User talk:Opabinia regalis

Kitten

Your talk without a kitten? No. Wikipedia must be much better now that a page listing a few operas and bios was deleted, - expect a drastic decline in infobox debates now that 21 articles such as Max Reger no longer invite to be "targeted". (And see what happens when I try to avoid the topic.) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:35, 23 September 2016 (UTC)

You're right! I better add a whole bunch more, just in case I start running low on kittens again ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 03:20, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Amazing dialogue on my talk: someone asking me to translate my article of 1 Jan, for a bio in a memorial concert! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:54, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Congratulations! Perfect use for a good article. Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:18, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Took me far on memory lane. Tonight, we sang Elijah (all of it), as back then when we were praised by Germany's leading paper, for a dramatic reading highly sensitive for text and tone. The conductor had a high fever that concert, but managed. - 2016 Elijah Concert on Monday, our national holiday, see? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:35, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Extended confirmed protection

Hello, Opabinia regalis. This message is intended to notify administrators of important changes to the protection policy.

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About that template...

You mentioned a template that would ping all the ArbCom. If you're serious about that, I could whip something up à la {{@MILHIST}}. Miss seeing you at TFD! Primefac (talk) 23:44, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Only if you "accidentally" leave me out... ;) Thanks, but I'm not sure the other arbs wouldn't kill me!

The other day I installed that new TfD script thinking I should do some more normal admin work, but I haven't had the time. Damn real work! Glad you are still holding down the fort over there. Opabinia regalis (talk) 04:28, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

The script is pretty nice, I only find a bug about every fourth day :p Fortunately the backlog isn't too bad. (It's the Holding Cell.... but I'm working on that). Primefac (talk) 05:07, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

Thoughts on essay

Mind taking a look at Wikipedia:Relist bias when you have a chance and providing your thoughts? With AfD showing backlogs recently, I think it might be a helpful reminder that kicking discussions down the road usually isn't helpful. I'd like a set of eyes on it before I start "putting it out there" (and potentially embarrassing myself with any typos, etc). Cheers! ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 22:48, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Good idea, I like it. (And I didn't find any typos, but that means exactly nothing given how many I contribute... ;) But, well, I hate relisting in general, so of course I agree! Opabinia regalis (talk) 06:08, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Hardy PD comments

Hi OR, I note your post here and thought a brief reply here might be more appropriate as the MH case is going to close any second. Sadly, I agree with you that the key decision has been made, but I disagree that it was to not desysop MH. That decision was (I would guess) fairly easy for arbitrators to reach once the quality of evidence was clear. For me, the key decision was that sanctioning non-parties with no notification is permissable. The TRM case is pretty obviously wandering in that same direction. I recognise you have characterised this issue as a "rough edge" (unless I am misunderstanding you) but it's actually a core issue of fairness and principle and it isn't going away. EdChem (talk) 13:22, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

@EdChem: Well, the final decision in the Hardy case includes no non-parties, and neither does the PD in the TRM case. The Hardy case would never have existed without the contention that his adminship might be a problem, so in that sense it was the key conclusion in the case. Honestly, rehashings of the Hardy case on talk pages after it closed (not by you, obviously) were kind of what we were trying to avoid with the probation remedy people didn't like. While I was going to write more stuff here, if it's all right with you, I think it might be better to pick this up again after a bit of time has passed, and as a more general issue with the "named party" system. Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:42, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Re the MH case, I guess it depends on 7c under "user conduct" which is obviously written as an adverse finding (not a description of background) aimed at a non-party, but I do agree that the outcome is much less problematic than I had feared. On the TRM, I confess I am surprised (and pleased) that the PD doesn't go where it was being pushed. As a personal view, I find TRM an irritating discomfort in the posterior, but only because he confuses being right with recognising trivia. I hope he is not desysopped because he does a lot of good for the main page, if only he could stop with the incivility and learn what is worth worrying about and what is trivia. Anyway, I'm staying out. If there are no further controversies over named parties, I think that would be an excellent outcome for all. Thank you for responding. EdChem (talk) 07:51, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

See, not responding is hard! But for anyone from the future who is looking into this case and digging around in my talk page archives, I'm pretty sure EdChem means 7e :) Opabinia regalis (talk) 22:43, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Infobox ARCA

