User talk:RexxS/Archive 8

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Excuse me for bothering you

[Shy but determined. ] Mr Rex. Sir? Excuse me. I am the actual fish around here! May I please also have wiggly waggly welcome wave on my page? To swim in. I am great admirer of handsome wave. darwin^fish 19:23, 5 November 2010 (UTC).

Welcome to Dino page, little one. Of course you can have. Made one more sedate than brother's. --T-RexxS (talk) 22:52, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you, Sir, but... page only shows small red X..? (URL a bit different from Darwinbish's?) More sedate sounds nice, but, I don't mean to be contradicting you, but evil twin is my sister, not brother. All the wildest bishes are girls, I think. Little 'shonen is firebrand! darwin^fish 23:38, 5 November 2010 (UTC).

Oh sorry, my little friend, that 7-ton theropod isn't very good at guessing gender of fishes. I suppose I shouldn't let him make web pages either. Anyway, the page is your very own, you don't have to share it with your sister, so it has a different url. It does seem to make a nice wave in Firefox, IE8, and Opera for me, but I'd have to boot up another pc to test other browsers. Java is usually good for most browsers, so do check that you haven't switched your Java off. Otherwise you could try to sneak onto your sister's pc and check it there (if you're feeling brave). Let me know, --RexxS (talk) 00:01, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Sneak up on the darwinbish (gulp)? But I use same browser as her, SeaMonkey. Mozilla suite. Hmm. I try Safari now.

.....

No, is same. Could there be typo? Please don't take suggestion as insult! The 'bish's wave URL doesn't have the ".htm"? (But I see removing it doesn't help.) Never mind, I make too much trouble for seven-ton Dino, excuse it, please! darwin^fish 00:25, 6 November 2010 (UTC).

Strange, I copy-paste urls so no typo, and clicking the link works for me. When there was only one page on there, I was able to give your sister a short url. The full urls for the two pages are:

• DarwinBish
• DarwinFish

Does the first link work for you, but not the second one? --RexxS (talk) 00:51, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, sir. That's it exactly. In both my browsers. Not like that for you?

Must excuse me for today please. Bishapod says I must go to bed. (Who is this Bishapod? Boss of Wikipedia? Many mysteries here for newbies!) Good night, kind Dino! darwin^fish 01:38, 6 November 2010 (UTC).

And yet now the links are so alike..! A thought, probably stupid: maybe second link need to have /Fish/Darwinfish.htm in it instead of /Bish/Darwinfish.htm? There is a logic in that.. but I don't think it's html logic. [/Young Darwinfish falls asleep and dreams he's Linus Torvalds.] darwin^fish 02:00, 6 November 2010 (UTC).

"Wildest bishes are girls, 'shonen is firebrand." GROAN. Darwinfish embarrass family! Supposed to live up to great Darwin! Don't let me see you bleat an undistributed middle like that again, you silly minnow with feet! little ankle biter 15:02, 6 November 2010 (UTC).

[Impressed. ] Gosh. How did Little Stupid's socks get so smart? And speak such good English Bishzilla prolly can't even understand them. If darwinbish keeps evolving at this rate, I soon won't be able to, either... I'll be the one wandering around biting ankles... Bishonen | talk 15:16, 6 November 2010 (UTC).

Andress, again

The "plainrowheaders" Merridew added did not fix anything, and it also undid other issues. You notice the editors involved with FL have much the same concerns I did. Gimmetoo (talk) 19:06, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Oops, sorry, plainrowheaders ought to fix the bold/center that the browser applies when row headers are marked up. I'm sorry I didn't spot the other issues you refer to. Would it be possible to outline those, either here or at Talk:Ursula Andress, please? I'll do all I can to help you address them.

Thanks for your contribution at FLC, btw. As you know, it's not easy to improve accessibility and retain the author's intentions at the same time, because of the way our browsers behave. I still believe we can meet both goals without making tables too complex for the average editor, but I'd appreciate any help in finding the best way to do that.

