User talk:Rotary Engine

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Things to do / look at:

Note: This is simply an aide memoire, so I don't forget to come back to these. If there is an issue with this section, please let me know; I will be happy to modify or remove as required.

Articles

--Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 07:25, 28 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Essays/Op-Eds

COI?

a question, a response, a clarification, an apology

Have you edited Wikipedia under different accounts or IP addresses in the past?
Are you an employee of the government of the United States (military included, of course) or have any relationship to the topic of the Senkaku Islands article that might be deemed to represent a WP:COI?--Ubikwit 連絡 見学/迷惑 08:30, 26 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Bizarre! Suggest: WP:AGF WP:DNB - Ryk72 (talk) 09:46, 26 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Don't bite the newcomers? You don't sound like a new editor at all; please don't pretend. STSC (talk) 07:23, 27 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
An accusation of competence? - Ryk72 (talk) 20:48, 27 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

FFS! COI, SPA, now SPI. Muppet?! - Ryk72 (talk) 20:48, 27 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

!COI

Hi Users Ubikwit & STSC,

Please accept my apology for not having formally responded to your questions above prior to now. I admit that I was a little taken aback by the questions; and did feel that there was at least in part an assumption that I was acting in bad faith.

In the hope of allaying your fears, and assuring you that I am not acting in bad faith, I confirm that:

  • I have not edited Wikipedia under different accounts or IP addresses in the past. (I am a genuine new user).
  • I am not an employee of any government, including the US Government (military included); the Governments of China (PRC & ROC); or the Government of Japan.
  • I am not a citizen of any country that makes a claim to the Senkaku Islands.
  • I do not have an ethnic or racial background which includes any ethnicity or race from a country which makes a claim to the Senkaku Islands.
  • I have familiarised myself with the policy at WP:COI, and do not believe that I have a conflict of interest.
and,
  • I am in no way affiliated with any other Wikipedia user. (including Phoenix7777, on whom an WP:SPI[1] was raised by STSC)

I accept that a new user entering into a contentious discussion as their first update on Wikipedia must have looked suspicious to you; and this would have given you cause for concern. I accept that this may not have been the best choice for my first updates on Wikipedia.

I respectfully ask that you assume good faith, even though our views on the topic of the discussion may not be in alignment.

I respectfully ask that you also consider the Wikipedia essays located at: Newbies aren't always clueless and Don't be quick to assume that someone is a sockpuppet, including the section at Brand new accounts are not single-purpose accounts.

Note: if there is an issue with this update, please let me know; I will be happy to modify or remove as required.

Regards, - Ryk72 (talk) 06:19, 29 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

To User:STSC

Hi User STSC,

I have struck through the parts of my previous update[2], above, which contained:

  1. an abbreviated profanity, expressing exasperation.
  2. a link to the Wikipedia page for "Muppet"[3]; intended to express a view that your behaviour was somewhat foolish.

I accept that these parts of the update were not helpful and conducive to an improved dialogue between us, and may have been better left unsaid.

I acknowledge that at the time the update was made, that I was frustrated by a series of actions by users Ubikwit, Lvhis and yourself; as I felt these actions carried an implication that I was not acting in good faith; and I felt that the actions appeared to be at least in some part "playing the man, not the ball".

I further acknowledge that my frustration at this time does not excuse my use of profanity (however obscured) or of a comment on the quality of your actions.

I apologise for any offence which I might have caused to you or to any other Wikipedia user. I hope that we will find ways to better work together in the future.

Note: if there is an issue with this update, please let me know; I will be happy to modify or remove as required.

(cf. [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12])

Regards, - Ryk72 (talk) 06:54, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Updated: - Ryk72 (talk) 13:44, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsed: - Ryk72 (talk) 11:51, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

December 2013

Extended content
To enforce an arbitration decision,
you have been blocked indefinitely from editing. If you believe this block is unjustified, please read the guide to appealing arbitration enforcement blocks and then appeal your block using the instructions there. Secret account 03:32, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Reminder to administrators: In March 2010, ArbCom adopted a procedure prohibiting administrators "from reversing or overturning (explicitly or in substance) any action taken by another administrator pursuant to the terms of an active arbitration remedy, and explicitly noted as being taken to enforce said remedy, except: (a) with the written authorization of the Committee, or (b) following a clear, substantial, and active consensus of uninvolved editors at a community discussion noticeboard (such as WP:AN or WP:ANI). If consensus in such discussions is hard to judge or unclear, the parties should submit a request for clarification on the proper page." Administrators who reverse an arbitration enforcement block, such as this one, without clear authorisation will be summarily desysopped.

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who declined the request. Other administrators may also review this block, but should not override the decision without good reason (see the blocking policy).

Rotary Engine (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

Request reason:

Hi, Hopefully I have the process right; please excuse me if I do not. The reason for the block from the block log entry is "Clearly not here to contribute to building the encyclopedia: obvious single purpose account/sock here to disrupt a page under ArbCom sactions", so I hope to address those concerns. W.r.t Sock Puppetry: I am a long time consumer of Wikipedia, but not a previous user/editor; and have not edited Wikipedia under different accounts or IP addresses in the past. I am not anyone's puppet; sock, meat or otherwise. Nor do I believe that I have a conflict of interest contrary to WP:COI which would require disaclosure. But I am not sure how to prove these without privacy implications. Part of the issue may be that I appear to be more competent than a usual novice user/editor; I am familiar with HTML & other markup languages which may explain this, and the "Cheatsheet" is really quite useful. I also did a lot of research on Wikipedia principles, policies & guidelines prior to making any talk page edits; as I wanted to be useful, rather than uninformed. I accept and acknowledge that the situation may have been more easily resolved if I had made a more direct response to Ubikwit's initial "COI?" question on my Talk page; but confess to being stunned by the suggestion that I might be a US Government shill. I feel that the question did not assume good faith. W.r.t Disruption: While I have participated in a WP:RM discussion, I have not made any edits to the Wikipedia page itself, and did not intend to do so while the discussion was in progress. I am not here to be intentionally disruptive and don't believe that I have engaged in any of the behaviours listed under "Disruption" on WP:Blocking_policy, but am happy to address any of these separately if desired. I also do not believe that I have gone outside the suggested "Rules of Engagement" on the talk page; with the possible exception of having provided long updates; but that it what I understood the "Survey" part of the WP:RM to be for, reasoned articulation of different views. I apologise if I was wrong in this regard. I believe that my latest update[13] explicitly suggests a way forward, suggests changes to the article text which might address concerns of bias, and calls for a general movement towards consensus. I also suggested[14] a potential compromise position for the "Senkaku Islands dispute" page (but no-one seems keen to comment). I think all of these are positive things. I also did a lot of research on the history of the discussion prior to making any talk page edits; as I wanted to be useful, rather than uninformed. My involvement in this particular discussion was prompted by two comments, by Benlisquare[15] and 1zeroate[16], each calling for input to the discussion from new editors. I was hoping to provide such input, and ask you accept that I am acting in good faith. I attest that I am WP:HERE, but that I have only been here for a short time. My first 3 days as a Wikipedia editor have been interesting, to say the least. :) Note: I have just found some alternate reasoning for the block as listed elsewhere are "blocked indefinitely for general disruption to the Senkaku Islands page move discussion"[17] or "Update I blocked Ryk72 indefinitely, and considering the page is under ArbCom sanctions and his only edits was basically to disrupt the closure of the Senkaku Islands page move, the block falls under the arbitration decision of the case."[18] I am happy to address these explicitly, but tend to think that they are predicated, at least in part, on the assumption that I am a puppet. Regards, Ryk72 (talk) 07:10, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Decline reason:

I find the evidence and rationales provided by Secret and others to be pretty sound. I suggest you email the Arbitration Committee's mailing list if you want this to be examined further (arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org), but I don't see compelling reasons to unblock. only (talk) 09:30, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

If you want to make any further unblock requests, please read the guide to appealing blocks first, then use the {{unblock}} template again. If you make too many unconvincing or disruptive unblock requests, you may be prevented from editing this page until your block has expired. Do not remove this unblock review while you are blocked.

