussion now, please? -GTBacchus^(talk) 00:16, 31 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, fair enough regarding your comments on some areas. I had considered that you read everything and anything which you had not commented on by default must have therefore been acceptable (ie Hangman). From what I am seeing at the moment, the sticking point seems to mostly revolve around this view of userboxes being damaging by causing a partisanship.

So to keep the discussion simple...

"Do you believe the current policy could be changed in order to remove the problem of being partisan, without actually having to remove userboxes altogether?"

Enigmatical 06:02, 31 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Alright, here's the question you posed for consideration: Do you believe the current policy could be changed in order to remove the problem of being partisan, without actually having to remove userboxes altogether?

Before I address that, let me try to establish some common ground for discussion. We've got suggestions out there that userboxes have some specific advantages, and some specific disadvantages. The general argument in favor of userboxes is that the advantages are real and significant, and that the disadvantages are either non-existent, or at least insignificant. There is also an argument that there are some specific disadvantages to deleting userboxes. On the other side, we've got the suggestion that the advantages of userboxes are not unique to userboxes - i.e., that we can obtain the same advantages without them - and that the disadvantages are real, significant, and worth taking the trouble to avoid. Please let me know if you find any part of that summary to be inaccurate or misleading. (As a point of reference, these arguments are fleshed out in some detail here)

Anyway, I think what you're asking is this: Is is possible to eliminate the disadvantages of userboxes without eliminating the advantages as well? I guess I'd say... maybe. I think that people moving them to subpages is actually one of the best solutions, because it addresses the problem of what impression is given to new users. If it's longer before someone sees userboxes, maybe they'll have more time to get the right idea about Wikipedia. Still, having them around really gives the wrong impression, and I'm really not convinced it's worth it to maintain something that goes directly against the image we ought to be projecting, and which confers very little in the way of advantages.

I think the important discussion that hasn't really happened yet is on the topic of what it means to be a Wikipedian, and what kind of image we want to project, and just what is the right idea about Wikipedia? (And what is the wrong idea that I'm claiming some people are getting?)

Implicit in my slight rephrasing of your question is one other point, which is that we're actually dealing with a cultural problem, and it isn't going to have a simple policy solution. There's no magic sentence you can write down somewhere that will somehow make it irrelevant that we've got increasing numbers of people with conflicting visions of what Wikipedia is. The solution will be gradual, and difficult. The good news is that we're working on it right now, by having this conversation. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:09, 31 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps it is best to keep it here rather than trying to jump back and forth. Your statement to find common ground for discussion is probably close to the mark if you wish to talk about "what is out there now". I do feel uncomfortable that the against option can only thing in binary and that userboxes can only go, and that there is no compromise... but still, your view is accurate.

Now that you have re-worded my question and answered "maybe" I believe that you are not being honest (not intentionally mind you). If you believe it might be possible then you would not be so adamant about removing them, or that they give the wrong idea about wikipedia, etc, etc. What you express clearly says "no".

I do agree that a discussion needs to be had about what being a wikipedian is and the image to be projected, which confuses me further that without this discussion, everyone (including yourself) states that wikipedia is NOT about userboxes and that it gives the wrong impression. What if the discussion is had and it turns out to be different from your point of view? Will you then say userboxes are now fitting? Its like putting the cart before the horse and it would appear to me that if you believe this, you would see all deletion of userboxes and admins who are slowly deleting them as being in the wrong for not first trying to reach this consensus.

For the record, I believe wikipedia is a community, and as such that community has various facets. Some of which are serious (ie article editing) and others which are not (ie games, facebook, userpages, userboxes). I think this is clearly evident by the fact that the software itself was specifically designed with user pages in mind and that policy clearly states that this is a place for users to put their own content here. It has already acknowledged that user pages can have content which is seperate from the serious side of wikipedia and userboxes simply continue that trend. To then say they give the wrong impression of wikipedia, yet allow user pages with colourful content, personal pictures, hangman, otehr games and everything else seems to me to be isolating one specific thing (ie thus having an agenda). I wonder then why you are not pushing to get this conscensus you believe should be happening to happen? Where is the discussion page on this that you have started? A person's actions should back up their words and if this is what you truely think... where is the action?