Re: "But things do seem to have settled down quite a bit in this area since the original filing. There have also been several recent retirements and it doesn't seem right to hold a case so soon afterwards. I think we should hold off for now but be prepared to accept a new case expeditiously if this resurfaces again." – Things usually settle down a bit temporarily when RFARB or ARCA has been invoked and fingers mutually pointed; that doesn't mean anything has been resolved or that the problems will not resume shortly. We know they will (this has been going on for years, and the earlier infobox ArbCom requests did not even involve many if any of the same parties), so why wait? And it hasn't really settled down at all. The present situation is that the battleground has reached the ultimate level: "I get my way or I go on editorial strike and malign my opponents until I get locked out anyway."

When those professing to quit the project over this and related matters are among the parties (and were ramping up not toning down their incivility levels, such that Cassianto was taken to ANI yet again for it the other day, and SchroCat was blocked for it, then both made a big show of quitting together and blaming MoS people for it, despite infoboxes not even being an MoS matter), it doesn't really compute, to me, to set the ARCA request aside out of deference to them. That's simply allowing process to be held hostage by the parties' own drama and behaviors that are, in substantial but not entire part, the subject of the request. Imagine if all civil law cases would be thrown out as long as any party to them threatened to leave the country, and made various extraneous accusations on their way to the airport. "A threat to quit confers immunity" is the message this will send, about ArbCom in general.

Since we know this isn't really about the exact personalities who are parties at this moment, but about a) infoboxes in particular (which limits the scope and applicability of any remedies sharply to one particular sort of tiresome controversy) and b) the broader issue of conflicting perceptions of a "right" to completely control an article an editor or group of editors feels proprietary toward vs. a "right" to standardize article features despite article- or topic-specific objections (these are the two extreme positions, with most parties actually being somewhere between them), the recent departures, while unfortunate, don't really have much to do with what ArbCom is being asked to help with. We genuinely need a way to rapidly shut down "infobox wars" before they get out of hand – hopefully with means that, once deployed a few times as short-term measures, will help prevent the battlegrounding from recurring. Generally, the only areas that see discretionary sanctions used again and again are socio-religio-political topics that attract fanatics and sockpuppets. It just doesn't happen with internal matters (see, e.g., how infrequently DS have been used with regard to the closely related WP:ARBATC); in order to know enough WP-internal process to get inflamed about an WP-internal formatting matter one pretty much automatically also becomes aware of the DS; by contrast, anyone's first edit can be a PoV-pushing, trolling rant about [insert ethnicity, religion, or political party here]. Even if DS turn out to not be quite the right remedy, something needs to be done, and it clearly isn't going to come from ANI and other noticeboards.

Much of this is partially the fault of a previous ArbCom. The original ARBINFOBOX case had the unintended but terrible consequence of effectively forcing every addition or removal of an infobox to be repetitively hashed out at each article, resulting predictably in the "not this crap again" frayed tempers, polarization, circular argument, and entrenched battlegrounding. What probably needs to come of this is an instruction for the community to come up with clearer guidance about infoboxes (always include them, get rid of them entirely, or – most likely – come up with guidelines about when and why to have one and, broadly, what it should and should not contain), otherwise this will never end. In the interim, it cannot continue to be okay for pro- or anti-infobox editors to programmatically try to remove or add them to all articles or whole categories, nor for either camp (or anyone in the middle) to use personal attack tactics to smear everyone who disagrees with them (and those are almost entirely coming from one side in the debate).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  12:32, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Although I've sharply disagreed with SMcCandlish on matters in the past, I agree with his assessment here. I think it's short-sighted to punt this (again), and we'll all be back to venues like AN/I next time there's a flare-up. The community has repeatedly shown itself incapable of addressing the so-called "infobox wars". Yes, several of the involved characters recently quit out of disgust with the community's inaction and inability to manage this area of dispute. I don't know if they were right to do so, but it's happened. I view it as ArbCom's primary responsibility to deal with problems of this magnitude. This is not about content—this is about the behavior of editors who push and pull infoboxes. Things have not blown over. On the contrary, most of us who have witnessed this war are trying to chill while ArbCom decides what it wants to do. Deciding "nothing" is not a very healthy result. Just a few days ago, Gerda Arendt added an infobox to an article which I single-handedly authored and clearly made an editorial choice not to have an infobox. Despite her statement to ArbCom that we "respect preferences", there it is. Is it deliberate needling? I'm choosing to take the high road, but not everyone has been so-inclined. --Laser brain (talk) 13:40, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Yes, what they both said. This isn't a style issue, this is a behavioural issue. Disregard the word "infobox" and consider how we would approach an group of editors who insisted that "British English is clearly the only correct form of English since the language originated in England" and spent five years "correcting" American spellings and harassing anyone who tried to point out WP:CITEVAR, or a group of editors who couldn't agree on whether the lead image on New York City should be the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building and instead of discussing it to agree on a "let's have a montage" compromise spent the better part of a decade reverting each other and trying to bait each other into breaching 3RR so they could have a free run at setting the article into their preferred format. ‑ Iridescent 15:23, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