Incidentally, you might want to take a look at Tables with JAWS and MAGic if you haven't already seen it, as it illustrates how JAWS user might use table captions to get a list of the tables on a page and go directly to one of them. It's a reason for having captions that we didn't explore earlier, but obviously will still need to be balanced against the visual effect of table captions for sighted users. --RexxS (talk) 19:25, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

These issues have already been discussed at the talk page, where you have not been involved for over a week. You know what they are. If you are not going to honour that, then you shouldn't be using the article as a live sandbox. Gimmetoo (talk) 19:32, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

The main concern seems to have been the bolding. Have you tried clearing your browser cache? --RexxS (talk) 19:40, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

The other issues were the duplicate heading, and you also changed the order of the columns. I'm going to AGF for now that the "plainrowheaders" will start working sometime soon, but only on the condition and understanding that neither you nor Merridew nor anyone else involved with "accessibility" ever tries to either remove it or remove its functionality (eg, through changing mediawiki css). Is the "plainrowheaders" intended to remove the background, or will that need inline coding? Gimmetoo (talk) 19:53, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. I thought that we had reached a tentative agreement that the table would be ok with the title as the first column, and I'm sorry if I read too much into that. Of course you're right that WCAG does not recommend against row headers in the second column and JAWS has no problems with it, but the same may not be true for all assistive technologies. WCAG has some links to tests of various ATs, if you're interested. But really, it also looks better to me with the title first – a poor reason for preferring it, I know. Yes, the background (if used with wikitable) stays as the standard wikitable background for a header by default.

I'm still happy to discuss the heading/caption issues, but it might be rendered moot by discussions at WT:FLC, so could we come back to that in a few days time?

Anyway, the discussion on "plainrowheaders" was at MediaWiki talk:Common.css#Solution 3, and as you can see, both Jack and I invested some effort in getting that. I can't speak for Jack, but you have my word that I will not be going back there to look for changes to the class. Regards, --RexxS (talk) 20:18, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Re: Table captions

Hi Rexx, the list made by using insert+control+T is generated using the table caption and/or summary, or if neither of those elements exist, by the initial text in the table. JAWS doesn't even read the title attribute in tables, let alone use it as a navigation aid, as shown by this example (although I am using JAWS 8.0, so things may be different in newer versions). However, screen reader users usually navigate by headings rather than by tables, and I always use "t" or "shift-t" to move between tables rather than using insert+control+t to make a list of them. Graham87 01:11, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Thank you so much, that does make things much clearer for me. You wouldn't be much inconvenienced by a lack of captions, as long as the table was in a section with a sensible heading, but we could still add something in the summary to cover the case where an AT user could benefit from a table identifier. --RexxS (talk) 01:21, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Notloaded

Sir, not to pester you indeed, but with hope this information may be helpful:

When I click on sister's link and see fine wave and some words, the status bar says "Applet Welcome started".
When I click on Fish link and see only small red x, status bar says "Applet DarwinFish notloaded".

darwin^fish 01:54, 7 November 2010 (UTC).

No amount of investigation has helped me solve this. Your computer loads the Welcome class, but not the DarwinFish class, which simply has a different word in it. It loads and runs fine on my pc, and it even works on my ubuntu pc in firefox and opera. I need to do more research on mac. In the meantime, I've given your page the same applet as your sisters' page. I hope that works for you. Enjoy! --RexxS (talk) 22:35, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes work indeed, thank you! Waggle waggle on blue Fish background, handsome! Better than darwinbish green! darwin^fish 20:35, 11 November 2010 (UTC).

[Does darwinfish have a deathwish? See him running giggling for the hills, pursued by a bear... no, by irate sister with sharp teeth! Run, run, little Fish! ] Bishonen | talk 20:33, 11 November 2010 (UTC).

MediaWiki talk:Common.css‎

Hi RexxS. All getting a little bit narky over there now. I was hoping we could provide a summary of where we've gone so far, including some example mini-tables to FLC so they could provide some opinion on the access changes, together with a summary from an ACCESS viewpoint on the plus's and minus's of each approach (see my last post over there with regard to examples). I thought that we'd made at least some progress, but neither Jack nor John seem to think so, which is a great shame, and it feels like an assumption of bad faith really. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:50, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Never mind. I'm out. What I thought was going to be a constructive discussion has just become unpleasant and sarcastic so I'll be moving on from this I'm afraid. I have enough on my plate on-wiki without arguing the toss over this sort of thing when I thought it was clear I was trying to be helpful. Good luck, working with you was good, and I think I learned a thing or two from you. The Rambling Man (talk) 17:38, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't know what to say. I've just got back and everything seems to have fallen apart in a few hours. I'll step away as well and take all of this off my watchlist as I don't seem to have been able to help. Do let me know if you think I can be any help to you in future, though. --RexxS (talk) 18:06, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Me neither. I was pretty convinced FLC was showing some willing in this discussion, but got shot down. I'll not be watching it either, but I would like to continue to discuss things with you in future, if we (i.e. you and I) can improve the situation. All the best, The Rambling Man (talk) 18:08, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

