User talk:Rossami

Purged into page history as of 22:05, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Newcomb

Some NPOV problems with Ben on Newcomb's paradox (see: William Newcomb (last line) --Dobrowsky

Rossami, I also was speaking about that STUPID green box (David Hume Irony)! Ben has put it there! (See History Page). That subtle non-NPOV joke must be wiped out! --Dobrowsky

That "STUPID" green box is entirely NPOV. The real irony is that the rest of the article was MAJORLY BIASED. Bensaccount 04:51, 25 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Peer review

Thanks, and I replied on my talk page re Jamie Bulger and tariff. Pete/Pcb21 (talk) 23:09, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Newcomb's problem

We cannot retain copyright violations in page history (since they are still available to the internet in violation of the owner's copyright) so we must delete the article (to delete its history) and then we can create a redirect that has no violations in its history. - Texture 23:34, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Military Slang

I deleted the origin of the term "GI" for a couple of reasons. First, such a long discussion seemed out of place on a word list. Second, the origin of the term is a subject of some discussion. The term "Government Issue" (as in a "GI Trashcan") seems to be much more likely than "Galvanized Iron." Still I will not object if you would like to add it back.

The page looks better in alphabetical order, don't you think? [[PaulinSaudi 09:00, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)]]

Thank you for your thank you. With all the places on the Net where people are nasty to each other, I gives me a warm glow to be part of Wiki, where we tend to cooperate. [[PaulinSaudi 12:55, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)]]

Hey there.. Thanks for the tips on research and United Holyland. It's a subtle point that the Binational solution has several forms. The meme U.H.L. in various forms is important because these ideas are not well expressed. No one for instance has challanged by origional research on Intransitivity but the concept is hard to find and the ideas poorly understood, like the unification concept in UHL.

I suppose I find the wiki a good place to make more clear discriptions..

Sorry about editing a comment.. just that some of them were conditional statements etc.. which I find really interesting as in E-Consensus which is also some origional work with the prevaling concepts --it's like describing mathematical principles that are just not well known. Quickwik 17:58, 23 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Oil for food

Hi there, you helped to find a consensus in the vote for deletion of "oil for food allegations". The article was merged with oil for food, but there are serious problems now, mainly because two users have extreme disagreements and no one else helped. Bcorr now suggested a peace-plan, and I thought you might be willing to help again? By the way, if you are interested in a project about learning, especially vocabulary, please check my page and let me know what you think. Get-back-world-respect 19:05, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Re:RTFM

Having "notable" in the title violates Wikipedia:Naming_conventions#Lists. Inclusion on the list should be self selective to subjects that qualify for articles. --Jia ng 20:29, 13 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Table in "Large Numbers"

There's a blank fourth column. I tried to get rid of it, but every time I tried the formatting, to use a technical term, went kerblooey.

Oops, never mind, I just figured it out for myself. Thanks for offering to help. Dpbsmith 18:41, 26 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Duke of Nothing, Elector of Evenless

Dear Rossami, i appreciate your efforts in this matter. I dont agree with the sentence about other Alberts in Albert, Duke of Saxony, sounds definitely out of place. Although if you are very keen on keeping it, i suggest to place it in the bottom. If this is *really* going to stay as a redirect, at least redirect it to an elector, not a duke. Thanks, MvHG 08:00, 27 May 2004 (UTC)[reply]

Rebirthing

... is much better after your rewrite. I had stumbled across a true-believer gush-fest and threw in a couple skeptical sentences, but it certainly needed a thorough going-over. - DavidWBrooks 13:00, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Fixing VfD

I do know a couple of technical tricks, it's just that neither of them work.

If subst: worked with parameterized templates, we could do this with only a single place where the page name has to be entered. {{subst:Deletion|page=Whatever}} would produce:

====Whatever====

[edit url goes here Add to this deletion debate]

No mess, one place to put the page name in, and life would be just wonderful if the developers would so much as acknowledge that it doesn't work. (I'm a little bitter about it because I saw how it could solve VfD's problems before 1.3 was even installed on en.)

If there were no limit on the number of times you can call a template, and you could make recursive calls to a template defined by a parameter, then we could get it down to replacing the page in the heading, and the one in the template call.

As it is, I don't think we can get any simpler than variations on the old Mediawiki page setup without some software changes. -- Cyrius|✎ 16:33, 11 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Conversion

I note you edited the entry on Vfd re Elizabeth Mytton Wilbraham, saying it was a conversion. What exactly does that do? Moriori 01:56, Jun 15, 2004 (UTC)

Most of the entries on VfD were made by appending the nomination at the end of the page and by using section edit to add comments to the discussion. This was creating massive duplication and overwriting every time there was an edit conflict. Several of us discussed going back to the page-per-discussion approach (which used to be called MediaWiki) on the VfD Talk page. After testing a few approaches, I was bold and started converting the largest and the most recent of the entries to that new format. This moves the dicussion off the VfD page but uses the Template function so that you can still read the contents of the discussion in one place. It almost eliminates the edit conflicts and should make the maintenance of VfD easier. After you've tried it, I'd appreciate your thoughts on the VfD Talk page. Rossami 14:18, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Streamlining Vfd is admirable, but I must confess I'm still confused. Elizabeth Mytton Wilbraham is still on the Vfd page, but not on the index in that page. Elizabeth Mytton Wilbraham was on my watchlist, but no longer shows up there. (I have moved your comments from my page to yours for continuity). Cheers. Moriori 21:09, Jun 15, 2004 (UTC)

Looking into it, I think a couple of things happened simultaneously. Any two of these could have caused the confusion.

