User:Geogre/Talk archive 27

Archive #27

Query

Geogre, do you recall a discussion some time ago about one-second blocks for purposes of leaving notes in a block log? I vaguely recall such a discussion and I vaguely recall that you participated. Anyway, the issue has come up at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Matthew Hoffman/Workshop#MatthewHoffman, if you'd care to comment. Best, Mackensen (talk) 02:01, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Yes, I did. I don't like doing them, but I don't see the evil of them as a general thing. Geogre 10:48, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

You know, I think we need to come to a "For Great Justice" thing. Let's figure out the difference between eye for eye justice and actual justice. There is a just principle that we can and should approach, and then there is revenge, which is stupid. However, justice demands alleviation of the harm. If the harm is verbal, then one can easily reverse it with an apology. If the harm is otherwise, then the reversal must be. So, if the harm is "Blocked: troll," then the reversal should be either removal of the comment or a truly official and corresponding "Please disregard the previous." Well, we can't do that. We can offer words. We can offer an official, "We apologize for any inconvenience." I agree that everyone throwing 1 sec. blocks to enter commentary is bad. It's just that it's the nearest thing to justice available. Geogre 11:20, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Irpen / AN

Geogre, with all due respect, this is the second time you commented in an AN(I) thread regarding Irpen and me, and I get the impression you are trying to play his behaviour down in order to defend him. I would greatly appreciate it if you would abstain from further comments unless unavoidable. If it's just my own paranoid perception, please forgive me. I'd still appreciate the gesture. Thank you. I dorftrottel I talk I 12:02, December 4, 2007

Playing it down? No. I think he had cause for bringing it up. He got an answer. Then folks started acting like this was Central Europe War vol. 4. I don't think it was. My feeling is that we create those conflicts by overreacting, and I thought people were overreacting. Was there an overreaction to your RFA? Not entirely: it goes in user talk space. Was it a grave offense? No. I just want folks to be calm about this stuff and not rush to conclusions, and that includes Irpen. Geogre 12:07, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

You may want to read my follow-up at AN. I dorftrottel I talk I 12:11, December 4, 2007

new Quorum thread

I was considering Gurch's report page [[1]], and had an epiphany re quorum. I think you could effectively achieve this right now, if you could convince "voters" of the value of a blocking oppose. If people stopped taking them personally, and were urged to not only vote for candidates they positively supported, but to vote against those on whom they had insufficient opinion, as the default option, then all candidates would start from a net negative assumption. To overcome this, nominees would either have to drum up even higher levels of support, or actively contain opposition - wallflowers could no longer drift by unnoticed. Either way, it would effectively institutionalize de facto quorum.

Am I right? If so, maybe someone should pen a voter strategy handbook? sNkrSnee | ¿qué? 01:21, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Yeesh. Well, I rather agree that people shouldn't take it personally, but I think rather than an automatic vote to oppose, we could do a few things. One would be to count "neutral" votes as "failure to achieve consensus." If we did that, then a great many people would feel freer to vote in that category. It would register not as "I have reason to believe that M.I.L.Quetoast is bad" but rather that, "I cannot support." If RFA is an assertion of trust, then trust can never be silent. Trust is a positive extension of faith beyond "user in good standing." Another way would be to assume 30 "neutral" votes in the absence of votes.

The usual nastiness has had an effect as well. Why, after 8 featured articles, have I stopped working up any article to that standard? Is it because I have no more knowledge in me and no more intellectual curiosity? No. It's because WP:FAC has become a place full of hatred and pettifoggers. Why do people stop going to WP:AFD? Is it because they have no opinions on keep/delete? Of course not. They get overwhelmed by the numbers and get weary of the pissing contests. Why do few people go to WP:RFA? Well, part of it is above -- new users without substantial contributions -- and part of it is insufficiently policed "vote" stacks, where people argue, glare, stare, and growl at one another. It gets hard to get motivated to investigate a user, when everything you say is going to get challenged by Glasscobra or some similarly functioning user. It additionally gets hard to get motivated when the user's edits are 15,000 changes of a single character here and there, adding endashes, or "assessing" articles.

So, if RFA is going to be one of the toxic pages (it shouldn't be, but that's not my concern here) and people going up are going to be 100% stuffing and 0% mattress, we need to have a more institutional and automatic corrective. Perhaps counting "neutral" as "not consensus" would help. Lots of folks would vote "neutral," and the knee jerk "how dare you oppose my friend" users would have a really tough time making that noxious. Geogre (talk) 11:39, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

So we agree, except you'd rather we call them "neutral" votes, rather than "oppose"? I can live with that, but your neutralsitional behaviour is noted. On the other hand, "institutional and automatic corrective" is a wonderful turn of phrase, at least out of context, so you're still winning. It's actually the first time I've ever been told "yeesh", and I'm at a loss for a response, so maybe I'll cry a little and get back to you later. On reflection, that reaction would solve many of the behaviours you seek to correct - maybe we should add a column to vote "yeesh"? Think about it. sNkrSnee | ¿qué? 12:55, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Favour please

Hello hello. You all probably hate me for the position I took on FT2. But it was done in good faith. There is a lot of nasty bullying going on. This refers. If you could help to stop this. I have offered to delete the offending page and do the rest by email. Best edward (buckner) (talk) 20:18, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

Someone has to do something about this. edward (buckner) (talk) 21:02, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

No, I have no involvement in FT2 at all, and after what I endured during my ArbCom run, I'm pretty against blocking one but not another. However, it looks like the temperature has reduced some, there. I hope it stays cool. Geogre (talk) 21:56, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

"Troublesome"

You think I'm "troublesome"? And to think, I voted for you last year. Maybe my judgement could use some improvement, huh? Everyking (talk) 04:19, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I'm sorry you took offense, but I did choose that word carefully, and it's not an insult in intent or context. I've answered more fully at your user talk page. Geogre (talk) 12:20, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

I have never tried to cause problems; I have only tried to solve them. Everyking (talk) 09:07, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes, well, when it comes to that, even Phil Sandifer and Ed Poor can say the same. The problem with cutting the Gordian knot is that you've still got a sword in your hand. Sometimes, you know the trouble that's going to result and you calculate that the problems demand it (because status quo is more trouble than the trouble that results from a bold/violent/disruptive solution). It was not your motives that I questioned. Geogre (talk) 10:00, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Reverts at Politicization of science

Hi, Geogre. I saw your comments on an IP page, and I thought I'd ask your opinion about this revert and others made by the IP editor. contribs

I figured with me and Athene making different sets of well-intentioned edits, we are simply against someone with an ax to grind. I would like to think that none of my edits were biased, but I leave it to you and others to decide that. I'm just trying to show both sides of a very difficult issue. How am I doing? --Uncle Ed (talk) 18:51, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

It's one of those topics, isn't it? I see that the page is now protected, pending working things out on the talk page, which is the proper thing anyway (working them out, I mean, not protecting). I have a feeling that the IP editor may not comment much on the talk page, but I found his behavior to be pretty belligerent when I dealt with him. In fact, he really, really acts like an old time POV person who is at war.

As for this article, though, Ed, you have to know that the title is a euphemism. While the term could mean, and probably should mean, "when science is controlled by political interests or when scientific findings are used for political advancement," the term is hot in politics today in the US. I.e. the very title reflects the current politicization of science. :-( I say this for a reason.

1. This phrase has become popular due to dissent to the Bush administration
2. Defenders, apologists, and dissenters of the administration are eager to
   1. redefine
   2. shift the ground (who's doing it, how political) of the debate.
3. Sources that link to think tanks are not only going to have an assumption of bad faith, but are going to have to meet higher scrutiny
4. Anyone who redefines to speak of general political roles of general science will be fighting against the primary usage and coverage of the present term.

So, we're stuck. It's a political term and a partisan term. It's like "judicial activism" in that the very coverage of the term places Wikipedia within a battle of POV's. The only potential way out is to never define or cover the thing, but to describe the political fight. If we try to describe the phenomenon, we're participating in it.

This is why I used to prefer that we delete such articles or merely redirect them to sections of existing articles. It's not because I'm an enemy of the topic, but because I think the topic is a ping pong ball. Until the game ends, we can't get near the table without either hitting the ball ourselves or getting hit by it, and, either way, the players get ticked off. Geogre (talk) 11:37, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

FAR

Would you be interested in Mediating the scope and purpose of FAR? Your comments on 1755 Lisbon Earthquake indicate that you would retain FA with fewer footnotes than I would, and I am plainly considered a dangerous radical. (I agree that the article appears perfectly sound, but I would like some more indications of what comes from where.)

In the meantime, would you have a look at {{FAR-instructions}}? The current flap began when I attempted to get rid of some of uses of facilitate, and of the Bureaucratic Passive; if FAR is going to encourage good writing, its instructions really ought to be in decent English. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:20, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The current flap began, it should be noted, because no indication of changes was made on talk. I can live with greater brevity in the template.

It was a copyedit; at that it received exactly as much prior discussion as, for example, this substantive edit. I discussed as soon as I was reverted; I really did think that it was going to be uncontroversial, and that the response would be further tweaks. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:58, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I'd suggest we not clutter this talk page. Marskell (talk) 20:00, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I thought your comment on AN/I was quite astute today, Geogre—not necessarily innocent is not necessarily stalking. And you're right that we should not water down the word "stalk" through overuse (as has happened, to some extent, with "civility"). Marskell (talk) 19:42, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. We can certainly be pains in the butts without being stalkers, and we can be fighting without it. The real stalkers are another matter, and even the wiki-stalkers are a different matter. People do pick on each other. People do follow a bit. The kind that get blocked are, or at least should be, the ones who are disrupting (undoing every edit), creating a war (going along to shout opposition everywhere the user is in a discussion), trolling (going to every page to ask a repetitive question or introduce an unrelated dispute). Frankly, what some of the long term feuding parties do bugs me more. The people who check contribs and collect diffs of every bad moment at Wikipedia shows treacherousness. I can deal with an honest opponent. The sneaks are another matter. Geogre (talk) 11:51, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Let me be clear: I think that FA would profit by an interaction of various POVs, not all of them often represented in its deliberations. I was asking if you would be interested in speaking for one of them; we would obtain a mediator to oversee the process from the Committee or the Cabal, as people thought better. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:19, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I'll take a look. FAC needs other points of view, and FAR needs to stop its Matthew Hopkins routine. When we start with the mentality that we are the missionaries trying to save articles, we immediately disrespect previous editors. When we start with the idea that our recent change is great, and the woeful world dwells in ignorance and must be reformed to it, we're begging for a holy war. FAC has had too few points of view, in my view. Bishonen, Giano, and I produced some solid work. I'm the most dissenting from current FAC, Giano least, but we all three dissent from the way things are now, and we all three decided that the atmosphere was too ... too ... let's just say "bad" and be vague (as I can only speak for myself) ... to argue all of the rules, rules, rules, rules, rules.

I prefer judgment to rules. I prefer human intelligence to -bots. I prefer FA's being approved and then left alone unless they possess grievous issues (not merely "has not achieved upgrade to formatX.a9"). The star doesn't mean "you can believe this article," and it less and less means "best of Wikipedia." It is increasingly meaning "adheres to a form." Geogre (talk) 11:51, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

I think the idea of saving articles is quite sound, in many cases. Particularly where the nominator is long gone. We talk about saving Emsworth's, for instance. See qp10qp's stupendous save on Elizabeth I recently; just today I was trying to save a frog.

The word may be patronizing if you're sitting on a review yourself arguing "this is as good as when I first wrote it." But as I've said to you previously Geogre, yours and Giano's FAs are not the norm for pre-'05. A large majority of the old one's that have come through FAR deserved removing. Blanket grandfathering simply wouldn't have worked. I've thought about a limited grandfathering, however, where the nominator is still active and can vouch for all of the information. (A principal reason I kept Restoration literature.) But the idea will drive people on the other extreme batshit. Marskell (talk) 13:07, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Personal attack

First, it tries to say that another person being uncivil is an excuse for a new administrator exhibiting different vices. Second, it throws "civility" around as if it were the paramount crime, when, in fact, there are times for drawing a hard line against specific individuals who are doing things that specifically harm the site, and "civility" must never, ever be understood as "politeness" or "niceness." Third, it is one of those cheap, theatrical comments that everyone can apply to someone else and no one can apply to himself, and therefore it cannot ever catch the proper targets. It was a wretched comment and betrayed a very cheap intellect or extremely derelict rhetoric. Epbr123 (talk) 12:23, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Accusation of "bad faith" FAR

Hi, I felt I needed to respond to your accusation of "bad faith" at Wikipedia:Featured article review/National parks of England and Wales You said "Bad faith nomination again. Is it a surprise or coincidence that the primary author of this and the Lisbon Earthquake left last week and two articles are on FAR this week? These articles were fine for a long time, apparently, and just got bad as soon as the author left. Why?" with an edit summary of: "Let's see: who leaves? Let's FAR them immediately! (petty, childish villains))" I do not appreciate that and I hope you will look at some of the edits listed below which I hope show my good faith:

• I started actively editing Exmoor (as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Somerset) on 28th Nov 2007 to get it to GA (since successful).
• As part of that process I looked at National parks of England and Wales and was surprised that it was an FA (and had been since 2004 before I started editing wikipedia) as it had no inline citations.
• On 4th Dec I put a comment on Talk:National parks of England and Wales suggesting the need for inline citations to be added & started added refs to the article. I also added a request on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK geography & Wikipedia talk:WikiProject England asking people to help improve the article. Nothing happened.
• On 9th Dec I did the FAR & then added the notice to the talk pages of the most prolific editors of the article (as requested as part of the FAR process) - until that point I had no idea who the primary editors were. At that point I noticed a "goodbye" message on the talk page of User talk:ALoan (dated July 2007)

My intention was to improve the quality of the article, and wikipedia in general, and I would be grateful if you would remove your accusation of "bad faith" and being a "petty, childish villain". I hope that my 18,000+ edits & several FA's GA's etc show that I have the best of the project at heart.— Rod ^talk 20:44, 11 December 2007 (UTC)

Quoting you

Just a brief to note to say I've quoted you here. Hope I didn't misrepresent you or take that quote out of context. More generally, I think you've commented on some parts of this case. Was wondering what you thought now? Carcharoth (talk) 00:42, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

No, that's it exactly, and ID is definitely one of those ping pong games. The only part I left out of my analogy is that the players absolutely hate it when you try to take their paddles. :-) This is why these things get intractable in such an almighty hurry. The way I look at it, the original "BATTLEGROUND" stated that articles should not be political battlefields. That was a reference to the old Gdanzig problem and the current Russia-killed-my-joy/Russia-made-your-economy arguments. The same is true of all these ongoing games. (I was on a roll, morning before last. I had my metaphor mojo.) If we were to write WP:PINGPONG, I think it would have to be a document of practical advice for how to stop these games. We don't need more "policy" to yell at malefactors. We need more guidance for the do-gooders and the people who have to deal with all the yelling. Geogre (talk) 12:23, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

editors investigating each other

Hi Geogre, you have recently commented on the practice of editors' digging through each other's contributions with the aim to get an opponent sanctioned, especially postponing doing so until some future point when the moment seems "best", recording anything they find for future use, then running around various pages with the complaints aimed at sanctioning the opponents, rather than address the disputes and also on admins on the civility vigilantism crusade. As you know well, we all agree that civility is a good thing. But this persistent misuse of WP:CIV as a weapon against the opponents is frustrating. Even more frustrating is this mutual stalking, snitching and non-nuanced interference from outside into this already delicate mess with warnings and block buttons thus making things worse by showing that vigilant mutual stalking with the aim to undig more violations is actually working.

I'm a little frustrated by language and the fact that Ioeth is definitely meaning well but making some mistakes. Could you take a look at User_talk:Ioeth#Notification_of_restriction, User_talk:Ioeth#Thank_you_for_the_Notice, User_talk:Dr._Dan#You_are_being_talked_about, User_talk:Halibutt#Regarding_the_Digwuren_case. While some users may be pleased by such incidents and mark small "victories", I am afraid the editing climate would actually be getting even more disharmonious. Thanks in advance, --Irpen 15:39, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Kind of ironic that after expressing concern over editors investigating each other (and I agree with Irpen that it shouldn't turn into a vigilantism crusade), he should then ask one admin to investigate another.