You may not care nor have any sway, but pointed opposes from Merridew won't do the access project any good whatsoever. Ironically, there seems to be different (but overlapping) MOS advice on "lists" and "tables". I think we'll declare our project "list-only" and avoid further debate. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:23, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm not approaching this primarily from an WP:ACCESS perspective. Of course, I do support proper accessibility accommodations. I am looking at this from a site-perspective. FLC is but one of many stakeholders in the styling of this website; WP:DISCOG, is another. But common.css is about *all* stakeholders and all (table-)styling. This 'plain' approach is driven by a few and is undermining site-wide-styling. I'm a developer and you and some others seem to only be looking at this from niche-perspectives. This is not just an encyclopaedia project, it is an *online* encyclopaedia: Do not forget that this is a website, too. Jack Merridew 22:06, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

From an outside perspective, how on earth do folks at FLC who witness "oppose" because "!scope" isn't followed know that it's because of Common.css? It's a minefield. You may know this like the back of your hand, and I tried, really hard, to get to grips with what was affected, how it would improve accessibility and how it matched up with the MOS. All I got in response was sarcasm and criticism. You may be a "developer", but you also need to remember that 99.99% of editors aren't. FLC wanted to help and join in with ACCESS, but now it's undone. Worse than that, in fact. Thanks for the reminder that this is an online encyclopdia, but I didn't need that, I know it's online, and your note is patronising. It's a real shame that so much dialogue has gone to waste. Needless to say we're at -1 now, rather than +1 (which, at least with !scope implemented, we could accommodate screen readers). Perhaps someone can point me to where I went wrong trying to get a mutually acceptable outcome to this, instead of which I got a barrage of sarcasm, criticism and technicality. As I said before, I won't try to venture that way ever again. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:30, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't mean to come-off as patronising, or sarcastic. I'm frustrated with this, as I see core stuff being trod on in an unwitting manner. You said you'd never heard of table-captions until a few days ago, and from that I rather assumed that you're not focused on technical matters.

I do know this stuff well, and highlighted the fact that this is a website, too, in order to emphasize that all the technical realities of being a website *matter*, too. I don't really know what precipitated the last some days fuss, but it seems that some FLs and FLCs showed-up with scope, and "!" and such, and you wanted answers and changes, stat. This would be whatever the WP:DISCOG crowd and mebbe User:Dodoïste have been up to for the last few months. As said, I support reasonable accommodations for accessibility and have pushed for such changes, but this went off the rails when this all got into undermining site-wide styling for a specific vocal-crowd. I've been brushed aside by the DISCOG crowd more than a few times when I tried to point them in better directions and Dodoïste and I do not always agree. RexxS and I do often agree and mebee this page is a better venue for sorting some this out. Sincerely, Jack Merridew 22:50, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Ok, then deep breath from me. I sincerely hope you (Jack) and RexxS (and maybe others) can see that, despite my technical failings, I'm trying to please all people all the time, and that's a challenge. I think the first issue was with the unannounced rolling out of different styling on existing featured material. As I said before, bygones and we are here now so ... done. Next up I (note, I, not FLC, not anything else, but given I "represent" FLC, I suppose it's the same sort of thing) wanted to understand, comprehensively, why suddenly we were getting (1) bold row "headers" (again, another failing, and perhaps a failing of our MOS - even our own article on simple data tables says "The first row is not counted, because it is only used to display the column names. This is traditionally called a "header row"." so the misunderstanding that a "header" includes the elements in the first column is, from my mind, vaguely understandable) and (2) captions which repeat section headings. FLC will try damned hard to accommodate accessibility requirements, but, as I noted some place(s), not to the detriment of 99.1% of our readers. I really, really want to understand, for instance, what the benefit of "!scope" is (I think it's screen readers, and we really were getting somewhere with that) and I really, really want to know who benefits from a light-grey (almost imperceptible) background for row headers. And how a bold caption which repeats most, if not all of the column headers helps too. I sincerely want to make Wikipedia better. And FLC do too. I'd much rather move away from Mediawiki "css"-file-speak and revert back to "how do we best serve our readers" (all of them, and this includes the 99.1% who are regularly sighted). Perhaps that's naive, and if so, sorry. I've invested a lot of my energy in trying to get this splicing of ACCESS/FLC to work, I know it sounds selfish, but I really want it to work and for us to progress. The Rambling Man (talk) 23:02, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Can I then suggest an experiment where we don't interfere with the rest of the wiki? I've made a page User:RexxS/List of symptoms of diving disorders which I'd like you to imagine is one section of an article entitled "List of symptoms of diving disorders". The page contains two versions, and I'd like you to find fault with each of them (perhaps as if the pretend full article were a candidate at FLC). If we can see what causes the faults, we may be able to ascertain where we can find common ground, and whether we can accommodate the differences. What do you think? --RexxS (talk) 23:40, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Me breathes-deep, too. I do see that your intent is fine and appropriate. I breathe things like markup and code, and sometimes find discussions running amok because people use technical terms in ways that don't really correspond with their proper meanings. A header-cell is anything done with "!" instead of a "|" and a row-header is the left-most cell of a table-row that has a ! for the first cell and | for the others. skipping right-along...

