User talk:Randykitty

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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 21:40, 1 June 2017 (UTC)

A request

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Randy, please revert yourself at philoSOPHIA. The three editors active at the article, who know something about this area, want to include the advisory board because these names are known, and they're involved with the society that the journal is part of. Headbomb was the only one opposed based on an essay, and he repeatedly reverted against three editors until he somehow summoned you. It isn't something that an admin should help him with. He has been very aggressive, there and during the AfD.

If you and he disagree with consensus, please open an RfC rather than trying to force your (or his) view in. SarahSV ^(talk) 06:39, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

• We have had many discussions like this at many different journals. Each time, the consensus has been that boards only get included if there are independent reliable sources documenting their implication in the journal. Some of this can be seen from the archives of the project's talk page. Unless sources can be found, this content is just fluff and name dropping. --Randykitty (talk) 06:45, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

But that isn't policy or a guideline. It's just a WikiProject—it can't control all articles that have its tag on the talk page. The consensus at that article is to include the names, so please revert yourself and join in the discussion or open an RfC. Headbomb and you have removed the names six times in a few days. It's very disruptive. SarahSV ^(talk) 06:50, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

If a similar discussion has been had over and over again, then that is consensus. This has been incorporated in the writing guide (on the talk page there, you can see a comment on boards by DGG, too). Has nothing to do with a project "trying to control" anything. It's just that at the project's talk page you can find links to some of those previous discussions. So please stop adding this inappropriate content or start an RfC (either at the journal's talk page or, more effectively, at the talk page of the writing guide, because there's no reason this should concern only a single journal). --Randykitty (talk) 07:03, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Randy, WikiProjects can't control articles via essays. Can you please take that point? See Wikipedia:WikiProject: "WikiProjects are not rule-making organizations, nor can they assert ownership of articles within a specific topic area. WikiProjects have no special rights or privileges compared to other editors and may not impose their preferences on articles." Also see WP:ADVICEPAGE:

in a few cases, projects have wrongly used these pages as a means of asserting ownership over articles within their scope, such as insisting that all articles that interest the project must contain a criticism section or must not contain an infobox, or that a specific type of article can't be linked in navigation templates, and that other editors of the article get no say in this because of a "consensus" within the project. An advice page written by several participants of a project is a "local consensus" that is no more binding on editors than material written by any single individual editor.

This kind of behaviour is one of the reasons experts (and women) don't edit Wikipedia. Someone once said the website is still so sexist because all the smart feminists stay away. It's hurtful to have to acknowledge how much truth there is in that.

All we want to do is create a short page for a small philosophy journal, so that there isn't nothing there if people look it up. It doesn't harm anyone to have it there; there are no BLP issues, fringe issues or anything similar. Yet look at the BS we've had to put up with. A creepy focus on it, aggressive reverting, an AfD, insults about special snowflakes, and now an admin joining in. SarahSV ^(talk) 07:15, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Sorry that you feel that way, but please read my above comment again, where I (apparently not well enough), tried to explain that this is not a case of a WikiProject trying to control "its" articles. What I am saying is that the discussion on whether or not editorial boards, associate editors, book editors, and whatnot should be included in articles on academic journals has been had multiple times at multiple articles with invariably the same result. Some (but probably not all) of those discussion are linked to on the talk page of the WikiProject, that's all. --Randykitty (talk) 07:42, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

• Randykitty, please stop reverting. You're an admin, you were canvassed, and consensus is against you. SarahSV ^(talk) 14:27, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

• What the hell do you mean, canvassed? Putting a neutral notice on the talk page of a WikiProject is not "canvassing". And without reliable independent sources, that stuff does not belong in the article. --Randykitty (talk) 14:49, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

It was canvassing because he knew it would get this reaction. He didn't let other interested parties know, such as the gender gap task force, where the response might have been different.

