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Vonnegut

Hey Iridescent,

I'm not sure if you'll be into it, but do you think that you could review Kurt Vonnegut and leave your thoughts at the peer review. I'm trying to get as many eyes on it as possible, and hope that my coverage of him is the best possible. Sound good? I understand if you don't want to, for any reason. Thank you, --ceradon (talk • edits) 08:35, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

I'll give it a go, although he's not someone I know much about. If you haven't already, you probably want Victoriaearle and Eric Corbett on board for this one; they shepherded Ernest Hemingway and Enid Blyton respectively through FAC, so will be more aware than me of the issues regarding writing a biography of an author of whom everyone has a vague idea they're familiar with but nobody actually knows that much about. – iridescent 08:52, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Hehe. I already asked Eric Corbett for a copyedit and a comment. Didn't get a response; I guess he's not interested. I would like for the article to be the best it can possibly be though, so as many eyes as possible. Cheers, --ceradon (talk • edits) 08:59, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

Other than a few minor edits and driveby talkpage replies he doesn't seem to have edited for the last few days—he's probably just on holiday. If he doesn't want to talk to someone he's generally not shy about letting them know. – iridescent 09:04, 7 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't have the time or motivation I once did to contribute here, but I'll take a look at Vonnegut in due course. Not this week though. Eric Corbett 16:36, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

Eric Corbett, thank you. :) --ceradon (talk • edits) 17:39, 10 August 2015 (UTC)

• Hey Iridescent. We're about ready to go to FAC. Any further concerns? Thank you, --ceradon (talk • edits) 12:37, 12 August 2015 (UTC)

• Nothing obvious I can see, with the disclaimer that I don't know much about him so am assuming accuracy throughout. ‑ iridescent 14:14, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Kurt Vonnegut FAC

Hello. We've gone to FAC with the Kurt Vonnegut article. Just a heads up. Cheers, --ceradon (talk • edits) 14:35, 13 August 2015 (UTC)

Will pop by when I get the chance—busy at the moment and unlikely to have time to review for a bit but I assume it will be there for a while. ‑ iridescent 15:45, 14 August 2015 (UTC)

Lambeth is no more

Maybe referring to Elizabeth Hankes? Several lines of odd stuff supposedly written on an envelope by Etty, I suppose between 1828 and 1830, in Round Table, Volume 3, H. E. and C. H. Sweeter, 1866 - New York (N.Y.) p. 316. • Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 08:01, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

WP:BLP prevents my giving my full opinion on Robinson's methodology, but I find that initial section where he traces Etty's family tree highly dubious, which is why I disregarded it altogether when writing the article; the sole source for Elizabeth Hankes of Lambeth even existing appears to be "according to William's great-great-great nephew". It seems unlikely anyone would refer to a family member, let alone a female family member, as "Lambeth"; the only people who are referred to by placenames are peers and bishops. Unless one is specifically talking about a district of local government, "Lambeth" is almost invariably going to be shorthand for the Archbishop of Canterbury; if it was indeed written in 1828, it will be a reference to Charles Manners-Sutton who died in office in July 1828. ‑ iridescent 16:43, 16 August 2015 (UTC)

The lambeth bit comes from a scribbled bit of self-talk pseudopoetry that might or might not be interesting enough to be worthy of inclusion in Etty's article. It mentions his sister, mother, specific paintings sold, prize won (I assume the 100 pounds) and so on. • Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 00:35, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

OK, looking at the original this just looks like verbal doodling (I wouldn't even consider it poetry, just scribbled notes), and I don't see what use could be made of it. For the benefit of anyone else watching this, the "poem" in question is:

God is God

Turkish proverb

Now that I am elected a Royal Academician

That I have sold my picture to the Marquis of Stafford

That I have sold my sketch of Pandora

That my mother is restored to me

That my Betsy remains

That Lambeth is no more

That the Chambers are comfortably let and [illegible] done with

And that my 'Venus' is sold, the 'Evening Star' and York in view

And 'Herculaneum' hung and Models done with

Can I forget? No! No!! No!!!

It will almost certainly be from summer 1828, as that's when Venus the Evening Star was sold, which means "Lambeth is no more" as a reference to the death of Manners-Sutton make sense, as he died in July.

If we're going to go down the "original research into Etty's writings" route (which would be more suited for Wikiversity than here) there's a lot of considerably more promising material in the YORAG archives, given that we still have the man's notebooks and correspondence. (I do use occasional quotes from him in the bio to give an illustration of how his mind worked, but have tried to do so very sparingly. Farr includes what he considered the most relevant of his letters as an appendix.) It's hard to convey just how huge YORAG's Etty archive is; it has over 1200 catalogue entries, many of which are notebooks or sketchbooks containing multiple items. There's no way one could ever distil the whole thing into a full-length book, let alone a Wikipedia article—trying to corral all his jottings into a coherent narrative would be a matter for a doctoral thesis, not a dilettante Wikipedia editor. ‑ iridescent 10:09, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

• Ok, sounds right. Good luck with your FAC • Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 10:23, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

To be clear, the "dilettante editor" is me, before the Civility Police pop up to accuse me of belittling other editors. ‑ iridescent 13:36, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

That may be true. However, if you count every fourth letter in your contribution to this thread, and adjust for the Coriolis effect, it's painfully plain that your message reads "Death to Jimmy Wales! All hail President Trump!" I personally think we should just skip the whole admin/ani/arbcom stuff and permaban you now. • Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 00:52, 18 August 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Brilliant Idea Barnstar
	Thank you for your fine help at Trinity Chain Pier. It is really appreciated and has eased my work in improving the article. John (talk) 21:23, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you, but I can't really take any credit—it was purely through idly flipping through Google hits that I noticed it had a different name in early sources. It occurs to me that the National Maritime Museum might have something on it as well—from the existence of Wikipedia:GLAM/National Maritime Museum I assume we did at least at one point have a contact there. (There's apparently a Scottish Maritime Museum as well who might have something as well, although since it only opened in 1982 I wouldn't hold out much hope that their collections go back that far.) It might be worth looking through the Scottish collection of the National Gallery of Scotland as well (I assume it's all online) to see if there are any paintings of the thing which are in the public domain. ‑ iridescent 21:33, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

I would probably have figured the name thing out myself in time but you saved me a lot of head-scratching. All the other suggestions are appreciated too. Thanks. --John (talk) 21:37, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

I don't know if it's sourceable, but dropping the location into Google Maps, there's a straight road (bizarrely, named "Trinity Crescent"), which runs directly from the disused Trinity railway station to the base of the pier, so it looks like even though the pier's importance was supposedly over by the time the railway was built, it was considered important enough to affect the placement of the roads. It may be worth looking to see if there is any discussion of links between the pier and the station in any of the books. ‑ iridescent 21:53, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

One of the sources talks about that. The building of the pier was contemporary with the building of Trinity Crescent, and the street was never completed with buildings. The railway (and it was Edinburgh's second) certainly traded on the popularity of the pier as a swimming destination, as mentioned by my railway sources. There was a steep stairway according to one of the sources, I think. I suppose it's a question of just how much detail one adds from the sources. Having decent sources really helps, and I heartily appreciate your help there. --John (talk) 22:04, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

DYK for Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret

Gatoclass (talk) 08:41, 26 August 2015 (UTC)

Improving Etty

Hello! Thanks for your detailed response on @Johnbod:'s talkpage. The Wrestlers was almost certainly rephotographed with colour calibration in advance of the gallery reopening on 1/08/2015. I am trying to get access to this copy in advance of the normal release process (at which point it will appear on the collections page: The Wrestlers on the YMT Online Collection). There are also a number of William Edward Frost's paintings in the online collection that currently lack accessible images.

How useful might Etty's sketches and works on paper be? There's one on Commons already and one by William Holman Hunt of Etty sketching: Works on paper in the York Art Gallery. A collections search indicates that there are nearly 700 more that might be photographed but may have dubious quality. If particular examples would be really useful it might be fun to hunt them down.

It would be great if Etty or related articles could hit TFA around early August as the gallery reopens? Let me know if there's anything else I might help with? Cheers PatHadley (talk) 16:12, 4 June 2015 (UTC)

PatHadley, I can try to get William Etty up to FA status by August 1, but it would be cutting it fine. Because the existing article is so poor there's nothing to build on, it will need to be written from scratch which I'd estimate will take around a month, and the FAC process will take a minimum of two-three weeks and probably longer as the article will be quite long, so people are more likely to spot issues. That pushes an earliest-possible promotion date to late July, which is cutting it very fine.

Unfortunately none of the three articles completed so far (Sirens, Destroying Angel and Candaules) are in the YAG, so they're not ideal. I'll ask the TFA schedulers (pinging Brianboulton, Crisco 1492 and Dank) to avoid scheduling any of those for the next couple of months to allow us to run something at the start of August without prompting "you're featuring too much Etty" complaints. If all else fails, we can always run Sirens, which is such a striking image it will almost certainly get quite a lot of pageviews, and will hopefully drum up some interest in Etty even though the painting itself is on display in the Auld Enemy over the Pennines.

Benaiah

Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball

The Wrestlers

Venus and her Satellites

In the meantime I'll try to get one of the works currently in YORAG through FAC in time. It will probably be one of the four to the right, as of the Etty works in the YAG collection they're going to be the ones it will be easiest to get a decent-sized article out of; if you or any talk page watchers have a particular preference do let me know. If I can arm-twist a TFA delegate into running Venus and Her Satellites under its older name of The Toilet of Venus and crop the image for the main page slot down to just the central tableau of naked women, it will light up Reddit and Twitter and should get around 100,000–200,000 pageviews, but it will also generate a firestorm of complaints that will make this argument look small, since some people take great offence at any effort to inject any element of populism on to the main page, especially the hallowed TFA slot. Aside from that, The Wrestlers or Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball are probably the ones which will connect best with Wikipedia's audience; Benaiah looks a little dated to the modern eye, and British audiences are unlikely to get Biblical references without explanation. Unfortunately, while YORAG probably has the most significant collection of Etty's works, the collection is surprisingly short of paintings in the "Great women of history and literature who have accidentally mislaid their clothes" style for which he's known today, so whatever we go with is going to be slightly unrepresentative.

Speaking of Venus and her Satellites, if you get the chance can you see if YORAG can upload a copy of their version of Venus and her Satellites? The version currently on Commons is the one now on display in Ponce; the YORAG version is similar but has certain differences, particularly in the sky and the shading of the figures. (If need be I can copy it from their website—I can't imagine they'll object—but uploading images taken from UK gallery websites without asking permission has caused a degree of unpleasantness in the past.)

Regarding sketches, they'd probably be more useful for the articles on individual works. An example that immediately springs to mind is in Candaules, where I mention that the central figure was one he'd sketched many times before; an illustration of a sketch predating the painting in the same pose would make the point well. The Art & Controversy book has quite an extensive section on his sketches—I'll see if there's anything mentioned in there that would be particularly useful. What would be handy is more pictures of Etty; at the moment we only have Holman Hunt's sketch, the 1844 photo & Adamson's painting from it, and Etty's 1823 self portrait. (Etty also made a self-portrait from the 1844 photo, but it's inferior in quality to Adamson's so there's no point using it.) We don't have any pictures that I'm aware of showing him in the 1830s, which is the period in which he was most active.

Sirens

Andromeda

I am almost certain these are four images of the same woman

Another thing it would be nice to have would be some preliminary sketches, if there are any, for Sirens and Andromeda; I am virtually certain that these show the same model in four different poses, and think it's quite likely that Andromeda began life as a study for Sirens; preliminary sketches that show the Sirens' faces would prove that one way or the other. (What would be really nice would be to have a name for her—it never feels right just saying "the model" like they're interchangeable objects—but I suspect there may be no record of that. Treating life-class models as important people in their own right rather than as disposable props was a practice that only really began with the Pre-Raphaelites.) Despite the fact that there's been very little written about it, I'm determined at some point to create some kind of article on Andromeda; of all Etty's works it's the one that's looks most strikingly modern (probably because she's not shown in either an awkward Academy Life Class pose, or in a reference to a piece of literature which is no longer studied, and if you ignore the fact that she's chained up and wrapped in cellophane the model is much more natural-looking than most of Etty's women). – iridescent 17:54, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

I would be able to get a general article on Toilet of Venus as a subject up, we have a Commons category. Johnbod (talk) 19:39, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Just as long as you make it a minimum of 1500 characters of readable prose, so "Did you know …that Mary Richardson went for a slash in the Toilet of Venus" can go on the main page. – iridescent 21:36, 5 June 2015 (UTC)

Nice one, though I'm not sure Americans have that idiom - perhaps just as well. Johnbod (talk) 15:37, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

"…that a elderly musician was pictured with eight naked women in the Toilet of Venus?" – iridescent 16:31, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Keep 'em coming! Is that Homer? If not blind he might easily get distracted - Etty stretches even my attenuated sense of decorum. On reflection, I'm amazed that no 5th-rate band or singer has called an album or track Toilet of Venus, & so it's still red. That's rare in iconography. Johnbod (talk) 16:58, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Ask and ye shall receive.

The wording of the first one should actually be "…that Mary Richardson popped into the Toilet of Venus for a slash before joining the British Union of Fascists", which is factually accurate and unifies the Main Page obsessions of Nazis, poor-quality puns and the gender gap.

As I think I've said previously, the more I see of Etty the more I'm coming to warm to him. He does seem to have sincerely believed that he was doing the world a service by painting as many norks as possible and illustrating the magnificence of God's creation, and never to have understood just why people found his habits of visiting morgues to dissect corpses and of asking people to take their clothes off for him to be odd. – iridescent 17:05, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, how come they haven't made the film yet? Johnbod (talk) 17:32, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

Heh, if I can write an article which inspires an opera, maybe I can inspire a film as well. (If someone were filming a Wikipedia article, the one to watch would be Halkett boat which would be wonderful animated; Lieutenant Halkett and his umbrella-propelled inflatable coat sounds like something from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.) – iridescent 17:48, 6 June 2015 (UTC)

The Wrestlers

OK, I've written The Wrestlers to try to ensure we have something in the YORAG collection ready for the 1 August reopening; once the FAC for The Destroying Angel is either archived or promoted, I'll nominate it. If anyone has any suggestions/improvements to make, please do as given the glacial pace of WP:FAC this is going to be a tight deadline; pinging Victoriaearle, Ceoil, Eric Corbett (this one is of male subjects so shouldn't have any GG implications), Giano, Johnbod, Kafka Liz, ArchReader and anyone else who might have an interest in Victorian high-kitsch. It's a bit of a difficult subject, as it's so poorly documented it's impossible to be sure what the artist's intentions were so of necessity there's a "it might be social commentary on the struggle between black and white people in British society, or it might just be that the model happened to be black that day" element. Plus, Etty also painted a completely unrelated picture also called The Wrestlers (nothing at all out of order going on in that picture, you just have a dirty mind), so there's an issue as to which painting any reference to it pre-1947 is referring to. – iridescent 09:38, 7 June 2015 (UTC)

OK. Woah.... First of all, huge respect for firing off such a brilliant article so quickly! I'll be letting the curators know and hopefully we'll get a little feedback from them. I'll definitely be getting hold of the latest images of all YAG's Ettys for speedy upload. Meanwhile, you are more than welcome to download any image from YMT's online collection (image policy here), as you saw on the Hunt sketch, there's a Commons template for tagging these images. His sketches and preparatory works that are in the 'Works on paper' collection might take a little longer to dig out and get snapped (by Christmas hopefully?). I'll mention Sirens, Andromeda and Candaules in particular. Also, we've begun our first experiments with stitching photographs for super-high-resolution results (eg, Snyder's Game Stall). Is it worth doing this for particular Ettys to see details, paint texture or anything that else worthy of explication? All your hard work is massively appreciated so there's no need to bust a gut for 1 August!? Perhaps it'd be healthier to aim for TFA on the death anniversary on 13 November? Let me know if there's anything else I can do! PatHadley (talk) 09:28, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

PS - you'll see that I've replaced the YourPaintings version of Study of a black boy with a much higher-res version from the online collection. I know the quality is variable but just want to reiterate that there is a great deal on there (Search for 'Etty' throws up 1241 items) that you can download and transfer to Commons as needed. Cheers, PatHadley (talk) 16:02, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for getting back. Regarding curators, it's probably worth reminding them that if they're not already familiar with Wikipedia's odd customs, it's probably best to raise concerns on the talkpage. In my experience, the leading experts in any given field generally find Wikipedia's reliable source culture quite jarring, since things they know are true are omitted from the article. The Destroying Angel is a good example; there's a figure in it which I'm almost certain is misidentified as a bacchante and is actually a nod to Liberty Leading the People, but because the only reliable source I can find that mentions it identifies her as a bacchante, that's what we call her.

The Ettys I can think of that would particularly benefit from scanning at super-size would be Sirens, (which would probably be a pig to photograph at very high quality, since it's too big and too fragile to fit on a flatbed) to be able to show the joins where the restoration took place, and the loads-of-small-figures ones like Cleopatra, Youth/Pleasure, Destroying Angel and The World Before the Flood where people might want to zoom in on individual characters—but none of the five are in the YORAG. Of works in YORAG which there's a realistic chance of writing a stand-alone article on, A Family of the Forest, Elizabeth Potts and Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball are probably the ones which would most benefit from an extreme-close-up treatment. (The problem is that, while York may have the largest collection of his works, the ones in the Tate and Walker have much more written about them, and consequently are easier from a Wikipedia point of view.)

It might be useful to have one of Etty's Elgin Marbles sketches as well (some of them are reproduced in the Art and Controversy catalogue so the scans have presumably been made, even though they don't appear on the website). There's no rush on any of this; the paintings important enough to warrant stand-alone articles are all either already on Commons, or easily available. (Picture quality is a nice luxury, but it isn't essential. If you watch people using Wikipedia in the real world, one of the first things you notice is how many people will crane in to look at images close-up because they don't realise clicking opens them in large size.)

I'm aware there was a better quality copy of Black Boy, but the YORAG website was down at the time and I figured the lack of quality didn't really matter given that it was just intended to illustrate a minor point about his having a history of painting non-white subjects. Since the alternatives were The Missionary Boy and Indian Girl, which IMO are among the most unpleasantly ugly works of the entire 19th century, I wanted this one if possible, and rushed it in to get the article up and running in as near-complete a state as possible.

If Wikipedia's going to run with a specific date, the reopening of the gallery is a much more pertinent date. His death anniversary isn't really of interest to anyone and presumably isn't going to see any kind of commemoration, whereas for the gallery reopening he'll presumably be covered in at least the local press. (Plus it's during the holidays, so might encourage some of York's flood of tourists to poke their heads in.) Date connections aren't really that important—he's not a figure like Shakespeare where his birthday genuinely is recognised. – iridescent 17:39, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

I've also cleared out the worst of the nonsense from William Etty. It's still an atrociously bad article which is going to feel the benefit of the WP:TNT approach fairly soon, but at least it's not full of outright lies now. – iridescent 18:53, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

All looking excellent! I've just shown the curator the Wrestlers article and she was very impressed and thrilled to learn that Etty might make the front page for August 1st. She's given me the list (from memory) of which Etty's will be on display in the new gallery:

• Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball - Currently 7.5MB - Higher res on the way. Super hi-res possible but not soon.
• Monk Bar - Currently 4.2MB - Higher res on the way
• Portrait of Mlle Rachel - Currently 7.7MB - Higher res on the way
• Male Nude with Staff] - Currently not on Commons. High res on the way
• Mary, Lady Templeton, after Thomas Lawrence - Currently not on Commons. High res on the way

Not sure how those might fit into your plans. I'll do my best to see if we can get the Elgin sketches digitised! Cheers, PatHadley (talk) 16:01, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

Break: Which paintings can realistically be worked up to full articles

Excellent news—there's always the risk with something like this that the curators will think the emphasis is wrong (or worse, the basic facts); or, that they'll be annoyed that Wikipedia is potentially eating into their own gift shop sales if they're planning to sell "about this picture" pamphlets.

There should certainly be something Etty-related run as TFA on or near 1 August, since even if The Wrestlers fails to gain FA status in time Sirens is ready and Destroying Angel should be barring unforeseen circumstances, so if need be one of them can run. (August 2 will almost certainly be taken by a football article to coincide with the Charity Shield, but to the best of my knowledge nothing else is lined up for August 1.)

I can do Preparing For a Fancy Dress Ball to a shortish full-length article (probably about the same length as Sirens), and Mlle Rachel and Male Nude with Staff to "short article but respectable enough that it won't look out of place standing alone" status. Monk Bar is probably a lost cause, since to the best of my knowledge there's never been anything substantive written on it (although I'm certain that enough has been written about the York city walls to write a stand-alone Monk Bar article which it could illustrate). It would probably be possible to squeeze out a stand-alone article on Mary, Lady Templeton, after Thomas Lawrence but I don't think there would be much point, since it's a slavish copy of the original which the young Etty painted as a training exercise, and it would make more sense to have a single Copies made by William Etty of works by other artists list/article.

