User talk:SmokeyJoe/Archive 3

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Message from July

Hi! I just saw the message you left me in mid-July (I was on break from early July to mid-August) and wanted to say that I appreciate your notice (and the "irritate you" comment gave the me first good chuckle of the day). :) Thanks, –BLACK FALCON ^(TALK) 17:20, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 20:51, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

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Category:Essays supporting editor endurance

Hi smokeyjoe

I have proposed renaming Category:Essays supporting editor endurance, which you created, to Category:Wikipedia essays supporting editor endurance. See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2009_December_23#Category:Essays_supporting_editor_endurance. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 15:15, 23 December 2009 (UTC)

Comparison between Roman and Han Empires at DRV

Just to clarify, the dispute is not whether to keep or not (it is clearly keep), but whether the closer's "unconventional close" of blanking/protecting the article and moving the rest of it to a "draft" was appropriate.Teeninvestor (talk) 01:15, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Merging every article on an Oslo street

Sorry I completely disagree with what you did. Your article is a mess. We have a list of streets in Oslo and most of the ones already started have valid info to have a seperate article and be expanded.... Dr. Blofeld ^{White cat} 19:16, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

Note that most of the streets were ripe for deletion. One of them I saved at AfD on the basis that the information belongs, although not in a stand alone article. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:50, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

Why don't you raise your concern at Talk:Streets in Oslo. At Category:Streets_in_Oslo you can see that the notable roads have their own articles, there is a list, and that the others, which contain facts but no secondary source information are merged. Sure, Streets in Oslo can be improved, given a lead, and hopefully some commentary. Is it you position that every street should have its own article? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 23:09, 31 December 2009 (UTC)

your email answer appreciated

Thank you. I did verify my email for this. I believe you clarified something for me though: users can send me emails, but they don't get to see what my address is? So it's not a part of my profile for everyone to see now? I think that's all I was 'worried' about. Not that I'm really worried. You know, sticks & stones... but email will never hurt me. --Neptunerover (talk) 02:47, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

You're welcome. Everyone can now see that you have a verified email address enabled, but no one can see what it is. You cannot see mine. If I email you, my address will be revealed to you, when the message is forwarded by the software. The interface doesn't tell me your email address. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 02:56, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Ping

I have sent you an e-mail. --Tenmei (talk) 16:50, 11 December 2009 (UTC)

"Poking" you, as suggested by your userpage text. I have sent a follow-up e-mail. --Tenmei (talk) 05:06, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2010 January 16

I noticed that one of your !votes on this DRV was "Automatic restore as contested CSDA7". Could you point me to the policy that says contested A7s are an automatic restore? Stifle (talk) 09:51, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

• There is no such written policy. A similar convention applies with respect to PROD, and I think it should apply similarly to many CSD criteria. With caveats. I've tried writting a proposal for "contested CSDs", and in the detail I've found the devil. In general terms, I'm thinking of criteria for "Speedy restore", and "Speedy restore and list at XfD" for DRV discussions. We occassionally have involved DRV discussions that are or should be XfD discussions.
• Unfinished thoughts...
  • Anything deleted by mistake should be restored.
  • A petitioner should be in good standing, and good faith must be assumable.
  • For most speedies, where an involved party indicates they want a discussion, and the deleting admin is unwilling/unavailable/unclear, it's probably better to open it up in an XfD than to stage a stilted DRV or to leave complaints languishing on an inactive talk page.
  • For some speedies, rules get complicated. Restoring a G10 and listing at MfD migh just create a forum to extend the attack, or maybe it wasn't really an attack at all. A7s, though, are unlikely to be problematic if restored and listed at AfD if it means that the newcomer can be helped to understand what the problem is.
  • Perhaps a good rule of thumb is that where a speedied page can be safely temporarily undeleted, the discussion is best listed at an XfD.
  • The point is to allow early closes of DRVs where the discussion belongs at an XfD. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:43, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Are you...

the same SmokeyJoe that runs ECF? (If you are, you know what ECF means ) If so, I just wanted to offer my greetings.
-Garrett W. {☎ ✍} 07:38, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

No, sorry. I am SmokeyJoe only on wikimedia projects, and I don't know what ECF is. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:16, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Ah, ok, sorry to bother then. I suppose I still offer my greetings though.
-Garrett W. {☎ ✍} 13:27, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I was actually about to ask the same thing. How convenient :) Equazcion ^(talk) 10:33, 29 Jan 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your greetings. Please do tell, what is ECF, and who is this other SmokeyJoe? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:38, 29 January 2010 (UTC)

Someone named SmokeyJoe runs the largest online forum for electronic cigarette users (Electronic Cigarette Forum). Equazcion ^(talk) 10:41, 29 Jan 2010 (UTC)

PS, about your archives, the counter should be at 1, unless you already have an "Archive 1" and would like to start an "Archive 2". Equazcion ^(talk) 10:43, 29 Jan 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Septemberboy009/Ayush Goyal

Hi, SmokeyJoe. Because you participated in Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Septemberboy009/Blades (band), you may be interested in Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Septemberboy009/Ayush Goyal. Cunard (talk) 23:38, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

FYI

I've changed the MfD guidance here to reflect what you told me. I didn't realise from reading this that no exceptions are possible - I was reading this as saying that these are allowed but that most such nominations will "probably" be speedy closed, not that no such nominations can be made and that they "must" be speedy closed. I wasn't trying to be disruptive, as this is a policy that we almost never use (eg I'd think few people know its abbreviated link. WP:V, WP:NPOV, WP:NOR we use all the time - but how many times do we cite WP:EP in discussions?) Tim Vickers (talk) 18:14, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

• It's probably because you put so much effort into content that you are not familiar with the customs of MfD. Sorry if I was blunt. MfD is often used pointedly, and I know that this was not your intention. WP:EP is a special policy, written in 2001. Was it the first "policy". It was written for a different time, for when the encyclopedia was very different. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:04, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

It's fine, friends should be blunt with each other - there's no need to dance around an issue with me. :) Perhaps this policy has been supplemented by subsequent, detailed policies, much like the core of an old tree can rot away and leave the trunk as firm as it was before! Tim Vickers (talk) 22:39, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

Hi

Hi, SJ, it's here. SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 05:36, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

AfD nomination of Rapido Realismo Kali and Isagani Abon

Hi! Please post your thoughts regarding these two non-notable articles related to Henry Espera. Cheers! User234 (talk) 03:05, 14 February 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Electric Retard (2nd nomination)

Hi, SmokeyJoe. Because you participated in Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2010 February 7, you may be interested in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Electric Retard (2nd nomination). Cunard (talk) 11:24, 16 February 2010 (UTC)

Color symbolism and psychology

Your ongoing participating in the article in question, as well as the attendant RfD, is gratefully acknowledged and solicited once more. I have made radical overhauls to the content, but still have editors claiming it "not good enough". At this point, I feel it rather obvious that their policy obstructions are just edit warring by another means, but I do not have the standing individually to stand up to it alone. Thanks! Ender78 (talk) 11:10, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Mentorship

I write to invite you to join others in becoming a co-mentor for me. This message is "poking" you, as suggested on your userpage. My earlier approaches were perhaps too discreet -- see "pings" here in December and here in January.

As you know, your name is listed at WP:WikiProject User Rehab. The nascent status of a mentorship committee is clarified in the currently active thread at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification/Tang Dynasty. Hopefully, this mentorship experiment will prove to be more effective and less burdensome than previous wiki-mentoring schemes.

This is a time for hortatory concepts. Do you know this one?

"I am only one, but I am one. I can not do everything, but I can do something.

I must not fail to do the something that I can do."

If Wikiquote:Helen Keller#Misattributed is to believed, then I am not alone in linking these words with Helen Keller. The salient question becomes this: Does precise attribution matter in the context of a teachable moment? No – not always, but often.

What can I say or do to convince you to agree tentatively?

Core policies are the tools at hand; and if you agree to help connect the dots, it could benefit more than me. In this search for a mentor deemed acceptable by ArbCom, I cite Wikipedia:Mentorship#Unintended consequences as a plausible context for discussing what I have in mind.

Among a prospective mentor's many burdens, the most difficult would involve (a) helping me discern why or when I should apologize or (b) helping me to explain why or when I will not apologize in a wiki-context. May I offer an on-topic writing sample? As you think about agreeing to join a mentorship committee, please review Patrick Lennox Tierney#Showa apology rebuffed.

Are you willing to look into this a bit further?