@Laser brain: I added an infobox to a Donizetti opera, as to many others by the same composer before, and as Viva-Verdi did to all by Verdi. All you need to do if you don't like it is revert, - I will not even go to the talk page (waste of time). It has been done for Die Fledermaus, for example. But see also Talk:Le duc d'Albe#Infobox, and the project talk, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 18:16, 2 October 2016 (UTC)

Oh wow, I voted to decline a case and people object? Is it opposite day? ;)

I think there's a few important points here. Because this is such a recurring issue, it's important that anything that happens have as much community-perceived legitimacy as possible. With the current setup it's just too easy for the outcome to be dismissed as "oh, as soon as Joe Bloggs left arbcom started a case that nobody even asked for...". It's not that retiring gets you immunity; it's really the other way around - we want people to be active and participating.

I'm sure you're all right and the issue will come up again, but I think "expeditiously accept a case" is a hint, no? :) We had an ARCA a few months ago, I recommended there that someone re-file with an explicit request for DS, and no one did. Then we had the current one, which again started out about a somewhat peripheral issue and got a lot of pile-on commentary about infoboxes in general in a place that really isn't set up for that. I hope that next time there's a serious problem, someone files a well-constructed case and we can sort through the evidence carefully, in a format that encourages more facts and less soapboxing. Also, I'll be going inactive for a bit due to a work trip in a couple of weeks, may I recommend you file it then? ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:11, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

I think I have a better idea: no next time. We can start today. I said so in the first case. - I invite you (all) to study its workshop page: many good ideas there which unfortunately were not followed. (It was my first case ever, I didn't yet know what "motion" means, so placed one there to have a short infobox for Giuseppe Verdi. We have it now.) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:33, 3 October 2016 (UTC)
 

(edit conflict) Opposite day, ha ha! :-) If you're going to be too busy to participate anyway, could you change your opposition to an abstention? I find it hard to imagine what different issues would be raised, among which different parties, if a third ARCA (or second RFARB) about the same issue were filed in short order. As you pointed out yourself, the first recent ARCA ended with a suggestion that there should be a second one, specifically asking for DS, and we now have that (though maybe it's only the bulk of the respondents asking for DS, not the original filer, I forget). Why would we need a third one that says the same thing? I agree of course that editors departing is a bad thing and that we want to retain them. The problem here is that more bad blood is going to hemorrhage all over the place if the battleground nature of this infobox crap isn't reined in, and that probably means more departures (and probably mostly from the range of editors who tend to lean against infoboxes, which suggests a form of fait accompli could happen, through the argumentum ad infinitum effect wearing people out, in a pattern that ArbCom itself set in motion).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  11:47, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

SMC, I was joking about how unpleasant arbitrating an infobox case is likely to be :) I really am traveling in a couple of weeks, but I can keep up with wiki-reading.

As for DS, nobody chose to file an ARCA with an actual plan. A lot of people jumped into requests about peripheral issues to recommend DS, but as you saw in my vote, we tried to work out a system that would actually target the problem areas without spilling over into unrelated issues and haven't come up with something that looks likely to work. We need a structured, evidence-based inquiry first - preferably originating in a request from the community, not a motion by arbcom.