The conversion from discussion on the main page to discussion via template.
Some people were still not understanding the switch and were posting to the main page so there was a brief test of removing the section-header designation from each nomination. This was thought to encourage people to edit the discussion page by making section edits a little harder. (By the way, there was some pushback, so that idea has been shelved for a while.) This would have removed it from the Table of Contents even though the discussion was still there.
All discussions nominated on 10 June (including this one) were moved to the Old page.
Someone changed all the links and references in the VfD page from "Elizabeth Mytton Wilbraham" to "Elizabeth_Mytton_Wilbraham" which may have broken the watchlist links. Hope that helps. Rossami

Rossami, what is going on (and please remember some of us are not compugeeks)?. "Elizabeth Mytton Wilbraham" was listed on Vfd June 10. It is still here on Wiki (but not listed on Vfd) despite consenus for deletion because it is clearly a DELIBERATE HOAX. Also, who changed "Elizabeth Mytton Wilbraham" to "Elizabeth_Mytton_Wilbraham" on the Vfd page? The hoaxer? If not, why was it done? I confess this is beginning to bug me a little. If Elizabeth Mytton Wilbraham remains I will be bold and blank it and see what happens. Also, where is the "Old" page you mention? Vfd already takes me so long to download that I haven't time to roam around looking for the new "Old" page. Moriori 03:19, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)

Boy, that's the first time I've been called a compugeek. Quite a compliment. Let's see if I can explain.

Even when there is consensus to delete an article at the end of the discussion period, the actual deletion depends on the volunteer services of some sysop. There are some mechanical tasks and a fair amount of record-keeping. That means that some articles continue to hang around for days or sometimes even weeks until someone volunteers. In order to keep the VfD page reasonably managable, those discussions (where the discussion period has ended but no sysop has taken the action yet) are moved to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Old as a placeholder. You can still see them by clicking through the date-links at the top of the VfD page.

By the way, with the new Template features, you should be able to keep tabs on the discussion by watchlisting Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Elizabeth Mytton Wilbraham, but that page will survive the actual deletion of the page. That's supposed to be part of the permanent record-keeping about the decision to delete.

To answer your other question, I don't know who changed the links to add the underscores. We could probably wade through the VfD history, but it would take a long time. I'd guess that it wasn't intentional vandalism but was based on a misunderstanding of how the links work. In any case, I wouldn't recommend blanking the page. That just ticks people off. Give it a few more days and I'm sure some sysop will find time. Rossami 13:53, 17 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Many thanks for your time and explanation, and no, I now won't blank the page. And yes, compugeek (TM Moriori ):- ) is a compliment. I wish I was one. Cheers. Moriori 23:01, Jun 17, 2004 (UTC)

Hello, I am also wondering about this conversion business. On 9 June, I listed the article Media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on VfD.

The last vote was cast on at 20:53, 13 Jun 2004 [1] at which point there was not a clear consensus to delete. The following day, it appears you deleted it with the message:

21:43, 14 Jun 2004 Rossami m (Media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict - conversion) [2]

and it no long appeared on VfD.

Normally, if a article is not deleted in the voting process, someone removes the {VfD} tag from the article and the voting history gets moved to its talk page as a record. In this case, this appears not to have happened, which I find rather alarming. I realize VfD is a very busy page, and a lot of work is required to maintain it, so I appreciate your efforts, but nonetheless I don't think that the VfD protocol should be summarily abandoned. -- 21:59, 16 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I can categorically state that I did not delete the discussion about Media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As far as I know, the VfD protocol is still working as it is supposed to.

On 14 June, I moved the text of the discussion from the main VfD page to a dedicated sub-page (Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I also put a "template" link on the main page so the text of the discussion would mirror through. That means that you can read it, but you have to use the "discussion" link to edit or contribute to that particular discussion. This makes some of the maintenance easier, virtually eliminates the edit conflicts and makes the VfD page a bit faster to load and to use.

Later that day, Jerzy noticed that the 5-day discussion period had expired and moved all the discussions which had been nominated on 9 June to the Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Old page. This is a placeholder for those discussions which have ended but where no sysop has yet volunteered to carry out the concensus decision. You won't see the updates to the actual article's Talk page until a sysop volunteers and takes action off the "Old" page. As of this morning, the discussion is still there. Hope that helps. Rossami

Update: On 17 June, User:SimonP took care of those sysop activities. In the process, he chose to merge the contents of the discussion into Talk:Media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict/Delete and put a link to that new page on the article's Talk page. Confusing as it was, the process worked. Rossami

Hi, thanks for the explanation. Sorry to imply that you might have done something wrong. The system is indeed a bit confusing. -- Viajero 09:49, 27 Jun 2004 (UTC)

9/11 victims

You're on a bit of a spree to get rid of them. What brought this on? -- Cyrius|✎ 19:28, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Peter Carroll

"...landing in India to be revered as a god..." in the 20th century?

If you have evidence to back up the prior version of the article, cite your source...!