If you please, contact me by e-mail or on my talk page. --Tenmei (talk) 20:06, 19 February 2010 (UTC)

Two rakan evoke a teachable moment, searching together for a focal point?

Thank you for your thoughtful reply. A summary explaining why I created a mentorship group is posted at WP:A/R/C#Response to Steve Smith.

I appreciate the thrust of your analysis; but there are no simple answers to searching questions.

In part, Nobel laureate Thomas Schelling was honored for conceptualizing game theory "focal point[s] for each person’s expectation of what the other expects him to expect to be expected to do." In essence, this the sort of thing you're asking; and I don't have easy answers.

Please consider contacting me by e-mail. I will address your questions as best I can.

I can promise to be frank, but not succinct. --Tenmei (talk) 00:54, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Final discussion for Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people

Hello, I note that you have commented on the first phase of Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Biographies of living people

As this RFC closes, there are two proposals being considered:

1. Proposal to Close This RfC
2. Alternate proposal to close this RFC: we don't need a whole new layer of bureaucracy

Your opinion on this is welcome. Okip 03:28, 24 February 2010 (UTC)

RfC on Community de-adminship

You are receiving this message because you contributed to Wikipedia talk:Community de-adminship/Draft RfC and have not participated at Wikipedia:Community de-adminship/RfC or been directly informed this RfC has opened. Please accept my apologies if you have been informed of and/or participated in the RfC already.

This RfC has opened and your comments are welcome and encouraged. Please visit Wikipedia:Community de-adminship/RfC. Thank you, --Hammersoft (talk) 16:15, 4 March 2010 (UTC)

Your note

"See the talk page" refers to the lack of consensus, and lack of participation. :) SlimVirgin ^{TALK contribs} 02:09, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

So yes, you were being too subtle for me. You mean see talk page for the absence of support. I went carefully though the talk page looking for something specific. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:03, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

File:Edits to WPNOR.png missing description details

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Re:The Death of Ivan Ilyich

If you believe the image has a case under the non-free content criteria, make the case. Do not force bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake... J Milburn (talk) 01:10, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

Hello, SmokeyJoe. You have new messages at Ncmvocalist's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Revert at Harmonious Editing

Hi SmokeyJoe,

I just noticed you reverted my removal of SkagitRiverQueen from the Harmonious Editing page. Even after adding her name, she was banned repeatedly for edit warring and personal attacks, was placed under an interaction ban with one editor, and was in the process of being placed under an interaction ban with a second user, when she was given a year-long community ban for her behavior. See her user page, and the included community link, for details.

Certainly feel free to leave her there if you like, but even after adding herself, her behavior didn't match HEC guidelines. This is why I removed her from the list. -FeralDruid (talk) 07:05, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Secret pages

SmokeyJoe, I agree with your suggestions at Wikipedia talk:Miscellany for deletion#Hidden/Secret Pages. Because I am unfamiliar with policy/guideline discussions and generally am wary of participating in such discussions which could take months, would you start the WT:UT subpage? Cunard (talk) 05:27, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

OK. If the proposal correctly anticipates consensus, the process won't take months. If there is genuinely no consensus, then all is hopeless. I am surprised at the level of opposition your MfDs have already received.

I think we should wait for the current MfDs to wind up. Possibly, you could try withdrawing them in favour of a centralised discussion. The merit for this is that each of the MfDs is so similarly, with templated comments across them, and the fact that they look like heading to no consensus to me.

One question for you that needs answering: What secret/hidden pages do you think should be deleted. All of User:MiszaBot/PSP? I personally would disagree. If not, then what list? Have you made the list, or do you have a method for vetting the false positives? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:47, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

I don't think I'll be withdrawing the MfDs, since some of them have a delete consensus. I'll let the other ones play out to see if there are further opinions about them. The level of opposition was initially surprising to me, but it really isn't that surprising. I nominated 13 MfDs for deletion, and the creators of the pages, as well as others who had recently found the secret pages, voted keep.

The secret pages that should be included in the MfD are those that users hide so others can search for them and then receive barnstars. Compiled from User:MiszaBot/PSP, my list of secret pages that should be deleted is here. Best, Cunard (talk) 21:08, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Agree, the Mfds should not be withdrawn. I have copied you sandbox page to Wikipedia:User pages/Secret pages to be deleted. You've put a lot of effort in. Assuming we agree to delete these secret pages, for this to work into the future, the bot need to not regenerate pages vetted as OK. I think we should collate these realted conversations to Wikipedia talk:User pages/Secret pages to be deleted --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:44, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Thank you. How do we advertise the discussion? Cunard (talk) 07:51, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Replaceable fair use File:VC Beharry.jpg

I don't follow you, I'm afraid: the image is still available at File:VC Beharry.jpg. Any feedback would be welcome, but I do not see how this image differs from any other privately-copyrighted image of a living public individual. --Kwekubo (talk) 06:23, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Tannhauser Gate

Please note that attempt is being made to redirect / delete Tannhauser Gate without reopening the AfD which closed with a consensus to keep...... --Michael C. Price ^talk 21:29, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

Thanks

My thanks for implementing this request. This wasn't a big thing, but it was the best kind of stunt, being crazed and valid at the same time. --Kizor 19:22, 14 April 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Richard Tylman (4th nomination)

Hi, SmokeyJoe. Because you participated in Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2010 January 18#Richard Tylman, you may be interested in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Richard Tylman (4th nomination). Cunard (talk) 02:15, 26 April 2010 (UTC)

Typo?

In the view you posted at the POTD RFC, did you mean unremarkable? --Avenue (talk) 04:01, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks. Sometimes I try composing in Microsoft Word to avoid typos. This time "remakable" got corrected to "remarkable". --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:26, 6 May 2010 (UTC)

draft

I wanted to thank you for your kind rationale. Best.--Epeefleche (talk) 02:58, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

WT:NOR#Terminology

As you might have been able to tell last night, it was very late and I was quickly tiring. I hope my response to your comment made clear I fully agreed with what you said--IMO wikilawyering and disagreements about how to apply policy to practice will not stop as a consequence of, as you said, "sanding down" policy language. (Though I'm not at all opposed to sanding down rough edges.) And yes, dispute resolution is a separate process altogether. Disputes about policy arise because simply people have differing views and are looking for arguments in favor of their respective views. By and large they don't appear to me to be a result of poor policy language. ... Kenosis (talk) 15:12, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Courtesy note

You are receiving this note because of your participation in WT:Revision deletion#Community consultation, which is referred to in Wikipedia:VPR#Proposal to turn on revision deletion immediately (despite some lingering concerns). –xeno^talk 14:15, 17 May 2010 (UTC)

Please take a look at this discussion

about your recent name change to Popular cat names. I don't have an opinion yet, myself, so I posted a question at WikiProject:Lists, and that may be how the two other editors there joined the discussion. I'm interested in getting your reasons. Thanks. -- JohnWBarber (talk) 05:09, 24 May 2010 (UTC)

The Gore Effect AfD

You previously commented on Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Marknutley/The Gore Effect (2nd nomination). A new version of the article has been created in article space at The Gore Effect and has been nominated for deletion. If you have any views on this, please feel free to comment at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Gore Effect. -- ChrisO (talk) 08:13, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

RfA

Thank you very much for your contribution to my Rfa. I have made a comment about it at User talk:JamesBWatson#Your Request for Adminship which you are, of course, very welcome to read if you wish to. JamesBWatson (talk) 14:53, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

File copyright problem with File:SmokeyBlue.PNG

Thank you for uploading File:SmokeyBlue.PNG. However, it currently is missing information on its copyright status. Wikipedia takes copyright very seriously. It may be deleted soon, unless we can determine the license and the source of the file. If you know this information, then you can add a copyright tag to the image description page.

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Taco

Sorry but all the sources I found, I put that.--Xan2 (talk) 10:01, 2 July 2010 (UTC)

Happy SmokeyJoe's Day!

User:SmokeyJoe has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, and therefore, I've officially declared today as SmokeyJoe's day! For being such a beautiful person and great Wikipedian, enjoy being the Star of the day, dear SmokeyJoe! Peace, Rlevse 00:36, 15 July 2010 (UTC) A record of your Day will always be kept here.