I failt to understand however how this is a "cultural problem". This has always been a place of conscensus, where the community decides what it is they want and clearly they want userboxes. If editors did not want them, then they would not be putting them on their user pages all the time. Where the problem is has nothing to do with "what wikipedia is" and everything to do with a select group of administrators (who are in the vast minority but have the majority of power) who have decided for themselves they didn't like what the community was doing and took it upon themselves to abuse that power in arbitrarily deleting them. Who can stop them? Its a boys club... those with power will not attack another with power because it removes the perception that they are infallable and nobody wants to entertain the idea that administrators can make mistakes (I have had a certain administrator freely admit he is arrogant and always right, that he basically gets away with whatever he wants only compounds his view). Now I freely agree that any userbox which supports an act or action which has caused great pain to innocent people (ie pedophillia, nazi germany, etc, etc) should be immediately removed, as should any that plainly and obviously serves no other purpose than to cause problems... but to try and apply this to userboxes which simply support Christianity, or Transhumanism... to delete those without conscensus is NOT waht wikipedia is about. So you want to talk about giving the wrong impression of wikipedia? Then what about the impression we are giving that administrators have the right to remove content for no other reason than they choose to, against conscensus and then ignore all calls to have them follow protocol? One such example is the Template:User transhumanist userbox. It was removed one day, people asked the administrator to follow protocol and he basically refused to even enter into discussion about it (how can you talk to someone who doesn't want to talk). He then waited a period of time until people gave up and moved on before then putting it up for a vote. I didn't even know a vote was being held which means it was extremely bias. So now they can claim that they followed process and it was still deleted. Its a very specific manipulation of policy and it was done under the arbitrary guise of "Divisive and Inflammatory". THAT is the kind of impression you are putting in the minds of people of what wikipedia is about, the abuse of policy by those who vote their friends into the "boys club". Compared to that, userboxes saying that you like pizza is completely tame. Enigmatical 22:56, 31 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(Outdenting) I'll go ahead and reply here, to help keep the discussion together. First, there's your statement: I do feel uncomfortable that the against option can only think in binary and that userboxes can only go, and that there is no compromise. Calling an exterminator to get rid of pests in one's house is also an example of binary thinking. So is cutting off a rotting limb. They're still both good ideas. I realize that I haven't yet explained how userboxes are like a pest or a rotting limb.

Next you suggest that my "maybe" could be less than completely honest. It's not a very strong "maybe". It can be expanded to "maybe there's a way to do that, but I sure as hell haven't seen it, and I can't seem to think of it, but there's always stuff I haven't seen or thought of in this world." It's kind of like if you had a malignant tumor in your body. You'd want to have it cut out, I imagine, and if someone really pressed you on the point - are your sure it has to go, are you sure there isn't a way you could keep it around, despite the harm you feel it's doing? You might say "maybe", but I think it would be a pretty guarded maybe, contingent on new information that you're not really expecting to appear. I think if there were a way to separate userboxes from the problems I have with them, someone might have thought of it sometime in the last 8 months, but I'm willing to keep listening. Meanwhile, I think it would be folly to put off excising the tumor on the grounds that some reason for keeping it in might come up tomorrow. Remember that as far as I can see right now, userboxes are actively harming Wikipedia, while we're talking. I'm open to being shown otherwise, but until then, wouldn't I be silly to pretend that I'm less convinced than I am?

Next, you ask how I can have an opinion about what it means to be a Wikipedian when the discussion hasn't yet happened. The thing is, that discussion has happened, for a lot of people, and its results are all over the Wikipedia namespace. Where the discussion hasn't happened is in the context of userbox deletion discussions, because people haven't really recognized that those discussions are actually about what Wikipedia means. People think the discussions are about all kinds of other red herrings, like vote-stacking, or freedom of speech, to use one example from each side. So, I've done a lot of thinking, and I've arrived at a conclusion. It's not a train of thought that's very easy to reduce to a simple soundbyte, but I am able to articulate it, and have done so, more or less sucessfully on a couple of occasions. When I did, others agreed with me that I was articulating the same vision Jimbo has been promoting, and various supportive comments led me to believe that I'm not alone in the way I'm thinking. I find it very clear and compelling. In response to your question: if someone shows me that I've been wrong about what it means to be a Wikipedian, or about how that applies to userboxes, and that userboxes are actually consistent with the best vision of what Wikipedia is, then of course I'll switch my support to that side. I'd be crazy not to.