Seriously, I think the Digwuren general restriction on civility for Eastern European area will be an effective means of restoring harmony. I really can't see how enforcing civility would make things more disharmonious. I've checked with User:Ioeth and I am fully satisfied with his approach after he explained it to me, and none of the editors he warned had any real complaints either. Martintg (talk) 03:02, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

And this above is exactly a type of stalking I was talking about. What on earth brought Martin to this page besides following me around? But seriously, I did not ask Geogre to investigate anything, less so to block or warn anyone. I asked him to provide his opinion on the matter. (Interesting who would show up here next.) --Irpen 07:40, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

"Exactly a type of stalking"? Are you assuming bad faith here? In fact I came here on another matter entirely, and noticed your comment here was related to the issue i discussed earlier with User:Ioeth, hence I made my comment. That other issue was my request to Arbcom to suspend both Digwuren's and Petri's ban Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#Requested_motions_to_Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration.2FDigwuren in which I cited Geogre's view that the remedies were too harsh. Now I pleaded with you before you took this case to ArbCom to follow mediation first, since the outcome of Arbcom could be quite unpredictable. In the end the result was Petri Krohn being banned along with Digwuren and findings of fact against youself in regards to incivility and consequently you being noticed in on remedy 11 general restriction. Now this mess can be undone somewhat if you could support this request to suspend the ban of both digwuren and Petri by making a positive comment on the ArbCom request page. I would also appreciate it if Geogre could also make a comment in support of this too. Martintg (talk) 12:55, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Marting, Irpen asked me, as a person who has interacted with him many times before, to take a look. Taking a look is not investigating. I'm rather famous, if anyone is famous on Wikipedia, among the administrators for taking a consistent line against using civility as a truncheon. As recently as two days ago, I made an impassioned, and actually mildly ill-tempered, comment to Morven about this. Irpen was posting on the same page and in the same place. This is consistent, and asking me to weigh in on a new-ish administrator and try to keep him from going astray is pretty nearly the highest principles of Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is big. We have to look for the interested people, because our system for coordinating people doesn't work and hasn't ever worked. This is entirely different from following a user about (are you suggesting that Irpen is following me?) and trying to clip single lines of conversations to get a case.

Finally, I made a rather strong point (if I say so myself) at that RFAR. I did not make it to hurt or help any one person but because I very much believe it. I hope that people remember the point and do seek me out if I can be of help. Geogre (talk) 11:26, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Due to the ArbCom case that Irpen initiated, there is now a general restriction in force across all of Eastern Europe topics, where any personal attack, assumption of bad faith or incivility will be immediately punished. This remedy requires that any editor engaging in incivility in Eastern Europe topics be first warned with a notice on their talk page (which User:Ioeth has correctly done) then immediately blocked if that incivility continues. Like you, I don't believe civility should be used as a truncheon, thus I sought clarification with ArbCom on the matter. The view is that named involved parties, like Irpen, by virtue of the fact that they have already been noticed on their talk pages at the conclusion of the case, are liable for instant block for any incivility, assumption of bad faith or personal attacks. I pleaded with ArbCom to atleast allow those involved parties be warned first, but they were quite firm on this point that named involved parties should get no warning before a block. Perhaps you could plead with them, given your fame you may have more success. Martintg (talk) 12:55, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Barbara Schwartz

Can you take a look at this first stab at a draft, and see how it strikes you?

It could be trimmed more ruthlessly if needed, but I've written as a first try, to the limits of what I felt could be represented fairly and within BLP. I've used government sources and her own filings for claims, where they exist, and drafted with care to make sure the wording does not imply a stance.

As a first question, is it reasonably fair, neutral, covers the main bases, and BLP compliant in your view? FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 19:25, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

My primary concern is that we're going to that phenomenological approach of circling the truth we can't know. It's a common strategy, and we're all accustomed to journalists doing it ("And we searched for someone in favor of euthanasia for cute puppies and eventually found him. In the interests of neutrality, we will now give him equal time with the Society for the Protection of Animals. We go now to St. Bethlehem's Hospital for comment by Heywood U. Quoteme."), and it's what happens when the truth is unsettled. This is the case when dealing with present events (and a reason I tend to stay in the past).

I think critics of both sides have a point if they start to be vicious about the "reliable sources." If they didn't have a point, the truth wouldn't be so hard to know. To be fair we circle the invisible truth in the center by having multiple points of view, but I'm not sure that being neutral is possible.

I haven't replied because I'm still trying to think of what I could say. I really don't see the figure as being notable enough for an article on her own, a biography, so I'm not sure I can be satisfied, and this is on top of the fact that sometimes "vandal magnet" means that we need really powerful claims of importance to justify the amount of work we have to put in. For Madeline O'Hare, Lyndon LaRouche, Ralph Nader, Mary Whitehouse, and others the profile of the controversial figure is so unbelievably high that we have to put in the work.

Still, I will weigh in, per your request, at the bottom of the DRV. I understand the strategy: get something neutral and BLP-free, and then work on issues of AfD/deletion guidelines. I'm just pessimistic. Geogre (talk) 12:37, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Elonka 3

Thank you for your comments in my RfA, and eventual support. Also, I'd just like to clear the air a bit, if I may. I'll be honest that my previous perception of your voting pattern was that, as far as I was concerned, you didn't so much make up your own mind, as have your opinion handed to you by others, and then you would come up with articulate rationalizations afterwards. So I was actually surprised to see you supporting me for adminship, and pleased that you were able to at least consider changing your mind about me. My own comments in the RfA were sincere, and I really do intend to further incorporate the (constructive) criticism towards being a better administrator. I sincerely doubt you'll see anything controversial coming from my new access level. My main goals, as far as the tools are involved, are simply to help out with various backlogs. As an editor though, I fully intend to keep on writing articles, as there are a few more that I definitely want to get to WP:FA status. Probably the most controversial things that you'll see from me in the future, is that I intend to get more involved in policy discussions. Wikipedia definitely has some problems that need to be addressed, and I'd like to see what I can do to help Wikipedia navigate itself to a healthier culture. I hope that, if you do take the time to look at my actions in the future, you will see that my intentions are genuinely positive ones, even if it does mean that I have to butt heads with people every so often, to make progress towards those positive goals. If you ever do have any concerns about my actions though, I encourage you to speak up at my talkpage. I will do my best to listen to everyone who has good faith concerns. --Elonka 16:47, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

The beautiful page!

Nice edit Geogre [2] - I wish there was a WP-most beautiful page section - i really think that one could win it! Giano (talk) 15:17, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Good. I knew I knew the term for what you were referring to, and then I saw something about Disneyland employing forced perspective, and a Christmas light went off in my head. Geogre (talk) 13:08, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and a happy new year Geogre. Thankfully for us, Christmas has improved leaps and bounds, and we'll be in Ireland for the festivities so won't even have to endure the Queen's speech. Hooray! turkey ahoy! --Joopercoopers (talk) 01:29, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! What an interesting engraving, too. I have this brief break between work, and I have vowed to write a real paper for a real presentation in a real... Anyway, I'm enjoying having a bit of a break (to actually get some work done in), and I can manage somewhat to duck the Christmas speeches from ... well ... YouKnowWho, which are a bit worse than the Queen, I'm afraid, in speechify making. (The man is the wood chipper of syntax, the incinerator of morphemes.) Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night this night. Geogre (talk) 13:07, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Buon Natale e buon anno! Giano (talk) 20:44, 23 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Giano. You know, I think that may be my favorite Mary of any Renaissance painting. It's not the obvious maternal part, but the fact that she's so young and innocent looking. There is still that hieratic neck, but the artist seems to have genuinely loved his model, and she seems to have really trusted him. It's very touching. Geogre (talk) 18:32, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

Merry Christmas, Geogre! Nice company you've got there :) But seriously, best wishes from Irpen.

Wow, Irpen, that lady is blushing so much that it's making her blouse pink. Thank you. And merry Christmas to you, too, in a few days. Geogre (talk) 18:32, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

WP:PRIVATE

I've been bold and rewritten it. Your comments would be appreciated. Risker (talk) 16:53, 25 December 2007 (UTC)

Request for arbitration

I have filed a request for arbitration which involves you. Please see Wikipedia:Requests_for_arbitration#Giano_II. John254 04:41, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

"Verb mood"?

This does not look like any sort of change that you describe in your edit summary.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 06:17, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

And yet it was. I was replacing a passive voice construction with active voice. There had been no rationale for removing what I had written, no discussion on the talk page, so I assume that the removal had been vandalism. I was correcting that mistake. Geogre (talk) 12:51, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

You still on strike?

Sorry about the RFPP, but it had to be done - and done by someone previously uninvolved and in a very public way, for everyone's protection. In any case, someone stuck a link to your essay User:Geogre/IRC considered on the talk page and I found it very erudite. It strikes me, however, that the issue of logging has turned out to be something of a canard, and there isn't really a copyright issue from Freenode's perspective. I will try to root out the statement, it might be on meta, but it is definitely around here somewhere and it was fairly recent as well. I am still snickering to myself about Irpen's caption. Risker (talk) 09:53, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I agree with you. Logging is, in fact, not disallowed. Additionally, there is no reason, within Wikipedia's practices and procedures, for not posting logs. There are no copyright issues, and the thought that there are privacy issues is simply incredible. No one has ever licensed privacy. What's more, though, Giano has tried to do this the most polite way possible: passing on only to those who seek (by saying, "Where's the proof?"). That's what you're supposed to do, and yet another block. Geogre (talk) 12:55, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

My essay was born in frustration -- much like my "Fork This" on wp:private. I wanted to point out that, if people just think, they can come to proper conclusions, that they can't edit because "I like IRC, so it's kewel" or "Well, I've never seen any abuse, so there is none." If people only think about what various media do, they would figure it why they're heading for trouble. Now, of course, I'm being belittled for doing the right damn thing and keeping it in user space? Hell, the talk at the time was to put it as a page that...well, the page that David rushed forward to write without input. Being arrogant pays among cows, I guess. Geogre (talk) 13:25, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

IRC essay

Very good. Thanks. Guy (Help!) 16:07, 26 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/IRC

An Arbitration case involving you has been opened, and is located here. Please add any evidence you may wish the Arbitrators to consider to the evidence sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/IRC/Evidence. Please submit your evidence within one week, if possible. You may also contribute to the case on the workshop sub-page, Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/IRC/Workshop.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, Thatcher 00:43, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Let's not quarrel

Re: this, WP:NOT#Not a battleground has always been a reason to delete. Your vote already expresses you disagree. I have great respect for you and the project is too divided. Let's state our separate opinions here and find some other area where we can work together. Respectfully, Durova^Charge! 20:23, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

You are misunderstanding what "BATTLEGROUND" says. It is important that, when we use it to delete, we know what it means. It is therefore important to correct you there so that others who read it realize that "disagreement" is not the same thing as a violation of BATTLEGROUND. It's important to know what the deletion guideline says and to use it appropriately. Geogre (talk) 20:28, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Walk a mile in these moccasins, Geogre, and you may view that differently. At any rate, may I invite you to visit Wikipedia:WikiProject Textile Arts? I've been raising Navajo rug with an eye toward WP:GA and it would be wonderful to have another experienced editor in the neighborhood. Regards, Durova^Charge! 20:33, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

On the Arbcom

Geogre-

As someone who agrees with you totally on the issues at hand at the Arbcom (and have currently become so frustrated that I've chosen to shut down my MrWhich account), please don't allow those out for Giano's hide to take you down. I've never seen you so frustrated and angry. I'm not sure I agree or disagree with your characterization of some of those currently working to get those who disagree with them banned/desysoped as "monsters." I do know that your characterizing them as such will be thrown up as further "evidence" to desysop you, and to discredit you. Phil, and Tony, and many, many others are who they are. They have done what they have done. They know it, and will never admit it. Nothing we say will ever change that. I'm beginning to think it would be better to leave them to slap each others' backs, mischaracterize their opponenents actions, and congratulate each other on how well they're doing in "cleaning up" the project. They've gotten rid of Giano. Others have followed, and more will follow later. Arbcom will make their decision, and if they unwisely choose to desysop you, or ban Giano, then simply leave the project, and if you choose to return, start again, write great articles, and do your best again to be an agitating force for change. I know that is what I will most likely be doing. --Mr Which???05:18, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

What I said is that I regard such as monsters, and it is unwise for anyone to read my comments, especially significant ones like that, without thinking about the words precisely. I could even argue out that they are monsters. However, Tony is on the workshop comparing Giano to a monster (Mr. Hyde), and there is ample evidence of his regarding de facto anyone he wishes to malign as a "problem user" who doesn't get a hearing.

What's also important to know is that Phil Sandifer has been looking for something to fight with me about for three years or so. I was instrumental in shooting down "semi-policy" with the departed user Orthogonal. I was a leader in getting rid of his prima facia absurd version of NPA. I was at least significant in stopping his move to have "experts" get double votes on things like web comics (where he boasted of getting a Ph.D. in web comics). I.e. Phil's animus toward me is much, much greater than his arguments.

If people are ready to demote me for "incivility," then it will be well done, for it will mean that Wikipedia's arbitrators have abandoned reason altogether. The "evidence" Phil has should be read in total. I am confident that any rational person would see the silliness of it.

I've been editing pretty calmly, actually, although I may be counting on other people being smarter than Phil. I know that I am, but I hope other people are, too. For example, if my "incivil" comments are such, then where was the reaction? My talk pages have not been deleted. Where are the protests? Where are the efforts to get a nicer set of words from me? Where is the upset by the "victims?" Indeed, where was Phil, so mortally wounded by my warning to him to not act out of malice, expressing this pain from such an attack? Where were the efforts at mediation? Additionally, I'm tacked on, principally by Phil Sandifer, with a great big "he was mean to me" encoded in a thousand diffs that show little. If I'm to be arbitrated on anything but the edit war, then we need to see attempts at working things out by the involved parties. I haven't received a single comment on my talk page from any of these supposedly aggrieved parties.

Lastly, though, that brings us to the folly of the whole of the proceeding: where was the "other side" trying to work things out? Whether we're talking about the edit war or... what are the other issues supposedly involved?... where is the evidence that people tried to talk them out before using protection (David Gerard), using rollback, or starting vexatious and punitive RfAr? I assume that people on ArbCom are intelligent and dispassionate enough to see and ask these questions.

As for Phil: he'll continue to argue out of his self-interest, I imagine, as he has for some time now, and he'll continue to look for anything he can to say against me. Meh. If ArbCom agrees with him, then I really needn't be here, because that would mean that all of those who want Wikipedia to reflect their ego deficiencies will have a piece of the reward. I'm not interested in MyFace.com. Geogre (talk) 14:24, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Architecture of Aylesbury

Hi Geogre. I note you've put the old intro back into Architecture of Aylesbury. I suggest you take a moment to read what it says. There is no supporting references for it. It is clearly either a copyvio or a piece of Original Research. I'm going to pop it back to the version I'm currently working on. I'll put a work in progress tag on it, and ask that you come talk to me about my very real concerns about the article. I've been working on it for some time, trying to salvage it. It's mostly a well written personal essay, though it does have the structure of a decent article. Excessive - and possibly not notable, however, worth saving. Please - before reverting any more - take a close look at some of the personal assertions on it - most of them I've now removed! Many regards - SilkTork *^SilkyTalk 18:34, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that saying that it's "clearly" copyvio is not sufficient for removing something that large. We have to find that it's copyvio before we eradicate that much text. Additionally, saying that it is clearly original research is, again, not sufficient for removing that much text, in my view, unless you have a challenge to it. I.e. if you have reason to believe that it is either 1) incorrect, 2) so tenuous that it's likely to be challenged, 3) contradicts what is said elsewhere, then it is fitting to demand references. Otherwise, the absence of citation does not imply either copyvio nor OR. Simply put, eliminating a vast swathe, especially in a case like this particular one, where the original author is temporarily (I hope) unavailable to answer your questions, demands, essentially, substituting one set of judgments for another.