Request for Clarification

Hi Admins Secret & only, I apologise for the interruption and thank you in advance for any reply that you might give.

I am hoping that you might provide some additional information which will assist me to make either a better unblock request or appeal to the Arbitration Committee.

I am still a little unclear as to what exactly I have done wrong. The reasons given in various places are (my underlining)

03:32, 28 December 2013 Secret (talk | contribs) blocked Ryk72 (talk | contribs) (account creation blocked) with an expiry time of indefinite (Clearly not here to contribute to building the encyclopedia: obvious single purpose account/sock here to disrupt a page under ArbCom sactions)
Ryk72 (talk · contribs) blocked indefinitely for general disruption to the Senkaku Islands page move discussion [31] Secret account 03:46, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
From glancing at the discussion, this seems to be retaliation as Phoenix777 has the opposite argument of Lvhis. More of a WP:BOOMERANG here and should be closed. I'm more worried about Ryk72 (talk · contribs) who clearly ain't a new user. Secret account 03:24, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
Update I blocked Ryk72 indefinitely, and considering the page is under ArbCom sanctions and his only edits was basically to disrupt the closure of the Senkaku Islands page move, the block falls under the arbitration decision of the case. I don't see any evidence that Phoenix777 is disruptive enough for a sanction, and like Sandstein said, the closure of the move discussion will make the request moot. Secret account 03:42, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Would you please let me know what exactly I have done that is disruptive, and what evidence is used in support of that allegation/finding? I am simply looking to understand, so that I can improve if needed. (If you could reference policy using one or more "WP:xxx" tags that would be best; as it would make it easiest for me to find the policies).

The WP:BLOCK page lists several actions which might be considered disruptive: vandalism; gross incivility; harassment; spamming; edit warring, especially breaches of the three-revert rule; breaching the policies or guidelines, especially the sock puppetry policy; attempts to coerce actions of editors through threats of actions outside the Wikipedia processes, whether onsite or offsite. If one or more of these, could you please let me know which; and what evidence is used to support the allegation/finding?

The WP:NOTHERE page lists the following as "indications that a user may not be here to build an encyclopedia": Narrow self interest and/or promotion; Focusing on Wikipedia as a social networking site; General pattern of disruptive behavior; Treating editing as a battleground; Dishonest and gaming behaviors; Little or no interest in working collaboratively; Major or irreconcilable conflict of attitude or intention; Inconsistent long-term agenda; Having a long-term or "extreme" history that suggests a marked lack of value for the project's actual aims and methods. Similarly, if I have been found to have breached one or more of these, could you please let me know which; and what evidence is used to support the allegation/finding?

Would you please also let me know what evidence is used to support the conjecture that I "clearly ain't a new user"; as this appears to be central to the issue?

Thanks again for taking the time to read this, and for any response that you might give. Greatly appreciated. And apologies again for taking up your time.

Regards, - Ryk72 (talk) 20:40, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Updated to include WP:NOTHERE reference - Ryk72 (talk) 22:06, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Request for Clarification - Procedural Questions

Hi Admins Secret & only, I apologise for the interruption and thank you in advance for any reply that you might give.

Having done some additional research at WP:AE, WP:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Senkaku Islands &c, I am now hoping that you can clear up some policy & procedural questions. Please note that I do under stand that Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy, and am not trying to "lawyer" my way out of the current block, simply to better understand it.

A. The block notice on my Talk page suggests that the block is "To enforce an arbitration decision, you have been blocked indefinitely from editing". The block log and "Log of blocks, bans, and restrictions" at the bottom of the Case align with this.
however;
B. The "Discretionary sanctions" section of the same page suggests that "Any uninvolved administrator may levy restrictions as an arbitration enforcement action on users editing in this topic area, after an initial warning." (my underline) The Discretionary Sanctions page also suggests that "Discretionary sanctions may be imposed by any uninvolved administrator after giving due warning;" (my underline again), and "Warnings should be clear and unambiguous, link to the decision authorising the sanctions, identify misconduct and advise how the editor may mend their ways;". No warning was provided. If it had been, I feel that I would have heeded it. In any case I would have been afforded an opportunity to explain myself.
and;
C. The "Enforcement by block" section of the same page suggests that "Should any user subject to a restriction or ban imposed in this case violate that restriction or ban, that user may be blocked, initially for up to one month, and then with blocks increasing in duration to a maximum of one year, with the ban or topic ban clock restarting at the end of the block." (my underline), and the "Log of blocks, bans, and restrictions" details a number of previous blocks, ranging from 1 to 12 months in duration. The current indefinite block seems perhaps a little disproportionate in comparison.
also;
D. The Arbitration Enforcement which lead to the block did not include me as a "User against whom enforcement is requested". If it had done, I believe that I would have been notified of the impending block, and would have responded. I believe that the block is collateral damage from the request for arbitration enforcement against another user. If an AE had been raised including me, I believe that I would have been afforded an opportunity to explain myself.

Question 1: Can you please confirm that the block was made to enforce an arbitration decision; and, if so, that the right procedures were generally followed? (I am happy with a general alignment to the process; I am simply trying to understand the reasoning behind the block).

The alternative is that the block actually made on the presumption that I am a "sock puppet", or otherwise acting in bad faith. If so, this might explain the lack of warnings, and the indefinite nature of the block.

Question 2: Can you please confirm that the block was made on the basis that I am believed to be a "sock puppet" or otherwise acting in bad faith; and, if so, if the easiest remedy is for me to satisfy Admin Secret that I am a genuine new user? (due to the "ArbCom" nature of the ban requiring they provide a personal reversal)

Please note that none of these questions are intended to imply that anyone has acted inappropriately or other than in good faith. I believe that you have both worked to fulfill your duties as Admins entirely in good faith, and based on your true and honest beliefs.

Thanks again for taking the time to read this, and for any response that you might give. Greatly appreciated. And apologies again for taking up your time; and for the length of the update.

Note: as above, if there is an issue with this or any other update, please let me know; I will be happy to modify or remove as required.