Source Pete Carroll, but frankly I dont care. Faedra 14:19, 7 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Privacy policy

Thanks for alerting me to the changes you made there; I think that in general I agree with you on the section on passwords, and not quite so much on the general undesirability of sock puppets. (I've added sentence a talking about polls, since that's where I think the problem mostly comes to bear; this was suggested by Wikipedia:sock puppet.) -- pne 04:26, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hello. Thanks for dropping me the note about changing the privacy policy draft. I appreciate the changes you made; I think it's very important that password security be maintained to whatever extent possible. I reallyf hope people can remember to keep an eye on this sort of thing as the wiki continues to expand. Thanks again! Jeeves 02:12, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Deletion process

Thanks for creating Wikipedia:Deletion process. It looks a really useful page. Angela . 23:21, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

New template

Because I didn't realise it was a new template, that's why. Sorry. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 23:39, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Well an early difficulty is that the deletion debate pages show up on Special:Newpages and I can see that that could cause problems in the future. Other than that I'm impartial either way. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 23:47, 16 Jul 2004 (UTC)

No because they were in Wikipedia: namespace and therefore didn't register on newpages. In the new format the deletion debate is a sub page of the main article and therefore exists in the main namespace: it's only main namepsace articles that register on newpages. -- Graham ☺ | Talk 01:26, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

VfD Footer

Hi, Rossami. I changed the footer after the VfD page moved back from Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Temp to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion. While everyone was putting their votes in temp, the footer was being copied verbatim for most of the new VfD posts, and the links would invariably be broken ("Add to Discussion" was at [[Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Temp/Page name/VfD]]) so we corrected the links as we went along. I corrected to whatever the last working entries I saw were, and the last working entries linked to VfD/Page name. A day or two later, when VfD moved back, discussions were still being "corrected" (not just by me) to VfD/Page name after copying the footer; it came to be so tedious to clean up every new entry that way that I went and changed the footer.)

In so doing, I have apparently bypassed what must have been weeks of arguments and proposals, and for that I am sorry. I'll revert the changes if you want.

As for the "add to discussion on a new line" thing, I honestly thought everything was supposed to be on the same line, and that split lines were formatting mistakes (I think I even mended a couple of those on the page.) It should have clued me in that the anchor on {{subst:VfD}} never worked right — I had to use external http links to refer to the right VfD page during discussions! Again, my mistake, and I'll rectify it if it needs to be corrected. --Ardonik 02:46, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)

In reply to your questions on my talk page:

Should the "add to this discussion" link be on the same line?

Pros: Takes up less space, automatically gets bolded
Cons: The header link is really hard to make work right, the TOC is cluttered

It's a tough call! It obviously looks better on one line, but as I said before, getting the link on subst:VfD to work right when debating with an incensed page creator is quite important. One possible solution is to have subst:VfD link directly to the subpage itself (whether at Pagename/VfD or at VfD/Pagename) and bypass the anchor mechanism completely. You can always click the link at the top to go back to the full Votes for deletion page.

Should the sub-page be a sub of the VfD page or a sub of the article? (Either way, the new Deletion process requires us to keep the page and not copy the discussion anywhere.)

VfD page: more text to type (or mistype)
Article : discussion shows up on Special:Newpages, links won't break when moved to VfD/Old

I'll have to cast my vote in favor of having the VfD discussion become a subpage of the article being considered. My reasons are

The VfD page is becoming enormous with all of these discussions,
The debate about whether or not to keep the article would become a symbolic part of the article's "history" if it survives — something that people on the talk page could refer to when debating in the future.
It seems logical that discussions about the substance of an article should go on a subpage of the article.

It would also seem more symbolic if the VfD discussion was a subpage of the article's talk page rather than a subpage of the article itself, but the distinction isn't really that important. --Ardonik 19:26, Jul 18, 2004 (UTC)

Unlinking Ads

You suggest waiting longer, which is fine w/me as long as we have a plan for eliciting that wider interest. (That's what i intended my "silence = assent" msg at Template talk:VfDFooter#Unlinking Ads for; still early to know whether it worked, i think.)

What do you say we give it a day more before jointly posting on WP:RFC? The following is not half of a draft (wrong format), but the start of a joint writing-for-the-enemy exercise for the sake of providing our colleagues with as clear a question as possible:

One of us thinks the mental fuss imposed by using VfD-posting instructions that are that much longer is much greater than any possible harm from 5 days' survival of the ad link.

(Hmm, am i trying to bootleg in the unwelcome

list[ing of] arguments for or against any position

? Is

Should the Template:VfDFooter including wording like "xxxx"?

all we would need to say, besides providing the talk link? If so, should we do the exercise anyway, and just use the results on the talk page?)

Thanks for your interest and openness.
--Jerzy (t) 19:27, 2004 Jul 22 (UTC)

Go for it. I'm dealing w/ alligators in a different f'g swamp. [smile] --Jerzy (t) 20:19, 2004 Jul 22 (UTC)

Transwiki

No, it turned out that feature wasn't available in 1.3 after all. It might be at some point in future, but not yet. Until then, cut and paste is the only way to move articles across projects. Angela . 22:46, Jul 28, 2004 (UTC)

VfD process when article is kept

In Wikipedia:Deletion process, you wrote: "If the decision is to keep, put a link to the discussion sub-page on the article's talk page." Is there a reason to prefer this procedure to that of just copying the deletion debate onto the article's talk page? The latter seems simpler. JamesMLane 13:35, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Good question. Answered at Wikipedia talk:Deletion process. Rossami 14:28, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Speedy deletes

I will reword my response on the VfD page a little more bluntly since this is a slightly less public forum:

I realize I made a mistake, and since I try to learn from my mistakes, it won't happen again.