Putting an "in progress" stamp on is probably fine. I hope that Wetman and Giano II and others with more direct knowledge of the particularities can talk things through, but the "like an essay" and "incorrect tone" is quite dismissive of the work. Given the author(s), I have every reason to extend much more faith than that. They have histories of extremely thoroughly researched work, but they also believe, as I do, that one does not cite common knowledge, nor cite simply because one is making a thesis statement. Geogre (talk) 18:40, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

I too admire the work of Giano, and, like you, supported him in the ArbCom election. This Aylesbury Architecture essay, however, is a bit naughty. I want to save it and that's what I am doing - though I have got mad at it a number of times while working on it! Stuff like this: "Hampden House at the junction between the High Street and Vale Park Way is one of the town's most interesting modern buildings. It is in a style seldom seen elsewhere. Conceived as an office block for an international company, its curved facades hint at a revival of the Streamline Moderne: this is further enhanced by the upper floors themselves appearing as bands of brickwork and glass. The large store on the ground floor is recessed into a faux arcade of a lighter stonework than the upper floors, providing a mixture of light and shade in an almost Baroque effect of chiaroscuro to the more solid floors above." is fascinating. It is a very authoritative piece. But who is speaking? Who has declared the building to be one of Aylesbury's most interesting? Who has found it to be a style seldom seen elsewhere? Who is reviewing the building and feels it is an almost Baroque effect of chiaroscuro? This is clearly against the principles of Wiki. It's a cheeky essay - nicely written, but far too personal! SilkTork *^SilkyTalk 19:03, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

You're being far, far too fine. I've never been to the town, but even I would say that it's "one of the town's most interesting modern buildings." You can accuse it more of using wiggle words than of being too demonstrative. Streamline Moderne is rare, and if the building is an example of that, then it sure as shootin' would be a style rarely seen elsewhere. I.e. the next sentence justifies the claim made, and the two together justify the "most interesting" appellation. I don't see the outrage at all. Again, I see this as a standard compositional technique. You set up the claim, and then you show all the evidence. You don't use a citation for the claim, because 1) it's not necessary, if the proof follows 2) you're often at a point where you have to cite common knowledge. This much I do know about architecture: International Moderne was fascinating, short-lived, and is rare today. I don't know if the building qualifies, but, if it does, it's got to be worthy of study. (The drummer for my punk band was an architect, and he was always raving about international moderne and how it was killed by fat cat businessmen falling for Bauhaus's cheapness rather than design.) Geogre (talk) 05:58, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

Edit warring block warning

Hi Geogre. Thank you for your message. Please note that the dicussion has rather been on the article title (initially Mongol conquest of Jerusalem), as it was considered POV by some, hence the attempt at changing it to something more neutral (Mongol raids on Jerusalem (1300)). The content itself is highly referenced and has always been available on the Franco-Mongol alliance page (which, at 170k, needs some sub-article creation). Regards. PHG (talk) 05:28, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem is forking during a dissent-filled discussion. More particularly, you seem to have been more than bold in striking out for a minority point of view. These are not merely acts that create animosity, but they virtually never serve the interests of the people making the forks. When the issue is naming and where to lodge an article, Wikipedia has a long tradition, even if it has weaknesses, of always trying to lodge an article at the most likely search term location. Therefore, if hypothetically there were a question of "Little Big Horn Massacre" or "Defeat of George Custer" or "Death of George Custer" or "Sioux victory against the 7th Cavalry," we'd go for the "massacre." It's the more valuative, the less neutral, but it's the likely search, if there is no compelling reason to prefer another title. Among those others that I mentioned, they all have their advantages, all correct one problem with the others or another, but, if there is no consensus among scholars and then there is no consensus among editors, we have to default to the bad but common location and seek to correct it in the text. You simply must get consensus among editors or demonstrate an Anglophone consensus among scholars to win the argument about locating the article. Geogre (talk) 21:18, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Queluz National Palace

This article, to which you contributed, will be featured on the Main Page on January 5, 2008.[3] Risker (talk) 17:50, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Far out! I wonder how the article ever got written, illustrated, or edited, as its author is, I'm told repeatedly, hostile and doesn't get along with people. I wonder.... Could it be...just maybe...that the author is not hard to work with? Is it possible that... that... people who communicate with the author on his talk page and try to work with him report a delightful experience? I guess we'll never know, as the people who assure me that he's horrible never seem to have written to him on his talk page. Geogre (talk) 18:09, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, sometimes we do. Happy new year, Geogre; I bet there's dozens of us who appreciate your work here more than you ever know. Antandrus (talk) 18:20, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Well Geogre, I am just the messenger here. I will point out, however, that the message went to 28 different people all told, from start to end of the FAC drive. Leadership is demonstrated in giving control as well as assuming it. Risker (talk) 18:47, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

I should be explicit, because I might have been making too rueful a point, there. Giano is characterized at arbitration, over and over again, as some kind of 'orrible monster who is just impossible to get along with. However, that's a reflection of the horrible, dreadful, and inappropriate people making those characterizations. None of them have been at Giano's talk page trying to communicate. They do not listen, do not compromise, do not try to work with others, and they complain that anyone who complains about their actions (not words, not motions, but actions) is some how "incivil." Civility begins and ends with discussion. Let no one complain of Giano's "civility" who has never discussed matters with Giano. In fact, Giano's FA articles are never solo endeavors. He works with people (imagine that!) and cooperates with them to produce the articles (there should be a website where people edit cooperatively...I bet it would be a big hit). Queluz National Palace is probably the most outstanding example of a page that Giano did that was fully cooperative. He relied heavily on the efforts of others and was gracious with them all along. It is an article that makes all of these charges of "incivility" a lie. I can immodestly say of myself that I am sometimes difficult, but I am generally willing to speak with anyone who listens and to listen to anyone who reasons. However, the FA's Giano makes are not only an embarrassment to those accusers who manage to write a -bot or come up with 10k of changes to articles reflecting some point of view, but a wholesale rebuttal to charges that Giano does not cooperate well with others. The fact that the accusers have no evidence of communicating with Giano is just another stone on the grave of the "Giano" strawman. Geogre (talk) 21:12, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Wow! What a truly horrible mixed metaphor upon which to end. You're exactly right about everything else, though. sNkrSnee | ¿qué? 23:43, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, well, they can't all be winners. I had a professor who swore that he had actually gotten the following on a paper, "It was a virgin field into which the hand of man had not yet set foot." For my part, I never get anything so elaborate, although I did once get someone write that something was outlandishly expensive. It "cost a nominal egg." I have been largely forswearing the arbitration and leaving it to the hyperactive ministrations of the people with beefs, but I do hope that someone is noticing that the people with beefs never attempted in any form or fashion to settle them (just to cook them (couldn't resist)). Geogre (talk) 20:16, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

That was so awful, it felt like a steak through my heart. Why can't being right be enough for you? sNkrSnee | ¿qué? 21:22, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Ref: "It was a virgin field into which the hand of man had not yet set foot." I am going to steal that and put it on my userpage. The first thought that came to my mind when reading it was "Does this mean Jesus was a breech baby?" Risker (talk) 21:26, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Aelle of Sussex pronunciation

Geogre, you were helpful on the pronunciation of Ine a while back; I wonder if you could be similarly helpful for Ælle of Sussex? Someone has posted a question on Talk:Ælle of Sussex, and I have no idea either how it should be pronounced or how to write an IPA pronunciation. I can probably figure the latter out; any chance you can help with the former? If you have time, it would be appreciated -- the article's going on the main page on Monday, I just found out, so it would be nice to fix it by then. Mike Christie (talk) 00:38, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Have done. I must say, though, that Æ is confusing and really a mess, so I didn't direct anyone there for a discussion of the vowel "ash." The only thing I can't tell is whether or not the terminal vowel got any voicing. It probably did. Therefore, take the a sound in "ash" and then add "lluh." Ash is a great letter, by the way, and we need it today. "Apple" and "all" use different sounds and get one lousy vowel, but in Old English we had two vowels for the two sounds. We kept the sounds and lost the vowel. (We also had two letters for the two different /th/'s. "Thin" and "then" are pronounced exactly the same except for the /th/. In OE, we had two letters for the two sounds. We kept the sounds, lost the letters.) Geogre (talk) 04:16, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Now that's a southern vowel shift! ""Thin" and "then" are pronounced exactly the same except for the /th/." Maybe in your neck of the woods. Our article says, not in Savannah. And certainly not up north. Jd2718 (talk) 01:52, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

The vowel distinctions are really, really subtle, and I should not have said "exactly." The critical matter is the aspirated and non-aspirated /th/. I.e. the difference between thorn and eth. (And, by the way, loads of dialects conflate the /e/ and what is represented by an i in those words. That i wobbles back and forth all over the US and many places in the UK and all over Aust. What's interesting from a dialectological point of view is that there is a bizarre "Valley Girl" dialect that has been running in parallel to regional dialect for about 30 years now, and it has pushed the /e/ in "then" into a full epsilon -- a position it hasn't had in oh so many years. Listen to Paris Hilton say "then," and you'll hear this lengthening of the e. (By the way again, the dialect had nothing to do with the San Fernando Valley, nor the song "Valley Girl," nor the movie "Valley Girl," and yet it was spreading across college age women, and solely women, for decades.)) Anyway, I've lived all over the eastern US and never heard a population with much of a vowel distinction in those words, but all of them carry the thorn/eth. Geogre (talk) 13:27, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

It's really clear that vowels just won't stay put. I try to read some of the science describing them eg Labov's simpler summaries; they're tough. The big chain shifts are complicated, but there are other things going on. The Certainly what happens before 'r's is strange, and before 'n's, too. There are spots in the midwest where I swear Ian and Anne sound the same. The development of different sounds or patterns for men and women is fascinating. Elsewhere (and perhaps in English, further back) affected extreme pitch differences occur. I've heard it in Japanese (without understanding, just a subtitled movie). Kind of shocking.

But the science explaining why these things occur? Separation, influences, homogenization, ok, ok, but why in one direction sna not another? Got me. Consonants seem a bit more conservative. The voiced th shows up initially only in a few "special" words - and later in not all that many. They both show up later, sometimes as alternates (breath/breathe, bath/bathe, swath/swathe, froth/well, there should be something), but my favorite bit of th-iania is the non-productive -th suffix - making a list of the words with it makes a neat party game with a dull enough party.

This is a place, btw, where WP appears to produce reasonable content. Jd2718 (talk) 02:55, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, Geogre; I didn't get to add this to the article -- I was too nervous to add the IPA, possibly incorrectly, just prior to it going on the main page -- but I will at some point. I really appreciate the help. Mike Christie (talk) 01:57, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Zacharey Grey

Beautiful. Funny, I was just thinking about you when I wrote No. 60. And did you get the express approval of Wikiproject RubberStamp to write this article without a single inline citation? And without an infobox? The article is naked without the input of Wikiproject Widgets! The gall! But I joke. I am glad you are still writing; thank you. Antandrus (talk) 01:12, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Antardus, that is wonderful. I concur with #60 entirely. Thank you, by the way, for reverting the vandalism of my user page. It turned out that that person was up to no good. An IP editor with almost no edits and then two user page changes in a night? Seems like something fishy was going on there. At any rate, I did Grey because he was red, and because he fought Oldmixon, and because I'm researching Pope just now for a thing I'm doing on Essay on Man, and I had to go find Isaac Watts, and that led me to do a bunch of assorted grazing in the library, and that led me to grab a DNB and start looking for people I might have overlooked. (Grey is important for my Popery because of his arch-arch-arch-hyper Establishment stance and his tussle with Warburton, because Warburton wrote the standard explanation of Essay on Man, and there is reason to suspect that the poem does not mean what we have all taken it to mean, that we have been reading Warburton rather than Pope for all this time.)

However, I did not get the permission of the projectors, and so, no doubt, my article is "Start class" or "Stub," and of "Low" importance, and I neglected to get a photograph of him for the infobox. I also did not indicate whether he had natural breasts or implants. I don't know why I keep writing these desperately incomplete articles, but at least I give the projectors something to do. Geogre (talk) 04:27, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

By chance today I've received an 1801 edition of his annotated Hudibras, so you've saved me the trouble of hunting for sources on the chap. Yomangani^talk 01:36, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

That's good stuff. You can see that he's quite partisan, but you can also see that, although he had a really big axe to grind, no one can say that his annotations are wrong. They're partisan as all get out, but so is Hudibras. I love Part One, but Part Two is not nearly as fun or funny. Hudibras is one of the forgotten masterpieces. All of the early 18th c. stuff, and all of the late 17th c. stuff and then some, needs heavy apparatus to be comprehensible to modern readers, and that really hurts. I have seen any number of people read even Swift, of all things, and say, "I can tell it's funny, but I don't get the joke." I tell people that reading these pieces is like watching Saturday Night Live or The Daily Show 100 years from now. The topical references and the ongoing political fights that make the stuff so good to contemporaries can bury it to later generations. The great stuff has fantastic performance too, though, and I think Hudibras qualifies. Geogre (talk) 04:27, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Guess the Point

Spanish moss hangs around, looking at its own reflection, and being generally purposeless. It's not good food, not good shelter, not good insulation, and not good for anyone, but it's just sort of there, and it makes its presence known to anyone with a red bug infestation.

I could be making any one of a number of metaphors with this picture. Geogre (talk) 18:56, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

elephants are suprisingly good at hiding? sNkrSnee | ¿qué? 00:33, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

I think you might mean mastodons, no? Risker (talk) 00:45, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

yup, that's exactly what I meant, I just couldn't bring myself to say it. I'm a petty, spiteful man. sNkrSnee | ¿qué? 00:57, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I think it is more of a snuffleupagus. A much rarer breed. Risker (talk) 01:02, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

That's a brilliant compromise that we can all agree upon, which is all the clue I need that it's anathema to the wiki spirit. Unless Snuffy went berserk and gored Bird, but they don't show that episode anymore... sNkrSnee | ¿qué? 01:12, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Spanish moss can be wadded up and shoved down a gun barrel and fired at one's enemies. Suppose you're irritated at the other person, and you want to shoot them, but you don't have any bullets. You grab hold of the moss, make a plug of it, and shove it down your gun barrel, after the powder, of course. You then touch off the pan, and, two months later, there is a lot of smoke, a "pfloomp" noise, and a pellet of flaming Spanish moss moves toward your enemy and lights the woods on fire. Geogre (talk) 13:34, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

You have mail. Gatoclass (talk) 20:32, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

• Explaining the point: The image has nothing to do with Spain. Spanish Moss is found not in Spain, but in the southern US, as well as through Central and Southern America. The image has nothing to do with moss, either. All of this is about a group of users of Wikipedia and not a group of editors of Wikipedia. If anyone sees the image and derives a personal application, or, worst of all, an ethnic or national one, that person is inferring something I did not imply nor intend. I will make an explicit response, later, to the group of user I have in mind, but not now. Geogre (talk) 11:43, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Memory

• Articles for deletion/Asiaphile
• Articles for deletion/Asiaphile/2004-12-14

Have you remembered that name, yet? Uncle G (talk) 12:17, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

• It simply can't be. With the promises of good behavior, etc., there is simply no way that that particular user would show up to rewrite articles by Giano. That's just unimaginable. Surely the highly ethical, rational, dispassionate friends of that user would warn him not to do that kind of thing. (Not, though, that I have changed my view on that article. It's a poor name, and it's a goofy idea to try to have an article on the subject that focuses solely upon the "I dig Japanese girls" nonsense.) Geogre (talk) 13:02, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
  • You've lost me on the "Giano" business. I don't see any contributions by xem in the edit history of that article. I've no idea who "that user" is. But yes, that's why I'm asking whether you remembered that better name. My best guidance at the moment is a book, the as cited in the AFD discussion, whose subject headings and content are making me lean towards a merger of the two articles into male preferences for Asian women or some such title. Uncle G (talk) 18:51, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
• Oh, just wondering about the "delete" nominators and wondering if they're the same, given the other thing that ST has done to come to my lazy attention.
• Anyway, I have a serious problem with the subject. It's a big, big topic. See, we have to distinguish the cultural from the physical, the historical from the current. A lot of the desire for "Asian women" is this b.s. desire for the submissive creature, some of it is for the porcelain doll, some of it is the love of exoticism, some of it is just the conflation of the love of small women, some of it is historically the transgressive impulse, some of it is indeed a desire for women with straight black hair, etc., In other words, the elements are such a mish mash of epochs and mythologies, so much a part of yearning for the Other, so much part of that dreadful Orientalism and Occidentalism stuff, that I don't see how on earth there can be an article that isn't just 1) blind, 2) a mash note, 3) if none of the previous, a dictionary definition. Of course there is a big historical fetishizing of the oriental woman, but it's not the same at any given time. (E.g. is it commonplace in populations where Oriental and Caucasian/African populations exist in equal numbers, or is it always a product of distance and rarity?) Geogre (talk) 19:41, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Who watches the London Spy?

