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Sorry about another case

I wouldn't keep coming to you if I knew of a bunch of other admins who cared much about indef blocks given for no good reason. Here's a longtime name editor (several years' work on the WP) who just got indef blocked for profane incivility to somebody on his own TALK page (!), followed by (as usual) failure to kiss the rears of the proper admins. [2] In light of the JzG2 case, blocking somebody indef for this, with 3 admins refusing to unblock, is incredibly hypocritical. Worse still, I'm certain the blocking admin knows all about the JzG2 case, but did it anyway. SBHarris 00:41, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I left a few comments. Carcharoth (talk) 05:14, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the input. As it happens, I noticed this because he got zapped just as he was making some productive slogging on some articles about centenarians that I'm interested in as a gerontologist. So I know he can be a productive editor, 'cause that's how I noticed he was "gone." SBHarris 05:37, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I think I need your expertise

Hey there. I've got another FAC going on To Kill a Mockingbird, and it is mostly unopposed, but there is some question as to the images in the article. I've placed movie stills in the article under the impression that the copyright had run out of the movie version. Someone called me on it and I have to verify that. Do you know where I can find that information? I don't suppose, if that information is inaccurate, that I could somehow give another reason for their being in the book article? I appreciate any assistance you can give me. Thank you. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Moni3 (talk • contribs)

Will have a look at the image question now. Would like to look at the article as well! Give me a nudge in a few days if I forget. Need to do another review first. Carcharoth (talk) 05:23, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your support!

I truly appreciate it. For me, 1 April typically is one of the most difficult days of the year. Invariably, people line up to complain that I'm a "spoilsport" or "killjoy" who lacks a sense of humor and should go away for the day. It always is comforting to be reminded that not everyone feels this way. —David Levy 13:50, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

S'OK. You shouldn't have to be the only one to try and keep a lid on April Fools. Carcharoth (talk) 13:56, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Comment

This wasn't me. Could you possibly go back and correct the AN/I thread? Ryan Postlethwaite 15:54, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Corrected. I've also gone over to the dark side. See below. Carcharoth (talk) 16:37, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

closing the RfA as successful?

too funny. :D 68.237.239.228 (talk) 16:34, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Yay! Someone saw it. Carcharoth (talk) 16:37, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Again...

Just when I thought April 1 was over and I'd get 60 days of drama free image editing to focus on my tag conflict project...Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Betacommand_and_SVGs. Should this be moved to the subpage or is it different and new enough to warrant an actual ANI thread? MBisanz ^talk 03:41, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Really, I think, the aim should be to move away from having that subpage. This is really something BAG need to be called on - Betacommand needs to either listen to BAG or the community. The issue of running large tagging runs that he and and small group of others think will be OK, and then issues appearing when more people become aware of it, is something that needs to be urgently addressed. Personally, I think anything that has a large effect like this (number of images tagged, or being an open-ended task) should be advertised more widely than BAG. The individual tasks need advertising in specialist places, as obviously not enough people are watching BAG. That supposes that this task was even put through a bot request. Was it? Carcharoth (talk) 09:41, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry. It was the human account, not the human running the bot account, wasn't it? Need to read more closely. This is just Betacommand running a script on his own account, isn't it. Well, there should be other ways to handle that, but I can't think of them right now. Carcharoth (talk) 09:46, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes, it was doneo n his human account. I just wish things could settle down in the image area. I mean we've cleared out the backlog of NFCC non-compliance and now we're working on even cooler things like resolution and license conflict, and this just gives the whole thing an uggh feeling. BTW, that license conflict program is still running on my main machine. I may set a record with this program at over 100 hours so far. MBisanz ^talk 17:26, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Awarding Barnstar

		The Barnstar of Good Humor
		Aprils fools day was a blast. Loads of users lightened up to have good old fashion fun. I want to thank you for taking part in editing this page in particular and even though I may not know you, embrace the same talk pages, or even edit with you in the near future, I'd like to award you this Barnstar for making Wikipedia a fun environment in which to contribute. Until next year. :) SynergeticMaggot (talk) 13:31, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

April Fools' Day guideline

David, given what happened this year, I don't think the current guidelines or policies go far enough. It would be nice not to have to do this, but what happened this year didn't encourage me - and since the Wikipedia community continually grows and changes, there will always be some people willing to engage in this sort of behaviour. I'm thinking of gathering some evidence and links to discussions about this year, and the last few years, and then proposing a guideline for community approval. Would you be able to help with this, or suggest the best places to advertise this? Does anything already exist? Would this be best handled as a new page or sections or notes in existing guidelines and policies? Also, is this best done now (while the iron is hot) or in a month or so? Carcharoth (talk) 10:39, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Hello again! I just noticed that discussion of this nature already is underway at Wikipedia talk:April Fools' Day, though I'm thinking that it might be better to wait until everyone's a bit calmer. —David Levy 15:02, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Some good discussion there, great poems, and a link to a nice collection of gags. Now, if only the more irresponsible gags can be avoided next year, it should be fine. Carcharoth (talk) 15:31, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Some of what happened eventually constitutes an issue for the Foundation as it goes to the heart of what Wikipedia tries to be. There was a clear contrast between the brilliance of the main page and the humour of some of the inside jokes, and the kids running around opening fire hydrants and saying nyah-nyah-where's-yer-sense-of-humour. In light of changes to the user interface and admin edit-warring, crawled and cached by google, I would say that the current desultory discussion should run its course and the consensus or lack thereof should perhaps be brought to ArbCom and most certainly referred to the Board for reference. Alternativley, add a template to every page: "Wikipedia is unreliable from April 1st until all search engine caches are cleared". Whatever, guidelines are sorely needed. Franamax (talk) 03:37, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Drive-by remark no. 004-860375(B)

This is a very anonymous comment (I know better!) and not really related to any of the work you are doing here, so I hope you can forgive me.  I want to tell you that your diplomatic and statistical contributions to the image cleanup project, especially things like this, have inspired me to open a similarly tooth-pulling discussion at Wikia, where I hang out.  I won't link to the specific page because certain people are feeling hounded enough already, but it is analogous to creating a BLP policy, which our wiki doesn't have at the moment.  That discussion, unlike Wikipedia's, has unfortunately died off without establishing a consensus on action items (albeit without veering away into a flamewar either), so I have not been a very successful diplomat, but I never would have had the nerve to try it in the first place if I hadn't been watching you post carefully reasoned perspective day after day without losing your temper.  Thank you for that.

As to Betacommand himself, I can only say that this came to mind: "For the less even as for the greater there is some deed that he may accomplish but once only; and in that deed his heart shall rest.  It may be that I can unlock my jewels, but never again shall I make their like; and if I must break them, I shall break my heart, and I shall be slain; first of all the Eldar in Aman."

Best wishes on not getting burnt out.    Xeriphas1994 (talk) 16:44, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! That quote was nice. Carcharoth (talk) 16:48, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

Old image source statements

I found an old magazine cover image that was tagged as Non-free. Image:Popular Magazine April 7 1915.jpg I changed the tag to PD-US; added the publisher and a generic source statement. Is this sufficient? I have not contacted the up loader yet. I am looking for a strategy to deal with old public domain images of unknown source. Thanks for all of your work on the image deletion mania. -- SWTPC6800 (talk) 15:41, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

As far as removing it from the non-free considerations, that is fine. I would be fine with the source wording, but maybe you could ask User:MECU what he thinks of the source wording, as he is someone who is currently questioning some of the boundaries of this. Carcharoth (talk) 15:49, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Everything Ok Now?

I wandered by the Mythopoeic Society page and discovered there was a question (on discussion page) about the Fair Use Rationale of the .gif used; further I saw that some months later you apparently updated info and brought it into compliance, yes? First, let me say that I'm not sure who put up the .gif and didn't fill out the rationale but still (second), THANK YOU for fixing it, and (third) may I edit the bot complaint from last July off the discussion page? Or does it live there forever? Inquiring minds and all that-- Thanks again!LynnMaudlin (talk) 11:51, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Removing the bot message is no problem. Might be an idea to tighten up the sourcing. The link the Mythsoc webpage shows the logo/design in use, but ideally it would be possible to link to a page that explains what the logo is, and what the copyright status is. The idea being that people coming along later can (a) verify that the logo is genuine; and (b) verify its copyright status. Sorry if this seems overkill, but it seems to be the standards that are being aimed at now. Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 17:03, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I've queried the Council of Stewards (the Board of Directors of the nonprofit corp.) and I or some other affiliated person will be along to comply. LynnMaudlin (talk) 02:07, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:DM Article Assessment scale development

Hi Carcharoth, you were active in WP:DM last year when the development of an Article Assessment standard was discussed. For your information, this issue has been brought up again and we hope to finalise it this time around. Your input will be appreciated. --rxnd (talk) 07:09, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I probably won't have time to comment there, but it looks fine. Thanks for the note. I hope to get more involved over there eventually. Carcharoth (talk) 20:04, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

Stuffed dog redux

The article as created was an obvious A7 so I deleted it. Warden took it to DRV, so as an attempt to meet him half way I included the material in Slough railway station and created a redirect to it. Warden complained about that as well, muttering about GFDL, so I deleted it. I can't be bothered with it any more, and I've said my piece on the DRV. See also [3].Black Kite 20:03, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

If you want to raise the issue of Colonel Warden's "I thought it might entertain you" edit, please do so somewhere else and don't confuse the editor and the content. I would have added this content anyway, regardless of whether Colonel Warden would have done it first. It might only be a sourced paragraph or two on Station Jim in the Slough railway station article, or eventually an article, but please don't drag the Ealing Station platform 9 arguments over to Station Jim. It is intensely annoying when someone who is trying to write stuff and upload pictures, gets caught up in petty arguments like this. Carcharoth (talk) 20:13, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

It's also intensely annoying when you perform a good faith and completely correct A7 and get flamed for it. So irritating, in fact, that I'm going to take a break for a while before I say exactly what I think about the current direction of the encyclopedia and especially certain editors, which would not be a good idea. As I said at the DRV, a para about the dog in the station article is reasonable, but a separate article? Black Kite 20:18, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

You've already said what you think here. But this is not flaming. This is normal. My views on that type of speedy deletion are that if it is contested, the simplest thing is to undelete and merge, or go to AfD. It saves a lot of hassle in the long run, and would reduce your stress levels as well. Instead of directing Colonel Warden to AfD DRV, you should have just done the merge you ended up doing. By merging, demerging, deleting, recreating, redeleting, you make things more complicated than they need to be. Carcharoth (talk) 20:23, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

It seems that I can't win. I thought the merge was a good-faith compromise, because I think the stand-alone article would've been slaughtered at AfD. Normally I wouldn't really care, but recently there has just been so much disruption and wasting of everyone's time at AFD and other locations by a small cabal of editors who appear to believe that everything is notable. I mean, when Kurt does his "ignore policy" thing at AFD, it's just treated like his self-nom comments at RfA, but these people appear to believe it. The end result is that (and I'm not talking about the stuffed dog here, in comparison that passes WP:NOTE with flying colours) the encyclopedia is filling up with trivial crap and I for one am sick of it. Sorry for the rant :) Black Kite 20:35, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm saying that the merge was good. I also said AfD above, when I meant DRV. I wasn't aware of the background at AfD, but then I'm pretty much a mergist inclusionist anyway. I think half the stuff that goes to AfD (and even PROD) could just be quietly merged and/or sourced by people who know what they are doing. Most of the drama comes from people !voting delete or keep without doing the research. Carcharoth (talk) 20:42, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

[outdent] Without wishing to stir-up anything regarding the way it happened, just wanted to say thanks for adding Station Jim to the Slough Station article. You obviously spent quite a while researching and making sure it was 'right'. He was on my ToDo list (long way down!) but I never considered him as potential fodder for a separate article.