- Ryk72 (talk) 10:36, 29 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I'll let User:Secret and/or the ArbCom (as I suggested in the unblock decline) handle this. Good luck to you. only (talk) 11:44, 29 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Admin only,
Thank you for taking the time to respond; for your well wishes; and especially for your advice as to how I might best proceed; it is greatly appreciated.
I am hoping that the issue can be resolved prior to an appeal to ArbCom. It seems troublesome to bother so many people for what is, from my perspective, a simple misunderstanding.
Hopefully, Admin Secret will shortly provide an update which answers the "Request for Clarification"s, above. I am not sure that I can make a clear & concise appeal to ArbCom without some clarity on some of these points. If he does not, would it be possible for you to provide some information on "the evidence and rationales provided by Secret and others" that you reviewed and found to be "pretty sound". (Please note that I am not asking you to reverse the block; as I understand that this can only be done by Secret or ArbCom themselves; per policy. I am also not questioning your decision, which I understand to have been made in good faith)
Thanks again, and good luck in your endeavours as well.
Note: if there is an issue with this update, please let me know; I will be happy to modify or remove as required.
Regards, - Ryk72 (talk) 07:18, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Unblocked

This user's unblock request has been reviewed by an administrator, who accepted the request.

Rotary Engine (block log • active blocks • global blocks • contribs • deleted contribs • filter log • creation log • change block settings • unblock • checkuser (log))

Request reason:

In line with WP:AEBLOCK, I would like the reviewing administrator to initiate a community discussion about an appeal against the current block. I have included an arbitration enforcement appeal template below. If possible, would the reviewing administrator please also provide notification to User:Secret, the Admin imposing the sanction. Many thanks, - Ryk72 (talk) 20:46, 5 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Accept reason:

This does not appear to have been an appropriate use of an arbitration enforcement block. This should be seen as neither an endorsement or a condemnation of your previous behavior, the block was simply improper on its face and as such has been lifted. Welcome back. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:00, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • I would add that this was an unusual situation In that in the fairly brief period of time since the block was issued the blocking admin has given up their administrative tools. It seems we had no procedure in place for this specific situation, which is unique to arbitration enforcement. Given the out-of-process nature of the block and your very limited history here prior to its issuance it seemed unfair to ask you to sit here and wait while we figured out what the procedure should be, so I took the liberty of unblocking you on my own authority as an administrator and arbitrator. This is therefore not an "official" action of the committee itself. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:08, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Beeblebrox, Firstly, a massive thank you for the unblock; it is greatly appreciated, especially as you note that it is on your own authority as an administrator and arbitrator.
I also understand the notes that you have here on: not an "official" action of the committee, and neither an endorsement or a condemnation or previous behaviour. Consequently, I will be consciously staying away from contentious topics for a good while, and I remain happy to answer any questions from the ArbCom members that might arise, should they wish to implement something more official.
Thanks again for your actions, your consideration, & your time. - Ryk72 (talk) 02:55, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Email to ArbCom

The following is the full text of an email to ArbCom, requesting a review of the current block

Subject: User:Ryk72 & WP:AEBLOCK

Esteemed Wikipedia Arbitration Committee Members,

I am hopeful that you might help with the current block on my Wikipedia account, "Ryk72"; which is listed as being due to an ArbCom decision.

In line with WP:AEBLOCK, the block can only be lifted by the admin imposing the block - unfortunately this admin has resigned from Wikipedia, and so is not able to lift the block themselves. (cf. User:Secret )

I have also explored the alternative method, through an unblock request asking for a community discussion - unfortunately, this request has not yet been picked up.

Reasons provided for the block are variously "Clearly not here to contribute to building the encyclopedia: obvious single purpose account/sock here to disrupt a page under ArbCom sactions" (sic), "blocked indefinitely for general disruption to the Senkaku Islands page move discussion" or "Update I blocked Ryk72 indefinitely, and considering the page is under ArbCom sanctions and his only edits was basically to disrupt the closure of the Senkaku Islands page move, the block falls under the arbitration decision of the case."

While I maintain that I did not intentionally set out to disrupt the discussion, merely to participate in it; I have had the benefit of some good coaching from other Wikipedia editors ( User:74.192.84.101 & User:Yngvadottir ), and understand how my actions may have been construed as being disruptive; and, more importantly, how I can act better to ensure that the situation does not occur in future.

For additional details, please see my Talk page, User_talk:Ryk72. I will include a copy of this email there, but please let me know if this is an issue. I will be happy to remove or modify as required.

Please also let me know if you need any more information. I am happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Thanks again for your time in reading this; appreciate all your efforts in ensuring the smooth running of Wikipedia.

Regards,

Ryk

Note: if there is an issue with this update, please let me know; I will be happy to modify or remove as required.

- Ryk72 (talk) 00:44, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Updated: section order / location change only - Ryk72 (talk) 10:32, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsed: - Ryk72 (talk) 20:38, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Arbitration enforcement action appeal by Ryk72

Extended content
Procedural notes: The rules governing arbitration enforcement appeals are found here. According to the procedures, a "clear, substantial, and active consensus of uninvolved editors" is required to overturn an arbitration enforcement action.

To help determine any such consensus, involved editors may make brief statements in separate sections but should not edit the section for discussion among uninvolved editors. Editors are normally considered involved if they are in a current dispute with the sanctioning or sanctioned editor, or have taken part in disputes (if any) related to the contested enforcement action. Administrators having taken administrative actions are not normally considered involved for this reason alone (see WP:UNINVOLVED).

Appealing user
Ryk72 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) – Ryk72 (talk) 20:46, 5 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sanction being appealed
Block, Indefinite, imposed at WP:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive144#Phoenix7777, logged at
WP:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Senkaku_Islands#Log of blocks and bans; see also WP:Sockpuppet_investigations/Phoenix7777/Archive
Administrator imposing the sanction
Secret (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA)
Notification of that administrator
The appealing editor is asked to notify the administrator who made the enforcement action of this appeal, and then to replace this text with a diff of that notification. The appeal may not be processed otherwise. If a block is appealed, the editor moving the appeal to this board should make the notification.

Statement by Ryk72

Reasons provided for the block are variously "Clearly not here to contribute to building the encyclopedia: obvious single purpose account/sock here to disrupt a page under ArbCom sactions" (sic), "blocked indefinitely for general disruption to the Senkaku Islands page move discussion"[19] or "Update I blocked Ryk72 indefinitely, and considering the page is under ArbCom sanctions and his only edits was basically to disrupt the closure of the Senkaku Islands page move, the block falls under the arbitration decision of the case."[20]

Note: I have made a number of attempts to contact the Admin imposing the sanction for clarification[21][22][23]; but the Admin has unfortunately announced their retirement from Wikipedia.[24][25]

Reasons for the appeal are:

  1. The indefinite block appears based in part on the assumption that I am a previous editor of Wikipedia[26] (and therefore this account is believed to be a "sock puppet"). I maintain that I am not, and would welcome an opportunity to prove this.
  2. Without an assumption of "sock puppetry", While, the actions were not intentionally disruptive in & of themselves; participation in a discussion is not equivalent to disruption; I accept & acknowledge that my updates were poorly formatted, and should have been better: a) to not give an impression of !voting more than once; b) to reduce the length of the updates (by rewording or putting the reasoning in a (collapse) or similar). I am now better educated on Wikipedia processes and markup; and should not make these same mistakes again. I apologise for any confusion that these updates may have caused and for any disruption to the WP:RM process. (Diffs of all 4 updates are:[27][28][29][30])
  3. Process for discretionary sanctions suggests clear & unambiguous warnings should be provided; no warning was given.
  4. Block imposed is outside the 1 year limit for discretionary sanctions; and is manifestly excessive.
  5. Sanction does not serve to protect the encyclopedia from damage or disruption. (see WP:BLOCK)

I do accept & acknowledge that participating in a discussion on a highly contested topic might not have been the best place for my first updates on Wikipedia. I also accept that having someone new enter this discussion must have seemed suspicious; and that the Admin imposing the sanction acted in good faith, based on the information available to them at the time. However, I maintain that we have achieved the wrong outcome.

