User talk:WormTT/Adopt/Kimelea

I first heard of Doom Bar in the Impy. I was there with the Change Ringing Society (I know, I know, as geeky as they come) and it was my round.

"Pint of Doom Bar please."

"Pint of what?"

"Doom Bar."

"Doom?!"

"Yes."

"Are you telling me there's a beer called Doom?"

"Doom Bar!"

"You're setting me up, aren't you?"

Needless to say he wasn't. It has always made me smile! Anyway, if your taste in pubs is 'old' then so is mine - the Fire House is the best pub in Exeter by a mile, imho. I just wish the rest of the student body hadn't also figured it out - you can hardly hear yourself think in there at the weekends. I like George's (mainly for the building) but I never did make it down to Double Locks. That's a disgrace, right? :( Have to fix it some day.

On with business. These are the references that look wrong to me - am I on the right track? I skimmed over the lesson plan briefly and it looks like this might be the best time for questions on referencing. Gulp.

• Floella Benjamin. Depending how recently you went to Exeter, this might be a familiar name to you :) If not, then in brief: she's been the Chancellor since 2006 and she's pretty much adored. But her article is messy, lots of unsourced stuff, and lots of mentions that look like trivial appearances on TV and so forth when whole sections of her career are missing. I need to overhaul it sometime. But there is a particular line that I removed already, and it was put back in. It's this bit: "In 2011, she attended Exeter University's Graduation Ball in a gold blouse and black mini skirt, dancing and singing for all the new graduates." Although it's true (the woman is amazing), the statement felt wrong to me and I dived into the documentation to back up my gut feeling. One of my issues is that the source is a YouTube video which looks like it was recorded on someone's smartphone. I don't want to edit war over it so I posted a very waffly justification on the talk page and alerted the users involved. It's had no response for a week. Am I right to want to remove it again? Are the reasons I stated on the talk page fair? I was hoping people would comment on it even if I was wrong.

• Protests against SOPA and PIPA. The second paragraph has the statement: "In all, over 115,000 websites[1] and unknown tens of millions of individuals[2] joined the internet protest." Citation [2] just leads to a footnote: "At least 10 million emails were received and 24 million tweets are documented; reliable sources do not estimate how many participated but it can be identified from sources as being at least "tens of millions"." That surely can't be okay? I want to slap {{cn}} on the 'reference' itself. Does it count as OR, given that the fake reference admits that no reliable source made that estimate?

I dived deeper into the references to see if other cited sources could back up the numbers. The tweets claim is unverifiable (one source says 2.4 million tweeted about the protests, not 24 million joined them). As for the emails claim: Later in the article we cite this New York Times page as [6] to back up the claim that 14 million people, of which 10 million were voters, emailed 'lawmakers'. The NYT attributes the quote to something a Senator said. And that quote seems to be the basis of the 'tens of millions' claim. But the '115,000 websites' claim in the same sentence is backed up by THIS New York Times page, [1], which says that only three million people emailed Congress - a quote attributed to a nonprofit organisation. Who says that the NYT's sources were reliable? What are we supposed to do when a reliable source such as the NYT contradicts itself?

Sorry to jump in at the deep end a bit with the complicated questions... ~ Kimelea (talk) 23:01, 7 March 2012 (UTC)

My first experience of the beer was out sailing with my Dad and best mate, ended up in the pub and had my first pint, Doom Bar. We both found the name amusing and ensured we always had it, spouting "Doom" every time... which was obviously hilarious. As for the other Exter comments, I lived behind the prison for my final year so the firehouse was practically my local. Not sure when you were there, but there used to be a place called the Thirsty Camel opposite (turned into Oddfellows), which did £1 a pint, so you could either have a relaxed evening with a giant pizza or a proper session. Ah, student days.

Anyway, I lived in Exeter for 6 years after graduating, so I only moved away in 2010. In other words, yep, I know who Floella Benjamin is. In fact I grew up watching playschool, so she's clearly a favourite for me! Anyway, you're absolutely right with it being a problematic addition, it's a primary source, not notable information, doesn't confirm to any of the BLP standards - absolutely sensible to take it out. I commend you for trying to start a discussion, per WP:BRD - but no one's talking. I've removed it, and if I were you I'd have removed it 24 hours after not hearing anything. In reality, he was the problematic editor by reverting your reversion. Nice and simple.