Moving along, you assert that Wikipedia is a community. I wouldn't put it that way. I'd emphasize that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and it's only a community insofar as that serves the ultimate aim, which is writing the encyclopedia. Any aspect of the community that starts to work against our fundamental project is unnecessary, unwanted, and needs to go. Once we start treating the community as an end in itself, we risk losing sight of our goal. The Wikipedia community is not what all those people have been donating money to support, and I refuse to betray them. Our job here is to write a free, comprehensive, neutral encyclopedia.

There are things happening at Wikipedia that make no obvious contribution to the project. You mention the facebook - it's contribution is very minor and we could easily live without it, but I can't see that it does any harm. BJAODN is also unencyclopedic, but it does no harm, and it's fun. Hangman is another fun diversion, but in the interest of not turning into a games Wiki, I think we should really draw the line at fun things that have something to do with the encyclopedia. In my estimation, BJAODN is good to keep by that criterion; hangman, not so much. Some userboxes are related to writing the encyclopedia, and many others could be argued as relevant, but at that point they also stop being harmless. Once they're damaging to the project, there's no excuse for keeping them. I suspect our disagreement is over whether they're damaging.

You state: It has already acknowledged that user pages can have content which is seperate from the serious side of wikipedia and userboxes simply continue that trend. To then say they give the wrong impression of wikipedia, yet allow user pages with colourful content, personal pictures, hangman, otehr games and everything else seems to me to be isolating one specific thing (ie thus having an agenda). I must point out that you're not understanding where I'm coming from. First though, have a look at WP:USER: Generally, you should avoid substantial content on your user page that is unrelated to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a general hosting service, so your user page is not a personal homepage. Your page is about you as a Wikipedian.

Now, onto the real central point. WP:USER says: Your page is about you as a Wikipedian. Now let's talk about what it means to give the wrong impression of Wikipedia. It has nothing to do with colorful content, or personal pictures, or hangman. It has to do with a misunderstanding of our neutrality policy. Political userboxes help undermine our basic philosophy of NPOV. I'm going to explain that in more detail, but I hope it's clear that the reason I'm "isolating one specific thing" is because it's that one specific thing that's doing the specific kind of damage I'm worried about, and about which we still haven't talked. My "agenda" is to protect Wikipedia against a very specific form of cancer, to which hangman doesn't contribute one bit.

Your next point is to question whether my actions back up my words. That's easy. First of all, for most of the summer, I haven't had an internet connection - look at my July and August contributions, compared to the preceding months. Before that, do you know who started, and made a huge chunk of contributions to Wikipedia:T1 and T2 debates? That's right, I did, and not just editing arguments on my own side either. I put days and days of my life towards trying to get people to talk to each other, and to actually look at the points being made by others with an eye towards understanding, and not just arguing against. Did you notice the multiple times I called out Tony Sidaway for failing to properly respect the other side of the debate? I typed thousands of words trying to drum up consensus for what I thought, and still believe, is right. I found it pretty difficult to get anyone else to contribute energy towards actually exploring the central issue; everyone was having too much fun running up blind alleys, and I was still working on how to untangle all the arguments. Now, it's September, and most people have walked away from the whole userbox affair, and I'm still bothering to type thousands of words to support the view that I still believe is correct. I'm still fleshing out what the best arguments are for what I believe, and I intend to promote them far and wide when I've figured out what they are, and if those best arguments turn out to be arguments in favor of userboxes, then I'll be there, promoting userboxes - although I'm not expecting that, because I still find the arguments against userboxes pretty damn compelling.