For a userbox you can add to your userbox page, see User:Rlevse/Today/Happy Me Day! and my own userpage for a sample of how to use it. — Rlevse • Talk • 00:36, 15 July 2010 (UTC)

inre Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Xenia Tchoumitcheva (2nd nomination)

As I stated at the AFD, I hate slogging through translations of German, French, and Italian (chuckle). But if you look at Xenia Tchoumitcheva, you'll see I am beginning to bring it into line per available sources... slow but sure. It is a great pity that it had not received proper attention since its last AFD... but it is getting some now, even if only from me. With respects, Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 20:46, 20 July 2010 (UTC)

Michael, I agree with you. I was pessimistic that the article could be much improved. The foreign language sources, such as you link to, were only looking to me to be too unreliable (bloggy) or too promotional. I certainly didn't look at them all, it being a pain to translate. It was hard enough for me to work out what language they were, to start with. I was afraid of making too much effort for an article that could easily be deleted anyway. With the AfD resulting in "keep", I will make more effort to work on the article. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:14, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

And I agree right back, it is indeed a pain to translate... and squinting at German, Dutch, Italian, and Spanish is making my head throb (chuckle)... but your insticts at the last AFD were the right ones. I noticed the recent SmokeyJoe "keep", thank you. Care to strike through the nomination and make a more prominant note of withrawal? Granted, others might still visit and offer a delete vote... but a nominator's strike-through kinda speaks volumes. Best wishes and happy regards, Schmidt, ^{MICHAEL Q.} 01:00, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

Quick note

I've slightly amended one item on WT:UP since you posted - didn't want you to be unaware. I've emailed you a comment. FT2 ^{(Talk | email)} 19:01, 24 July 2010 (UTC)

VPC

— raekyT 23:46, 1 August 2010 (UTC)

DrV

Hello

I've responded to you here. Also, you you mind being called "Joe"? Thanks, Hobit (talk) 18:49, 26 August 2010 (UTC)

Certainly not. Please do call me Joe.

I have replied there. I think it is the same old, very interesting, debate on WP:NOR versus attempting comprehensive coverage. Of the WP:N GNG verses the SNGs. Do the SNGs (1) establish specific subject areas that are to be included regardless of wikipedia-notability, or (2) are the SNGs subservient to wikipedia-notability, and best viewed as AfD-useful, systematic indicators of, whether a subject is likely to be able to be improved to meet wikipedia-notability.

I favour (1), but relaxed my view significantly following discussions at WT:PROF. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:14, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Thanks! Hobit (talk) 13:56, 27 August 2010 (UTC)

Grech

After you wrote to me I brought it to the attention of WT:AUSPOL (I had an active role in the past election so thought it might be a COI to act unilaterally) and they decided to action your request :) Orderinchaos 23:51, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

I saw. Small thing, quickly and easily done. Thank you. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:15, 9 September 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, SmokeyJoe. You have new messages at Courcelles's talk page.
Message added 06:17, 12 September 2010 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Secret pages 2

I have created Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Secret pages 2. Cunard (talk) 06:18, 12 September 2010 (UTC)

RFC on vandalism sandboxes

As someone who previously participated in the discussion to adopt policy verbiage that is being used as a rationale to delete "vandalism sandboxes", your input would be appreciated on the matter: Wikipedia talk:User pages#Userspace Vandalism Sandboxes. Gigs (talk) 15:07, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Quote

You caused me to add a quote section to my userpage. Nice... Hobit (talk) 02:34, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

RE:Jessica Jarrell

Unfortuantely, the singer's bio does not meet WP:NBIO yet. But I didn't know it was a set amount of time for material to be in a sandbox/or userspace of mine? I thought they were for testing and building up articles until they do indeed meet notability? Candyo32 13:41, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Come to find out, I have already placed the article in another one of my sandboxes, so feel free to delete the one in the userspace. Candyo32 13:51, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Oh I see what you are talking about. I will blank the page and just have it to work on in one of my sandboxes. Now I see why it the page was edited so much by random IP's. Thanks for the assistance! Candyo32 12:22, 11 October 2010 (UTC)

Default is to keep?

Hi,

Not putting you on the hot seat... just curious. I noticed you made this statement at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2010 October 19: "Closer did the right thing, although it was not a consensus to keep, but in the absence of a consensus to delete, defaults to keep.".

I also noticed no one objected to this assertion that the default at AfD is to keep. Is that convention stated somewhere, or just informal practice? How well established is it? I'll look for a reply here. Thanks. --Born2cycle (talk) 21:08, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

At Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Deletion_discussion, the following seems to say it:

The deletion of a page based on a deletion discussion should only be done when there is consensus to do so. Therefore, if there is no rough consensus the page is kept and is again subject to normal editing, merging or redirecting as appropriate. Discussions concerning biographical articles of relatively unknown, non-public figures, where the subject has requested deletion and there is no rough consensus may be closed as delete.

There is a very firm tradition that non-consensus defaults to keep for non-BLP articles, and there have been a few proposals for non-consensus in BLP deletion debates to default to delete, but they failed. A no consensus AfD can be renominated almost immediately without annoying people if you have a significant point that were not made in the debate or after just a couple of months. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 19:54, 21 October 2010 (UTC)

Category renaming?

Hello again, this is Darin. Our[[1]] regarding renaming the category has been automatically archived so I thought I should follow up on your talk page to see what our conclusion should be. To be fair, the users that said 'Keep' were referring to the question of deleting the category before or after it was determined that the question should be about renaming the category, so no one challenged the renaming of the category in the discussion. Also, since I don't accept Wikipedia's philosophy and therefore will not help it, and this being the internet, it's hard for me to express how honest I am about leaving Wikipedia. Posting as an IP address and acknowledging myself to be a real person, not a user, is the most that I can do. Thanks for understanding and allowing me your time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.208.41.91 (talk) 22:24, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Read carefully the comments from Nihonjoe (talk · contribs). I suggest that all further appeals go via email to WP:OTRS, and that you cease all deception and half truths, and that you reveal all remaining undiscovered activity on your part. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:45, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Would it also be wrongful of me to ask you to stop stereotyping me? If I actually committed "deception and half truths" during my return then you would have left some kind of proof of those actions as well as reference the "comments" by Nihonjoe if they could change anything here. I made my IP address obvious so don't tell me you can't see what I'm doing. You're saying that instead of honoring a simple, inconsequential request--that even you said is acceptable on the discussion page I linked to above--you want me to waste my time appealing to a sub-volunteer group about something they don't care or know anything about just because you think your internet reputation would be harmed a little bit if you were reasonable to a person that Wikipedia isn't? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.208.41.91 (talk) 19:53, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

I think your request is reasonable and I have said so. Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2010_October_26#Category:Wikipedia_sockpuppets_of_Darin_Fidika is still open. Nihonjoe's statement of 02:54, 27 October 2010 hurts your case. He refers to OTRS, so I suggest proceeding via OTRS. My advice above is the best I have. Sorry. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 21:43, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Apparent false positive

A user tried to paste this text into your page. I'm assuming it is the same user as the IP above but he was posting from 72.129.135.233 (talk · contribs · WHOIS) at the time. If it is the same user, it's block evasion, but because that's not clear yet I'm not going to either block the IP or paste the text directly here, though if it becomes clear that he's evading a block then I will extend the block to the new IP address. (Note though they don't seem to geolocate to the same area). —Soap— 11:32, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

The IP address that requested that message be posted here was me, but the original IP blocking was a mistake. I was just trying to edit the archived category discussion topic referenced in this sub-question so that I could submit a comment to it, but that same software blocked me from adding my message, and a user blocked me for it thinking I was trying to vandalize the page. Is it just really sensitive keyword software or did I run into an error both times I tried editing? It's never happened to me before, and I'm not saying anything out of line. Thanks. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Innocent premonition (talk • contribs) 00:47, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

About my MFDs of old userspace drafts

Since I was out of pocket over the weekend, I did not see the conversation between you and Cunard (talk · contribs) at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:KatieFB/Luidia until the discussion was already closed. So I will say here what I might have said there. There are hundreds of apparently abandoned drafts is userspace. The majority of them don't need to go to MFD, and I do not bring most of them there. For each such page I have nominated for deletion, there are several others where I took some other action, most commonly blanking. But for BLPs and potential corporate spam (in cases not so obvious as to allow speedy deletion), I don't consider blanking to be a sufficient remedy. So I bring those to MFD. You are of course free to disagree about what items should be deleted, but please don't think I am nominating these pages without considering the alternatives. --RL0919 (talk) 16:15, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Hello RL0919. I am largely in agreement with Cunard on many things, but there are some slight differences between us that were being thrashed in that MfD. It's complicated, but not a stalemate, and not personal, and I would certainly welcome your comments on my comments.

I have not followed your contributions, and did not know that you have a balance of blankings versus MfD listings versus speedy deletions. I would be interested to know your criteria. Why did User:KatieFB/Luidia require deletion, not redirection? Had you considered that option, and rejected it? Do you believe in general in the deletion of history-containing-redirects that automatically result from moving userspace drafts to mainspace?