As for SOPA and PIPA, now you're getting into more interesting areas, highly charged especially amongst the wikipedia community. I'd raise your points on the talk page because it is such a high profile article, see what people say. I think you're right, it's wholly unqualified statement. You could actually put a {{cn}} template on the note, there's no reason that notes shouldn't be cited. The important thing is that you get the discussion going.

Oh and what to do when a high quality source contradicts itself? Editorial judgement. Which is more up to date, and appears to be from a better source, get other sources in from elsewhere, perhaps? Worm^TT · (talk) 11:06, 8 March 2012 (UTC)

£1 a pint! No, sadly when I was there the price of booze had inflated a bit. Grr. And the Thirsty Camel sounds like somewhere I would have gone if it had existed, just cos it was called that, but I never went into Oddfellows... never had the need for a funky gastrobar when there's £5 pizza and candles and lovely rough tables right there.

2010, so you haven't been gone that long then? I was studying there from 2007-10, so we probably walked past each other a few times. Stuck around another year attempting a masters and then going off the idea, but maybe I'll go back and finish it. I do miss that place. Miss having Dartmoor on the doorstep too. Floella's a legend... I feel bad for you that you couldn't have had the chance to have her presiding over your graduation, if you finished in 04 ish. Thanks for sorting out her article - now I know that 24 hours is a reasonable time to wait for comment, I'll use that in future. And I'll keep an eye on her page and watch for the angry re-revert... (doom!)

Thank you for the advice on sourcing, I'm glad my instincts were OK. I've now dived into SOPA and entered the murky waters of contentious topics, so let's see how it goes... ~ Kimelea (talk) 00:19, 9 March 2012 (UTC)

No, I've not been gone long at all, though I've found some lovely places (and great beers) up North. The best thing is that I can afford to buy a house on my own salary, which is fantastic. Seems to take up all my time though.

I do think Floella would have been great at my graduation ceremonies (I had two, I actually stuck around for my Masters), both times I had Lord "limp handshake" Alexander. I don't blame him, if I had to shake that many hands I'd probably just touch them gently too! I did get Tim Rice as speaker though! (You can use that information to find out a lot about me, I'm sure!)

Dartmoor on the doorstep is a big tug. I grew up in the South west, and my mates lived on Dartmoor, so I used to go there quite often. Brilliant fun. Anyway, good luck with SOPA! Ha! Worm^TT · (talk) 13:44, 12 March 2012 (UTC)

Limp handshake? Eeeh, inspiring. I've never heard of him. Floella grabs both your hands and has a brief chat with each graduate and magically transmits self-confidence and pride as she does so. :) Tim Rice however, now that's someone I've heard of! His name is in my iTunes quite a bit, which tells you something about my musical taste, hehe. That's a cool speaker. I wasn't planning to e-stalk you, but now you kind of made it a challenge, so maybe I will. ;)

Great that you're buying a house - you must have netted yourself a decent job up there during the employment desert. It seems to allow you a little time to edit WP from work, at least. Which flavour of geekery do you work in?

No arguments on SOPA's article OR Floella's. Bring on the controversy already! ;) ~ Kimelea (talk) 02:30, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Kopa

Reply to this now we closed that section:

You know about Kopa? OK, so are you also a Lion King fan who gets into amusing levels of debate about what "really" happened to obscure semi-canon characters (a little unlikely), or have you been following my contribs / to-do list? ;)

Yes, I was aware he had his own section on List of The Lion King characters until recently. It was added by the author of Kopa (lion) after I found that page up for deletion and commented on it suggesting that we move him to the characters page. (I feel bad about that comment - it was quite dismissive of someone's work.)

The whole List of The Lion King characters article is a bit of a mess but the only thing most people seem to want to make 'accurate' is Kopa. Other TLK articles too (Simba, The Lion King). (Ahhh, I remember the days when all fans discussed was Nala's parentage...) The most accurate summary of Kopa's existence on WP is on Retcon (unsourced). I still feel he should be on List of The Lion King characters because he is so popular, and if the fact of his retconned status isn't up there fans will just keep re-adding their own theories, but I can't find a half-decent way to source it. Apart from the Six New Adventures books themselves, the only sources we're likely to have are fan sites and an interview with the director of the Lion King sequel (primary source) in which he admitted he'd never heard of Kopa when he created Kiara for the second film.