For what I hope is the last time, can we please stop trying to make this discussion one about my honesty or sincerity? Have you noticed that I haven't once mentioned or alluded to your motives? Can we please focus on the topic of whether or not userboxes hurt Wikipedia, please? At least can you wait until after you've found out what my position is to question my motives for holding it? Because you're making it abundantly clear that you still don't know what my argument is. I'm not surprised you have misconceptions about my beliefs; please find out what I believe before making ad hominem arguments, ok?

So, we're nearly to the point, which is the specific way in which userboxes are harmful. First though, I'll just register a couple of replies to your last paragraph. You say "I fail to understand how this is a cultural problem". That's because you still don't know what I'm claiming the problem is. We'll be there in a paragraph or two. Secondly, I have nothing to say in support of uncommunicative admins refusing to discuss their out-of-process deletions. I think that's fucked up: not deleting out-of-process, which has its place, but refusing to discuss, which in my opinion is very much wrong, and I've expressed that to several of the admins in question on more than one occasion. I agree that administrative dickishness is a problem, and that it gives the wrong impression of Wikipedia, and encourages others to be dicks as well, and I find this to be one of the major problems facing Wikipedia. Userboxes are the most visible aspect of another one of the major problems facing Wikipedia.

OK! Now check it out. WP:USER says that your user page is about who you are as a Wikipedian. This is consistent with how your userpage will be viewed by observers, because it's the homepage of your Wikipedia account, not your MySpace account. Now, on a page that's about you as a Wikipedian, if you declare "This user is a Republican", you're saying that you, as a Wikipedian, are a Republican. In other words, you're saying that when you edit Wikipedia, you consider your being a Republican part of your approach. Whether or not this is what you mean, this is how it comes across. It encourages others to bring their biases to Wikipedia and set up shop as an Atheist or a Trans-humanist, or a supporter of Palestinian independence, or whatever.

Now this next point is important: there are two ideas about what neutrality might mean. It might mean that a bunch of biased people come together and edit as representatives of their bias, and since all biases are represented in relative proportions, we end up with some kind of average, which must be neutral. On the other hand, it might mean that we try our best to pursue neutrality on an individual basis. We grant that it's not possible for someone to be entirely neutral - in fact, we repeat that like a mantra - and we each individually strive to rise above our biases with each edit, acknowledging that we're bound to fail again and again and again.

I hope it's clear that I'm saying the second model is the preferable one. Now, it's entirely possible for someone to agree with me about that model, and yet think they're doing a service to NPOV by advertising their likely biases with userboxes. This is the disclosure of bias argument, and it makes a certain amount of sense. What it fails to take into account is the appearance projected to outsiders, because of the powerful nature of a colored box with the words "this user is a...." as a viral meme. First of all, they look like little badges, and they appeal to our instict to make collections of colorful little objects. This is not harmful in itself, except that it means that, if there are a few userboxes around today, there will be more tomorrow: they tend to increase unless they're given clearly prescribed limits.

Secondly, and this is the rub, they indicate that your identity as a Wikipedian is in terms of your biases. They're effectively a welcome sign targeted directly at people who would like to edit Wikipedia from a particular biased perspective. They say to those people "yeah, what you want to do is really how Wikipedia works, and we welcome you to bring your agenda here and operate from it." In fact, we don't welcome that. We don't want people to make contributions that fly directly in the face of our NPOV policy. The more people rely on Wikipedia as a source of information, which is more and more each day, the more people with strong agendas would love to bend our articles away from neutrality and towards their world-view. We have to vigilantly keep Wikipedia de-politicized. It's very hard to do, and it really doesn't make it easier when we make it look as appealing as possible to partisans, by projecting the message that being a partisan Wikipedian is the main idea.