Won't one of you who watches Geogre's talk page and has a copy of the DNB concealed about their person please take pity on poor Ned Ward? He may be a dunce but he deserves a better than that stub. (Geogre, I apologise for using your page as a clearing house, but you do attract a better class of editor at your Levée) Yomangani^talk 17:03, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I second your motion, in fact. Ned needs better. Poor Ned, he was much maligned in his own time, and he's ripe, absolutely ripe, for a doctoral dissertation. If I were advising any doctoral students, I'd aim them straight at Ned and tell them to pick up Foucault in one hand and London Spy in the other. Talk about a man clawing and scraping to create himself: Ned's him. Geogre (talk) 19:43, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't have the time or expertise to do anything with him myself, but could probably email a copy of the ODNB article (and possibly the original DNB) to someone. David Underdown (talk) 20:08, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

I have access to print DNB 2004, obviously, since I rifle through it constantly, but I've stayed away from Ned because he deserves a fuller article than DNB gives. It's too bad, really, that there isn't a recent full bio., because he's a great study, like Tom D'Urfey or Robert Gould. Geogre (talk) 20:13, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

Speaking of rifling: William Melmoth. That's the thing. This guy wrote a book that was very pious and serious, and he was rich all along, ruling class, etc. The life is stable and calm, the book a bit high minded, and it's just not as interesting as someone like Ward, who had to fight and scrape and whose work shows it. Nearly a century later, Tobias Smollett is a scrapper. These are the fun and endlessly interesting people, and there is so very, very much to say about them, if only we have time and resources. Geogre (talk) 00:47, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Cows and Horns

Geogre, Geogre, Geogre. Surely this edit was a joke. Someone as intellectual as you must know of a little cow called Elsie? I guess all that English Literature knowledge in your brain didn't leave any room for animal husbandry? --Tex 21:32, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh for heaven's sake. It's a Highland, of course the cow has horns.[4] I'm trying to remember what a wide forehead is supposed to mean, phrenologically speaking... Risker (talk) 22:20, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Prrrbt! Must be some kind of European thing! Elsie was cross dressing as Elmer, I always thought, but good old American cows, like they were meant to be when John Wayne created 'em, don't have no horns! (As for me, I have a high brow, a low down, and I've taken my lumps. (I did see a book that told me how to do palm reading, and, according to that, I've been dead for a while, now.)) Geogre (talk) 22:52, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, that explains a lot. Risker (talk) 22:53, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, I grew up in Texas and I've had a few interactions with horned cows in my day. (No, not those kind of interactions!) --Tex 23:02, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

The funny thing is that I've got cattle all around me. Well, not very close and all around, but within a mile all around, and I'm pretty sure that some of my charges ride cows when they can't get the golf cart charged up, but these are all white face and brahmins and such like 'at 'ere. I don't see horns on them, but I learned long ago that it's better if I just eat them and let someone else do the handling and killing and packaging (and cooking). Geogre (talk) 23:05, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Digwuren restriction

I have asked arbcom to clarify the procedure concerning this clause, and named you as another user who raised a query about it. I hope I have not mischaracterized your position, but anyway, you are welcome to comment there if you choose. Regards, Gatoclass (talk) 11:09, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

No, I have big questions, too. It seems to me that the restrictions were intended to cover the proliferation of sock puppets and fast-moving block evasion, not to empower any person who complains. The difficulty of "incivil" behavior is that they're in the eye of the beholder, unless we look to the effects of the behavior or avowed intent. It seems to me that the restrictions employed "administrator" as a short hand for "uninvolved" administrator and assumed that the administrators would use tests for evaluating. Thatcher seems to aim for a zero-tolerance, but, in doing so, that is getting back to the unintended result of giving the most offended person the power to get anyone else blocked. That can't be a good idea, because it rewards sock puppets and rapidly moving block evasion. Geogre (talk) 11:52, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, so basically what you're saying, is that you think the initial bar should be set higher? I'm hardly likely to disagree :) Gatoclass (talk) 13:51, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

Enforcement on X-Ethnicity/Nationality disruption

Suppose we have a problem with Fredonia. Fredonians and their natural enemies, the Elbonians, are editing Wikipedia sometimes to sing their own praises, sometimes to tweak the noses of their enemies, sometimes to deny critical terminology, other times to insert critical terminology. When a particular user is blocked, half a dozen new names appear to reinstate that user's point and to complain about how the nasty Elbonians/Fredonians are controlling Wikipedia.

To deal with this, ArbCom might issue a restriction designed to prevent any episode from escalating. If so, they can do so only by relying upon independent, dispassionate, and thorough investigation. Without that, disruption will be enabled rather than prevented, because six Fredonians can go to say, "This Elbonian is disrupting us," and six Elbonians can come to say, "This Fredonian is being incivil to us." In other words, without investigation and independence, all that happens is that more disruption results. Complaining is just as effective as name calling, if the goal is silencing another user.

"Incivility" is supposed to mean (by most lexical standards), that behavior that is against societal norms, something that arises from barbarity, a behavior that shows no awareness of the rules of conversation and which erodes civility. Well, that is only something we can interpret either A) by knowing exactly the rules of social behavior, B) assessing the effect of the speech or behavior and demonstrating a deterioration of social action. The only way that A) can be employed is by a survey or gaging "community standards." B) is easier, but, when we apply it in these cases (the Fredonians and Elbonians), what we see is that societies are at odds with one another, that the origin of the speech and behavior is one social group against another. It can therefore be a matter of insult or being insulted. If I can be insulted and offended on behalf of my Fredonian countrymen, then I can uphold my Fredonianism against the outsiders. If I can call the Fredonians murderous half-wits, then I can affirm my Elbonian society by putting down the awful Fredonians.

In other words, any administrator applying "incivility" to nationalist or ethnic or religious communities at odds with one another is completely out of his or her tree. Looking for "who feels insulted" is, simply put, nuts.

Obviously, we apply "civility" as a standard in these instances because we are silently (and, I think, unconsciously and ill-advisedly) supposing "in accordance with building an overall social group that is beyond and between the subgroups and ethnicities." In other words, what an uninvolved administrator has to look for is not insult, but, instead, "Who is trying to pit one group against another? Who is trying to subdivide the editing population to create an us and them?"

Anyway, that's what I think. Any subgroup that acts as a subgroup to define, block, or control another subgroup is being uncivil. Thus, when six or seven users mobilize instantly to try to get the editing privileges of another user curtailed, I fear that a new orthodoxy and control is being offered, and that's anathema. Geogre (talk) 20:47, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

The problem with the approach of looking for "Who is trying to pit one group against another? Who is trying to subdivide the editing population to create an us and them?", particularly when applied to ethnic groups, is that it is a recipe for the kind of xenophobia and scapegoating that was prevalent in certain countries in the 1930's. Martintg (talk) 02:56, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

What the hell? Trying to find out who is trying to create a subpopulation at Wikipedia is xenophobia? Gosh. That's not much of a stretch. This is Wikipedia, and the English Wikipedia, and it has to serve neutral points of view. It has to serve an overriding and unified editing group. Any faction is unwelcome. Geogre (talk) 03:48, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

One neutral point of view, one unified editing group, one English Wikipedia, is that it? Perhaps you ought to discuss your approach in dealing with these ethnic groups allegedly behind pitting one subgroup against another on Jimbo's talkpage: User_talk:Jimbo_Wales#On_the_topic_of_east_Europeans_and_draconian_sanctions. Maybe you could identify these groups for the benefit of the community. Martintg (talk) 04:17, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

PS, once you identify these groups, how would you go about identifying its members so other admins know who they are dealing with? Martintg (talk) 04:24, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Ohhhh, I see. Wanting harmonious editing is "eine volk, ein Gott," eh? Well, you know, you should really be campaigning against the local Department of Motor Vehicles. They say that people who won't stand in the line are not going to get served. Obviously, they're Nazis. And the police who demand that all people refrain from beating each other up are actually storm troopers? You're... umm... well, let's just say that argument by analogy needs not me to deride. ("Hitler was a vegetarian. So is X. Therefore, X is a Nazi!") Geogre (talk) 13:25, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

?? You are making the assumptions and analogies here, I am merely attempting to understand where you are coming from. Your proposals to achieve "harmony" appear to be thus: Identify those "disruptive" ethnic groups that are wrecking the "harmony" of Wikipedia. Then if User:xxxx makes a complaint against User:yyyy over some incivility, first check if User:xxxx belongs to the designated "disruptive" ethnic group, if so, dismiss/admonish/sanction/block/ban User:xxxx without regard to the substance of the original complaint, since membership of the designated group alone is sufficient evidence of bad faith. Did I get that right? If so, how do you propose these members of the designated "disruptive" ethnic group be identified for the benefit of other admins who may have to deal with them in the future, have them wear a little badge on their talk pages? Martintg (talk) 19:38, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I do all that? I was thinking, instead, that I looked to see if the user is part of warring parties and then looked to see if the complaint is designed to win in a struggle, and thus prevent harmonious editing, or if it was trivial, or if it was a form of insult itself. If you go complain that I'm a Nazi for wanting to suppress parties at Wikipedia, your complaint is an insult. From what I've seen, many of the complaints are, in fact, insults. They are never, "X said Y, and this was an insult." They are, "X pursued his pro-fascist agenda by saying Y to the heroic and innocent angels of Z." Complaints can be insults. Complaints can be war by other means. Insults can be insults, and they can be complaints, and they can be war by other means. Therefore, I recommend making sure that administrators investigate and be sure that the people involved are not warring. If they are, then zero tolerance means putting the complainers as well as the "incivil" person "on notice."

It's pretty simple: don't fight. That's about it. Geogre (talk) 20:15, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm... This approach could be seen as a massive assumption of bad faith on the part of the admin which is open to gaming. There is a content dispute between an individual and a group of editors which is proceeding reasonably civilly. However the tide of consensus is turning against that individual, so he insults the group "you are just a bunch of xxxx POV pushers" (where xxxx = some political, ethnic, national, religious tag) and stirs the pot with a bit of disruptive edit warring too. The other party brings a complaint to an admin, however the admin believes this complaint is "warring by other means" because he believes the complainants belong to a particular group, and thus he sanctions the complainants. Thus it is a positive result for the individual who initiated the incivility, the complainants gets sanctioned, the ethnic group the complainant belongs gets further stigmatised, leading to admins further doubting the good faith of members of this particular group in future. Martintg (talk) 20:57, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

"Who is trying to pit one group against another? Who is trying to subdivide the editing population to create an us and them?"

Hmm, I can see you've thought about these issues quite deeply Geogre. I guess I could comment further, but I'd probably run the risk of being accused of "bigotry" or something again if I did, LOL.

Anyhow, I decided to withdraw my request for clarification at arbcom. For one thing, I have an obvious COI in raising the issue. For another, I really don't want to put Thatcher on the spot, because regardless of what one may think of her decisions, I'm sure she made them in good faith and I can understand why she did what she did. If she hadn't sanctioned me as well as the others there probably would have been a new round of complaint, so by doing so she effectively stopped the dispute from continuing.

Apart from which, she's indicated she will consider removing my notice in future given good behaviour, so I really don't have that much left to complain about. Gatoclass (talk) 04:46, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Thatcher is a good egg, generally, so I can only think that he or she was acting upon general practice rather than creating practice. However, the above argument is shocking. The Nazis invoked language of one people. I invoke language of a harmonious group of editors that do not subdivide for real world nationalist reasons. Therefore, I must be just like the Nazis. It's staggering. Geogre (talk) 13:25, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, what argument are you talking about? Are you talking about Thatcher's apparent decision to sanction all parties regardless of guilt? Gatoclass (talk) 14:59, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

The Distrest Poet‎

Could you have a look at this if you get a chance (end of the Background section). Paulson advances a theory that it is anti-Pope, and I'm not sure of some his conclusions. Though I've been careful to point out they are his, a second opinion on whether it is worth including would be handy. (and what's this ...whose work is considered a high point of pre-industrial bookbinding... who is the great post-industrial bookbinder?) Yomangani^talk 12:56, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I will. Paulson scares me. He has been known to be mean to people who disagree with him. I can't see how the painting could be anti-Pope, since it repeats Pope's characterization of the scribbler from Dunciad. As for Mearne, I didn't know what to say. I have never had the money or the trainspotting impulse to notice bindings or value them, so I wanted to find a way that an outsider like myself could assert that the guy's work is good (and notice that I used the passive: it ruined my whole day to do it), so "is considered" and yet I haven't the vaguest about computer-assisted book lathes spinning out embedded chips that play "Jingle Bells" when you open the book, and shifting holographic covers that change the cover every time you move, etc. I went for the pre-industrial and actually meant pre-Industrial Revolution. Please to fix. It is an ugly sentence from someone who knew not how to praise a book binder. Geogre (talk) 13:29, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. The anti-Pope idea did surprise me, but Paulson makes a good argument for it - which I've poorly paraphrased in the article - if you accept the view of Pope as a continental dandy and sycophant (or accept the view of Hogarth viewing him as such). I see the problem with Mearne now - if you don't say that then you end up saying he is the greatest bookbinder ever (CITE NEEDED! NPOV!) or nothing at all. Yomangani^talk 15:42, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Pope was a self-promoter, although hardly a dandy or Continental. There was strong backlash against Pope from men who should have been of his own view, later. Johnson, for example, sniffs at Pope (and Swift), for thinking too much of himself. At the same time, none of these people would have dreamed of taking the side of Pope's enemies. That said, Pope effectively lost against Theobald. Bardolatry is growing and growing from 1737 to 1800, and the indeterminate state of Shakespeare texts was getting more and more nailed down, and Pope looks a fool. It's hard, if not impossible, for anyone to think Theobald has any worth in general, but it's hard for anyone to agree with Pope's tirades against Shakespear Restor'd. I.e. I can see Hogarth disliking Pope, but I can't see him liking Pope's enemies or making Pope a scribbler. More to the point, if Pope is the distressed poet, that takes some serious imagination. A 4' tall hunchback with no female companionship who made himself wealthy by his pen just wouldn't be painted as a tall, thin, married family man starving in a garret. (It always helps to remember the basic stuff.) Geogre (talk) 18:59, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I obviously need to make that clearer. Paulson doesn't suggest the "distrest poet" is Pope, but that he is the ultimate unseen villain of the piece, the "Great Poet" that the bloke depicted wishes to become. Hard to see what Pope's "crime" is though. Being successful and encouraging others to do the same by the fact? Hogarth is equally guilty there. I'm more of the view that it was pro-Pope and slowly toned down during the various iterations until the poet who was perhaps Theobald in the beginning is just a stereotype by the time of issue. Still, it wouldn't be a comprehensive article if we left Paulson's views out. Yomangani^talk 19:37, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Props for Bishonen?

Geogre, you've always been able to translate American into English for me. What is the usage of 'props' seen on the Swedish page - as in "major props to Bishonen". Obviously its congratulations/kudos etc. is it short for something? where does it come from? --Joopercoopers (talk) 14:25, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

It's extremely recent slang, and I'm only aware of its originating in Black English. In particular, it seems to be urban and from the hip-hop community. At least that's where I first heard it and how it has been transmitted. I believe it comes from "prop up," which refers to "elevate" and "hold high." I.e. something like, "We carry X up high (as if on our shoulders, in celebration)." It has lost some of its force and now means "compliments" or, as you say, "kudos" (which is also figurative, I believe). Geogre (talk) 14:29, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Ah "we prop Bishonen on our shoulders and parade through the laneways of wikiland..........like gay pride for editors!" :-) --Joopercoopers (talk) 14:36, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I suspect urban/youth music rather than Black English. I first saw it in print in the context of kid social networking maybe Spring '03, and heard it October of that year. No idea about the origin. And I get sympathetic smiles from kids when I use it today - it's old, at least in my corner of NY. Jd2718 (talk) 03:36, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

On Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour, he played an R&B song from 1947 or thereabouts that had the first recorded usage of "homie," so sometimes these terms have a lot more history than we suspect. "Props" is either a clip of some other word or is "prop up." I can't tell its history, because the sorts of serious journals that would note and weigh it are unavailable to me, and the sorts that are available (urban dictionary) are junk or (Partridge) out of date. Geogre (talk) 11:52, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

OED Online gives

“ slang (orig. in African-American usage).

Due respect; approval, compliments, esteem.

[App. < prop- (in PROPER adj.; app. understood as short for proper respect) + plural ending -s (prob. merely euphonic).]

1990 Chicago Tribune 29 July 2/4, I was one of the first female rappers, but I've always gotten my props. 1997 Touch May 24 Why do certain sectors of the music fraternity still refuse to give him due props? 2002 Electronic Gaming Monthly Feb. 164/1 Props to Tiburon for making use of the C stick on the controller.

”

for what that's worth. David Underdown (talk) 15:46, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, it seems like OED half agrees with me and half doesn't. Propers/propriety...alright. That must be speculative. If they can't get a better first usage than that, they've got to be dealing with something that had a multi-point origin, where the word spread more quickly than its meaning. Not that I think I'm right. I'm sure I'm not. It's just that, if it's of that recent a mintage, the derivation's got to be a guess. (Certain words have usage go way up, and their initial meanings are either lost or just not at work. See, for example "proactive," which became this business community mantra. While the poor thing originally meant "relating to, caused by, or being interference between previous learning and the recall or performance of later learning *proactive inhibition of memory" (Merriam-Webster 15th), it started to mean something like "active" or, at its very best, "preventative.") (For my part, every time the Republican Party is in power in the US, I lobby for the spreading of the word "barmecidal.") Geogre (talk) 20:43, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

FAR notice

A Tale of a Tub has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Cirt (talk) 14:19, 14 January 2008 (UTC).

I second the question: have you read the book? Geogre (talk) 17:55, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

So, all people who come to read the Wikipedia article must have read the book first in order to understand the article and the various WP:OR points mentioned at the WP:FAR ? You should put a notice at the top of the article then, something like: "All those reading this article should first go and read the book A Tale of a Tub, in order to understand this article." No, that would be silly, right? Cirt (talk) 23:07, 14 January 2008 (UTC).