Gerda, as much as I don't want one, I'd be pretty surprised if this didn't come back as a case sooner or later. One thing to try is to rethink "all you need to do is revert" - that works fine for articles that have grown up in the usual agglomerative Wikipedia way, but when it's clear someone has made a lot of editorial investment and there's still no infobox, it's probably better to leave it alone, even if it introduces inconsistency with other related articles. Even if an infobox would help orient readers, the editorial improvements also obviously benefit them; it's a rare case where a mediocre article with an infobox is better than a well-developed article without one. On the other hand, it would really help if people who make "editorial choices" not to use infoboxes would do some more thinking about how they are going to serve their less prose-oriented readers - people who are just skimming, who aren't sure this article is the one they're looking for, who don't read English well, who are reading on their phones, who are trying to reuse our content, etc. While I don't mean anyone in this thread, I've noticed that a lot of the rhetoric around infoboxes carries the tone that these readers are not worth making an effort to reach, and that's not a sustainable approach. Opabinia regalis (talk) 23:55, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

I agree especially with your last comment, reminding me of one of my recent confessions. Re revert: I have little time these days, but still try to create one infobox a day for opera, where they are available per project guidelines. So one day I came across the Donizetti work mentioned by Laser brain above. I always look up authors for French opera, and didn't change several of those because of author names I know as infobox dislikers. However, I had already added so many Donizettis without problems that I confess I didn't look. Even if I had looked, I would not have known that someone made an editorial choice not to have an infobox. Many of these articles don't have one because they were written before 2013 when the template became available. No hidden message said: "I, the principal author of this article, made a choice ...", or in other words, - something that might really be helpful to avoid problems. (I added a hidden notice to Beethoven.) I use the edit summary "try infobox", - reverting is short, and I will take it. An author could, however, also realize that the infobox is the better choice for the reader (see Falstaff), because its alternative, a side navbox of other operas by the same composer, is redundant to the bottom of the article, the more common position for such a thing. Laser brain didn't revert ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:19, 4 October 2016 (UTC)

Well, you know the problems with hidden text.... Yes, I agree that lack of a way to signal "this was on purpose" is part of the problem. And for all the apparent issues with "drive-by editors" (possibly also readers?) adding undesired infoboxes, I'm not sure I've ever seen a drive-by infobox removal by a previously uninvolved editor on the grounds that it is misleading/lacks nuance/looks bloated/etc. And I've never quite understood why categories, which are at least as reductive and even more cluttered-looking, and which are rarely used as navigational elements, don't get anywhere near as much hate on an article-by-article basis. Just because they're at the bottom and no one looks there? Would it be OK to make an "editorial choice" not to include, say, a portal link, and to revert attempts to add one? Section headers? Wikilinks? The more I think about this, the less sure I am that we as a community really have a solid common understanding of what the basic building blocks of an article are. Opabinia regalis (talk) 03:37, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Infobox removals don't come with edit summaries "bloated/...". The come with "not needed" (as in the case above, as if anything we do here was needed) or "condensed" (and that cleverly not even a complete removal, only almost complete) on the article I was just pointed at by the ARCA, but probably held responsible for all misery dating from before I even entered Wikipedia although I never made one edit ;) - I found a very quotable edit in the 2012 discussion. Still miss the editor. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 05:56, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Well, I don't want to interrupt your abstinence ;) But I mean removals by "drive-by" editors - people who are just gnoming around, or happen to be reading the article - in parallel to the oft-complained-about "drive-by" infobox additions. Opabinia regalis (talk) 20:14, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Both cases fit that description. Well, the one mentioned above: some edits were made before the revert ;) - I am way too happy after a most interesting concert where I sang only a little but had had the idea (see my talk, look for Frank Stähle, the thread, I mean, + I will post the details on top), - too happy to deal with these minor unimportant annoyances ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:38, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