In addition to the correction of not being more willing to delete things just because they've been tagged by someone else, the fact that it had numerous language problems (sentence fragments, misspellings, etc.) may have overly colored my judgement, so I need to keep that in check, as well.
As for "Speedys are an inherently autocratic process dependent on the judgement of a single person.", I agree, and that is why most of the speedy's I do are ones that someone else has tagged, making it a two-person judgement. Virtually all the exceptions have been deleting redirs, almost always to prepare for a move. While on VfD some consider me a deletionist because of my concerns about what I feel is excessive granularity, on the village pump I recently took some flack for being too tolerant of 'b-movie bandit' substubs. Also, if you look at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship, I believe Meelar's comment "I've warned him multiple times about zealotry in using the speedy deletion template, as have other users" includes me as one of the other users, as I complained loudly on Lucky's talk page that I felt short (and they're often just one sentence), but generally accurate contributions were NOT speedy candidates, and when I went there to complain, there was a message from another user making the same point (I don't remember if that was Meelar, or someone else). There's no way I could support Lucky being an admin, and am quite tempted to oppose.
As for admins in general, I guess I somewhat share your concerns. For example, while I felt Terry Teene was easily worthy of VfD, I don't really think it should have been speedied. I haven't really been an admin and checking the speedy cat long enuf to even have a good feel for whether there's many admins not adhering strictly to the speedy policy, let alone know if it's trending one way or the other. I do believe there's some variance in how admins interpret the speedy policy, as the length of time individual items stay on the speedy cat can vary.
I hope I have addressed your concerns, and have no problem with you raising them. Niteowlneils 00:01, 11 Aug 2004 (UTC)

VfD

Hi Rossami, you closed the discussion on Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Sysop Accountability Policy, implying that it was to be deleted, but it's still there. Did you forget or is there a reason it's not deleted? Confused. 02:13, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)

My conclusion was that it was to kept as a BJAODN. Never having used that page, I moved the links up into the Transwiki queue for someone else to move. I know it's not strictly a transwiki request but that's the best place I could find for it. If anyone's familiar with the BJAODN page and can complete the move or if there's a better answer, I'd appreciate it. Rossami 11:17, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, I hadn't realised it was in that transwiki queue. All you need to do is move it to a subpage of BJAODN, and then delete the original. If something short needs to go o BJAODN, you just cut and paste it into the latest BJAODN page and then delete the original. Angela . 15:47, Aug 19, 2004 (UTC)

Thanks Rossami, and I clarified my vote (sanity template) --Pgreenfinch 14:16, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks very much for fixing my Scania problem on the List of national anthems page. I was just thinking about asking Mic, when I caught sight of your note on Geogre's Talk. :-) Scania is only a small region that's never had any kind of political or economic self-sufficiency. The local independence movement would be funny if it was for real, but it isn't - it's more of a front for fairly sinister, uh, Extreme Right agendas. Hope to get rid of the article too, and thank you. Bishonen 17:00, 19 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Insanity templates

I was somewhat weakly in favor of keeping them. I think they're mildly humorous, as long as not applied too wildly. That said, I think we'll lose the vote anyway, so no big deal. Ambi 22:52, 21 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Sexist language

What is your opinion on the view of using sexist language at Wikipedia?? 66.245.98.143 22:14, 23 Aug 2004 (UTC)

First, you have to define what you mean by "sexist language".

If you mean avoiding deliberately hurtful or inappropriate language, then of course I agree that sexist language is bad.
If you mean that all references to gender are inherently bad or that we should be absolutely gender-neutral without regard to historical word usage, common understanding or cultural context, I politely disagree. We are writing an encyclopedia about the world the way it really is (and/or was), not as we would like it to be or have been. We should approach controversial issues with as much tact and compassion as we can while remaining absolutely true to the facts at hand.
If you mean that some words are inherently sexist (for example, that we should use womyn because "woman" has "man" in it), I think you would be sacrificing the potential usability of our encyclopedia on the altar of political correctness. Regardless, that sort of proposal would have to be made and extensively discussed at the Village Pump and should not be "snuck in" through the editing or renaming of selected articles.

By the way, it's kind of hard to discuss this when you're not signed in. Please consider getting a free user account and logging in. Thanks.Rossami

Examples of sexist and non-sexist language are:

(For anyone who sees this table and has more to add, feel free to put more in.)

Sexist	Non-sexist
he as a gender-neutral pronoun	singular they
man to refer to all people	human being
fireman, policeman, etc.	fire fighter, police officer, etc.
sculptor, poet, etc. for a man, sculptress, poetess, etc. for a woman	sculptor, poet, etc. for a person regardless of gender
Reference to a woman by "Mrs." followed by her husband's full name	Reference to a woman by her own full name

unsigned comments by User:66.245.98.143

Now that the edit conflict is sorted out, I think I understand your position. I do not agree that the left-hand column is inherently sexist. The use of the term must be considered in the full context of its historical and conventional usage. To do otherwise would be attempting to revise history. That would be inappropriate for an encyclopedia.

Attempting to impose strict gender neutrality also creates new problems. For example, not all police officers are strictly "officers". Ambiguity is not good in an encyclopedia.