I also accept & acknowledge that I reacted when provoked (cf. User_talk:Ryk72#COI?), and that this would likely have exacerbated the situation. I resolve to make every attempt to remain calm in the future.

If the block is lifted, I will be looking to contribute in the ways suggested at WP:Community_Portal#Todo and Special:GettingStarted and at User_talk:Ryk72#Things to do / look at:.

I humbly request that the block be lifted, in line with WP:AEBLOCK; and that the following pages be updated to reflect this: WP:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive144#Phoenix7777, WP:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Senkaku_Islands#Log of blocks and bans

For additional information please see my Talk page: - Ryk72 (talk) 20:46, 5 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Updated - Ryk72 (talk) 03:27, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Statement by Secret

Statement by (involved editor 1)

Statement by (involved editor 2)

Discussion among uninvolved editors about the appeal by Ryk72

Result of the appeal by Ryk72

This section is to be edited only by uninvolved administrators. Comments by others will be moved to the sections above.

Collapsed: - Ryk72 (talk) 20:40, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This... makes me sad.

a welcome, a link, a quote, a disclaimer

Welcome back, Ryk72[31]

Looking for an easy way to get involved? Just choose one of the three options below, and we'll give you a suggested article to edit.

Add Links
Connect Wikipedia articles together.
Improve Clarity
Simplify or reword sentences.
Fix Spelling & Grammar
The easiest way to get started!

Note: if there is an issue with this update, please let me know; I will be happy to modify or remove as required.

- Ryk72 (talk) 11:00, 29 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsed: - Ryk72 (talk) 12:03, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

An open letter to members of the Talk:Senkaku_Islands discussion group

Extended content

Explicitly includes the following respondents to the recent WP:RM: Lvhis, PBS, AjaxSmack, Jonathunder, Kendall-K1, Qwyrxian, Benlisquare, Lssrn45, Brian Dell, STSC, SnowFire, Phoenix7777, Oda Mari, Shrigley, Ubikwit, Blueboar

Respected Fellow Wikipedia Editors,

It has come to my realisation that there is an unfortunate side effect to my involvement in the recent Requested Move for the Senkaku Islands page et al, and subsequent block; on the basis that I am believed to have been a previous editor of Wikipedia (and therefore this account is believed to be a "sock puppet").

I realise that I have not only opened myself to these accusations; but also that I have made each of you, as participants involved in the WP:RM, 'open to the accusation that you might have acted inappropriately in an attempt to influence the discussion.

I would therefore, like to categorically and unreservedly state that:

  • no other editors involved in the recent WP:RM discussion on the Talk:Senkaku_Islands page is me;
  • no previous editors of the Talk:Senkaku_Islands page et al (whether blocked, banned or otherwise) is me;
  • no other Wikipedia account of any kind is me.
  • no other Wikipedia editor is known to me outside of Wikipedia.

Please feel free to link to this update if & as required; especially if any accusations are made.

I would further like to explicitly extend my most sincere apologies to Phoenix7777, who has already been the subject of such accusations. However they might have been intentioned, these accusations have no grounding in reality.

Note: this update's purpose is only to proclaim the innocence of other users, including those explicitly listed above.

Note: if there is an issue with this update, please let me know; I will be happy to modify or remove as required.

Best regards - Ryk72 (talk) 11:01, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! I've always thought your indef. block was too harsh. Did you see this? I try to work for you. You can ask for an admin help by using this template. Oda Mari (talk) 15:37, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi: as advised above, the recommended avenue of block appeal where Arbcom sanctions are involved is to e-mail Arbcom at: arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org . Reminding you of that option. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:20, 2 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Howdy Ryk72, this sorry situation was mentioned to me by Yngvadottir. What a nice happy new year, eh?  :-)   Sorry about the mess. I can skim through your contribs if you like, or answer your questions if you like. I've worked with Secret before, they are tough but fair.

  You mentioned above that you were worried about privacy-concerns, and that is perfectly fine. Nobody here is going to try and find out your real-life identity, see WP:DOX. As you may have noticed, there are some folks very antsy about WP:COI; that's not your fault, it is from recent events that have nothing to do with you, involving wiki-politics and real-world PR firms and all sorts of other unsavory stuff. Most folks that edit wikipedia, even including admins, have very little access to the deepest innards of the webservers. For transparency reasons, almost all stuff that happens on-wiki (meaning talkpages and articles and such) happens out in the open. This is even true for most business of the foundation, which handles donations and that sort of thing.

  The exceptions are very few. When you donate to wikipedia, and enter your credit-card number, that does not get posted here on your talkpage, thankfully.  :-)   Also, there is some networking-data, which is obscured from all but a few folks, who work in the WP:CU "department" here, and generally only a few folks (like a couple hundred maybe) have such access, to prevent abuse and/or privacy breach.

  Finally, as has been mentioned before, in some cases there is a special bunch of a dozen to a dozen-and-a-half folks called ArbCom... this name is historical, and the gory details are quite gory, but basically ArbCom has the unenviable job of being the appeals-court of wikipedia. They have indirect access (or in some cases direct access maybe? not sure really) to the webserver innards. They are elected by the most-active wikipedians, and in fact, there was just an election where 923 votes were placed, and the top folks got two-year terms. When you email them information, it is kept secret, and is not used on-wiki. Of course, the *email* itself might be unencrypted, if you are worried about privacy from your ISP or from your local government, please let me know. ArbCom members can be trusted not to reveal your info, generally speaking, and folks like User:only and User:Secret can take ArbCom at their word, if they say that you've emailed them and everything was a-okay. You don't have to email them, possibly we can figure out something else if necessary. It's the usual process... but as always, WP:IAR applies, and if the usual process is improper or inadequate, we can work out something else.

  Anyhoo, long story short... welcome to wikipedia!  :-)   If you're willing, I'll walk you through the steps to getting unblocked, and answer your questions. This prolly won't happen instantly, Rome wasn't built in a day, but you seem a fine person, it would be sad to lose a new editor to a false-positive. Hope this helps. I'll skim your info, and check back in a bit. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:07, 3 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsed: - Ryk72 (talk) 09:33, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A brief note of thanks...

Extended content

Hi,

I just wanted to express my gratitude to those people who have noticed my current situation and have offered their assistance. I realise that everyone's time is valuable; and I am humbled & honoured that you have taken your time to help.

Fellow editors Yngvadottir, Amakuru, 74 and especially Oda Mari - Thank you for drawing attention to my situation, to my previous Talk page entries, above; and making sure that the right people were made aware of them. I really appreciate it.

Likewise thank you for providing advise on how I should best proceed; it is fantastic to be able to rely on the value of your collective experience with Wikipedia.

I'd also like to thank Admins only & Nick for responding on the various talk pages & for any work that they have done or are doing in following up the reasoning behind the block.

