User talk:Hans Adler

I do not use "talkback" templates, and it rarely if ever makes sense to leave me such templates. I could never see the point of the stickers I sometimes got in elementary school. Please do not embarrass me with "awards" or "barnstars" or the like.

Mediation Case

A request for formal mediation of the dispute concerning Genesis Creation Myth has been filed with the Mediation Committee (MedCom). You have been named as a party in this request. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Genesis Creation Myth and then indicate in the "Party agreement" section whether you would agree to participate in the mediation or not.

Mediation is a process where a group of editors in disagreement over matters of article content are guided through discussing the issues of the dispute (and towards developing a resolution) by an uninvolved editor experienced with handling disputes (the mediator). The process is voluntary and is designed for parties who disagree in good faith and who share a common desire to resolve their differences. Further information on the MedCom is at Wikipedia:Mediation Committee; the policy the Committee will work by whilst handling your dispute is at Wikipedia:Mediation Committee/Policy; further information on Wikipedia's policy on resolving disagreements is at Wikipedia:Resolving disputes.

If you would be willing to participate in the mediation of this dispute but wish for its scope to be adjusted then you may propose on the case talk page amendments or additions to the list of issues to be mediated. Any queries or concerns that you have may be directed to an active mediator of the Committee or by e-mailing the MedCom's private mailing list (click here for details).

Please indicate on the case page your agreement to participate in the mediation within seven days of the request's submission.

Thank you, Weaponbb7 (talk)

Wilhelm von Gottberg

Thank you very much for your help.Xx236 (talk) 07:40, 30 August 2010 (UTC

Categories of contract bridge

See my response to your comment on my user page. Regards. Newwhist (talk) 16:52, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Transformer Warpath deletion review

There is a review of a deletion you might want to voice your opinion on here: Wikipedia:Deletion_review/Log/2011_April_21 Mathewignash (talk) 16:52, 21 April 2011 (UTC)

Note

I think your points about the likely effect of a redaction request are accurate. The first paragraph however seems more of a problem. Reconsider perhaps? Ocaasi ^c 21:14, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, the first paragraph is the AGF version: Incompetence rather than active malice. It's personal, but it seems relevant enough. If SirFozzie has any problem with it, I am sure he himself is capable of proposing to take that particular aspect to a more appropriate place. As I am not sure where that would be (where do we normally discuss problems with incompetent arbitrators? RfC/U?), I am not doing anything for the moment. Hans Adler 22:52, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't have any problem with it, personally, tempers are running hot (and it comes with the job), except it makes it harder for one to take seriously comments after those that begin with "SirFozzie, you are seriously out of touch with reality. It's amazing how someone with such a poor understanding of social interactions could ever get into your position here. Or maybe you just don't have the time to read diffs and do your job properly?" and then an attempt to try to claim you're AGF.. I think they call that passive-aggressiveness. I feel like one of those old sitcoms. "Don't hold back, tell us how you really feel...." You disagree with the way I see this, fine, but there's a line about disagreeing without being disagreeable, and I think you crossed that line with your comments, which sadly, makes it harder for me to take seriously your other comments on the issue. SirFozzie (talk) 22:59, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Searching on google

If I type sirfozzie and philknight into google, this is what I get.[1] It could be different in other parts of Europe. Please could you do something about it? Thanks in advance, Mathsci (talk) 21:08, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks a lot, I have added the noindex magic word. This behaviour of Google is ridiculous. Unfortunately, the last time we had a discussion about the problem, there was no consensus to make user space noindex by default.

The page is meant strictly as a reminder for myself for the next Arbcom election, because I tend to forget such things and then I don't know who to vote for and who not.

While I am very happy that you noticed this problem and notified me, I must say I feel slightly uneasy that you noticed it so quickly. Presumably you are not googling for these two user names every few hours. I guess it's just one of those funny accidents. Hans Adler 21:42, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for doing that. It might be best to keep any list like that off-wiki, unless it is intended for some kind of RfC/U. As to how I found your subpage, if you leave messages on ArbCom case pages that I watch, it's just a click away on the history of that page to see what you have been up to elsewhere. Nothing mysterious. The test on google took less than a second. Regards, Mathsci (talk) 22:10, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, that makes sense. I can't keep such information off-wiki because I would almost certainly forget about it, so I don't really have a choice unless I want to risk voting for people who I now feel very strongly are not qualified. I am just not good enough at having a long-term bad opinion of someone... As soon as Google updates its index it will be completely out of sight, so there should be no harm. Hans Adler 22:16, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