You're seeing more row-headers because it is appropriate to structure many tables that way. Take my experiment on Angelina Jolie#Filmography. The filmography is a list of works, and I made the film-title the primary key for each row. This means that it's implemented with a '!' and scope="row". Everything that follows in each of the rows is a data-item about that row's film: year, role, the catch-all 'notes'. This is better semantics; it's a better structure and the background, especially, is what tells people, *sighted* people, that the first cell of each row is data concerning that film. I'm a strong advocate of sorting, because it puts the end-user in control of the presentation of the information they're looking at. Far too many of our tables are cemented into some specific order by whatever crowd of editors treads regularly on them. Editors get very fixed ideas about how things should be presented. Modern website design emphasizes a separation of presentation and content and for this reason, we should avoid baking-in presentational information in pages. The separate place for the presentational information is the site style sheets. The idea behind style sheets is to centralize the styling so that changes to the site look-and-feel can be made from one point, as opposed to editing thousands of pages. This is like putting code into a reusable template, only much moar powerful. The DISCOC lists are chock-full of all sorts of presentational information and they seem to not get any of what I'm talking about. They'll never get their tables consistently formatted by hard-coding everything. Every time a new idea is offered, they have to go make the change thousands of times in individual articles.

Table should have caption in most cases. HTML tables all have a caption-element, although it's too often null. I say they should all have it because it's good information architecture. The caption of a table is simply the most appropriate place to offer a concise 'what-is-it'. The h2-section headers are only duplicative because the article is missing prose. The ratio of prose to markup is very poor in many articles. We prefer prose. This ratio is also why I favour true list-constructs ('*', '#', ';:') over tables, for most list; they entail far less markup than tables and avoid all the goop that accessible tables entail.

The background-color on header-cells is for *everyone*, not for accessibility. The blind are not going to see it and I would think most screen-readers would gloss-over most colour. For them, the '!'-header and scope are what matters (and the prose in the cells). The visual-styling of table headers cells is about communicating the structure of the table to sighted-readers so that they can properly understand it.

You know my history? The nutshell of why I was brought back is that I have technical clue about these sort of issues. Cheers, Jack Merridew 00:16, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

re 85.114.137.152

i submitted 85.114.137.152 to sockpuppet investigations early this afternoon because the user's mo and demeanor are just too bloody similar to be coincidental. you might wish to add your thoughts to my report there. cheers! --emerson7 05:27, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

um...i don't quite know 'what' to make of this? ....what do you think? --emerson7 18:38, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

I didn't think the SPI would help because he's hopping via proxies. I'm taking this to ANI now at WP:ANI#Disruptive editing by IP user. Any comments you may have would be appreciated. --RexxS (talk) 19:49, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Usenet poster Autymn Castleton

Just in case you're interested, I found a typical sample of Aut's Usenet contributions in Google Groups' archive of sci.physics. Several messages in that thread … I don't recall where I got the idea the poster is female—not that it makes any difference—but it was probably from a message in which she corrected someone for referring to her as "he". Anyway, she's been a fixture in the science groups, and elsewhere on Usenet, for at least a decade AFAICT. —Odysseus1479 (talk) 02:22, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Wow, that takes me back to the days of Trumpet Winsock on Windows 3.0, and BBS, followed later by Usenet with Turnpike! I think that although my involvement with those groups goes back to the mid-90s, I'd probably moved on by the time she established herself, since I don't recall her. Thanks for that sci.physics thread, anyway; it's a great reminder of why I'm not on Usenet any more. --RexxS (talk) 02:49, 12 November 2010 (UTC)

Widening my mood

Thanks, RexxS. I suppose there isn't any way I could put the wiggle waggle on my page as well? It's too html, I suppose? Bishonen | talk 01:49, 13 November 2010 (UTC).