I'd like to recognise the valuable work that all Wikipedia's Admins put in to ensure that things run as smoothly as possible; for what is essentially a volunteer job, it cannot be an easy one. I notice that User:Secret has retired from Wikipedia, but I'd like to thank him for putting his hand up to do the Admin job while he was here, and for the hours that he put into the role.

Finally, it looks like all roads are leading towards sending an email to ArbCom; which I am working on now. Hopefully I can put my case forward clearly, concisely & convincingly.

As "74" suggests, "Rome wasn't built in a day", so it might take a while, but I hope to be back making a contribution sooner rather than later.

I think I'm likely to find myself "once bitten; twice shy" and stick to less controversial topics for a little while. Instead, I think it better to take the suggestion at Special:GettingStarted and do some grammatical or spelling clean-up &/or linking.

Thanks again; collectively & as individuals, you've managed to restore my faith quite a lot.

Regards, - Ryk72 (talk) 12:04, 4 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Ryk72: thanks for this message and good luck with your future Wiki career, whenever and however that may develop, according to ArbCom. And good luck with the WP:WIKIGNOME work - that sounds like a great place to start, as it's certainly highly useful for the project but unlikely to be mired in any controversy! Thanks  — Amakuru (talk) 17:02, 4 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsed: - Ryk72 (talk) 09:33, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Meta TBD

a thing

Hello again Ryk... are you a sucker for work possibly interested in some outside suggestions that I might make, for articles?  :-)     Also, are you still interested in chatting about your questions above, regarding the rationale for blocks, and the ways of the wikiverse, and all that stuff? I'm happy to try and answer, as best I can. Yngvadottir knows more, but is out sick today. Hope this helps, please feel free to move it out of the way if needed. But I made it small and unobtrusive, see? <grin>   Hope this helps, thanks for your serene attitude. — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:46, 7 January 2014 (UTC) [reply]