If you consider the material spammy, don't you thing the mainspace article, Luidia, Inc. is a higher-priority concern? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:38, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Having looked at a couple of hundred drafts, I would have to go back and look at the page to try to remember what I was thinking at the time. I had not been considering redirection as an option (although if it was a true predecessor to the mainspace article, a history merge might be an even better choice). I'll keep those in mind in the future. The general process I've followed goes something like this:

1. Is the page speediable? If so, delete. Note that I don't hold to the view that old drafts can just be speedied as G6 deletions, so I'm not talking about speedies for that reason.
2. Checking the page history, has the draft been edited in some significant way (excluding things like an AWB sweep that happened to catch the page) in the past six months? If it has recent edits, move on.
3. If the draft is stale, check the user's contribution history; have they edited at all in the past six months? If they are active, move on. (Ideally the action here would be to ask the user if they want to keep the draft, but I have not been doing that so far. Maybe on a future pass.)
4. Is there already an article on the subject? If there is, check whether the draft is an improvement over the existing article. If there is no article, consider whether the draft could be moved to mainspace.
5. Assuming the draft is stale and the user inactive, and the draft is fit for neither mainspace nor speedy deletion, then is the draft "problematic" (loosely speaking, a BLP or corporate promotion, although this a somewhat subjective area)? If so, nominate at MFD. If not, blank it.

It occurs to me that I could probably flowchart the steps for better repeatability. Anyhow, as to the mainspace version of the Luidia article, it could probably use some improvement, but there is only so much one person can do. At the moment I've chosen clearing out stale user drafts as one of my personal focuses. If you have any further suggestions for criteria or options that I should consider, I would love to hear them. --RL0919 (talk) 17:38, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi RL0919. Your decision making process looks really good. It looks like it could even be automated. Conversion to redirect of the userspace original of a copy-paste move seems like a reasonable easy thing to do. Someone once told me that asking for an unrequired history merge is to seriously waste administrator time. I imagine that it is simple if the userspace version was edited only before the move, and the mainspace verion only after the move, but that once you started doing these history merges the complicated exceptions would be a pain in the neck. So, I no longer suggest history merging where there is only the one author involved.

I will immediately support deletion of any abandoned BLP-problematic userspace draft if the nominator gives a reason why there is a problem. I don't agree that every unsourced BLP is by default problematic.

I think there are so many spammy/promotional things in userspace produced by account active only for a very brief period that MFD-ing them all is disruptive to MFD. If blanked, they'll remain blank. It is just as easy for a drive-by spammer to repost spam as it is to unblank.

Anyway, I mean to help support productive editors like yourself, so i should stop consuming your time here and let you continue. Thanks. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 19:23, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Hyphen Luddite drama

Hi Jc37. Re your comment here. What drama were you talking about? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:39, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

It was awhile back. And I seem to recall it was more than one drama, which kind of started to blend. (I think the dates de-linking thing was around the same time, but not positive - these things are starting to run together in my brain - maybe when I'm more awake : )

Anyway, as I recall, it reached its apex when someone was using a bot to make the changes, and then AN/I and so on. The typical way these things escalate.

Regardless, it's moot, considering the close (no consensus to delete, as I predicted : ) - jc37 17:29, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Geo Swan/working/Summary of Evidence memos/pg112

Could you please revisit Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Geo Swan/working/Summary of Evidence memos/pg112. I believe that your opinion their was based on an incorrect impression you may have gotten from an earlier post by another editor, and is not actually reflecting anything Geo Swan said or indicated. I would appreciate it if you looked at the full discussion and arguments again, and check whether your opinion actaully reflects the facts in this case. Fram (talk) 20:58, 12 December 2010 (UTC)

Victimology categories CfD

Hi. You recently participated in the ongoing Partial list of victimology categories CfD. I recently posted a renaming proposal in that CfD and I would appreciate receiving your feedback at Partial list of victimology categories CfD. Thanks. -- Uzma Gamal (talk) 10:56, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Victims of political repressions CFDs

You participated in a 2010 DEC 13 CFD about victims of political repression. A follow-up nomination to that discussion has begun here. Good Ol’factory ^(talk) 02:16, 22 December 2010 (UTC)

Christmas Card

File:Wikisanta-no motto.png

Merry Christmas

At this festive time, I would like to say a very special thank you to my fellow editors, and take the time to wish you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year. And, in case you can't wait until the big day, I've left you each three special presents, click to unwrap :) Acather96 (talk) 10:10, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

File:Green and Yellow Present.gif

File:Yellow and Red present.gif

File:Blue and Red Present.gif

WP:SOCK and WP:ABF

Dude, please try at least some minimal research next time. I'm from here and Pedro thy Master is from here. That's a few thousand miles of sockpuppetry, and any moderate dig into our contribution history would be clear that we are not related/ Seasons greetings. Pedro :  Chat  23:01, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Hello and Seasons greeting

My friend, I shall be very glad if you upgrade my approach of Theories of death anxiety to something more feasible. I have left my final comments in deletion page. Happy new year, in advance!Shoovrow (talk) 14:17, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Closed down

Template:Closed down has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Thank you. Mhiji 17:32, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

Plaid-collar crime

Hello, SmokeyJoe. You have new messages at Courcelles's talk page.
Message added 12:10, 18 January 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Hi Courcelles. I'd like to look again at your recent prodded deletion of Plaid-collar crime. It appears sufficiently notable. There are numerous sources fr its use as a term. There are a decent number of mainspace incoming links. I'd also like to work out why it is on my watch list. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:59, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

The last one might be the easiest to figure out- you made a single edit in March of 2009. Do you want it put somewhere in your userspace, or would you like to contest the PROD and just have it restored into mainspace? Courcelles 12:09, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Hmmm. I'm very very close to agreeing that it should be deleted. Looking at the google cache... both sources are broken links. There is a single source that I can find: http://www.forthepeople.com/plaid-collar-crime--11-1824.html. It is quite similar in content to the deleted article, possible the real, uncited source. The incoming links seem to be all due to Template:CriminTheo, from this edit. Every other online source seems to be due to mirroring of articles containing this template. I think it is squarely a WP:neologism.

Would you mind copying/moving this talk page section to my talk, and userfying the article with history intact to my userspace. I'd like to take one last look through, and then I'll probably CSD#U1 it in a day or two. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 15:21, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Done, see User:SmokeyJoe/Plaid-collar crime. Courcelles 18:54, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you Courcelles. {{db-u1}}-ed [2]. Just means farm crime. A 2006 fad. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:45, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Your comments all around

Hi there. I've seen your comments in a few talk pages. I found them quite intellectual and intriguingly highly intelligent. Just leaving a note to say, I've gained from those. Thanks you. Wifione _....... ^{Leave a message} 12:17, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

That's nice of you to say, thank you. I think this is a fantastic project, and I do what I think I can best do to support it. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:51, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Too wordy?

SmokeyJoe, what happened here? Did you think I was being too wordy? ;) Cunard (talk) 10:27, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Hi Cunard. I've not really considered you too wordy, and I don't think the removal of those words improved the message. I don't know how I did that, I certainly didn't mean to. Sometimes I copy/paste links, and sometimes I get confused in the edit window. Sorry. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 20:53, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

It is all right. I'm just joking with you. By the way, have I every told you about my most embarrassing typo. 1 I called a research an infant. That could have been construed as an insult. I would have been rightly blocked for a BLP violation but luckily no trigger-happy admins were lurking about the article that day so I was safe! Phew! Cunard (talk) 07:31, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Advice on first impression

(from User:Michael P. Barnett) Many thanks for your comment on my Talk page. It is reassuring. As a guide for the future, I would be grateful for comment on how I might have handled two episodes that were disruptive to substantive contribution, and how I should proceed with the article that is my highest priority within WP.

1. In editing the article about Royal Radar Establishment, I took the obituary in Biographical Memoirs of the Royal Society of a scientist (R.A.Smith) who played a pivotal role in the development of radar during the war, then established solid state physics in England, then came to the U.S. as Director of a very large laboratory at MIT, then left after many years to be Vice-Chancellor of a major Scottish university. No-one has written a WP article about him yet. I put the list of people who were mentioned, in the obit, as major contributors to the work with which he was associated into a paragraph in the WP article about RRE. The next day they were all deleted (with R.A. Smith himself) on the grounds that they were not "notable" in the WP sense. For the next two days I spent the hours that I could devote to WP, searching for biographical information to show they could satisfy notability criteria, found that several did have WP articles about them already (one had been made a life peer, several others were knighted), then hunted around for guideline pages where I could post a question about mentionability requiring notability. An editor posted a statement that it was not, so I put the names back. (The Editor who had removed the names mentioned his father had worked at RRE).