Unfortunately, it's a Java applet, so I put it on a site I control, but I can't upload it to Wikipedia. The upload form only accepts the following:

• "Permitted file types: png, gif, jpg, jpeg, xcf, pdf, mid, ogg, ogv, svg, djvu, tiff, tif, oga."

The best I could offer would be to capture the animation, then convert that into Theora video format and encapsulate it as an ogv file, and I'd have to research how to display that on a wiki-page so that it looped for you. Bleh. I'm loathe to produce an animated gif as (for me) it's the image equivalent of clay tablets. There's gotta be a better way! --RexxS (talk) 02:20, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

LOL. I thought jpg's/jpeg's were the clay tablets of images? (But they don't wiggle, I know.) They seem to be very despised among the cognoscenti in my family. Bishonen | talk 20:51, 13 November 2010 (UTC).

Oh, no. jpg's have a real use for image storage. For a photographic image with continuous tones they can produce a good quality image which has a small filesize. It's only where the image has sharp edges that they are poor, and you can always use less compression until the artefacts become unnoticeable. On the other hand, gif's are no better than a properly optimised png, without any of the flexibility that png's can offer. So animated gif's are about the only time they are useful, and even then they are a nuisance for folks on low-bandwidth connections, because you have to wait for the whole image to download before you can see the animation. Next week: Image Processing 102. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 21:58, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Not sure...

But was there a development which decided that left-aligned ! scope="row" was bad? I was managing to convince others to begin adopting the new approach e.g. see The X Factor (UK series 7) but now users are question why the CSS coding keeps changing? -- Lil_℧niquℇ №1 | talk2me 21:03, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, I'm sorry it worked out that way, but some folks wanted wikitables to be the way they were before (centred headers), and others wanted left-aligned without the bold. In the end, they decided to add another class, so that that if you use class="wikitable" you get bold, centred headers, but if you use class=wikitable plainrowheaders" you get the row headers to be left-aligned and normal weight (not-bold). I'm fairly certain that we won't get changes to that for a while, so I'd recommend putting in the extra word "plainrowheaders" and see if it does what you want. I'd be happy to come along and help with any cleanup, but I don't want to poke my nose in and start altering things without being invited. It does give the flexibility for singles, albums, shows, etc. to use italic or bold according to agreed conventions, without the text already being bold just because it's a row header. I know it's a pain adding in the extra word most of the time, but in the long run, it allows us to make tables accessible while offering two default options to try to please different projects. Here's what the table at The X Factor (UK series 7)#Week 1 (9/10 October) looks like with just the word "plainrowheaders" added after "wikitable":

A summary of the contestants' performances on the first live show and results show, along with the results.

Act	Order	Song	Result
F.Y.D.	1	"Billionaire"	Bottom three
Matt Cardle	2	"When Love Takes Over"	Safe
John Adeleye	3	"One Sweet Day"	Safe
Rebecca Ferguson	4	"Teardrops"	Safe
Storm Lee	5	"We Built This City"	Safe
Belle Amie	6	"Airplanes"	Safe
Cher Lloyd	7	"Just Be Good to Me"	Safe
Diva Fever	8	"Sunny"	Safe
Paije Richardson	9	"Killing Me Softly with His Song"	Safe
Katie Waissel	10	"We Are the Champions"	Bottom three
Mary Byrne	11	"It's a Man's Man's Man's World"	Safe
Nicolò Festa	12	"Just Dance"	Eliminated
One Direction	13	"Viva la Vida"	Safe
Wagner	14	"She Bangs" / "Love Shack"	Safe
Aiden Grimshaw	15	"Mad World"	Safe
Treyc Cohen	16	"One"	Safe
Final showdown details
F.Y.D.	1	"Don't Stop the Music"	Eliminated
Katie Waissel	2	"Don't Let Me Down"	Safe