I asked you a question. Your FAR nomination can only have come from someone who has never read it. You call things OR that are so blindingly, staggeringly, incredibly in the damn book that you can't have read it. It isn't OR if everyone, every single one, of the readers sees the same thing. Something like, oh, Jonathan Swift saying "for the allegory I had in mind" or any of the ten thousand introductions discussing the elements. You do NOT FOOTNOTE COMMON KNOWLEDGE. You put up references to things likely to be challenged. Show a challenge to any of the facts, any at all, from any print source, any at all. Better yet, read just 50 pages of the book. It'll be good for you. It will also keep you from making a fool of yourself. Geogre (talk) 12:29, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps Cirt might prefer the audiobook? --Joopercoopers (talk) 12:53, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Oh, for the love of Mike! I think Swift would have approved, though. A book about reading read by a machine that is incapable of reading, on behalf of people who are incapable of understanding is just perfect, in a way. Of course, for the blind, there are much better sources than that, and they're free, so it's not as though Guttenberg is serving in that regard. "I need a footnote that the second brother represents the Church of England!" Indeed, if you have never read the book, you do. If you have, you have already seen the footnote provided by Swift, of Curll or Wotton's "key." The glorious choice of being a fool among knaves. Geogre (talk) 21:39, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry Geogre, I imagine that was a shock. The full text version is also there for Cirt's (and mine) edification. I enjoyed Gulliver's Travels, much more biting and bawdy than I was expecting - I'm put of a little by the 'difficult satire' description - does it have things to say to modern man about the human condition, or is only of interest to historical literature buffs? --Joopercoopers (talk) 21:59, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

He he, your response reminds me of Zappa "Rock journalism is people who can't write interviewing people who can't talk for people who can't read." --Joopercoopers (talk) 22:14, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

+10 points to you! I had the Zappa quote in mind. (I'll be by to award the points.) Yes, it has a great deal to say to modern man. The issues of indeterminacy that you see in Bk III of GT are mainly featured. It's also a more subtle satire, because it claims to explain why the CoE is the best, but ends up saying, "The CoE is not as bad as the others." That's quite different. If you're familiar with the concept of the unreliable narrator, that's who you've got throughout Tale. It's the non-linearity of it that throws readers, really. It's a difficult teaching text for that reason: every time you try it, some students (over half, last time I went into it) simply "don't get it." They want a plot. They want a story. They don't understand why there are all these digressions. (The digressions are the tale. The story is a digression from them.) If you're at home with anarchic works like Tristram Shandy (which was modeled on Tale in many ways) or Sartor Resartus (which is even more explicitly modeled on Tale, although, unlike Sterne, Carlyle wouldn't admit it), or modern works like Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds or Italo Calvino's (disappointing, to me) If On a Winter's Night A Traveller, then you won't find the Tale difficult at all. If it's a satire of any one thing, it's a satire of being unable to read metaphors properly. That and the credulity.

Imagine a person who reads all of the web, and only the web, and believes everything he reads, but only if it's a conspiracy theory. That's the sort of narrator you have in A Tale of a Tub: he's sure that he's right, because he's new. It's that kind of thing. Geogre (talk) 22:22, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Well I made it through the Naked Lunch while hitching around spain in my early 20s so anythings possible (horrible book)- I loved Calvino's Invisible Cities - A truly romantic architectural vision. I just remembered I liked it so much I gifted it to a friend - must buy again.... Cheers Geogre, when I'm done with the Time Traveler's Wife I'll go there next..--Joopercoopers (talk) 22:27, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

And finally a gift to you - my word of the week Gongoozler! --Joopercoopers (talk) 00:42, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Te-he: "Gongoozlers in action" -- probably a typo for "Gongoozlers inaction." :-) I say this, but I love to watch rivers, and Robyn Hitchcock has a very moving song entitled "I Often Dream of Trains." I enjoyed the descriptive power of Invisible Cities, and it is a deeply Romantic notion, although I'm not sure, in the end, that it is a vision of cities. I should like to ignore my colleagues who tell me what Calvino's "really" doing, as they never seem to get it right. Anyway, Tale is an explosion. Geogre (talk) 11:19, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Hylozoism

I think this is a good article and if someone more knowledgable on the topic isn't available to clean it up then I'll take a stab at it. But please don't remove the maintenance tags if you aren't willing to make any effort of your own; that's not helpful. —Kymacpherson (talk) 15:05, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Maintenance tags? I asked and ask still that people explain what needs to be cleaned up to meet Wikipedia standards. Without anyone saying what's wrong, how can anyone else clean it up? I removed the tag after removing a section that was in violation of Wikipedia policies -- a personal guru philosophy boost. You do me two disservices, here. First, you ignore the fact that I did clean up the article, and, second, you insist that tags should stay in the absence of any explanation of what they're about. A person putting a tag has no priority over anyone else, if there's no discussion on the talk page. Use your words, not your tags. Geogre (talk) 17:52, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Also, for anyone coming by and seeing this, please note that Kymacpherson's "clean up" was creating a single wikilink. Why not just do that? Why put a tag up with indefinite purport and insist that it remain, esp. when the tag is supposed to be used for the really woeful articles created by newbies. There had been someone who inserted 2 paragraphs of personal vision and guru worship, and I knocked those out. Apparently, though, no one noticed that it had been cleaned up. (I think I'm owed an apology, frankly.) Geogre (talk) 21:41, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

DYK

On 14 January, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article William Melmoth, which you created or substantially expanded. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

--Victuallers (talk) 15:26, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Protection of Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/IRC/Proposed decision

On 17 January, following a series of edits to Wikipedia talk:Requests for arbitration/IRC/Proposed decision, User:FloNight protected the page and added the following in an edit summary: "I protected the page from all editing until the case is closed or edits all agree to make all productive comments about the proposed ruling and not other editors". Flonight has not left any further messages as yet, so I am posting this message to all those who edited the page in this period, and asking them to consider signing this section at Flonight's talk page indicating that they will abide by this request. Hopefully this will help move the situation forward, and enable the talk page to be unprotected (with any necessary warnings added) so that any editor (including those uninvolved in this) can comment on the proposed decision. Thank you. Carcharoth (talk) 05:43, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

In case you missed it, I replied on Giano's talk page about the mailing lists. Carcharoth (talk) 03:48, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

The point that should be jabbing every arb in the ribs is that there are a half dozen solutions to the general mailing list issue, while none of the rationalizations of the status quo ring true, and then there is the problem that a named party of a case is the owner of the mailing list. It's rather like when that person announced that en.admins.irc need do absolutely nothing that ArbCom said, that it was simply at his own pleasure and JamesF's pleasure, to even listen. Geogre (talk) 13:14, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Somerset

Geogre, I am looking at Somerset, which is at FAC, and I noticed that the history of the name uses the form "Sumorsǣte", with a bar on the æsc. I was wondering both what the difference is, and also whether it's correct in this form -- I assume the editor of the article got it from the source they cite for it, which is Victor Watts, Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names, but I thought you'd be a better person to ask for the first question. If you have a moment I'd be interested to know. Thanks -- Mike Christie (talk) 04:09, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Odd. The long mark doesn't belong there. In fact... well, that looks like a pronunciation guide, not ... That particular book would need to be consulted in its front matter to find out what their practice is. I'll go to the OED (place names are included). Another would be the American Heritage etymological dictionary. Despite its name, it's the finest etymological dictionary out there. It's in many libraries. Geogre (talk) 13:17, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Idea

(Cross posted to Giano's talk page)

Does this sound like something you'd be interested in? Raul654 (talk) 03:23, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

FYI --Joopercoopers (talk) 10:06, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Joopercoopers, I went there. I can't believe how cavalierly Marksell was insulting people in his opening salvo. It's a "mess" if people don't play along. Some dinosaurs like me write horrible articles like Emsworth's. (And yet, paradoxically, he also notes that people don't come forward to defend Emsworth, but they do when the articles are mine, and he has no explanation for that except that I'm still here. It couldn't be that these are not at all like one another, could it?) As for the person who is offering to reform our awful messes in the 18th c., I don't have anything against her, but these are not messes. In particular, having something like Bishonen's footnote-loaded Colley Cibber (we all have a copy of The Apology; the hard part is getting ahold of the scandalous letters) put in with my parenthetical-or-none articles is a real mistake, and I chide her for that alone. It's also offensive to have even the implication that I or others don't allow people to add citations. Hell, look at how much I had to suffer while they "fixed" Restoration literature. Just get serious sources, and for statements likely to be challenged (by sources), not "likely to be challenged by people wanting to be involved at FAR." Geogre (talk) 12:00, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Just thought you should be involved in the discussion. For what it's worth I rather rate Awadewit. She's personable, intelligent, courteous and I think she's doing a phd in lit of roughly your vintage. If she's prepared to add the necessary cites - I'd say, bite her hand off. --Joopercoopers (talk) 14:50, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

I don't want to bite her at all, but you can see what's going on now with A Tale of a Tub. There are some good references being added (like the 1967 last-ever discussion of authorship), but there are also references that just aren't needed. Let me put it this way: the person who reads the article is probably reading the book or has read it. Therefore, that person has already met with the basic facts of the 1700 Whig/Tory split, probably already read an introduction that says something about the narrator, and so putting a footnote in to say that whigs were associated with dissenters (see an anthology of 18th c. lit) is somewhat weird: the reader should already know that. The reason I mentioned it in the article is strictly to explain the polemical grounding of the book. Swift is lodged strictly and joyously in a political fight, and he's making fun of people. I therefore need to give the reader a playbill, but these identifications are so well known that it's impossible to find anyone who doesn't say these things, and that's why I think we shouldn't have citations there.

It makes us look worse, in my opinion. If you read something that says, "The dissenters had felt their interests thwarted by the accession of Anne," do you feel like it's entirely made up? When you read, "The dissenters were the people who did not agree with the Church of England (note to the dictionary), and many of them were Puritans (note to a general history)," don't you feel like the author doesn't know what he or she is talking about? When I see notes to common knowledge, I conclude that the author is a dolt or trying to impress me.

Yes, we can figure out when things are "common knowledge" by testing them. We can test them a number of ways, but one of them is stability.

So, no, I don't want to bite anyone being helpful, and some of the stuff being added now is absolutely fantastic, but when we give in to "gee, I dunno; I've never heard of Lilliput before, so I demand a footnote," we make our articles both less reliable and less readable, and we kill the ability of anyone to write.

Most of the footnote festivals that pass these days, by the way, are to web sites. That means that 90% of the time they didn't get reliable at all. They just got notated. Geogre (talk) 20:59, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

"I can't believe how cavalierly Marksell was insulting people in his opening salvo." I must have missed that. There was certainly no insult intended. Marskell (talk) 14:18, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

ATT

How about I sandbox the article and add cites to that only. I'm aware of the book for only 19 days, I only know the period from paintings, but am fanicated by the sources I've found so far on Swift. I need to spend some time reading up, but if you could vet the sources I find, that would be great. Ceoil

Althogh that might sound weak, this is an article for casual readers; is my excuse. (talk) 20:55, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

• Again, I appreciate the effort. I'm not intending any discourtesy to you, by any means. I have a problem with the way that people are concluding that "a person could ask" is the same thing as "likely to be challenged." To me, "likely to be challenged" means "by another source," not "by a reader in a bad mood." The nomination for that article for FAR was simply one of the most extreme cases of something that has been lingering for a while. The nominator picked an article that really leaned heavily on knowledge of a field that is common in the field and not outside and then listed a number of things that were simply foolish ("Who says it's a difficult satire" and "Who says it's an allegory"). I feel like our links are partly our footnotes. I remember reading print encyclopedias, and I was constantly running across statements about events I had never heard of, so I'd go look them up. I remember getting references to works I'd never heard of, so I'd go look for them. I'm not going to remove any of the citations you're adding. I'd rather talk than cut or revert. (I wish other people would prefer to talk than FAR, too.) Geogre (talk) 21:15, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

No you dint bite at all, and I need to closely look at the respectability of the diff authors before I add any more shiny dinky refs. The authorship debate was the first thing that leaped out at me, and it was foul, to be surre. Anyway, as a side note, any interest in in Abbey Theatre; its close to a keep, but could do with work from a skilled editor. Ceoil (talk) 21:21, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Abbey is later than my own knowledge, but there are some hilarious things Flann O'Brien said (he thought it was pompous, and he was fed up with Yeats's Ireland, I think). I'll take a look. Geogre (talk) 21:33, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

There was alot of pomp and back stabig in those days. The Abbey's history is full of drama, a look would be great. Ceoil (talk) 21:42, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Have been reading about Frank O'Connor's dismissal from the abbey all morning, and its fascinating and vicious, and I highly recomment you look it up. I'm no fan of O'Connor's work but the man had balls. And thanks for the look. Ceoil (talk) 13:26, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

I rather like Frank O'Connor. What I find interesting, among many other things, is just how twee Yeats and Gregory's vision was and how it was a course carried forward by the strength of name, and therefore one that was endlessly confining to other Irish writers. Basically, a cabal, if you will. O'Connor was more of a Dostoevskian writer, in my view, and aligned with American fiction to some degree, and O'Brien, of course (Brian O'Nolan, Flann O'Brien, Myles na gCopaleen), was aligned with American literature and what was happening in US circles. Either way, there was a heavy resentment of this Ireland of Myth, on the one hand, and Synge's Ireland of Cute People. (I have sympathy. As a southerner, I have seen the same strains in "southern literature." We get a great one like Faulkner or O'Connor, and suddenly all southern literature has to have sweaty plantations or "grotesques," and a bunch of southern writers are happy to oblige. The Thomas Wolfe side of things, the southern tradition influenced by Romanticism and French symbolism, is out of the picture (except sometimes in Truman Capote). The difference is that southern literature never got a group (with imported money) announcing that it was The Cultural Center.) Any group setting itself up as the power is a tyrannical and unrepresentative group almost instantly. It gets very quickly to a monoculture and an echo chamber of voices. Uh, I seem to have wandered. Geogre (talk) 15:45, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, Yeats was a one/two-handed cabal. If you read any critical overview of Irish poetry written between the mid sixties (it took that long for discent to be published) and the early 80s it's all hangover from the fierce and jealous presence of Yeats. And the echo of his twee vision was implemented in stone for 30 years or so in statute by Dev. I suppose you know that the powers that be in IRL hoped at the time for nothing more that such naive 'celtic' mystism. And any writer that dissented was...with O'Connor in the grave. Ceoil (talk) 16:14, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Your talk about southern reminds me about how Cork and dublin bands are treated by papers of record. Forgive me the leap of logic, but dublin bands are given grativas in dublin's eyes, while the best of cork is 'quirky and momentarly distracting'. It's seems a universal principal is at work here. Ceoil (talk) 16:36, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Franco-Mongol alliance

I hate to bother you with this, but since its a complex issue and you may be aware of some of the details since you've warned PHG (talk · contribs) before, I was hoping you could take a new look. Recently I've become more involved in the talk page discussions and even reverted the article once, so I don't feel it would be appropriate for me to consider using any tools in the situation. The gist is this:

PHG's behavior continues to become increasingly disruptive. He's now created a slow moving revert war with 3 other editors and is wikilawyering in great amounts on the talk page in an attempt to advocate for his preferred version. He's canvassed editors who've been in previous disputes with his opponents, editors who voted to keep one of his POV forks [5] [6] [7] [8] and invited in an editor who's already under ArbCom restrictions in the subject area[9] in an attempt to bolster his side of the debate. I've also recently discovered that he's been using misleading edit summaries and his "reverts" have also included the addition of more than 40 new paragraphs of highly disputed information (the unsupportable pov he's been pushing for four months now) and enough quotations and summaries from supposed sources to bring the number of total article notes to 401 (example). In total, he's managed to sneak in another 50k worth of absolute crap (for comparison's sake, his original preferred version was 147k and the rewrite he keeps reverting is only 80k). See this for more details. Not to mention he's created scads of POV forks in further attempts to keep "his" OR somewhere (detailed here). You may also want to see this for a refresher on the background issues as well.

I'd like to see the other editors who are discussing on the talk page and trying to improve the article get a chance at it and if I weren't involved, I'd consider blocking him for this continued disruption. Could you take a gander and see what your feeling is on the issue? Shell ^babelfish 22:05, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Re: Aiding and abetting a known criminal?

You are incorrect that there has been no finding regarding Giano's behavior; Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Durova#Giano is less than two months old, and Giano has again done virtually everything that was mentioned there.

Fundamentally, the success of the project requires that we maintain an atmosphere that is at least broadly tolerable, if not necessarily pleasant. Disputes are supposed to be resolved through polite discussion; Giano, however, is more likely to use rumor-mongering, provocation, insults, calumny, and character assassination. These are more effective methods, to be sure; but that doesn't make them acceptable. This is not a political arena.

And it is your responsibility, as a respected administrator, to act as a moderating influence—to calm the dispute and encourage editors to act in a manner compatible with community norms—rather than throwing gasoline on the flames. The same applies to Bishonen.