Furthermore, I have never believed that adding gender specificity (sculptress when you do in fact know that the sculptor is a woman) is inherently sexist. I'm not sure that it would add anything to the discussion, though, so I can't ever see using it. (Any article about a sculptress would already identify her as a woman so use of the term would be editable as redundant.) Refering to a woman as Mrs. xxx should be based on 1) her legal name (which may or may not have been changed when she married and 2) how she is generally recognized. This is, after all, an encyclopedia that has to be useful to others.

And just to be a bit pedantic, singular they is still technically considered grammatically incorrect and remains a minority usage. Again, though, you are raising issues far bigger than just one article or one user. If you feel strongly that "herdsman" is inherently sexist, you should raise it as an example on Village Pump and get much more than just my opinion. Rossami

Adminship?

Apparently you are not an administrator. I've noticed that you generally keep your cool and prefer civil discussions, and since you've definitely contributed enough to be familiar with our policies, I would like to nominate you for adminship if you are interested. Please let me know if you're willing to be nominated. --Michael Snow 00:18, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Okay, I have posted the nomination at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship. Please reply there to indicate whether you accept the nomination. Also, as you may be aware, some people may want to ask you various questions, so you may want to monitor the page in order to answer those. Thank you for allowing me to nominate you, I am always happy to find well-qualified candidates for adminship. --Michael Snow 05:16, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Phantom mobile device vibration?

I saw your name when I was going back thru VfD history here[3]. I was poking about because the PMDV Talk page turned up on speedy, and there were comments on it wondering why it had been deleted. Since there was clearly lack of consensus, now I'm wondering, too. So, my question is, do you know if this issue was raised anywhere, and if there was any outcome? Did anyone ask VampWillow why they deleted it, consider the vote was basically a tie? I certainly would not want to stir things up if this has already been hashed out. Niteowlneils 03:09, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I left him a message late on 18 August asking the same question. So far, I have had no reply but a check of his contribution list shows that he has not been active since earlier that day. If he doesn't come back in a few more days, a request to undelete might be in order. Rossami 03:24, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

PS Michael Snow beat me to it--I was going to offer to nominate you, if you wanted to be an admin, and thot the voting would go well (I'll admit I'm too lazy to sift the past to see if you've ever been in edit wars, etc.--I would trust that, since a contentious vote wouldn't be good for either of us, you would simply decline the nom. w/out giving a reason)--I was just waiting until I saw you were over 2000 edits when I checked the stats page, since some people like high numbers of edits. Niteowlneils 03:09, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for the vote of confidence. I've been in some healthy discussions but no edit wars that I know of. You might look at the history and resolution of Talk:Newcomb's paradox and see if that qualifies as an edit war. Rossami 03:24, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Eh, I didn't carefully review every edit, but reading the talk page and looking at a couple of the edits, to me it looks like two people with a disagreement that talked it out, trying different compromises, and didn't resort to name-calling, etc., plus it worked itself out within two weeks. When I think "edit war", I'm thinking of long-standing battles with lots of straight reversions, often minutes apart, like here[4] between VV and Neutrality, and especially Kevin baas. And earlier, to a lesser extent, Gzornenplatz and Savantpol. And these were fairly tame compared to some I've seen. If that's a fair example of your reaction to a disagreement over an article, I don't see a problem. (I agree it is more convenient to have all the conversation on just one Talk page, but I'm glad you pinged my Talk page so I knew to look). Niteowlneils 04:08, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Greenburg

I added the most essential bad-faith evidence to Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/Joseph Greenberg (economist), and User:Ruhrjung cited only it when he voted to Del. The voting has been open over 120 hours, but i don't think anyone quibbles about votes cast between that point and its move to /Old around 5 hours from now, if your interest continues. Thanks in any case for your interest in this VfD. --Jerzy (t) 18:35, 2004 Aug 25 (UTC)

Unspeakable relief: Bishonen shutting up about Scania

Rossami, thank you very much for your great intervention in the Sång till Skåne debate, I really appreciate it. I don't want to volunteer any further information in supplement to your synopsis now. I probably supplied more than anybody wanted already, and also, some unexpected (to me) detail of what I say always seems to get seized on for further debate. The day job is calling, too. But if you can think of any question, anything you think might genuinely help a non-Scandinavian understand the issue, it would be great if you'd ask it explicitly, and I'll try to reply (no doubt others will, too). If you don't, I'm done. Bishonen 18:51, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

VfD European Union Olympic medals count for 2004

Hi, thanks for the work you did to clear up the VfD page for this one, but I'm still at a loss as to how this page was removed from VfD when the consensus was clearly to delete. I understand that User:SimonP decided to unilaterally remove the VfD notice, so have you received any explanation from him since on the reason he did this? I mean, if the VfD process was not correctly followed, surely the page should be relisted on the VfD mainpage, and the VfD notice added to the article's mainpage once again? Impi 09:28, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

European Union Olympic medals count me too

Rossami, I have the same concern as Impi. I appreciated the masterful and careful way you took charge of Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/European Union Olympic medals count for 2004, sorting out the voting, tabling the votes, indicating new users with few edits or none, etc. I noticed that when feelings were running high, you asked us all to please trust the sysop making the final call. But that sysop has now, in your words, "apparently determined that the final decision should be keep since he removed the VfD tag and the listing from the VfD/Old page, however the decision was not fully documented in accordance with the Deletion process." The basis for SimonP's decision to keep seems to have been 15 Keep votes and 35 Deletes, plus a number of disputed votes from new accounts. You asked for clarifications yesterday, I presume as an invitation to SimonP to explain, but if there's been any comment from him, I can't find it. He may have a good explanation and the best of motives, but he doesn't seem to be in any hurry to share them. To me this raises concerns about sysop accountability and sysop high-handedness. I was just going to ask you about stuff like that on RfA, but then I saw Impi's note and realized this was a better place for it. Bishonen 10:00, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