You may be interested to know that he is a minor celebrity in the area. A few years ago 'British Rail' (or whoever was in charge) wanted to remove him, and the local press led a successful campaign to keep him where he was! (I have a cutting somewhere.)

There is (or was) another stuffed dog, at Wimbledon Station I think, and in the article I read about that one it was suggested that there were once quite a few of these dogs working around the network. Now that would be a subject for an article...albeit a small one. (Just need some sources... :o( ).

Thanks again. -- EdJogg (talk) 13:12, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

No problem, and thank you. If you could find, or rediscover, that newspaper cutting, that would be great. More stuffed dogs? I fear some people may go into apoplexy! Carcharoth (talk) 13:17, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I've also found more. Thanks for this clue! See the DRV. Carcharoth (talk) 13:23, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad I didn't look at the DRV until after I left my comments here. (Slough Station is on my watchlist, otherwise I wouldn't have known.) Some strong feelings raised here! Thanks for your (closing) comment too.

Fascinating to see how many such dogs there were. How many more did not survive to be stuffed? I'll see if I can find out the newspaper article, and if so, I'll amend the station article accordingly. (You may then freely include it on your new article about Railway collecting dogs, or whatever you call it. Certain to be chosen for 'DYK?' !!)

EdJogg (talk) 14:55, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Ian Blair

As well as the Menezes incident and the bombings, it might be worth looking for comment on the attitide of the old-fashioned copper on the street to IB. I have it at third hand (the sergeant son of my parents' cleaner) that there was hostility to Blair over his post-Stephen Lawrence/Macpherson Report reforms. It may be worth seeing whether the Police Federation actually criticised him by name on this issue.--Peter cohen (talk) 12:27, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Note regarding ST47's incivility

I point you to this uncivil edit summary ("Bellweather [sic] can't behave"?!? What the hell is that supposed to mean? Does he think I'm his effin' kid?!?) as further proof that if arbcom doesn't at least address ST47's behavior, he's likely to repeat it. I'll let you deal with it, though, as I'm beyond the point of dealing with him in any manner other than (a wholly justified) anger. Are we really going to allow respected admins to treat normal editors like second-class citizens? Bellwether ^B_C 20:44, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

He obviously doesn't want to discuss things with you. I sort of gave him an exit strategy there, but I agree the edit summary and the smiley were less than ideal. I don't think anything more I say will help. Maybe you could ask someone else for another opinion? Sorry to be of so little help, but I am trying to calm things down. Carcharoth (talk) 21:08, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

• Well, Carch, I'm out on this whole fiasco. If ST47 wants to call me disruptive, and say I can't behave, more power to him. I can't deal with this crap anymore. If you check my contribs, you'll see it's taken a toll on my encyclopedia-building, and it's probably going to lead to a nice long semi-wikibreak (other than vandal-protection and the like). I don't know why arbcom can't see that setting up castes of editors who can be admonished/reminded/paroled, and those who can not discourages participation in the project. Please drop a note at my talkpage if there's anything at that mess of an arbcom you think I need to take note of. Regards, Bellwether ^B_C 03:31, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Board's new policy

Duh, how did I let that happen? Thanks for catching it; fixed. Tony (talk) 14:13, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Carcharoth, this is the Foundation-L initial post on the matter[4] with a link to the "official" statement and the discussion has continued on several threads within that mailing list. Does not appear to be finalized at this point, and there are some important issues to be resolved, such as existing restrictions on certain projects (French ones for sure) that copyright to specific versions of the GFDL. There are questions of whether their info can be transferred across to the proposed new licensing scheme. You can find the archives at WP:MAIL if you want to spend hours reading... Risker (talk) 14:17, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Oh. I thought, given the date, that it was about images. This is just the whole "what can we replace the GFDL with" debate. I fell asleep on that months ago. :-) Carcharoth (talk) 14:26, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I keep asking myself why I subscribe to that list, although it does work wonders for insomnia. About twice a month, there is something genuinely interesting and newsworthy, and then the regulars debate it endlessly for a week. Hmmm. Sounds like some pages around here. Risker (talk) 14:36, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

So should I remove it from the monthly summary (i.e., is it more trouble than it's worth to draw people's attention to it)? Tony (talk) 14:34, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

What you linked was about images, but as phrased at the moment is misleading, IMO. Probably is more trouble than it is worth, as no real change. Obviously if things do change, then add something. If the new license stuff Risker was talking about come to fruition, that is something that impacts whether people want to contribute under that license (most still will), but that's not really a WP:MOS issue. I do like the idea of a summary of WP:MOS changes though. I'm afraid I only really pay close attention to WP:MOS when things get close to WP:FAC. Or when common sense doesn't help, or I can't copy what someone else has done, or I'm really stuck between two choices. Whether or not the choices I do make in editing conform to WP:MOS is another story... Carcharoth (talk) 14:40, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar Award

		What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar
		For introducing the (absurdly simple yet brilliant) idea that solving the problem and getting people to help you do it is much better than endlessly arguing about actions that don't solve the problem. The idea also quickly ended an argument, will have resounding effects on Wikipedia in the future and helped my stress level and sanity at a time which I sorely needed it. Thank you for the brilliant idea and your help. MECU≈talk 17:48, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

(By the way, you may want to archive your talk page a little more. There are bots that can do it automatically if you want.)

Thanks. I had been putting off the archive, but will do it now. Still not quite sure about having it done by bot, for some strange reason. Carcharoth (talk) 18:01, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I second this barnstar, and have been meaning to do so many times. dihydrogen monoxide (H₂O) 02:43, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Request for peer review

Hi! I was wondering if you'd be able to look over this peer review (article). It's got a long way to go, and any input would be greatly appreciated. :) This spam message brought to you on behalf of the current Tzatziki Squad collaboration. Thanks, Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 22:22, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Not quite my thing (though I presume this is from the list of peer review volunteers). I see you have some feedback already, so will leave this on the back burner for now. Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 21:45, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

g'day Carcharoth...

I thought I'd let you know that we've had some success in finding a way to make mp3 files of our conversations available - thanks to User:Dtobias, who's donated some server space. You can now get the files from Wikipedia:NotTheWikipediaWeekly#mp3_files and I hope this helps you listen, if you're interested!

I love the idea of transcripts, but haven't yet had the chance to talk with anyone about how that may be feasible. I'd like also to extend an invitation to you to come along to one of these conversations - my intentions for the project is for it to be very open, and to hear your views on a variety of wiki issues would certainly be of interest to me! - let me know if you've any feedback whatsoever on how we're doing so far, and thanks for the interest! cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 07:36, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Will keep an eye out. Carcharoth (talk) 21:44, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Those Birds

Hi Carcharoth. I can't tell for certain but they look like white racing homers to me. Sorry I cannot be more definite. They may also be some white ringneck doves but it's a bit hard to judge the size of the birds (which would be the main determining factor) from the picture. --OnorioCatenacci (talk) 09:39, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Will later on try and upload two other pics I took, and get back to you (and the editor who left another comment). Carcharoth (talk) 21:44, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

NFCC 8 revisited

You were involved in this discussion, so I thought you might be interested in Wikipedia talk:Non-free content#Criterion 8 objection. howcheng {chat} 21:04, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

WP:CENT for NFCC#8

I'm happy to set this up, just checking you're not already doing the same thing. Black Kite 08:17, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

• Done - Wikipedia:NFCC Criterion 8 debate. Black Kite 09:33, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Missed anything

Sounds like a good summary without missing anything important. The libel claim could be another sentence, but still, it proves we don't need 100kb of text about someone's misdoings. Sceptre ^(talk) 01:15, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

No offence, but what you've written there misses out several key points. Why not try re-reading what was on the talk page? I know those who live in the area and who read about in the papers every day for months might not have the same viewpoint as someone at more of a distance, but you can be too distant from an event, and a rough and ready edit (which I've actually very grateful for) is really only a starting point. Carcharoth (talk) 01:21, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Weeding out the POV issues "he falsely claimed" and anything not relevant to Blair himself and not as part of the Met, you'd get something close to the paragraph summary. Minus the libel, of course. The thing is, you've got to be careful with the proportion of material you put in a biography for one event - even with Clinton, the summary of his impeachment hearing is about 5% of his article. Sceptre ^(talk) 01:26, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Well good, I'm glad you can do this sort of work as well. Like Cobaltbluetony, I will say good night now, and thanks for doing that work on that article. Carcharoth (talk) 01:29, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Long term vandalism

FWIW, I agree with you that it would be useful to track long-term vandalism (and I thought the "giving you a cookie" remark was uncalled-for at best.) I've personally run across at least a couple of vandalisms that have lasted for more than a month, on less-active articles, and--like you--I find it depressing. Do you know of anyone who might be able to cobble together something that would track these type of vandalism reverts? Gladys J Cortez 13:43, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Ask at WP:BOTREQ maybe? It is unfortunate that rollbacks don't have edit summaries, but I'm sure someone could generate a list of edits that were either undos, rollbacks, or had "rvv", "rv", "revert", "revert vandalism", etc. in the edit summaries, but were made a month or more after the previous edit. Or maybe two weeks or more. Or a range of times to see what the distribution is. In fact, I'll do and do that now. Carcharoth (talk) 13:47, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

FWIW, I recall reading about a revert that corrected vandalism more than a year after the fact; it was reported at one of the less pleasant off-wiki sites, and I'm not particularly motivated to spend the time searching for it there. My own record is, I believe, 6-month-old vandalism. Risker (talk) 13:57, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Interesting. Thanks. Do you have a diff for the 6-month one? Carcharoth (talk) 13:58, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry no, it was a few months back when I was just hitting random article and happened to spot an incongruous sentence in some technical page. I'm not even sure I was logged on at the time, I have a terrible habit of puttering around like that from work when I am stuck on-hold or in teleconferences. Don't tell the boss. Risker (talk) 14:29, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

I won't tell yours if you don't tell mine. :) It's just amazing to run across one of those oldies, though...the increasing sense of "WTF?" as you go back further and further through the edit history is an interesting sensation. Gladys J Cortez 16:23, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Just happened to stumble across this discussion: I picked off three long-term vandalism edits from 2007-10-10 on 2008-04-13, so it should meet the 6-month threshold. See Special:Contributions/68.32.137.51; two of the articles had automated or semi-automated edits intervening, but nothing else. Choess (talk) 21:59, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

image stats

I dont have the time to make this look pretty but http://pastebin.com/m4cf1e0ba is a list of results by file type, with a total of about 784659 images. β^_command 17:26, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Compared to a current total (from Special:Statistics, as of this timestamp) of 776,088?? That is slightly closer but still a puzzling 'increase' discrepancy of around 8000. Which do you think is more accurate? Don't worry about making things look pretty. I'll take it from there. And thanks very much for running that query. Carcharoth (talk) 17:32, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

RFA thanks

Thanks for your support in my RFA, that didn't quite make it and ended at 120/47/13. There was a ton of great advice there, that I'm going to go on. Maybe someday. If not, there are articles to write! Thanks for your support. Lawrence § t/e 17:53, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry

..for the misspelling. I normally have no trouble with my transliteration of Sindarin. --Relata refero (disp.) 12:03, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

longer comment

Let me explain the situation I had in mind in my comment on ANI. Very often you and I run into a "spree vandal" who is set on vandalizing until they get blocked. They vandalize one user page, someone warns them, they do it again, someone else wans them, and then finally I notice the vandalism on my watchlist. So I go, see the warnings, and leave a final warning - if you don't stop, you're going to be blocked. Then the person edits my user page. I don't believe it's a conflict of interest in situations like that to block them at that point, since I would have blocked for vandalizing any other user page. It seems to bureaucratic to me to go chase down another admin just because the person, who is going to be blocked anyway, decided to vandalize my page last. Of course it would be different if I had an ongoing relationship with the person I blocked, but in these cases it's throwaway accounts I am thinking of. — Carl (CBM · talk) 12:29, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, if there had been warnings but the vandalism continued, you could just block immediately on that basis. I guess it depends if the vandalism includes incivility and personal attacks on you, but then it would no longer be just vandalism. I personally would still just revert any vandalism directed at me and ignore it. You might say that this will allow them one last act of vandalism against someone else before being blocked, but that is easily reverted and I would apologise to anyone affected if the vandal was incivil to someone before I blocked them. But I need to be more experienced in this area and watch a few more cases before getting involved and putting theory into practice. Carcharoth (talk) 12:38, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Betacommand 2

This arbitration case has been closed and the final decision is available at the link above. The remedies decided by the Arbitration Committee, viewable here, instruct Betacommand with regards to the operation of BetacommandBot, including placement of notifications and civility in replying to concerns raised about its operation. Betacommand is urged to be significantly more responsive to good-faith questions from users whose images he tags and either to respond directly to such questions, and also to develop an "opt-out" list for BetacommandBot without imposing conditions on its use.