From a Wikipedia viewpoint, the ones which could realistically be brought up to FA level at present (aside from the four already done) are:

• Benaiah (YORAG)
• The Bridge of Sighs (YORAG)
• Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret (Tate)
• The Combat (National Gallery of Scotland, engraving in YORAG)
• The Dawn of Love (Russell-Cotes)
• Male Nude With Arms Up-Stretched (YORAG)
• Musidora (Tate)
• Pandora Crowned (Leeds)
• Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball (YORAG)
• The Triumph of Cleopatra (Lady Lever)
• Venus and her Satellites (Two versions, one in Ponce and one in YORAG)
• The Warrior Arming (Manchester)
• The World Before the Flood (Southampton, with a much rougher version in YORAG)
• Youth/Pleasure (Tate)

and possibly also Prometheus (Lady Lever), Bathers Surprised by a Swan (Tate) and Venus and her Doves (Manchester).

The problem is that (per my comments above) the YORAG collection is somewhat unrepresentative, because of how the collection was assembled; the paintings for which he's best known (the big glossy history paintings filled with gratuitous nudity) were bought by industrialists and ultimately found their way into the Tate or the municipal galleries of the big mill towns; YORAG's collection is heavily skewed towards his early and late works, which haven't had the same level of coverage and thus aren't as easy to cover from a Wikipedia viewpoint.

Male Nude With Arms Up-Stretched

Elizabeth Potts

(For what it's worth, I think if YORAG is only going to pick five works from the collection to display, Male Nude with Staff and Mary, Lady Templeton are odd choices. Male Nude With Arms Up-Stretched and Elizabeth Potts are far more visually striking examples of a male nude oil sketch and a formal portrait of a bad-tempered-looking woman, respectively. I agree entirely with including Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball, which I think is arguably his greatest work despite its relative obscurity, can see the obvious local-interest reason for Monk Bar despite its insipidness, and can kind of understand Mlle Rachel as it's so radically different from his usual style. Any Etty exhibit without a single female nude or history painting does seem slightly odd to me, though, especially given that YORAG has Venus and her Satellites, the apotheosis of "gratuitous female nudity in an overblown mythological history painting", in its collection.) – iridescent 23:54, 10 June 2015 (UTC)

I tend to agree, but the Venus takes up a lot of wall (the York version is bigger than Ponce, is that right?). Johnbod (talk) 00:39, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

The York version is 78.7 by 110.4 cm (31.0 by 43.5 in) – it's not exactly a miniature, but it's not a behemoth like Sirens or The Combat. The Ponce version is very slightly larger at 80.6 by 111 cm (31.7 by 43.7 in); the discrepancy is probably accounted for by the framing rather than any difference in the canvas itself. For comparison, Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball is over three times the size, at 173 by 150 cm (68 by 59 in). – iridescent 00:50, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough, though of course it's the width that is key when hanging. Johnbod (talk) 15:02, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

There's always the cop-out the V&A and Tate have both followed in recent years, of saying that hanging salon-style is "more authentic to the period" and cramming the paintings virtually floor-to-ceiling like bathroom tiles. While I do entirely get that having as many works as possible on display is A Good Thing since when you have a rotating display it means people are more likely to see what they came to see, it does sometimes feel like the museum equivalent of prostitute's cards in a phone box. – iridescent 00:52, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Well yes, although there's also the National Gallery's approach of hanging at their standard close peering, school party & wheelchair friendly height works which they know perfectly well were designed, and the perspective aligned, to be seen from 10, 15 or 20 feet below. And don't even get me started on exhibitions of historic sculpture at the Royal Academy. Johnbod (talk) 03:36, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

I would rationalise the NG's treatment of something like The Ambassadors as the painting equivalent of when a science museum intentionally exposes part of a mechanism so visitors can see how it works. There's always going to be a loss of authenticity in the settings, given that most of the things were painted on the understanding they'd be seen by dim flickering light. – iridescent 08:52, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball

PatHadley, Johnbod—in light of the above I've worked Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball up to what I consider FA standard. Do either of you (or anyone else watching this page) have any strong opinion as to whether Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball or The Wrestlers would be preferable, given that the timescale means there's likely only to be time to get one through FAC in time for the gallery opening? My preference is tilting towards Fancy Dress Ball if that one's going to be on display and Wrestlers won't be, but I can see arguments the other way as Wrestlers is a more visually striking image so might generate more page-views. I'll nominate one or the other very soon, so if anyone has and good reasons why one or the other should be chosen, speak now or forever hold your peace. (I've also nominated Fancy Dress Ball at Featured Picture Candidates despite my general distaste for FPC, as I feel it easily qualifies and now the painting is the subject of an article, the image has an obvious encyclopedic value.) – iridescent 11:29, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm also leaning towards Fancy Dress. One could argue that the important genre of female portraits is under-represented on WP, though so of course is inter-racial wrestling. There's always Black History Month, October in the UK, for the Wrestlers. Johnbod (talk) 13:21, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, at the moment the only female-only "portrait" (loosely) FAs are I think: Drowning Girl, Madonna in the Church, The Magdalen Reading, Portrait of a Lady (van der Weyden), Portrait of a Young Girl (Christus), Rokeby Venus, Statue of Liberty, Three Beauties of the Present Day. Shades of Caryl Churchill's Top Girls , & certainly a group that could do with a 19th-century addition. Johnbod (talk) 14:52, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Is that really all? We surely at least ought to have some Madonnas and Queen Elizabeths knocking about. I ought to be able to work Musidora and The Dawn of Love up as well, which I suppose technically qualify as female portraits, although I'm not sure they're exactly what the GGTF have in mind.

Fancy Dress Ball it is, I think; quite aside from the fact that I think it's both a more engaging painting and a more engaging article, it works better from the point of view of drumming up interest in York Art Gallery since it includes three other works currently in YORAG, even if they're not on display. (The more I see of Elizabeth Potts, the fonder I'm becoming of it. Her expression is right up there with the Mona Lisa as a tabula rasa—you can legitimately describe her as happy, sad, excited and bored.) Fancy Dress is probably more likely to create interest from people who'll go on to visit the gallery, too; Wrestlers would probably deter as many people as it attracts. – iridescent 23:55, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Fwiw, I really like Fancy Dress Ball and would go with that. I'll be sending the Annunciation (Memling) at some point, when I'm in FAC mood again, but as Johnbod says, it's a group that could use a 19th cent addition. Ping me on my page when you nom, and if I'm around I'll review it. I don't have FAC on watch, so haven't a clue what's going on there. Victoria (tk) 00:29, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Now live at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball/archive1. – iridescent 00:40, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

That's good. On female portrait FAs, I missed the artistically dreadful Streatham portrait (of Lady Jane Grey), bringing the total to 9. The scary thing is that 5 of those are mainly User:Ceoil (plus Victoria, myself, et al.), so without him ..... I haven't counted things like Portrait Diptych of Dürer's Parents, though of course one of those is just a female portrait. Ceoil & Victoria again. Johnbod (talk) 03:46, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

The Streatham portrait is at least no worse than the NG Lady Jane Grey. AV Club does a good series on "hate songs" (typical target Lennon's vapid "Imagine"); Paul Delaroche might roll in his grave if it ever becomes a series on paintings. Ceoil (talk) 04:13, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

If you'll forgive me coming over all Simon Cowell, the Delaroche wins on the important measures of whether people walking past stop to take a longer look, and whether people buy a poster in the gift shop. See also And When Did You Last See Your Father? (No article? Really?), Isabella and the Pot of Basil, The Lady of Shalott… (My personal "Imagine" would be "anything by Leonardo da Vinci". I am mystified by the pseudo-religious awe in which he's held—his paintings are without exception completely generic works of the Florentine tradition, but there seems to be an ongoing conspiracy to promote him as the greatest artist who ever lived. And Within Leonardo's own lifetime his fame was such that the King of France carried him away like a trophy and was claimed to have supported him in his old age and held him in his arms as he died. Interest in Leonardo has never diminished. The crowds still queue to see his most famous artworks, T-shirts bear his most famous drawing, and writers continue to marvel at his genius and speculate about his private life and, particularly, about what one so intelligent actually believed in. has a good claim to be the most ridiculously overblown paragraph on the whole of Wikipedia. This paragraph has somehow managed to survive for eight years) – iridescent 09:27, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

I'm not sure if its some weird oop north thing, but the Italian High Renaissance doesnt really work for me. The Lady of Shalott and that, well you can see why it appeals to passers by, nearly all of the paintings mentioned here have commonalities, tropes, that appeal to the sentimental. I'm not entirely immune, have a fondness for the Lady of Shalott, that I can rationalise, but am not proud of. Am much more tyrannical when it comes to music; Shellac? Lightweights. Ceoil (talk) 17:50, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

It can't just be sentimentality, or the walls of the world would be papered with Millaises (Millae?). There's something very specific to present-day England (you don't see it in Scotland or Ireland to anything near the same extent) that reacts to the combination of ginger subject and a primarily green or turquoise background; almost all the gift-shop favourites from Beata Beatrix to Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose to Chatterton to The Last of England to The Hireling Shepherd seem to have this in common. (I just did a quick dip sample of major English galleries' Wikipedia pages looking at their "highlights" section, and all but the Tate conform to this, and given that they have an entire room full of Rossetti and Waterhouse they're clearly in denial.) I'm sure there's a thesis in here somewhere—a cultural legacy of the whole Celtic Twilight fad of 100 years ago perhaps? – iridescent 19:36, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Cracking stuff! Not sure what I can add at the moment while you're forging ahead - I'm at the limits of my art history knowledge and the curators are so buried in set up that they can't spare a moment to go through this. Having said that, they have personally passed on their support, thanks and awe! I.e: "Amazing work!" - "Great to see Etty getting attention" - "I wish I had time to write that!". They all understand the benefits of Wikipedia/OpenGLAM work and there are no issues with them feeling threatened. The next step for me will be to get the latest hi-res images of Etty's paintings up on to Commons (hopefully this Thursday, poss next Tuesday). I'm also going to advocate getting the works on paper (particularly the Elgin Marbles sketches) digitised in the autumn. Anything else? PatHadley (talk) 11:08, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Musidora

Excellent news! We also have Musidora, Candaules, Fancy Dress Ball and The Wrestlers lined up waiting for their turn at WP:DYK, so there should be a steady stream of incoming traffic from the main page, particularly if Musidora runs with this rather eye-catching image. – iridescent 11:24, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Johnbod, RexxS—since he might conceivably listen to one of you, can you tell Mabbett to knock this nonsense off? There is nothing contentious about a lead image width of 300px/upright=1.35, which is the recommended size for a lead image specified by VAMOS. Given that this is an article on a topic in which he's never shown the slightest interest, and that in the past few days he's edited Stonnington City Centre, Royal Society of Chemistry, Technetium-99m, Bidford-on-Avon, River Tame, West Midlands, AirTrain JFK, Samuel Lines, Concorde aircraft histories, Holdout (real estate), LAMP (software bundle), Birmingham Museum Collection Centre, Entomological Magazine, Supermarine Spitfire, Diane Gromala and Amos Smith—all of which have images the same width or larger, and none of which he's raised any concern about—I can only assume that this is a deliberate attempt to disrupt FAC. Even Gerda Arendt, who generally supports POTW, is saying in the FAC that if anything, the images in this article ought to be larger. (If he genuinely thinks 300px is too large, I can only imagine his reaction when he notices Witches' Sabbath.) – iridescent 15:58, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

He certainly won't listen to me (we've been round this track many times) and I expect RexxS agrees with him. The MOS on images has been somewhat contradictory & widely ignored for years. This is really all linked with the drive for infoboxes that Wikidata can pick up from. Johnbod (talk) 16:03, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Sigh. Touch wood, he'll give up of his own accord, since I have absolutely no desire to ever set metaphorical foot in WP:ARCA again. – iridescent 16:10, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

On the contrary, John, I agree with you. My poor old eyes need bigger images if I'm to make out the detail without having to keep on messing about with zooming. Can I say what a delightful article it is - and if anything I'd be arguing for a slightly larger image size, although I accept that it starts to become impractical on many mobile phones once you get past a certain point. Hope that helps --RexxS (talk) 21:56, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

The World Before the Flood at WP-default size

Thank you (both for intervening, and for your kind words). I tend to agree that if anything, the images ought to be a lot larger for a lot of these visual arts articles. Particularly with someone like Etty, who painted a lot of large-canvas works like The World Before the Flood where at Wikipedia default size the individual figures look like grains of rice; even at the MOS-approved maximum of 300px it's virtually incomprehensible. I can say with absolute certainty, having seen it for myself often enough, that many (perhaps most) Wikipedia readers are completely unaware that clicking on images enlarges them, and when confronted with an image will either jack up the zoom setting on their browser or press their noses to the screen. On something like Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat), forcing the image even to the 300px MOS-approved maximum, let alone the WP defaults, will make it look like a brown smudge. – iridescent 20:21, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but then you have something like Beaune Altarpiece, which we (I, Victoria and Sarah) never managed to resolve. Also, I agree generally with RexxS' cmts re images and succinct pic descriptors. The temptation towards eye candy in arts articles is huge, as is the tendancy towards long, long captions. I usually find myself cutting down a fair few during pre FAC waves of self awarness and restraint. Followed by long, dark, winter nights wondering if I sold out, for a FA trinklet and one single main page day, to the man. Ceoil (talk) 23:55, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

Sometimes the long captions make sense—someone just skimming over the article rather than reading word-for-word should be able to read the caption to any picture and understand "what is this a picture of, and why is it here?". Very long captions are certainly not exclusive to VA articles, although on VA topics there's sometimes more of a need to explain to the reader the significance of what they're seeing. – iridescent 12:58, 19 June 2015 (UTC)

Current state of play

PatHadley, barring unforeseen circumstances Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball will pass FAC by 1 August, so will be hopefully be TFA that day. The YORAG paintings included on it are Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball, Elizabeth Potts, Venus and her Satellites (albeit the Ponce and not the YORAG version) and Mlle Rachel. There will also be a steady stream of "Did you know" articles between now and then, starting tomorrow with Candaules and followed at roughly 4–5 day intervals by The Wrestlers, Fancy Dress Ball, Musidora, The World Before the Flood, Youth & Pleasure and The Combat. I'll try to get the bio up to at least a respectable level before 1 August, as at the moment it's really not fit for purpose. – iridescent 21:37, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Fantastic stuff. I know that on Wikipedia the work is supposed to be it's own reward but I would really like to celebrate your incredible work on these articles and speedy, friendly discussion of the issues. Just a random thought - how about a Periscope tour with a curator? You could ask the questions and the rest of the world could tag along? If you're UK-based we could look into a trip to visit? Cheers, Pat

(PS - Sorry that the new versions of the images are still delayed but I'll get them up as soon as I have them.) PatHadley (talk) 12:23, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

I'd be reluctant to do anything that involves working closely with any institution, rather than at the present arms length. After the QRPedia/​Monmouthpedia/​Gibraltarpedia and Contribsx fiascos (fiascae?), the WMF will be taking a much dimmer view than they used to of anything with even the slightest hint of conflict of interest particularly when it looks like there's any potential involvement of Wikimedia UK (who it's fair to say are not at the top of Jimmy Wales's christmas card list right now). Presumably the last thing YORAG wants is to be the subject of multiple incoherent rants by the rabble of fruitcakes and loons who infest Jimmy Wales's talkpage, followed by their grand reopening being overshadowed by gloating "Wikipedia is corrupt and here's the proof" articles in the Guardian. (Possibly a statement of the obvious, but bear in mind that YORAG's very survival is dependent on the goodwill of a government in which Grant Shapps is an influential figure, so a public association with Wikipedia is possibly not something thet want to publicise.) I'm well aware that I'm still a hate figure among certain members of Wikipedia's lunatic fringe, who would welcome the chance to manufacture a conspiracy theory. (As those with long memories can attest, in the case of at least one member of said lunatic fringe the combination of "Thomas Gray" and "naked teenagers" on Youth and Pleasure is virtually guaranteed to be taken as a personal affront.) – iridescent 15:53, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Bio done

Wikipedia now has a shiny new William Etty article in place and ready in time for the local papers to plagiarise use as a basis for their own writing in their coverage of the YORAG reopening. Re-pinging User:PatHadley, Victoriaearle, Ceoil, Johnbod, Kafka Liz, Lingzhi; do your worst. I'm aware that it's nudging the WP:TOOBIG limit, but IMO this is a topic that really shouldn't be split into separate "Early life" and "Later life" articles a la Ricky Ponting or Samuel Johnson, since such a key element is being able to see how his work changed over time, and how his later works relate to early works. (It's not unconscionably long; assuming User:The ed17/Featured articles by wiki text is correct, if it were to pass FAC today it would be the 147th-longest, and those above it include considerably less weighty topics such as Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons, Adam Gilchrist, 2012–13 Michigan Wolverines men's basketball team and Ontario Highway 401.) Besides, the only natural break points are 1821 (which would only trim a tiny amount) and 1828 (which would mean a post-1828 article requiring such a long "story so far" section, it would effectively be a content fork).

It does intentionally break the all-hallowed WP:VAMOS in a few places, but I feel it's justified; with the monumental paintings like Sirens it really doesn't make sense to have images at default size (those sailors who look like tiny specks in the background are each around three feet high in the original), and the "bound captive" paintings I've intentionally placed looking out of the page as I think it suits the aesthetic better. – iridescent 19:15, 14 July 2015 (UTC)
Failed to ping earlier as the names were a cut-and-paste from my previous list, but Belle consider yourself pinged as well. – iridescent 23:16, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

Great stuff! I'm travelling at the moment so it will take a few days. An impressive wall of Ettys at the Lady Lever Art Gallery, 11 I think (including Cleopatra as below), which will put York to shame. I'm of course too early to see theirs though I'm there now. Johnbod (talk) 06:29, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Amazing work! I understand your reservations from my previous offer but the relationship between WMUK, WMF, the community and this project has been overwhelmingly positive. If there's anything that we can do to celebrate your work, I'd be happy to find something you thought of as appropriate. Thanks again, PatHadley (talk) 09:11, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret

Johnbod I've always thought that if you take them on their own terms as a museum of late 19th-century tastes, rather than a museum of art per se, Lady Lever and its less self-promoting southern twin are two of the best small museums in the world. Even kitch vileness like His Turn Next and The Kelpie kind of work in context, and some things like Jeunesse Doree or The Chosen Five would be celebrated as major works if they were in the Tate rather than tucked away in the unhip half of Merseyside or the arse end of Dorset. (When it comes to Etty, Lady Lever bizarrely hung on to tat like Aurora and Zephyr and his rejected cartoon for Prince Albert's shed, but flogged off probably the most important of all his works in their collection, Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret, to the Tate who promptly shoved it in storage for five decades. And yet, they give pride of place to Cymon & Iphigenia which vies with Dignity & Impudence to be the most tackily unpleasant artwork of 19th century England*.)

*Specifically England. When it comes to "charmlessly tacky", 19th century Scotland and Ireland were in a league of their own.