People's eyes are drawn more towards a patch of colorful boxes with pictures than to blocks of monochromatic text. If I visit a website, and I see a userpage with some text, and a bunch of boxes identifying the user as belonging to various religions and political parties, I'm going to think immediately, "oh, I get it, this is a political website, where you get to take a stand for what you believe in". The more people have that impression of Wikipedia, the harder it gets to keep important and controversial articles neutral. User pages should make the casual visitor think, "ah, I see, this is a website where people are really dedicated to neutral reporting of knowledge, and where there's a lot of focus on sourcing, and good writing, and good research, and where people identify themselves in terms of how proud they are of the research and writing they're involved in." If we can give that impression, then a partisan is much more likely to realize that they are not welcome to bring their political fights to our encyclopedia.

This is why I call it a cultural problem. We need to reinforce and strengthen our culture of academic neutrality. Too many people seem to be given to a culture of partisan debate, and we have to work against that, and try to stop reinforcing and encouraging it.

So, I hope I've managed to get that idea across with something resembling clarity. Please let me know whether I succeeded in making any sense. -GTBacchus^(talk) 19:07, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

First I want to appologise for questioning your sincreity or honesty. I guess I am inappropriately using my bias as a result of being on the receiving end of certain administrators (which strangely enough you mentioned by name) and wrongly assumed that you would be the same. My bad there.

I do understand where you are coming from now and I appreciate you taking the time to explain it to me. Fundamentally however I think your view on why userboxes are dangerous is clearly subjective and it may not actually be the view of the majority of those who come to wikipedia. I do not just say this for no reason, I say this because I believe it is clearly seen in the "trend" which you find on wikipedia today. If what you said is true, and that userboxes were purposely polarizing people and making them think that wikipedia was a place for their POV then more and more people would be limiting themselves to userboxes that illustrated that point. Especially considering the people you are talking about woudl be zealots and seeing other users pages political userboxes as a sign for them to do the same should result in a large proportion of user pages containing nothing but those politically related ones. Sure there are users who do this, and their page is plastered with their POV. This is a good thing as you mentioned... better to be up front about who you are and put it "out there" than to be subvertive and edit under secrecy where nobody knows you harbour this extreme POV that you keep from the world. But we are not seeing that... more and more we are seeing people creating and using user boxes that discuss computer games they enjoy, consoles that they like, gender, adoption, generation, country of origin, skills in computer languages, love of pizza, following of philosophies, etc, etc. There is such a rich and broad range of userboxes that those of a political nature can quite easily get lost in the sea of colour that you seem to feel automatically draws people to. I personally think your subjective view on them being damaging is a little paranoid and clearly not respresentative of what we are seeing. Not only that, but it clearly shows then how admins are doing the wrong thing by deleting NON-political userboxes such as transhumanism in the manner that they have.

The greater problem to wikipedia, and the one which I feel is clearly giving people the wrong impression is the perception of admins having aboslute power and complete immunity. How many times will Tony continue to act in such a beligerant manner and be reprimanded for his actions yet not have those actions automatically reversed and his priviledges taken away? How many people need to leave wikipedia in disgust at how admins are acting before wikipedia is left destitute people people see it as an admins personal playground? For that matter, which causes more damage... a user box on a user page where someone has to actively find it and then pick a specific user box out of a sea of thousands... or a disgruntled user who has been burnt by admins who leaves the website emotional and tells anyone who will listen about how bad wikipedia is? I think in the grander scope of things, userboxes are far more benign than the current issue of admins and the way in which they choose to work. That they are supported by fellow admins (who are protecting their own right to act in that way) and purposely subvert the rules (no matter how slow it is, deleting user boxes is still a deletion spree) in order to get their own POV across. The fact they use "divisive and inflammatory" as the reason for their speedy delete clearly shows tehir own POV yet they claim they are neutral. Wouldn't a user box in their own page stating "I hate user boxes and will speedy delete it whenever I can get away with it" be appropriate in such a case? ;) Enigmatical 00:33, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I saw you in wikipedia faces

Hello. In the faces list, I saw you. You said you have a mathematics degree on your user page. Your picture looks like one of my old math teachers. Anomo 05:35, 8 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Abortion-stub tag issue