Well, two things, A) You don't need to worry, I already said that this is my last term, that when my two year term expires in December 2012, I'm not going to be running again, and I intend on honoring it, and as for the link, have you considered that it's because we have a common experience, in working in AE previously, so that we (PhilKnight and myself) would have a similar mindset about actions in that area? SirFozzie (talk) 20:12, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the information. My concern is extreme ABF, which is something I have rarely observed from arbitrators. (Maybe because I have rarely paid much attention to a case.) It may or may not be caused by group thinking or even a right-wing authoritarian mindset. [2] In any case the result is blaming the mobbing victim and defending all the culprits. I have extremely low tolerance for everything that even remotely approaches hypocrisy, and this matter is getting so close that I am now trying to disengage in order to restore my balance. This is not a promise, just an explanation why I suddenly stopped communicating (or rather tried to do so). Hans Adler 20:23, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

No problem with the lack of communication, I'm just trying to explain where I'm coming from. By your request, I'll drop it after I say one last thing. We disagree about the proximate cause, but hopefully we put things into the decision that will make sure that none of these things happen again with other people. I have concerns that the personal interactions which led to Ludwigs2's initial request to AN (which probably will not be in the final decision) will lead to another case, but that won't have anything to do with AE (which is what we accepted the case on). Anyway, I wish you well with the disengaging, and hope you find your equilibrium. SirFozzie (talk) 20:42, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

DYK for Ristikontra

The DYK project (nominate) 12:04, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Pigeon photographer

I've had a soft spot for this article ever since I helped Jennavecia expand it sufficiently for DYK, ages ago now it seems. (What was it called then, the Bavarian Pigeon Corps?)

You've performed wonders with it since then, and I'd really love to see it get promoted at FAC, so I hope you don't mind my fiddling with it. It may be controversial, but I view FAC in much the same way as gladiatorial combat; fighting on your own is what you have to do sometimes, but it's much safer if you can gather the support of a few allies. Malleus Fatuorum 20:23, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I was extremely lucky that Uncle G drew my attention to the article. I am very happy about your help. So far FAC has been a purely cooperative experience for me, and I hope it's going to stay that way. As it's almost a year until next April Fools Day I am extremely relaxed about it. I wouldn't have minded if other commenters had become a little more active directly in the article, but I guess from their POV it's prudent not to do that.

I am slightly irritated that so far almost all the feedback has been on purely formal things – your style improvements were a very welcome change. At times the GA process, especially the one at the German Wikipedia, felt like a thesis defence. Coming to it with this expectation, the FAC feels like a thesis defence in which I must explain my choice of paper and the lack of capitalisation in chapter titles. Or is it just that the formalities are generally done first because they can lead to a quick fail?

By the way, I would really like to make the article mention the "Bavarian Pigeon Corps", but it's still not clear whether it ever existed. For a long time I thought it was all completely wrong, but recently I found this. This was the first clear evidence that pigeon photography was really used in the Second World War. Maybe those trucks were the Bavarian Pigeon Corps. In the light of this, it seems possible that the German army, and maybe even the French army, had superior pigeon cameras before Christian Adrian Michel. But so far that's all pure speculation.Hans Adler 21:11, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I think that you could (and perhaps should) shoehorn in the Bavarian Pigeon Corps, as it's mentioned by several apparently reliable sources, whether or not they were correct in what they claimed. It would need to be carefully written though. I had a similar problem with my own FAC on the Green children of Woolpit. The probability of those kids actually appearing as the result of a matter transporter malfunction on a distant planet is vanishingly small, but I suppose not actually zero. It rounds off the story nicely nevertheless and adds a bit of sparkle.