PatHadley Many thanks for the thought, but as I say I don't think I'd be comfortable getting too close to any institution. WMUK does some excellent work but I don't think anyone would dispute that WMUK's attitudes are currently very out of sync with the hivemind in San Francisco who currently call the shots and have very little fondness for WMUK which they consider (with some justification) an extremely loose cannon. WMUK doesn't make the rules, Jimmy and Lila do, and the rules as they currently stand are these, which I'd technically be in breach of if the YORAG cafe gave me a free bun. Just watchlist User talk:Jimbo Wales and WP:COIN for a while and see how often some variation of "someone who corrected a typo on this article two years ago once sat next to the subject on a bus" is raised and meets with a chorus of "burn the witch" approval from the self-appointed Defenders of the Wiki. (Johnbod can no doubt recall just how well the British Museum giving out prizes a few years ago for expanding articles on their exhibits went down.) The people within Jimbo's approved circle can and do get away with COI editing, but I am decidedly not in that circle. – iridescent 20:53, 15 July 2015 (UTC)

(de-indent) I was looking around in JSTOR the other day and came across a snippet in the Bulletin of the American Art-Union advertising the 1849 retrospective. Apparently, "The Council of the Society of Arts [...] exhibit every year the collected works of some one artists, and apply the funds arising therefrom;—first, to giving the artist whose works are exhibited, a commission for a picture; and secondly, to the purchase of pictures already painted. The first of this series of Exhibitions was that of Mulready's works, last year. This year a collection has been made of Mr. Etty's. One hundred and thirty have been brought together, and are said to form a combination of great excellence." I hadn't read the new biography at the time, so I was surprised by the tone of the piece, which was far more respectful than I had expected for someone with Etty's reputation (as reflected in your articles for his various paintings, or at least those I had read). It all makes more sense now; in its detail and completeness, the new biography explains clearly and impassively the changing perceptions of Etty's work, and indeed places even the kitsch in its proper context. Beautiful work, Iridescent, about a remarkable artist. Waltham, The Duke of 23:39, 1 August 2015 (UTC)

Well, many thanks. I will confess that I had much the same opinion of Etty when I started these (the conversation which sparked this series begins "Much as I dislike Etty and everything he stood for"). I think he's really suffered through the fact that the only paintings of his which most people have heard of are the garishly kitsch ones which aren't actually very representative of his output; plus, the Pre-Raphaelites who followed him had a vested interest in claiming to have invented a new genre and didn't want to acknowledge their debt to anyone later than Raphael. I think it's reasonable to make the claim that one can trace the style of virtually every subsequent English painter of whom anyone's heard, from Dante Gabriel Rossetti to David Hockney, directly back to him. (I'm also very pleased at how high the page-views spiked when Fancy Dress Ball was TFA; it shows, I hope, that the article engaged a significant proportion of its readers to the extent that they wanted to learn more about him.) – iridescent 18:56, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Heh

Nineteenth-century fusions of Venetian history painting and English proto-realism appears to beat Wikipedia's usual remit of sports, war, trains and astronomy with our readers. (Didn't Jimmy Wales ban Gibraltar Tourist Board fluffery from appearing on the main page? It looks to be sneaking back in.) ‑ iridescent 19:46, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Invitation to WikiProject TAFI

Hello, Iridescent. You're invited to join WikiProject Today's articles for improvement, a project dedicated to significantly improving articles with collaborative editing in a week's time. Feel free to nominate an article for improvement at the project's Article nomination board. If interested in joining, please add your name to the list of members. Thanks for your consideration. North America1000 08:13, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

I won't, but I wish you the best of luck. I find it's easier to work on something when there isn't someone else working on it at the same time, as otherwise you tend to get a mass of edit conflicts and duplicated research. (I know it's heresy against the Wikipedia credo, but aside from a few top-level articles, collaboration on Wikipedia doesn't tend to work very well—in my experience, if more than a couple of people are working on something it tends to function much better on a "you leave me alone with it for a week, then I'll leave it with you for a week" basis. Despite the WMFs protestations to the contrary, Mediawiki is an awful piece of software when it comes to how it handles multiple people working on the same piece of text.) ‑ iridescent 17:41, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

I agree, unless it's someone you know well and can trust. As for the Mediawiki software .... Eric Corbett 17:46, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Hi Iridescent & Eric Corbett: Thanks for your opinion/insight. For what it's worth, check out some of the project's accomplishments, for examples of the good the project is capable of. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 23:50, 27 August 2015 (UTC)

Oh, I'm not belittling the project, but I don't feel its model is very good once you get to FA level (if I'm reading this page correctly, TAFI has only ever achieved one FA and two GAs (and one of those GAs was promoted following a rather dubious-looking review by Awadewit). To misquote Kelly Martin, open editing may be a good way to start an article but it is not a good way to finish one; the mass-collaboration model is good for getting things from bad to adequate, but a collaboration of more than three people doesn't really work at the higher levels. Quite aside from all the technical issues (edit conflicts, MOS compliance, citation styles, avoiding repetition, image placement…), when you're inviting a lot of people who don't have specialist knowledge or access to sources to pile into an article, you're effectively adding an open invitation for people to write articles based on the results of Google searches, and "people who don't know the subject well enough to weigh sources, trying to add to articles based on whatever they've found on Google" is a recipe for disaster. (Unless the topic is something like a videogame or recent movie, where the most important sources will genuinely be online, "more than a third of the references are to things which can be found on Google" is a pretty sure-fire indicator that an article will have serious systemic problems. The nature of Google Books, which is largely built from American collections, means the results of a Google Books search automatically come with an inbuilt serious systemic bias, which people who aren't intimately familiar with the topic generally find very hard to counterbalance.) ‑ iridescent 19:28, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

I've not infrequently had objections from editors complaining that sources weren't available online. Have they never heard of libraries? And as for the saintly Awadewit, least said soonest mended. Eric Corbett 20:04, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

My thinking was that the TAFI works best trying to improve broad untechnical articles that are in a poor state with little inline referencing. There are still quite alot of these around the place, so I think there is a place for it as long as the right articles are selected. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:15, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

@Eric, you may recall that back before the dawn of time, it was myself who sarcastically defined "unreliable source" as Any source that would require more than 30 seconds of effort to verify, and if anything the rise of Google has just made that mentality worse, coupled with a tendency of some editors to unquestioningly accept whatever Google throws up as holy writ. (I won't embarrass by naming names, but I've caught at least one significant editor citing articles to novels without realising that they're works of fiction.) I believe my opinions of the sainted Awadewit were, and are, fairly well known.

@Cas, I agree entirely that there's a place for TAFI in getting things which are currently unacceptably bad up to the level of adequate—some of Wikipedia's core-topic articles are atrocious. (This is a website that purports to be an encyclopedia, yet Prose is a mighty 355 words long.) For getting things beyond "barely adequate", I think it's far from the most efficient process. (Divvy up the participants into groups of two or three, and assign one article to each group to focus on exclusively, if you really want to win the Wikipedia MMORPG.) ‑ iridescent 20:26, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Yet another competition without a prize! Yeah, great! Eric Corbett 20:43, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

The whole of Wikipedia is a competition without a prize, unless you count "increased number of abusive emails from people you've never met" as some kind of prize. I don't like the assorted contests and think they tend to focus people's energies into areas where it's not best used, but (with the exception of WikiCup, which is actively disruptive and should have been shut down years ago) I don't see any great harm, and they might do some good. ‑ iridescent 21:33, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

I've never considered the TAFI project as competitive. Rather, it is collaborative, the opposite. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 01:40, 29 August 2015 (UTC)

Funny

AWB said this? Better fix the dictionary. LeadSongDog come howl! 00:22, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

AWB doesn't run off dictionaries but off regexes—when a single word contains two different errors, it can confuse it. In this case, it was (correctly) fixing the missing s in "succesful", but failed to fix the double-l. ‑ iridescent 09:21, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

DYK for The Dawn of Love (painting)

Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:01, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

"Purpose" of ANIthing

"what the purpose of this board [ANI] is. It's not the Editor Conduct Complaints Department, it's the place one comes to report incidents which potentially require administrative action. ‑ iridescent 17:14, 5 September 2015 (UTC)"

Are you sure? (ANI might be described or defined like that, but is that how it is used? I have seen even administrators discuss how they can execute site bans on editors over generalized behavior, at ANI. [Even Dennis Brown thinks that.])

In addition I've seen many times at ANI threads closed with comment that the thread was a content dispute, so not suitable for ANI. (Okay. Then once when I observed a clear content dispute, and interjected into the discussion that it wasn't a candidate for ANI, I was disagreed with and "educated" by more than one editor that ANI can be about content issues too.)

My conclusion has therefore been, that ANI has no rules, and is capable of nearly anything. And to make argument that ANI not fulfill purposes it is not defined to do, carry no credence re the actual activities on that board (except as mentioned for immediate justification for an editor to do something they want to do, like close a thread based on "content-related", but also violating that "rule" when editors want to ignore it).

I believe my view is pragmatic since formed by observations of the actual realities at that board. Making a disconnect between any defined description, thus a kind of anarchy there. Which many editors have commented on, not just me. (Do you disagree?) IHTS (talk) 22:18, 5 September 2015 (UTC)

And in a larger sense too, I doubt there are "rules" that govern anything anywhere on the WP. (E.g. a request for ARB clarification turned into a site-ban effort on Eric Corbett. Casliber once told Eric that a threatened iBAN would not be applicable to him, since Eric never stalked the editor in question. But when I informed Casliber that I had iBAN applied to *me* when I never stalked anyone ever, he had no response.) IHTS (talk) 06:38, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

And here's another interesting (at least I think so) thought: Dennis Brown once said that actions inconsistent with current WP policy can absolutely be OK, because policy is an after-the-fact recognition of "current practice" on the WP. Bishonen agreed with that position. (To me that's scary. How the hell is a newbie, who does her/his best to educate themselves reading WP policies, supposed to know what "current practice" is? And what quantifier/qualifier determines "current practice" anyway? It seems [to me] that could mean any blue smoke someone [an administrator] wants to blow out a body orifice at any given time, to justify an action/sanction they want to take/impose.) IHTS (talk) 06:49, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

As it says at the top of the bloody page, This page is for reporting and discussing incidents on the English Wikipedia that require the intervention of administrators and experienced editors. Part of the reason it has such a toxic reputation is that so many people try to use it as an unholy combination of a drumhead court and an on-wiki version of Wikipedia Review and then throw temper tantrums when they aren't allowed to do so, but that doesn't mean they should be encouraged to do so. I've no idea how and why Dennis Brown comes into this, and whether you're holding him up as some kind of paragon of admin virtue or as an example of a bad admin at his worst; given that I'm not sure I've ever interacted with him in any way, he's probably not the best person to ask me to take as an example either way.

Of course, ANI can be about content issues, when the content issue constitutes an incident that potentially requires admin intervention. It's not and never has been the pro version of Jimbo's talkpage where random groups of people have a god-given right to whine about how much they dislike each other.

Wikipedia's rules certainly exist, and if anything are enforced far more consistently now than they were back in my day. (This is probably in no small part a legacy of Newyorkbrad; what's often overlooked is that when I coined the term "Bradspeak" it was as a compliment to his ability to word things without ambiguity.) That Casliber disagreed with other people on one occasion over how those rules were interpreted in two specific cases doesn't mean anything other than "sometimes people disagree"; this is why Arbcom is a committee, not a dictatorship.

I would suggest that my talk page is not the appropriate place to hold a discussion over what the remit of ANI is in theory and practice and whether either or both should be changed; for that Wikipedia talk:Administrators' noticeboard is the place to go. Before you go advocating changes, I would point out that for all its many faults, the WP:AN—WP:ANI—WP:AN3—WP:RFC setup has actually proved remarkably stable over the past decade, and none of those arguing for it to be changed have ever come up with an alternative which doesn't involve as much or more bureaucracy. ‑ iridescent 19:31, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Well, the abolition of RfC/U a year or so ago was a big change (I haven't yet seen anyone post-morteming whether a good change or a bad one). Personally I find the concept of ANI generally reasonable and the atmosphere there often toxic, but I don't have a suggestion about how to replace or improve it, and it's not for lack of thinking about the issue.

I don't really think the increasing number of rules on Wikipedia is attributable much, if at all, to me. We need some well-defined rules and then we need sensible editors and admins applying them; we generally don't need more rules for the sake of having more rules, except where a specific need or gap is identified. The arbitration procedures, for example, are a place where every incremental change was generally sensible but the overall complexity of the rule-set is sometimes just too much, and I expect that experience has been replicated in lots of other places. Newyorkbrad (talk) 22:41, 6 September 2015 (UTC)

Reread what I said - I don't hold you responsible for the proliferation of rules, but for the fact that existing rules are now generally enforced without fear or favor. It's not that long since the days when it was possible to predict the outcome of arb cases just by running down the list of active arbs and calculating which of the parties they disliked the most. ‑ iridescent 05:18, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. Some early arb-pages have some truly embarrassing segments. Sigh..onward and upward :P Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:20, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

@Ihardlythinkso: yeah...I often disagree with people and events here often leave me at a loss for words too....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:21, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

@Iridescent: Thank you. Newyorkbrad (talk) 15:42, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

Goya

It seems I made a mess at TFA. And was short with you. Ahem. I dont really care about the scheduling, fwiw, and Brian had a point. Ceoil (talk) 07:23, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Don't worry about it. 31 Oct and 1 Apr have always made tempers fray for as long as I can remember, since there are legitimate arguments both ways. ‑ iridescent 08:37, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Not guilty

It wasn't me with the book, I would not ask Jimbo and the other anti-content people on the board for anything. Best,--Wehwalt (talk) 11:12, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I know it was one of the FAC regulars—not sure who it was if it wasn't you (I know they gave Cas a load of Amazon vouchers to use as competition prizes at some point as well.) It's clear that both WMF and WMUK give out book-buying grants, but if there's a public record of who they've actually given them to, they're certainly keeping it well hidden. ‑ iridescent 11:24, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Unlike the T-shirts!--Wehwalt (talk) 11:45, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I was never sure whether to feel pride or annoyance that I never got one of those T-shirts. (Not that I can think of much I'd be less likely to wear than a Wikipedia T-shirt, but that's missing the point.) ‑ iridescent 11:54, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I did get one, though it took multiple people nominating me. Can't remember what happened to it. Probably fell crumpled in the bottom corner of the closet. I don't think I ever wore it other than as a workout shirt, often inside out. People aren't impressed.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:12, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

Don't know what this is all about, but WMUK have several times given Amazon vouchers as prizes for Cas's Wikipedia:The Core Contest, which are all recorded on those pages. WMUK have also paid for a few books (total >£200?) for editing. There are lists somewhere on their site. Strictly they are WMUK property, and the full WMUK library is set out here, but many/most of these are donations, mainly by institutions, that cost WMUK nothing - all but one of those I hold for example. I don't think the WMF Individual Engagement Grants will cover many books. Johnbod (talk) 15:17, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

It's a discussion at WT:ADMIN, more proposals seeking The Fall of the House of Admin. It would be nice to have a fund that could pay for books with little paperwork, possibly run openly on wiki (let's say, $500 a month to start. That is, total for everyone). I'm fortunate to be the Wikipedia affiliate of my local university, which includes library privileges, but I still grumble about the traffic between here and there, and the parking. But there's always books where WorldCat says the nearest is 1,706 miles away ...--Wehwalt (talk) 15:40, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

It's been done, although the experience would be more streamlined in the US. Nikkimaria (talk) 16:15, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

It would have to be streamlined; you can't wait weeks on a book you need.--Wehwalt (talk) 17:36, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

WMUK require no "paperwork" at all, you just put up a case online, but only cover UK residents, & you'd need a wiki track record. Johnbod (talk) 16:42, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I shall report to Calais and see about the residency. As for the track record, I've heard they have some there.--Wehwalt (talk) 17:34, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I do like the "open fund" idea, although given the way things usually go on Wikipedia, I suspect if the discussions were held on-wiki it would quickly turn into a shouting match between supporters and opponents of the various editors tendering for the funds, and also create an unhealthy pressure on the recipients of the books to come up with the goods—sometimes, one starts to write something and soon after realises either that there's not enough to make a full-fledged and balanced article out of it (particularly if the book in question is the only significant work on the topic, but turns out to be heavily biased), or that the end product isn't going to justify the effort it will take.

One day, someone will explain to me just why "conflict of interest" and "paid editing" are such terrible things. Many years ago during the MyWikiBiz wars I asked why User:NumberOneBritneySpearsFan making a series of gushingly one-sided edits to Britney Spears is "community engagement" but User:Dave from RCA Records Press Department making strictly factual and non-contentious edits regarding sales figures or release dates on the same article is a heinous offense that justifies immediate banning. I've yet to see a convincing reply. ‑ iridescent 23:15, 9 September 2015 (UTC)

I think it has to do with the millennials being taught that profit is a bad thing. Very strange. The whole thing has inspired me to go on and improve an article on a fake disease, which I've just left at PR. That will show them. Now to find someone to pay me for it...--Wehwalt (talk) 03:02, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Blaming millenials... heh. I don't claim to speak for everyone who's concerned with paid editing/COI, but my perspective is informed by my experience as both a contributor to and a user of the peer-reviewed scholarly literature in my field. Right now, Wikipedia is where the biomedical literature was 10 or 20 years ago in terms of having our collective heads in the sand about COI issues. (At this point, one could generate a Wikipedia-specific version of COI bingo).

Unpaid tendentious editing is a problem and paid/COI editing is a problem - I don't think they're mutually exclusive concerns. At least there's general agreement that tendentious editing is problematic—making it marginally easier to deal with. In contrast, there's a lot of resistance and contrarianism when it comes to acknowledging the threat that paid/COI editing poses. Every serious reference or scholarly work has had to deal with the issue of COI, and we're uniquely vulnerable because of the pseudonymous open-editing model—but we're not willing to think seriously about it. The first step in dealing with a problem is admitting that it exists, and right now we're stuck on step zero. MastCell ^Talk 04:42, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

I think my ultimate objection is that it is being used to try to cut off all possibilities of making money by editing, or to make them so unattractive that they will not bear any fruit worth the eating. Should there be possibilities of compensation for creating significant quality content for one of the most-visited websites in the world? Can it be done in a way that will satisfy an uninvolved outside person's ethical scruples? I think it can. Would I take money say as a stipend and for expenses towards editing articles in a certain field? Possibly, but I doubt I'd go down that way until it was a well-worn path, with the rules and expectations clear. Money may be a bad idea for reasons having nothing to do with the POV issue being discussed ad nauseum, but I'm really discussing the general principle. As for the corporate COI bit, I suspect we are not heavily relied on for our corporate information, as there are better places people can go to find out more relevant details about a company. Like if they're open on Saturday, or if their service is good. I don't think it diminishes people's confidence in the articles on history, or video games, or battleships. Call it denial if you want.--Wehwalt (talk) 05:32, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

I agree with the above from Wehwalt, with the one exception of medical articles which is a place a paid bad actor could actually do some damage. It's been quite well documented that, many people take Wikipedia's medical coverage far more seriously than it deserves; inserting "xxxx is known to cure yyyy" and getting it to stay on the page would potentially have enough impact to distort the market in the US. (Specifically the US; it wouldn't have anywhere near the same impact in countries where medical purchasing decisions go via NICE or equivalent rather than the patient.) It would be an interesting, albeit grossly unethical, experiment to insert misinformation into a medical article along the lines of "the use of Vosene shampoo has been demonstrated to prevent hay fever" and see if it actually had an effect on sales.

@Mastcell, I have a feeling your view is slightly distorted by working in one of the few fields where COI does have the potential to have an impact—for most of Wikipedia, the motivation for something being written isn't really an issue except when third parties choose to make it so. For the vast majority of Wikipedia, the primary motivation for inserting distortions in articles is "I like it" or "I dislike it", and that has a far more corrosive effect.

To take a completely non-random example, when the British Museum was offering payments to anyone who took an article on one of their exhibits to FA, it would clearly breach either of the proposed new rules (admins are not allowed to accept payment for any services on Wikipedia. Do not believe those who claim to be admins and ask for money. or No administrator may accept payment to edit articles or to perform any administrative function on Wikipedia.) but I fail to see any actual problem caused by it—yes, it possibly caused some editors who would ordinarily have worked on something else to choose to work on BM material instead, and thus caused a notional detriment to those other subjects, but you'd be hard-pressed to demonstrate it. I'm not sure the "no payments" hardliners really understand just how much Wikipedia relies on paid editing, and just how difficult it is to separate paid editing from paid advocacy—Sue Gardner did try at one point, but was overtaken by events.

(My Cassandra/Jeremiah combo a few threads up looks less paranoid in the wake of this latest crusade, doesn't it? If anyone wants a vision of what Wikipedia 2016 would look and feel like were this proposal to be accepted, just imagine a world in which any talkpage disagreement which happened to involve an admin triggered a process that looked like Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Tree shaping and lasted just as long.) ‑ iridescent 11:14, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

I'd be willing to grant special status for medical articles, or even the need for special scrutiny. However, the practical effect of tagging pursuant to the terms of use amendments is not special scrutiny, but a scarlet letter. Since FAC is a consensus process, I can't afford to bring in articles that will attract hostility for reasons having nothing to do with their content. But when I see the sums of money being thrown around, and being accepted by some ... well, all I can say is that Avery Brundage was not a hypocrite on amateurism because he wouldn't even take his expense. There are some who make large sums by trading off their connection with Wikipedia, and oddly they are among those most active in seeking to cut off opportunities of members of the community. Well not some, a few. Well, not a few, one.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:40, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

I guess as a doctor I see Mastcell's and Doc James POV...some of the stuff I see is terrible. However, I am also aligned with Wehwalt's and iri's POV. I spent alot of my youth being shit-broke and it enrages me when we can sti and watch lots of famous people and business leaders get huge bonuses and then begrudge a few pennies to others...part of the new monetocracy where the rich and famous get to shit on the poor more overtly than at any time since the early 20th century. I do think we need some structure but not sure of best wording as yet. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:43, 10 September 2015 (UTC)

Is the terrible stuff you see in the medical articles really the result of paid editing, though? It's not an area in which I've spent a lot of time, but in my experience the main problems in medical articles are that "eating raw coffee beans cures cancer" Daily Mail-type folk remedies find their way into articles as fact, and that there's a pervasive Teach the Controversy mentality among a clique of very vocal editors which means new-age woo gets given equal billing with experimentally proven treatments and those who try to remove it get ganged up on.

