User talk:Newyorkbrad/Archive/2011/Jan

This is an archive of past discussions with User:Newyorkbrad. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Hogmanay greeting

Thank you very much for working with me in 2010 to make the encyclopedia a better place. Regardless of any disagreements we may have had, I want to wish you all the very best for 2011. I look forward to working with you, and I hope for health and happiness to you and your family in the year to come. I therefore send you this glass of the cratur, so you can celebrate, whether it is Hogmanay or New Year's Day where you are. Warmest regards, --John (talk) 04:58, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you

For your prompt input into the AE case involving me. The fact that I can thank you here shows that it was quite effective :) Nonetheless I do believe that I will have to seek a clarification and/or an amendment soon; I certainly don't want to end up on AE again - yet the last few week do show that navigating the topic ban is hard, and not only for me. Any further advice is, as always, appreciated. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 01:38, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

So, is there going to be a motion, or should we request clarification every time just to make sure arbcom really, really, really meant what it said? T. Canens (talk) 03:32, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

I've been thinking about how best to deal with this, but in the meantime, I see that Piotrus has filed a request to lift the ban, so some form of motion (whether a lifting or a clarification or whatever) will likely arise out of that. I will note in self-defense that the wording we used for Piotrus was under discussion for a couple of weeks on-wiki, and has been used before regarding a couple of other users, and has been used before that in another case if I recall correctly—and no one ever suggested that there was any ambiguity in it until this incident came up. Suggestions for a clearer wording, if we don't lift the ban altogether, would be most welcome. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 04:00, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Help with microfilms

As we discussed at the meetup in DC, this is the task: Currently, two of the reels are missing from the Library of Congress microfilms of New York City telephone directories. The last one before the gap is dated October 15, 1915; the first after the gap is dated May 8, 1918. The presumed directory dates would be February, May, and October 1916, February, May, and October 1917, and February 1918, since at that time the directories came out three times a year with February, May, and October dates. (This would come to 7 directories on 2 reels, a little strange because you'd expect an even number, but I guess one had 3 and one had 4.) I would like you to look up two pages in each: the title page (which gives the precise date) and the business office/exchange list. (In the 1915 directory, it is headed "TELEPHONE BUSINESS OFFICES IN NEW YORK CITY" but in 1918 it is headed "LOCAL COMMERCIAL OFFICES IN NEW YORK CITY," so you'll have to look for both, this is an early page in each directory.) What needs to be done involves the ten exchange names that were present in 1918 but not in 1915: Academy, Bowling Green, Forsyth, Kenmore, Knickerbocker, Rhinelander, St. Nicholas, Sterling, Vanderbilt, and Whitehall. The question is, when did each appear for the first time? If you can check these, it would be appreciated. Please note down both the exact dates of the seven directories (even the ones in which no new exchange appears; I need that information for my organized charts) and which of these ten exchanges are found in each. Thanks in advance -- BRG (talk) 14:36, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

As promised, I will look these up for you, though I can't promise just when. To save me a few minutes, could you look up the directories in the NYPL online catalog, and cite me to the entry and the call number? Thanks and regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 04:01, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

The call number is given as *ZAN-13682H (Microfilm). Any more useful info you might need to help you track it down is at http://catalog.nypl.org/record=b14889052~S1 . -- BRG (talk) 13:54, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Invitation to join WikiProject United States

Hello, Newyorkbrad/Archive/2011/Jan! WikiProject United States, an outreach effort supporting development of United States related articles in Wikipedia, has recently been restarted after a long period of inactivity. As a user who has shown an interest in United States related topics we wanted to invite you to join us in developing content relating to the United States. If you are interested please add your Username and area of interest to the members page here. Thank you!!!

--Kumioko (talk) 03:59, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Unbelievable!

You, my dear sir, have written the most amazing block reason that I have ever seen. This was unbelievably fun to read. Fantastic job. :) ~~ Hi878 ^{(Come shout at me!)} 02:19, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

		The Barnstar of Good Humor
		For this block rationale. T. Canens (talk) 03:58, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

NYC Wikipedia Day Invitation

As a New Yorker and someone I met last year, I invite you to join me in my Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Wikipedia Day#Open Space discussion on how to improve the coverage of New York City. My hands-on tutorial on wp:inline citations will be directed to Manhattan in particular, but the discussion will be open-ended, drawing on my experiences improving coverage of Philadelphia history and government.--DThomsen8 (talk) 15:25, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

notice of withdrawal World War II

The following notice has been posted by me at Evidence page, World War II case:

Notice of withdrawal

My application for arbitration was made in the belief that the dispute represented essentially a content dispute concerning systemic and systematic POV-bias, as corroborated by the words and meaning of my initial applications and of my pre-filing statement and evidence statement.