The business and economics forum

Anouncing the introduction of The Business and Economics Forum. It is a "place" where those of us with an interest in the business and economics section of Wikipedia can "meet" and discuss issues. Please drop by: the more contributors, the greater its usefulness. If you know of other Wikipedians who might be interested, please send this to them.

mydogategodshat 19:12, 26 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the deletion policy hidden tags

Thanks for adding all those hidden divs to Wikipedia:Deletion policy! I'd been meaning to add them myself, but I kept forgetting. :-) • Benc • 14:45, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Howdy (and congratulations early)

Rossami, I appreciate your patrolling of folks a bit too quick to nominate for CSD. I'd like to open a dialogue with you, and others, eventually, on an idea I have.

We have CSD's, and they're tightly confined.
We have VfD's, and they're not defined much (anything can be nominated, though voters generally obey the criteria).
My idea is this: We have a new category for managed delete. The idea here is that articles that are nonsense, but long form nonsense, or advertising, but long form advertising, and that do some harm to the site by remaining, but which are not so brief, obvious, and clear as to be CSD's, go to a category where they must remain for 24 hours and must receive 3 delete votes and no opposition (none) within that time to be speedy deleted. If they get even one oppose vote or fail to receive 3 delete votes, they must go to VfD.
At this point, I'm only forming the idea, but it seems like it might free people from repeatedly violating CSD and also keep VfD down in size and still allow rapid, but managed deletion of articles that do harm to the site by remaining. I don't have a set of criteria in mind yet, etc., except in the most vague form, but what do you think about discussing the idea with me? Are you against the very idea? Geogre 16:14, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Managed deletes and preliminary discussions.

Rossami, this is copied from my reply on my user page:

Oh, heck, I hardly need any credit. I don't think I'm a galvanizing user, but I thought that I'm probably, on a continuum of deletionism with Everyking on one end and RickK on the other, about 70% over on the RickK side, and you're probably about 65-70% on the Everyking side. I thought this made us, as moderates, good choices for opening a civil discourse with open minds before going to the policy pages and the heat that those always generate. I do agree, though, that we might consider a page on meta or something to do a kind of invite-only talk before a wide community. I don't mean to fear the wider community, but I'd just like to work out some principles before then with people who will listen to each other before the more ideological show up and thunderously say that more things should be on CSD or none should be.
As for "harm the site," we can't be too absolute, here. In a sense, none of the things that are deleted by CSD hurt the site worse (and many much less) than the things that go to VfD. After all, a John Kerry: Coward page would take 5 days to go away, and Bushcountry.com could tell all its readers go to to Wikipedia and "learn the truth about John Kerry" during that time, and we'd be screwed. Compared to that, my favorite speedy delete (Tokyo Street Motocross 3, the content of which was "cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt") is safe as milk. Harm is relative. However, I'm thinking of patent lies, patent fantasies, and even michaelisms. I admit that part of my motivation is that there are some things that are just plain going to lose on VfD by any estimation, and these are getting speedy deleted, when they shouldn't be, by the rules. The question is whether the admins are wrong (absolutely, they are, in many cases!) or the rules (and I think they're not wrong so much as not sufficient here). So there: I've admitted my ulterior motives. :-)
One last thing, though: I don't mean to sound like a jerk when I say that you're staring at an entry too hard. I know you're doing the right thing, and so do you. I, too, can think of reasons for saving lots and lots of things, and I'm delighted when we get to do so. It's just that some of these are cases where what's at test is not the article, but our own abilities. Too often others (not you that I've ever seen) say "keep" and then lift not a finger to help an article. You put in the work. Other people, though, say, "Well, this could be an excellent article about the grand history of the world," and then I look back and it still says, "Rashes are skin abrasions." Sorry for going so long. I'll paste this to your page, too, so the reply can be accessible to you. Thanks, Rossami. I hope we can continue the dialogue and start getting some other voices in here. (Maybe the dangerously sane Andrewa and the open minded Siroxo?) Geogre 19:03, 29 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Sysop

Congratulations Rossami! You are now an administrator. You should read the relevant policies and other pages linked to from the administrators' reading list before carrying out tasks like deletion, protection, banning users, and editing protected pages. Most of what you do is easily reversible by other sysops, apart from page history merges and image deletion, so please be especially careful with those. You might find the administrators' how-to guide helpful. Good luck. Angela . 00:35, Sep 1, 2004 (UTC)

Congratulations, Rossami! [[User:Neutrality|Neutrality (talk)]] 02:03, 1 Sep 2004 (UTC)

redstar2000

Please check the page for new info. I didn't create the page orginally and neither did redstar2000, who is a 60 year old man with little skill when it comes to computers. Anyways, I believe it is reasonable now.--Che y Marijuana 09:22, Sep 3, 2004 (UTC)

Big Brother contestants VfD

Thanks for your comments. I have de-linked the contestants for both the Australian & US versions of the show, and marked where appropriate those participants under VfD, only from the US show as it happens. -TonyW 01:17, Sep 4, 2004 (UTC)