Per a comment I made somewhere else once, an intelligent paid editor from a drug company wanting to slant a medical article could work entirely within NPOV; expand the MiracleDrug article until it's so big it needs to be split, create separate Benefits of MiracleDrug and Drawbacks of MiracleDrug articles with equal weight and prominence; then, get the former up to GA followed by FA, giving it two slots on the mainpage while encouraging other people to link to it. (FAs always have more incoming links than non-FAs on equivalent topics, just because more people know they exist to link to.) At no point in this process has the editor breached any policy, and likewise at no point has admin status been an issue. ‑ iridescent 08:51, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Actually the Daily Mail's cancer coverage is not that bad these days, for a tabloid - latest example. When I was at Cancer Research UK there was a lot of talk between them & CRUK people checking stories. Sites like The (New) Daily Mail Oncological Ontology Project, a Reddit joke page ("an ongoing quest to track the Daily Mail's classification of inanimate objects into two types: those that cause cancer, and those that cure it." - last entry 2010) seem to have petered out. Fiona Macrae has a degree in medical microbiology apparently. A scientist analyses one of her stories here. My impression was that the big UK charities have most of the UK media pretty well trained to check the significance of stories with them. Johnbod (talk) 12:39, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

The Mail may have finally dropped that particular ball, but never fear, 'the Express is here to pick it up. ‑ iridescent 21:03, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Even those aren't so bad by American standards. Even "Death diet: Now chips, toast, crisps, biscuits and coffee give you cancer" reflects pretty faithfully what the European Food Safety Agency or whoever said. It's the university & agency press departments who are to blame if you ask me, pushing this stuff down the throats of journalists. My favourite "how accurate is Wikipedia?" study, some years ago, was a large survey of the members of the American Society of Toxicologists (or similar) who rated WP 2nd to a Medscape type site, a bit ahead of the Food and Drug Administration and way ahead of the New York Times etc. Journalists can't resist story. Johnbod (talk) 22:21, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

If the matter was being approached from the standpoint of "We must make necessary exceptions to the general rule that what an editor does with his time, whether he chooses to sell it if he can, is his own business," I'd be OK with it. But it's being approached from the opposite standpoint, the Avery Brundage perspective that amateurism is good and necessary, and must be enforced, and maybe we'll let you have a cheap T-shirt if you're good and don't get out of line. Oh, and possibly you can get compensation, if they give Jimbo a few hundred thousand in prize money if they share Wikipedia's mission. Good luck to any group conservative enough to provoke a social media howl there, given the present makeup of the board. They'd fold like a lawn chair.--Wehwalt (talk) 09:50, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Indeed. If those cheerleading for amateurism were genuine believers in the "Wikipedia is an artefact of pure knowledge and shouldn't be tainted by any external influence" concept, I still wouldn't agree with them but I'd at least have some sympathy with their position. However, given how many people at high levels have their snouts in the trough, I find it very hard to get excited. One of the many great low points of Wikipedia was Sarah Stierch being fired for taking a $300 payment, by a man who pimps himself out as a "brand ambassador". ‑ iridescent 10:03, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Well, now Jimbo owes me for a keyboard. That advertisement made me physically ill. It actually struck me as a fair policy if you said no one with admin or "higher" permissions, and no board members, could make money off their connection with Wikipedia, including a) allowing their name to be advertised in connection with it, b) mentioning Wikipedia in speeches, and c) accept any prizes or compensation with a retail value of more than 99p. They are of course free to resign board membership and permissions at any time and go in with both front trotters. Their business. Seriously, I think a fair policy for paid editing would be disclosure to the Arbitration Committee, in confidence, with a defined procedure as to what would happen if they thought there was a problem.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:24, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

But these are two very different situations, which you're conflating. In Jimbo's case, his prominence enables him to make money by endorsing products in advertisements. I understand that these transactions occasion distaste (and envy) among some volunteer contributors. But that's very different from taking money in exchange for editing article content, without disclosing the arrangement. It's beyond apples and oranges, and I'm worried that there's a fundamental disconnect between how I view the COI issue and how you guys view it. I don't have a problem with people making money off Wikipedia per se, and I can't even begin to understand why you'd propose to prohibit people from mentioning Wikipedia in speeches or appearing in advertisements. I have a problem with people accepting money in exchange for editing articles. It's not about "amatuerism"; it's about the integrity of our content, and whether we care enough about it to think more seriously about COIs. We'd need to start by distinguishing COI editing from appearing in a watch advertisement. MastCell ^Talk 05:18, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

I was thinking about a reply, but after I hit the the word "envy", I will not bother. Agree that we see things differently and leave it at that.--Wehwalt (talk) 07:46, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Ditto, if you seriously think this dispute is motivated by envy of Jimbo. If you don't think Jimmy Wales accepting cash to appear in an advert is relevant to this then you've misunderstood what's under discussion, as under the proposed new COI policy that would be grounds to summarily ban him from Wikipedia.

In a nutshell, I think "Conflict of interest" occurs when an editor has an external incentive to slant coverage of a topic in a particular direction, and that external incentive can be anything from an outright financial inducement, to a fan wanting to airbrush mention of their team losing badly, to someone who disapproves of something trying to remove mention of it; and that whether a COI exists is not particularly affected either by whether cash has actually changed hands, or by the user rights of the editor. To the proposers of this amendment, "Conflict of interest" exists when an admin (specifically only an admin, not a vanilla editor) accepts a material reward of any kind in connection with anything done on Wikipedia ("admins are *not* allowed to accept payment for any services on Wikipedia" is the exact wording proposed, complete with asterisks), which would most certainly cover Jimmy Wales's adventures on stage and screen (unless you think that whenever he turns up on TV the producers have no interest in Wikipedia, but are seeking his experience as proprietor of a porn site guy-oriented website). ‑ iridescent 09:00, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

I do not envy Jimbo; I have no interest in having his life or being him, nor do I particularly mind him making money. Except that it is us that is making Jimbo someone who a company can profitably dub a "brand ambassador". Jimbo is known, I believe, to carp that he has not been compensated a la Zuckerberg. Possibly, but Zuckerberg at least has the good grace not to slam the door in the face of the opportunities of the people who made him wealthy. We do work that not all can do, that is the face of one of the top ten websites in the world that has gained a dominance that should keep it in place for the foreseeable future. And I'm out of pocket for the book I bought for my last article because I couldn't get it from a local library. What sort of a penny-ante operation does that?--Wehwalt (talk) 10:27, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that. The WMF's attempts simultaneously to ride the horses of the cult of professionalism and the cult of amateurism was just about credible when Wikipedia was smaller. Now it's a powerful and wealthy global brand with well over a hundred highly paid staff, attempts by a group of people who are extremely well paid for their own work to demand that other people working in exactly the same area be not only censured, but actively punished, if someone so much as pays for their lunch as a thank you,* is going to work about as well as it did in sport. I don't begrudge donating time to Wikipedia—nobody forces anyone to be here—but I do begrudge a bunch of people who make a living off Wikipedia, demanding the right to decide who is permitted join the ranks of those who profit from other people's work.
*No, this isn't hyperbole; "If you could afford to, I would expect you to disgorge yourself of the entire cost of the meal." is a direct quote from one of the proponents of this change when asked the "what if someone buys me lunch as a thank-you?" question.

Incidentally, does I do accept travel costs for speaking events by organizations that can afford them—a direct quote from the userpage of the admin who actually started this whole idea—constitute "accepting payment"? As NE Ent has pointed out, he already appears on the T-shirt list, and since the T-shirt in question costs $15 or £14 (interesting mark-up there, WMF, since the current exchange rate is $1.54=£1) that's certainly going to be well over the de minimis line being proposed.

(In researching the cost of those shirts, I have just discovered for the first time that The Wikipedia Store is a thing. Even the people modelling the shirts look embarrassed to be associated with them. It does fill one with confidence to know that the WMF is dealing with a reputable-sounding organization like "our fulfillment partner, SWAGBOT", though.) ‑ iridescent 17:08, 13 September 2015 (UTC)

wow, the wikipedia jacket comes with a free cat Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 01:13, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

I just looked at it. We sell Wikipedia pencils, Wikipedia notebooks. We do not sell Wikipedia tablet cases, or anything else that smacks of the 21st century. The irony.--Wehwalt (talk) 01:49, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

That did occur to me; there are so many little touches like "make the stickers the right size and shape for the reverse of commonly used phones" that could be done, but aren't; there is literally not a single thing for sale there that would look out of place in 1970. I get that they want to keep costs low (and have a sneaking suspicion that the "accessories" section is whatever tchotchke freebies were left behind on the Wikipedia stall at whatever was the last trade show Jimbo attended), but what kind of signal does it send out when (1) the most high-tech thing being sold by an organization which sells itself as being on the cutting edge of technology is a "plantable pencil" (is that even legal? AFAIK most countries take a very dim view of anyone importing seeds from overseas without a permit), and (2) that an organization which is forever promoting itself as the greatest repository of high quality images in history sells clothing which is so damn ugly—"You could look like one of these people" is surely not a sales pitch that is going to appeal to many of our readers.* (@Cas, you're the medic but it looks to me like that cat is either seriously obese, or has swallowed an ostrich egg.) ‑ iridescent 16:27, 14 September 2015 (UTC)
*No disrespect intended to the four people in the photo, whom I'm sure look perfectly normal the rest of the time and are just hapless WMF interns who've been press-ganged into trying to fake enthusiasm for the copy of How Wikipedia Works being held by the woman in the middle. (If How Wikipedia Works really meets WP:Notability (books) I'm a cabbage, incidentally.)

Ho ho - the $15 teeshirt is now £9.72. Never say the WMF don't listen to what you say. Johnbod (talk) 03:36, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

I suspect I accidentally looked at the Euro or Kroner pricing. I may have an overinflated opinion of myself, but I greatly doubt the WMF are going to change their pricing policy based on my say-so. ‑ iridescent 16:27, 14 September 2015 (UTC)

• I would also tack on a business editor's community service, requiring them to make meaningful contributions in other topic areas. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 10:41, 12 September 2015 (UTC)

Happy Adminship Anniversary

	Happy Adminship	from the Birthday Committee
	Wishing User:Iridescent/Archive 19 a very happy adminship anniversary on behalf of the Wikipedia Birthday Committee! -- Vatsan34 (talk) 04:43, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Eight years, how depressing. ‑ iridescent 18:50, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Help us improve wikimeets by filling in the UK Wikimeet survey!

Hello! I'm running a survey to identify the best way to notify Wikimedians about upcoming UK wikimeets (informal, in-person social meetings of Wikimedians), and to see if we can improve UK wikimeets to make them accessible and attractive to more editors and readers. All questions are optional, and it will take about 10 minutes to complete. Please fill it in at:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/JJMNVVD

Thanks! Mike Peel (talk) 17:51, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Replied, will leave this notification here in case anyone else wants to fill it in. ‑ iridescent 18:49, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank you! Mike Peel (talk) 18:50, 20 September 2015 (UTC)

Ref desks, main space

Hi, I saw you pinged me at ANI, but I thought I should place this comment here:

That's a cool tool at WMF labs, thanks I was not aware of it. But let me be very clear - edits to mainspace mean nothing about the value of a user to the ref desks. Let me use myself as an example.

1. I'm very active on the ref desks
2. I provide more refs in total and more per response than most users
3. I give more scholarly refs per week than anyone I can think of
4. I have tons of thanks in threads and on talk pages
5. I am almost always AGF and CIVIL
6. I rarely run my mouth about things that I don't know. When I do, I clearly flag it, and I welcome sourced correction

Essentially, I do it right, and I make the ref desk a better place. And yet I almost never edit mainspace [1], but that doesn't mean I'm not an excellent ref desk respondent. Do you think I'm a bad influence on the ref desk? Do you think I should be topic banned? I hope not. So please don't imply that not editing mainspace much makes someone a poor ref desk respondent :) SemanticMantis (talk) 16:14, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Apples and oranges. Your edits are answers to people's questions; his edits are semicoherent ravings like this. I don't think anyone except SMW himself is claiming that his refdesk edits aren't at best extreme stupidity, and at worst intentional trolling, so the issue at hand is whether there's anything worthwhile in his history that makes it worth the effort of topic banning him (which means monitoring and enforcement) rather than just indeffing him and sending him off to Wikipedia Review to play with the other cranks. ‑ iridescent 16:56, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

Fair enough. I guess I misinterpreted your original comment a bit, thanks for clarifying. SemanticMantis (talk) 18:32, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

What on earth are you talking about

I seriously have no idea what you are talking about. --S Philbrick(Talk) 22:32, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

I guess I was supposed to notice that the but owner was blocked. I didn't.

I saw an edit which didn't make sense to me. I spent more time than it deserved trying to track down what the edit was intended to accomplish. Then I realize the edit remove some important information and that irritated me. I was pretty unhappy but I thought I'd left a reasonably worded request to explain the edit. Yes I missed that the editor was blocked. Your lack of AGF is showing. To the best of my knowledge I've never interacted with this editor before so I wasn't trying to get in a "kick". I simply wanted to know why someone was running a bot that was making inappropriate edits. It is highly likely that it wasn't an intentional error, but I wanted to let the bot owner know that they were potentially creating problems. Have we interacted in a negative way before? If so, I don't recall it, so I don't understand your ABF attitude.--S Philbrick(Talk) 22:46, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

You failed to notice the blanked talkpage, failed to notice the  WARNING: This page has been protected so that only users with administrative rights can make edits. Admins are advised to check the current version of the protection policy before making an edit , failed to notice the bright red edit window that appears when you try to edit an full-protected page, and edited through full-protection to berate a retired and indefblocked editor about a six-week old edit which had no effect other than the specific purpose for which the bot was approved at BRFA—and where the edit summary for the edit in question even linked to the relevant BRFA so anyone with any queries would know where to find it (and without even bothering to tell him what the edit in question was, presumably assuming that in the event he did come back and read his talkpage he'd guess what you were talking about)? You're right, my AGF is not high. I have a low opinion of the editor in question and feel Wikipedia is better off without his constant sniping and arguing, but that doesn't mean I feel policy—let alone basic courtesy—no longer applies to him just because he's blocked. ‑ iridescent 23:03, 21 September 2015 (UTC)

I was reviewing my watchlist which by definition are recent edits. I realize now it was an older edit – I haven't reconstructed how I got from my watchlist to that page but my mindset was recent edits. It was the most recent edit on that article, so it didn't jump out at me that it was not a recent edit. The edit itself was very hard to parse, in theory that's the whole point of a death is to let you know what's changed but so many things are moved around I couldn't figure it out easily and didn't want to take the time to lay them the down side by side and figure out what was going on. It looked a lot like an edit from an editor interested in bulking up edit counts – and edit that looks like there's a lot of activity but nothing much actually happens. The edit message "split team/years in infobox..." Wasn't very informative. I wanted to know what was going on. So I decided to ask.

The talk page was blank but that simply reminded me of an interaction with a editor I had a few days before where I left copyright notices on their talk page and they blanked them out. Acceptable but annoying. It seemed like I had run into yet another editor who seem to think that a blank talk page was a positive. I saw some red but didn't read the notice – I knew I was trying to contact the editor associated with the bot and in the past, but operators often have prominent notices on the bot page to make sure you contact the editor rather than the bot. I just assumed it was something along that line.

I disagree that I was berating the editor. I was pointing out that they made an edit that they may not have intended and wanted to alert them to this, as well is wanted to know what the edit was intended to achieve. I have no opinion of the editor – to my knowledge I've never interacted with him or her before. I was following policy – when you don't know something ask.

Yes I miss that it was protected. That was my bad. A reversion, along with a polite note did you miss that you are editing a protected page, and I'd be apologizing to you for missing it. Instead I'm in a pisspoor mood because I got a lot of crap to do and now I've got several hundred more edits to review because they may be problematic and I'm being dumped on for trying to look into a possible problem. Have a nice day.--S Philbrick(Talk) 01:11, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) You missed a whole bunch of very frustrating context, and that sounds like a whole string of unnecessarily, well, ABF suspicions. But anyway, if I can be useful for once, the point of the edit was to split up pseudo-lists in infoboxes in order to fix markup that is not accessible to screen-readers. It looks like in this case the parameter names were corrected (and others reordered) but there were no pseudo-lists in the teams or years parameters to fix. (Also looks like they didn't get to the tournaments and awards, which have the same issue.) I imagine the removal of hidden comments was unintentional. Opabinia regalis (talk) 03:33, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks

Good job on Dblack wiki Pepdonald (talk) 05:53, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

You're very welcome, although I'll warn you that its tone is quite promotional and it probably needs to be cleaned up. D-Black if any talk page watcher fancies having a go. ‑ iridescent 21:20, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 12, 2015

A summary of yet another Featured Article you nominated at WP:FAC will appear on the Main Page soon. It mostly follows the lead section; how does it look? - Dank (push to talk) 15:57, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

@Dank, I've made one minor change to the wording, changing "Polish-born" to "Polish"—to me, "Polish-born" implies that he was a Polish citizen, but Poland in this period wasn't a country but an ethnic group spread across an ever-changing mix of nations.

Yes, and that was the one edit that wasn't mine :) - Dank (push to talk) 20:26, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Needless, to say, this one is a dead cert to be vandalised to hell and back if it goes on the main page, as well as probably attracting assorted complaints that I've made the story up. (When its sister article Tarrare was at DYK, it prompted this.) I'm unlikely to be available on the day, so would appreciate it if any talk page watchers could watchlist this (and its sister articles Tarrare and Daniel Lambert) and admin TPWs be prepared to semiprotect it. Given the potential offensiveness of the topic (the story is well-documented, including by a then-obscure journalist called Charles Dickens, and the article sticks scrupulously to the sources, but some readers are certain to assume it's meant as an anti-Polish propaganda piece, while others will likely see it as an attempt to belittle those with eating disorders), also pinging the long-suffering User:Mdennis (WMF) for info, as she'll presumably be the one who has to deal with the complaints. ‑ iridescent 20:15, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Hey, your work made it into Dinosaur Comics, you're famous! I'll post this request at ERRORS the day before, we'll have lots of help if needed. - Dank (push to talk) 20:30, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, that article completed the double of being pilloried by Dinosaur Comics and being plagiarised very closely paraphrased by Stephen Fry. I give it 3 minutes 45 seconds between going on the main page and appearing at TIL. Bizarrely, Charles Domery is a FA on a respectable number of different language Wikipedias, despite being about the niche-est topic imaginable. ‑ iridescent 21:46, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Given that a great proportion of vandalism is probably perpetrated by bored schoolchildren, has anyone considered adopting a practice of running the more "interesting" mainpage FAs on weekends? Newyorkbrad (talk) 21:58, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi NYB. I'm just a copyeditor. Pinging Chris. - Dank (push to talk) 22:21, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

• My experience has been that the community is generally good at keeping the worst of the vandalism away. The last article we were concerned would have a rough time on the MP, JC's Girls, ended up having a fairly normal TFA day. Is this a sign that Wikipedia's changed since 2010 (when Tarrare ran in DYK)? Quite probably. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 23:09, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

• It's hard to predict vandalism patterns, as it depends to a large extent on pageviews which in turn depend on what other websites happen to pick up on. Sometimes things which look like pure vandal-bait go through untouched, while things that one would assume are routine happen to draw the ire of Reddit or 4chan. With all due respect to Ealdgyth, unless one is already interested in 1950s horse racing Miss Meyers makes Wood Siding railway station look thrilling, but she came under the kind of dusk-to-dawn IP attack on would expect from running a pop star or unpopular politician, while Aylesbury duck, which I was expecting to attract quite a bit of both vandalism and good-faith errors, sailed through virtually untouched.

  I think the vandalism problem is certainly less bad than it was in my day, both because the novelty of "anyone can edit" has worn off, and because IPs being locked out of templates has made many of the types of vandalism Cluebot couldn't handle a lot more difficult. Plus, the "nothing on the main page can ever be protected" mentality seems a lot less prevalent than it was.

  @NYB, I know that on at least one occasion Bencherlite intentionally scheduled an article (Fuck) for when the schools were closed, although that was less a matter of avoiding vandalism and more of trying to prevent a repeat of the Virgin Killer incident, given how hair-trigger the site-blocking software used by schools is and how much hay certain people would have made from "Wikipedia banned from use in schools owing to obscenity". ‑ iridescent 09:36, 26 September 2015 (UTC)

Thank You

For this. I had just spent over an hour reading her talk page, and looking through contribs. looking for that. Sad; especially to see an admin. perpetuating that. Thank you for asking outright where it should be asked. With respect, — Ched :  ?  19:07, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

It confused me when I saw it, as it just didn't sound like the kind of thing she'd say—I've certainly seen her flare out and snap at people, but in my experience she always insults people's abilities ("you're an idiot") rather than just being generically rude. This RFA appears to have reached the point in which those who want it to fail are throwing whatever mud they can find, in the hope something sticks. It certainly hasn't escaped my notice that, in the last RFA in which the opposers were accused of using that tactic, the 'crats used a supervote to disregard (sorry, "seriously downgrade") the oppose section and claim that despite the numbers the RFA had passed. ‑ iridescent 19:19, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

I don't think that's very likely in this case. I was rather surprised to see how many times I was mentioned in her RfA though. Where is my cult when I need them? Eric Corbett 19:44, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

I feel like I am mentioned even more, if not by name then as "friend", "mate" etc. Wish I had not touched Joseph. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:25, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

(ec) The same myth appears in the first line of oppose #1, much more visible than #80. How about questioning there? With a "diff" (diffs are holy, they prove everything) which proves nothing. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:25, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I agree with both points. In fact I had, moments before your post, emailed Montanabw asking for the diff. (regardless of the RfA merits, I've never known her to be dishonest.) As to your second observation, I also had questions. (Having not been particularly active at that point, my thoughts were posted in the neutral section). — Ched :  ?  19:29, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

@Gerda, Oppose #1 is misleading but technically accurate (it doesn't say she used the term itself, but that she expressed agreement). Plus, #1 includes other grounds for opposing, with which I don't necessarily agree but which at least sets out an argument why he thinks MBW shouldn't be an admin. (There is a certain "the biter bit" irony, in light of incidents with which I know the two of you are familiar, about MBW being harassed by a disruptive "new account" about whom the admins/arbs are unable to take any action owing to WP:AGF.) @Ched, the only way this one is ever going to pass is if the support percentage is so high nobody can dispute it; the 'crats are human too, and the lack of recent turnover among their number means that whoever closes this will be someone with a memory long enough to remember WP:QAI's harassment campaign (and no, that's not too strong a term) against Raul654. ‑ iridescent 19:38, 22 September 2015 (UTC)

Raul645, I thought he left a happy man, "I have better things to do with my time ..." (19 August), just married, fond of cats. If there was a campaign, I didn't notice. I took a look at his last archive, searching for my name: all amicable talk. I was member #5. - Actually, I came to the same conclusion, not leaving, but having also better things to do with my time. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:13, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

Yes, at the least most, and perhaps all of the campaign (can't remember) was after he'd ceased to edit anything to do with FAs, and was very largely prompted by that fact. Johnbod (talk) 15:16, 25 September 2015 (UTC)

I remember article collaboration on Horst von der Goltz, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:38, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

By the way - I think I do want to respond to this; however, I may choose email over on-wiki for obvious reasons. — Ched :  ?  01:11, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

71th

Not really an error because it didn't make things worse, but this edit ideally would have been caught to change "71th" to "71st". Cheers, Jenks24 (talk) 13:36, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

(TPS) A bot or script that is set up to fix one particular typo, by definition, won't catch anything else.... Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:34, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

All AWB edits should be manually reviewed before hitting save page. Now that sounds kind of critical and it's not what I was going for here. The intention of my message was really to say "you missed this, something that can happen to anyone, especially when doing fast-paced semi-automatic edits, and I thought you'd like to know so you can keep an eye out for it in the future". Jenks24 (talk) 14:47, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

What NYB said—regex scripts can only go so far, and the GIGO principle applies. Possibly with General fixes enabled it would catch these, but I intentionally keep genfixes turned off when running MOS-standardisation scripts as it triggers too many false positives and annoying pointless "fixes". I always check the preview to ensure it's not correcting an intentional misspelling, quotation, proper name etc, and to ensure I'm not unintentionally correcting the formatting of a piece of vandalism, but for a run like this—which is specifically about making the hyphenation MOS compliant and any other changes are just a by-product—I'm not looking closely at the context. ‑ iridescent 22:48, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Yemen-Iran

Consider the source: ... an unsourced report from state-owned Aden television. Sca (talk) 21:44, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

"State owned" is certainly not a synonym for "accurate"—by that logic, E4 would be a reliable news source. That something is state-owned says nothing about its quality—try watching Italian TV some time. ‑ iridescent 21:53, 2 October 2015 (UTC)

Understand, my point was that "state-owned" makes a medium prima facie suspect. Sca (talk) 14:44, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Not necessarily—I think that may be a product of your being in the US, where state-run media is minimal. In most countries, much if not most of the media is state-owned; in the UK for instance, which is hardly a hotbed of corporatism, of the 14 TV channels with an audience share above 1% (see right) seven and a half are state-owned including three of the top four (the "half" is Dave, which is 50% state-owned and 50% private). "State owned" doesn't mean "state controlled"; all it reflects is that in most countries, there's a general feeling that private control potentially compromises editorial independence. ‑ iridescent 16:01, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

Understood. Sca (talk) 16:27, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

smiles

I saw your conversation on Eric's page, and thought you might enjoy this. — Ched :  ?  19:11, 3 October 2015 (UTC)

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that that was the watermelon guy. ‑ iridescent 04:07, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

The motivation/interest (or lack thereof) of editors

Enough. The original thread is thataway, in the unlikely event that anyone other than the OP believes this is a discussion that warrants continuing.