Gerda, I am quite taken aback, but not surprised by your selective memory and mis-characterisation. Re bloated, I would like Opabinia regalis to take into account the rational provided here - the article you were "just pointed at by the ARCA" has been circled for weeks, and recently capitulated, under protest, given that gang's onslaught (see later connected tactics below). Read Targeted, and what else was her mdf about "article improvement" page[1] about except about coordination for those watchlisting. For those how know their history, this is how this team of about (now) four people works, and note the long term attrition on the other side.[2], more thoughts on blind ears. "Wear people down" is the key point here, discussed in dept. I notice Rexx, not noted for his love of early modernist poetry, was attending also.[3]; not to mind his new found love for categorising Jane Austin as romantic fiction and promoting incompetence if it suites the cause, with bullying, intimidation and playing on insecurities as part of the game, if it suites the cause.[4]

Its probably worth mentioning that recent tactics have involved emailing spouses and outing - which might be difficult to reconcile with trying to sway and influencing others, as seen here. A careless mistake, though not credible, is preferable to a lie. And that is what we are up against. This is not about infoboxes, its about primarly about reductive summaries. But also in scope its a machinelike desire to mow down editors, in the long term, so machines can resduce articles to two or three facts. Ceoil (talk) 00:10, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

Hi Opabinia - I'd like to share a story with you and your page watchers. A few days ago I went to my local library to pick up some books I'd ordered to work on Jane Austen and while I was there I took a walk through the stacks. To my astonishment the stacks were almost 80% empty. I haven't been there as frequently as in the past because I had a lengthy illness during the winter and apparently during that period they decided they didn't need book any more. I asked about it: "Where are the books?" I wanted to know. The answer was that everybody now goes to the web for information and books no longer circulate. They have plans to dismantle the stacks. As a long-time and very serious lover of books I was horrified.

The reason I'm telling you this, is because we (the collective we as in Wikipedians, past and present), bear a great responsibility, imo. We bear a responsibility to get things right. I'm a bit of stickler for that, and I prefer to verify information in a scholarly book, but this editor won't be able to in the future - not without shelling out money for which the WMF would never reimburse me. It's the burden of the responsibility that worries me.

Which brings me to my point. All editors are the constituents of the arbitration committee and I don't think it's appropriate to have this conversation here. The tone in the first comment is very disparaging to people like me. To keep editors who care about building content, in other words who care about the burden placed on us for getting it right, it's best that we don't feel intimidated.

I'm happy to debate the pros and cons of infoboxes and why they don't always work – in a relaxed manner. To go on a tangent - yesterday I read an article explaining that the literature of the late 18th century and early 19th century in England was difficult to categorize because much of it was written by women and ended up being called "romantic" - this is a gross over-simplification - and that women, often being outside of society (so to speak) do often set trends. That to me is interesting. How to put it in a single word in a genre parameter poses a challenge. I could discuss it ad nauseam.

What isn't good is to see that apparently decisions have been made, i.e you noted that there's no reason for a case because of recent retirements (suggesting one or more of the retirees would have been a party). What isn't good is that people like me feel intimidated. What isn't good is to see that Ceoil is clearly upset - he never makes long posts, kept well away from the infobox case and rarely resorts to diffs. What isn't good is that when he tried (quite inelegantly) to remove material from an attack page an email was sent to his wife not to him. No post to his page. An email sent to his wife as if he'd been naughty and she should rein his him. What isn't good is that on this page you're having a discussion with the person who sent the email and the person who could well end up a party if there is a case (you're an intelligent woman and don't need me to spell out why). What isn't good is that a user has to make a post like this, and this happens with zero accountability (and, yes, I saw).

These are behavioral issues. They've been going on a long time and no one has done anything. In my view, the committee's remit is to nip behavioral issues in the bud so that people like me (who cares about content and now according to my librarian am responsible for the sum of all knowledge and getting it right) can carry on doing what we do best. That hasn't been happening. We've lost interest which is not good for the project.

It's your page, but I think this thread is counterproductive. You can skip all the long-winded stuff above and simply read this. It's only part that counts. Thanks for indulging me. Victoria (tk) 16:15, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

I promise that I will never again email a wife that I am concerned about her husband making 4 reverts, concerned because of HIM, one sentence. It had nothing to do with the kind of page reverted, nothing with other editors, nothing with infoboxes. I am worried about an(y) editor making four reverts, period. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:43, 8 October 2016 (UTC)