This case was referred to Arbcom on the basis of Arbitration Committee's own stated Mehod, cases "can and have ranged from user misconduct to large-scale disagreements over article content." However, Arbcom has since reneged and/or contradicted its own publicly stated Mehod by now saying: "It is not the Arbitration Committee's role to settle good-faith content disputes among editors." [1] Moreover, the drafting arbitrator has made clear his view that there is no need to invoke any extraordinary dispute resolution mechanism to resolve what IMO is an intractible editing dispute.

Given the above facts and matters, the filing party hereby withdraws unreservedly the case filed. Communicat (talk) 19:58, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

WikiXDC: Wikipedia 10th Birthday!

You are invited to WikiXDC, a special meetup event and celebration on Saturday, January 22 hosted by the National Archives and Records Administration in downtown Washington, D.C.

Date: January 22, 2011 (tentatively 9:30 AM - 5 PM)
Location: National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), downtown building, Pennsylvania Avenue & 7th St NW.
Description: There will be a behind-the-scenes tour of the National Archives and you will learn more about what NARA does. We will also have a mini-film screening featuring FedFlix videos along with a special message from Jimmy Wales. In the afternoon, there will be lightning talks by Wikimedians (signup to speak), wiki-trivia, and cupcakes to celebrate!
Details & RSVP: Details about the event are on our Washington, DC tenwiki page.

Please RSVP soon as possible, as there likely will be a cap on number of attendees that NARA can accommodate.

Note: You can unsubscribe from DC meetup notices by removing your name at Wikipedia:Meetup/DC/Invite/List. BrownBot (talk) 02:06, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Please comment

on this, if you please. jps (talk) 07:52, 28 December 2010 (UTC)

I'm travelling for the holidays with limited on-wiki time and access. I'll take a look at this after I get home on Monday night, assuming it hasn't been fully resolved by then. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:53, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

It really should be clear to everyone that the general observations made in that case four-plus years ago are not meant to constrain rational editorial decisions today. Whether the issues are framed as passing ones about semantics or deep ones about the philosophy of science, they are not particularly within the Arbitration Committee's role or area of expertise. If there remains genuine confusion about this, I suppose we could reconsider making some sort of further clarification, but I really don't think it ought to be necessary. Newyorkbrad (talk) 13:25, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

kindly acknowledge withdrawal notice

Kindly acknowledge my notice of withdrawal posted yesterday. Alternatively, please direct me to the codification that states a case filed may not be later withdrawn by the filing party. If you missed my earlier message, here it is again:

Notice of withdrawal

My application for arbitration was made in the belief that the dispute represented essentially a content dispute concerning systemic and systematic POV-bias, as corroborated by the words and meaning of my initial applications and of my pre-filing statement and evidence statement.

This case was referred to Arbcom on the basis of Arbitration Committee's own stated Method, cases "can and have ranged from user misconduct to large-scale disagreements over article content." However, Arbcom has since reneged and/or contradicted its own publicly stated Method by now saying: "It is not the Arbitration Committee's role to settle good-faith content disputes among editors." [2] Moreover, the drafting arbitrator has made clear his view that there is no need to invoke any extraordinary dispute resolution mechanism to resolve what IMO is an intractible editing dispute.

Given the above facts and matters, the filing party hereby withdraws unreservedly the case filed. Communicat (talk) 19:50, 6 January 2011 (UTC) Communicat (talk) 13:03, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I acknowledge that you have sought to withdraw the case. However, it would be unreasonable to allow the case to be withdrawn at this stage, after the parties and arbitrators have spent a very significant amount of effort preparing and reviewing the evidence and working on the decision. We might allow a case to be withdrawn at this stage if the parties had resolved their disputes, but that is not what is happening here.

I am sure you are disappointed by the findings in the decision and the fact that things have not turned out as you have liked. The fact is, however, that a dozen arbitrators have concluded, so far unanimously, that the focus of the case should be where we have placed it. It may be that Wikipedia is not a suitable place for your writings on World War II and related topics, and that you should post them elsewhere instead. Please understand and accept, though, that we have independently evaluated the issues presented, without preconceived notions, and our conclusions are what they are.