All editors are advised that periodic review of images and other media to ensure their compliance with the non-free content criteria may be necessary for policy, ethical, and sometimes legal reasons, and are invited to participate in policy discussions concerning this and related areas. Editors are cautioned not to be abusive toward or make personal attacks against participants, including bot operators, engaged in this work. The community is also urged to re-examine our policies and practices for reviewing, tagging, and where necessary deleting images in light of experience gained since the policies and practices were previously developed, including the disputes underlying this case. The Committee listed five specific points in the specific remedy that they believe any review should attempt to cover.

The Committee expects that the disputes and disruption underlying this case will cease as a result of this decision. In the event of non-compliance or a continued pattern of disputes, further review by the Committee may be sought after a reasonable time. In such a review, the Committee may impose appropriate sanctions including but not limited to the revocation of any user's privilege to use automated tools such as bots and scripts, revocation of other privileges, topic bans, civility restrictions, or any other remedies needed to end the disruption. However, please note that nothing in this paragraph restricts the authority of administrators to take appropriate action to deal with any disruptive incidents that may occur.

On behalf of the Arbitration Committee, Daniel (talk) 12:38, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Re: Incoming links to talk page redirects / Adminbot request

Sorry for the delay concerning the talkpage deletion robot, I was drafting a statement somewhere else. You can find my thoughts on Hesperian's talkpage, so there's little point posting the same thing in different places. Regarding the undeletion of the SVGs, there's two ways I can do it: undelete all the revisions of the images, or undelete all but the last. The former will be error-free, but you'll have to revert the speedy deletion tag very fast before somebody else working CAT:SD deletes it. The latter method is possibly prone to errors though, so I'm debating whether to go that route without preliminary testing. east.718 at 13:12, April 13, 2008

Replied there, though I see it has now gone to ANI. Carcharoth (talk) 13:37, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Please consider taking the AGF Challenge

I would like to invite you to consider taking part in the AGF Challenge which has been proposed for use in the RfA process [5] by User: Kim Bruning. You can answer in multiple choice format, or using essay answers, or anonymously. You can of course skip any parts of the Challenge you find objectionable or inadvisable.--Filll (talk) 14:16, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

You are assuming good faith (!) that people won't look up the answers... :-) (or look up the most popular answers). But I will have a quick go at the multiple choice ones. May do an essay later if I get too much wrong! Carcharoth (talk) 14:23, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Matter

Didn't want to clog up the images thread further with this, but get it and read it now. I am 100 pages in and it has me hooked. If you liked his other Culture stuff, I think you will like this. Respectfully yours, --John (talk) 20:47, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! :-) Carcharoth (talk) 20:52, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

And, having just finished it, my recommendation still stands. It's like a cross between Against a Dark Background and Use of Weapons, with a hint of Excession thrown in. Now I'll get off your talk page and let you get on with business. --John (talk) 00:41, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Re: Orphaned talk page redirects deletions

Hi there. As I've said at the ANI thread Ned Scott pointed out to you, I don't think your deletions are problmatic, but I did notive that you replied to him but haven't said anything at ANI. Given that you are still carrying out the deletions, might you consider leaving a note on ANI explaining how your deletions are different to those of East718? From what I can see, you are deleting genuinely orphaned redirects, and doing so slowly enough to manually review them. The larger question of whether this was discussed also needs answering, if you could say something about that. Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 04:46, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I've been waiting all day for you to come and talk to me. You (and others) mentioned me several times in various places without ever coming to my talk page. I can't say that left me feeling too good. I'd be more than happy to discuss my deletions with you here or on my talk page, however, I will not be posting to AN/I. I'd be much more in favor of marking it as {{historical}}, but that's a discussion for a different day. ; - )

I am currently deleting orphaned talk page redirects. The redirects do not have any incoming links and are generally the result of page moves. They are all older than 14 days. If you have any further questions for me, please let me know. --MZMcBride (talk) 04:52, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't actually aware (until Ned Scott posted) that you were actively carrying out deletions at the moment (that is what brought me to your talk page above). I was looking through East's logs, not yours! The previous references had been by others to you being one of several running admin bots. I did say, as soon as I saw Ned's post, that he should notify you, and he did. Next time you feel like this, please leave me a talk page message or come to ANI. No need to participate, but just make sure people know you are aware of the thread. I'm discomfited by the notion that admins being discussed at ANI would avoid ANI - that is not good.

As for the redirects, I think the indications there are that this sort of deletion is probably best put on hold until there is consensus that these types of redirects can be speedied. I would probably support a speedy for the sort you are deleting, but others wouldn't, and we need to respect that. So could I ask you to stop and participate in the discussion as to why these redirects should be deleted, or point to previous discussion of this? Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 05:12, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I see no reason to stop simply because there's a fuss on AN/I. If I based my every edit and action on the drama the consistently plagues AN/I, I'd be stuck in the mud, permanently. You've said so yourself that the type of deletions that I'm doing are uncontroversial maintenance. Right now is a low point in site usage for both the time of day, and the week. There's no need to get in the way of RC patrollers at some later time when now is fine. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:19, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I see that WP:CSD#G6 says the vague "cleaning up redirects". That is vague to the point of uselessness. There are many types of redirects, as I've said here. It is possible that CSD#G6 was only intended to apply to type 2A and 2B (broken redirects with only one edit). Also, did you see this comment by JLaTondre? I admit that your deletions are "cleaner" than the ones East did (his ones were not orphaned and included an exclusion for Wikipedia and User space backlinks), but still, there are others objecting, which is what I meant by "we need to respect that". I also asked if you could "point to previous discussion of this" - I presume that no link means there was no discussion about this? Or was there? Carcharoth (talk) 05:33, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Special:Statistics tells me that 216,100,013 edits have been made to the English Wikipedia. There are thousands of discussions every month. I certainly haven't read all of them, but I'd be shocked if one hadn't been had about this subject previously. I will say that lack of discussion doesn't imply that the deletions are controversial, though. And I haven't read most of the background discussion about many of the criteria for speedy deletion. I don't think that implies that I'm unable to delete pages under them, does it?

A few members of the community (less than .00001%) seem to be making quite a large production about something related to redirects and deletions on AN/I. But from what I can tell, a lot of it is simply a battleground in a larger political war. I see many back and forth posts between you and Maxim which seem entirely irrelevant to the broader topic at hand. In fact, the original poster posted again wondering what had happened. He had wanted a discussion about adminbots and had gotten a discussion entirely dedicated to God-knows-what.

I refuse to be part of such pointless drama. We're here to build a free online encyclopedia, or at least that's what I'm told. I do my part by reviewing a lot of old pages that shouldn't have been created and I delete them. I regularly do a significant amount of maintenance work – I fail to see how any of this really involves me. And I also fail to see how the project as a whole, and its noble goal of compiling the sum of all human knowledge, is diminished by the deletion of old, orphaned redirects in the Talk: namespace.

This conversation seems to be becoming circuitous, so this shall be my final say on the matter. Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:48, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with large parts of what you have posted here - you are either mischaracterising or ignoring parts of the ANI thread where valid points have been raised. If the redirects were recreated or restored, they would not diminish or harm the encyclopedia. Conversely, deletion of these redirects does not help the encyclopedia and should (except in limited cases) be done through WP:RfD or not at all. Several editors at the ANI thread have said this, and several have raised problems that you continue to ignore. Here is another one, from Help:Redirect: "Keep links to a page active after it has been moved (even if internal links are updated, this still applies for links from outside; also for links in edit summaries)". And that will be my last word on the matter for now as well. Carcharoth (talk) 06:28, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

Just for the record I tend to agree with MZ here. AN/I is basically broken and rather unproductive, there are some people who live there and turn everything into a major drama. Actions which improve the encyclopaedia which are from a user/reader point of view uncontroversial will always have my support, although I'll often debate on the detail. Orderinchaos 05:31, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The summary I wrote during that thread was meant to get things back under control. I think in some ways it did, but then again not many people actually responded directly to what I wrote in the summary. At the least, the summary is what I will look at when I seek to tie up loose ends, though as you say, I will probably do that away from ANI. Carcharoth (talk) 05:34, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

For the most part AN/I seems to be misunderstood by (generally non-admin) users as a place where one goes to defame one's enemies. The enemies then respond in like manner, and then they go for the death match in front of an audience, unaware that nobody is actually watching. It's like gladiatorial sports in text form, minus the audience. The actual % of admins who regularly use the thing would be an interesting percentage to calculate - several I know persistently ignore it because there's too much noise and sometimes no signal at all. Orderinchaos 06:39, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Stalking

In response to your wondering about a comment to the effect that "Consider I have been stalked in the past" - it referred to real-life, calling-at-home, threatening-his-wife, making-fake-plane-tickets-implying-that-they-were-coming-to-his-city harassment.