So far as FAC is concerned, yes, reviewers will pick the low-hanging fruit first, looking for reasons to fail: things like sourcing, image licensing, poor writing and the like. Once they're out the way then it's game on. I think that in many ways FAC (and even) GAN is similar to a thesis defence, with the obvious difference that you're allowed to recruit colleagues in the defence. Malleus Fatuorum 21:24, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

I see I'm not perfect after all. That was indeed what I intended. Malleus Fatuorum

Template

Is your "invisible template" supposed to do this. Or is it some sort of joke? Perhaps I am too thick to appreciate something. --Peter I. Vardy (talk) 12:32, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

It's not a joke but a solution to the very real problem described on the template's documentation page. You are not the first editor who added an infobox to one of Giano's articles or to an opera composer article. Editors do this in good faith, but those who care for these articles and don't want infoboxes tend to get rather grumpy when it happens for the umpteenth time. Occasionally this leads to huge escalations, which I hope to prevent with this little trick. The template makes it absolutely clear when no infobox is desired. It may have been my own idea, but when I searched for it I saw that someone else had proposed it before. The idea can be extended to provide microformats, since in the past at least one editor vigorously pushed infoboxes just to get microformats into as many articles as possible. This is the context in which it came up previously. Hans Adler 12:40, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Is it normal that all that text appears in the article? Should it be in Template:Infobox_invisible/doc? --Enric Naval (talk) 13:26, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

I don't know. It's not a frequently used template (yet), so I guess it doesn't really matter. I don't mind if you want to restructure it in this way, but for the moment it only seems to make things slightly more complicated. Hans Adler 13:53, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

separate question - have you considered the option of a collapsible infobox rather than a hidden one? a collapsible box can take up very little real estate but still provide the information for them what wants it. --Ludwigs2 22:29, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Good idea, but I doubt it would be considered acceptable in the cases for which I have created it. Some editors reject infoboxes very, very strongly, probably in part due to many negative interactions with editors who tried to force them into articles. Perhaps after a few years without such conflicts they will be sufficiently relaxed to accept collapsed infoboxes... Hans Adler 22:39, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

lol - ok, well, flag me in a couple of years if you want help making one. --Ludwigs2 00:07, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Arbitration enforcement warning: Pseudoscience

(Warning removed on advice of Risker.  Sandstein  20:39, 30 April 2011 (UTC))

Sandstein, since this is a case you are currently a party to, and since tens of other admins and arbitrators are watching the pages actively, and the ruling on the current case hasn't even been finalized...maybe this is one of those situations where it's better to drop the rulebook, or at least to let someone else administer it. I'm not saying Hans' language is ideal, but something doesn't look right about your warning either. Maybe you should get an uninvolved admin in the future. Also, this is a heated arbitration case not a content dispute; a simple request is often less officious and more productive than invoking formal procedures. I'm pretty sure you see these warnings as the very opposite of the Ludwigs-style declaration made at ANI, but I don't think all other editors do. They can appear as threats, in their own way, when they come from involved editors. They raise the tension as much as they seek to squash another problem. Ocaasi ^c 19:29, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

amazing. simply, truly, unabashedly amazing. I am simply shocked that anyone can see this and not conclude that Sandstein needs to be relieved of AE duties. --Ludwigs2 22:04, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Fucking rude

Really, you think you're the greatest thing ever? OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 18:30, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

So sorry for stating the obvious. Do you want me to dig up the links proving this pattern from before your 2-year absence? I would be prepared to do it for WP:Requests for comment/Orangemarlin. Hans Adler 18:33, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Wow, you are obsessed with me? I guess you do think you're the greatest thing around. You really should reword your personal attack. Note that I haven't bookmarked at least 5 personal attacks against me by you over the past 6 weeks. But see, I have balls, I don't go whining to anyone about these things. I pretty much ignore you, since I have so little respect for your "pseudo-skeptic" meme. I read what your pal Ludwigs2 wrote. It was highly POV. Not just a little bit. But continue your attacks Hans. They show your character. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 18:39, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

I am beginning to wonder if you are an impersonator who guessed the password correctly. The Orangemarlin I remember seemed to be slightly more mature. Hans Adler 18:42, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Hans, back in the day OM tended to work in tandem with ScienceApologist. Whatever else you might think about SA, he's intelligent and communicative and that went a long way towards offsetting OM's (shall we say) terse style and mannerism. I don't think we need to go to the impersonator extreme - this is just who he is without backup.