With regard to whether cases should be allowed to be withdrawn, at this stage, even if we were to allow you to withdraw the case, it would inevitably be re-filed right away by someone else. We would wind up exactly where we are now, except after a few more days of delay and a little more arbitration-process "paperwork." I cannot see how that would help anyone, including yourself. Newyorkbrad (talk) 08:19, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Admins editing through protection

Hi Brad there is a request to unprotect the article - it is unfair that multiple admins are editing the article when an admin has protected it, there are also experienced users that want to edit it? Off2riorob (talk) 20:40, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

I think admins who are editing are doing it in good faith to make the article presentable with the many thousands of views it's getting. Nothing more. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:41, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

At the moment, it is semiprotected rather than full-protected. Hopefully it can stay at that level, but that depends on editor behavior. If the article does have to be full-protected again at some point, I agree that controversial edits may not be made, but I see nothing wrong with uncontroversial clean-up. This is an exceptional situation involving an article that, over the next several hours, will be viewed by tens of thousands of persons. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:47, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

The replies are appreciated. Its not easy being a second class contributor. Off2riorob (talk) 02:04, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

No one is a "second-class contributor." On the other hand, it's a question of balancing. Suppose while the article was full-protected, I noticed that somewhere in it, it said "Sen. Giffords" rather than "Rep. Giffords." Under a literal reading of "no editing through protection, period," my choices would be (1) to start a discussion on the talkpage about whether to fix the obvious mistake, which would have to be kept open for some undetermined period of time to allow a consensus to emerge, during which period thousands of people would see the factual inaccuracy; or (2) to unprotect the page, even if there were legitimate reasons for it to be protected. Neither of these is really satisfactory, and hence the conclusion I infer that there needs to be a narrow exception to allow non-controversial editing even on full-protected pages in situations such as we had today.

I anticipate your response that I am offering a silly, simplistic example: of course no one would object to that edit. But if that is so, then we already have established that rules have exceptions, and now we are talking about the more subtle task of line-drawing.

The best solution, of course, would be not to need full-protection, and indeed, I see that it was able to be lifted shortly after the flare-up. But we can't always count on the vandals and the POV-pushers and in this case the early-news-report-overreliers to cooperate, and we can't really allow edit-wars over whether someone is alive or dead, either. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:11, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

No worries, simple solutions with exceptions in extraordinary situations, I support that also. At the time I was actually responding at the time to this talkpage comment and I thought yea, he's right, when I checked the edit history, your one was the last so I posted the request here. I was actually the editor that was the first to realise the subject was not dead but was in surgery here and posted the edit request to the talkpage - edit protected - get the dead claim out of the article. The dead claim was supported and aided in its premature inclusion by administrators supported by breaking news stories without any official announcement at all. My remaining issue with this is that - as an experienced contributor I was able to help remove the false death report but then I am not able to edit through the protection like administrators are able to when as far as uncontroversial editing through protection goes there is no reason why I can't be trusted to be able to do it either, no worries, as I said, actually I was really responding and supporting the other editors position as I also do support minor clean up through protection but I see no reason why I and other experienced non admin contributors should not be able to contribute through protection in the same way. Such simple admin type tasks as minor clean up through protection and in fact protection of article and deletion of clear consensus AFD content and so on - the non controversial admin type work could easily be done by experienced contributors such as myself and many others without the need to pass a popularity firestorm that is the current RFA - a sort of admin lite for experienced contributors that have edited some controversial areas and have lots of entrenched wiki opponents and perhaps have some blocks such as myself who would have no chance of passing RFA. Just thinking out loud and bouncing some thoughts, no need to reply I realize its a discussion for another location, probably a perennial one that also would have no chance of getting support, regards. Off2riorob (talk) 14:06, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

G'day brad

And thanks for your thanks on my talk page - I think it's quite likely my early support was significant in your re-election, so you can love me or hate me for that at your leisure and inclination ;-) - I also recently asked Lar if he knew anyone with a broadly watched talk page and who might be interested in a very narrow, but important in my view, policy proposal at Wikipedia:Sexual_content - on the off chance that you might also know of someone who'd be interested, I thought I'd drop this in here :-)

Hope you're enjoying the winter - it's all hot and sticky down here, so I'm heading back to the sea..... Privatemusings (talk) 23:20, 10 January 2011 (UTC)

Question

I hope this is the right place to put this. I tried my 1st editing and being a Wikipedian! On the GCT page I left a message on the discussion pages using four tildes (RonRice (talk) 04:33, 11 January 2011 (UTC));I did check out Wikipedia:Questions, and NOW I am asking for help on a talk page, welcome! Newyorkbrad (talk) 04:04, 11 January 2011

Can you please see if my pages make sense on GCT? I don't know how to add a reference so I put it in the text. Sorry.

