User talk:Guy Macon

A Wikipedia Content Dispute.

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"Wikipedia's articles are no place for strong views. Or rather, we feel about strong views the way that a natural history museum feels about tigers. We admire them and want our visitors to see how fierce and clever they are, so we stuff them and mount them for close inspection. We put up all sorts of carefully worded signs to get people to appreciate them as much as we do. But however much we adore tigers, a live tiger loose in the museum is seen as an urgent problem." --WP:TIGER

Only 993,176,031 articles left until our billionth article!

We are only 993,176,031 articles away from our 1,000,000,000th article --Guy Macon

Depiction of Wikimedia Foundation destroying Wikipedia with Visual Editor, Flow, and Mobile App

Depiction of Wikimedia Foundation destroying Wikipedia with Visual Editor, Flow, and Mobile App.

--Guy Macon

Calvin discovers Wikipedia

• "A little rudeness and disrespect can elevate a meaningless interaction into a battle of wills and add drama to an otherwise dull day." -- Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes. --Guy Macon

Page views

Page views for this talk page over the last five years
Detailed traffic statistics

Page views for this talk page over the last six months
Detailed traffic statistics

--Guy Macon

Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet

"Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game because they almost always turn out to be -- or to be indistinguishable from -- self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time." --Neil Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
--Guy Macon

The most important^{[Citation Needed]} page on Wikipedia

User:Guy Macon/On the Diameter of the Sewer cover in front of Greg L’s house --Guy Macon

I can see why this has not been added yet; it does not have an "...in popular culture" section! For shame. --IanOsgood (talk) 12:58, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

"...It looks like Wikipedia is really pulling out all the stops in their latest appeal to their users..."

Donations Needed: Wikipedia Has Posted An Appeal Asking For One Night Of Physical Intimacy From Each User --Guy Macon

Wikipedia Celebrates 750 Years Of American Independence

"The Revolution's main adversaries were the patriots and the people from Braveheart," said speaker Tim Capodice, who has edited hundreds of Wikipedia entries on subjects as diverse as Euclidian geometry and Ratfucking. "The patriots, being a rag-tag group of misfits, almost lost on several occasions. But after a string of military antics and a convoluted scheme involving chicken feathers and an inflatable woman, the British were eventually defeated despite a last-minute surge, by a score of 89–87."[1]
--Guy Macon

Reasoning

"Reasoning will never make a man correct an ill opinion, which by reasoning he never acquired: for, in the course of things, men always grow vicious, before they become unbelievers..." --Jonathan Swift ( 1721)[2] [3]

In modern language that would be

"You cannot reason people out of something they were not reasoned into. They will viciously attack you instead of abandoning their beliefs".

--Guy Macon (talk) 12:59, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Well, at least they have their priorities straight!

• A seaside town in Japan has raised eyebrows after it used funding from an emergency Covid-19 relief grant to build a giant statue of a squid. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:10, 8 May 2021 (UTC)

Press mentions

Hey, you've got a couple of press mentions in the Spanish and Brazilian press:

• Wikipedia cuenta con 300 millones de dólares y ha roto sus previsiones de donaciones… pero te sigue pidiendo que dones (Genbeta)
• Wikipedia tem 300 milhões de dólares em caixa e continua pedindo doaçõesWikipedia tem 300 milhões de dólares em caixa e continua pedindo doações (SempreUpdate)

Cheers, --Andreas JN466 20:25, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

Thanks! Google translate:

"Already in 2016, a Wikipedia editor named Guy Macon published a report in which he warned that the viability of the project was in danger ... due to the pace of the foundation's expenses and, above all, because spending priorities were not the correct ones." (The Spanish and Portuguese translations are pretty much the same).

Interesting how they came to that conclusion about spending priorities despite the fact that it I was very clear that in my opinion it is the spending increases that are likely to kill Wikipedia, not the spending priorities. Actually, the fact that they are pouring money down rat-holes strengthens my argument. If the W?F was spending way too much but spending it doing things that are worth doing it would be harder to get public support for having the W?F grow up, put on their big-boy pants, and stick to a budget. --Guy Macon (talk) 21:33, 1 June 2021 (UTC)

It seems Katherine Maher has made a contribution to the Hacker News thread. See [4]; her handle on that page is "kmaher". --Andreas JN466 09:57, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Have you ever heard the story of the admiral's yacht? According to the story, whenever someone proposes a reduction in military spending, the military immediately cuts the budget by not buying bullets or buying less food for the troops, but they never touch the admiral's yacht or the general's ski vacations in the Swiss Alps.

Whether or not the story is true in the case of the actual military, in certainly is in the case of the WMF. We keep hearing about maybe spending less on redundant datacenters or on fixing bugs, but we never discuss the Wikimanias, the HQ located in the second most expensive city on earth, or hiring 300 people to do the exact same job that 50 people were doing before.

In the linked comment Katherine Maher makes the same error: literally nobody is calling for lowering the wages of software developers. Absolutely nothing in WP:CANCER suggests such a thing. If anyone had bothered to ask me I would have pointed them to studies that show that a smaller number of higher paid and more productive software developers typically create better software. (You have to work hard to identify the really productive developers -- just spending more money doesn't get you there -- but once you do you have to pay them what they are worth.)

Again, it isn't what the W?F spends on that is likely to kill Wikipedia. It is the ever-increasing spending and the inevitability that donations will not increase every year forever. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:59, 2 June 2021 (UTC)

Alternative medicine in a nutshell

https://xkcd.com/2475/

--Guy Macon (talk) 07:58, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

You are not allowed to edit (banned topic)

It reports only on what its adherents believe, the history of the view, and its notable or prominent adherents.

But we both know it doesn't, which makes Wikipedia irrelevant.

Wikipedia is inherently a non-innovative reference work: it stifles creativity and free-thought. Which is a Good Thing.

It's only a good reference if the reporting is accurate, which it isn't.

Sotuman (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) 10:25, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

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The trolling above was clearly compiled with inferior tools. My guess is that you used Visual Troll++, or possibly TurboTroll 2000.

These first generation tools are quite limited, and there is a severe garbage-collection-related performance hit when you try optimizing the output of VT++ for flaming or insults.

I suggest that you try the latest version of GTC; the Gnu Troller Collection. It is *the* standard when it comes to Trolling. It is also Open Source, reentrant, and is fully compliant with the Triple Troll, Troll-On-Troll and TrollChow protocols. --Guy Macon (talk) 11:55, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Haha, see this is why I love you. Thanks for being on Wikipedia.

You the man(converse) 04:51, 15 June 2021 (UTC)

A cookie for you!

This article is fantastic, it does a great job putting words to my frustrations with some people on this website. DrOwl19 (talk) 01:06, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Essays that promote pseudoscience or conspiracy theories

See Wikipedia talk:Advocacy#Is it OK use Wikipedia to promote personal beliefs or agendas at the expense of Wikipedia's goals and core content policies, as long as you do so in an essay in userspace? --Guy Macon (talk) 04:16, 20 June 2021 (UTC)