Between the two of you, you've reverted about nine times in a few days, at an article neither of you has any interest in or knowledge of, one that both of you believe should not exist. Instead of fighting with us, why not leave it alone and let us try to write it? SarahSV ^(talk) 14:58, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

• That they want to include the advisory board because these names are known means that are seeking to gain name recognition, also known as promotionalism. True, this is one of the functions of many members of editorial boards-- to make journals seem important-- but normally it is considered promotionalism--usually promotionalism by the journal, but sometimes, as I suspect here, also promotional efforts by the members of board to actively help the journal--they are using their name recognition to advertise it. This sort of promotionalism is routine practice in the academic world; in WP, its the sort of routine promotionalism we always remove. . We remove mere memberships in a board of editors from a bio of an academic also. It does not indicate significance; it's a very minor honor, and part of the culture of mutual inflation of everyone's CVs. As an admin, one has the responsibility to remove spam. If I deliberately failed to do it in a comparable case that would be abusing the admin power. RK and I feel the same way quite simply because anyone who actually knows academic journal practices would. (and I note the 1promotional use of reference 9-- a very important cause, appropriate for the person's bio article, and for an article on the actual subject involved, but not for every article on something she's connected with.) However important a cause may be to us, we still don't promote it. DGG ( talk ) 20:53, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

• David, there's so much misinformation in your post I hardly know how to address it (including about reference 9, which is just wrong), and there's no point in trying. The bigger picture is that no one wants to edit this miserable encyclopaedia anymore, myself included, because of these kinds of episodes.

Look at RandyKitty's recent contributions. Three edits since April and none in the last few days, before Headbomb summoned him to a tiny, high-quality philosophy journal of interest to women (if you knew anything about women in philosophy, you would understand why this journal might matter to some people), decided his view must override the view of people who know something about the topic, and used up his three reverts within seven hours. The woman he was reverting against is a newbie and a philosopher and exactly the kind of editor Wikipedia should want to keep. That doesn't matter to RandyKitty. All that matters is that he get his own way.

I was looking forward to expanding the article with information about its work (yes, from the jourmal itself, horror of horrors), and now I don't even want it on my watchlist. Thank you for that. SarahSV ^(talk) 22:20, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

I judge articles one at a time. I don't go to other people's talk pages to express my general dislike for their work. DGG ( talk ) 23:34, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

I have no idea what that means. What's depressing is that the three of you don't know anything about this journal or about philosophy. Yet you're absolutely sure that including the editorial board is just spam, absolutely certain that they're just names that the journal has signed up in order to sell itself. People who do know something about it are telling you you're wrong, but you're not able to hear that.

This would have been a nice approach: "I see you've included the names of the advisory board. There's no guideline on this, but there's been consensus in various discussions that journals include well-known academics on their boards for promotional reasons only. As this article develops, can I ask you to bear that mind? I'll check back in a month to see how it's going, and if it's not clear by then why the names are included, I may remove them. Thanks for creating the article!" SarahSV ^(talk) 00:29, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

SlimVirgin: 1/ "absolutely sure": nope, I'm not absolutely sure. I'm willing to be convinced by independent reliable sources (and please don't repeat Hypatiagal's ridiculous comment that the journal's publisher is somehow independent of the journal). 2/ Hypatiagal is not a newbie. See her userpage claiming that she edited under another name since 2014. 3/ DGG is a retired research librarian from a major US library. To tell him that this is a subject that he doesn't know much about it downright silly. I myself have specialized in editing articles on academic journals. I really cannot count how many such articles I have edited, but it's many hundreds, perhaps even more than thousand. Headbomb similarly has years of experience with editing academic journal articles. It's a subject DGG, Headbomb, and I care about and have specialized knowledge about. 4/ Even if all of the foregoing would be false: you're insisting to include information into this article in the face of opposition repeatedly requesting that you justify yourself with an independent reliable source. Even if the people requesting this were newbies ignorant of academic journals, that is not something you can ignore. Correct sourcing is the backbone of "this miserable encyclopedia". 5/ By the way, while you're looking at my contributions, you may notice that my recent inactivity is quite exceptional and not something to use as an argument here. --Randykitty (talk) 09:28, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.