Finally, Is there a Cheat Sheet page I can use, and can you help me to create a page for James Monroe Hewlett and can you link it for me from the GCT text I added? How do I put a divider line in to separate my text from the next person's text or a section? Thanks, Ron RonRice (talk) 04:33, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Friendly (and new) talk page stalker Hello, it seems your question is directed at Newyorkbrad, but here is a 'cheat sheet' for editing Wikipedia (if I understood one of your questions well) : Wikipedia:Cheatsheet. Cheers - [CharlieEchoTango] 04:53, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Completely off-topic

... I was curious what you think about this. It sounds like the job market for newly minted J.D.s is pretty poor, although interestingly it hasn't seemed to slow applications to law school. I'm curious what you think the implications are for the legal profession 10 years down the line, because if you lose a generation of brand-new lawyers today, then presumably there will be a lack of experienced, prime-of-their-career lawyers a decade or so from now. The same sort of thing is happening in academic medicine, although perhaps to a lesser degree: with the substantial and ongoing contraction of federal research funding, it's nearly impossible for a novice researcher to secure the sort of funding necessary to develop a career. We're probably adequately supplied with independent researchers at present, but the same is unlikely to hold true in 10-20 years.

Medical-school debt is equally, if not more, substantial as law-school debt, but it sounds like law-school graduates are much more hard-pressed to pay it back, especially in the current economy. Medical-school graduates benefit from what is essentially a 100% employment rate, starting salaries that are sufficient to pay down debt, and federal loan-forgiveness programs for people who practice in underserved areas or stay in academia. It sounds like law-school graduates are pretty much completely at the mercy of the market, which is pretty harsh considering the price tag of a legal education. Anecdotally at least, there seems to be a proliferation of law-school graduates with crushing debt and little or no prospect of paying it back. Anyhow, perhaps this isn't an appropriate topic to discuss on Wikipedia, but I was curious to get the opinion of someone with more first-hand experience of the situation. MastCell ^Talk 19:55, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your note, and sorry I didn't have a chance to respond sooner. I don't think I have much to add to the situation, as you've read about it and observed it. A person who is close to me graduated from law school a couple of years ago, and was fortunate enough to find a federal clerkship for two years, and after that has a job at a big firm, but I know that some of his classmates are not nearly so lucky, and those who go to law schools that are not as highly ranked as his was are struggling even more. The law-and-economics types would say that the current situation is simply supply-and-demand at work—and plenty of people would say that our society is overrun by lawyers and lawyering and could use less of each— but neither of those observations is much comfort to someone who entered law school three or four or five or six years ago with no way to anticipate changes in the job market. I think one change in behavior that we are already starting to see if that people will attend law school only if they actually think they will want to work as lawyers or in an affiliated field, as opposed to law school's being the "safe" or "choice-postponing" default for some people who graduate from college and aren't sure what they really want to do next. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 09:46, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Content dispute or not?

I would like you or a "fully uuninvolved adminstrator" (page lurker) (as the formulaic request goes) to examine WP:Activist and its talk page to examine whether the content is related to Arbcom rulings about editor participation, or whether essays in projectspace are exempt from any Arbcom rulings about disputatious topics (including, but not limited to, Prem Rawat, Scientology, Eastern Europe, and Climate change as covered by Arbcom decisions involving groups of editors). I tried cleaning up the essay to make it neutral and non-polemic, but the banter on the talk page and the weird edits on the essay seem to indicate a potential problem therewith. Sound sufficiently carefully phrased? Thanks. Collect (talk) 11:43, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Not really, no. The page is obviously an outgrowth of ARBCC, but Cla keeps pretending otherwise, so everyone else is playing along. If the pretence has become too thin to be believed any more, then it would be best to put the thing under ARBCC formally, or (better) just delete it as a WP:WASTEOFTIME William M. Connolley (talk) 12:36, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Curiously enough, I am not CLA, nor have I ever been. See, moreover, [3] for the tenor of his talk page comments, and [4] and [5] injecting the CC case indirectly himself. And again, though WMC seems to think I am CLA, I am not. Collect (talk) 13:04, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Also note Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/Wikipedia:Activist and the strong delete !vote "per nom." Collect (talk) 13:06, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Of course you aren't CLA. You aren't Cla either. What are you on about? William M. Connolley (talk) 13:46, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Myzsterious Mizster Jones

The article Myzsterious Mizster Jones has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Not notable enough as a stand-alone article. Fails WP:NSONG. Information can be included in album's article.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. jsfouche ☽☾Talk 11:54, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

He's into shooting stars,

Eccentric cars,

Grew up fussing,

Fighting, in the bars.