So what happened here? This is not a case of routine 3RR or even wheel-warring, originally. Rather, Giano set out to add comments that were deliberately provocative to the other editors of the page and, more importantly, clearly intended to besmirch the reputation of anyone using the IRC channel. That he felt their reputations were worthy of besmirching is utterly irrelevant; this is not how we do things here. And then, rather than pulling him aside and asking him to act with a bit more decorum, both of you stepped in to carry on the dispute. Again, you may have been correct in substance; but the way in which you acted was unbecoming.

Or, to quote the infamous m:Don't be a dick:

Being right about an issue does not mean you're not being a dick! Dicks can be right — but they're still dicks; if there's something in what they say that is worth hearing, it goes unheard, because no one likes listening to dicks. It doesn't matter how right they are.

The sad thing in all this is that Giano says a great many things that we would listen to if not for his thoroughly atrocious manner of saying them. Kirill 17:57, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Yes, yes, I'm terribly evil. We all know that. Just look at all the acrimony on this page for proof.

The question was what Bishonen did.

Let's do be specific, though, and not general, and let's do talk about specific insults rather than "designed to provoke a group." I was asking about Bishonen, not me, and not Giano. I was asking what Bishonen did. I could ask what I did, too, but I don't much care. The way "incivil" is used at the proposed decision page, it has no meaning whatever. No one can tell what it is, and therefore there is no way for anyone to contest that he or she is not, and I'm not in any case concerned with it, as "civility" is an absurd goal. (And see how people reacted to Bishonen quoting David Gerard, the man at the center who never gets any derision, who wrote an essay... which is still here!... and in the wrong space (again!) on "fuckheadism." The way that people will get shocked at "civility" and then quote "don't be a dick," which is an insult, simply evacuates any whiff of meaning from what they're saying.)

No, what did Bishonen do?

Also, who was insulted? Were you insulted, as a user of that IRC channel? Who found it difficult to edit Wikipedia because of the changes to that page? Who found it difficult to edit Wikipedia because of the illicit page protection there? Who found it impossible to go on with matters because the page describing that IRC channel said what was actually true -- that there is no redress from abuse there -- and who found it difficult to go on after having an unheard of (and never checkusered) party start a frivolous arbitration and have that accepted without any charges?

If harmonious editing is the goal, you would never, ever have voted to accept this "case." You would have spoken to the people who were so displeasing (at least once would be something). You wouldn't use vague language with no purport and make valuable administrators leave to register your unhappiness. Geogre (talk) 21:01, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Me, insulted? I've never been on that channel—I don't even have access to it—and avoid IRC altogether.

The point is simply this: we do not go out of our way to blacken the reputations of our colleagues, or hang their dirty laundry in prominent places to "shame" them into reform. That's simply not the proper behavior expected of participants in this project.

As for Bishonen, she made several edits to a page already in dispute which were at best unconstructive and had the effect of further inflaming said dispute rather than calming it. Which is not to say that she didn't have a valid point; but the way in which she made it was not an appropriate one. Kirill 21:42, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Could you respond?

Four threads up, Geogre, you suggested that "cavalierly, Marksell was insulting people." [comma inserted]. I responded that I intended no insult. I would like the field to be clear, so to speak. What I find cavalier is that, after numerous hours spent crafting responses to you over two years (honestly, check), you'd so casually lack AGF when you see my sig.

I don't get it. I honestly don't. Maybe you don't pay attention to sigs? Or maybe you conflate them? You've conflated mine with what you don't like about FAR? What is it? I'm not going to kiss your ass re main space contributions, because I think you're an editor that doesn't need his ass kissed. So, really: could you respond? And respond to me, man—I've already read the boilerplate about your hating bots and this and that. Can I talk to you? If not, why not? Marskell (talk) 21:55, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Sorry. I accept your account, and I have no problem with believing that it was an accidental insult. It looked to me that my old FA's were being lumped in with Emsworth's and that there was an implication that I'm somewhat trouble. It sure looked to me at the time that I was being singled out as a dinosaur writer of woefully inadequate FA's who stands in the way of progress. I think on that page we had others offer up the real answer: we need a fair and complete examination of "likely to be challenged." If there is no consensus that emerges from that, then we must go back to allowing the FAC voters to have priority over FAR voters. Otherwise, it's like double jeopardy. (Yes, we all know that no consensus will emerge.)

I have an idea or two for how we could debate the matter and avoid the ball of threads chaos that usually results, if you want to move ahead with it. Geogre (talk) 22:12, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

OK, thank you. The comparison to Emsworth was merely temporal: the literature and architecture reviews are a patch from '04 that regularly turn up at FAR, just as his do. Read the salvo again and you'll see no comparison re writing quality. Quite the opposite: if I thought the pages you've worked on are terrible, dinosaur writing why would I have even gone to FAC talk to argue for grandfathering? The only comment on prose was "Prose quality is never a serious issue." As for the implication of trouble, the reviews are trouble—that's a plain fact—but it's a different thing to say that you are trouble. The Tale of a Tub review turned into trouble without you typing a word; can't really blame you for that. The only criticisms I'd offer are that you sometimes fail to assume good faith of nominators and that you seem to think that there's an agenda to have things defeatured. Again, quite the opposite.

Anyhow, lay out your idea or two by all means. You can use WT:FAR, if you like. Marskell (talk) 12:24, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Pre-emptive answer

I say that sages and projects as determinants of whether an article is properly cited is outside of Wikipedia's remit. Why? Well, Wikipedia replaced an "expert only" project and was attractive because it accepted all persons. The belief that licenses this is that all of us, collectively, are smarter than any of us, individually. Of course, there are numerous debunkings of this idea. It's not an accurate model. However, whatever problems there are with the utopian ideal of the GNU folks, the fact is that Wikipedia does not demand that editors establish credentials, does not accept authority based upon them, does not test them, and does not work with external status as "experts" in any form. It therefore really does not do well to have an internal establishment of a "Sage" as anything but an informal and fluid expression of trust. It cannot be given, cannot be cemented, cannot be affixed like a gold star to the forehead. (Yes, I say this as a person who could pass any external verification, but I don't want to have more say in matters because of anything like that. I demand that I get respect by my words and deeds, and not my diplomas or publications.)

Projects are another matter, slightly. They're voluntary and self-selected, and I generally applaud them as the inevitable result of our chaos. However, so long as they are self-selected and voluntary, they don't have power. There is a huge, huge difference between acting as a nexus for writing and editing and acting as an authority. A project is great as the former. It's onanism as the latter (at best). Nothing wrong with projects existing -- they would in any case -- but there is nothing right with them being in "control" of anything. Geogre (talk) 15:47, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Have you seen User talk:Raymond arritt/Expert withdrawal (and its talk page)? Carcharoth (talk) 19:21, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Carcharoth: I just dropped by because I was going to link the same thing. Geogre, you might have something worthwhile to say there. Marskell (talk) 22:33, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, you've already commented. Maybe too many fires to tend at once. I do appreciate that you took the time to work up a robust comment at WT:FAR. Marskell (talk) 22:37, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm all for people expressing their wills, but a strike only means anything if there is some definite group that is trying to assert control. When I've gone on strike before, I have been demonstrating that people who try to create "power" or to assert "authority" have nothing. It makes sense to me, in cases like that, to point those people to the ultimate fact that nobody works here, that we all volunteer, and there is no power, no authority, no rights, no status, that there is only an agreement between volunteers, and this agreement can be stopped at any time. I really feel that they need to jump in the boat with the other academic standard folks and try to develop a voice that will assert something normative, rather than merely object to the death by a thousand cuts that is being right at a project where that does not impart any power. Geogre (talk) 11:16, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Flagged revisions, which has supplanted Stable versions, could go a long way to assuaging concerns if the flagging is properly rationalized. Surely the greatest disincentive to anyone adding in goodwill is the knowledge that it can all be undone. But if flagging is just another thing for partisans to war over, it will do as much harm as good. Marskell (talk) 11:29, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Notification of FAR on A Tale of a Tub

Since no one currently participating in the review (restarted very shortly after the last was closed as "keep"), I thought I would let you know that the review process has started again. I'm sure you'd probably noticed, but if none of them were willing to notify you per protocol, I thought I would do it. Regards, -- Bellwether ^B_C 01:08, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

What the heck? How many bites of the apple are there? That's nonsense. I understand, now, why Giano, last time this happened, said that he would far, far, far rather have the FA status go than have the aura of tribunal and the exposure to people who didn't have justifications for their complaints. Show me any work, and I can pick it apart, from Hamlet to Hamlet. Putting up an article at random or in series to see what people can pull at is no virtue and no improvement. Geogre (talk) 12:54, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

• Don't shoot the messenger, Geogre. I didn't agree with the nomination, especially given that it was just closed as "keep" not long past. No one else there seemed willing to notify you (assuming you already knew, I guess), so I did the notification. -- Bellwether ^B_C 13:10, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Blech. Geogre, I think Bellwether was just trying to be nice. The notifications can seem annoyingly...bot-like? But presumably it would be more annoying to have a review go through with you not noticing it. Bellwether was just making the notification step official, even if it's obvious you've noticed. Marskell (talk) 20:43, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Geogre, I'm partly to blame for this. The last time it was FAR'd, Marskell thought it was too hot for him to handle and asked me to take care it. I dropped the ball and Marskell ended up having to sort it out. The new FAR nom was started off shortly after the last one closed, and I told Marskell I really would keep an eye on it the second time around. I've decided to let this one go forward. The goal here is not to torment you, but to get an otherwise FA-quality article up to standard where the references are concerned. Raul654 (talk) 21:31, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Up to the level of a single episode of a popular TV show (wonder how many books were cited, there) or a single sports game. I can see the dilemma. Geogre (talk) 11:13, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Pure poetry

The truest words you have ever written on Wikipedia [10]. congratulations. Giano (talk) 21:31, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Thank you. No one seems to even notice that this is supposed to be a flat hierarchy, and I, the last Cassandra, am on my way to being a "problem user" for even being able to remember 2003. Things have changed: the clueful must rise up and whip the lumpen mob. The "trusted" must show the untrusted their power. The -bots can take care of "content": the real Wikipedians talk to each other all day and all night, and in the crepuscular gloom they act by boldly, cleverly, powerfully, and masterfully blocking half a dozen users for a length of time determined by a random spin of a wheel. Dusk gone, they go back to talking to each other about how well they blocked, how unfair it is that anyone disagrees, and how meaningless all these words are in articles. Geogre (talk) 11:18, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

The pain may be keenest for those of us who have been here the longest, and remember when it was still possible to write an article on an important topic from scratch. Doesn't it seem to you that for about 90% of users here there is "nothing left to do" but invent assessment drives, chat rooms, tagging contests, review boards, vandal-shooting hunts, new forms of rack and pillory? I think it is harder to do meaningful work on Wikipedia than it used to be, but easier than ever to join the project and collect a bunch of shiny userspace widgets. A lot of our problem is a demographic shift. I'm not sure it's fixable. For more than a year now I feel I've been playing defense, and much of my work is scraping corrosion off of things I wrote in 2004 and 2005. Anyway, probably two cents more than you asked for. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 17:28, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I do agree with you, but I still find new pages to write and so do some others, I think it helps though if one is interested in writing an encyclopedia. Giano (talk) 17:46, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Antardus is one of the few authors left, one of the few to have been at the old VfD, one of the few to remember the call for editors, one of the few to remember that driving someone off Wikipedia was the greatest crime you could do (not a triumph to celebrate on IRC). Indeed, I recall when we dealt with vandals just fine without trying to figure out their IP's, and where we just deleted "BLP" issues without super secret emergency councils of the high order of defensior fidelii. I remember when we used to try to get attention on articles and had no "projects." I remember when the issue of "civility" was introduced. What happened then was that a person complained about another person, and then that other person, when there had been many complaints, would be warned. There was no looking about for things a user had said and announcing that, despite the other people being fine with it, the words contain some mysterious essence of "incivility." I remember when the fun of writing articles overcome the annoyance of the youth of mind and body of the other editors. None of this is true any more. Geogre (talk) 22:16, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I know who Antandrus is! My above comment read all wrong! It was not Antandrus I was suggesting was not interested in writng an encyclopedia (appologies if it sems that way), perhaps we need to start a geriatric Wikipedian club! Giano (talk) 22:25, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

LOL, I'm probably older than either of you. One never knows though!

Are you both familiar with the gorgeous story by Franz Kafka, A Hunger Artist (Ein Hungerkünstler). I feel that way sometimes. We who write starve ourselves in our pitiful cages, while the excitement of baiting live tigers happens elsewhere in the circus. Perhaps my interpretation of the story is perverse, but it does feel that way. At any rate we have an abundance of energy on the project; most of the energetic newbies are in their early 20s, or younger; and most of the encyclopedia articles are written.

I have more than 50 more articles to write on 16th century Italian composers alone, and I haven't even started on Germany yet. But I'm just one of those in the cages off to the side, making irritating sounds in the straw. The circus-goers notice me only during their "article improvement drives" and tagging contests. Nothing I've written merits anything above a bot-assessed "start" though ... Sigh.

I admire those who have stuck it out this long. It's that top Google hit that keeps me here. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 23:59, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

I can describe my own process:

1. Write, because we had horrible gaps,
2. Suggest policies, because the suggestions were there, and because doing other things might lead to bad stuff,
3. Try to get rid of the abuses in articles,
4. Try to correct the bad, self-serving policies,
5. Decide that idiots always outnumber bright people and that they can be convinced only when they are dispassionate,
6. Give up on VfD, concentrate only on writing articles (because we have gaps), and addressing new policy ideas and developments,
7. Decide that the idiots are easily impassioned, that they have now achieved critical mass, and therefore give up on any new policy suggestions except where the audience seems to be sane,
8. Decide that that doesn't work, focus solely on writing, because the chin-drooling idiots are rampant all other places,
9. Then I discovered that the reason the idiots seemed to be all listening to inaudible arguments was that they had been hanging out at an IRC ice cream parlor, where only the goofiest speak and a competition for most sensational goes on,
10. Make one last effort at pointing the lamp at the door out of the asylum,
11. Go back, as now, to only writing, being uninvolved unless something interfered with this sole delight,
12. Find that this only means that the goofy and yelping organize into a human wave and voice corporate outrage at the inequalities of achievement by forming Drives (waves) and Projects (human pyramids, with some Yertle the Turtle on top,
13. Now, today, deciding that all of them are parasites on Rambot, their authorial ideal, and that writers are not needed, that gaps are not known, and that even getting top Google spot is useless, because "in popular culture and Anime" will soon be there and someone will be along momently to tell you that you don't have lots of footnotes the way that the article on a Green Day song does.

To say that I'm considering alternatives is an understatement. I and my 300 articles aren't doing much good as they wait for some random insult or injury. I did very good work for the form, but I also understand the form -- it's a form that is largely impossible to find -- and I find that the form is neither understood nor desired by the "writing" side, and writing is neither understood nor desired by the IRC hobbyists. Why, then, give the unwanted to the unknowing, when they will soon, out of revenge or native spite or bumbling ineptitude, mar it so that the unseen and unheard Reader will be unserved. Geogre (talk) 14:11, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

• I'd just like to say, I'm in love with your talkpage, Geogre. Where else on Wikipedia can one find smart people actually talking about the historical goodness of this damn addiction I've fallen into over the past 18 months or so? The writing of articles is a pleasure that seems lost on some, but there are those of us about for whom that joy is still paramount. (Oh, and I also love your talkpage because somehow Kafka was dragged into the conversation, and what smart person doesn't adore Kafka? Or at least claim to, while having never read a word he wrote?) Regards, -- Bellwether ^B_C 14:49, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
  • And Dr. Seuss with Kafka! :-)
  • I'm sorry I didn't answer, above. I was distracted by the ongoing exsanguination of an RfAr. I know you were only the messenger, and my biting was aimed at the process more than the individuals.
  • I talk about "the form," and I think it's important. Antardus and Giano both know the form I'm talking about. It's the encyclopedia article. I know that those two are near me in chronological age, or at least, like me, people who grew up without the Internet and got used to print encyclopedias. I try to be very guarded about actual personal details, but I will say this: I almost had my MA thesis failed. I wrote 325 pp. One member on my committee said that I had written a dissertation, and I had been assigned a thesis. She said that she would accept it as a dissertation, in fact, that it wasn't missing any qualities of one, but that's not what I was supposed to write. Her point was that there is a thing known as "the MA thesis." I hadn't hit it, and I now would do the same as her.
  • The "encyclopedia article" has an overview, a thesis or point of view to organize the material, a principle of exclusion, a presentation of material (with references for further reading for the excluded material, if needed), and a list of readings for those who want to know where this information came from. That's not just the old Britannica 1911 model, it's the encyclopedia model.
  • We have a two-fold split in approach, these days. We have one group that thinks that an article is a fact or a couple of facts. We have another group that thinks that it is an undergraduate research paper, where every statement not opinion must have a citation and every statement that is opinion has to be cut. So, between all of these "Route 9 is a road" and the "The earth is a large planet (note) classified as M class (note) that orbits a star called the sun (note)," the idea of a thesis to organize the information and the shaping of an article to present the reader with a clear path through all the information that could be out there is lost.
  • I guess sic transit gloria mundi and all that. Geogre (talk) 15:04, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Our posts crossed paths. Thanks for the above reply. I've simply given in to the "citations are king" crowd, and have littered all articles that I write with them. I'm excited about migrating my articles to (and writing new articles for) CZ, as the citations-crowd doesn't seem to be nearly so prominent there.