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

While I appreciate the sentiment of your comment, there was no need to misrepresent what I'd said for added effect - at no point did I suggest what I was asking was going to be easy, or should be the product of someone just making up a new article. I've left a more detailed comment at the project page. Kristian Jenn (talk) 14:55, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

(talk page stalker) For the benefit of Iridescent's other TPSs, that's Wikipedia talk:WikiProject UK Railways#Privatisation of British Rail. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:02, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Your exact words were My best suggestion is to not even start with what's in the current article, it's that bad - just write a new one from scratch, with a clear structure in mind, and only when that's done, see if there's anything in the current article that warrants keeping. I really don't want to check back in a year's time and see this frankly horrific article in largely the same state., in the context of explaining that while you personally weren't going to do any work on it yourself, you insisted that someone else do a complete rewrite of an 7500-word article on a politically sensitive current event, and without even bothering to say what you thought was wrong with the existing article or where you expect the person doing said rewrite to find sources. Writing Wikipedia articles isn't just a case of Googling the topic and cut-&-pasting what you find, and this is a topic on which no significant book has been published (other than Wolmar, but as a high-ranking Labour activist he can't be considered NPOV on the topic).

Just writing the introductory background section alone would mean trawling through and summarising 15 years worth of specialist magazines from 1979–94, since one doesn't just need to explain why Major pulled the trigger but also why Thatcher didn't; one would also need to write something about Sealink, Seaspeed and Eurotunnel which would need a completely different set of specialist knowledge. Then, of course, one would at least have to mention the ancillary disposals, ranging from BREL to Travellers Fare to Red Star.

That would be the first section; one would then need to do the same level of research with regard to the actual process in the 1990s, with the additional issue of having to wade through the British Newspaper Archive to summarise contemporary commentary; after that, one would then have to summarise 20 years worth both of specialist financial reporting and of political reports on internal debates within three separate political parties (four if you include the SNP), regarding refranchising, the renationalisation of Railtrack, the chain of decisions that led Blair and Brown to keep the railways in private hands despite ideological opposition, and the complex and troubled relationships between DfT on the one hand and the Mayor of London, the Scottish Government, and the big northern Passenger Transport Executives on the other. (This would, inter alia, mean trying to summarise Brian Souter's impact on transport policy, and good luck finding neutral sources for that.)

After that, one would be left with writing a legacy section; this would mean not only trying to create a coherent and unbiased explanation of both the pro and anti views, for a topic on which there has been much verbiage spouted by politicians but very little academic research, but also having to research the impact on other rail privatisations and restructurings, which in turn would mean researching specialist financial and industrial journals, many in foreign languages.

Starting from a WP:TNT tabula rasa as you propose, I'd estimate that just writing a minimal summary of the topic would take an specialist editor who already had a good knowledge of both the industry and the politics involved at least a month. To get a topic like this up to GA/FA level, I'd conservatively estimate six months to a year, and I'm not convinced it would even be possible as it's a topic for which unbiased sources are difficult to find (as with many topics of the Thatcher–Major era, people writing about it tend either to be passionate supporters, or fanatical opponents).

TLDR summary: if anything, my reply to you was overly polite. If you seriously think a single purpose account turning up out of the blue, insulting the work of other people (I believe you called the authors of the existing article "borderline criminal") and demanding it be rewritten without even bothering to make any suggestions as to what you think should be changed, is appropriate behaviour, then Wikipedia is probably not the place for you.

Just to put this in perspective, this discussion is about an article whose average readership is roughly half that of the biography of Barack Obama's dog. ‑ iridescent 15:55, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

Well, I'll keep this brief as I think you're just intentionally trying to piss me off. I'll say it again, because you're apparently not listening - I didn't say it wouldn't be hard, and I didn't say it wouldn't take time. Selectively quoting me won't change that basic fact. I also didn't call anyone a criminal, WTF is that nonsense? I said the state the article is in is borderline criminal, and I don't really think I need to expand on that given you've illustrated pretty well above what a good article on this topic would contain. I have no idea why you think no significant books or research have been published on this topic, I find that an amazing claim on the face of it. Unbelievable even. I will put your assumption that I would be happy for people to just dump whatever they can find in Google into the article down to the fact you obviously think I'm some kind of moron. The fact is, I'm really not stupid (I've got the Masters degree and £40k salary to prove it). As for bias, you just have to be sure to clearly identify what's an undisputed fact, what's a disputed fact, and what's just opinion. It's not exactly rocket science. As an aside, arguing that the relative popularity of Obama's dog means this topic is unimportant, has to be the stupidest thing I've read in a long time. Kristian Jenn (talk) 17:22, 4 October 2015 (UTC)

So where are these supposed significant books and research? You seem very good at claiming something is do-able, and not so good at suggesting how to do it; other than Wolmar's Broken Rails and On the Wrong Line (which he openly admits were written with an agenda in mind), the only potential books I can think of are All Change and The Privatisation of British Rail which are 15 and 18 years out of date respectively, Railpolitik, British Rail: The Nation's Railway and Work Identity at the End of the Line, all three of which are are expressly written from a hardline anti viewpoint, a few dry-as-dust papers from think tanks, and the Ian Allan "Story" trilogy which does meet WP:RS, but all three of which are written by ex-BR officials and have NPOV issues of their own. (And no, neutrality does not mean you just have to be sure to clearly identify what's an undisputed fact, what's a disputed fact, and what's just opinion, it means you have to fairly and proportionately represent the different views on the topic, which on a topic like transit privatisation is easier said than done since most people writing about it are either strongly in favour or strongly opposed.)

To reiterate, this is a volunteer project and wandering around insulting people and issuing demands is not going to encourage people to want to help you; among Wikipedia's currently-active editors there are probably ten who understand both the political and the engineering/intrastructure management aspects of the issue, and the more arcane aspects of wiki editing, well enough to rewrite Privatisation of British Rail from scratch, and by my count in your 36-edit Wikipedia career you've so far alienated three of them with a fourth pointedly ignoring you. You could try asking at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains to see if anyone is willing to help you (WP:UKRAIL is fairly moribund), but unless you're actually able to explain what you think the problem is, how you think it should be addressed, why you feel it's important somebody devote this level of effort to such a low-traffic page, and why if it's so important you're not doing it yourself—none of which you've thus far done—you're unlikely to get a very polite reply. ‑ iridescent 08:52, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

---

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

143.231.249.141

Just for your information, but with regard to your deletion of an edit made by Knowledgebattle, there was a past discussion regarding that edit, if it helps: User talk:Knowledgebattle#Warning at User talk:143.231.249.141#October 2015. Dustin (talk) 16:35, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks—I'll keep an eye on him. It looks like most of his contributions are legitimate—I think he's just forgotten that he's supposed to be on an academic project and not Twitter. ‑ iridescent 16:42, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

TFA

Thank you for Charles Domery from your "eating disorders of the French Revolutionary Wars" mini-series, precious again. - Did you see this, still dealing with the rigid rulez around TFAR we once had (4 any-date noms max, out after 7 days, replace noms of others according to a point system ...) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:07, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

You're very welcome—I note that, as predicted, the people claiming I've made it up have already started to appear.

I actually agree with the delegates at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Perovskia atriplicifolia; there have been too many plant articles recently (with Cucurbita also likely to run), and I don't see what's to be gained by leaving the nomination open indefinitely until the flood of plant articles slows down. All that leaving it open will accomplish is to put off other people visiting the page, who will see a long argument/discussion and think "this looks complicated and unpleasant, I don't want to get involved in this", making FAC/TFAR even more of a feedback loop of insiders commenting on each others' work than it already is. See WP:In the news/Candidates if you want to see where this particular slippery slope of interminable arguments between a few insiders leads if the discussions aren't closed promptly. ‑ iridescent 08:06, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

I was the first to point out there that we will hopefully have three plants in October, which is enough. Thanks for the pumpkin nom for Halloween! Today is the anniversary of my PumpkinSky Prize no. 1000, DYK? - I don't see why the flower nom should be closed, it shows nicely and openly what arguments we cause by following rigid rulez. We have four slots for any day, and had flexibly six at a time which I trust delegates can still handle. We don't need any fixed time for how long a nom may be open, - it could be closed once a delegate has decided to run it, even before setting a date. We don't need a point system which gives editors the right to kick out another nom, - we now talk about running an Australian nom the day before or a California one the day after. More democratic and more flexible: I like that. - Different topic: brainstorming for an image for a pumpkin-coloured monster with steam out the ears, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:37, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Honestly, I entirely see Crisco1492's point here. When you look at User:Brianboulton/TFA notepad, which lists everything that's not yet run sorted by category, it becomes very obvious that some categories are about to run out, and running Perovskia atriplicifolia would take "Flowers and plants" down to zero. If they exhaust too many of these categories too quickly, and there isn't a constant flow of new FAs in these categories to replenish them, then in a few months the list will become even more unbalanced and they'll have to run an almost non-stop stream of videogames, Australian pilots and hurricanes to restore balance, which will lead to even more complaints further down the line. ‑ iridescent 09:44, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

Back to my first line: I also agreed, - I suggested June 2016 for the flower. And now Cucurbita is scheduled, the third plant. - I don't need to go to the notepad, - thanks to Br'er I see in the normal WP:FA what appeared and what not, - copy from User:Gerda Arendt/common.css if you want to do the same. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:11, 12 October 2015 (UTC)

A cup of tea for you!

With this ever dramatic world including WikiDrama, here's a cup of tea to alleviate your day! This e-tea's remains have been e-composted SwisterTwister talk 07:17, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks—having just deleted about 20 pages on Scottish National Party councillors, I expect the drama level to ratchet up shortly. It's long been Wikipedia policy that we don't cover individual local councillors unless there's some additional reason to make them worthy of inclusion, but I'm sure someone will pop up soon enough to explain at great length why I'm a part of the evil Unionist plot. ‑ iridescent 07:44, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

Wait, you're not part of the evil Unionist plot? /me goes off to find out what a Unionist is. Risker (talk) 02:58, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

"Unionist"="anyone who's not 100% supportive of Scottish/Welsh/Northern Irish independence", in the language of devolution, although paradoxically a lot of the most vocal unionists are also the noisiest independence-from-Europe agitators. Surely Canadians of all people should be familiar with the language of "exhausting three-year-long independence referenda" and "interminable discussions about the nature of the relationship with the bigger neighbour to the south"… ‑ iridescent 06:59, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

File source problem with File:Manchester Art Gallery - Gallery 3 Etty wall.jpg

Thank you for uploading File:Manchester Art Gallery - Gallery 3 Etty wall.jpg. I noticed that the file's description page currently doesn't specify who created the content, so the copyright status is unclear. If you did not create this file yourself, you will need to specify the owner of the copyright. If you obtained it from a website, please add a link to the page from which it was taken, together with a brief restatement of the website's terms of use of its content. If the original copyright holder is a party unaffiliated with the website, that author should also be credited. Please add this information by editing the image description page.

If the necessary information is not added within the next days, the image will be deleted. If the file is already gone, you can still make a request for undeletion and ask for a chance to fix the problem.

Please refer to the image use policy to learn what images you can or cannot upload on Wikipedia. Please also check any other files you have uploaded to make sure they are correctly tagged. Here is a list of your uploads. If you have any questions or are in need of assistance please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 17:36, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

And Kirill has a late competitor in the race for the coveted 2015 "Spirit of Betacommand" award for clod-hoppingly literal application of Teh Rulez without bothering to look at the context. Who exactly do you think William Etty's The Sirens and Ulysses is likely to be by? Or are you worrying that because I haven't specifically named myself as the photographer, the rightful owner of the copyright to an intentionally-unfocused mobile phone snapshot is likely to turn up demanding the enforcement of their image rights? As already stated on the file description, which I take it you haven't actually bothered to read, all but one of the works visible is long out of copyright, and the sole exception is by Banksy who doesn't enforce copyright (and said image is a hugely-reproduced image which already graces a million T-shirts and posters), and at a resolution this low is of zero commercial value to anyone even should the world's most famous anonymous recluse decide to break their cover to take the WMF to court. ‑ iridescent 18:32, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Just add "own photo" to "author". No point arguing with computers. Johnbod (talk) 02:22, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Did you take the photo? If so just label it as own work... Sfan00 IMG (talk) 22:05, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Don't remind me of Kirill, I am on vacation. I wonder if he would have blocked me for a month without a warning if I proclaimed that I performed half of my featured content with men, without prejudice of gender. I'll make a template about blocks without warning, in case you ever need it, I hope not.--Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:01, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

@Johnbod, I won't bother - this is only used in a now-closed discussion to give an idea of its scale compared to typical paintings. If there's one thing Wikipedia has taught me, it's that image discussions never go well. Regarding No point arguing with computers, AGF says that Sfan00 IMG is making all these posts manually and is just a very fast typist, since we all know what happened last time someone used an unauthorised bot to tag images for deletion.

@Gerda, no, but he'd do it if you make two further replies in this particular thread, since infobox it's now technically covered by sanctions. I do understand the logic behind letter-of-the-law application - as I said elsewhere, if Eric hadn't been blocked there would have been legitimate complaints about favouritism - but even the harshest judge ought to know when to apply common sense regarding marginal infractions. My issue with Kirill in this case isn't so much the actual block, but his "I had to do it because I'm the only one brave enough" posturing, along with the apparent assumption that his decisions are so perfect they don't need to be discussed, and the implication that every admin who decided to take no action did so out of fear rather than out of a feeling it would be a gross overreaction to a minor comment. ‑ iridescent 18:39, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Denbies

Regarding my intentions for Denbies: I added it to the list of articles I would like to see on the Main page some day on 27 June. Of the few I have there for any date, two are animals which we had saw a lot recently. We run articles of retired editors, and of editors who don't care about Main page exposure: where's your problem? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:07, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Pinging User:Eric Corbett and User:Sagaciousphil, as this is in relation to a discussion about them.

See my comments there; it's the act of running that would be vindictiveness, not the act of nomination. TFA is probably the most stressful experience Wikipedia has to offer with the arguable exceptions of arbitration and RFA, and inflicting it on someone who hasn't volunteered for it and who's not in a position even to answer questions on the talkpage, let alone try to maintain the articles against trolls and POV-pushers on the day, is just plain nasty. (Brianboulton knows what a soul-destroying experience being the author of a potentially contentious TFA is, and I think the likelihood of him running this is zero.) I'm sure you're well aware of my opinion of QAI, which in my opinion has drifted from whatever good intentions it once had and is now little more than an on-wiki coordinating platform for harassment of editors who don't share your views, and I find your habit of nominating articles with which you've had no previous involvement at WP:TFAR fairly objectionable - anyone who knows Wikipedia well enough to take an article through FAC is going to know where to go if they want something to go on the main page. To many (probably most) editors, TFA isn't a reward, it's a stressful nuisance which is an occupational hazard that comes if you write something of decent quality.

As I've said fairly often, if I were in charge I'd abolish TFA altogether; it's a huge time sink with no obvious benefit (virtually every other website on the planet gets by perfectly well without any equivalent). If we must have some kind of showcase on the main page, make it "interesting facts" rather than a single TFA, which would be more likely to attract readers to articles, do a better job at showcasing Wikipedia's diversity of coverage, and finally end the "mushroom/hurricane/battleship/white male biography of the day" problem. ‑ iridescent 22:42, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Short on vacation): TFA day seems overrated, I watch the TFA every day I am available (not today and the rest of the week), yes, some vandalism, but nothing extrem recently. Did you know whenthe most horrible vandalism,the addition of an infobox on TFA day occured the last time? More than three years ago). - Selection: I go by topic, only afterwards look at who wrote it. I like to promote Amazing Grace in our sea of warfare. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:11, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

No, not three years ago, Gerda. I don't know if it was the most recent but this was certainly not more than three years ago. SagaciousPhil - Chat 09:24, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I didn't add "by a QAI member", - we are the ones who got restricted and told to "better conduct themselves", which we try to do ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:35, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

TFA is definitely overrated. I know that for Sinatra is would have been a massive amount of effort from me and reviewers all for something which the vast majority of readers don't even click anyway. You're more likely to get hassle with it than praise on TFA day and the article suddenly attracts all sorts of idiots. It is a nice feeling for some editors seeing it on the front page of such a big website though and Gerda at least appreciates the editors who do it by precious.♦ Dr. Blofeld 15:43, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Mastering Jenkins Deleted

This page was created with care so as not to advertise. There are HUNDREDS of pages in wikipedia dedicated to published works. This book's page was no different than say the wikipedia page on Perls cookbook. Please describe why this page was deleted and other programming book pages were not.

Ex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mastering_Perl — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jmcallister80 (talk • contribs)

Wikipedia isn't a webhost or promotional site, and we only cover material which has been the subject of significant coverage in multiple, independent, non-trivial, reliable sources. I agree that Mastering Perl doesn't currently meet this either, but it's a book published by a major company and written by a noteworthy author, whereas Mastering Jenkins is a self-published book published by a PoD outfit in the West Midlands. Given that you've re-created it, you need to make a very good case at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mastering Jenkins as to why this isn't spam. (You should probably read this page as well; while using the site for self-promotion is not specifically forbidden altogether, Wikipedia tends to have a very dim view of people who try to sneak advertorial in.) Regarding "This page was created with care so as not to advertise", why is there no mention of any negative commentary on it? No book has ever been published that was universally liked by reviewers. (If the reason is that it hasn't received any reviews, you've answered your own question as to why it's not an appropriate topic for a Wikipedia article, as Wikipedia only includes information which has already been published elsewhere.) ‑ iridescent 17:39, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Thank you

Dear Iridescent,

Thanks for your comment at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Wikicology, I appreciate your contributions. Wikic¤l¤gy^{t@lk to M£} 20:04, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

No problem, and hope it goes better next time. ‑ iridescent 20:06, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

"Marks of Cain"

Apologies

I don't know if it's too soon, but I just wanted to tell you how sorry I am about yesterday. --Rubbish computer (Trick: or treat?) 00:52, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

CDN77

Hi! A wiki page about our company (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CDN77.com) has been rejected recently - I would like to know what is the main reason of the rejection, along with what improvements could we make to make the page more "significant". It's just that we have been in the market for more than 4 years now, we are mentioned regularly times by some of the CDN authorities and I do not think that there was much of a difference between our WIki page and Wiki's of our competitors (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CacheFly)...hence I do not know what should we do differently. Along with that, could you retrieve the deleted page so we do not have to start from scratch? Thanks! Appreciate your work! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cdn77 (talk • contribs) 10:22, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

User:Cdn77, I've restored the page to Draft:CDN77, to allow you to work on it—please don't move it back to Wikipedia article space without addressing the problems, or it will be deleted again. As you probably know, the page CDN77 has been locked against recreation owing to persistent spam problems (which is presumably why you had to create this latest incarnation at CDN77.com). Because of this, you won't be able to move the draft into article-space yourself; once you've completed it and feel it provides a neutral summary of the subject and demonstrates why it's considered significant, you'll need to go to this page and follow the instructions to get it moved to the CDN77 title.

