User:DavidLeighEllis/TalkPageArchiveTwo

A barnstar for you!

	The Special Barnstar
	For your gracious conduct on the recent user name discussion. Irondome (talk) 19:17, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 19:25, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

For no particular reason

David, the countering of vandalism is an important thing, no doubt. I've done quite a bit of it myself. But I don't like casting it in terms of a fight, and I certainly wouldn't want to be enlisted with police officers. That's not how it works in reality, it leads to misunderstandings and anger too easily, and it does not aid in building an atmosphere of collaboration. We are not a bunch of officers beating down a horde of soccer hooligans. Thank you. Drmies (talk) 03:28, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

The police metaphor is representative of the large amount of effort required, the sifting through innumerable false positives, before finding an edit that can be rolled back, much as the police may have to wait for quite some time before someone commits a crime in their presence. The relationship to vandals is anti-collaborative, since RC patrolers are reverting their work, warning them, and trying to get them blocked. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 15:56, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your response. Yes, that's precisely the kind of attitude and metaphor that I think is unproductive since, for instance, it completely bypasses the fact that WP:VANDAL does not overrule WP:AGF. A great many of my 100,000+ edits here are to revert vandalism, to warn and to block editors committing acts of vandalism, and to undo damage done; yet, I find the comparison with the police to be incredibly distasteful. It invites antagonism and demonstrates a basic attitude that searches only for negative edits, not for positive ones. It is a very limited view of what Wikipedia is and can be. Drmies (talk) 18:08, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

RC patrol by its very nature involves trying to find the needle of bad edits in the haystack of good ones. WP:AGF is fully adhered to, insofar as it disqualifies most questionable edits from being treated as outright vandalism, and permits only the most blatant cases to simply be reverted, warned, and blocked. That's certainly not to say that the most important editorial task is pressing the rollback button at just the right moment. The law enforcement metaphor is a sentiment used to glorify the RC patrol task because it has a certain intrinsic unattractiveness not present in writing articles or taking photographs. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 23:59, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Again, you don't have to explain "RC patrol" (itself a military metaphor) to me: I've been doing it for years. This is a kind of "glorification" that we can do without, and that I certainly don't wish to be associated with. But you don't seem to care enough to take that offensive picture down, and that's fine. Perhaps this goes to show you that perspective matters, in this case as in yesterday's little affair. Drmies (talk) 01:46, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm afraid that this discussion is rehashing a rather old and long-settled issue. I gather that WP:CVU was nominated for deletion several times, once by a sockpuppet of a notorious vandal, for being excessively "paramilitary". The community has repeatedly refused to delete it on those grounds. Now, comparison of RC patrol to the work of polite London police officers who probably don't even carry firearms is decidedly weak tea, in relation to the military metaphor of the CVU, to which the community has acquiesced. If I were using File:SWATK9.JPG you might have a point... DavidLeighEllis (talk) 03:09, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

You've probably never been on the other side. Good for you, you're a winner. And you got a ridiculously large picture of a bunch of cops on your talk page--what a great way to open up lines of communication with other editors. I don't know about "dedicated Wikipedians": those vandal patrollers strike me as people who need a hobby. A different hobby. Drmies (talk) 04:49, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

I really had no idea that creating User:UBX/WikipediasFinest would cause so much controversy. I've removed it from all pages and tagged it for speedy deletion as CSD G7. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 22:51, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Query

Hi. I'm curious to know how you came to be sniffing around Riggr Mortis's talk page? --John (talk) 07:38, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