As for Dr. Seuss, I've always felt Geisel was a philosopher in picture book author's clothing. -- Bellwether ^B_C 15:12, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

• I'd also like to cordially invite you to Citizendium. I'm sure you've investigated, and perhaps you're not interested in the "real names" side of it, but I've recently opened an account, contributed my first article, and plan on moving much more of my work to that project. The only reason I keep this account open is for my students, who still retain the passion for creating new articles they care about, but are not old enough to qualify for Citizendium as yet. CZ needs good writers, and both you and Giano, as well as Antandrus, qualify as such. -- Bellwether ^B_C 15:04, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Always a pleasure

Thanks again for lending a neuron or two, it's still very much a work in (slow) progress at Wikipedia is not a sentient being. Another and perhaps not overly original idea at How to survive on Wikipedia - suggestions for de-bullshitting always welcome. Just in case you've got nothing better to do. Kosebamse (talk) 13:46, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Please help de-escalate this

Look, there are some real issues and disputes out there, and I guess you an I will be on opposite sides on a good deal of them. But I've recently deliberately tried to keep it cool and de-escalate where I can. The purpose of dispute resolution is to resolve disputes as amicably as possible, not perpetuate point scoring and divisive polemic. You are an undoubted master of rhetoric, please please consider using it to state your case clearly and avoid heated remarks that tend to inflame and provoke. I'd like to assume that dispute resolution is the goal of every participant at this time, but I have to admit that sometimes that assumption is harder than at others. However, given arbcom's support for a finding asking ALL parties to tone it down and seek resolutions, perhaps all of us could use the opportunity to try a little harder.

To record what I'm talking about see this. Now, sometimes I have been guilty of missing the subtleties of your words, but in the present climate, using words like "quisling newbie" "arrogant" and "parasite" are not at all helpful. I'll not call them "personal attacks", or "incivil" because that's another minefield, it may well be that my pain reading of the remarks is wrong. This lecture is from a penitent, if not totally reformed, sinner, so any change of hypocrisy you care to make against me in return will doubtless be justified.--Doc^g 17:03, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Doc, I understand wanting to keep peace, but what you're referring to specifically is a sequence that goes something like this: 1) insulting reasoning, 2) I comment, 3) Direct insult and arrogant sneer at me, particularly, 4) A particular insult delivered back. I.e. if there's some kind of escalation, it's at #3. I felt there was an insult of everyone who had ever disagreed in the reasoning and my first comment was an exposure. So far, we have nasty and protest. However, the newbie Aza Toth goes up with a personal attack, if we need code words, and so, seeing no one object to his comment, I figured that there was a right of reply involved, and so I did. I won, I think. (I think so because it's drawing all this attention.)

The point is that it's fair enough to remove Aza Toth's insult to me and my reply insult or to leave both, but it's not really cricket to leave him telling me not to worry about matters that are for serious people like him to manage, that I should go back to working for them, and then take away a good demonstration of where such comments lead.

By the way, I generally think that the rough and tumble of "peer editing" means that there is a place for insult, occasionally, for jarring, when the issues deserve it, but I also think that, if we believe that such things are always bad, then they're always bad, whether it's David Gerard sneering that he doesn't need to communicate with peons who edit Wikipedia or Aza Toth, a brand new creature, sneering that he is one of the Elect who decides things for such lesser creatures as those of us who built the encyclopedia. Geogre (talk) 21:06, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

I have found that one can always justify one's less that helpful remarks by pointing to the failings of others. Sure escalation goes in circles, but we are, in the end, only responsible for the part of the circle we draw. I suppose you might complain that I'm on your talk page and not on that of others. Well, yes, I am. But that's just how it goes. Are you willing to help in de-escalation?

Here's another thing. I've read the post above about how Wikipedia has changed, away from a content focus. Now, I wasn't here before early 2005, so forgive me if the early nostalgia doesn't do it for me. But, even in my time I've seen a worrying move away from content focus. I'm not the greatest content editor (although I've moved more in that direction recently), but you know I share some of your concerns about automotive editing, and people racking up edit counts by creating boxes. I've recently been appalled at the willingness of RfA to sysop people who can't point to any article they improved.

Now, it seems to be you have choices:

1. Decide Wikipedia will not change and learn to live with it (shut up).
2. Decide Wikipedia will not change and you can't live with it (leave).
3. Decide Wikipedia will not change and you can't live with it, but you are going to throw your toys about in spite (troll like hell)
4. Decide Wikipedia can possibly change and make a constructive attempt to change it.

If you are going for 4, then you need to change tactics. Because only a broad coalition can change wikipedia, and if you can't develop a reasonable agenda that is going to resonate even with people like me, then it is in vain. Incidentally, a broad coalition of content editors would need to include most of the arbitration committee who are mainly (I checked) serious content editors. The beginning of that movement is to look sane reasonable and open to criticism and the admission of mistakes. One of the most infuriating things about the campaigns waged by yourself and Giano, is the assumption that you are always totally justified and that opposition to your tactics makes the critic the implacable foe. It has become a "who is not for us is against us" - and that type of polemicising attitude simply encourages opposition, and destroys any hope of forward motion in a collaboration project. A little mea culpa can go along way to convincing people of good faith and serious reflection. You do not own the issues, and others are and have articulated many of them in a less aggressive manner. So, I guess I'm asking "think it possible you may be mistaken" as to tactics. And if you think civil collaborative tactics, aimed at resolving disputes and finding compromises, are doomed, then simply give up now.--Doc^g 22:05, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

• Doc, I made the path to "de-escalation" clear. If you believe in removing insults, remove both (you). If you don't believe in removing insults (me), then there is tit for tat. Again: both gone or both present. It's my belief, since dirt, that we leave both. I deplore anything like removing insults. People need to be bigger than that. You believe in removing them, so, remove both.
• As for the rest, I should imagine that I have actually done pretty well at establishing a wide base of support for an agenda of resistance to some changes and of creating changes in other areas. I spend time generally trying to helpfully designing guidelines and consensus. Note, however, that I do it the proper way by using user space, getting comment. I don't throw them into name space. I don't conspire.
• I have been at #4 since 2004, and I'm going to #2. I have left, and when I've come back, it's to a lower level of activity. The next step is completely off. However, Bowdlerizing won't make people nice, and blocking for impoliteness won't make anyone calm. Reverting one's peers is an aggressive act. Geogre (talk) 13:10, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

• • If you've not the decency to see that likening people to traitors and Nazi collaborators (Quisling) is well beyond the scope of constructive debate, and if you are really going to claim that incivility on the part of others justifies your own insults, them I'm through with you. What is it with people who are unable ever to admit their own mistakes and have the sense to retract and apologise? Reverse gears can be useful. Anyway, since I can no longer believe that you are interested in resolving disputes, then I am forced to the opinion that your departure from this project is both inevitable and regretfully welcome. Good day.--Doc^g 14:02, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
    • "Anyway, since I can no longer believe that you are interested in resolving disputes, then I am forced to the opinion that your departure from this project is both inevitable and regretfully welcome." - Doc, you can have your opinion, but please don't present it as Geogre forcing you to take a particular stance on this. It is your choice to make a principled stand over this, not his (and equally it is his choice to use that word). For the record, it is my opinion that predicting or calling for the departure of other established users is not a good sign. I certainly hope I would never do that. I sincerely believe that the project does not stand or fall on the basis of a single user and their behaviour. It is a form of eventualism, I suppose. Carcharoth (talk) 20:23, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

I've removed all comments other than Aza's original !vote. --Joopercoopers (talk) 15:22, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Justify? Doc, I'm sorry to see you lose your cool and perspective this way. First, the comparison is strained. If you look up "quisling," lower case, you will see how I used the word. In American English, rightly or wrongly, the term became a common noun after the war for "person of weak character who changes sides to please those in power." The word was written with a lower case q for a reason. Also, although I know you cannot understand my position, it is not a new one. "Justifying" insults is neither here nor there: removing insults is. If you've read Burgess's A Clockwork Orange, you've seen the theological lesson there: preventing people from being bad does not make them good. If you've read Swift, you'll have seen that a society that does not have room for "flinging a well timed turd" is one that stagnates. Wikipedia is built on, God help it, a "mob" model. Societies emerge with both normative and punitive means. If they emerge with coercive means, they become something that will never hold volunteers. In the rabble and clutter of the marketplace of ideas and words, there are harsh words as well as pleasant. I do not believe in removing insults. I believe in avoiding them, but I also believe that, as a puppy learns how to bite appropriately from its littermates biting it, when a new user comes along and begins insulting the project and its administrators, sometimes it's social, sometimes it is very literally "civil," to correct that behavior with a swat on the nose.

As for your decision that I must leave, etc., that's really rather a sorry state of affairs to see in you. I hope for better. We should all agree that threatening a contributor or wishing for one to leave is the lowest crime on Wikipedia. Without any special pleading for myself, it would be sad to see those comments on any user talk page. I do not wish you to leave. I still regard it as important to gain contributors, and you are a contributor. Geogre (talk) 12:29, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

Deep in the #2

Per the section above, I'd like to make an impassioned plea for you not to step back from Wikipedia, not to decrease your level of activity. Perhaps disengage from discussions with people who add little content, aye. But one of the reasons that things occasionally appear to be getting worse is that the reasonable turd flingers are exhausted by the seemingly endless energy of those for whom Wikipedia serves only as a prop for their egos.

Things are getting, in some ways, heaps better. Yes, there has been a fair amount of kerfluffle lately from "old timers." It's a mere rattle, emitting a vague and senseless noise. It's the chattering of a corpse that knows not yet of its own death. On the ArbCom level, Newyorkbrad and FT2 look like Golden Rays of Sunlight to me. On the general plebian admin level, there are a large number of new admins who appear reasonable, open, and accomodating. There are several yearling admins who have continued to be the same. On the editor level, good quality content continues to get written.

Stay on lad, and don't let the blighters get you down.

152.91.9.144 (talk) 07:23, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

Because i know how much you looooove pop culture

Would you kindly drop by Talk:Maharishi_Mahesh_Yogi#For_reference_check_and_discussion_re:_John_Lennon_addition, wearing an editor hat, and tell me if I'm misunderstanding the situation? Nandesuka (talk) 18:48, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

PS: The fact that I started editing the article just a day before the subject died is purely coincidental, I assure you. Nandesuka (talk) 18:52, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Mentioning John killed him! You did it! See how much a violation of BLP it is?! (Sheesh. You've found yourself a full blown hagiography, being tended and nurtured by some cast iron Followers. Of course you're right. I'm old enough to even remember it. Furthermore, it was even parodied in The Rutles, which had the participation of George Harrison and Mick Jagger. It's a standard cultural reference, the "split" over him. Allegations that George-the-Peacemaker of the Beatles was out of the picture during the split because he had been "brain washed" by the Maharishi, etc. It's not a wild thing to put in, because every single account of the man's public career mentions the fact that much fame came when John liked, and much fame came when John's followers followed John in disliking.) Geogre (talk) 11:41, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Interesting John Cleese interview

"JC: Yes, but studio executives always treat people like me, and writers in particular, as though we live in some kind of ivory tower. And these executives think they know what audiences really like, despite the fact that I've spent my life in front of audiences. And the executives have never been in front of audiences, apart from sycophantic young junior executives who wouldn't dare not laugh at their jokes. So the whole idea that they have some kind of practical knowledge that I don't have is so ludicrous that it does not bear inspection. But they hang onto it. They hang onto a mystical belief that in the moment they inherited the biggest desk and office in their block, they also inherited an understanding of comedy. And it's absolutely insane, but they really do think that they understand it. And so they start telling you to do things which you know are wrong, and I don't know how you can write something that you know is wrong. I mean, what do you try, do you try to write it badly so it will be better? "[11]

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/IRC

This arbitration case has closed and the final decision may be found at the link above. Giano is placed on civility restriction for one year. Should Giano make any edits which are judged by an administrator to be uncivil, personal attacks, or assumptions of bad faith, Giano may be blocked for the duration specified in the enforcement ruling. All parties in this case are strongly cautioned to pursue disputes in a civil manner designed to contribute to resolution and to cause minimal disruption. All the involved editors, both the supporters and detractors of IRC, are asked to avoid edit warring on project space pages even if their status is unclear, and are instructed to use civil discussion to resolve all issues with respect to the "admin" IRC channel. For the Arbitration committee, Thatcher 04:06, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Parturient montes et nascetur ridiculus mus -- Horace.

Commentary

How about Wikipedia:Ping pong instead? Oh. Wrong case. Carcharoth (talk) 14:23, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

"Because the parties to the discussion are operating on the level of warrant and founding assumptions, rather than propositional logic, they cannot find via media or any attenuation of the foundational truth." - that went straight over my head. I think you did say the philosophy articles were in poor shape, but is there anything to help people get a handle on this? I didn't find theory of justification much help. Carcharoth (talk) 14:57, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I'd venture to interpret via media as "the middle path" - in other words, since both sides of the discussion believe that their position is based on a fundamental, immutable truth ("the sky is blue") instead of a deducted truth, they are unable to find the middle path between their truths, or any ability to shift (weaken) their fundamental belief. Please correct me if I am wrong, Geogre; it's been much longer than I care to admit. Risker (talk) 16:00, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Exactly right. In rhetoric, there is something that is most often called a "warrant," but it goes by a dozen names. Essentially, it is the set of assumptions (not in a bad way) that both parties of an argument must accept before they can work out any agreement. It can sometimes be called the Major Premise, but sometimes "major premise" refers to something else. If we're going to argue about which is the best restaurant, we tacitly agree ahead of time that service, flavor, ambience, etc. are part of what defines "good" in restaurants. If, though, you like restaurants where they deliver it to your car through a window, your argument with the Mobil Guide folks may be impossible. Some "debates" currently going on involve broken warrants. For example, both pro- and con- abortion folks agree that fertilization begins the process of cell division that will, if all goes well, result in a college fund, but one believes that the quality of "human life" starts at that point, while the other believes that "separate human life" begins with viability outside the womb. Because no one can see "human life" or define it, the two sides just scream at each other. They can't argue. The same happens with creationism, often enough. The people are rational enough, but they don't share the fundamental assumption that would allow them to make headway in an argument with others.

Worse yet, some of these arguments are about "justice." That's even more dangerous. When someone says, "The Fredonians have oppressed my Elbonian majority for centuries, and I need to make that clear," we're in deep, deep doo-doo. They have a passion and belief that is superior to "reliable sources" or "neutral point of view": they're trying to correct something, trying to wreak justice, trying to dispel something the rest of us view as "true." This passion is shared by the spiritual believers and devotees of gurus, but not to the same extent. Geogre (talk) 16:59, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Freedonia and Elbonia? Please? Ah. We have do articles on them, that's good to know. Carcharoth (talk) 17:12, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

It occurs to me, though, that warrant (rhetoric) is still to be written. I've got the books we used to teach the subject, back at the University of Paris in the 14th century, but I'd need to get more than a few sources to do a decent job and to document exactly who starts calling it by that term. (I have the Howells book on Renaissance Rhetoric, and it's one of my most treasured objects, even if it's impossible to read, and "warrant" is more current than that. I suspect that it's Austin or someone like that. Don't think it's I.A. Richards... not his style to use an Anglicized word.) Geogre (talk) 23:13, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Gloss

Oh, and for those (like me) who are lacking in a classical education (but who can use Google to find the correct spelling): the Horace wikiquote entry says "The mountains will be in labor, and a ridiculous mouse will be brought forth".