Just so you know. DS (talk) 00:17, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

OK. Thanks. It is unfortunate that wiki-stalking uses the same terminology, and that some people shorten that to "stalking". I certainly will be more careful how I use the phrase "wiki-stalking" in future, though I can't speak for others. Carcharoth (talk) 05:28, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Chess books

Yes, those are the ones still in the article. The others that are being added by DEn Broeder [6] are his own books. He claims that they're the "official" books of the tournament but provides no evidence. If they are the official books then, well, *shrug* but the fact that he's already been banned from nlwiki because of this spamming is suggestive. Black Kite 12:41, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

• Yeah, if Den Broeder's books are the official ones then fine, but (I must be getting cynical in my old age) I'd rather keep books added to an article by their author out of it until he proves that. Black Kite 12:45, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Vereniging Basisinkomen

Hi Carcharoth, I'd like to see you comment at Vereniging Basisinkomen. Since I have a COI, there is not much more that I can do there, and I would hate to see a good article go because a user dislikes me. Guido den Broeder (talk) 12:50, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Tag conflict

So, the great cross-tabbing is done and there is a list of 700 images at User:Betacommand/Sandbox 3 that show images classed as both free AND non-free. Obviously, an image can only be one of the two, so if editors could go through and correct the images, striking them out on the master list it would be great. Thanks. MBisanz ^talk 03:03, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Some wiki-gnome work! Thank goodness. :-) Though actually, images can contain free and non-free bits. Mainly a person taking a picture of a copyrighted sculpture. Needs a non-free tag for the sculpture, but also, because the photographer decides on angle of shot and lighting, they can release their bit under a GFDL (or other) license. Makes sense? Sorry I didn't mention this before! Carcharoth (talk) 06:58, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Yea, some may validly have 2 tags. But most are screenshots that are in theory fairuse replaceable, or mistagging by uploader, or user of a FUR where none is needed, etc. I'd say valid uses are maybe 5%. MBisanz ^talk 07:10, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Giano, Arbs, and Betacommand

Why do you even try, Carch? Dealing with this arbitration committee has, in my view, become little more than tilting at windmills and pissing into the wind. Why do you still try? You're a good community member, with lots of solid ideas on how to improve the community. Those on the arbcom aren't worthy of your time. They're chasing good contributors off right and left, both with their inaction (Betacommand), and their wildly misguided, antagonistic action (Giano). As I said, I can't figure out why you still try. Bellwether ^B_C 04:24, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Because most of the people involved are, in fact, reasonable, even if some are stubborn, prideful, verbose, etc. There is, in all cases, a person behind the screen. We are not just words on a screen, though the impersonal nature of the medium is part of the problem. Carcharoth (talk) 06:58, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I'll turn that around and say: Carcharoth, why don't you just keep on trying, keep doing what you're doing, when people talk past your summarizations, try another summary, when people ignore your list of questions in favour of the convenient single answer, just regroup and try again. Basically, ummm, exactly what you've been doing, exactly the same way, only into the foreseeable future. Impact doesn't come overnight, but here's one who's ideas have changed from watching you. None of ArbCom, Beta, Giano nor a swathe of others are stupid, corrupt, malicious nor any other epithet. They are all people who care deeply about Wikipedia, however each in their own way, and all with due care to their own selves and self-images. As do we all. It's amazing that this project can possibly function, think about it - there are a million reasons why it shouldn't exist. Carch is one of the reasons why it should - keep on keeping on! Franamax (talk) 10:02, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm going to second Franamax's thoughts here. Your continued work on these challenging situations has made a difference that helps the individuals, the interrelating groups, and the encyclopedia. Do keep it up. Risker (talk) 13:22, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Yes please. Paul August ☎ 14:44, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

I'll second Risker's praise - re your comments on my talk, perhaps I should have worded it better "your offer suggestion to provide commission stats" - either way, it'll still be eagerly taken up as a way of promising possible jam tomorrow rather than today. --Joopercoopers (talk) 14:47, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

• Hey, thanks all. I'll reply here in case this section gest out of control. It's nice to have the message bar light up like this for such nice messages. Doesn't take any time to deal with anything either! :-) Carcharoth (talk) 14:54, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

  For the record, my initial post of this thread was intended as a compliment to your character, in case it was taken any other way. Bellwether ^B_C 23:30, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks

For the support[7]. Narratives work better, I think, than bars and charts and arrows and timelines. Everyone involved is just a human at the other end of the screen...well, you said it better up above. Risker (talk) 05:54, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories

Is Wikipedia:WikiProject Categories basicly a dead project? It does not seem that anyone is watching / replying to the talk page entries. Dbiel ^(Talk) 05:32, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Replied over there. Carcharoth (talk) 06:56, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

E-mail

Apologies to those who sent me e-mail. I only picked it up this morning, though lots of it was about yesterday. Will try and reply to the e-mails at some point later today/tonight. Carcharoth (talk) 07:02, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

Melody Amber

The page is no longer protected, and the discussion seems to be over. Would you do the honours? Regards, Guido den Broeder (talk) 08:54, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Re: Special enforcers

1. It's not my intention to limit (reasonably civil) discussion (although I'm not certain where we should draw the line at which the behavior becomes outright harassment of the blocking admins). In any case, there are a number of technical means by which one can assist block evasion without modifying the original block, including proxying for the blocked user, playing games with autoblocks to allow the user to create a new account, and so forth. The general idea here is that, once properly blocked, the user would stay blocked, regardless of anything else.
2. I'm not sure why there'd need to be any agreement moreso than usual; all this does is reduce the pool of potential blockers to a very small group. Certainly, I would expect that anyone in the group would be mature enough to accept a difference of opinion.
3. Yes, I suppose that's true.

Kirill 14:50, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

Random page restrictions

I google searched special:random page and other parameters and your userpage pops up, so I assume you may know more than most about special:random. I am a molecular biologist and I am trying to tie togheter the topics in the portal Wikipedia:WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology, but is was thinking that the best way to fix stuff is to have other people fix it. Therefore I was looking for the possibility of using the Special:Random page to fish in only one category. Do you know who knows if it is this possible/easy to do? Thanks --Squidonius (talk) 21:14, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't actually know myself, though the one I know of is at Portal:Middle-earth/Random-article. Why not ask at Wikipedia:Help Desk and see if someone there can help you figure out how that random article generator works. I suspect you have to have a manual list somewhere, rather than a portal, but I may be wrong. See also Portal:Featured content, which has random stuff in its design. Carcharoth (talk) 21:28, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Opinion / Delete Page

This is a brewing controversy of which I'm sure you're aware, now I see there are four (no longer two) candidates willing to approach the process. I've previously expressed my opinion on where you should fit in the structure. So please give me your opinion on this page and whether you would advise me to promote it into project space. If you think it could reasonably go forward, I think it's worth a try. (I was ready to hedge with how it could be POINT-y, but I'm less worried after seeing more candidates working through the same system, nevertheless, beware). If you have no interest or oppose the process, please consider this my {{db-auth}} request for the referenced page in my userspace. Also keep in mind that your participation in BAG may conflict with your roles in 2009 Tranche Beta ;) Franamax (talk) 05:28, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I wasn't actually aware of the new process at all, as I've been doing other stuff the past few days. Thanks for writing this though! :-) Would you mind if I think about it for a bit? At the moment I'm thinking no, but don't want to decide straightaway. Carcharoth (talk) 07:37, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Take yer time and yes, you would have to review the developments, Coren's efforts, edit warring, the whole blah-blah. I'd urge you to think carefully, it would be pointless if you just got caught up in drama, but I do think you would bring an especially valuable viewpoint and some skills that could rub off onto other members. Franamax (talk) 09:24, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

OK. I thought about this at various points yesterday, and my thoughts did not really change. So I'm not going to go ahead with this. The timing doesn't really feel right for one thing. Thanks anyway, and let me know what you want to do with the page. I can't really bring myself to delete it! :-) Carcharoth (talk) 07:06, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

CSD:G7'd, an uninvolved admin will soon take it to the backyard shed and do the honours. Preserved on my local drive for posterity. Think about it in future. Or put forward someone else you think could be a good "non-tech" bot-head. Cheers! Franamax (talk) 07:16, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

And just FYI, here's a bot seemingly approved for trial without examination of the code, and apparently without questioning the assertion of storing on a subpage, resulting in the creation of several thousand sub-pages, flagged up here. I'm not going to raise a stink anywhere about due diligence, I'm not a BAGer and I might make that same omission in any case. I do feel a little uneasiness though. Franamax (talk) 07:49, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

missing ref tag bot

I saw you were involved in the "Unclosed ref tags" discussion and thought you might be interested in the related "Need a bot to find corrupted REFLIST outputs" discussion. What do you think of my algorithm proposal? -- Low Sea (talk) 07:03, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

Help please, Carch!

I've been mass-tagged by JohnBot regarding several of my images needing "copyright tags." Do you have any idea what the hell this is about? Doesn't the permission information ("creative commons") take care of copyright issues? What's the deal here? As you are something of an advocate for those of us who have been chased (mostly) from the project by this type of thing, I wanted to see if you would help me with this. I was just stopping in to see if I had any messages, and I saw that I'd been mass-tagged. Thanks for all you do! Bellwether ^B_C 18:43, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

• Also, given the lack of basic civility on the bot's talkpage, I didn't feel like opening another Betacommand can of worms--and I'm not around often enough anymore to deal with it anyway. Bellwether ^B_C 18:46, 25 April 2008 (UTC)
• I don't have the time or inclination to dig through and find the right copyright machine-readable tags. A while back, I worked my butt off for this project, trying to find free images like these to illustrate lesser-known articles. I emailed people, spent time on the phone, and spent multiple hours writing the actual articles. But recent events have convinced me that this project is values hard-working users less than their faceless bots and "career politicians." I just don't havve the WikiEnergy to run down all these machine-readable copyright tags that the bot is wanting. They're perfectly good images that I worked very hard to secure for these articles I wrote, but if the project cares more about making sure the copyright information is machine-readable or whatever, then I guess they will be deleted and will go off into the ether somewhere. Bellwether ^B_C 13:54, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
• And, by the way, shouldn't there have to be actual copyright VIOLATIONS (not just a lack of a machine-readable tag) to delete a photograph? Or are we so concerned with making our project bot-friendly that it doesn't matter if we lose really great images in the process? Bellwether ^B_C 14:00, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
• I've responded at my talkpage. I can't do this. Bellwether ^B_C 01:44, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

FYI

May I lose a hand if I make that error again. --Relata refero (disp.)

I made a couple of points over at Geogre's talkpage that might interest you. --Relata refero (disp.) 09:21, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

And I misspelled your username too. Again. Sigh. --Relata refero (disp.) 18:29, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

No probs! :-) I wonder if that story of Fenrir inspired Tolkien? Almost certainly. Wonder if I can dig out a reference for that? Carcharoth (talk) 18:31, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Done! See Carcharoth#Inspiration. Carcharoth (talk) 18:57, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Easter, images and a ticking bomb

File:Eastereggs.jpg

All the best! --Irpen

Thanks for heads up. I replied at my talk and at the thread. I remember the wonderful post by Geogre (can't find it now) how he watched bemused how bots were tagging, untagging and retagging his medieval image unable to agree with each other. At some point image patrollers kicked in (with no more clue, not because of lack of intelligence but because of lack of care and a shifted ranking of priorities (content too low.)

Anyway, if you don't mind the Eastern Orthodox Easter greeting, here are some traditional Ukrainian painted eggs. Cheers, --Irpen 06:14, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Related but different issue, therefore posting here. You can paste it to the thread at AN if you want.