The edit to his talk page showed up in the "filter recent changes" feature of the anti-vandal tool. This is not an infrequent phenomenon for talk page discussions involving heated language, most of which I take no action on. However, as Ceoil's comment seemed very extreme, I did not immediately recognize it as involving users who like to swear at each other. Rather than explaining the situation, Ceoil decided to respond with extreme personal attacks, once on his talk page and twice on mine, the second after I had reverted his first piece of invective [1], [2], [3]. Then he characterized the admin who blocked him in rather strong language [4]. Given my extensive participation in RC patrol, isolated mistakes will happen, and should not furnish occasions for the use of scatological and anti-Christian language. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 15:12, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Have you ever read WP:DTTR? It makes quite a good case that leaving templated messages as you did here, especially on established editors, can be fairly counter-productive. How do you feel about the result you've achieved by your actions in this case? --John (talk) 18:53, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Ceoil and Riggr have been bantering back and forth like that for years ... perhaps next time you might click on that little button "contributors" (found in the History tab at the top of a user talk page), to help you realize when people are friends and for how long they have been friends. This is a sad chapter ... I hope this advice will help you avoid having this happen again. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:42, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

I apologize for inadequately investigating the situation before reverting Ceoil's comment on Riggr Mortis' talk page. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 23:33, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, David. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:37, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Well indeed. I was hoping to promote that realisation by my gentle questions above. Tell me David, you profess to be a "Christian" just above; what do you think of the whole "Judge not, lest ye be judged" thing? --John (talk) 20:06, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

Matthew 7:1 is one of the most widely misinterpreted verses of the New Testament. It does not nonsensically imply that no Christian may ever evaluate the propriety of another person's behavior. My "Catholic Study Bible", Second Edition, provides the following explanatory footnote: "This is not a prohibition against recognizing the faults of others, which would hardly be compatible with Matthew 7:5,6 but against passing judgment in a spirit of arrogance, forgetful of one's own faults." Before anyone asks how recognizing a comment as apparently uncivil (in this case, incorrectly, as the recipient user likes to be sworn at) could possibly comport with [5], please note that I have only used such language against racist trolls such as "Nottruelosa", and not against anyone showing the faintest shred of good-faith participation in the site. I have also never characterized other editors by way of crude, scatological terminology under any circumstances. That being said, I have agreed above to investigate more thoroughly when I see language that finds no use in polite company apparently being used to degrade editors. This is a situation analogous to the small-town sheriff who walks in on a BDSM scene and naively concludes that an actual sexual assault is in progress. DavidLeighEllis (talk) 23:33, 4 August 2013 (UTC)

David, I've made some mistakes here myself. Earlier this year I said a very nasty thing to a user who would not stop posting to my talk page. One short moment of anger led to literally weeks of aggravation (as I am an admin and a functionary such behavior is seen as especially problematic) and it still hasn't stopped, someone brought it up again just yesterday in an attempt to discredit me in a completely unrelated discussion. The whole incident has been a reminder to me about something I thought I had already learned: do not feed the trolls. Trolls are here to try and get people to act upset. To do so only gives them what they want. They are mostly angry, petty people who want everyone to be as unhappy as they are. WP:RBI is a much better approach. It lets the troll know that we won't waste our time playing their games, and it doesn't bring loads of upset comments to your talk page. Its a win/win way to handle such persons. Give it a try, you may find it works a bit better than taunting and insults. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:27, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Just to clarify, my reference to not feeding the trolls was in reference to David's edits at User talk:Nottruelosa, which he mentions above. I did not mean to imply that Ceoil or Riggr are trolls. Sorry for being unclear. Beeblebrox (talk) 15:25, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

I wasn't going to say anything about this event, because, well, what's to say that hasn't been said. But now I have to clear up some statements made on this page:

1. No, I don't like being sworn at, as such ("as the recipient user likes to be sworn at")--that's kind of belittling actually--your BDSM/sheriff analogy was humorous (unintentionally?) but if the analogy includes your lumping me in with that type of activity or personality (the "M", in this case)--no thank you. For better or worse, there are classes of people that joke around with swear words. This has been going on for a few millennia, I imagine. If you think Ceoil and/or Wikipedia are bad, you should try visiting... just about anywhere else.
2. Ceoil is not a troll. He's done loads of work for this project.
3. I've seen a number of implications or assumptions that our "banter" has included a similar amount of swearing from me, at Ceoil. Wrong. (Somehow, in retirement, I've turned into a potty-mouthed masochist without saying a word!)

Riggr Mortis (talk) 05:01, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Arf. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:37, 5 August 2013 (UTC)