What do you think? Anyway, thanks for all the effort you've put in to help improve accessibility on Wikipedia. I know it's not been easy of late, but as it settles down, people get used to new things. At least it's making a big improvement for the visually-impaired readers. --RexxS (talk) 23:17, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi Rex, no problem. Actually it kind of works better because the main objections I'm finding are the Bold row headers. So this actually works better. If you could assist with the clean-up it would be much appreciated. -- Lil_℧niquℇ №1 | talk2me 00:33, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Next WP:USPP assessment

Hi RexxS/Archive 8! Since Amy Roth's out on maternity leave, I'm pushing out the next round of assessments she needs. This time, we're comparing your assessment to readers' assessments. And instead of us assigning you articles, we're letting you pick! The full list of topics is on a subpage of the Assessment tab on our WikiProject. Please choose 10 of the articles to assess. Use the link in the section title to go to the appropriate version of the article.

Also, as a thank you for all your help, I'd like to send you a small package of Wikipedia swag. Please email me your postal address.

Please let me know if you have any questions! --Ldavis (Public Policy) (talk) 21:49, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi RexxS, Just wanted to ping you about this. I need the assessments done this week if at all possible. Please choose 10 articles to assess that have fewer than three assessments already done. Thanks! --Ldavis (Public Policy) (talk) 20:52, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

ACCESS questions

Hi. You had implemented the changes to the scope parameters and such during the FLC for Philadelphia Phillies all-time roster (A). I'm now ready to nominate the second list (Philadelphia Phillies all-time roster (B)), as the first has passed, but have tried and failed when implementing those parameters myself. Could you either take a look at the history and tell me what I'm doing wrong, or alternatively, implement those changes on that list? Thanks. — KV5 • Talk • 12:52, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi KV, it looks like you worked it out – you just needed to separate the '!scope="row"' from the name with a pipe '|' as you've now done. It looks fine to me now. I know it's a bit of a pain to add in those extra bits, but it does make a real difference for anybody using a screen reader. Feel free to drop me a note any time though, as I'm always keen to help. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 13:31, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

NPOV

I mentioned your edit to NPOV here. QuackGuru (talk) 18:09, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads-up, QG. I'll have a look at the thread and see if I can contribute usefully. --RexxS (talk) 19:36, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Vertebral Artery Dissection

You asked for links regarding VBA forces and also pre-existing conditions. I listed two [1] here (Spine 2008 and JMPT 2005), if you want to check them and or comment. Ocaasi (talk) 03:35, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, Ocaasi. The PMID 18204390 study is the one that DC was quoting at WT:WikiProject Medicine, so that's useful. The problem is, of course, that VAD has such a rare occurrence that the data is difficult for even the experts to analyse, particularly when the condition seems to be only reported when it produces stroke. I found it interesting that Rosner - one of the strongest proponents of chiropractic - concludes in PMCID 2647091 that "Despite the many risk factors that have been proposed as possible causes of CAD, it is still unknown which of them actually predispose patients to CAD after cervical spine manipulation". I doubt that we'll get a resolution to that question anytime soon.

Anyway, I'm trying hard to keep away from controversial topics for a while. There are enough strong voices at Talk:Vertebral artery dissection without me adding to the clamour. You're doing the right thing by broadening the base of sources for folks to consider - even if they don't get used, it helps to inform the debate when trying to decide WEIGHT. I'll have a bit more spare time in a week or so, and if the debate is still raging, I'll likely be able to contribute more adequately than I can right now. Regards, --RexxS (talk) 12:47, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Right on. I knew how you felt about Ernst, but now that the claim was more specific to VAD rather than Chiropractic, it seemed Weight would have to balance these. I won't drag you in further. Cheers, Ocaasi (talk) 13:47, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I have no strong feelings about Ernst himself, or about chiropractic in general. My only goal is really to defend the principle of using the best sources, published in the best journals. If, for example, Rosen had been published in JAMA or IJCP and Ernst were presenting his views on a self-published website, then I'd assuredly be arguing for including Rosen and excluding Ernst! However, I'm glad that folks like yourself and Doc James have found a much broader range of sources. Relying on what the best sources say, rather than accepting any editor's judgement, is the Wikipedia way. --RexxS (talk) 14:03, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Ok, one sociological comment/question. I see a bit of bias, perhaps institutional, towards someone like Rosen, who is a tremendously experienced and respected authority on Chiropractic within that community being relegated to self-publishing on Chiroaccess and in the Journal of Chiropractic Medicine. Ernst shares a somewhat similar background as Rosen, but came out strongly against Chiropractic, and winds up in IJCP. I'm not saying there's a great conspiracy or that the comparison is perfect, but it seems that something in MEDRS or in modern medicine itself is preemptively biased against Alt-Med. I guess my question is, why isn't Rosen published in IJCP? Do you think it has nothing to do with his conclusions? Or to make this slightly relevant to Wikpedia, should MEDRS make any allowance for citing field-specific journals and experts, if not in direct opposition to systematic reviews, then at least as a way to describe the prevailing view within the field. Ocaasi (talk) 10:29, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