See this history. The iron-clad FU rationale being removed or ignored with same spuriousity. Now, this is different from PD having the source page dead. But it is largely similar in that the fuss being caused by carelessness. Whoever uploaded the image, once I gave the rationale, it should have been (1) read, (2) judged on its own merit, (3) if challenged, the problem would have to be explained at talk. The patrollers did none of that. I have seen plenty of similar cases. These are just all from last week and I remember them best. I don't keep black books on users I don't like. So, I can't dig out every example. Thanks for taking on this. --Irpen 18:46, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, I've been looking at this upload log. I see Image:Patriarh Alexij II.jpg was deleted, but we have an image already at Patriarch Alexius II, so that's OK. The only other one is Image:Russia-navy-warrant officer.gif. That was used in Naval ranks and insignia of the Russian Federation. See here. Are you happy with that, or would you like that reviewed as well? Carcharoth (talk) 19:06, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

I have to run now. Sorry, will have to look at it later. But here is more of the same that illustrates the problem. --Irpen 19:12, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

History of science newsletter

Carcharoth,

Thanks for lighting a fire under me about the newsletter. I'll try to make a new one within the next week or so. I haven't been editing as much the last couple months, but my activity is picking up a bit for the summer. Those biographies you created are definitely fair game for the project. I don't know where exactly the line in drawn, but I'd say any scientist (or mathematician or inventor or physician) is fair game in the long run.--ragesoss (talk) 14:27, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

User:Videmus Omnia

Thanks for all your good work and wisdom in dealing with this. Without your intervention and leadership, this could have quickly gotten much uglier. --A. B. ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:07, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

CfD nomination of Category:School massacres

Category:School massacres, which you created, has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. – Superm401 - Talk 01:28, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Re Signpost story

I think that having a signpost story and making it clear that we take TOVs seriously might deter vandalism. Afterall, the kid got caught, arrested and now faces really serious charges. That might be a deterrent, I think. Regardless, TOV is only an essay and thus people don't have to listen to it, which I think sets a bad precedent. As far as the threat in the Middle East, it's difficult to report those to the appropriate authorities. And there is a bit of a litmus test in threats- is there both a plan AND a mechanism OR date/time. If you don't have at least two of those then it's likely just vandalism. Bstone (talk) 02:35, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Favour

Could I ask a favour, to tie up a few loose ends? Could you review the block of User:כתר and leave a note on their talk page whatever you decide? See User talk:כתר. I'm not happy about Moreschi's "Adieu", the lack of response from the unblock mailing list, the lack of checkuser evidence or even any attempt at such, the demand from Future Perfect for disclosure of previous editing (would be difficult if there wasn't any, and is intrusive in any case). Despite this, ktr was engaging reasonably with Future Perfect, but then the conversation fizzled out. If you could just follow up and explain or talk with ktr and see what you think, I'd be grateful. Carcharoth (talk) 14:12, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I'll review it later this day. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 14:39, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I've commented on various things (and sent you an e-mail). I also talked to ktr about the personal attacks, and ktr has apologised for those. I've re-contacted Future Perfect and Moreschi. Would you now consider unblocking for time served? As I said in the e-mail, I'll be away the rest of the weekend, so I'll leave this for you to deal with if you are around later. Carcharoth (talk) 09:48, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Moreschi has replied here, and has indicated he won't stand in the way of an unblock. I think we are very close to finishing this off. I considered unblocking, but as you said you were considering unblocking depending on time served, I thought I'd leave it up to you. Could you let me know what you decide? Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 21:47, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you (and Carcharoth) for following up on my request. Do you have any thoughts on how I could have handled the original situation more effectively or expeditiously? Thanks, Bovlb (talk) 23:07, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your help Bovlb. I think creating a SSP report or filing a CU request would have been the right and most appropriate thing we could do. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 23:49, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, yes. Unfortunately I didn't feel that I had either a basis or the belief required to file at SSP or CU. And I was unsuccessful in persuading the blocking admin to do it. Maybe I could just have filed an "anti-SSP report". :) Bovlb (talk) 00:42, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi Fayssal. Thanks for dealing with this. I appreciate you doing this before or just after starting a wikibreak. Bovlb's idea of an anti-SSP report is not such a bad idea. It would be just a normal SSP report, but would in fact report that an admin had blocked for "obvious" sockpuppetry without an SSP or CU case, would contend that it was in fact not so "obvious" as it seems, and would ask others to review it. Carcharoth (talk) 02:08, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi Carcharoth. I appreciate good ideas but we have the AN and ANI. Like this case, all other cases can be sorted out via those venues. This is just my opinion but it would be great to hear about other people's opinion. We have talked about a non-conformist RfC but this point can still be discussed at the village pump or the SSP talk page itself. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 05:25, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Re Unblock requests

The other matter is that I am still extremely unhappy at MaxSem's unblock reason here: "I'm not even going to look at this incivil and full of assumptions of bad faith request." I've looked at some other of MaxSem's declines, and I'm not impressed. Please note that I mentioned the MaxSem issue at ANI, but it got lost in the ensuing thread. See User talk:SimpsonsFan08 - at first glance that looks like someone abusing the unblock template, but would you be able to say anything about how the admins handled the unblock requests? I've never looked closely at how unblock requests are handled, but what is your opinion on the tone and appropriateness of the following? (I will notify MaxSem of this thread, and I apologise for using his unblocks as an example - if there was a way to do a random sampling of unblock requests, I would do that instead). [8], [9], [10] (yes, I know, but it doesn't look any better down here than it did up there), [11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16]. Note also the variations in block length - some people reach for the indefinite button immediately, others are more cautious. Now, I'm not saying that all the unblocks should have been granted, but there is a prevailing culture in some areas that is difficult to engage with, and I think unblock requests is one of them. I realise the vast majority of unblock requests need to be declined, but the culture seems to be one of rubber-stamping, and of requiring grovelling to be unblocked, rather than one of fairness and objectivity. I am thinking particularly of this and this. I would also note that some people do really great work in this area, but I'm concerned that using the unblock template has become a bit random - the outcome depends on who turns up to answer the request. Anyway, that's enough for now. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Carcharoth (talk) 14:12, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

This is a very reasonable concern and needs some serious and open discussions between admins and probably a general RfC on the issue without necessarily discussing individual admin actions (as we have AN for that) would be a good start to enhance our blocking process. I will definitely be glad to participate on it as I have a few points to discuss. Probably we can involve a few arbitrators to join the discussion and bring their input.

I may agree with you on the generalities and if you want me to review this case as well I will do of course. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 14:39, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. No need to look at the specifics here. I would like to keep this general. It will take me time to work up a suitable request for comments, but hopefully it can be kept reasonably calm and focused. Carcharoth (talk) 14:48, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Calm and focused - would also be dependent on the RfC's scope. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 14:59, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Re: AN

I apologize for my off-color remarks at AN earlier today. They were inflammatory, unnecessary, and needlessly provoking. You and I don't always agree on certain issues, but that doesn't mean that it's appropriate to make the kind of comments that I made, and for that I am truly sorry. --MZMcBride (talk) 01:27, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

• Apology accepted. Thanks, and don't worry about it. Carcharoth (talk) 02:56, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

VO

I'm wondering exactly why you support linking to a blatant attack page. Exactly what justifies maintaining this link? I think it sets a very poor precedent and is certainly not supported by any policy, but rather violates WP:CIVIL and WP:NPA. If you have a clear and rational justification for maintaining this particular link to the attack page, I'll let it stand, otherwise, I'll be deleting it and reprotecting the page. FeloniousMonk (talk) 03:22, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

The compromise (which I agree is not viable in the long-term) was aimed at avoiding escalation of the edit war that had broken out, which started with your edit here. I will note that others tried other compromises. See here and here. If you still have concerns about this, I suggest you read the ANI thread, the AE thread (not yet archived, one possible permalink here), and the exchange on Jim's talk page. I had actually forgotten to note this all at the arbitration case pages, so I'll do that now. I understand you are not happy with the compromise, but I would ask you to try and think of some other compromise and discuss it with others before taking unilateral action. Your initial action was to blank the part you found objectionable, though that still leaves the material in the page history. Ultimately, if you want the material gone, you need to consider whether you are happy for it to remain in the page history, an archive, in deleted edits accessible to admins, whether the link to the page history should stay or go, whether you want to request oversight, and so on. An MfD would be messy, as would a new arbitration case. Maybe you could consider writing a rebuttal and posting it in your userspace? Carcharoth (talk) 03:46, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

• And re-reading what I posted in the ANI thread, I think the best way forward is still this: "I suggest the arbitration committee review the essay and respond to Videmus Omnia as if he had filed a request for clarification in the case, and that the page is blanked in the meantime, with a link to the essay in the page history" - Felonious Monk, this would apply to you as well - you could ask the arbitration committee to review this, if you want. That would be my advice. Carcharoth (talk) 03:50, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Reasonable enough short-term compromise from the perspective of VO, but I think you can see why those he's named are objecting. Considering they remain on the project and he doesn't, I can't say this 'solution' is at all fair or viable. I hate punting to others (the Arbcom) to settle such a piddling affair. I suggest a better route for him and the community is for you (since you seem to have his ear) to speak to VO about the advantages of standing down gracefully, taking the high road and removing the link. That would be the ideal solution for all, I think; he's already made his point. FeloniousMonk (talk) 04:47, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I'll see what I can do. Carcharoth (talk) 05:20, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

A question, o all-knowing angel of non-free photos

Am I able to load the photo of the "Key Marco Cat" on this site, which appears to have been taken by the US-government run Smithsonian Institution, to Commons? Thanks in advance. --Moni3 (talk) 14:21, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I don't think so. 3D object - the photographer choses the creative angle and lighting. You'd need to ask nicely for a free picture, or take one yourself (if it is on display). The museum could kick you out and bar you for doing that (I presume they forbid taking of photos), but not much else (well, don't test that theory...). Or you could write an article solely about the object, and then claim fair use. But for a section in an article, probably not. I'd recommend putting an external link in the article, as I did (for example) at Harold Baily Dixon. Sometimes that is all you can do. Not a very angelic reply, was it? :-) Carcharoth (talk) 14:41, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

The article will be about indigenous people of the Everglades region. The Key Marco Cat is one of the only artifacts from the Calusa in such a state. I can't get to the Smithsonian, but I may try to take pics from a museum down here of less impressive stuff. There's no rule that says the angel can't be a pooper at the same time. At least it saves me some time and energy. Thanks! --Moni3 (talk) 14:47, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Huh?

This is a bit ludicrous, I think. How is gauging support for re-creation of that article violating anything Brad wished to happen? Brandt's a grade A hypocritical jackass. If he's so okay with "outing" the best arbiter I've known on the project, then why the hell shouldn't we re-create his article? He's becoming more and more notable by the day, and I'm sick of his bullshit. Bellwether ^B_C 17:14, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

V'town pictures

Yes, I was VERY happy to see that Gimmetrow did the legwork there. It makes me sad that the Sorta photograph will probably be deleted, though. That took a LOT of work to secure, and it's sad that we're becoming so scared-of-our-own-shadow bureaucratic with regards to photographs that even work that was clearly intended to be released under Creative Commons can't be used. Thanks for your assistance in this matter, though. And if anything might bring me back to the project with a vengeance, it's idiotic jackasses outing Brad and pissing me off. Bellwether ^B_C 17:18, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Proposed free image cleanup bot

Hi, Carcharoth...would you care to look at this bot request and make your opinion known? Also, if you know a forum to notify other possibly interested users, that would be great. Kelly ^hi! 17:56, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the note

Which got removed anyway, but I checked the page's history. This smack too much of censorship to me, but I guess we will have to go outside signposts, to blogs and such, to learn the truth. Sigh. As much as I dislike certain sites out there, I have the feeling that their version will become the only version... I also think that this censorship is going to blow this event out of proportions, just an opposite of what Newyorkbrad would want, but censorship has this effect on things. The rumor mills are already spinning. PS. You may want to comment here.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 08:52, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. It seems to me to be more a communication issue than any self-censorship. It doesn't help when someone isn't around to confirm what they meant, but I think it is clear that the departure itself (within limits) can be discussed with being explicit about what caused it. ie. No mention of names. I have myself removed several mentions of names in order to keep discussions focused. See what I said here. Carcharoth (talk) 09:32, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

I always strongly argued that editors should be protected from slander/harassment just as the subject of LIVING articles are; that said, if there is no slander/harassment involved, real names may be used (particularly if they are known to some... no point of trying to put the genie back in the box, it will only fuel the rumor mills and such). PS. Now AN search for newyorkbrad will come up empty ([17]); how many more will be censored? :( PS. I have posted my thoughts here.--_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 19:22, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Guido den Broeder

Hello. I discussion you participated in is used as evidence in an RfC/U I started. Fram (talk) 12:58, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Tolkien stuff

About the merging of the Middle-earth horses list into the Middle-earth animals list, I felt merging into one was better than having some editor tag it as non-notable cruft. I think combining articles into the lists of objects, weapons, plants, food, and Elves makes it easier for us to manage the content. See Magical objects in Harry Potter, for example. Better long lists than dozens of stubs marked for deletion. (I removed information about the movie horses based on the other lists, which have no adaptation info. The horses link provides the same information anyway, and it cuts down on non-free content).