Well, actually, some context: in Ars Poetica, Horace is speaking of a bad poet who kept promising this Important Poem. He worked and worked and worked and spoke of it over and over again, and then he produced a very bad, silly piece. Thus, "The mountains go into labor, and they give birth to a ridiculous mouse." The effort is massive, and the result is laughable. Hence, our very good friends accepted a case, announced all sorts of breakthroughs to be made, all sorts of peace to be created, all sorts of justice to be delivered, and then they produced... exactly what the were pregnant with. Geogre (talk) 14:42, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, thanks! By the way, it is difficult to judge true emotion in a written context like this. Obviously the outcome of the arbitration case wasn't ideal, but would you mind saying how you really feel about all this? I'm not sure if the above is light humour or biting satire or restrained fury or something else or all of the above. Carcharoth (talk) 14:55, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

There were certainly mountains of comment on the talk pages! I think a huge monster of an arbitration decision, whether in volume or in effect, would have sent the wrong message. This one was about right for the situation. --Tony Sidaway 16:17, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

• My view is that there simply was no case. The way I view it, cases should always be because policies have been violated and because the parties who did so are ongoing or vowing to continue. Arbitration should be seeking the middle way and explaining as much as ruling.
  1. Here, the policies violated were either never stated or had already been upheld. However, people were angry.
  2. The case didn't have a definition. Everyone and everything got tacked on for whatever could be cobbled together.
  3. The case was commanded to solve the problem of David Gerard's vanity page, but a simple mfd took care of that, and it was commanded to set up clear governance of IRC on Wikipedia. Because of #2, it was easy to duck that. So, an edit war that was over, and where penalties had been assessed by usual process morphed into this hideous Caliban of "longstanding civility" where there was no definition of what, when, or how there had been "incivility," a question of Tony's pottymouth, and any and every thing else.
  4. How do you justify a mess like that? There is only one way, and it was the way various arbitrators took: promises to get at the "real reason" for an outbreak of anger. In their mysterious majesty, they came up with the answer of "Giano is mean. Geogre is mean. Bishonen is thin skinned."
• It's an utter failure. As was demonstrated amply during the morass of the talk page's life, two separate instances of IRC cronies maligning absent users occurred, and both resulted in anger. Giano had no way to avoid getting blocked, because there was never a definition of what the hell he had done wrong, Bishonen and I are warned not to edit war on a page that has been deleted, and we are promised that a secret IRC "working group" with neither oversight nor inclusion principles will sort out the problems of IRC. Notably, those working on it will be chosen by people most invested in the continuing existence and promotion of the "admins" IRC channel."

• Everything has been about feelings, not actions. It has been about the hearts of the arbitrators, not the actions of anyone. It has been about preservation of status, imposition of status, and the existence of laughable power. It has been aimed at people who choose not to play on IRC, and the hidden message here is that if you don't go there, you are prey. If you do participate there, you are empowered.

• Tony Sidaway still isn't an administrator and is still welcome there. Betacommand still isn't an admin and is still welcome there. Dozens or scores of administrators won't go near the thing with someone else's modem. It continues to bear its name, and now it is to be "fixed" by only those who go there. Haven't we all been down this road before? Isn't the conclusion immediately obvious?

• I spent the time to write a careful essay about how useful IRC can be and what the inherent dangers are, and that turns into the received opinion that I "hate IRC." Bishonen goes there, though, and so she is a "hypocrite." I.e. if you find it reprehensible, you are dismissed. If you go there, you are dismissed if you have any vision of how it can be better. If you say nothing about it, one way or another, you are subject to sudden actions that are mysteriously coordinated, and you find that loads of people "know" all about you.

• However, we hear now that "don't be mean" is the result of the case that was supposed to address the issue. "Follow existing processes" is the answer for bad behavior on IRC, when there aren't any. Good God, can anyone think that it was worth the time, the animosity, and the hard feelings? Do the people who voted to accept the case feel satisfied with themselves? Do they think, seriously, that they were following the processes of ArbCom? If so, bad cess to them: they are not worthy of being listened to by anyone. For myself, it is an irrelevance. I feel no change in my heart or mind or practice. I see no change in anyone, except the loss of contributions to Wikipedia. It is good, though, that there has also been absolutely no change to the contributions of en.admins.irc nor its conduct. There will not be, either, because I note that many people would far rather give up editing Wikipedia than give up talking on IRC. That should tell them that they're misplaced. It tells me that quite clearly. Geogre (talk) 17:18, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I asked to be removed from the access list to the channel before the arbitration case was accepted [12] and have publicly asserted that I intend that to be permanent. [13]. Jimbo Wales clarified the way to handle complaints about IRC prior to the case [14]. The arbitration committee ruled (as it often has in the past) that provocative editing and warlike use of admin tools are not acceptable. And there won't (or shouldn't) be a repetition. This is something we can all live with. The Committee has announced that it is "formulating policy and procedure changes" based on Jimbo's clarification.

You state that "many people would far rather give up editing Wikipedia than give up talking on IRC" but I see no indication of where you arrived at this conclusion (at least one person who has announced that he is giving up editing Wikipedia does not use IRC at all). In short, I find it difficult to reconcile your description of the case with the facts available on-wiki. --Tony Sidaway 17:47, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

You know, Tony, one of the ways you could demonstrate your intention to stay out of trouble would be to...how can I put this nicely?...not continue discussing this subject with people who have a fundamentally different view of the situation. This would be a very good time for you to gracefully bow out of continuing to discuss this. If you'd like to make your position "official," why not write an essay and link it to your user page? Then people who wish to see it will be able to. Risker (talk) 18:02, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't agree that it would be appropriate for me to avoid discussing the case, any more than Geogre. I've provided some links to correct Geogre's misapprehensions. --Tony Sidaway 18:19, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

That is not what I said, Tony. My recommendation is for you to "not continue discussing this subject with people who have a fundamentally different view of the situation." You will not be able to persuade Geogre to change his views about the outcome any more than he is likely to change your views. He discusses that very issue in the section above. He, having also been a party to this case, has every right to draw his own conclusions. You have your right to draw conclusions as well. He isn't posting his conclusions and interpretations on your talk page, is he? He is not perpetuating this discussion with you. It's time to let this go, Tony. Risker (talk) 18:28, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

You're right that an exchange of views may not be particularly helpful. However my additional data points (concerning my permanent departure from the IRC channel prior to the case, Jimbo's clarification of policy, and arbcom's specific and unsurprising rulings in line with longstanding Wikipedia policy) may be of use. --Tony Sidaway 18:31, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

(Sorry Geogre and Risker, cover yours ears for a moment). Tony, you've just turned up on my talk page to criticise my actions. You also said at ANI that I owe someone an apology. You clearly hadn't read the whole thread, as someome else told you. You also weighed in with this comment, where you seem to support the actions of blocking first and asking questions and granting unblocks later if the blocks were in error. I actually agree with many of the points you raise above, but sometimes I read what you write and I think you are writing from incomplete knowledge of a situation (data points, indeed). Carcharoth (talk) 18:43, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

This comment doesn't seem to relate in any way to the arbitration case. --Tony Sidaway 18:50, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Correct. I'm changing the subject. It seemed the best thing to do. Carcharoth (talk) 19:13, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Let me know when you're ready to discuss the facts. --Tony Sidaway 20:52, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh, good heavens! Tony, aren't there other people to convince? What you've written is, if I'm being charitable, sophistic, or, if I'm not, self-delusion. Dude, don't try to get the last word, please. It's unbecoming. I was asked how I feel about it all, and I've answered. You disagree. That's nice. I expect disagreement, as it makes the world interesting. You keep disagreeing. That's a bit less nice, as it tends to make things all bolluxed up.

Tony, you've repented several times. It seems to not bother you, and that, in its way, is a worrisome sign. People who can break up with a lover too quickly are ones who never loved, and people who can go from en.admins (after they'd done so before) with no resolution to stay away nor reform of the thing itself so that non-administrators are not there, is not very reassuring. Perhaps you'll never speak there again, and perhaps you'll be back in a few weeks. If there is no change in the place itself, there is no reason to believe that another person won't be there telling all the admins how "we" do things. If there is no reform, then it will still be for the more equal animals. If it's still here, still calling itself "wikipedia," and still not brought under any realistic means of dispute resolution, it will still be inappropriate, and all of this will replay for a fourth time.

I expect you disagree. That's fine. Please don't go from disagreeing to disagreeable. Geogre (talk) 23:09, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Also, Tony, you should review this. I don't want to be boorish and make much of it, but, well, it is to the purpose. Geogre (talk) 23:18, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

Geogre, you made some errors of fact. I provided the facts. I'm sorry if you have misread my statements of fact as "sophism". And I suppose while I'm here I'll clear up another. You state "The case was commanded to solve the problem of David Gerard's vanity page" (here you were obviously referring to a page on the admins channel). This is quite false, as you could easily tell if you looked at John254's application and the arbitrators' initial opinions, not to mention the principles, the findings of fact and the remedies. Sure, we disagree, but I hope we can at least agree on the the content of John254's statement and the words of the arbitrators in response. --Tony Sidaway 00:08, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Tony, let me make this very simple. Facts aren't actually as important as the interpretation of the facts. For example, you have told Newyorkbrad that you will no longer be discussing this subject except to read things on your talk page and acknowledge having seen them. I interpreted that to mean that you would no longer be discussing this subject. Perhaps I have misinterpreted that fact because here you are discussing this subject. We clearly have different interpretations of a single sentence, in any case. It should come as no surprise that when you are dealing with thirty or so people, there will be different understandings of the same core information. Risker (talk) 00:27, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

• I'll make this simpler--and much less diplomatic--than Risker. You need to shut up now, Tony. You've made promises to not discuss this issue anymore, yet here you are once more, an agent provocateur. I followed the case from beginning to end, and noted well how you pulled the wool over enough arbiters' eyes to avoid direct sanction. It was truly a masterwork of spin and deception. One of the key ingredients in your witch's brew was a promise to avoid these discussions. This promise was clearly a sophism, proving Geogre's point. You prove it more and more with every post you make to this page. My recommendation? Stop now, before you have completely disgraced yourself. In wading into discussions with Carcharoth, Geogre, and Risker, you're out of your intellectual depth, and by continuing to attempt to answer the self-evident charges leveled against you, you put the lie to the tales you wove at the Arbcom. Mr Which???05:00, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with Risker that interpretation of the facts is important, but the facts themselves are a little more important. If for instance I go off interpreting what I believe to be a fact, which is not a fact, then my conclusions are going to be invalid. For instance, in the above Geogre has incorrectly stated that I'm "still welcome" on the IRC channel but I've supplied him with a correction: I had myself removed permanently from the access list in late December. Geogre has modified his interpretation (and that's fine, he's entitled to his opinion). Moreover he, Mr Which and Risker all three have incorrectly stated that I said I would not discuss the IRC channel again (to what end?) I correct you now: I have given no such absurd promise. Please read my statement, which Geogre cites, in context . Intellect is no use if you don't apply it. --Tony Sidaway 14:08, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Why would "selected, not elected" matter?

Let's take a hypothetical. Suppose that there are over 2000 eligible persons for a position, and let's suppose that 40 run for the position. Now, let's suppose that the "election" is really more or less window dressing, that the winners will be selected by a single individual. Is it likely that such an individual will be fully informed about the 40 candidates? Suppose also that the person has a job or two in real life.

Ok, now let's suppose that there is a chat medium. It's attractive, because you don't really have to commit to getting a ton of background. You can go there, hear from people, utter a pronouncement or two, and then log off and go back to work. As soon as you show up, though, you hear great things about certain people and bad things about other people, and most people say very flattering things to you. If you were Solomon himself, your head would be turned.

So, let's suppose, again hypothetically, that the "selection" of candidates had something to do with these reports, or the flattery, or just familiarity, or even because one assumes that chatting shows dedication. It does not matter why or how. We only need to suppose that it has an effect, that it is a way to go from "just some name" to "known by Himself."

Here, then, comes the issue. Some people (rather a lot, unfortunately) say that the medium by which you pop in, chat a bit, and go back to work, is bad, that it has bad effects, or that it has been misused. Well, if you're Himself, it has to be puzzling. After all, every time you've been there, there is only peace and kindness to be seen. If you're one of those selected rather than elected, you have to be conscious of the fact that this medium is one of the keys to keeping you from being anonymous, that it is the doorway to Himself.

So, let's just ask the question: in such a hypothetical realm, how likely is it that the selected-not-elected would take the concerns of others seriously? How likely is it that they would want to see any substantial change to it? How likely is it that they would tolerate a suggestion that it be dismantled?

That's what I think, too. Geogre (talk) 12:53, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Doesn't this also apply to other self-selecting groups such as the various mailing lists, private email, and one-to-one chat? --Tony Sidaway 14:27, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Some things are more self-selecting than others. Talk page participants are selective. Talk page audiences (or any on-wiki audience) is not measurable (unless you want to try and make page view stats (minus the account owner visiting their own talk page) available - wouldn't it be strange if this was the most visited user talk page on Wikipedia after Jimbo's?). The public mailing lists are widely viewable - more so than IRC. One-to-one chat is *highly* selective. Unless you are Jimbo at the TIME 100 party... (yes, I read his talk page as well). Carcharoth (talk) 15:13, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Private email is obviously the most selective. We even provide a widget on the user interface to send a private email, and administrators are often exhorted to enable it. Not all mailing lists are public, and much the same observations apply to them as apply to private email.

But Geogre here is suggesting that the selection of candidates by the selector might be affected in some way by private conversations he may have, with particular reference to the chat medium. It's a reasonable argument in principle, though not particularly relevant to past selections (Jimbo has announced his reserve list and it includes every arbitrator candidate who got more than 50%, in order of the popular vote, after subtracting opposing votes from supporting votes--see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2007-12-26/Arbitration_series).

Geogre's overall point is that the private chat medium is seen by the selected as a funnel to the selector, and thus the selected will be biased against reform of the medium. It's really an argument against patronage; the medium is irrelevant. The question of whether we'll retain Jimmy Wales as our "special person" (as anthere puts it), and for how long, is much broader than the question of IRC. --Tony Sidaway 15:38, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

It's a silly dodge, anyway. It's another "let's change the subject" motion. If you think your best way to be known to Jimbo, or the reason you were known to Jimbo enough to be selected to ArbCom, is by the admins.irc channel, then how likely would you be to want to see it changed? I think that's the gist. Whatever the hell else people do is their business. If a big group thinks this thing is bad, and if you, as a member of ArbCom, know or suspect that this thing got you where you are, aren't you already seriously inclined to dismiss everyone else? After all, it's great, so far as you can tell. Works for you. So, everyone else must be imagining things. Jimbo will get the impression that it's "vital," because it's his only real contact with people on Wikipedia, and he'll think that there are no bad things done there, because every time he joins, the conversation is sweet and full of praises for him. Tony wants to talk about, "Well, can't two people get coffee cans and a string and whisper bad things?" Maybe. Who knows? This hypothetical is about whether people "selected" by Jimbo and who are known to Jimbo by their talks with him on en.admins.irc, are going to put through an honest consideration, much less effort, at addressing any systemic or fundamental problems with it. Ignore anyone who wants to talk about e-mails of Menace or walkie-talkies of Doom. It's cheap theatrics. Utgard Loki (talk) 15:39, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Are you aware how often Jimbo Wales visits the admins channel? The answeer is "very, very infrequently", far less often than he comments on the wiki or mailing list, and even less often than he responds to private emails.

But again I must pick you up on this suggestion:

If you think your best way to be known to Jimbo, or the reason you were known to Jimbo enough to be selected to ArbCom, is by the admins.irc channel....

We held public elections and Jimbo selected those who achieved more than 50% support in the popular vote, assigning positions to those who achieved the highest vote difference (opposes subtracted from supports), and retaining a reserve list in strict order of vote difference. See the link I posted above. This, I suggest, makes your argument moot.

I would also add that Jimmy Wales is, ex officio, a member of the arbitration committee's private mailing list. Wouldn't the patronage argument apply more readily to that forum? Why would a serving arbitrator feel the need to maintain contact with Jimmy Wales by hanging out on an IRC channel that Jimmy Wales hardly ever visits, when he knows for a fact that everything he says on arbcom-l will end up in Jimmy's inbox with a suitably impressive label? --Tony Sidaway 17:07, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

You're talking to yourself, now? Dude. Why am I so honored as to be the audience? Geogre (talk) 22:03, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Tenses

I was looking into the tenses, and I found: “Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus” or “Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus” with the future instead of the present ‘parturiunt’, as we have two lections. - which translates as "The mountains are in labour/ will be in labour, a ridiculous mouse will be born" - I corrected one part of the spelling, but when correcting another part, I think I got the tense wrong. Parturiunt = are in labour, and Parturient = will be labour. Of course, the mountains will continue to labour, and hopefully will bring forth some lions instead of mice, but surely you want to say that the mountains have laboured, and have brought forth a mouse. Or would that get too far from the original? Carcharoth (talk) 15:09, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

For me, I take it as making much more sense as "they do go into labor," but there is a sort of indefinite future, and Horace's usage can be figurative. I always had it as "parturiunt," but then I've seen it "corrected" as "Parturient." The first time I hit the quote, it was present tense, but the idea that there are two versions would explain how I keep quoting it and getting "corrected." What was most important for me was the very polite way of saying that ArbCom had performed an autocolonoscopy. Geogre (talk) 22:09, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

The spelling and tense were screwed but I thought the interpolation of "et" before "nascetur" was a nice rhetorical flourish (cf: Quidquid id est, timeo Danaos et dona ferentes, though in that case it might have more to do with the meter). --Tony Sidaway 16:09, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

As I've heard it, the passage is: "Parturiebat mons; formidabat Jupiter; ille vero murem peperit.” Translation:“The mountain laboured, Jupiter stood aghast, and a mouse ran out." ^[15] --SSBohio 04:57, 29 February 2008 (UTC)