In other words, NPOV lets us describe the views of any fringe, no matter how nutty, because we just attributepov and move on. But with AltMed and MEDRS, we can't address the medical perspective from within a [somewhat] fringe community, because as soon as they make a medical claim MEDRS takes over with full force. There is some justification for that, since science doesn't have 'multiple perspectives', at the most basic empirical/ontological level. However, I still want to know what the Journal of Chiropractic Medicine says about Chiropractic, even if the IJCP has smacked it down. But with MEDRS, there's now way to currently do this without violating Weight. Ocaasi (talk) 10:32, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

You're right about how mainstream literature has a bias toward mainstream views (and I think I may have said this to you in the past). If you think about it, the majority maintains its position as the majority by distancing itself from the minority, effectively marginalising it. That's not new, nor restricted to academia, but manifests itself in any sociological setting where "democratic" processes allow a majority to exercise a power to its own benefit. As long as there's a distinction made between mainstream and altmed, then a mainstream journal maintains its position by publishing mainstream views in preference to altmed ones.

Wikipedia reflects the same tendencies, of course. I think what you are asking is: "We're aware of a systematic bias toward the mainstream, so can we do anything about it?", and I suspect the answer is "No". If WP:CON worked perfectly, we might stand a chance; but where around a thousand or so active editors are maintaining about three million articles, it's most likely that any majority view will still impose itself on what it perceives to be a minority view, probably for no better reason than expediency. Determining WEIGHT is possibly the most time-consuming task for editors, because it actually requires every editor involved in seeking that consensus to have a full overview of all the relevant sources, in order to determine the prevalence of each differing viewpoint. Intellectually, I'd also like to hear what J Chir Med has to say in a balanced context alongside other views; but practically, MEDRS keeps the task manageable by effectively excluding many minority views. --RexxS (talk) 15:35, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

I accept the mainstream bias towards the mainstream. I'm even ok with it sometimes, since it acts as a barrier to entry for nuttiness, and science can benefit from prejudicing prior findings over new ones (though not in the extreme). What i'm saying is, what if MEDRS specifically allowed for a separate section, weight-appropriate, in which ALT-MED specific sources or experts (JCM, Rosen) could have a say. This section would require attribution and description as the in-field view, and it couldn't stand in direct opposition to the mainstream sources. I'm thinking of proposing something like this over at MEDRS, but it needs some refining. Ocaasi (talk) 20:53, 10 December 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Darwinbish

Your comment made here was unacceptable. Please refrain from making such comments in RfA, if you have a problem with an editor, raise it with them and not in this way. Thanks! Barts1a Suggestions/compliments? Complaints/constructive criticism? Merry Christmas to all! 10:38, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

You raise it with the fish. I'm far too attached to my ankles. Merry Christmas to you too! --RexxS (talk) 10:44, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Does that mean you're "crying ankle"? Gwen Gale (talk) 13:09, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Lol - too right I am. Happy Bishmas, Gwen! --RexxS (talk) 17:58, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

Accessibility opinion?

Hi. User:The Rambling Man suggested that I contact you and ask if you'd take a look at some diagrams with respect to accessibility. The article, List of selected stars for navigation is a current featured list candidate, and the images in question are the four SVG star charts. Thanks for your time! Haus^Talk 08:20, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Sure, I'm happy to have a look and see if I can make any helpful suggestions for you soon. --RexxS (talk) 14:44, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks RexxS. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:53, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks again for your thoughtful suggestions and explanations. I'll try to bang out your suggested improvements tomorrow morning. Cheers. Haus^Talk 17:53, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

happy holidays from PPI

Thanks RexxS, for all your work assessing articles with WP:USPP over the past few months. I will have some results to report to the assessment team in January. The next semester should be pretty exciting there are over 25 university classes signed up with the project. Your input is helping to gauge how successful the project is, not just at improving the quality of public policy articles, but at incorporating Wikipedia as a teaching tool and recruiting and retaining college students as editors. we still need you in 2011, but it will mostly be assessments of student articles. Currently, there is another round of assessments to look at the improvements students made to their articles. If possible please assess by 5 January 2011; these results will be presented at an international conference later in January! Have a wonderful holiday season, all the best, ARoth (Public Policy Initiative) (talk) 02:15, 23 December 2010 (UTC)

Good math

Good inaccurate count there! [2] Finally somebody who understands multi-dimensional geometry in this hick town! darwinbish ^BITE 11:24, 27 December 2010 (UTC).