Could you move The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II: The Rise of the Witch King to The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-earth II - The Rise of the Witch-king, or to any title as long as "Witch-king" is spelled correctly (heh)? I'm not sure the double colon is grammatically correct but Electronic Arts is no help regarding the "official spelling". Uthanc (talk) 16:07, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the note about the horses. As for the computer games title, there is also The Lord of the Rings: The Battle for Middle-Earth II—The Rise of the Witch-King... At this point, I'm tempted to ask: "Does it really matter?" :-) Carcharoth (talk) 12:08, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Links at Rome

I restored the dead links per your comment. I can't fix them though, I speak Hungarian and German, but these are Italian links. Thanks for the info anyway. Squash Racket (talk) 12:02, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Why did they freeze Brad's page?

It seems there's nearly an embargo on discussing what happened? This seems counterproductive. One of the highest-profile members of our community has left. Should there not be an open, honest, thoroughly frank discussion of what happened, and how to prevent such occurences in the future? Certainly, I would claim that if Brad were a run-of-the-mill user, editing a few articles, but basically staying out of the spotlight, his wishes to curtail discussion should be granted. But the fact that he was amongst the HIGHEST profile users on our project (and had willingly taken that position) would seem to indicate that he has forfeited--to some extent, at least--his right to curtail discussion of his dropping all of his myriad of duties and leaving the project all of a sudden. With ALL of that said, Brad is (was) one of our finest users. I wish him all the best, but I just feel that curtailing discussion of the why's and wherefore's of his leaving is counterproductive. Bellwether ^B_C 19:30, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Asking the questions all over Wikipedia appears to be counterproductive, and we should definitely respect Brad's wishes. Considering what he did for the project, we can at least do this. I second what MBisanz wrote. If you want some more details on the whats and whys, you can e-mail me. Please let's not have a reoccurrence of what just happened at signpost and scores of other places. Enigma ^message 05:07, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

What just happened? Is this recent or the stuff that happened a few days ago? Carcharoth (talk) 12:28, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Why can't you guys respect him, and his privacy, and drop the issue like he asked? - Rjd0060 (talk) 05:15, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

• Please see here for the general discussion, and please respect Newyorkbrad's wishes to not discuss him or the specifics of what happened here. Carcharoth (talk) 12:28, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Bombs

Oh, and Joopers, forgive me if those living in London don't find this sort of humour funny. Sure I'll forgive you if you like Carcharoth, no hard feelings here. I do think you're wrong though incidentally. Londoners have always laughed in the face of adversity, and it will be a sad day indeed when the city becomes as humourless as wikipedia often appears to be. Not that the idiot that did the posting shouldn't be hung up from the nearest virtual lampost, but reporting every prank call to the authorities is a sure fire way of diverting them from important traffic offence ticketing and policing the no demo zone around Whitehall. :-) take care. --Joopercoopers (talk) 19:46, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

No problems. I quite agree that some humour is needed. Thanks for explaining things. No hard feelings from me either. Carcharoth (talk) 23:06, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

WikiProject History of Science newsletter : Issue IV - May 2008

A new May 2008 issue of the WikiProject History of Science newsletter is hot off the virtual presses. Please feel free to make corrections or add news about any project-related content you've been working on. You're receiving this because you are a participant in the History of Science WikiProject. You may read the newsletter or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Yours in discourse--ragesoss (talk) 23:33, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm glad you found it worthwhile. I already left Jsarmi a note (and a second note to DGG soon after yours). Thanks!--ragesoss (talk) 00:29, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Opinion requested

As you are an admin involved in image policy, I'm hoping for a third opinion...per your advice, I stopped most of my image cleanup efforts and am mostly working on template standardization now. I did keep previous images I had tagged on my watchlist, and I was hoping for your opinion on Image:Biglvov2.jpg. I initially tagged this as as missing a source, this was reverted by Irpen. I felt the source was inadequate per the requirements of Wikipedia:Public domain (especially given the obsolete license tag), so I standardized the image format and added tags to request a better source and license. There are related discussions here and here.If you look at the state of the image now, it is almost as in as bad a state as when I found it, and it probably has a greater chance of deletion now than when it when it was tagged as a {{non-free historic image}}. I'm honestly not seeking deletion of content, and prefer that images be brought into compliance with policy rather than deleted, but I seem to run into unrelenting hostility wherever I turn. Unless you can point me elsewhere, there's no formal forum or method (that I know of) to question PD status of the images of absent uploaders rather than WP:PUI. Assuming I were ever return to image cleanup, how would you recommend image patrollers proceed in these situations? And when people attack my motives in this way, do I have any recourse besides a) quitting image patrolling or b) trying out the hopelessly useless DR process, like WP:RFC/U, and then when it fails to accomplish anything as usual, quitting image patrolling? Kelly ^hi! 01:43, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

There is little to add to the diffs in histories of the image and discussion pages. Exhausted by the patroller's persistence I even budged and provided an iron-clad rationale. But later, it crossed my mind to check google images and to find out that the info on publisher is on the first page of google image results.

Why did not I do that before? Well, frankly, I could not have thought that the image patroller did not try that on their own before tagging. Only later I realized that this may be the case and so it was. --Irpen 01:55, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

So why isn't the information on the publisher on the image description page? Why is it tagged with a Ukrainian tag when that isn't where it was published? Why is it tagged with a deprecated Polish tag? Why was the {{Information}} template deleted? These are the things that are frustrating. I'm happy to help clean up images, but these types of edits seem counterproductive rather than cooperative. You yourself have complained about images being deleted when source links go dead, but you haven't made any attempt to replicate that information here so the image can be preserved if the source link becomes unverifiable. I've tried to help on these Russian and Eastern European images, but I've been attacked at every turn. So be it - let them be deleted via BetacommandBot tagging or an unsympathetic admin if you don't want to work with anyone. I give up. Kelly ^hi! 02:05, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't do nice templates, sorry. This was never a requirement. Bot-readable templates are not an image requirement and will unlikely be. When I upload an image I add to it all the info necessary in the form clearly readable and intelligible. When you add the bot-template to my images whose status is clearly indicated anyway, it annoys me, but I do not interfere, as those image pages are not "mine" per GFDL.

Polish tag is not deprecated. The photo was published in both, Poland and Ukraine, so both tags apply. I gave you links and you have all the info you need to add if you think it is deficient rather than protract this discussion. And the main question remains, why did not the image patroller try Google Images? 10 seconds. First page of results. I think I answered that question too. --Irpen 02:15, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, so the image was published both in Poland and the Ukraine? I'm not seeing that from the source info, which seems to indicate only a Polish publication. And if you don't want to use info templates, why delete mine when I add them? And it is necessary to include verifiable information on creator, date, and place of publication on the image description page when making a PD claim, not just some bare link that includes a copyright claim like this. {{Somewebsite}} is not a valid PD claim. Kelly ^hi! 02:25, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

• Comment - there used to be a template {{PD-nosource}} for requesting more details on a PD image to justify a PD claim. But it was deleted on the grounds that any image without a source suitable for justifying a copyright claim should be deleted. So the only processes we're left with are speedy deletion, WP:IFD, or WP:PUI (which many erroneously believe is a deletion process). All of them evoke attacks on taggers or bot operators. So what is the alternative? Kelly ^hi! 02:34, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm away for the weekend, but my advice would be that you should both add as much information as possible to the image page (not just a link) when an image is disputed. No-one else is going to do it, and more information is good. Carcharoth (talk) 07:04, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Orphaned non-free media (Image:04298u cropped.jpg)

Thanks for uploading Image:04298u cropped.jpg. The media description page currently specifies that it is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, it is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the media was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. BJBot (talk) 12:15, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

That was because of unreverted vandalism. See here. Thanks for spotting that! Carcharoth (talk) 17:17, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Middle-earth CfD nominations

Original notices refactored by Carcharoth (talk) 07:16, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

I have nominated the following categories for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussions by adding your comments at the discussion pages. Thank you. Judgesurreal777 (talk) 00:01, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

• Category:Middle-earth horses discussion page
• Category:Middle-earth materials discussion page
• Category:Chieftains of the Dúnedain discussion page
• Category:Kings of Dale discussion page

• Thanks for the notification. I'm noting some other ones here as well:

• • Category:Ents discussion page
  • Category:Middle-earth Orcs discussion page
  • Category:Middle-earth food and drink discussion page
• In future, do you think you could do a list, like the above, as that is less "bot-like" than a string of automatic notices? Also, if you could notify Wikipedia:WikiProject Middle-earth, that would be good (see the project talk page). Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 07:16, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Request for Comment on List of the verified oldest people

I have started a request for comment on this page regarding what I believe to be the insertion of more original research. I don't believe that you have been involved previously but, if you have a little extra time, I would appreciate it if you had a quick look at the issue at hand, since your brilliant compromise at Ruby Muhammad has stood the test. If nothing else, I'd like to know if I'm really off base on this one! Cheers, CP 00:24, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Email

incoming. MBisanz ^talk 11:19, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Peer review request

Hi Carcharoth, This is a request for additional peer-review of article Anekantavada. This article has been peer-reviewed by Ruhrfisch (talk · contribs) who suggested that someone with interest in religion and philosophy should also peer review the article. Besides peer review I would also appreciate active improvements on this article (like copy editing, tagging for citations/ NPOV, wikifying links etcs and other stylistic concerns) This is, if you have time. The problem is not a single article relating Jainism is a featured or A-class article and all the articles are in a pathetic state. Hence I would doubly appreciate your efforts. Thanks--Anish (talk) 08:14, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Category Unions are also possible

I had a nice long chat with Brion Vibber yesterday. Found out that not only are category intersections possible using search, but also category unions! --☑ SamuelWantman 08:25, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

One random cent of advice

DNFT. Ncmvocalist (talk) 16:48, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Thank you

For this.[18] Today has been a tough day, and your post was heartwarming. Bittersweet, perhaps, yet I appreciate the thought. Best regards, Durova^Charge! 22:21, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Yet another attempt.