A concern over the appropriateness of the image used in Abortion-stub has been raised at WikiProject Abortion. Your input, as the one who helped create both the project and its stub tag, would be appreciated. Thank you. -Severa (!!!) 05:24, 12 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

suspect a sockpuppet of User:SirIsaacBrock

hi, I noted that you were one of the admins that blocked/banned User:SirIsaacBrock. I wanted to bring your attention to User:What123, who I suspect to be a sockpuppet of User:SirIsaacBrock. User:What123 seems to follow the same pattern of edits to articles around the Israel-Arab conflict, depopulating articles relating to abarigional conflicts for Category:Conflicts in Canada, etc... but the diff here (the use of "Cordially" at the end of his comment) is what makes me sure it's him. Are you a good person to come to for my SirIsaacBrock-blocking needs in the future? or should I take this sort of thing over to wp:ani? Thanks in advance and sorry for the trouble. Mike McGregor (Can) 04:41, August 21, 2006 (UTC)

Meetup

Looks like Wikipedia:Meetup/Seattle4 will be happening September 9, 2006. - Jmabel | Talk 01:54, 28 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sources

I got a message on the article Combined Transport Inc. saying this:

An editor has expressed a concern that the subject of the article does not satisfy one of the guidelines for inclusion on Wikipedia on one of the following topics

Now what exactly does this mean? I don't site sources? Well I got this information from their business plan they handed me. How would I site that? --Steven91 05:33, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

NOR

You know, you and I do not always agree but I think we handle our disagreements in a civil way and what is more important it is always evident to me that you are tying to be constructive. Thanks to your participation I thought we were making progress in revising one paragraph of the policy into one that more people liked more.

The John Awbrey added this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:No_original_research#Son_Of_Suggestion Do you see in this the constructive spirit of engagement that I see in your comments? I don´t. On the contrary it seems only to disrupt or undermine the progress we were making, thanks to you and WAS.

Am I off base? Am I out of line? Or is Awbery? Perhaps you can comment on his suggestion. Thanks Slrubenstein | Talk 03:10, 2 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

personal attacks

Will refrain from them. Will clean up the wording in the article to conform to wikipedia standards. But I have to wonder why you deleted the material instead of fixing it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nardman1 (talk • contribs) 01:58, September 3, 2006 (UTC)

No problem to unprotect WP:NOR

I figure everyone has finished the argument by now. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 10:30, 3 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Award

Cool as a Cucumber Award

For staying cool in a heated discussion on Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Counter-Vandalism Unit (third nomination) and trying to encourage others to do so too. --Konstable 00:17, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

picture for menstrual extracton article?

hi there,

i made a stub for menstrual extraction, and looked around for a picture for it (which i thought would be good because a visual could show the technical differences between MVA and ME better than words...)

i only found one, at this url: http://www.io.com/~wwwomen/menstruation/extraction.html

i've only been editing for a month, and have no clue about how to include this image, or if it is even possible. any help appreciated.

thanks, Cindery 17:17, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

thanks

i guess i will have to make my own little drawing or something :-) do you have any suggestions for where to find another image? or any criticisms/suggestions/advice re the menstrual extraction stub and how to make it better? (i'm going to convert all the references into actual footnotes today...) Cindery 18:32, 4 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

protect again?

Hi Bachus, about WP:NPOV: It happened to be an undoing of someone's edit without prior discussion - in fact, it had been discussed before to not have that version. Probably I was not clear enough in my comment? In any case, I welcome protection of that page if such edits continue. Harald88 20:08, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