As for Red Dwarf, well, that revels in rewriting backstory for giggles. WP editors ought to revel in it too. ;) Except turning Kochanski from a sweet Scots girl into a hawt posh babe who's also a sarky grouchy cow. That wasn't so cool. ~ Kimelea (talk) 16:07, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

I know everything. Everything! Not really, I just enjoy reading wikipedia articles, and when you mentioned that my mind jumped to the Retcon article, which I'd read. Two seconds double checking and I look like a genius. Not stalking, not a Lion King fan, though I did watch it last week, coincidentally, for the first time since I was a kid, in my great marathon of watching lots of Disney films.

It's a shame, but popularity isn't a criteria for wikipedia, as one of my other proteges, MelbourneStar seems to be finding. He keeps writing about internet celebrities, and having the articles deleted. His best effort though is Zyzz which just survived an AfD. So, unless we can do better than an interview and lots of fan sites, it's really not something that should be on WP. Luckily there is a site where it can be The Lion King Wikia, for all those who'd be interested.

That sweet Scot's girl was on Let's Dance for Sports Relief in the audience at the weekend. She's changed a bit! And the sarky grouchy cow make sense, she did get dragged across from a rather tough dimension change. It's more the fact that they gain a time and space machine and use it to get curry... because they like being millions of years in the future? very odd. Of course that's half the fun, as you say! Worm^TT · (talk) 16:22, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Erk. A few days away with only a mobile broadband dongle and I really start to notice the WP addiction. :p

Pah, dimension shmimension! Being an alternate dimension version of Kochanski doesn't explain her being a completely different woman - appearance, accent, personality, dress. You'd have to say a different sperm fertilised the egg, and in that case the chance of her ending up in the same cat-in-the-cargo-hold-three-million-year-drive-plate-accident situation as happened in 'our' Red Dwarf seems a wee bit remote. But my problem with it is more that sarky grouchy cows are not much fun for female viewers to watch - it stops being a bunch of guys getting into a variety of pickles and becomes a bunch of guys running around drooling over The Token Woman. It'd be like plonking Anne Robinson down in the middle of Top Gear and expecting it still to be funny. ......OK that would be brilliant, for one episode, but you see my point!

And can I just say how amusing and endearing it is that you assume good faith about Kochanski's bitchiness. :D

OK, for Kopa, I'm going to draft a very short section for him in List of The Lion King characters which sticks to the plain facts about his existence and avoids the fan interest completely. I'll submit it to your critical eye when it's done. (Did you enjoy your Disney marathon?)

You know, I'm struggling with the disconnect between Jimbo's idealised vision for Wikipedia (the sum of all human knowledge) and the current reality (strict rules about verifiability). I keep thinking about tribal knowledge, of all things - the wisdom that tribal people have about the land, what's edible, plants with medicinal value, what the weather's going to do - knowledge that is transferred orally, and its verifiability is its practical use in everyday life. That kind of knowledge will probably be lost with that way of life, without ever being preserved and shared with the world in a place like Wikipedia. If you taught them to use a computer and they stuck their knowledge on Wikipedia, it would be reverted as it has no source except reality. If I went out there and learned what they know and 'converted' it to the Western style of knowledge transfer by writing it all down, it wouldn't be deemed fit for Wikipedia unless I got it published as anthropology... and then it would be classed as knowledge about those people and their beliefs, not knowledge for its own sake. This is the kind of thing that keeps me awake at night. :p ~ Kimelea talk 18:15, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Disputes

I hope you don't mind, but I'm going to talk to you here in future about any trouble I get into, because it seems that one of my sparring partners has watchlisted your main talk page and opted to reopen the argument there. Which doesn't massively help.

Niteshift36 is no big deal - he hasn't got a leg to stand on, Guy Macon is countering his intimidation and hostility on my talk page, and he keeps insisting that he's done with it. But this thing with the RfD is really starting to upset me now, I'm being accused of all sorts of deceit and manipulation here and here by someone convinced that I am acting in very bad faith. I'm not asking you to intervene - I know you're busy and this would require a lot of reading to catch up with. I'm just letting you know, as my mentor. Since there is an admin already slightly involved (Thryduulf - he commented on the RfD, including a remark on the attacking user, Machine Elf 1735), I have asked him for help on this occasion rather than approaching any of the wise owls you suggested. But I will go to them in future in preference, when you've got real life on. :) ~ Kimelea (talk) 20:16, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

Hey there! I did try to get my head around it, but since I can't tell the difference between Tai Chi and Chai Tea, it got too deep too quickly. In other words, I stepped back. I think Thryduulf is a decent enough chap (I've not worked with him to the best of my knowledge), but I've no reason to think he isn't. Let me know if you get stuck. Worm^TT · (talk) 12:38, 28 March 2012 (UTC)