Hello again "74". I am a su^H^Hinterested in your suggestions for articles; and even willing to spend some time drafting up the edits themselves. I would not, of course, be able to place any edits or details of any suggested changes on Wikipedia itself; while blocked. And yes, I am still interested in chatting about the questions above, rationale for blocks, etc. T.b.h. I had hoped to hear something direct from the horse's mouth; but that is now looking unlikely. I would definitely value your insight. I hope Ynvgadottir is better soon; please forward my regards. Serenity is a choice; seething seems counterproductive. - Ryk72 (talk) 22:29, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
For work, there is an article Andersneld is working on, that could use some copy-editing, see pointers on my own and Yngvadottir's talkpages. If you want to make some suggested fixes to Bob Huff (see my talkpage and the Billbird2111 user-talkpage), that would be helpful. If you are *really* a glutton for punishment, your fresh eyes on WT:Articles_for_creation/DUROMAC(M) SDN BHD#DuRoMac would be helpful, and may give you some bad habits if you pay too close attention. For an easy-peasy cleanup-job, see WT:Articles_for_creation/Sapience which *was* trying to be about the software-product, but needs to be converted into an article about the software-corporation, de-pufferized, and then moved into mainspace. There are *plenty* of sources for that one. A bit more challenging, since it is already in not-too-terrible-shape, is the article on WT:Articles_for_creation/OrderUp. Feel free to totally ignore all of these suggestions, WP:REQUIRED applies as always. But rather than go hunting for copy-edits in mainspace, I would urge you consider contributing to the AfC queue (which may soon become the WP:Drafts mechanism) to help get new articles up and running. There are a ton of them.
  As for answers, again, the same sort of thing applies... WP:REQUIRED is also for admins, although there is a pretty strong tradition that they should answer good-faith questions. Not being inside their minds, I cannot give you a definitive answer(s), but I can try and see. First, of course, we should start a new section. This is the "future work" section. Add any suggestions of mine that you take a hankering to, into your own list above. I'll go ahead and split this meta-discussion-about-work, into a separate section of your actual list-of-work. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 20:53, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi "74", Many thanks for the suggestions; looks like there is a lot to be done. I have looked over Andersneld's article submission, and already made some suggestions; in a new section below. I will look over the other suggestions soon.
NB: Checking Bob Huff & Billbird2111 pages, there appears to be some controversy here; but I am still prepared to "be bold", so will see what I can do.
I also had a couple of questions:
  • You mentioned the @Ryk72 mechanism to call attention to anything that I might update on my Talk page - do you have a reference for how this mechanism works?
  • How / where can I find a list of things on the AfC queue?
Update: I'm also familiarising myself with: WP:Article_development, WP:Writing_better_articles, WP:Referencing_for_beginners & WP:Sources. Please let me know if you can suggest additional pages that I should also look at.
Thanks again for the suggestions. Really do appreciate all your efforts.
You are a very good egg, "74". - Ryk72 (talk) 22:23, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Updated - Ryk72 (talk) 00:12, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You can do this trick...
{{u|Yngvadottir}}
which looks like
Yngvadottir
and is not much different than
User:Yngvadottir
Under the hood there is a magic echolocation which sends them a sekrit mehssij.
  Doesn't work for IPs, you'll have to get unblocked for that part, which basically necessitates manually visiting the anon's talkpage, and leaving them a note. There are templates for such things, see Template:talkback for instance, which is invoked by placing something like {{tb}} onto the user's talkpage you wish to leave the template. Stuff inside the curlies is 'transcluded' magically, and although many are complex, there are also simple ones like {{done}} which prints  Done.
  As for pages to look at, I'm old-school about my advice. Skim this. WP:5P. If you want to create an article, see WP:42. Definitely recommend WP:IMAGINE. For really deep philosophy, see WP:UIAR, and apologies in advance for the poetry. Wikipedia *has* a bunch of rules, but they are not the important thing. WP:! + WP:-D + WP:IAR. Although to be perfectly frank, such methodology can get you into deep doo-doo nowadays, so I recommend you go with your natural inclination Lawful Good, and work your way gradually into the zen of encyclopedia maintenance.
  If you want the referencing to be super-cool™, then you can look at my crazy curlies inside Andersneld's junior high article. But really, just saying <ref>http://www.wsj.com/foo/baz/qux</ref> is TOTALLY GOOD ENOUGH, because sooner or later a boht or a wikiGnome will come along, and fix up the referencing-format to be beautiful and standardized and date-formatted and whatnot. An advanced trick is the Minsky moment article where I messed with deadurl=yes and friends, which let you make your refs bulletproof by archiving the page-contents. You should prolly use archive.org and/or webcitation for that purpose, the other popular one is Officially Taboo.
  Yes, the Billbird situation is a bit controversial, but only for people getting paid to be there. Since you cannot edit directly, it's hard for you to make any mistakes whatsoever. Suggest something useful, then flag down the nearest editor who looks reasonable, and ask them to make the edit for you. Billbird should not be making edits direct to article-space, but me or Yngvadottir (or that llllaaaaaazzzzyyyy Hafspajen who justs sits around gazing at imagefiles most of the day :-)   or most other folks can help. OrangeMike is familiar with the Billbird situation as well as politics in general, so worth getting their look-see if you need to step gingerly through something. But mostly, somebody just needs to read through the article, and then do some search queries for different years of Huff's career, to get a feel for what the sources (once sanitized into NPOV facts) actually *say* is most notable about the WP:BLP in question.
  And for the afc queue, WP:WPAFC or WP:AFC or WP:AFCH or similar, will take you to where you need to go. There's a tab called 'submissions' which lists various statistics. There are old articles (called G13 in wikiCop jargon) which are mostly abandoned, and there are brand new ones just submitted. Your best bet is to look for ones that are neither: the articles where you can immediately jump in and start productively helping, are the ones which were just declined by one of the AfC regulars. The decline-message will say what the problem is, and the author who is sad about the decline, will be delighted to have somebody *helping* them fix the problems. To find declines, there are some bot-generated lists, but the easier way is just to find an AfC regular, visit their talkpage, click on 'User contributions' to see what they've been up to recently, and look for Declin(e)(ing) messages with ctrl+f in your browser. It may help to click the '500' hyperlink, to see the last 500. Once you find an article to mess with, just open a new section here, paste the work, make the updates, and then use the echolocation trick to alert the author of the article, or ask the nearest handy-nearby person.
  Think I covered all the questions, if not, ask again. And yes, feel free to hammer away, either I'll answer you, or if I'm too lazy, some other talkstalk might, and if nobody answers you, once you're unblocked you can ask the questions at helpdesk/teahouse/refdesk/similar. Also, note that wikipedia has a search-box, and you can type "afc queue" into it, and get back... nothing useful... but then you can click 'help pages n project pages' to try the search again, and that will give you a better shot at finding what you seek. That said, I almost always use an *external* search engine, because the wikipedia one is so awful.  :-)   Hope this helps, let folks know if you need anything. — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 09:33, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  Almost forgot this one. WP:SOP. As you can see, quite a few of these are violated brazenly in the hotzones. That is spreading to the other areas, as well. Must be slowed, then stopped, then reversed. These are good principles; the trouble is, building an environment that selects for people who wish to, and know how to, maintain such a thing. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 10:21, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Here were some tasks I assigned to Peter, who wasn't keen on them, it turned out. But a genuinely nice fellow! You are free to mess with any of them you like, but the ones witch need teh most work are ETW and ITA. They are two existing articles in mainspace, but with negligible refs in the article. Trying to figure out if Stanley/HKTA/SliderAsia was wikiNotable, I looked up a bunch of sources in those two for comparison (about fifty each). Anyhoo, if you feel like doing more music-articles, you can tackle ETW or ITA or both. Many of the sources I found are *not* going to turn out to be WP:RS per WP:SCHOLARSHIP, because they won't meet the usual rules. That said, music is a performance art, and methinks a special case in some ways, as concerns sourcing/notability. Lemme know if you want to tackle these, and I'll try to get you straightened out on them. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 09:43, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi "74", These look like a good place for the next step - I think they'll provide an excellent chance to gain some experiential learning on how WP referencing works mechanically, and also on what makes a quality reference. I have added these to the list above; as well as the Bob Huff article, which I will have another look over. Please send details of your prior work on the Trombone articles, if & when you can. - Ryk72 (talk) 03:20, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi "74", Also looking over BETTER WORDS, so that I can help VirtualAvi with some changes to WT:Articles_for_creation/Sapience. - Ryk72 (talk) 09:57, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hah!  :-)   I was just about to tell you that you could find out yourself the details of my prior work on the trombone triplets, by clicking on the link I helpfully provided, how could you miss where I said " *HERE* are some tasks..." in my message, if you weren't so... uhhmmm wait... wait just a minute... where it that, um, helpfully-provided link? I coulda sworn... nevermind. Yes, let's just go ahead and strike this whole paragraph.
...was just about to tell you that, ahem, if somebody forgets to post a useful link, rather than TOTALLY POINTING OUT that they were a bonehead... <grin> ... if you want to search for someone's prior contributions on a topic, you can click over to their user-talkpage (or userpage), and click 'user contributions' on the left, and click '500' to show a bunch of recent effort, an then use ctrl+f to search for for trombone or whatever you are wondering about. Were you to do that, you would find these things:
  1. Talk:International_Trombone_Association, stub article, definitely-wikiNotable annual trombone-festival && hosting-association, I did a reasonably comprehensive WP:GOOG search for WP:RS, but did not read any of them, not fix the stub-contents. A good challenge, for creating-basically-from-scratch, with most of the chaff-sources already cut out of your way.
  2. Talk:Eastern_Trombone_Workshop, same as above.
  3. User_talk:Stanleywlchen#getting_SliderAsia_article_written_correctly, not-yet-proven-wikiNotable annual trombone-festival && hosting-association, but methinks could be done, if Chinese-language WP:RS can be located. No article exists, if you want to draft one, I've listed the sources (with analysis of their WP:RS status) on Stanley's page.
  4. Jazz on the Square, just-barely-wikiNotable jazz festival, picked because they are similar in size to SliderAsia... I already did some de-peacocking exercises here, but could always use another set of eyeballs
  5. User_talk:PeterBiddlecombe#trombone questions, with meta-suggestions and meta-discussion you may find useful, mostly about the four things above
Having not actually read the ITA/ITF && ETW links I gathered, i.e. not myself personally having visited said links, please note that these are all just *potentially* RS for the ITA (btw please verify whether the disambig page has them listed?), and each URL will thus need to be assessed for whether it is either RS#1) fact-checked by professional editorial board of a publication, or RS#2) peer-reviewed aka refereed academic publication counting PhD theses, or RS#3) the stated opinion of a Very Important Person in the field in question.
  This third RS#3 option, clearly being the hardest to verify/justify, but on topics like non-pop-music performing arts, or martial arts, or a few other more-action-less-conversation fields, can be essential to proving wikiNotability and wikiReliability. The usual example here, is if Noam Chomsky says that such-and-such linguistic theory has merit at blog.noamchomsky.com then this *counts* as WP:RS, although it is WP:PRIMARY and should only be used 'with care' ... but it does count. With the trombone stuff, there are a lot of blogs of might-be-famous-trombonists (aka artists) and of might-be-famous-conductors (aka the heads of various symphony organizations). These *might* be WP:RS, or might not. Yngvadottir and Drmies have some experience with tricksy sourcing, and may be willing to help out with the analysis.
  But, all that being said, stick with the low-hanging-fruit first: skim through the sources, cherrypick the ones that seem most easily and obviously satisfy RS#1 or RS#2 above, and defer the RS#3-type-sources-stuff until later (perhaps indefinitely... you ain't WP:REQUIRED to go through every source I ran across with a fine-toothed comb... just do what is fun for you, and skip the drudgery, somebody else will come along later, one editor's drudgery is another editor's dream). Hope this helps, danke por improvamente DahCommuhnity, talk to you later. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 17:57, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi "74", Thanks for the set of links; I'll look into these over the next few days and see what I can do. Order of priorities will probably be: 1) Sapience, 2) Trombones 3) Bob Huff; but if there's a chance to significantly progress any of these, I will. Thanks again for the advice & the opportunity to make a contribution. - Ryk72 (talk) 20:58, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Meta FAQ

a nother

So what is your basic question? Something like, was justice served, when you got blocked? The answer is, probably not. It was rough justice. Frontier justice. Shoot from the hip, ask questions later, kind of justice. Wikipedia is still actually on the frontier. There's only 30k active editors, that contribute 5+edits/mo. Only about 10% of them are very active, with 100+edits/mo. Secret is a good editor, and a good admin. They once banned all members of homo sapiens sapiens modernii from mainspace, of course! That was probably a mistake.  :-)