2. Another Editor who was supportive of my efforts, who had worked at RRE, asked if I thought another of our colleagues should be included. I checked briefly, found impressive evidence of his standing in a particular field of research, and put him in. He was deleted, by the Editor who had made the previous deletions, with the comment that he (the Editor) had been to school with the sons of the scientist whose name he had removed. I spent several more hours building the case for this further addition, and made it. (I did wonder if COI covers begrudging as well as aggrandizement). But the Editor has many banners to his credit.

3. In the article about Charles Coulson, my Ph.D. supervisor who was well known for his religious activity including popular BBC broadcasts on religion, I encapsulated a well known aspect of his personality by "his religosity was gentle and, at times, humorous". And got the book thrown at me for violating a whole slew of wiki guidelines. Now there is a principal that we do not have to justify mention of Paris being the capital of France. I was able to put back the "humorous" by using a direct quote from his Royal Society obit. I can justify a statement that he was gentle by a direct quote about his behaviour towards students. I could justify a statement that his approach was gentle by the fact that he would not have been invited to speak on BBC in the context he did, had he been strident. But then Editors can start arguing that in the U.S. today religious speakers flourish on stridency, and I am using personal recollection of the situation in England and, if I find a review of one of the talks Charles gave on BBC, I am committing the cardinal wiki-sin of original research, synthesis and so on. Which was why I posted my comments about impossibility of avoiding the posting of "new" material.

4. Also, in the Coulson article, an Editor has thrown the mentionability requires notability argument at me again, and I feel it a waste of my time even having to fend that off by finding the relevant exchange in my archive of wiki arguments.

5. To test the water, I posted some questions about arithmetic operations being original research in wiki sense, with actual examples. And I learn that I must not say "Jones describes this in a 15 page chapter", because I computed the 15 by taking difference of starting page numbers.

6. Now I may be being bloody minded, but if I cannot, as an experienced, law abiding writer, describe Charles Coulson's religiosity as gentle and humorous, and comment on the number of papers that cited his work on alternate hydrocarbons because I found it by addition, then I feel the WP environment is getting so disjoint from reality that trying to contribute is non-optimal use of whatever time is left to me (I have mentioned this elsewhere -- I am 82, very conscious of uncertainties that can lead to being hit by a truck, metaphorically and literally, which is why I want to get verifiable info that I know about posted asap without effort being dominated by wiki legalisms.

7. I am trying to track down a quote in a whodunnit I read recently -- part of a series, the central character is a Bulgarian woman police colonel -- that is approximately "the government makes laws forbidding absolutely everything, and enforces them against the people it wants to". I have this feeling about some of the multi-banner wiki-legalists (I mentioned the analogy of the democratic approach of WP that gives everyone an opinion of equal weight, with what happened in early days of Soviet Union, and Cultural Revolution in China -- the "Banner" terminology is chillingly reminiscent of Generalissimo Stalin and his entourage of multi banner Marshals of the Soviet Union -- that IS the way he was identified in the later days of WWII).

8. Anyhow, I will do some non-wiki work for a while.

71.224.245.75 (talk) 12:34, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Thanks

... for reconsidering, based on new evidence proffered. Too often, our peers don't. Or won't. BTW -- though not necessary, I think it reflects your intent -- you may want to consider writing Keep now at the beginning of your comment. It might aid someone in coming along, closing it early, and saving the Project further waste of time over there. (or not). Best.--Epeefleche (talk) 00:54, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

MfD nomination of Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:April fools/April Fools' Day 2011

Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:April fools/April Fools' Day 2011, a page you substantially contributed to, has been nominated for deletion. Your opinions on the matter are welcome; please participate in the discussion by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:April fools/April Fools' Day 2011 and please be sure to sign your comments with four tildes (~~~~). You are free to edit the content of Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:April fools/April Fools' Day 2011 during the discussion but should not remove the miscellany for deletion template from the top of the page; such a removal will not end the deletion discussion. Thank you. GW… 09:42, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Woah...talk about hard to read... Bob the WikipediaN ^{(talk • contribs)} 00:16, 2 April 2011 (UTC)

User:LeaveDogLights/Hotel Carolina

Refactoring someone else's comment with a [citation needed] comes off as rather WP:POINTy does it not? Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 17:40, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

• I don't see how it is disruptive, so no, it is not pointy. You asserted "we don't redirect out of userspace". This is demonstrably wrong. But maybe you know something that I don't, and existing userspace-mainspace redirects are breaking some higher rule? {{cn}} is a discrete tag that unambiguously focuses on the questioned point. I have used it a number of times in the past. So far, everyone else has removed the tag in the same edit as providing an explanation or link, exactly how it is done in mainspace. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:40, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks...

...for your message. I responded in a note at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Chip Yates. All the best, Drmies (talk) 18:37, 14 April 2011 (UTC)

My RfA

Hi Joe. I just wanted to thank you for your support !vote in my RfA and for your thoughtfulness in sending the personal communication. I would like to personally assure that should I be given the tools, I will be certain to understand them thoroughly and only use them to maintain the honor of our noble project. If all reviewers were half as considerate as yourself, I have no doubt that the complaints about the process in general wouldn't exist. Thanks, -RHM22 (talk) 02:12, 19 April 2011 (UTC)

Help with proper userfication

Thanks again for the alert and pointers in the AfD for "moderated nuclear explosion". I'm usually a stickler on copyright/plagiarism issues, so this was a real facepalm moment for me. I'm new to userfication, and somehow got the idea that it was just a matter of copying the article to a user page. In retrospect, yes, of course you want the edit history to come with it. I don't know what I was thinking.

What should I do about my user-page versions of the deleted Aerovator? I tweezered this together from a wikipedia mirror a few months ago, when it seemed likely that a conference paper and other RS might soon emerge, possibly meeting WP:GNG. (Not so clear that'll happen now.) I'd like to get the edit history restored. I was in contact with the editor who (as a WP:SPA) had written the original article, and I've tried to credit him properly, but I'm pretty sure there were a few other contributors. Is it too late to do a proper userfication? Sorry to make such a mess of this. Any help you can render would be much appreciated, although I admit, with the topic's notability not so likely to be forthcoming, this is tantamount to a request for help with a WP:NOTWEBHOST-violating hobby. I'd actually rather take it to Google docs, but Wikipedia user space seemed like a good, quick-and-dirty temporary staging area. Yakushima (talk) 04:36, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Hi Yakushima. You are certainly welcome.

Regarding Aerovator. You should go to Wikipedia:Requests for undeletion and request its userfication to your userspace. I expect that the request will be readily granted. If not, ask for a copy with the attribution history to be emailed to you. Check that the undeleted version is the same as User:Yakushima/AerovatorAW, and then have your unattributed version deleted.

In your request, you should probably say that you mean to see if you can come to reason for deletion at AfD (gross violation of WP:NOR), and that if after a short time you cannot, you will move the material offsite. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:30, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#Further clarification to mass article creation

Because you participated in Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#Proposal (permanent link), you may be interested in Wikipedia talk:Bot policy#Further clarification to mass article creation. Cunard (talk) 08:53, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2011 June 5#User:Timeshift9

As you participated in Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:Timeshift9, you may be interested in Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2011 June 5#User:Timeshift9. T. Canens (talk) 10:14, 5 June 2011 (UTC)

Restored

Talk:Horror comics in the United States, 1947–1954 --SPhilbrickT 12:57, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

A kitten for you!

Testing this wikilove thing. Bit dubious at this moment.

SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:51, 1 July 2011 (UTC)

Forum User subpages at MFD

You do realize that 1.) Forum User hasn't edited since 2007, so it's not like they've just left this behind and are coming back, and 2.) the official guidelines at WP:STALEDRAFT render your arguments null and void. Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 11:23, 2 July 2011 (UTC)

Replied at Wikipedia:Miscellany_for_deletion/User:Forum_User/Duck-family_tree. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 08:24, 3 July 2011 (UTC)

Please see

Please see Wikipedia_talk:User_pages#Wikiproject_Abandoned_Drafts_and_WP:STALEDRAFT and my most recent edits to the corresponding project page.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 09:42, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

In your ample free time ;-)

If you have a few minutes, I'd love to have your opinions (and help) at User:WhatamIdoing/Sandbox 4. I'm hoping to move it to a title like WP:How to identify and use primary and secondary sources before long. It is meant to be a supplement to the PSTS section of NOR. It needs a decent introduction, and I'd like some more and better examples of how to use primary sources at the end. Feel free to edit it directly. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:21, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Request userfication

You "request userfication"? Well, you now have userfication -- with a vengeance. Take another look, and goggle in disbelief. -- Hoary (talk) 08:00, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Peverted Shipping

Does File:Warship_2.png count as porno for sexually deprived boats? What does it say about me that that is what immediately came to mind Egg Centric 22:38, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

No, pretty sure not. It suggests that you are familiar with the subject you mention, and interact very infrequently with the subject of Naval warfare. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:56, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

• This hits the nail squarely! If the ship is truly departing from the fight, there would have been no further escalation, not even a single shot across another's bow. Best. --Dave ^{♠♣♥♦™№1185©♪♫®} 13:58, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Truth

I just wanted to let you know I added a counter proposal to the one you made at WP:Truth. Please don't take it as contrarian. I think your proposal is constructive, I just have another idea (that it should be added to WP:NOT). I added material from the original NPOV policy - I hope it helps. Slrubenstein | Talk 19:09, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi Slrubenstein. You should make your proposal at WT:NOT. I don't like your action of merging content from a very old version of WP:NPOV with the intention of then merging to WP:NOT; you should propose merging this content directly at WT:NOT. Given the opposition to the mention of "not truth" at WP:V, I don't think adding "Not truth" to WP:NOT will succeed. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:06, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

You might be right about the proposal. But you misunderstand me. The proposal is a separate matter from merging the material. As you know anyone can add to an essay. I added that material because i thought it improved the essay. I would have added it regardless. Slrubenstein | Talk 10:38, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Your !vote at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Truth, not verifiability

I checked your diffs from your comment and the essay I've nominated for deletion doesn't appear to be the same one that was discussed in the diffs. Would you mind double checking, I believe the confusion might be coming from the fact that the essays have similar names. -- Avanu (talk) 14:14, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. You are right. I amended my !vote. I feel embarrassed. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 14:26, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

Its a very similar name; its totally understandable why it would cause people to mistake it for the other one. Incidentally, my personal view on the WP:V first sentence has been that editors made a reasonable case that the current version is somewhat open to gaming or confusion, and so it is a reasonable thing for people to amend it slightly. I don't have any issue with the current wording, and in fact, I like the word truth in there because it delves ever so slightly into things of a philosophical nature. But I'm not adamant about it. If I see a reasonable amendment put out there that expresses the same concepts as our current wording, I'll support it. Its a very fine line trying to explain to people that we want an accurate (aka truthful) encyclopedia, but before we determine or weigh truth, we weigh its verifiability, and really truth doesn't matter, but actually it does because we want something people can rely on........ :) I think everyone in there understands what we want to convey, and I'm surprised its been debated for so long. I have no idea what went on in the last year on that Talk page, but hopefully it can get settled sooner rather than later. -- Avanu (talk) 14:44, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

your comment at WT:V

Hi,

I am confident that my "thread moves" would stand up to the test of reason if we were ever to have a discussion on them, which is not the current topic being discussed.  The conversation that you joined into on your last edit has to do with a revert of a good edit, a revert that was done not to improve the encyclopedia, but to create a platform for undocumented accusations.  I have avoided reifying this platform, and I am now here to ask you to reconsider your own involvement in this false platform.  I have so often seen reliable responsible posts from you, so there is surely some way that you can express your opinion without adding to an inappropriate discussion.  I suspect that we are in substantial agreement, since I was opposed to didn't like both of the original thread moves that were added at the time of the creation of WT:V/First sentence; although, before it sounds like all is harmony, I suspect that you lack experience with refactoring.  So ultimately, I have no idea what your objection today is, it may be that you haven't taken the time to confirm your objections with diffs.  Thanks, Unscintillating (talk) 12:06, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

I object to your thread move here. As a discussion following the reversion of an edit, it belongs on the main talk page. As the thread was critical of your double revert found here, it was particularly inappropriate for you to confound the discussion by moving it. I would be pleased if you would move it back. I dislike refactoring in general. I believe that someone's edit should be left were it was put, in its original context. If a thread is very repetitive, or off-topic, I support collapsing the thread. Archiving should be done by an archiving bot for maximum transparency. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:40, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

That makes sense.  My question to you is, do you agree that it is inconsistent to leave only the one "first sentence" thread at WT:V, when all of the other "first sentence" threads were moved to WT:V/First_sentence that day?  Thanks, Unscintillating (talk) 14:16, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't agree with the moving of any of the threads. I even said that I'd like the subpage deleted, thinking that this would mean all the moved threads would be put back. I changed my mind about deletion because many new posts appeared on the talk sub page. So, I am not concerned about consistency, as I believe all of the thread moves were bad.

Your move of the thread Wikipedia:Verifiability, not truth, an essay was, however, worse, for these reasons: (1) You didn't leave a pointer to the new location of the thread; (2) this thread was showing clear consensus for an edit to WP:V, whereas the other moved threads were just discussions or proposals failing to gain consensus; (3) You were involved, with your recent reverts, in opposition to the prevailing direction of the debate.

I'd like to see the the thread Wikipedia:Verifiability, not truth, an essay moved back to WT:V. It showed a consensus when it was there, and is supported further by First_sentence#Poll_V_FC_P_11_Essay_on_Verifiability.2C_Not_Truth. The other threads are mostly problematic to move back because they have gathered further comment at the subpage. I don't think it would be helpful to fight over the other threads, but in future if it happens again, I intend to make more noise about it. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:54, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

There were six threads moved that night, moves made by a total of four editors.  None of the thread moves left pointers behind.  I moved one thread, the last of the six.  Since none of the other threads were left with pointers, I find that your objection that my thread move was left with no pointer, is without foundation.

The sum of your objection seems to be that I didn't allow that one thread to have special treatment, and that there was some political impropriety to do so (to not allow).  Yet if you review this revision you will see that just before the last thread move, that the page was marked, "Please use and read the sub-talk page Wikipedia_Talk:Verifiability/First sentence" "Discussions generated there can become consensus."

You seem to be unaware that I did not agree with what happened on 29 August in regards to the moving of decision-making threads for WP:V (diffs on request).  I disagree with your statement where it says that it was ok to disrespect the RfC thread (by moving it) because it was a proposal "failing to gain consensus".  You also seem to be unaware that there has been activity here.  Regards, Unscintillating (talk) 10:03, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi Unscintillating. I recall SlimVirgin moving threads onto the subpage early in the process, and leaving pointers behind. This may have been a different day, or I remember incorrectly. Today, I will say that IF threads are to be moved, which is something I don't expect to support, then at least a pointer should be left behind. Prefereable to that even would be to leave the thread archived (coloured and collapsed) with a summary note saying that it has been copied somewhere and to please continue there.

My objection as raised is to the movement of this one thread. This is not to say that I approve of the moving of other threads. I think I do object to the moving of all of them, but I haven't paid equal attention to all. Some at least, due to be extended at the destination, would be problematic to move back. I think the thread in question here has not been extended, and so could easily be moved back.

I do not confidently stand by "it was ok to disrespect the RfC thread (by moving it) because it was a proposal "failing to gain consensus"". Moving a thread that is failing to gain consensus is perhaps less bad than moving a thread gaining consensus. However, this is not a fully considered opinion.

In regards to your noting of activity "here". Do you mean your addition? I think, as implied just above, I did not notice. But I did read your addition. I would have thought that this might make you agreeable to moving the thread back? I'm not sure. This may lead into discussions of whether a consensus on the subpage is sufficient to jutify direct editing of WP:V, as S Marshall has discussed, and is a valid, hairy subject but one that may not end up being a productive discussion. Perhaps we can simply end this by adding the essay to the ==See also== section of WP:V and assuming that no one will object? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 11:49, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

No, I feel that moving the thread back would be in opposition to the current working consensus, and that to do so would not be working to build the encyclopedia, but rather weakening the ability of editors to work together.  I also don't see that it makes any difference as to leaving it where it is now, or on WT:V—as the consensus to make decisions only on WT:V was, on 29 August, broken by S Marshall and SlimVirgin, and accepted by Blueboar.  And I would say that the discussion currently has consensus or sufficient consensus, so why not make the addition (or revert my edit as the case may be)?