17:24, 7 September 2006 (UTC)~~== NOR ==

It is a policy page. I believe policy pages should have a much much lower threshold for protection than articles. Be that as it may, my protection doesn´t block administrators (and there must be thousands by now). If someone fels I acted inappropriately and undoes the protection I won´t protest, but I do think it was warrented. As for expressing my support, one reason I felt free to protect is precisely because I had stepped out of the debates some time ago - making only minor comments about process (rather than arguments for any changes). Slrubenstein | Talk 23:46, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I proposed a change to the primary and secondary source section. There was extensive discussion and the discussion was made into its own page. My sense is most people viewed the change as a simple clarification of existing policy, and two or perhaps three people argued against it without in my opinion any sensible arguments. I still support the clarification I proposed. Be that as it may, the only change I am aware of that was actually made to the policy was to change the paragraph on expert editors. I did not think anyone had made any change concerning primary and secondary sources yet. Slrubenstein | Talk 00:01, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, you are missing something. The page was recently unprotected. Someone put in the new paragraph concerning expert editors. Someon - Jon Awbery, you, I do nmt remember - suggested that at the same time that the expert editors section was modified, someone took advantage to change the primary and secondary sources section somewhat underhandedly. When I wrote, "I did not think anyone had made any change concerning primary and secondary sources yet." I meant "since the page was unprotected." You are seriously mistaken if you think I have ever suggested that I have not edited the article. I made many edits, which Jon Awbery, 0^0, and Wjhonston reverted. Felonious Monk, Jayjg, and Slim Version at various times reverted those reversions, that is, restoring my version (which they edited as well). HOWEVER (and THIS is the important thing) Wjhonston reverted those (me, Felonious Monk, Jayjg, and Slim Virgin´s) edits so that the primary and secondary sources section was returned to the state PRIOR to my revision. At that poinmt the page was protected. When the page was protected, the version of primary and secondary sources was NOT my version. When the page was unprotected, it was to make a change to the Expert Editors section. I have made no other edits. It is unfair and slanderous to accuse me of having taken advantage of the lower level of protection to sneak my version of primary and secondary sources back in. You asked me if I still cared about my revision and the answer is YES: I still think my revision provides a necessary clarification that improves the text. But that does not mean that I have changed the section to reflect my views. I HAVE NOT. Just because you can find an edit of ine from mid-August in which I made a change means nothing. There were many edits, a veritable edit war, and it ended with the page being protects. AT THAT TIME the protected version of the page was NOT my version. And sincce the page has been unprotected, that section on primary and secondary sources remains NOT my version. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:45, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I truly appreciateyour note. Despite what I wrote above, I neverfelt any animosity from youand have always appreciated the spirit in which you have contributed to Wikipedia. I think I was reacting moreto what others have suggested or might suggest. Be tthat as it may, I appreciate your apology and I am sorry I overreacted. Asfor Awbrey being a troll, you and I will just have to agree to disagre. As tojustifying my views and edits concerning NOR,I havealready explained myself fully. All I could ask anyone to do is go back and reread what I have already writen. I have no new ideas or explanations or justifications, and I personally amsatisfied that I have provided necessary and sufficient explanations for my views and edits. I just do not have anything more to add to what I have already stated. Slrubenstein | Talk 17:24, 7 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

NOR

WIth all due respect, Awbrey is a troll. My advice is simply this: do not feed him. If no one else is engaging him, there are good reasons for that.Slrubenstein | Talk 23:53, 5 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My WikiBreak

First off, I would like to thank you for your message. :) While leaving Wikipedia permanently would be a knee-jerk reaction, nonetheless, I feel it necessary to force myself to back away whenever my level of frustration starts to affect my decision-making. I fear that I have bitten off more than I could chew by taking on more articles than I could reasonably handle. I may have become somewhat brusque in my dealings with other users as such.

You needn't feel negative for taking a vacation during the summer. We all have other commitments in our lives and our contributions to Wikipedia are on a volunteer basis.

In terms of places in WPAbortion which could benefit the most from your attention, the Mifepristone article has been very active of late, and more input could help resolve lingering concerns at Talk:National Abortion Federation. RoyBoy sought a peer review of the ABC hypothesis article but the response has been somewhat limited. Issue over the inclusion of the word "death" in the introductory sentence of Abortion has been raised twice on that article's Talk page recently. Substantial debate, spanning four archives, has evidently not resolved this problem. Also, there has been debate on WikiProject Abortion Talk regarding the icon, or lack thereof, of Abortion-stub; another user's opinion — especially that of one familiar with stub protocol — might lend itself to a cooperatively-reached solution.