Yer, well, as they won't let us use the normal counter (spoilsports!), somebody had to keep the summary up to its usual standards of accuracy. --RexxS (talk) 16:46, 27 December 2010 (UTC)

"cut without consensus"

Seriously? Wikipedia articles don't get magical protection until consensus is achieved to change them, we don't do that level of status quo bias around here. More to the point, the sentence is already in the article, verbatim. I've been trying to find various compromises and make the lead as sound as possible, but the flip side of this is, there is no consensus to keep that statement in the lead either. If some progress isn't made on compromise, then we're going to end up with an {{npov}} tag on the article, and once that happens, it is nearly impossible to get rid of.--Tznkai (talk) 18:08, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, seriously. The article has been stable in that state for a considerable period, which already represents a consensus that most could live with. You ought to take a look at the archives to see the intensity of debate over much of the wording used – and the impropriety of NPOV tags where there is no serious disagreement among reliable sources. There is no question of 'status quo bias', but a question of whether you are justified in removing properly sourced text that is relevant and important to an understanding of the topic. You boldly removed content from the lead; I reverted that removal, and I'm happy to discuss whether or not it belongs in the lead. I know you are experienced enough not to edit war to force a preferred version. Now, to the point: the sourced text you removed contained important points concerning epidemiology, and it is unsatisfactory to have a summary of Abortion without mentioning them. I can see no reason why you want to remove text from the lead – omitting important issues does not make it more sound, and I see no reason to compromise on the principles laid out in WP:MEDRS. The BRD cycle has been started; you now need to go to talk and discuss your case to see if there is consensus for your proposed change. --RexxS (talk) 18:39, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

I wrote the vast majority of the current lead as well as the organization of the entire article, and I know exactly how hard fought all of it is. And I've been making my case repeatedly on the talk pages, and I'm not the only one who supports some sort of change. BRD functions when all participants seek compromise, it is not the person who wants a change trying to "achieve consensus" for a change, otherwise that would be status quo bias.

As for the "impropriety" of an NPOV tag, so long as there is a serious dispute as to the neutrality (or accuracy, or whatever), the tag is suitable. Just because a statement is supported by a citation doesn't mean it belongs. (For example, if the entirety of the abortion article is that "abortion is the death of a fetus" that would be non-neutral despite being supportable and correct)

As I've said repeatedly, in my edit summary, on the talk page, and here, the sourced information was not removed from the article, it was removed from the lead only. I'm not going to get into an alphabet soup war with you over this, but I am asking you to take this seriously, and make some attempt at compromise instead of enforcing the status quo with reverts.--Tznkai (talk) 02:21, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

This isn't difficult. I think that the two sentences Forty percent of the world's women are able to access therapeutic and elective abortions within gestational limits. The frequency of abortions is similar whether or not access is restricted. are important points and should be included in the lead; you don't, and the change you want is to remove them. That would leave the entire section of Incidence – over a thousand words of text plus images – summarised by An estimated 42 million abortions are performed annually with 20 million of those abortions done unsafely. Are you seriously suggesting that would be an adequate summary of the section? because I don't, and I don't believe other editors will either. So what compromise are you looking for? I think the lead of the article which contains over 5,000 words should be twice as big as it is now. I've made my compromise already by not attempting to put more into it.

If your intention is to appease the section that finds those conclusions uncomfortable, then I'd ask you to reconsider. What's more important: pleasing other editors or getting the article right? Let me also remind you that an NPOV tag also requires that the dispute be serious - i.e. based on a dispute found in reliable sources. It is wholly insufficient for an editor to place a tag simply because they disagree with what the article says. Finally, even if the entirety of the abortion article were "abortion is the death of a fetus", then you would improve its neutrality by expanding it, not by removing it altogether. --RexxS (talk) 05:22, 1 January 2011 (UTC)