Please see the two polls at WP:V/First sentence/Procedural.  I believe that the RfC should be put back where it began and where I think it still belongs.  Thanks, Unscintillating (talk) 02:31, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Nomination of Alex Day for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Alex Day is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alex Day (2nd nomination) until a consensus is reached, and anyone is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on good quality evidence, and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion template from the top of the article. Lagrange613 (talk) 21:30, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

RfA stats needed

Hi SmokeyJoe. Is there any chance you could extend/update this graph to include up to August 2011? We have an important use for it at WP:RFA2011. Cheers, --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:47, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

OK. Good think we do signatures, because I barely remember doing it. I wonder how I got the data? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:24, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Please see

Please see Wikipedia talk:Identifying and using primary and secondary sources. We have, not surprisingly, a discussion there with editors whose only knowledge of the subject appears to be what they learned on Wikipedia back when the policies pretended that "secondary" was a fancy way to spell "independent". WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:11, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

WT:Notability#Interviews_count_as_primary.2C_but_it_says_for_GNG_you_need_secondary_sources. would benefit from another knowledgeable voice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:24, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Move proposals

In order to propose an article move, I suggest you follow the (simple) instructions at WP:RM. --Born2cycle (talk) 05:08, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I've appealed to the last closer of a formal WP:RM motion, on the basis that he misread WP:RETAIN to read "frozen at its current name" when it actually reads "used in the first non-stub revision". I suspect that while your position is entirely right, you have unfortunately rubbed him poorly.

I see no point in a fresh WP:RM motion. The recent RM discussion was well-participated and clear. It is clear that there will be no consensus on a preferred title, which is what WP:RM requires. For further appeal, I think aninstead an RFC on what policy says when an ENGVAR RM results in a huge "no consensus." --SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:43, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Actually, it looks suspiciously like a consensus is forming, you may want to consider adding "Support" to your comment if you actually feel that way. -Kai445 (talk) 05:37, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to apologize for hijacking your thread. It was unintentional the way it formed up. I first listed to support a move but supplied my rationale per COMMONNAME. I realized a little later that it needed to be formalized but to do so, one must leave the template at the top of the thread with a policy-based reason so I went back and placed the appropriate template so that the bot would include it in the list of RMs. It didn't occur to me at the time that it would look like my thread but it did later. I didn't mean this to happen and am trying to be helpful.

If you want to succeed with the move, I'd suggest that you continue to let people list for whatever the reason in the same list and not allow fractionalization. We may disagree as to why it needs to be moved but we both see that it should be. It is unwise to have the supports quibbling with each other.

Again, my apologies
⋙–Berean–Hunter—► 22:46, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

No apology necessary. It's how things happened. I don't own threads, and you were among an avalanche of opinion. I have sympathy with the view that repeating a recent discussion is (weakly) disruptive. I don't mean to argue against a newly emerging trend on the COMMONNAME argument, but did want to note a little confusion with two distinct arguments mixed together. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 22:56, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Brooklands, Canterbury

Just a courtesy note to let you know that I have reverted your edits to Brooklands, Canterbury. You are right that the land settles, but that effect is rather minor compared to the buoyancy caused by soil liquefaction which makes empty pipes and tanks float up. Those petrol stations in Christchurch that experienced soil liquefaction and had a tank empty were out of action after the 2011 Christchurch earthquake, as the tanks floated up and pipelines thus ruptured. Where the tanks were full, often nothing happened. Schwede66 17:50, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

• Thanks. That did occur to me afterwards. Introducing buoyancy into the caption makes it much better for the reader. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 03:22, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

CSD proposal

Hey, I was disappointed when you didn't chime in here. I'd love to hear your thoughts! causa sui (talk) 04:36, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Whoops, please excuse the too aggressive canvassing. :o) causa sui (talk) 04:45, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Trying to judge consensus here, so I wanted to put a question specifically to you. I just want your honest opinion so please don't read this as me looking for a fight. :-) Q: Would you support my original proposal, or do you think your proposed point #3 would be required in a new CSD? Put another way, if it came to it, would you rather that nothing get added rather than my original proposal? causa sui (talk) 18:20, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

big edits v. small edits

If you wish to see how the idea of "small" edits works in practice - look at [3]. The use of "the edit is too big" is oft used to mean "I want no changes" - and when small edits are made, the result is one ginormous revert with an edit summary of "revert: there is no consensus to reduce "gratuitous usages" of the term which is the point of this essay)" and finally "consensual version per discussion)" where even JW found the other version to be a "consensus version". Consensus != veto by single editors <g> and I trust you know my opinions well enough to give them some weight. Cheers. Collect (talk) 13:30, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Now I have seen everything - an editor with dozens of reverts on a single page asserts that "stability" is key and no changes should be allowed which interfere with "stability"! <g> I think I have finally seen the oddest claim against edits ever made. Cheers. Collect (talk) 01:24, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Sandbox

Wikipedia:Misuse of the sandbox -- MST☆R ^{(Chat Me!)} 05:54, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:Closed down

Template:Closed down has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Kumioko (talk) 00:23, 22 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:User pages#RfC: Should "new messages" banner hoaxes be prohibited?

Hi SmokeyJoe. You participated in the discussion at Wikipedia talk:User pages#Simulating the MediaWiki interface (joke banners redux). I have started an RfC about the issue: Wikipedia talk:User pages#RfC: Should "new messages" banner hoaxes be prohibited?. Cunard (talk) 05:13, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Fæ

A request for comments has been opened on administrator User:Fæ. You are being notified due to your prior participation in ANI, RfA, or RfC discussions regarding this user. Thank you, MadmanBot (talk) 19:50, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

Greetings

Hi SmokeyJoe, I hope I did not appear rude by failing to respond to your kind greeting at WT:CON! As you can probably intuit, I am attempting a *dispassionate* style of posting (so far as possible), and avoiding even the appearance of factionalism. (I just noticed the lines on your userpage, good.) Don’t want to get anyone who is my friend in trouble by association when I maybe go out on a limb. But may I say now, thank you and it sure does feel good to be on the same *page* with an fondly-remembered collegue. NewbyG ( talk) 10:35, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

Demi Moore

This edit intrigues me [4]. Was it a mistake? If not I can't work out what the point of it is. AIRcorn (talk) 07:27, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm intrigued as well, especially since your summary doesn't match what was done There were no personal attacks or BLP issues in the redacted section, This was part of the DR process (informal mediation), as well as which refering to her by a name that she is specifically denying could be seen as a BLP issue in its self. Stuart.Jamieson (talk) 07:51, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

I'd welcome your positive contributions, but not disruption. --Dweller (talk) 23:13, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Hi, Smokey Joe. As you've commented on this issue at User:Dweller/Demi Moore, you may be interested in weighing in on one or more of the three compromise proposals at the bottom of Talk:Demi Moore. --Tenebrae (talk) 20:06, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

Curious

I'm curious to why you edited my page lol. Did you rdmly come across it...? Dengero (talk) 02:10, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

I looked, coming from User_talk:Jimbo, and saw User:DGG has left a message with a wiki link containing an accidental extraneous character. Having spent a minute working out the accident, I thought I'd correct it. I hope you and DGG don't mind. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 07:32, 11 March 2012 (UTC)

File:Simon Wicks 2012.jpg

File:Simon Wicks 2012.jpg (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs)

This image has been restored. Nevertheless, it is relisted for FFD discussion. You discussed it in Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2012 March 6, so you may be interested to improve the FFD consensus. --George Ho (talk) 22:00, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Adminship

Hey there SJ! I'm going to cut to the chase and dispense with the pleasantries: Have you ever considered submitting an RFA? Our work together of MFD has shown me (and I'm sure many others) that you have the knowledge, civility, accessibility, knowledge of policy and willingness to effectively enforce that policy. The backlog sitting at MFD (there's currently a discussion that should have been closed a week ago just stting there) leads me to believe that we need another mop on the ground, there at least. Let me know what you think. Cheers! Achowat (talk) 19:45, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Adminship

Hey there SJ! I'm going to cut to the chase and dispense with the pleasantries: Have you ever considered submitting an RFA? Our work together of MFD has shown me (and I'm sure many others) that you have the knowledge, civility, accessibility, knowledge of policy and willingness to effectively enforce that policy. The backlog sitting at MFD (there's currently a discussion that should have been closed a week ago just stting there) leads me to believe that we need another mop on the ground, there at least. Let me know what you think. Cheers! Achowat (talk) 19:45, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Achowat. Thanks for your compliment. I have considered. I have considered it most largely because I have often had the wish to read deleted contributions. While contributing to deletion discussions, I have often thought it desirable to know what has been deleted, or to know that there are not things that have been deleted. However, this does not seem so important, as admins now routinely undeleted article histories for the benefit of non-admins, and demonstrate explicit awareness that non-admins cannot see deleted content.