Besides myself, Andrew c and BCSWowbagger seem to be the most active WPAbortion members, so I would also consult them for their opinions of what articles within the project are the most in need of attention. -Severa (!!!) 05:33, 6 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Encyclopedia Dramatica question

Hi GTBacchus, I'm trying to find someone who can explain why the article on Encyclopedia Dramatica was deleted. If you're willing to discuss it with me could you explain how an article on ED wouldn't be able to not violate WP:V and WP:NOR or any other policies? I've been working on some information relating to this. Thanks! --AlexJohnc3 ^(talk) 03:10, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

You commented on a conversation I was having with Morton devonshire [6]. I think it may answer my question, so saying, "Encyclopedia Dramatica is a website that, according to their website "explain things in a funny and not necessarily correct way" would be original research? --AlexJohnc3 ^(talk) 14:20, 9 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Meetup notes

Wikipedia:Meetup/Seattle4. Edits welcome. - Jmabel | Talk 08:37, 10 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

Thanks, I just edit conflicted with you correcting that. I really should use the preview button more. JoshuaZ 00:02, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know. I haven't made up my mind. I'm generally sympathetic to essays in Wikipedia space but times like this make me wish we could do something like the German Essay Solution and put almost all of them into userspace. JoshuaZ 00:10, 13 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hacking report

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariah_Carey

I don't know who else to tell, sorry. :-/

Annie XX

Re: WP:RM

I went ahead and did the move, because I saw it there, and checking Amazon, it's easy to see that we're just correcting an erroneous title here, and that nobody seems to be opposing it. Feedback is welcome; it seemed to me like a good corner to cut. -GTBacchus^(talk) 02:40, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's fine with me. -- tariqabjotu 03:15, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

from WP:RM

Hi. I just want to check with you - is your history merge from List of Czech, Bohemian, Moravian and Slovak Jews completely sorted out? I'm just working on the WP:RM backlog, but I don't want to delete that request (in the September 2 section) if there's anything still pending about it. -GTBacchus^(talk) 03:24, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

To the best of my knowledge, the histories are correctly merged. - Jmabel | Talk 03:54, 14 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

about questions of ED notability...

Your good question elsewhere on Wikipedia was observed.

I'm posting this anonymously for my own protection--certain parties seem set on driving out any users who offer even a modicum of support for this alternative satirical website. I can assure you that the person posting this is *not* who you may be suspecting it is. Let's just say I'm one of the 1,000. Your reply, if left here, will be read. The ED site *might* not have been notable enough before for a WP article, but it is without a doubt now. It's all over the news. This is just the tip of the iceberg--seriously. Do not have access to Lexis Nexus type searches from earlier than the past 7-8 days, so this is likely exponentially grown. It probably is due for another DRV.

http://encyclopediadramatica.com/index.php/ED:PRESS

June 2005:

The Guardian, a major United Kingdom newsmagazine, reported on ED's political commentary about the George W. Bush role in the TL;DR article on ED.

January 2006:

Bantown claimed responsibility on ED for discovery of a critical Livejournal hack, as reported by the Washington Post.

September 2006:

TV news coverage

MSNBC TV - MSNBC, the major and leading cable news network, reported on ED and its role in the RFJason Craigslist Experiment, including screen shots of the website and the URL, and specifically talking ABOUT the site by name repeatedly. Google Video mirror, and YouTube mirror.

International news coverage

The Ottawa Sun referenced ED, quoting our take on the evolution of the Emo scene.
The Toronto Sun also reported on our coverage of that music scene, in a much more expanded article.
Spiegal, a major German news source, reported on ED and Jason Fortuny.
La Press Affairs, a leading Francophone news source, also covered ED and Fortuny.

Major blogosphere

Boing Boing - http://www.boingboing.net/2006/09/10/the_seattle_craigsli.htm
Broowaha - http://losangeles.broowaha.com/article.php?id=88
Good Morning Silicon Valley - http://blogs.siliconvalley.com/gmsv/2006/09/perhaps_youd_be.html
Waxy - http://www.waxy.org/archive/2006/09/08/sex_bait.shtml
Wired Blogs - http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/?entry_id=1553329
Wired Blogs - http://blog.wired.com/27BStroke6/index.blog? entry_id=1553813