Reposted copyvio

Thank you for replying to my question about deleted and then reposted articles on Wikipedia talk:Candidates for speedy deletion, Rossami. (I have to say I wasn't expecting it: you've never replied to any of my messages and concerns on your own page.) The page title in question was listed on VfD on 23 Jan 2004, was deleted as copyvio after the VfD period, and re-appeared as a stub on 5 August 2004. Of course there's no reason at all to think the creator of the stub, Gzornenplatz, had any bad intentions, and I originally assumed good faith in those who had expanded it, too, but it turned out the user who added long quotations to it on 15 August 2004 had shown here that he was aware of the previous deletion, here that he knew it had been for copyvio, and here (in the comment that inspired me to go look) that he still had a good memory of it on 3 September 2004. As far as I can see, he must have deliberately recreated the very same copyvio on 15 August, by adding the same text again. These passages have now been removed, and the article is more or less a stub again. I think the subject — a professor at a famous university, but without any publications — is non-notable, but not in an offensive way, and VfD is now so embattled, not least by the contributions of the same user, that I don't care to list it for deletion.

I do think I ought to do something about what seems a clear act of malice by the user, but it's very hard right now to set aside the amount of time and energy from my day job that I'm sure RfC-ing him (see, I don't even know the correct terminology) would take. I'm still not sure whether I'll do something like that or not. If there's one thing I've noted since I began to contribute to Wikipedia in July, it's that these things take much effort and rarely lead anywhere. Anyway, thanks for your attention. Best regards, Bishonen 01:38, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Reposted copyvio again

Well, I came in over-optimistic about the process and may have become over-cynical in reaction, perhaps a standard new-user graph on Wikipedia. Things like the outcome of the Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/European Union Olympic medals count for 2004 VfD vote are bound to make people less trusting, but I agree one ought to work for improving the system rather than complain about it. Anyway, I found something about "Standing orders" on A's Talk page, which suggested that a thread might already be open where complaints about him could be posted, with some hope of effect (on a good day, I suppose). If it is, I just hope it would be acceptable for me to post a documented description of the problem, without subsequently getting embroiled in the frustrations of arguing with A. I've written to User:Raul654 to ask how to go about it. Thanks for your comment, Rossami. Bishonen 14:19, 6 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Bradley Amendment

Much, much better. I won't say it's perfect, but it's definitely worthy of keeping now. Now the question is, keeping where? Should it be part of the article on the law that it amended? Taking a quick look, it appears that the section that it amended was part of the Social Security Act, which probably wouldn't benefit from a lengthy discussion of child support—maybe there should be an article on United States federal child support law? If it's kept separate, is there any other "Bradley Amendment" that it could get confused with? The article says it's one of many—were these in the same area of law or different? Is there any other way to identify it more clearly and precisely? Very good rewrite, though. Postdlf 01:38, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The other "Bradley Amendments" that I found were in different areas of the law. One, for example, was an amendment to a transportation bill that had to do with highway repair budgets. Rossami

Rough but not the nasty rant it was before. -- Cyrius|✎ 01:56, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Managed Delete discussion

Ok, here is the preliminary policy proposal. Comments welcome. Geogre 17:47, 14 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Broken wikilinks

Did you have a specific reason for removing all but 2 contestant links on The Apprentice 2? You left the only two links that were "blue," so it seemed to me like you were delinking the others because articles were not created yet. Please do not do this, as "red" or broken wikilinks are perfectly acceptable and help get articles created, as well as reduce the amount of work when they are created. Otherwise, the page would have to be updated each time a contestant article is created. Thanks. - MattTM 04:07, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)

I hadn't realized that the two The Apprentice 2 candidate articles were on VfD when I reverted your changes. I just voted to keep in both of the VfD polls, since I find deletionism such as this particularly troubling. I suppose I'm part of the crowd that believes the more information we have on Wikipedia, the better. Considering the popularity of The Apprentice, voting to delete candidate articles seems ridiculous to me (even more ridiculous is the amount of delete votes they are getting). In fact, I'd love to see full biographies on each candidate along with lengthy descriptions of their time on the show. It certainly wouldn't damage anything here, so why not? (Not a question directed at you.) Anyway, I'm rambling. Perhaps I should write up something on my user page about this. Thanks for explaining your actions, I thought you were just another one of those users going around removing red links. - MattTM 04:30, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)

I second MattTM's remark. I intentionally provided wikilinks with the contestant names. Some people may believe they are not notable, but the show has quite a following. Articles will or should be created. With all the fictional characters and places listed on WP, I don't see why real people should be targets for obliteration, especially 18 chosen out of over 1 million. [[User:Nricardo|--Nelson Ricardo >>Talk<<]] 04:33, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)

Both reasonable arguments but they are bucking the trend on the inclusion of biographies. I counsel patience. Rossami

Thank you for you good counsel. I just wish everybody on Wikipedia had the level head you do.