All he's got to show for it's

The battle scars -

The myzsterious Mizster Jones.

Sounds notable to me. :) Newyorkbrad (talk) 09:37, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of Little Sheila

The article Little Sheila has been proposed for deletion because of the following concern:

Not notable enough as a stand-alone article. Fails WP:NSONG. Information can be included in album's article.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{proposed deletion/dated}} notice, but please explain why in your edit summary or on the article's talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing {{proposed deletion/dated}} will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. The speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. jsfouche ☽☾Talk 11:55, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

There's some more commotion down on the street,

And some more emotion out in the heat -

You've gotta watch yourself whoever you meet,

'Cause she's Little Sheila....

I don't suppose "WP:NEWYORKBRADLIKESIT" can be written into deletion policy, but in all seriousness, I think there's probably enough for an article here. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 09:41, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

One user re-added the PRODS, then was reverted again. I suspect that the user re-adding the PRODS was following one user by the looks of the contributions history :(. As an aside - I regret that some editors regard "principles" as being "platitudes." If anything, I suggest that the principles be written more stringently than before to indicate that they most certainly are not "platitudes." Collect (talk) 11:40, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

I think that user you mention was (understandably) confused by the difference between a prod (which can be removed by anyone who thinks we should keep the article), a speedy tag (which needs to be reviewed by an admin), and an AfD notice (which generally stays for the 7-day AfD period). It's been explained to him now. Newyorkbrad (talk) 13:34, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

So noted - he was absolutely acting in good faith on this. Thanks. Collect (talk) 14:38, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

General question

Am I misinterpreting WP:CFRD? 28bytes (talk) 00:52, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm also confused. RevDel only applies to the edit summary, not the actual edit, right? Does an admin need to scrub the actual edit from my talk if the edit summary wasn't offensive? And I posted to ANI because it sat on my talk for the longest time with no action, and was reverted at ANI with no action. Since I don't do IRC, I don't know how to handle such issues in the future to avoid spreading them. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:03, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

To 28bytes: application of criterion 2 is a judgment call: one person's "slurs, smears, and grossly offensive material" is another person's "ordinary incivility or personal attacks," and I don't think it's possible to define a sharp dividing line between the two. I personally favor erring, if at all, on the side of removing highly offensive remarks, particularly where they appear to be the interpolations of a banned troll who probably should be under a court order forbidding him from editing, as opposed to a good-faith editor who lost his or her cool in an isolated instance.

To SandyGeorgia: in general, the revision-deletion criteria apply to edits themselves and to edit summaries. However, many administrators will consider an offensive summary more in need of deletion than an offensive edit without the problematic summary. The reason is that when the edit is reverted, no one will see it the text of the edit again unless they happen to click in the history on that particular version, which usually no one will have any reason to do; whereas the edit summary, unless oversighted or rev-del'd, remains visible in the page history permanently. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:09, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, NYB ... that gives me enough info to know what to do in the future. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:41, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, NYB; I was under the impression that the "grossly insulting" etc. applied to other editors, not just to BLP subjects, but was confused by the AN/I comment that seemed to suggest otherwise. Thanks for the clarification. I agree with you, it's better to err on the side of removing it if there's no encyclopedic value to it; editors shouldn't have to see that sort of attack every time they check a page history. 28bytes (talk) 06:46, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

It applies to other editors or BLP subjects. That is, it applies to everyone. The purpose of Wikipedia is not to create a place where people can be randomly and offensively insulted. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 10:13, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Except by administrators? Malleus Fatuorum 10:22, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

That appears to be mostly the prerogative of hammers. — Coren ^(talk) 16:00, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Once again confirming what anyone with eyes to see already knew. Abuse is OK as long as you're an administrator. Malleus Fatuorum 16:03, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Malleus, you seem to be using two instruments for measuring abuse, calibrated at opposite ends of the reasonable scale. Maybe you can swap them? I am fairly sure that your blood pressure and the quality of your social interactions will profit. Hans Adler 16:31, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