The article needs to indicate why independent non-trivial reliable sources (in this case, most likely to be trade magazines) consider CDN77 significant; Wikipedia isn't an advertising portal or a trade directory, and we only include information which has already been published in reliable sources (by Wikipedia's definition of the term). It may well be a viable topic for a stand-alone Wikipedia article, but it needs to demonstrate why people not connected to the subject consider it important. Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) has more detailed explanations of what information you'll need to include to have it be kept, if it is genuinely worthy of keeping.

Assuming (given your username) that you work for the company, you should probably also read Wikipedia:Conflict of interest closely; while it's not forbidden to write about your employer on Wikipedia, it's strongly discouraged as it's very hard to remain neutral. (Also, if you do succeed in writing a neutral and balanced article it has the potential to get you in trouble with your employer, since it likely means you'll be publicising negative commentary about the company.) In addition, if you're receiving payment for writing this article, then the Wikimedia Foundation's terms of use require you to disclose your employer, client, and affiliation with respect to any contribution for which you receive, or expect to receive, compensation. If you have any queries specifically about the conflict of interest policy and how to work within it, ask at Wikipedia:Conflict of interest/Noticeboard; if you find that, or anything else, too confusing (Wikipedia policy pages are sometimes not easy to understand for those not versed in Wikipedia jargon), then and someone will come to your talkpage and talk you through the problem. ‑ iridescent 12:05, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your answer, however there is one thing I need to clarify - "As you probably know, the page CDN77 has been locked against recreation owing to persistent spam problems", what exactly does it mean - what spam problems do you have in mind?  ‑ Cdn77 14:28, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

If you click the red CDN77 link, you'll see the issue; this article has been repeatedly recreated in an unambiguously advertorial form (sample quote: "Our 39+ data centers across the globe secure extensive coverage, which translates to rock-hard stability and stunning speeds."). Because of that, the title has been locked so you won't be able to move the draft page direct to this name when it's ready, but will need to go through the complicated requested move process linked above. ‑ iridescent 13:38, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Allegra Versace

Just wanted to invite you to take a look at this weeks TAFI article Allegra Versace. Regards.--BabbaQ (talk) 18:17, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

I can honestly say I've never heard of her, and to be frank this looks to me like an AFD candidate as she appears famous only for having a famous uncle. (Has anyone ever actually used the word "socialite" other than Wikipedia and the occasional Channel 4 press release since the 1930s?)

I know Cas will pop up shortly to disagree, but I don't really support the premise of TAFI; the point of Wikipedia is surely encouraging people to work within their areas of expertise, not to get a whole bunch of people to write on a topic with which they're not familiar. (How are participants even supposed to have access to the sources? Google Books has an major—and acknowledged—systemic bias in terms of what's included, and while there are cases where websites are superior to print sources they're few and far between. When people try to write Wikipedia articles based on Google searches on a topic with which they're not already familiar enough to judge the validity and weight of sources, it rarely ends well, and leaves those who are familiar with the topic with a large and time-consuming mess to clear up.) ‑ iridescent 18:34, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

SRK at TFA

During the TFA request for Shah Rukh Khan, you mentioned that it had potential to break the most-viewed TFA record. Where are TFA view statistics kept? He is at TFA right now, and I would like to be a able to follow up this later. BollyJeff | talk 01:05, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Today's featured article/Most viewed—the all-time TFA record is 768,586 for Franz Kafka, which had the "perfect storm" of a Google Doodle pointing towards the Wikipedia article, combined with his centenary generating interest. It relies on stats.grok.se, which is sometimes wildly inaccurate—I can see from the weekly count that Charles Domery got over 200,000 pageviews on the day, but stats.grok.se shows it getting only 27628 views. (User:West.andrew.g might be able to explain why the counts are sometimes so wildly different; I'd be inclined to trust his count over stats.grok.se if the two disagree, although he doesn't give daily totals.) ‑ iridescent 09:38, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Sorry for correcting, but Kafka was not shown on his centenary, it was 130 years after he was born, - I remember removing the google doodle news from the article as trivia ;) - Did you notice that even a Bach cantata can almost reach the stats, appearing on Halloween with monster (in the translation of the text, in German "Ungeheuer", the same word Kafka used in The Metamorphosis) and my heart swims in blood (the title), --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:52, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't believe the stats.grok.se aggregation includes mobile viewership, which is a significant portion of all traffic. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 17:08, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Sure, but it shouldn't be that different—in the case of Charles Domery, for instance, the counts are literally apart by an order of magnitude (219,897 hits in a week on your count, 48,974 in the same month on stats.grok.se). Mobile views aren't going to have that kind of impact. ‑ iridescent 00:02, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

My report shows Domery in 81st place with 219,897 total views over 7 days. As the other columns in my table show, (39.8 mobile + 0.08 zero) = 39.88% non-desktop views, or 87,695 non-desktop views and 132,202 desktop views for that week. I believe that stats.grok.se only aggregates desktop data, but indeed, this is still quite a large discrepancy given their monthly reporting of 48k (desktop) month views. I've done literally dozens of these investigations into the raw data when people found differences between my reports and grok.se -- and every time the raw data supports my aggregation. I don't say this as a triumph, but unfortunately as much as people rely on grok.se, it is legacy code suffers from some bugs. If you'd ever like counts on an article for a particular day, I do compute and persistently store those for up to a year. Please contact me directly me on my talk page if this helps your investigations. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 20:50, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

As I say above, I'm always inclined to trust your stats over stats.grok.se - I've seen too many really weird numbers from them to take them seriously. (In fairness, given the volume of data involved, no system is ever going to get it right all the time.) ‑ iridescent 20:54, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

According to this [2], SRK only got 52,895 hits. BollyJeff | talk 02:22, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

I've checked my figures which include mobile data, they report as follows:

NOV 1 stats (UTC): desktop 6119 mobile 18393 wpzero 4

NOV 2 stats (UTC): desktop 55364 mobile 53870 wpzero 134

NOV 3 stats (UTC): desktop 17319 mobile 25231 wpzero 52

Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 21:03, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

55k plus 54k means that it should make the list, no? BollyJeff | talk 22:27, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

I would ask at Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/Most viewed before adding it. I believe the other entries on that page only list desktop views (for historic reasons, as the WMF didn't formerly publish mobile view statistics) so it may cause issues if two different methods are used to calculate the totals. ‑ iridescent 22:39, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

above average, still, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:13, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, that's well above average and looking at this months queue he will probably be the most-viewed TFA of the month. (Harris's List of Covent Garden Ladies might overtake him, as in the current climate the "Wikipedia is irredeemably sexist" crowd will be tweeting links to it as evidence of Wikipedia's depraved nature.) In general TFAs usually only get above 25,000 or so if an outside website takes an interest (usually Google or Reddit), if a high-profile celebrity tweets a link to it, or if it relates to a current event and would have have had that many page views anyway; over 50,000 views is remarkably high, especially when you consider that the majority of people with an interest in him are probably going to be reading the Hindi-language article. As West.andrew.g points out above, that number also doesn't include mobile views, which for a biography like this will probably be quite high. ‑ iridescent 12:19, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Also don't forget the 16k+ yesterday, and today and tomorrow. It's a mystery to me how those mere links below the TFA the following three days attract attention. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 12:25, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

IIRC, for historic reasons stats.grok.se actually counts from 2300-2300 rather than 0000-0000, so 1⁄24 of the hits for TFA are always attributed to the following day. Probably most of the other hits in subsequent days are actually people reading "hey, did you see this article yesterday?" posts on social media, rather than actual clicks from the main page.

My stats dump above supports the notion that stats.grok.se does have a non-standard definition of a "day", as my numbers are approximately, but not identical with what they report on the desktop side. It is important to note we use the same raw data in arriving at these aggregates. Thanks, West.andrew.g (talk) 21:07, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Useful Tip on finding out if people actually found your article interesting; go to Topsy and enter the article title, and you'll get a little chart at the top showing how often people tweeted about it. For articles that catch the public's attention, you can see the spike in "look at this article on Wikipedia!" tweets on the chart quite clearly (example); you also see the actual tweets, so you can see what readers were saying about your article. ‑ iridescent 12:43, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

PROMYS page

SandManMattSH 02:02, 9 October 2015 (UTC) You recently deleted a page for a HS program I am familiar with. If I were to write a well-cited page for this program, would you reinstate the page? If so, how can I use the existing (now deleted) page as a starting point? Please excuse me if it is poor protocol to edit a User talk page like this, but I was not sure what to do. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MattSH (talk • contribs)

MattSH, assuming you mean Program in Mathematics for Young Scientists, that was deleted under the proposed deletion process—as you've now contested the deletion, I've restored the original article for you to work on. Bear in mind that it's likely to be deleted again if the issues aren't addressed—it needs to demonstrate that the topic has received significant coverage in sources not connected to the subject, which it fails to do at the moment. ‑ iridescent 06:00, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Iridescent, this edit won't notify MattSH, however this edit will. You need to add the user link and a new signature in the same edit - overtyping an existing signature won't work. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:47, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Restore talk page and redirects

The page Program in Mathematics for Young Scientists has been restored. You should restore its talk page and redirects as well. GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 16:48, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

I've restored the talkpage, although it seems something of a pointless exercise since this page is a piece of spam sourced entirely to primary sources and has no realistic chance of surviving AFD barring a total rewrite. I've not deleted any redirect to it, so don't know what you mean by that. ‑ iridescent 16:53, 10 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, by the way. It always irritates me when a non-notable article on an non-notable subject is promptly restored because someone swears he'll work on it, largely because those involved in the deletion discussion or PRODding are seldom notified, but more so because 95% of the time no "work" is ever attempted, let alone results in a qualifying article. It's not been my experience that the recreating admin follows up to ensure that it is, and I thank you for doing so. Ravenswing 21:13, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

No problem. People do sometimes follow through on promises to improve restored content—if you look at the #CDN77 thread further down this page, I can see that the requestor has begun to work on the restored draft. If it's obvious that something could be improved (that is, the sources obviously exist and it's just that noone has got around to rewriting the page), I generally have no problem with leaving articles in a poor state, but I have considerably less patience when people claim that something's "obviously" notable but can't point to any sources to demonstrate that. ‑ iridescent 22:44, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Redirects

Having just skimmed the AN/I discussion about redirects such as booby magnetic resonance imaging, I think the reactions have been a bit overblown. While some of these redirects are silly (booby mri or boob mri might be more plausible search terms), sites such as Yahoo!Answers or the comments sections of YouTube repeatedly remind us that people are pretty stupid. Wikipedia is intended to be a place for people to learn and get smarter. Redirects are a navigational tool to that end.

Wikipedia is radically transparent. Is it fair for people to suddenly complain about redirect creations that took place in plain sight over many years? I'll readily admit not having taken a deep dive into Neelix's history here, but it appears there was an incident in 2010 and not much since? I don't see much indication that Neelix was being repeatedly warned about these redirect creations. And I haven't seen any evidence that he was trying to disrupt the project or cause harm. Every comment I've seen from him since he was dragged to a noticeboard, and a quick read of his user page, indicates to me that he was acting in good faith.

Briefly looking through User talk:Neelix/Archive 21 and User talk:Neelix/Archive 22, it seems like all(?) of the redirects that he was notified as up for discussion have been kept? I see more than a dozen blue links, anyway.

A few people in the discussion have tried to make similar-ish points (slakr and bd2412), but it's quite likely that the mob carrying pitchforks is going to win this round. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:23, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

The trouble with this particular incident is that unless you were there at the time, it's quite hard to follow the context. The mass deletion means his contrib history gives the impression that either this was a historic incident which was just being dredged up out of vindictiveness, or that it had only just been noticed but happened some time ago. In reality, redirects like Tubular titties and Constructions of the booby were still being mass-created right up until the ANI thread began.

I'd have no issue with genuine plausible search terms ("Boob scan" etc); the problem is that these weren't for the most part plausible search terms, they were nonsensical phrases like Segmentally removes titties and Inter-mammary wanked, or ridiculous non-existent terms he'd made up himself like Antitrousers. (Imagine explaining to someone with breast cancer just why Tumorous titties existed as a redirect.) Wikipedia doesn't exist in a vacuum; given the hay made with "Someone said a word which people in a country on the other side of the world find offensive!", what signal does it send out if Wikipedia doesn't take action here once it had come to admin/Arbcom attention?

As Softlavender has now pointed out, this particular rabbit hole is a lot twistier than it initially appeared. I'm backing well away from the discussions, since no good can come of being involved with this; clearing up messes like this is why we have Arbcom. (And deciding whether they did a good job of handling it is why we have Arbcom elections.) ‑ iridescent 08:59, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Arbitration case accepted

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Neelix. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Neelix/Evidence. Please add your evidence by November 17, 2015, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Neelix/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration.

For the Arbitration Committee, Amortias (T)(C) 20:41, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Serneholt

If you want to, please help by improving this weeks TAFI article Marie Serneholt. Any help is appreciated.--BabbaQ (talk) 21:50, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

I refer you to my previous answer. (Does TAFI have a particular thing for dubious-looking BLPs at the moment? Surely these are the last articles one should be inviting groups of random strangers to add to.) ‑ iridescent 21:53, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Technikal

Hi, I noticed that you recently deleted the Technikal page. Please could you ensure that all links to the article in question are removed from other articles? He contributed heavily to Example's most recent album, which charted in the UK Top 10, and so his name is mentioned on various articles and I'd appreciate you making sure there aren't red links left lying around as a result. Thanks. —ItsLuke (contribs) 19:57, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I disagree; I think he actually has high potential to be a valid BLP subject, if the article's written and sourced properly (he even has his own category). The issue here wasn't so much notability, as the fact that it was a de facto unsourced BLP (the sole sources were a dead link to frenzyclub.co.uk and a link to his page on iTunes). To me, this is one of those situations where the link ought to remain red in case someone comes along and writes a decent quality article on the topic. ‑ iridescent 20:02, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Fair play, I'm glad to hear that! The page was definitely in a terrible state; I would've given it a makeover myself but I just never got around to it. Hopefully it'll get revived eventually in a better shape :) —ItsLuke (contribs) 20:08, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

You could try asking at Wikipedia:WikiProject Electronic music if anyone wants to take a stab at him. He almost certainly does meet WP:N, but the sources to write it are likely buried in back issues of Mixmag and DJ Mag, and not easily available to anyone without a big heap of old magazines in their bedroom. ‑ iridescent 20:15, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland

You may wish to contribute to the vote taking place on the talk page. Laurel Lodged (talk) 14:26, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Laurel Lodged, assuming you mean Talk:Thirty-fourth Amendment of the Constitution of Ireland#Must vs May, it's not really something on which I feel strongly enough to express an opinion. (Of the four suggestions, I think option 4 looks clearest, but I still have an unpleasant enough memory of the years-long chain of arguments that led to this to be reluctant to get involved in any Ireland-related vote.) Marriage may be contracted in accordance with law by two persons without distinction as to their sex is an awkward phrasing, and the legal experts who drafted the constitutional amendment knew it was an awkward phrasing, but they chose "may" for a reason; "must be contracted" would imply that couples in a relationship are legally obliged to marry, which was certainly not the intent. The clearest way to explain it IMO would be "the amendment made same-sex marriage explicitly legal and forbade the Oireachtas from passing legislation forbidding it without a further constitutional amendment", but that's a confusing mouthful. Pinging the go-to guy for summarising legal formulations while avoiding ambiguity. ‑ iridescent 16:44, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Irish constitutional law is well outside my core competencies, but I've posted a suggestion for the editors there to consider. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 20:21, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your input guys. And I can well understand your reluctance to dip a toe into Irish wiki projects - it's a bruising experience. Laurel Lodged (talk) 09:24, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures

Dear admin,

I kindly would like to ask you to restore the article European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures and the associated redirect ESFRI. The former was deleted based on a prod contesting notability, but the ESFRI programma is a major part of the European Union funding of research infrastructures, which certainly is notable, for example proved by:

• http://insidehpc.com/2015/11/how-to-move-hpc-forward-in-europe/
• http://insidehpc.com/2015/06/will-europe-be-first-to-exascale/
• http://www.theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics/gallery/2015/jan/24/life-physics-in-pictures-no-3
• http://www.theguardian.com/science/life-and-physics/2014/nov/17/whats-in-your-bag

And this list goes on and on... (try Google News search on "esfri".

Probably the article needs improvement and I am willing to spend some time on that over the next weeks.

Best regards,

--Reinoutr (talk) 20:51, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Restored, although if this isn't improved to something other than the current totally unsourced piece of promotion within a month, I'll nominate it for deletion and I'll warn you that in its current state it has zero possibility of survival. Claiming something is important isn't enough; you need to demonstrate why independent reliable sources consider it important, and you need a reference for every potentially contentious claim in the article. Pinging Jujutacular for info as the one who originally proposed it for deletion. ‑ iridescent 20:58, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, although I must admit I do not understand the hostility in your response. I am well aware of WP guidelines, having edited here since 2004 and being the main author of one featured article. I'll do my best to improve this article within one month. --Reinoutr (talk) 21:58, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

And deleted again, since on looking more closely it's a verbatim copyright violation. The article before the copyvio was cut-and-pasted read—in full—The European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) is an organization in Europe., and I'd venture to say isn't worth restoring. ‑ iridescent 22:12, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

You deleted Ognjen Radisavljevic ...

You deleted Ognjen Radisavljevic (BLP prod), but didnt delete the redirect Ognjen radisavljevic. I could csd it, but then somebody else would do your home work :-) (Have a nice day) Christian75 (talk) 17:14, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

✓ Done ‑ iridescent 00:29, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

The UK Government's Knowledge Network Programme

Thanks for deleting The UK Government's Knowledge Network Programme. I guess here most users protest such PRODs ;). Zezen (talk) 14:22, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

You're welcome. It is a viable topic if someone ever decides to write the history of the increasingly hare-brained government IT schemes of the Blair years, so I've left the incoming link from Knowledge Network in place for the moment in case anyone decides to take a stab at it, but that article in its current state was unsalvageable. ‑ iridescent 00:33, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

ArbCom elections are now open!

Hi,
You appear to be eligible to vote in the current Arbitration Committee election. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to enact binding solutions for disputes between editors, primarily related to serious behavioural issues that the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the ability to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate, you are welcome to review the candidates' statements and submit your choices on the voting page. For the Election committee, MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:46, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Mdann52, shouldn't you be substing this? The server load from transcluding this on 100,000 user talk pages must be astronomical. ‑ iridescent 16:59, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Maybe - however, only a fraction of pages this is posted on are likely to be looked at. If you think it should be subst, I can do this going forward, but bearing in mind the page size and compared to other templates of similar sized that are also transcluded, I don't think this is too much of an issue. Mdann52 (talk) 17:05, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

It would probably be worth asking one of the WMF techies how they'd prefer it. (Paging WhatamIdoing, who seems to be the current holder of the "WMF Engineering's ambassador to the human race" short straw.) Bear in mind that although only a fraction of those talkpages are going to be looked at, many of those talk pages get a very high number of page views, so the server load isn't going to be insubstantial; AFAIK this is why we have the set-in-stone rule that everything in Category:User warning templates always be substed. ‑ iridescent 17:14, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I would have assume that the "subst everything on user talk pages" rule applies, merely because it would make sure that the version currently displayed on the page is the one that was originally delivered (i.e., in case someone decides to change the text). Solely on those grounds, I would suggest subst:ing it for any future deliveries.

I'll see if I can find anyone in Ops who has a strong opinion about it. Fixing it should be easy, if they want that done (or if you decide to do it anyway). There are several bots that will subst templates (see list at the end of WP:Substitution). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:36, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

The general word from Ops seems to be that they'd prefer that such things were subst:d, but the 'cost' of going back around and subst:ing it now (and thus having an extra revision in the table/another round of flooding people's watch lists) is similar to the cost of leaving it alone. So therefore my recommendation is to just leave it alone (individuals can subst: their own copies at any time, of course). Also, I gather that if the number had been much higher, than their POV might have been different, so now we have an idea of what their threshold is for something of this size/(lack of) complexity. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:59, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

To be slightly clearer, this is a direct quote from one of them: "doing another edit after the fact would be worse than not doing anything at all, assuming the template is not edited frequently". I'm assuming this template isn't ever going to be edited. Perhaps under the circumstances, we could reduce the odds of vandalism, etc., by getting it protected? WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:00, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

It already has been—I think it's a fairly safe bet that if it hadn't been protected, a lot of people would be asking confused questions regarding why their talkpage had been replaced with goatse by now. ‑ iridescent 20:03, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

ACE2015 voting

Having just got four emails asking me for WP:ACE2015 recommendations, posting this here to save repeating myself. As remarked elsewhere ad nauseam, this is probably the weakest set of candidates in the history of Arbcom elections, so there are a few weak "make up the numbers" supports of people I'd oppose in a normal year.