The guidline you cited states that acceptable entries include "Well known entertainment figures, such as TV/movie producers, directors, writers, and actors who have starring roles, or a series of minor roles, in commercially distributed work screened by a total audience of 5,000 or more". Should the articles be deleted, I will recreate them. People should be using their time on Wikipedia to create, not destroy.[[User:Nricardo|--Nelson Ricardo >>Talk<<]] 04:58, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)

While quality is very important, Wikipedia is certainly concerned with quanity as well. Look at how proudly we are showing on the Main Page that we have 1,000,000 articles. The more the merrier. The stubs I've created can develop into something along the lines of Kelly Perdew, which has expansion potential. I'm not sure what you mean about the "costs". True, we do need server space (that reminds me, I need to dig into my wallet and give some), but a few extra bytes aren't that much.[[User:Nricardo|--Nelson Ricardo >>Talk<<]] 05:25, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies is indeed quite useful - I was previously unaware of its existence. I personally consider someone playing themself on a show for several months the same as an actor playing a character on a show for several months, though that page doesn't have any guidelines reality show contestants. On a slightly different note, I've just noticed that we now have articles for every contestant on The Apprentice 2. I might try to expand them a bit, but I'd hate to see them all wiped out by a VfD or angry sysop (are all of these going to be listed on VfD? I sure hope not.) There's certainly enough information on these people, considering their personal biographies on NBC.com and other sites, along with their adventures on television; the non-notable issue is the only thing standing in their way. As for the disk space used by articles such as these, I can't imagine the 18 of them combined taking up the same amount of space as another copy of a >32KB page being layed on the server for a minor copyedit or such.

By the way, I moved one of your comments on my talk page to clarify whom it was in response to. This 3-way discussion stuff can get confusing. I hope you don't mind. - MattTM 06:07, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)

You raised some very interesting concerns on User talk:Nricardo - I wasn't thinking of that type of cost when I left my previous message. I would be interested in a page further discussing these issues as well, if you are able to find one. Thanks. - MattTM 06:43, Sep 21, 2004 (UTC)

Delay between relisting on VFD

I like your proposal - I'm really concerned about the tendancy toward much more deletion of interesting articles just because they might be of interest to only a small number of people. Intrigue 17:35, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Notability

Hi there, thanks for your note. I looked again at Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, and could not find anything that talks about notability. As for it being a proxy for verifiability, the existance of a school is easily verifiable, and yet people try to delete them for not being 'notable'. My worry is that notability has nothing to do with verifiability, but rather reflects individuals beliefs about what they think is interesting. I don't believe that there is any policy or concensus that an article's contributor should have to justify to a would-be-deleter why something that they have never heard, have no interest in, and probably think no one else has an interest in is important. We are simply reducing the coverage to the lowest common denominator by deleting anything non-mainstream. Perhaps you can point me to where 'notability' is defined, and where its use as deletion criteria were agreed to? Thanks, Mark Richards 22:00, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, although it does confirm my fears - the 'consensus' is not recorded anywhere, and what concensus was reached is not available to examine. While I am all in favor of a wiki approach to content management, when it comes to something as 'un-wiki' as deletion, simply allowing people who are keen on deletion to claim that there is a concensus to delete anything that is not 'notable', and that they get to decided what that means is frightening.

The particularly disturbing behavior of relisting items repeatedly, and listing so many items that it is almost impossible to examine them and vote means that only those who have a strong interest in deletion matters will give this any oversight.

I'm concerned because there is nothing on either WWIN or deletion guidelines about 'notability'.

There is clearly no concensus (witness 14 pages of discussion on one thing listed 3 times in the last 2 weeks) and endless listing of schools, programming languages etc. If there was concensus, folks would know how to deal with these. What bothers me is that, in the absense of concensus, a war of attrition is being waged by deletionists who know that those who oppose deletion do not spend as much time on it as they do. If they list enough, and list it often enough, much of it will get deleted. I've been concerned for a number of months, and watched the process closely. I'm sure folks are acting in good faith, but worried that what they are doing is deeply wrong, and largely impervious to the normal process of wiki checks and balances, since by its nature deletion is difficult to undo. If this was simply blanking or changing material it would not bother me. Sorry to rant. Thanks for your sane perspective! Mark Richards 23:05, 29 Sep 2004 (UTC)

If you have a problem with me, take it up with me

...don't bitch behind my back. You know as much as I do that you've tried, and clearly failed, to arouse any community support for changing criteria #4. You've tried unilaterally doing so numerous times. So please don't resort to making comments on other people's talk pages about me.

On another note, though - your comments about notability on Mark's talk pages were quite interesting. Kudos. Ambi 07:04, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for your note. I think we're all getting frustrated with deletion matters at the moment, and I apologise, too, for being somewhat terse.

Based on the responses to the Managed Deletion proposal, which seem to indicated a bit of support for an expansion of speedying, I wonder if it might be worth putting up a bunch of votes to gauge community opinion in this area - "vanity? ads? hoaxes?", etc. Ambi 15:31, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

"Vanity" should be called "autobiography", because the word vanity is also commonly used to mean "lacking usefulness", which is not something admins should be determining unilaterally. anthony (see warning) 20:43, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

I find your reversion of my edit on Wikipedia:Criteria for inclusion of biographies quite rude. It should not have been a minor edit, you should have let me know that you were doing so and/or used the talk page, and since your problem seemed to be an extremely minor quibble you should have fixed my statement rather than deleting it. anthony (see warning) 12:46, 2 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Nation of Islam anti-semitism

Rosami, if you look in the edit of the RfD history you will see I made an unfair comment about you. I have removed this as I was wrong, and my apologies go to you. I still will not delete. Please take it back to VfD. It's quite possible it will be voted for deletion again. - Ta bu shi da yu 12:55, 19 Oct 2004 (UTC)