You might want to take a look at this. -- ☑ SamuelWantman 08:34, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

Commented over there. Carcharoth (talk) 02:04, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Kurt

Re: your comment on the ANI - I stand by my comment. Kurt's comment that the so-called "Arbitrary Committee" has "no legitimate authority granting any sort of access of this type" has no resemblance to reality. This is par for the course for him. Raul654 (talk) 00:50, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the pointer to the history. As I said to Deskana, I missed the "Arbitrary" comment, and I've noted this at the thread and pointed it out to Kurt, asking if he will apologise. I did also ask Deskana what the normal practice was. This happens so rarely that it might have been an idea for Deskana to give a bit of background as to why this thread suddenly popped up on the Administrators' Noticeboard. Not everyone knows what is going on around here, so explaining things at the start of a new post is often very helpful. Carcharoth (talk) 09:58, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Pointer to user_talk:Lar

You left me a message. Per my policy I have replied there. Just letting you know in case you had more to say. Happy editing. ++Lar: t/c 02:51, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

RE:Realms of Arda

Of course. By all means, please do so; if you can make it a good article, I in no way would try to impede you from doing so. I also want to point out that it's fueled in no way by malice, but more as pure annoyance. I just can't stand it when people state that there are so many ways to fix an article in an AfD, but none of them do anything to fix it afterwards. The exact same thing happened with the Kunta Kinte article; of course I'd like to see the article stay, but if it's just going to just sit there and not be improved by the people who defended it, then it needs to just be deleted. ♣ Klptyzm ^{Chat wit' me § Contributions} ♣ 17:01, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I am going to be looking at featured fictional lists to see how they handle things. I'm not good with wikitables though, so do bear with me here. Carcharoth (talk) 02:04, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

PD Images

Hi Carch, whilst wading through a swamp, I seem to recall you having made a suggestion once about, basically, a category for "Images that will enter the public domain in 200x". Did you actually make that suggestion, did you ever follow up on it, and why haven't you devoted every piece of your wiki-time to doing it? Or questions to that effect, anyway ;) Franamax (talk) 21:18, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

<deer caught in headlight look>! I did make that suggestion (several times in fact). I was kind of hoping someone else would adopt the idea. I think I personally didn't do this because someone said that some copyright renewal thing to do with Disney means that everything gets put on ice, including the PD champagne, until some date in 202x. I think. But that might only be the US. For other countries, or ones where you can definitely identify a date, and can do a fair-use rationale, that sort of category system would be good. For ones where no rationale is possible, a list of redlinks following image deletion, plus external links, would be good. This is the kind of thing that a well-organised project could do quite well. A bit like WikiProject Deletion Sorting, but for images. Carcharoth (talk) 02:02, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

notice

Hi Carcharoth. Please have a look at this. Thanks. -- FayssalF - ^{Wiki me up®} 22:39, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I appreciate you dealing with that before or just after starting a wikibreak. Carcharoth (talk) 01:30, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

The WP:AN thread on vandalism-only accounts

Referring to your point in the thread about vandalism-only accounts, it was well-made. I treated this site as a bit of a lark, and looking back on the experience I was a total eejit.

Anyway, I'm going to try and edit constructively... if you can help me that'd be appreciated! --1qx (talk) 22:55, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure you'll do fine. Just read around and as long as you edit constructively things should be OK. If you are still worried about what your early (and deleted) contributions look like, write an essay in your userspace explaining why you made those edits and what has changed since then. Carcharoth (talk) 02:26, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

• I should note I'm editing from an IP that is now blocked anon-only due to misuse (confirmed by a checkuser). I'm not going to go the same way as them! As for the essay, well, it'll be in my userspace, if you watchlist my userpage... Ta, --1qx (talk) 08:02, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

ED

I tried to get ED listed in the article Shock site, but other users have debated whether or not ED qualifies as a shock site. (If it isn't a shock site, though, then what is it?) There probably is an article that it belongs in, though. I just can't figure out which one.--Urban Rose 03:06, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Removal of pics

I'm waiting on a response from this person. Unless I receive a satisfactory one, I'll never deal with the Signpost again. I resent the degradation of the article and the waste of my time. If there's a policy about rationing perfectly good Commons images, tell me before I go searching for them (at Sandy's request). Tony (talk) 12:55, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

AND the graduation image was a beautiful one that is used absolutely nowhere. All the more reason to allow it a little breath. I'm very annoyed. Tony (talk) 13:25, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Middle earth food and drink

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2008_May_3#Category:Middle-earth_food_and_drink closed, notifying you per your request. --Kbdank71 14:11, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 02:30, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

A featured list graph

Hi, I was wondering if you would be willing to make a graph for featured lists that is similar to this one. There are considerably more sports FLs than any other category, so the graph will look a bit off, so maybe you could combine some of the categories (the sciences, music & media, etc.) Thanks for the time, Scorpion⁰⁴²² 00:23, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm really flattered by the request, but that last graph took a fair amount of time. I may do something eventually, and will do a graph if someone provides the numbers, but then whoever does the numbers might as well do the graph. It is the number-crunching bit I don't really fancy doing right now. Sorry about that! If you really can't find anyone else, ask me again. Carcharoth (talk) 05:43, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Uploading Image

Can you please upload this image. I am asking you because I have never uploaded any image from BBC. The image is present in this page. I want to use it for the article 1999 Chamoli earthquake. Otolemur crassicaudatus (talk) 05:38, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

That would be fair use, right? I wouldn't actually feel able to personally justify fair use for that, and as the uploader I'd feel responsible for it. It might be best if you find someone else, or try and find a free image. Sorry about that. Carcharoth (talk) 05:44, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

Albert Memorial image

Hi there. Sorry I didn't get back to you sooner. Yes, the licensing looks fine. I've actually gone ahead and uploaded another version (taken from the original) over the top of your crop though. It is quite a bit higher resolution, albeit not that much more detailed. Next time I'm in the area I can take a better photo of the freise itself if you'd like. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 19:56, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

• I decided to head over to Albert Memorial yesterday as I had some time to kill. :-) I took a panoramic image of all four friese sides that should be vastly better than the existing one. Perhaps if we were to really nail it, I could also add a silhouette image below each one detailing who is depicted in it. The images themselves are detailed enough to read the names of each person though. What do you think? Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 13:37, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
  • Oh, and as you said, you tried to take a photo of them on an overcast day.. Well yesterday was lovely and sunny but there was one drawback that I didn't consider til I got there. When the sun is shining, only half of the set of four frieses is sunlit and the other two are in shadow. As such, the four frieses are not evenly lit. Not much that you can do about it unfortunately. You either have four of them in shadow or you have two of them in shadow, depending on weather you encounter. Diliff | (Talk) (Contribs) 13:41, 13 May 2008 (UTC)
    • Well, not if you hang around for about half a day... (or pick a time of year when the sun in in the right place) :-) Thanks awfully for doing this. Can't wait to see the photos! Carcharoth (talk) 13:46, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Just to say hai

Tinucherian has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend or a new friend. Cheers, and happy editing!
Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Have a nice day ! -- TinuCherian ^{(Wanna Talk?)} - 09:36, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Museum stuff

Hi. I'm a little tied today. I'm sure User:Blnguyen the Vietname expert would look into it. Regards ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 11:20, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

OK. Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 11:28, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I've looked into it and there doesn't seem to be a museum with that name. There is however a Alexandre Yersin Museum which the article does mention "Yershin Museum". The page should be deleted as the part about th albert museum in clear nonsene, and later the Alexandre Yersin Museum started. ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 16:28, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I;ve stubbed the Yersin museum anyway, apparently it used to be his home. Seems odd a French-Swiss bacteriologist living in Vietnam! ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ ^$1,000,000? 16:40, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Please help!

I posted this on the Talk:Homeopathy Page:- TenOfAllTrades, Shoemaker......How can Homeopathy be the 'Fringe view' on the Homeopathy article? If that was the case, the article on 'Islam' should also be considered 'Fringe view' and the Criticism of Islam should be on the article on Islam rather than on the 'Criticism of Islam' Page. At WP:FRINGE, there is a section, titled, "Sufficiently notable for devoted articles", which mentions, 'Creation science', 'Apollo moon landing hoax', 'Time Cube' and 'Paul is dead' which are false allegations/rumours, so the allegations made by references 16 to 19 are not acceptable and so the whole of Para 2 must be removed from the 'Lead'. In fact, Para 1 is more than enough for an introduction.

Is there something wrong with it? Shouldn't Para 1 alone suffice for the 'Lead'?—Homoeopath (talk) 12:11, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

I sort of agree, but don't have time to get involved unfortunately. Carcharoth (talk) 13:48, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Confirmed sockpuppet. -- Fyslee / talk 14:24, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Ah, right. Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 14:36, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

"Le sigh"

Making typos, then correcting them, is one way we keep our edit counts up! --Orange Mike | Talk 16:55, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

G'day Carcharoth

I wonder if you'd be at all interested in a voice conversation? - there's a couple of things I'd like to touch base with you about - it'd be great to chat 'off' and 'on' the record over at WP:NTWW, if you've got the inclination at all. (the couple of things are really just the broad issues of the image policies, and the arbcom - I've got some ideas and would like your advice too....) cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 08:03, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm actually going on a wikibreak soon, so I probably won't have time. There are some other reasons why I'd prefer to do stuff by e-mail rather than voice conversations, so drop me an e-mail if you want to discuss some things. Carcharoth (talk) 10:00, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

perhaps I should wait until post-wikibreak? - if text is the go, there's nothing particularly sensitive, so maybe this page is a good location? - it's just a few ideas for some ways forward that I'd like your advice about really... I hope the wikibreak isn't because of undue stress - and regardless, it's probably worth me saying that I've held you, as a wiki-editor, in very high regard for a long time... cheers, Privatemusings (talk) 10:05, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

No stress. Just a well-deserved holiday! :-) Carcharoth (talk) 10:11, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

fantastic! in that case, I take it all back - you're an idiot, and I'll see you when you get back! ;-) Privatemusings (talk) 10:12, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Unblock

Since I'm around sporadically, probably better is someone else does. MBisanz ^talk 14:00, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

OK. Thanks. Carcharoth (talk) 14:03, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Yea, your actions were fine as I detailed in User:MBisanz/DraftRFAR‎. Now I'm justing waiting for the yellow bar telling me I have to copy/paste that to Statement 2. Cheers. MBisanz ^talk 20:11, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

RfA thanks!

		RfA: Many thanks
		Many thanks for your participation in my recent request for adminship. I am impressed by the amount of thought that goes into people's contribution to the RfA process, and humbled that so many have chosen to trust me with this new responsibility. I step into this new role cautiously, but will do my very best to live up to your kind words and expectations, and to further the project of the encyclopedia. Again, thank you. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 16:01, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Charcs

I think I meant to write Charc's, but now I actually realise that's wrong too, but for some reason I've always read your name as Charcoath. Maybe you should change it lol. I've seen lotr but I don't remember any badass wolves named carcharoth, did he not make the cut? MickMacNee (talk) 23:57, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Carcharoth. Carcharoth (talk) 23:58, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

RE: ANI thread regarding unblock decline

Please tell the complete story. [19] - Rjd0060 (talk) 01:27, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Good point. Sorry about that. Carcharoth (talk) 01:33, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

I have responded at the thread. Basically, I take a dim view of requests that focus on another user's conduct, and while I could probably have phrased my decline better I felt from what I could review that the block was justified and that a 55-hour block message that includes the language "you know better" means that someone more familiar with the user than I meant the block. I'm not aware that we ought to contact the other admin on every unblock situation. If East718 wanted to unblock, as he ultimately did, he had plenty of opportunities to do so while those unblock requests were up. Daniel Case (talk) 04:08, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

The Special Barnstar

		The Special Barnstar
		because I admire your style in resolving disputes. Enigma message 19:56, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Much appreciated. :-) Carcharoth (talk) 14:02, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

5/24 DYK

On 24 May, 2008, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Frieze of Parnassus , 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.

--Bedford ^Pray 01:42, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

Copyedit help

Hello Carcharoth. I am looking for someone to copyedit Textual criticism, which I am working on toward FA status. Interested? Drop me a line if so. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 16:00, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Hol

Sounds like a great holiday! I'd love to go to Chambord: that big picture is great fun to open up to full size. I'm not really turning to Arthurian stuff but that one's on the help list at the FA Team, of which I'm not even a member. And I'm going to help with Learned Hand (help!). My heart lies only with art and sixteenth/early seventeenth-century history, but I feel one should help out with this and that in a collaborative way. Trouble is, one then never gets round to what one really wants to do. qp10qp (talk) 18:25, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Comment

Well, it bears out what I always say about people who use their real names here .... Johnbod (talk) 16:55, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

So you aren't really John, then? :-) Thanks for removing that - I know you didn't have to. Carcharoth (talk) 17:01, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Why three hours?