Definite support

1. Casliber
2. Opabinia regalis

Grudging weak support

1. Drmies
2. Keilana
3. Timtrent

Weak oppose

1. Callanecc
2. Gamaliel
3. GorillaWarfare
4. Hullaballoo Wolfowitz
5. Kelapstick
6. Kirill Lokshin
7. LFaraone

Definite oppose

1. Hawkeye7
2. Kevin Gorman
3. Kudpung
4. MarkBernstein
5. Mahensingha
6. NE Ent
7. Rich Farmbrough
8. Samtar
9. Thryduulf
10. Wildthing61476

If any of the candidates request it, I'll give the reasonings, but otherwise I don't see anything to be gained by doing so. Whoever's clerking this, please don't add this to the "official" voting guides box. ‑ iridescent 13:31, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Pre-emptive note

Pointing readers at this thread now, so I can say "I told you so" in two weeks. ‑ iridescent 21:33, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

Re: comment on deprodding

I wasn't pinged, so pardon the tardiness of my response, but the best you'll get out of me is a big fat "meh". I didn't make the BLPPROD rules, and I agree with you some aspects of it are stupid. BLPPROD is a misnomer -- it's a CSD with a few days of delay to add a source to the article, and as such, is intended to be applicable with no need for a judgement call or application of common sense; CSD criteria are cut-and-dry, unambiguous and uncontroversial by design. Whereas a PROD is basically just an AfD nom that only actually becomes a discussion at AfD if anyone objects. A standard PROD would've done just fine for this one, though. :) ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 05:00, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Also, you and I both know how POINTy some people can get -- I'd rather see a rocksolid AfD consensus than a grey-area-BLPPROD that might end up overturned if a spotlight is shined on it. Common sense is all fine and dandy but this is Wikipedia we're talking about and doing "the sensisble thing" while opening doors for shitnosers to stir trouble can be worse than some extra wasteful bureaucracy which removes any wiggle room. Especially when said article's creator is notorious for his POINTiness. ;) ☺ · Salvidrim! · ✉ 05:04, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

My reply is also "meh" since I find it difficult to have a strong opinion on an article consisting of 86 words of readable prose whose only "reference" is to the subject's own (non-functional) website; I stand by the statement that deprodding it was pure makework, since it contained not even the vaguest assertion of notability (the lead read in full Mark Morningstar is an American chiropracticionist.) and could perfectly well have been deleted under A7.

While the article's creator could indeed get WP:POINTy, given the circumstances of his indefblock I don't see him being in a position to complain any time soon, nor do I see either the ARS or the clique of self-appointed Defenders Of The Weak And Downtrodden feeling particularly inclined to wade in in this case. (Even the most hardline of the every-grain-of-sand faction would concede that it's not appropriate to have an separate bio for every doctor in the world and that while this one's no doubt a perfectly nice guy even his own website doesn't make any assertion of particular notability, while WR/WO are not about to mobilize the troops on behalf someone who was on a self-proclaimed mission to free Wikipedia from being "overrun by kikes".) ‑ Iridescent 14:55, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks for your recent fix of a misspelling in an article that I recently launched. I'd proofread the article several times, but had managed to miss spotting the error each time. Glad that your eye for spelling is better than mine, and that you're willing to expend the time and effort to hunt down mistakes like this one. — Ammodramus (talk) 01:49, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

SC Group

Thanks for your typo correction on the SC Group page. I've spent a lot of time working on that recently, and while I have proof read it about 1 million times, clearly I need to read it a few more... Thanks for being one of few (I suspect...) prepared to take the time out to look for, and correct, such errors.UndateableOne (talk) 12:24, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

"Is nobody clerking this?"

Oh yes the clerks are clerking some aspects of it most assiduously, just not Kevin's word length. Compare my edit summary here. I guess it didn't make any impression, though presumably it was seen. A block threat from an arb followed very quickly.[3] Bishonen | talk 23:00, 10 December 2015 (UTC).

Twas ever thus. From the arb point of view, exchanges like that do give the impression of bystanders trying to make what ought to be a straightforward case about one particular set of actions into general State Of The Wiki debates, so while not condoning Salvio's snappiness I can kind of forgive it; if they let Giano's comments stand, they won't have grounds to remove comments later on when every crank with a grudge demands the right to say their piece, and having just waded through that 200-party nonsense Eric case I can't imagine they're keen on letting this one become the rematch. (There is supreme irony in a party failing to read the instructions, on a case about said party not following instructions.) ‑ Iridescent 23:25, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kevin Gorman

You recently offered a statement in a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kevin Gorman. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kevin Gorman/Evidence. Please add your evidence by December 28, 2015, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Kevin Gorman/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 11:32, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

"Offered a statement" is probably stretching it. "Offered a driveby comment about an issue which has since been addressed" would probably be nearer the mark. A full case is absolutely undesirable; it'll jam up my ability to mediate conduct disputes, build content, and conduct real-world outreach for multiple months when, for the first time in a year, I can do those things, while magnifying drama and sniping. Handle the case by motion if necessary, but I don't think there's any real dispute that ENWP will be better off with me a sysop than with me not one, and this RFAR in addition to the private feedback I've received will have a much greater effect than any motion of warning or admonishment. is a decent contender for most facepalm-worthy statement ever made by the subject of an arbcom case, though. ‑ Iridescent 11:43, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks

Thank you for closing the ANI thread. I agree it was getting nowhere. Perhaps I should have made it more explicit that accusations of bullying were made against me, as it seems to have generated some confusion. Burninthruthesky (talk) 10:33, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

TBH, I read the situation as you both accusing each other, neither with a great deal of evidence. I think EEng's original accusation against you was an attempt to defuse the situation through humor rather than a genuine accusation, but if so the joke was so unfunny I can easily see how you'd interpret it as a genuine accusation (to the extent that I can't be sure it wasn't a genuine accusation, either). ‑ Iridescent 10:41, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

It seems "attempts to defuse the situation through humor" work less and less. And very sorry that you see my interjections as "shit stirring". I must be misreading "wiki culture" again. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:01, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Honestly, yes I do (and it's certainly not unique to you); what works in a discussion between people who know each other doesn't scale to addressing strangers, particularly on a global project where to many of our readers and editors your comments aren't even recognisable as attempts at comedy. The general perception that Wikipedia is run by a self-important clique which makes a conscious effort to discourage outsiders may be incorrect, but it doesn't originate in a vacuum; from the perspective of a new or newish user, your constant injecting of yourself into conversations which aren't about you doesn't come across as an attempt to lighten the mood, it comes across as aggressive "you don't understand this secret code, you don't belong here" sneering. [4], [5], [6] are all from the last couple of days, and if I were the new user in each case I'd certainly consider all three as sneering put-downs rather than "attempts to defuse the situation through humor", and that's before one moves on to these or these. ‑ Iridescent 11:39, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Would you like me to resign? I do apologize, Burninthruthesky, if you found any of my pointless additions "nasty". I just found the whole exchange even more ridiculous than usual. Martinevans123 (talk) 11:45, 11 December 2015 (UTC) p.s. I received "thanks" for some of those edits. But perhaps it was a "secret coded thanks"?

I was just checking I hadn't hit the wrong button by mistake. I feel I must clarify I only use the "thank" button if I mean it sincerely. Burninthruthesky (talk) 14:15, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

You're not alone there, Burninthruthesky.

So, all my edits to Jimbo's Talk page since 2011, and to ITN/C since September 2014, are "put-downs" or "aggressive sneering"? It must be very encouraging that all these "new or newish users" have confided in you so willingly. Ah well, at least it wasn't aggressive sneezing. Martinevans123 (talk) 21:57, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Requesting to join a debate for James Stunt

@Iridescent: I'm requesting you to join this Afd discussion. Your comment is valuable to us. Please help us reach a consensus. Thanks -Khocon (talk) 19:02, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for your attempt to help with Program in Mathematics for Young Scientists

Sorry I didn't take action on this or reply sooner. I was traveling for work, and didn't log in to Wikipedia during this time. Regardless, I respect your decision. My initial objection was that this is one of the top (arguably top 3) mathematics programs for high school students in the United States. However, I wasn't able to find much impartial coverage (with a cursory internet search) that would address your concerns about notability and significant coverage. I appreciate your giving me a chance with the short-term article restoration, and am thankful for the hard work you and other admins put into this informative site. -User:MattSH 19:40, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

It's that season again...

		Happy Saturnalia
		Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season, from the horse and bishop person. May the year ahead be productive and troll-free. Ealdgyth - Talk 17:25, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Oddly, I was just thinking about you today, having just seen a large book on sale called The Medieval Horse. ‑ Iridescent 17:45, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

By Hyland? I got it .. its in a box, somewhere... I hate packing to move. Ealdgyth - Talk 18:55, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

No, John Clark. If it's like everything else produced by MOLAS, it will be meticulously researched and represent the peak of current thinking, but also be earnestly detailed to the point of insanity, use technical jargon so off-putting it makes a Wikipedia mathematics article look welcoming, and refuse to allow for the possibility that anything that happened outside the M25 could possibly be of any importance. ‑ Iridescent 19:03, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Oh, that one. Have it too. I agree with your description, as it happens. Excellent but good gods it's dense. It also turned out to be less than useful for the research I got it for - mainly because it's so highly specialized... Ealdgyth - Talk 19:07, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Today FA

Precious again, your "Hot naked
man on man action!"!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:26, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks—I don't really like this one, either as an artwork or as a Wikipedia article, but it makes a change from the scantily clad woman and Florentine altarpieces which typify Wikipedia's painting coverage. ‑ Iridescent 22:21, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

I picked Sorrow to translate, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 22:54, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

It's heresy to say it and will no doubt cause Ceoil to complain about my philistinism, but I honestly don't understand the appeal of Van Gogh. The Netherlands have produced some of the finest artists in history, but the only one to get any attention nowadays in the rest of the world (even Rembrandt has faded from popular culture) is a second-rate imitator of Adolphe Monticelli whose main claim to fame seems to have been "use bright colours". I'm sure its the "romantic tortured artist" back story that's led to his current popularity, rather than any particular appreciation of his style. (Don't get me started on Leonardo either, who in artistic terms wasn't fit to clean Titian's, Botticelli's or Lippi's paintbrushes but has somehow become identified as the embodiment of Italian art.) ‑ Iridescent 23:38, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

If you love Adolphe Monticelli so much, then honor him by taking the article to FA. ;-) Meanwhile, if your point is that Monticelli is the pathbreaker and Van Gogh the follower, it may at least be conceivable within some possible worlds that refined critics may afford a few too many points for the act of innovation, and neglect to consider that the followers (standing on the shoulders of giants, and so on) may have improved upon the expression of the originators. I may have mentioned that a (photograph of) a Van Gogh painting is the only one ever to bring a tear to me eye (and it was just those ships on a shore, for some unknnown reason). [There was another one with some somber woods that I found touching, but I can't find it on Wikimedia]. Anyhow, your debt to Adolphe awaits you. ;-) Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 01:45, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I've got my doubts about Vermeer too! Johnbod (talk) 04:59, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Monticelli would need a French speaker. The dislike of the British art establishment for him (and by extension the American, Canadian etc as they still tend to take their cue from London) is legendary; the National Gallery of Scotland notoriously refused to allow any work by him to go on display, while the National Gallery itself still keeps their collection hidden in the cellar basement (now better known as The Undergallery) which is only opened to the public a couple of days each month. As a result, aside from a couple of exhibition catalogues and passing mentions in biographies of VVG, every significant work on him is in French.

Don't necessarily take the ability to draw tears (or smiles) as a sign of quality. I've seen a grown, and otherwise sensible, adult reduced to tears by the emotional intensity of Police Academy 3. (Really. I was there.)

I always think of Vermeer as the painting equivalent of Beethoven, Dickens or Orson Welles; someone people feel obliged to say they like for fear of seeming uncultured, rather than someone they actually like. I'd be willing to bet that if you polled 100 people and asked them to name Vermeer works, no more than three would be able to come up with anything more than "Girl With a Pearl Earring and that one with the milk jug whatever it's called". (This would probably be the case even if you conducted said poll in the central gallery of the Rijksmuseum.) ‑ Iridescent 17:06, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I think you're a bit high on that estimate. The common man's knowledge of art works is even worse than their knowledge of history. Ealdgyth - Talk 17:49, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes, but the common man remembers Scarlett Johannson movies; if not for that, I'd revise that estimate to zero. ‑ Iridescent 17:52, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

By the way, I should point here to my annual Wiki Christmas card (DYK on the 25th, with pic I hope) which is a blow against the tyranny of "scantily clad woman and Florentine altarpieces" - Adoration of the Shepherds (Poussin). Season's Greetings to all! Johnbod (talk) 18:44, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

If Ottava were still with us, I dread to think what he'd make of that one. ‑ Iridescent 18:46, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

No wait, did you just kinda casually stiff-arm Beethoven too? My lowbrow wrath shall fall upon ye! String Quartet No. 14 (Beethoven) is absolutely my all-time fave... sorry to hear about Monticelli's dim hopes of being FA... as for crying at kitsch, I was well into my late twenties before I stopped crying every single time I heard The Little Drummer Boy, but that's a one-off, since not one other song had that effect... but if chills count, this works (perfect blend of voice/melody/poetry), even though I generally have no time for the swooping gargles of opera. Oh wait, this page is about visual art... ermm, if I may ask in a teensy little voice from the corner, I'm dying to know, and please have a stiff drink first to shed any cultured reticence, what do you think of the work of this guy? No really. Have a drink first. A strong one. Something with the word "grouse" and a prominently displayed "18"... Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 20:34, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I've honestly never heard of him—aside from the superstars like Dali and Picasso, and the YBAs of whom one can't live in England without having an opinion given their ubiquity, I don't really know much postwar European stuff. (My personal opinion is that in 300 years, the only postwar 20th century European names which will draw crowds are Pablo Picasso, Bridget Riley and Grayson Perry, and Picasso's best years were behind him by then.) Going purely on a Google Image search, it has the same "well, that's nice enough but if I'd paid to see it I'd feel cheated" vibe I get from Rothko, Warhol and Vasarely.

I freely admit to not getting Beethoven. To me, he's like John Lennon; revolutionary at the time, but so imitated since that the original has lost any impact, as everything worthwhile has been reused so often as to become cliched.

One of the more surreal images of the 1980s (sadly, it doesn't appear to be on YouTube) was Margaret Thatcher being reduced to tears by Rolf Harris's Two Little Boys during a recording of Desert Island Discs. ‑ Iridescent 21:01, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Unsurprisingly, I've never heard of Riley or Perry, but will give their work an honest look via Google. The article about YBAs prominently mentioned wild lifestyle etc., which resonates with my pet peeve against modern art: the art is a mere shriveled appendage of the true message, which is an expression and exultation of a lifestyle (and by extension, an act of politics in many cases). Cue the "Jackson Pollock" and "vivid wallpaper" rant. Lowbrow me hath spoken. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 21:16, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

You'll likely hate Perry (I'm not very fond of him myself) but he's one of the few genuinely inventive people working today, as well as arguably the only person successfully to meld the classical and comic book traditions. Riley has fallen well out of fashion by now—she was big in the 1960s and not since—but is possibly the only person in that 1960s counterculture tradition not to thoroughly deserve the "self indulgent posturing" label. ‑ Iridescent 21:22, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I've made several visits to the Rothko Chapel and every time I left I went "and that's art?" so I'm not a good judge of anything after the Impressionists, usually. I favor Uccello and Blake as artists, and Dvorak and Copeland as composers. Oh, and Titian. There's something about bombastic mythology in huge canvases that I must adore. Hubby's a Wagner fan - which I have never been able to figure out since he's basically Scotch-Irish with a lot of Appalachia in him. Shouldn't he like banjos??? I prefer my art to resemble something and my music to be at least something approaching a tune - if that makes me a less than avant-garde, so be it. Ealdgyth - Talk 21:37, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

If you like bombastic mythology in huge canvases, Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/William Etty/archive1 is waiting for your call. ‑ Iridescent 22:15, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

(ec) Nowait, Riley worked in an ad agency? I'm shocked, shocked! As for Perry, well there are different modalities of liking something. I actually like the stuff, but it's "cool" (in the popular sense, not in temperature or standoffish, of course), like... any really creative and talented art student could make... but not "powerful". I'd be perfectly willing to spend $20 US on it. Maybe even a little more.. But to recover somewhat from my unrelieved lowbrowishness, Ceoil has totally turned me on to Paul Gauguin, and I am now officially a card-carrying supporter. And now thanks to Ealdgyth, I need to find out who Uccello and Blake are (unless the latter is William of Red Dragon fame, in which case, wow...) Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 21:40, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Uccello and William Blake. I like Blake's poetry too... There's a place that'll do reproductions of famous artworks in oil/canvas for you, lifesize. Hubby won't let me get the three panels from The Battle of San Romano for our next house. Something about having to build the house around the artwork he deems excessive. Ealdgyth - Talk 21:47, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

(ec)I second your Blake on both counts. Certainly not the very greatest in either area (especially not in poetry), but clearly gifted in both. Beats the tar outta Perry, anyhow. :-) Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 21:49, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I can't really get my head around Blake. I think part of the problem with him is that the two main public collections of him (Tate Britain in London and Whitworth Art Gallery in The City That Must Not Be Named) are both quite cluttered with bright shiny stuff which tends to dominate the room; Blake is possibly one of those paradoxical artists whose work works better online than in the flesh. (That said, while writing Youth and Pleasure I came across Blake's illustrations of Thomas Gray, which are some of the most peculiar artworks I've ever seen; there's not a one that would look out of place as the sleeve of a 70s prog-rock album. Design 7, "Ode on the Death of a Favourite Cat." in particular is truly odd.) ‑ Iridescent 22:15, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

With respect

My holiday postings are few - but I did want to include you. I've never known you to show emotion in your postings, so I won't trouble you with such either. I just want to say thank you for all the time and effort you've taken to treat me as an equal. I hope you and your family, and your friends, have a very VERY enjoyable holiday season. I wish you all my best Iridescent — Ched :  ?  02:43, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

And the same to you. Does "irritation" count as an emotion, as I've certainly been know to show that? I like to think I treat everyone as equals unless and until someone does something good enough or bad enough to warrant my opinion moving up or down. The Bible contains a lot of very bad advice, and a lot more which was once sensible but is now outdated by centuries, but Luke 6.31 is as good a piece of advice today as it was two millennia ago, even though Eric once nearly got sitebanned for restating it in his own terms. (Ironically, this season is something of an unholiday for me; because so many workplaces shut down or scale back their operations, public holidays are the ideal time for major restructuring or maintenance which makes them the busiest time of year for those working in critical-infrastructure projects.) ‑ Iridescent 21:00, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Best wishes for the holidays...

		Season's Greetings
		Wishing you and yours a Happy Holiday Season, and all best wishes for the New Year! Adoration of the Shepherds (Poussin) is my Wiki-Christmas card to all for this year. Johnbod (talk) 10:26, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

The guy who's about to set a basket of apples down in front of a hungry-looking donkey has clearly not thought this plan through. ‑ Iridescent 21:00, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

Would it be considered impolite...

... if I claimed an "assist"* for Youth on the Prow, and Pleasure at the Helm? After all, I started the article (admittedly only as one of my signature Three Sentence Long But Impeccably Well-Referenced Micro-Stubs™). Pete AU aka --Shirt58 (talk) 08:32, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
* By "claim an assist" I mean shamelessly putting that FA star up top of my userpage despite having contributed almost nothing to the article, of course.

I've no problem, but be careful how you word it, particularly if you're ever planning an RFanything in future. "Looking at the claimed credits on the userpage to see if the candidate actually wrote everything they claim to have written" is behind only "check the block log", "look at the talk page history for suspicious reductions in size where the user has tried to hide arguments" and "see if the ratio of Wikipedia Talk edits to mainspace edits is unduly high" when it comes to quickfailing at WP:RFA (and WP:RFB, WP:ACE and all the rest of the alphabet soup), so you don't want to say anything that gives the impression of kill stealing. (It also irritates some of the FAC regulars, so be aware if you're ever planning to ask people for help in future that it may make them more likely to say no; as a concrete example, Mattisse's long list of claimed FAs came back to bite her when she got into trouble and was looking for people to defend her.) ‑ Iridescent 20:25, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Jacob van Ruisdael

I hope you had a fine Christmas. Two months ago you helped me with my FAC for the Jacob van Ruisdael article. I just put it up again. Hopefully this time around it does get some votes. I made some more changes as well, hopefully for the better. Please have a look. Thank you. Edwininlondon (talk) 14:15, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Will do, but it may not be for a few days. Pinging Johnbod, Victoriaearle and Ceoil, in case you haven't already. ‑ Iridescent 20:27, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Season's Greetings

File:Xmas Ornament.jpg

To You and Yours!

FWiW Bzuk (talk) 15:53, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Many thanks, and the (belated) same to you. ‑ Iridescent 19:49, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Solstice & Season's greetings

	Merry Christmas and happy New Year
	And thanks for your WP:contributions! Best wishes to you and your family. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 18:50, 21 December 2015 (UTC) |}

Thank you—and the same to you. ‑ Iridescent 19:49, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Happy Christmas!