  But on wikipedia, mistakes are not permanent. History of human civilization goes where it should; that history of civilization does not yet do so, and has not done so since 2009, is a correctable trouble. Undeletions require admin intervention, otherwise anybody with a username could fix the history of civilization troubles. Along the same lines, unblocking requires an admin, and in your particular case, unblocking *usually* requires the blocking-admin. Which is no longer possible, and other admins are a bit antsy about an unblock which crosses the Big Line In The Sand. No harm no foul... you can still read wikipedia, and make new sections right here on your talkpage, and "edit" articles thataway. Just ask somebody by using the @Ryk72: feature to come along and shuffle your edits into mainspace, once the fixes are ready. Furthermore... although the admin shot from the hip when they blocked you, unlike in a *real* situation of rough justice, you can be resusitated. Content which is deleted incorrectly can be retrieved, and editors which are blocked incorrectly can be unblocked. I've only recently started messing with talkpages... for quite a long time, I just edited mainspace, communicating via edit-summaries. One thing I've learned in the talkpage-namespace, is that the wheels of wikiJustice grind exceedingly slow, but the do grind, and they tend to grind exceedingly fine. So, I expect you'll be unblocked eventually, and free to roam about once again.

  Did you do anything wrong? Yes, a couple things. First, you responded to rudeness with rudeness. There is a caste-system around here. It's not fair. But it is, what it is. You were the low-caste person. Somebody was fucking rude to you. You responded, with rudeness in kind. Banhammer. It's unfortunate... I think it's the wrong way to run the 'pedia... but it's nothing personal. "Ye judged me before ye even knew me." Correct. Because statistically, the chances that you were a wikipedian at heart, rather than somebody here to disrupt things, was about 10 to 1, or maybe higher.

  As it turns out, you were a Good Egg, and thus, your ban was a false-poz. I'm working on adjusting a bunch of different wiki-crap, to keep the false-poz events from being wiki-stress-inducing. Sorry that I failed to finish the job, in time to save *your* tender feelings.  :-)   But you came out of your trouble relatively unscathed. A bit more wary, perhaps, but still Assuming Good Faith... and that, more than anything else, says you'll do fine here.

  So. Mistake number one, being a beginner. "Mistake" number zero, reading the policies first, signing your posts, knowing what you were talking about, arguing lucidly, and being bold. DO YE NOT KNOW THY PLACE YE BEGINNER?!?  :-)   As for actual mistakes, your posts were too long. I suffer from the exact same disease; around here, they even named an official policy after me, WP:WALLOFTEXT. You and I will get along just fine. But other folks, are not gonna be happy. I won't try to give you any advice on how to stay terse, because obviously, *I* must know nothing about it, otherwise I would practice what I (don't) preach. Finally, you make the mistake of bangvoting in two-and-a-half places. You posted your original bangvote of oppose-the-move-to-a-slashed-article, and then later, you posted (several inches further down the screen) another bangvote of oppose-the-move-to-pinnacle, and then a bit further down still at the maximum outdent level) posted a comment where you suggested support for possibly moving one of the article to a slashed form.

  You are a beginner. You did not know. But here's the deal. If you bangvote oppose, and then leave a long comment (or there gradually grows to be a long chain of rebuttal-reply stuff below your original bangvote), and then later temporally you *change your thinking* and want to say more, you should say it right in the place where you originally gave your rationale, right at the top. Now, this is tricky to do properly! You cannot just go and change what you originally wrote, because folks may have already left rebuttals, to your *original* rationale, right? Right. So, you have to do it with a bit of HTML, and since you already mentioned you know something of markup langs, I'll just demonstrate, sans further longwinded explanations.

  • Oppose move to Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands. This is an artificial construct which is not the common name in English, and does not meet several of the principles of WP:AT, WP:POVNAMING, WP:NCGN et al; some of these principles & guidelines are explicitly against the use of such constructs. —Ryk72 (talk) 05:55, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Also, Oppose move to Pinnacle Islands. There is no evidence that this is the common name in English and it appears a poor compromise. - Ryk72 (talk) 05:55, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
please find enclosed my WP:TLDR rationale
The impetus for this WP:RM appears two-fold: That 1) the current article title is biased or supports a non-NPOV; 2) the current article title does not reflect the English common name.
W.r.t perceived bias of the current name:
WP:POVNAMING suggests the following "Although multiple terms may be in common usage, a single name should be chosen as the article title, in line with the article titling policy (and relevant guidelines such as on geographical names). Article titles that combine alternative names are discouraged. ... Instead, alternative names should be given due prominence within the article itself, and redirects created as appropriate."
The current title is in line with this; alternative names are given significant mention in the article, and redirects are in place.
WP:NCGN on Multiple local names suggests "There are cases in which the local authority recognizes equally two or more names from different languages, but English discussion of the place is so limited that none of the above tests indicate which of them is widely used in English; so there is no single local name, and English usage is hard to determine.
Experience shows that the straightforward solution of a double or triple name is often unsatisfactory; there are all too many complaints that one or the other name should be first. We also deprecate any discussion of which name the place ought to have.
We recommend choosing a single name, by some objective criterion, even a somewhat arbitrary one. ... one solution is to follow English usage where it can be determined, and to adopt the name used by the linguistic majority where English usage is indecisive. ...
There are occasional exceptions ... when the double name is the overwhelmingly most common name in English. This should not be done to settle a dispute between national or linguistic points of view; it should only be done when the double name is actually what English-speakers call the place."
In summary, these principles & guidelines indicate that w.r.t the article title, questions of bias, or support of a national or linguistic POV are secondary to the requirements to reflect the English common name.
The current article title is in line with these guidelines. The proposed double name is, at least in part, explicitly to settle a dispute between national points of view; and therefore contrary to these guidelines.
W.r.t naming in general:
WP:AT suggests "By the design of Wikipedia's software, an article can only have one title. When this title is a name, significant alternative names for the topic should be mentioned in the article, usually in the first sentence or paragraph. If there are at least three alternative names, or there is something notable about the names themselves, a separate name section is recommended."
The current article title & content is in line with this; redirects are in place.
W.r.t the question of the current English common name:
In line with the principles & guidelines above, for the WP:RM to be upheld, the exact phrase "Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands" must be the actual English common name for the islands; it is not sufficient for there to be several alternative names, or for there to be differing national points of view; in these case we would choose one or the names and list the alternatives in the article.
Much of the evidence provided does not appear support the line of thought that the English common name has changed to "Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands". A significant number of the articles provided simply use one or the other of "Senkaku" or "Diaoyu", with the other referenced at some point during the article; this is especially an issue for the provided evidence which is based on Google searches.
Additionally, much of the evidence provided actually relates to the territorial dispute itself. As covered below, the name of the dispute itself would appear to be a separate thing. There is no evidence provided that the name of the dispute has changed the English common name of the islands themselves in some type of back formation.
Questions of "Senkaku" being the anglicization of the local Japanese name or also being the Japanese name are moot. There is no more issue with this than with the title of other English Wikipedia articles where the English common name is an anglicization; e.g. "Berlin" or "Wiradjuri".
It appears that there are several alternate names in use; with "Diaoyu" or "Diaoyutai" being used in the Chinas (PRC & ROC) and the Chinese diaspora, and "Senkaku Islands" being used elsewhere, including in several of the "reliable sources" listed in the guidelines; "Pinnacle Islands" appears seldom used.
Based on this, there does not appear to be sufficient evidence to support the WP:RM. - Ryk72 (talk) 05:55, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
— Ryk72 (talk • contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
User Ryk72 (this is a SPA account?), let me just repeat: The correct way ...((snip))... --Lvhis (talk) 17:10, 26 December 2013 (UTC)
User Lvhis, I respectfully suggest that please see WP:WikiSpeak#respect for why this is usually a bad phrase — and you may find other hue more there which is applicable to your experience there are a number of issues with the use of the extract from WP:COMMONNAME, quoted as above. I will not to repeat the full text of WP:COMMONNAME, but omit needless words the text preceding the quote indicates that the primary purpose of the policy is to establish a preference for the article title to be a single name, most commonly used (as determined by its prevalence in reliable English-language sources).
The use of the ellipsis within the quote is also troublesome; no point in pre-pointing this point out, per WP:POINT, or am I bluffing? :-) the full text of the quoted piece is "Neutrality is also considered; our policy on neutral titles, and what neutrality in titles is, follows in the next section. Article titles should be neither vulgar nor pedantic. When there are multiple names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others." An impartial reading would be that this redirects questions of "Neutrality in Article Titles" to WP:POVTITLE (& WP:POVNAME or WP:POVDESC); and that the final sentence relates to questions of vulgarity or pedanticism(?), which may be addressed by choosing an alernate title from the existing set of common names - not the creation of a synthetic hybrid name.
In short, I do not concur that WP:COMMONNAME supports use of either a hybrid title ("Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands"), or of an alternative which is not the most commonly used ("Pinnacle Islands"); that is, it does not support the WP:RM.