I'm a little more curious about Gerardw (talk · contribs), who showed up at the page after I reported OM for edit-warring and is looking a little meatpuppetish. I may need to look into that further if it keeps up. --Ludwigs2 20:00, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

I see what you mean about Gerardw, but I think he has simply followed you from WQA. He appears to be editing anonymously most of the time. Hans Adler 20:22, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I was beginning to come to that conclusion myself. I'll go ahead and AGF on that. --Ludwigs2 21:21, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Acupuncture

Have you read WP:BRD recently - best to take it back and have the issues laid out. All you have done there is take sides I suggest you self-revert --Snowded ^TALK 18:32, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

No, that's not how BRD works. You can't just jump in supporting an edit warrior who just throws around policy abbrevations without being able to mention any proper concern, and base this on nothing but ABF-ing the editors who have been discussing and editing at that page. Hans Adler 18:37, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Another personal attack. Ludwigs has NOT been editing that page, it's his hounding of me that got him involved is all. Kind of like what you're doing, but with a little more honesty that you despise my ass. BRD words precisely how I did it. You devalue me by making me prove that Ludwigs' edits were right or wrong. It is incumbent upon Ludwigs to show cause that his edits make sense. But he and you prefer the personal attack route. I do appreciate adding another diff to my pile of personal attacks from you and Ludwigs. OrangeMarlin ^{Talk• Contributions} 18:41, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

It is how WP:BRD works, if there is a dispute, then you go back to the pre-dispute version while it is sorted out. Ideally you avoid taking a position (as you do above) while that takes place. --Snowded ^TALK 19:30, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

BRD is not the only relevant guideline here. WP:OWN is much more relevant. As you can see on Talk:Acupuncture, OM has still not answered L2's question whether the first change is OK. That's typical. As soon as it gets too concrete, the claim that everything is a violation of NPOV, or some other 2-4 letters, becomes falsifiable. OM cannot deal with that situation because he is not used to discussing the changes he reverts. L2 is very good at explaining the things he does and the reasons for them, and reacting to objections. But by asking him to explain everything you are forcing him to do tedious work that is totally futile because it would be absolutely unprecedented for OM to do anything useful with a presentation of the changes and say precisely what he doesn't like about them. L2's approach of doing it piecewise is perfectly reasonable. It saves him the advance payment that would not be paid back. Hans Adler 19:48, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

That first change was probably the least controversial, subsequent changes appear to have modified the text where it argued a more scientific approach. OM is a difficult character, but its not correct to say that either of the two protagonists are in the right. We need to address the content issues and that would be a lot easier if you had followed WP:BRD rather than reverting. --Snowded ^TALK 06:14, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Please have a look at L2's report at WP:EW/N, where I have provided an overview over OM's activities at the article so far. 5 reverts in 24 hours, 10 reverts in a month. That's all his edits since he returned from his 2-year break. The previous 10 edits (counting consecutive edits as one) were 8 non-vandalism reverts, 1 removal of content, and 1 addition of a tag, all spread over a year (early 2008 to early 2009). I knew it was worth looking into because I have seen precisely the same pattern from OM at many other articles. On contentious articles he never does content work, he is completely focused on preventing any changes that come from editors he does not trust. He never explains what his concerns are, and after so many years of this disruptive behaviour it must be allowed to suspect that he doesn't have any legitimate concerns when he behaves like that. Hans Adler 06:24, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Late to the party

As usual, I come late to the party. I'm still trying to catch up with everything that happened in the case, but I was hoping you could explain to me why you thought that this was the right way to go in making the point you wanted to make. Surely there was a better way to do it? NW (Talk) 18:59, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Now I have the same problem that Ludwigs2 had right before Sandstein blocked him: I don't know what you mean. Could you please explain what was problematic about that comment. I have seen Sandstein's strange warning before he removed it, but it seemed to be based on the idea that (1) some of the things I said about QG were personal attacks as opposed to lucid factual descriptions, and (2) that an arbitration case is not one of those places where one can discuss the problematic behaviour of editors. Hans Adler 19:03, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Clarification: "predictable temper tantrums", "fails to see the full extent of his own incompetence", "disruptive WP:IDHT artist" are all personal attacks. Mathsci (talk) 20:39, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for helping out with the arbitration clerk work load by reading NW's mind. NW, can you confirm that this is precisely what you meant? Hans Adler 20:53, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Sure. I'm not trying to say that you should not give your input, but surely you can see the distinction between stating that QuackGuru has "predictable temper tantrums" and stating something along the lines of "QuackGuru has behaved inappropriately in the past in circumstances like that of <date>.[1][2][3]"? NW (Talk) 04:25, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Good point. I will go through the 30 AN/ANI reports that I listed at WP:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Arbitration Enforcement sanction handling/Evidence#QuackGuru's pattern of tendentious editing to see if I can come up with a more precise description of QG's reactions to opposition. Meanwhile I have rephrased the temper tantrums as predictable overreactions to opposition. Hans Adler 05:03, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

That's certainly a step in the right direction. "who fails to see the full extent of his own incompetence" was another phrase I thought that you might not want to use in the future—there's a way of saying these things and still not violating WP:CIVIL.