Apart from that, I don’t see any need. In influencing deletion discussions, it is the participation in the debate, not the closing, that matters. And the lack of admin status never seems to hurt my ability to be heard. I don’t feel any urges to close discussions. I don’t think that there are serious backlogs. A contested deletion discussion lingering a few weeks is not a problem, in my opinion. There is a greater need, in my opinion, for more participants, and for the existing participants to communicate better, than for more enthusiastic closers.

At MfD in particular, one of my opinions is that there are too many trivial nominations. Some have characterised MfD as busywork. I pretty much agree, where many nominations are for things that are of no consequence, absolutely none. The main reason I put effort into MfD is to free up other Wikipedian who are better at other things from having to worry about MfD.

I used to contribute to AfD a lot, but have declined in activity there because I started to find the cased overwhelmingly dreary. I find that most nominated articles, if well nominated, are unimportant or uninteresting, or that an enthusiastic newcomer is facing a crushing rejection of their work. In the old days, articles were worse, nominations were more random, and arguments and process were not so refined. Precedent setting was important. These days, I find that most articles at AfD are right on the boundary of what should be allowed to stay, and in trying to map out the boundary line, I have decided that the boundary is fractal.

If I were to submit an RFA, a very serious drawback is my lack of content creation, and lack of even direct content work. I am today up to 361 mainspace edits. Many wikipedians consider significant experience and success in content creation to be an essential requirement for an administrator. This was not the case in the early days, but it certainly is now. As a hypothetical, I am interested in how the community discussion would run. If I were to succeed today, my edit contribution stats would be an extreme outlier. That in itself doesn’t worry me, what does is that it would weaken the default expectation that administrators are proven content creators.

In order to spread my experience to include content work, I occasionally attempt to get involved. Strangely, I haven’t seemed to enjoy it. I really don’t know why. However, I maintain a desire to do some serious content work, and qualify for adminship.

But what about you? You are accruing a decent number of edits, and are now broadening your experience into Project space. I think that today you would stand a better than even chance of success, despite failing User:Achowat/RfA Process/1. With a little more time, your chances will become excellent. The one drawback, that you are a recent arrival who hit the ground running fast and well, is, were you here before, under another name? --SmokeyJoe (talk) 13:15, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Y'know, your comments are frankly pretty shocking. I've never even considered looking into Adminship. I have the same issue as you, content creation. It's not so much that I find it unenjoyable, I really do like contributing the the on-stage part of the Encyclopedia (though most of my contributions thus-far have been in the back-stage part of the Project); it's just that all of my Areas of Expertise, so to speak, come from using Wikipedia as a primary source, and then following Refs and learning more. I come to the problem that I honestly can only think of like 1-3 things that probably deserve Inclusion that are not already, y'know, included.

As to my history on Wikipedia, it's pretty much what we should expect out of every new editor (or, perhaps, ideally). I hung around as an IP lurker, making small edits to my areas of fandom (A little soccer, some flags, and general typo and syntax fixes). I got really intrigued by the concept of a project that "Fails in principle but works in practice", so I got myself educated. I read just about every Policy, Guideline, and Essay before jumping right in. And no, I'm not saying that every new member should be forced to sit down and dig through WP:OMGWTFBBQ before contributing. I read those because I honestly thought they were fun! To understand WP:REICHSTAG you have to understand WP:CON, WP:CIV, and WP:POINT. From there I just started Recent Changes Patrolling (ClueBot was down at the time, so it was needed) and that led to my ill-fated attempt at New Page Patrolling (CSDs and PRODs and BLP-PRODs and AFDs were a little too hectic for me).

But I got a handle on the why. I guess that's always what has me digging deeper. I patrolled for Vandals because I wanted to know why Vandals decided to attack pages. I wanted to know why adding "hi sarah" to Battle of Agincourt was funny. I wanted to know why editors made new pages, why people have Edit Wars, why the good things and the bad things that happen to the project happen.

And that's really the long and the short of it (perhaps a bit too long). But serious Kudos are in order for you checking out my RFA Process. That's really just set as a reminder for myself of the things I find most important. Adminships, if I may opine (not that you can stop me at this point), is about trusting a User with The Tools and too often Opposes pile on based on a newfound Cause célèbre and I like having something written to remind myself of what's really important.

But you keep fighting the good fight (I know sooner or later we're going to disagree on one of these MFDs ) and let me extend an offer that if you ever need a Nomination Statement written, just drop me a line. Cheers! Achowat (talk) 13:45, 30 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Achowat,

What in particular did you find shocking?

Wikipedia "Fails in principle but works in practice"? Like democracy? I never believed that line. I blame misuse of the word "priciple" where "prejudice" or "assumption" is meant. The human thirst for knowledge is strong, and when combined with practicle benefit, the quest becomes self-reinforcing. The growth of Wikipedia has gone very well. The growth is mostly complete, although it will never be finished, Wikipedia is now well into the phase of maturation. I wonder what is to come.

Did you develop an idea for why vandals attack pages? (I have my own ideas)

I do agree that the most important thing about granting privileges is trust.

Thanks for your friendship. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 12:33, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

I found it shocking because of what I do. My contributions are mainly gnomish changes, making sure that game logs of soccer matches (that I care about) are filled in and accurate, jumping into content disputes that are happening on talk pages to remind everyone of our policies, MFD, and I've also been trying to revitalize the CVU to make it a useful tool (trying in vain, I'm afraid, but we're finally getting traction). Very few Admins come out of these areas, because they're not "sexy" if you will. It's a lot easier to look at a Brand New Page, help promote it to GA or FA, and say "Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair" then to take pride because the infobox is accurate and not spilling raw code all over the place. I very, very rarely contribute to AFD and I've never posted on AN/I, and that's where Admins and Admin hopefuls flock. Essentially, I doubt there are many editors out there who, for lack of a better term, know who I am. My work is so diverse and "backstage" that I don't make the "Big Splash" that gets editors to notice you.

Adam Smith would argue, and I would tend to agree, that people always act on rational self-interest. What is done needs to be of benefit to the doer. Wikipedia benefits me, yes, but not my work on Wikipedia. I already know who won the 2012 Desert Diamond Cup, I watched the game. But I put the results up because it would be a benefit to someone else. And, y'know, someone else put up the results of some other tournament I was interested in, and I benefitted that way. But, Wikipedia existed without me for so long, my contributions are not vital to its continued existence. I guess it's an example of Sorites paradox, that if you take a heap of sand, you can remove one grain and still have a heap, indefinitely, so that at the end even 1 grain of sand can be a "heap". If every editor left, at some point it would break down, but right now Wikipedia doesn't need me to give in order for me to take. There should be, by all accounts, a Tragedy of the commons. But in practice, it works, and it's hard to figure out why. And democracy, as we all know, is the worst form of government.

There are four kinds of vandals that I've come across in my work. They are (in order of destructive tendency) testers, Britanicans, goofballs, and Jokers.

• Testers are not people who make test edits, they're people who like to test our responses. Wikipedia got big when I was in high school and I knew a lot of testers. They're testing us, they're testing our response to vandalism. Testers are responsible for most of the subtle vandalism. There vandalism is most often discussed in the phrases "Hey, let's X and see how long it stays up".
• Britanicans hate the idea of Wikipedia. I don't understand why, yet, but they think the only way to make their point that Wikipedia is an unreliable source is to make it and unreliable source. (Which is folly, since logic would dictate that if you need to be proactive in making it unreliable then the status quo can be seen as reliable; well, que sera sera).
• Goofballs are who we most often think of when we think of vandals (and most of our efforts are put into stopping them), because there work is most easy to see. They put things that they deem as "funny" onto the page, and like to watch it. These are the same people who draw fake mustaches on flyers.
• Jokers just want to watch the world burn. There's no motivation, they neither find it fun nor stimulating, they just like to destroy something beautiful.

Trust is everything. In an ideal world, everyone would be able to delete, block, rollback, and protect. The problem is that we don't live in an ideal world. Having those tools (I hate calling them rights, though I'm sure you'll find some example of me doing so in the last 6 days) is 100% about "can we trust this person to use the tools appropriately?". Nothing else, not one other thing, matters.

And be careful about using that "friend" moniker, wouldn't want this page deleted per WP:NOTMYSPACE . Achowat (talk) 14:33, 3 April 2012 (UTC)