		Happy Christmas!
		Have a happy holiday season. May the year ahead be productive and happy. John (talk) 17:46, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Thank you—and happy hogmanay (which Firefox appears to think is a misspelling of "mahogany"). Or at least, hope the crowd of drunk tourists doesn't cause too much of a nuisance. ‑ Iridescent 19:49, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Season's Greetings

	Wishing you a Charlie Brown Charlie Russell Christmas! 🎄
	Best wishes for your Christmas Is all you get from me 'Cause I ain't no Santa Claus Don't own no Christmas tree. But if wishes was health and money I'd fill your buck-skin poke Your doctor would go hungry An' you never would be broke." —C.M. Russell, Christmas greeting 1914. Montanabw(talk)

Well, that one's certainly the winner this year. ‑ Iridescent 19:49, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

2016

	Happy New Year 2016!
	Did you know ... that back in 1885, Wikipedia editors wrote Good Articles with axes, hammers and chisels? Thank you for your contributions to this encyclopedia using 21st century technology. I hope you don't get any unneccessary blisters.    – Cullen328 Let's discuss it 02:23, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Today's featured article/January 16, 2016

I didn't need to change anything with this one except for trimming down to around 1150 characters and removing the red links. If those turn into stubs between now and the 16th, please let me know. I see this is your busy time of year, so I won't wish you happy holidays. - Dank (push to talk) 02:37, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

WandsworthBridge.jpg at standard {{TFAIMAGE}} width

Wandsworth Bridge (cropped).JPG at 190px

Dank, it would probably violate some policy or other but it might make sense to use this image at an expanded width, rather than File:WandsworthBridge.jpg as currently in the blurb. Because of the former's extreme aspect ratio it wouldn't take up appreciably more space than the latter (see right), but it gives a better idea of the width of the river at this point, as well as highlighting the one remarkable feature of this otherwise singularly uninteresting structure; that its wartime camouflage is remarkably effective at making it hard to tell exactly what you're looking at when viewing it from a distance. (Illustrating something that's intentionally designed not to show up clearly in photographs is always going to be tricky.)

As regards the blurb itself, I wouldn't lose sleep. This one is deeply dull, and will have an outside chance of challenging Australian Competition and Consumer Commission v Baxter Healthcare Pty Ltd for the "least-viewed TFA" title. ‑ Iridescent 16:17, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Good point. Pinging Chris. - Dank (push to talk) 16:24, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

As I said, don't lose sleep over this one. Some of this "Bridges of West London" series are fascinating stories (the back-story of Richmond Bridge would make a decent-sized novel), but Wandsworth Bridge is not among them, and there's only so far one can go when it comes to trying to make things like this sound vaguely interesting. (It's still not as bad as Chiswick Bridge, which is so deathly dull I still haven't got round to taking it to FAC almost a decade after finishing it, on the assumption that no reviewer will bother reading it.) ‑ Iridescent 16:56, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

• Well, we can give it a try (referring to image). — Chris Woodrich (talk) 23:37, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

• I'll wager that at least one person doesn't read the blurb as far as "camouflage", and complains that the picture is indistinct. As I've mentioned before, I do find the camouflage of Wandsworth Bridge fascinating; despite just being a simple two-shades-of-blue paint scheme, if you flip through commons:Category:Wandsworth Bridge you can see that whatever the angle and weather conditions, except in very bright clear light (which is not common even today, and in pre Clean Air Act 1956 wartime London was unheard of) this 200m long lump of concrete and steel looks like a blur when viewed from a distance. ‑ Iridescent 17:02, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Nomination of Wisconsin Green Party for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Wisconsin Green Party 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/Wisconsin Green Party 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 high-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 notice from the top of the article. Me-123567-Me (talk) 18:27, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

My only involvement with that article was a single minor typo fix. Eight years ago. FWIW, I don't think there's the slightest chance this will be deleted barring extraordinary circumstances, since there's no indication you've done any WP:BEFORE work (just dropping "Wisconsin Green Party" into any search engine shows that this party has non-trivial coverage in multiple independent sources), and given that this is a party with multiple elected representatives (indeed, the first Green party to win elected office in the US) you'll have a hard time claiming it doesn't meet WP:GNG, especially given that a glance at {{Green Party of the United States}} shows that in every state with an active Green Party, said party has its own article. Contrary to belief, "poor referencing" is not and never has been a deletion criterion; I'd strongly suggest you withdraw the AFD nom now to avoid the almost inevitable snow close. ‑ Iridescent 23:54, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Stationary

Ahem!....please excuse me while I cringe. ;O))Keith-264 (talk) 18:28, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Don't worry, you're certainly not alone; every couple of months I go through and clear them up. "Ordinance Survey" and "doe snot" are the other repeat offenders—because they're legitimate words in their own right, spellcheckers don't spot them. ‑ Iridescent 18:30, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Your wisdom regarding COI

Tapping into your wisdom because you seem to know far more than me regarding just about anything to do with WP ...

Does this seem reasonable? I rarely have dealings with articles where self-declared paid editors are involved. - Sitush (talk) 01:49, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

With the disclaimer that this is a topic on which I know nothing, my gut instinct is that the edits you reverted here may have been COI, but weren't outright spam, and were no certainly no worse than the kind of casual "my favourite band/team/product" puffery to which Wikipedia has turned a blind eye for over 15 years. (Way back Before The Dawn Of Time when the total number of articles was in single figures, we'd already managed to acquire our first piece of blatant fancruft. Both Jimmy Wales's "Giving the World the Sum of All Human Knowledge" and Larry Sanger's "Unappreciated Visionary" posturing overlook the fact that the "75% of articles are irredeemable crap" rule has been a part of Wikipedia since the days when it was an obscure link hidden halfway down the sidebar on a ropey porn site "guy-oriented website"*.)

Wikipedia strongly discourages COI editing on the grounds that paid editors are unlikely to be neutral, but doesn't actively forbid it; in this case, it looks like the paid editor was making a bona fide effort to maintain NPOV. The article itself, in either version, is a wretched piece which devotes hugely undue weight to criticism (there's more on legal challenges than on the rest of the article combined), and probably ought to get a full WP:TNT delete-and-rewrite-from-scratch treatment.

Paid editing and India are two of the topics most likely to attract a swarm of weirdos and the intersection of the two is unlikely to be pretty if history is anything to go by. Given the minimal readership of the page I wouldn't consider this a hill worth dying on, and the best thing to do is probably to post a neutral notification at WP:COIN, unwatch the page and let matters take their course. ‑ Iridescent 00:40, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

*Those who want to research the manure in which Wikipedia grew could do worse than dip their toes into just how unpleasant Bomis actually was.[7][8][9]

Ok, thanks. I was thinking of posting at COIN because, as you say, the thing is a complete mess which ever way I look at it. - Sitush (talk) 00:53, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

My opinion of paid editing—which definitely doesn't reflect Wikipedia policy—is that whether someone is a paid editor or not is largely irrelevant, and that paid editors who declare their association should be welcomed and encouraged. It's impossible to identify them in an anonymous environment unless they either voluntarily identify themselves, or leave an obvious trail of breadcrumbs from elsewhere (testimonials from satisfied customers that allow us to see what the article in question was, etc). The proposal that got Greg blocked a decade ago—paid editors working in a separate draft namespace, and then approaching people with no opinions on the topic to determine whether their suggested rewrite is appropriate and if so to move it across—is still the most sensible suggestion I've seen on how to handle the issue, and I strongly suspect that had the idea come from anyone else it would have been standard practice for years.

Plus, the COI from a paid editor is in many cases no worse than that which exists on every article. The volunteer nature of Wikipedia means that by definition people are going to write about things that interest them, which in most cases will mean things on which they have an opinion. Presumably the majority of editors on any sports team are going to be fans, with a motivation to make their team look good just as strong as that of a paid editor, but if anyone tried to propose "No Grimsby fans are permitted to write on Grimsby Town F.C." they'd be laughed out.

The example I always used to use was celebrities; under current custom and practice, if User:ILoveEllieGouldingShe'sSoCool posts a torrent of gushing fancruft to Ellie Goulding they'll be welcomed and patiently walked through the policy/guideline maze, whereas if User:Nigel from the Polydor Records Press Department makes minor corrections to factual errors on the same article, he'll almost certainly be reverted-and-blocked, and at the very least receive a talkpage full of intimidating and largely incomprehensible templates; as things stand, we actively penalise people for honestly declaring their biases. ‑ Iridescent 12:44, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

User:Arturo at BP, determined to do things right, has got on slightly better than that, and is generally patient when no one independent is prepared to action his suggestions, which seem sensible, or just correct. I hope he has managed to get the details of his boss's bio right by now - see Geoff Morrell (spokesperson) and its talk. Johnbod (talk) 14:02, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

User:CorporateM seems to be getting by as well. I don't dispute that bad-actor paid editors can cause problems, but I do dispute that the COI of a paid editor is necessarily any worse than that of any other editor working in a field in which they have strong opinions, which by definition will be most editors since the pool of Eric Corbetts, willing to devote hours of work to topics on which they have no interest, was never large and is getting steadily smaller. ‑ Iridescent 23:50, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

I do see your point, and I have more experience than I care to consider with the damage than unpaid obsessives can do to the encyclopedia. But I disagree about the equivalence between paid editors and enthusiastic amateurs. BP is an extreme case, but recall that at the height of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, BP's public-relations budget was more than $5 million per week. It is at least theoretically possible that Wikipedia's natural defense mechanisms can handle a steady drip of fanatical amateurs, but it is insane to think that we're equally well-equipped to deal with those kinds of corporate resources. MastCell ^Talk 00:56, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Sure, but most of the purported "paid editor problem" isn't with PR departments recruiting banks of editors to push their party line, it's people earning $50–100 on Elance to create Wikipedia pages about obscure bands and local businesses, or the owners of small businesses writing articles about themselves, owing to the vague feeling among much of the general public that if something doesn't have a Wikipedia page, other people won't deem it important. I don't see how FineryLondonSocial writing Finery (company) is necessarily any more biased than my writing Norwich Market or Preparing for a Fancy Dress Ball, provided the authors in both cases at least try to maintain NPOV; both are instances of someone feeling that something they consider significant deserves to be better known. I'd argue that Wikipedia is better placed to handle PR professionals, who by definition are going to stick to their particular field and thus are easily monitored, than it is to deal with the obsessive fans, the conspiracy theorists and the True Believers of every political party, religion and fashionable cause. (Ask Sitush just how well Wikipedia's doing at handling the enthusiastic amateur genealogists of India.) ‑ Iridescent 14:54, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Blimey, this thread has grown like Topsy. We're actually doing better at handling the amateur genealogists but I understand your point and, yes, it only takes the absence of a couple of people with big watchlists for the genealogists to start getting the upper hand again. - Sitush (talk) 15:35, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

All too few are familiar with nupedia .. fewer still with Bomis. I always appreciate seeing thoughts of those who are well read. TY. — Ched :  ?  05:48, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

In a very halfhearted defense of Jimmy and Larry, at the time of Bomis the internet was (a) overwhelmingly male and (b) still had an element of the "we are the vanguard of the new society and doing things normal people find unacceptable is just Sticking It To The Man" mentality, and in that climate Jimbo's offerings like Almost Naked Teenage Girls and Celebrity Upskirts (both safe for work provided you don't follow any links) are understandable, albeit not excusable. (We still have an unhealthy number of "stick it to the man" free-culture hardliners with us to this day; they tend to infest User talk:Jimbo Wales and the Village Pumps, although a lot of the worst offenders have decamped to Commons.) ‑ Iridescent 12:44, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

When to scold questioner at the Ref Desk

I have opened a thread at the Ref Desk talk page related to your scolding of a questioner for being a troll because the answer popped right up when you did a Google search. I feel that such scolding violates WP:NPA when it is not an obviously trolling question of the racist, nonsense, scatalogical, or gibberish variety. Edison (talk) 21:03, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Seriously? He was first warned about timewasting and trying to use the Reference Desks to start discussions rather than to ask legitimate questions six years ago, and has recently been bombarding the Reference Desks with similar pointless questions. "Assume Good Faith" is not infinite. In the most recent case, just typing "Lead" into the Wikipedia search box would have taken him to the answer to his question. ‑ Iridescent 21:10, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

WP:Arbitration/Requests/Case

Hi Iridescent

I've removed one of your comments [10] from this page as it was placed in another users section. Please feel free to incorporate this into your section on the page if you wish for it to be retained. Amortias (T)(C) 22:20, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

I believe I'll survive. (OR, I trust this illustrates my point? I'm sure Floq, Elen and I can find a space for you in the Reject Brotherhood when you care to join us.) ‑ Iridescent 22:25, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

When, not if, hmm? Make a prediction on who quits when and post the hash somewhere ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 21:00, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

One flame-out around August and one stepping-down in December, if history is anything to go by. It takes a few months for the "this is hugely time-consuming and extremely stressful, and is serving very little useful purpose in proportion to the effort expended" penny to drop, but once that particular mental toilet is flushed there's no putting the water back in the cistern. I can with reasonable confidence name who the two will be, barring unforeseen events. ‑ Iridescent 15:56, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

We elected a good class of arbitrators (not a nearly random one, as some people feared after the semi-inadvertent voter-notification expansion). Let's not be encouraging the newbies to flee already, Iridescent, unless you want to risk your own name being nominated to fill the vacancy.... Newyorkbrad (talk) 17:37, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

We just got archives access working, finally, so now I can make a well-informed decision about which members of the cabal should be sent a summons in the event of any departures... ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 03:08, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

They won't be who you expect. Some of the apparent biggest doofuses turn out to be those who came up with the most intelligent and thoughtful comments privately, while some of the most revered and respected figures could sometimes have been replaced by a bot programmed to wait until it was clear which way the wind was blowing on each decision and append its name to whatever proposals looked likely to pass on the PD. ‑ Iridescent 20:38, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

I wasn't around to watch most of this stuff in real time, so I have only weak prior expectations. The ratio of number of posts to long-term importance of issues has clearly had some notable historical spikes, though. And it's strange that a mailing list in continuous operation for over a decade has apparently never had a settled consensus on the key question of top or bottom posting. Also, I can't believe I let the highly quotable "mental toilet" pass uncommented upon! Anyone who quits needs to link that post in their resignation. Opabinia regalis (talk) 02:40, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

• If this isn't a private conversation, I'd like to join. — Ched :  ?  18:43, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Come on in ‑ Iridescent 18:44, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
    • You know Drmies has been spilling Cabal secrets over here... ;) Opabinia regalis (talk) 22:36, 24 January 2016 (UTC)
• OK - I do agree with NYB about there being some very good people brought in. I think there are some "new generation"(?) arbs coming in that can make a positive impact - "If and only if" they can work around some of the old stalwart mentality. I do (almost reluctantly) disagree with NYB's post to the recent Arb request. While the "troll/LTA" situation is a very real situation which needs to be addressed, I think it was tangential to the actual case, and should be dealt with separately. I think it was an unfair curve to throw at new Arbs. NYB speaks softly, but with great weight - and I think it provided some undue influence to very new Arbs who have yet to get their feet wet. I believe the case should (have) focus(ed) on administrative behavior. (not trolls or even civility) ... but plenty of keystrokes have already been spent on that topic.

Yes - I can see at least one current Arb stepping down due to burn-out, perhaps as early as early summer. If the one I am thinking of does step down, I think it will be a loss; because, I think if they could reign in their own personality traits, they could actually provide some excellent leadership skills to the committee.

Re: the arb "bots" .. :-) .... ok, point taken. Still - there is a certain wisdom to the "awaiting comments". When it's done to protect a political career, it's wrong. But when it's done to see all sides of an issue - it's pretty prudent. I agree that Arbs must take a leadership role (currently hampered by various items), but they must also be aware of the voice of the people too. You would know better than I do, but isn't it a fine line between gauging community consensus and establishing community order?

My own thinking is that while AC may have worked in the 2001-2007 era, it is fundamental inadequate in this era. (at least in its current form) — Ched :  ?  19:25, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Don't underestimate the value of the "maintaining order" side, even though it gets people shouting about "injustice". When you have a batch of people ranting past each other at cross purposes, throwing increasingly hysterical accusations around, and sucking anyone nearby into their largely pointless debate, there comes a point when Kelly Martin's old maxim of "(a) block the most obvious bozo, (b) wait and see if the problem goes away, (c) repeat (a)" becomes the most sensible course of action to shut the disruption off, regardless of whether it's "unjust".

As I've said elsewhere (five years ago!), I think we're long past the time when Arbcom should have been split into a true Arbitration Committee dealing with dispute resolution, and a separate GovCom with the power to issue binding closures to RFCs, and thus act as a precedent-setting supreme court. I'd be surprised if it ever happens; too many people have carved out their own little petty fiefdoms on Wikipedia, and something with the power to cut through the stagnation would be a direct threat to the tinpot empires. (Just look at how tricky it's proving to kick out an obvious crook when the highest echelons lock arms in defense.)

Assuming we're thinking of the same arb, I agree it would be a shame for them to go but think it's very likely. They're the type of person who'll get upset at not getting their way, but too polite to force their opinions through, which is a recipe for either a quiet disappearance or going down in flames. ‑ Iridescent 19:46, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

(all IMO) ... "maintaining order" is a very delicate concept. If authority becomes too heavy-handed, you risk a revolt. You are bringing in a bigger picture than just "EN-WP", and I have to admit that I don't have a full understanding of it all. Yes, I understand that Jimbo gave up being "the management" of all things wiki (without providing a replacement) . Yes I am aware of the "community elected Doc James" being ejected situation. I am also aware of a power monger being brought in. Geshuri has a history, and the community can not address that. (unfortunately) To be honest, I was/am thinking in a more specific "EN-WP" idea. Personally I was thinking of a 3-person team to make a final call. Arbcom as it is now is far too diverse to be effective as a final stand.

I don't know enough about the structure of the wiki business model to speak intelligently of the whole.

I do like your concept of a separation of powers in "GovCom" and "Arbcom". I think I will stop at this point. — Ched :  ?  00:49, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Meh—whatever the other language projects and Commons might feel, to all practical purposes the WMF is the political wing of en-wikipedia. Without en-wiki acting as a benchmark and a driver, the other projects would disintegrate within weeks into squabbling factions. (English Wikipedia gets more pageviews per hour than every other WMF project combined.) In that context, the WMF board and en-wiki's governance structure (including but not limited to Arbcom) are locked in a death-grip; the WMF may control the servers and the cash, but if they ever pushed en-wiki hard enough to cause the kind of backlash and mass exodus that happened at Wikitravel, the grants would dry up and the WMF would collapse. (Look how quickly they backed down over Media Viewer and Flow when push came to shove; Jimbo likes issuing blustering threats, but the board are well aware of how toothless they are on the rare occasions when the editor base revolts.)

Maintaining order is a nebulous concept, but a necessary one. There are some fires that will burn forever if left unchecked, and it becomes necessary to bring out the artillery if they don't calm down even if the result is unjust. (You filed the infobox case; you know this.)

Arbcom looks too large now, but bear in mind that natural attrition means it will shrink over the year, while at least two or three arbs will be inactive at any given time. Three would be far too small; if one were absent and the other two didn't agree it would mean deadlock, and if two were absent the third would be an effective dictator. Pulling three from a pool of 12-15 for each case would be workable but would lead to endless relitigation if people felt the arbs picked for their case weren't a fair sample; what's needed is cultural change. (The cultural change is already underway; the number of cases going before Arbcom is way down.) ‑ Iridescent 01:32, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

I dunno, I'd be more on board with the govcom idea if I had a better sense of how such a group might deal with, say, the endless RfCs on not-quite-the-same-but-clearly-related topics about MEDRS. A hypothetical govcom would be somewhere in the range of 7-15 people, meaning maybe 3 at most who understand the underlying source ecosystem and at least 2 who privately believe something wooish. And those distributions would be the same for any major contentious issue, but that one happens to be both on my radar content-wise and actually important to the project. I suspect this is one of those ideas that sounds great when I imagine the decisions being made by people more or less like me - not "people I agree with", but "people with a similar approach to thinking about and evaluating evidence" - but sounds not-so-great when I imagine a more plausible mix of decision-makers.

Still, as a trial, what's stopping the people who frequently close major RfCs from setting up shop as a wikiproject and taking requests? They could even offer in advance to close an RfC given the consent of its originators to make no further requests (indefinitely, for n months, until X related matter is settled, etc.). It may not quite be "binding", but with people who bring a little social gravitas to the concept, "as binding as you can get without arbcom" isn't a bad first step. Opabinia regalis (talk) 22:36, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

That Govcom proposal originated on arbcom-l (from Jclemens as I recall); if you search around April-May 2011 you'll find the original discussion. Provided they were elected with a broad mandate (presumably by running it at the same time as Arbcom elections), it would have no worse a sensible/crazy ratio than Wikipedia deserves. (An alternative would be for 14–20 arbs to be elected for two-year terms, and each serve one year on committee A and one year on committee B.) ‑ Iridescent 22:44, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

Right, found it, thanks. On the list of things to read. The thing is, right now the crazy in that area can be held to a sort of metastable state. As appealing as a "good" binding decision would be - well, I'm usually one of the the less alarmist ones on this topic, but a really bad binding decision (even just till the next election) involving biomedical content would be one of the relatively few things I'd describe as "catastrophic". Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:40, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Hah. "He helped hold the crazy on biomedical topics to a metastable state" will probably be my wiki-epitaph. The current WP:MEDRS kerfuffle does raise the issue of whether there should be minimal qualifications for closing RfC's; much of the trouble stems from a remarkably poor close of an early RfC by an editor who has absolutely no business closing nuanced RfCs on key sourcing guidelines. MastCell ^Talk 01:50, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Hope you like that epitaph, MastCell. If we're in a position to really need one for you, we won't be able to write anything because we'll all be buried under the avalanche of crazy. Opabinia regalis (talk) 05:46, 27 January 2016 (UTC)