And obviously you don't have to source everything, but you could have linked to it. NW (Talk) 13:17, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

I doubt that "who fails to see the full extent of his own incompetence" is a violation of WP:CIVIL. QG's incompetence in the collaborative editing environment is matched by few other editors who are still allowed to edit, and his failure to make any allowances for it is one of the root causes of the entire case. I don't think circumlocutions such as "His behaviour has consistently and over many years failed to meet the social and intellectual standards that the community expects of every editor" are appropriate. I would only use them for comic effect. Hans Adler 13:50, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Geez - I wish people had such a loving attention to detail when it came to incivilities directed at me. But alas, no... --Ludwigs2 14:51, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Assassination

Your edit of your own post at WP:RSN seems to have gone amiss [3]. However, could I ask you in general not to modify your comments after other people have replied, please? It makes the discussion harder to follow and can have the effect of changing the sense of those later replies. At the very least please indicate that you have modified your post after the reply. Sergeant Cribb (talk) 19:24, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I do that when it's a substantial change. In this case it was the addition of a missing word/link and of the source on which I based this. I doubt that this would have changed your response, and I did think about this when I got the edit conflict. Otherwise I would have left a little note. But in trivial cases such as this such notes are just irritating. Hans Adler 19:28, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Glad to hear it. Sergeant Cribb (talk)

Moving on, can I ask you to be careful when you use phrases like "I seem to see a distinct American, nationalist, bias" [4]. In whom do you seem to see this bias? I very much hope you are not accusing me of being American! Sergeant Cribb (talk) 19:44, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

No, I see that thou didst not actively contribute to that. The main problem was the way Fred Bauder started the section. Sorry I wasn't clear that I did not mean to address thee but you. (Sometimes I really wish English still worked this way...) Hans Adler 19:50, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for that. Sergeant Cribb (talk) 19:53, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Reverted your Hat notice

Hans, I just reverted your hat notice on [Pippa's talk page]. While I totally agree that mentioning her butt in the article is nowhere near appropriate, I disagree that talking about that point violates BLP. In fact, it's good for showing consensus that it doesn't belong in the article. Should you put the hat notice back in, I won't revert it. I wanted you to be aware that it had been done and why. Thanks KoshVorlon' _Nal^uboutes _Aeria ^Gloris 11:42, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I made the reason very clear: BLP applies everywhere, including on talk pages. The very act of insisting on discussion of this "topic" for inclusion in an encyclopedia is offensive. I won't revert you directly but will ask at WP:BLP/N for someone else to do it. Hans Adler 11:52, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

A discussion that might interest you

See WP:Village_pump_(policy)#Verifiability.2C_not_truth. I've seen your comments on this meme before, and your insight might be helpful. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:45, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Ouch

Puns are for children, not groan readers.[5] The Spirit of Neutrality and Truth (talk) 13:15, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Your input on the reliable source board

Calling an editor disruptive and/or incompetent without solid grounds is highly uncivil, but surely a Wikipedia veteran such as yourself must know that. Hearfourmewesique (talk) 13:43, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

If you argue that this is a reliable source for this, then absent any special circumstances that the editor who reported this incident may have suppressed, there is only a choice between a WP:POINT problem and a WP:COMPETENCE problem. Hans Adler 13:52, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

This is a screenshot of the opening credits of season 5, episode 7. The fact that it was taken from Wikipedia is marginal; the main point is that if the makers of the series found it good enough for inclusion, we cannot assume that one is not connected to the other. It would be like claiming that a doctor was unaware of his own profession prior to his medical license being hung on the wall. Hearfourmewesique (talk) 14:04, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Facepalm Hans Adler 17:21, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for listening. Hearfourmewesique (talk) 21:54, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

AE

Please see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Hans Adler.  Sandstein  23:56, 5 May 2011 (UTC)