In response to your question on Giano's talk page, I felt a three-hour block would be enough to get the message across without being so long that someone would block as excessive. What he's posted on his talk page since the block is plenty enough to extend the block but I am going to leave that well alone. Stifle (talk) 17:34, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Request for Peer Review help

Thank you for you work as a peer review volunteer. Since March, there has been a concerted effort to make sure all peer review requests get some response. Requests that have gone three days or longer without a substantial response are listed at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog. I have three requests to help this continue.

1) If you are asked to do a peer review, please ask the person who made the request to also do a review, preferably of a request that has not yet had feedback. This is fairly simple, but helps. For example when I review requests on the backlog list, I close with Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). Yours, ...

2) While there are several people who help with the backlog, lately I have been doing up to 3 or 4 peer reviews a day and can not keep this up much longer. We need help. Since there are now well over 100 names on the PR volunteers page, if each volunteer reviewed just one PR request without a response from the list each month, it would easily take care of the "no response" backlog. To help spread out the load, I suggest those willing pick a day of the month and do a review that day (for example, my first edit was on the 8th, so I could pick the 8th). Please pick a peer review request with no responses yet, if possible off the backlog list. If you want, leave a note on my talk page as to which day you picked and I will remind you each month.

3) I have made some proposals to add some limits to peer review requests at Wikipedia_talk:Peer_review#Proposed_limits. The idea is to prevent any one user from overly burdening the process. These seem fairly reasonable (one PR request per editor per day, only four total PR requests per editor at a time, PR requests with cleanup banners can be delisted (like GAN quick fail), and wait two weeks to relist a PR request after it is archived), but have gotten no feedback in one week. If you have any thoughts on these, please weigh in.

Thanks again for your help and in advance for any assistance with the backlog. Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:59, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Trivia

Hi Carch, nice to see you back & rested. With ref to this, there is or was a WP-space list of admins (I think, might have been all editors) named after things, ie "editors whose name is a vegetable", "editors whose name is an animal". You are probably on that list, where-ever it may be. I took it off my watchlist awhile ago, more fool I. It was funny 'til I got tired of it, now I can't find it. C'est la vie. Franamax (talk) 22:26, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

User:Radiant!/Classification of admins. :-) Carcharoth (talk) 22:28, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Ahh, thanks, re-watched. Now that I look, there seems to be a paucity of edible admins - systemic bias maybe? :) Franamax (talk) 23:37, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Cannibal? Carcharoth (talk) 23:38, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Now that you mention it, Wikipedia does seem to have an alarming tendency to eat its own members. Franamax (talk) 23:43, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

<me licks my chops>... <lupine grin> Carcharoth (talk) 23:47, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Bahh. Everyone knows you can be defeated by a wascally wabbit ;) Franamax (talk) 23:52, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Bones

The Wikipedia verification cult long ago eroded my belief in the BBC as a purveyor of straight information. Who says that Shakespeare is thought to have written those appalling lines? (There's no evidencethat he did or he didn't.)

Seems that stone restoring chap is onto a lucrative number. He was talking the job up a bit, but I wonder how much he is charging for binding in some flat stone?

qp10qp (talk) 13:02, 28 May 2008 (UTC) (AKA Mr Gradgrind)

Gradgrind? Ah, a Dickensian reference! "[Gradgrind] represents the stringency of Fact, statistics and other materialistic pursuits". My search for Gradgrind and Wikipedia also threw up User:Johnbod/chaperon! Carcharoth (talk) 13:07, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Lifetime

Presumably the CfD will be inconclusive. Given the technical issues, perhaps an RfC might be more helpful? Charles Matthews (talk) 13:18, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

I have a depressing backlog of technical stuff (and non-technical as well) that I haven't seen through to any sort of conclusion. The effort needed to actual set overarching things up and see them through to a conclusion on Wikipedia is quite large (and has got larger with time), though it is the task that is never started that takes longest to finish as, um, various wise people have said (oh, OK, it was Gaffer Gamgee!). I can't promise to actually do anything, but will definitely keep this in mind unless someone else gets to it first. Sorry to be so non-committal. Carcharoth (talk) 13:33, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

AN/I Edit summaries

Perhaps a different edit summary would not have literally stopped me in my tracks. My blood pressure now having returned to normal, I'll simply say that I'm not sure anyone really knows if or when Lawrence will return. He did get a good start in; if he isn't back by, say...this time next week, perhaps it would be worthwhile to pursue this without his input. It might not go in the direction he expected, but at the same time his work will be continued. Thoughts? Risker (talk) 02:37, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

What did you think the draft RfC was about? :-) I'll try and not be vague in edit summaries in future! I hadn't noticed Lawrence set a wikibreak enforcer for August. Maybe someone should e-mail him and ask if he minds others pursuing that idea. I'm not entirely sure such a large RfC will work, but it is an idea at least. Carcharoth (talk) 06:50, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Peter Wall

Hi. You might be interested in my revision of the lead, which I think now does a much better job of showing what the article is about, stressing its emphases and strengths, rather than being caught up in the promise of biographical trivia (heh). Your further thoughts would be appreciated. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 08:12, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Ken Pounds

I don't think there's any way to tell when an article is deleted, even if it was on your watch list, or at least not to be notified automatically. I was extremely surprised that they had copied the article word for word not only because of copyright reasons, but also that they trusted the content of a Wikipedia article for such an important report! We could have included any number of false facts in the text! JRawle (Talk) 21:39, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Peter Wall

C: Thanks for your efforts on this article. However, I really do have problems with many of your edits. Not least the one that has changed the first paragraph to what it is at present. I do hope you do not intend to leave it that way. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 05:17, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Sorry about that. Feel free to make changes. If we can discuss on the talk page, that would be good. Sometimes I edit to show or try something, rather than suggest. If you could be more specific as well, that would be good - do you mean the lead sentence or the first paragraph of the article proper? Carcharoth (talk) 05:21, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I mean the first paragraph, which consists of the following two sentences: "Peter Wall is a property developer in Vancouver, Canada. His role in the city's ongoing real-estate boom of the 1990s and 2000s has earned him both criticism and praise." To be honest, and I absolutely recognize that you are intent on improving the article, and agree in principle with some of your aims, I have very grave problems with your revisions. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 05:26, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

OK. I'm writing a post for the article talk page, offering up the edits for review. Could you wait a bit and then comment there? Carcharoth (talk) 05:28, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Actually, decided to address your concern straightaway. Did this change help? The problem I ran into was that the lead was being repetitive. There was a "significant and controversial" bit and a "criticism and praise" bit. I couldn't decide whether to keep both, one or neither. What do you think? I've nearly finished the talk page post, so if you don't mind waiting one minute longer, we can move over there. Carcharoth (talk) 05:34, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Talk page section is ready for discussing the edits. If you could comment on all of them (even the ones you agree with), I'd appreciate it. Constructive feedback is relatively rare around here and when I do get into a detailed discussion like this, I like to try and cover as much of the edits as possible. Carcharoth (talk) 05:46, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, again to be honest, about that change... I don't understand why you would try to avoid saying "in the first sentence what he is famous for, but [leave] it for a few sentences later." Again, however, this isn't the only change (albeit, obviously, the most significant one) with which I have grave problems. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 05:50, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I understand that. I'm working on something else while I'm waiting for you to say something on the article talk page. By all means feel free to change stuff and then discuss - I don't mind the order particularly - but I do need to know specifically what your concerns are before I can reasonably respond. I did leave out of the list what I thought were minor changes (date context), but I know some people in the past have said they prefer to leave dates for readers to find in the references, or to follow links to other articles to find out extra details - I happen to disagree on that, but I suspect it is more the changes to the lead and the section title changes you are concerned about. But I will stop speculating and let you actually say what you are concerned about. Carcharoth (talk) 05:55, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

You have mail. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 05:57, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

It is probably best for content issues to be discussed on-wiki, unless there are good reasons not to. Carcharoth (talk) 06:05, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 06:10, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Carcharoth, I have no interest in fighting with you, and I think you have made a number of salient points on the FAC. But I was dismayed at the extent and breath of your consecutive edits. Lets talk (Though I'm off out shopping for a few hrs in a minute!) Ceoil (talk) 10:09, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Oh well. Nice pointy edit summaries. But what did you expect after substantially changing an FAC. Ceoil (talk) 10:33, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I'm trying to make clear what is going on to anyone reading through the article history. I think my edit summaries are more informative than your one of "revert". What would you suggest I say instead? Carcharoth (talk) 10:43, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I meant using my name on the edit summaries, but really thats a very small thing. I've apologised to you on the fac page and given reasons for why I did what I did. I'm well aware that I reverted a lot of hard work, and I very sorry about that. But we are where we are, lets take this up on the article page. I have a few other things I want to take care of today, but I'll be watching and will try and respond and discuss with you as much as I can. Hopefully we can come out of this with a FA standard article, and no hard feelings. Ceoil (talk) 14:53, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I will try and avoid naming people directly in edit summaries in future - they are indelible so I should have taken more care there. In some ways this has worked out well, as I rarely get the chance or time or motivation to dissect things as much as this. Obviously such detailed dissection all the time would not be helpful, but I hope it will be helpful here. Carcharoth (talk) 15:05, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I have to admit I'm hopeful about this; I ve seen you around a fair but, and you seem like a reasonable and capable fella/gal. Anyway, enough of this, lets do some work ;). Ceoil (talk) 15:07, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Are you going to add Image:Vancouver Panorama.jpg or what ;-) I responding to opposes on the nom page and some are calling for images. You have images! Add.....Ceoil (talk) 16:35, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I've outlined some thoughts, at some length, here. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 08:37, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

(copied over from my talk page:) As I've indicated, it may be painstaking but I'll happily go through the individual edits if you want. This will be slow, but I'm prepared to do it if you feel it's important. But I would be grateful if at some point you were able to respond to the points I make above about the general way forward. That would be most useful to me. Thanks. --jbmurray (talk • contribs)

I thought I had. They are on your talk page, right? I'll look there. Carcharoth (talk) 10:32, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Nope, not yet. I've asked again on the talk page. Reply wherever you see fit. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 11:00, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

(copied over from my talk page:) Grand. I'm happy to leave you to continue with revising the article as you see fit. I do wish you all the best. Please feel free to give me a shout if at any point you think it is useful for me to take a look at it. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 11:41, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

(copied over from my talk page:) Hi. I'm not entirely sure of your specific questions. It might be good to look at all the sources used in that paragraph: the NYT emphasizes the post-1989 panic; the Georgia Straight emphasizes the handover; the Delany article stresses migration. Hence the Wikipedia article, correctly, includes all these as factors. (You might also note that this was a paragraph that underwent some distortions in copy-editing; look at this version, from when it went on FAC, for text that is more faithful to the sources. Had I continued to work on this article, I would have returned to these issues.)

As for whether Hui is or was more important than Wall, for this you can re-read the WP article itself, which establishes notability in ways that you would not be able to establish Hui's. Not least the fact that Wall built Vancouver's tallest building. I.e. Wall's notability is not premised on his colourfulness.

Otherwise, of course the article simplifies to some extent. That's part of our responsibility as encyclopedia editors. But you would need to look at the full range of the sources to get a decent idea of the actual situation, if you want to question the ways in which I've presented them. The sources very clearly, I believe, verify my presentation.

You may not have access to ProQuest. I'm happy, however, to email you copies of the articles used if you wish. I noted from your edit summaries that you had problems with some of the sources; I strongly disagree with your assessment of them, but that's your call as you re-write. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 12:44, 2 June 2008 (UTC)