No, I am using the same measure of abuse for every editor, a strategy that I think others might usefully consider adopting. Perhaps when you get blocked for using the word "sycophantic" you'll begin to understand. Malleus Fatuorum 16:36, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

(outdent) This would usually be a cue for one of my longish wikiphilosophical essays, but I don't have time to write one at the moment, which is probably just as well. However, I strongly believe that:

(1) This is a collaborative project, which means we need to treat each other with respect and refrain from gratuitiously insulting each other. This particular refers to editors who adopt that sort of tone as part of their everyday discourse, as opposed to someone losing his or her cool once in awhile, which happens to everyone.

(2) Editors should not be blocked unless there has been serious misbehavior. There is some tension between my view that incivility and personal attacks are a serious problem and are damaging the project, and my view that blocking should always be a last resort.

The tension between these two points would dissipate if people would voluntarily tone down excessive rhetoric and the flinging of insults. This would be a Good Thing for all concerned, administrators and otherwise, but I don't suppose that my calling for it to happen will make it so. Newyorkbrad (talk) 16:53, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

There is indeed a tension, but it doesn't go away if you choose to ignore it. How can any rational adult justify a ten-second block, for instance? Malleus Fatuorum 17:01, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

The project needs to own up and admit that there are several oft-stated principles that no longer apply, to the extent they ever did: "blocks are preventative rather than punitive," "being an admin is no big deal" and so on. I think that much of the grumbling and ill-will we see results from the tension between these platitudes and day-to-day reality. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 17:23, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I think that would be a start. I'd add to your list "adminstrators have the trust of the community". Perhaps they do, whatever that mythical "community" is, but they certainly don't have mine. Malleus Fatuorum 17:56, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I think Brad nailed the tension, pretty much. The overall level of civility here is poor, and seems (to me, anyway) to be declining. On the other hand, an authoritarian, block-based approach to incivility doesn't fix, and in fact escalates, the problem. If people spent a fraction of the time brainstorming solutions that they do on trying to use WP:CIVIL as a bludgeon, that would be a first step. Unfortunately, accusations of incivility are a zero-cost and moderately effective battle tactic here, so our incentive system is counterproductive. Of course human behavior can't be understood and modulated solely in terms of incentives; only an idiot and/or an economist would think that - but it would be somewhere to start. MastCell ^Talk 05:36, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The enforcement structure (admins and arbcom) doesn't do too bad a job with obvious, superficial incivility -- namecalling and the like. It fails spectacularly in dealing with uncivil conduct that can't be explained with one or two context-free diffs, like misrepresenting someone else's words. I would argue that the latter type of incivility is far more destructive. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 18:33, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps it is time that we start removing those statements from the essays, userguides, and other project pages that they exist on. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 20:42, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I don't personally believe we're at the point where such a change is necessary or desirable. If it is being seriously proposed, however, I am sure there is a more central forum for discussing it. (Please post a link here if anyone opens such a discussion.) Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:15, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

fair enough. I'm not looking to provoke drama, but I do agree with SBHB that we might look at the way we actually do things vs. the 'policy' or internal value we preach. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 22:04, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Re - Userpage

Thank you for your nice comment :) And also thank you for your postings on the Volokh Conspiracy that got me interested in the first place. Best regards, Lord Roem (talk) 14:21, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad you enjoyed the posts. I recently reread them after a year and a half and I think they stand up reasonably well—although one thing that one gets spoiled about on Wikipedia is the ability to copyedit things one's previously posted, which I can't do in a couple of places where the posts could definitely use it. I wrote them partly to answer some common questions about our project and partly to potentially do some recruitment, so I'm glad I had at least one success at the latter. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 09:48, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Response?

Since you archive the posts on this page really quickly, and thus my original request got archived, how will you respond to me when you've gotten around to looking up the data I asked for? On my talk page? Or what? --- BRG (talk) 16:01, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

I'll leave you a note on your talkpage and then e-mail you the actual data, if that works. I'll be getting to it pretty soon, I believe. Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:09, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Hello, Newyorkbrad/Archive/2011. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.— DThomsen8 (talk) 16:02, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Received and will respond within the next day or so. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:09, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Proxy block

Yes, it is indeed a proxy. I have blocked it for 2 years. --Bsa dow ski1 02:16, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Rock on. Newyorkbrad (talk) 02:22, 23 January 2011 (UTC)