:::However, I do think you have highlighted at least some of the points of disconnect between the thoughts in the initial WP:RM and in my !vote; which I will summarize, in the hope that it might assist us in moving towards consensus.

My understanding is that you assert the following:
  • a. that "Senkaku Islands" is a locally used non-English name.
  • b. that "Diaoyu Islands" (and variations thereof) is also a locally used non-English name.
  • c. that by some measuring or accounting they are "equally used".
  • d. that, therefore, the article title "Senkaku Islands" is biased, supporting a national POV, or does not accurately reflect the English common name.
  • e. that the "correct way" to proceed is to use these in a combination or hybrid form or;
  • f. that the "correct way" to proceed is to use none of them, potentially by having "common usages ... be cancelled by each other".
  • g. that "Pinnacle Islands" is the "real and pure" English name, for some unstated meaning of "real" and '"pure".
Please note that I am not attempting to create a straw man, or to verbal you; this is my understanding of your reasoning behind the WP:RM. If I am incorrect on any of these, please let me know; and let the community know which you feel are incorrect. Ryk, your intent here was in good faith, but I know from experience .... <grin> .... that people NEVER take this the right way. But hey, at least you only listed points seven bullet-points, when I tried it there were 98. True story, albeit a very sad one.

:::However, I maintain that these assertions are not borne out by the evidence available, to wit:

  • i. that "尖閣諸島 Senkaku-shotō" and "钓鱼岛 Diaoyu", and variations thereof, are the locally used non-English names. not 'Senkaku' nor 'Diaoyu'
  • ii. that "Senkaku Islands" is an English name, regardless that it is derived from the Japanese Senkaku-shotō, and that it is used internationally. (For similar examples of English names derived from locally used non-English names, see: Moscow, Prague, Croatia, Ireland, Poland and many others)
  • iii. that "Diaoyu Islands" is an English transliteration of the Chinese name, and that it is used almost exclusively by the Chinas (PRC & ROC), the Chinese diaspora, or in the construct "known as Senkaku Islands in Japan and Diaoyu Islands in China" or similar; (KASIJDIC).
  • iv. that KASIJDIC and similar constructs such combo-phrase-usage does not provide evidence for the use of "Diaoyu Islands" as an English common name; any more than "known as pain in France and brot in Germany" provides evidence that these are English terms for bread. 'Diaoyu' clearly is not used as often as 'Senkaku'
  • v. that "Pinnacle Islands" is rarely used, and therefore cannot be said to be the English common name, or the "real and pure" English name for any accepted meanings of "real" or "pure".
  • vi. that the Wikipedia Principles, Policies & Guidelines WP:PG already provide mechanisms for dealing with situations like this;
  • vii. that those mechanisms WP:PG do not support use of a combination or hybrid name as the article title or the use of something which is not the English common name (as evidenced by reliable sources); that is, they do not align with the assertion as at e.; and "e" can be elided too since it is just "we should use a combo-hybrid-name"
  • viii. that those mechanisms WP:PG do not support or provide for the use of *none* of the common English names, nor for the idea that "common usages ... be cancelled by each other" as proposed above at f.
  • ix. that, in this instance, those mechanisms WP:PG supports the use of "Senkaku Islands" as the article title, with inclusions in the lead text of the article detailing: "Diaoyu Islands" as an alternative, which is used as described at iii.; and the Chinese & Japanese names from i. as locally used non-English names; and inclusions in the later text describing the issues with the "Senkaku Islands" name from a Chinas (PRC & ROC) & Chinese diaspora perspective.
I humbly submit that to refute the conclusion at ix. you would want to refute or disprove one or more of these points: ii., iii., or v. - by providing evidence from reliable external sources; vi., vii., viii. - by providing evidence from Wikipedia Principles, Policies &/or Guidelines; WP:PG or alternately that ix. does not logically follow from the previous points. I would be happy if you were to do so; it may move us closer to consensus.

:::Alternately, we could move towards consensus by no longer having one or more of a. through g. asserted.

Apologies if the above seem overly legalistic. I am simply looking to provide a clear, logical breakdown of where I see the current WP:RM not convincing me falling down; so that you might either: improve the reasoning, obtain more evidence, or adjust your position towards a more consensus view. - This strikethru is borderline... saying what you said was mostly fine... but I would avoid giving advice (look how well I heed *that* idea! <grin>) and just stating your position clearly, unless asked a direct what-do-you-suggest-we-do question, or unless making a specific howto-recommendation, rather than a generally-applicable set of non-situation-specific options Ryk72 (talk) 02:42, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
  • To Ryk72 (a newly created single-purpose account), you're just trying to play down the significance of "Diaoyu Islands" to suit your argument; "Diaoyu Islands" is a widely used common name in English sources, and is also in line with WP:POVNAMING, WP:NCGN and WP:AT. Therefore, the current title is biased in terms of common name issue (as well as NPOV issue). STSC (talk) 09:28, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

::User STSC, would it also be fair to also say that you are just trying to play up the significance of "Diaoyu Islands" to suit your argument? stick to the high moral ground, even when... make that *especially* when... provoked I do not concur that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that "Diaoyu Islands" is a widely used common name in English sources outside those used in the narrow cases in my update above; therefore I cannot concur that "Diaoyu Islands" is in line with WP:AT - Ryk72 (talk) 02:42, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

  • Comment There are also issues with the conflation of the 3 articles in a single WP:RM; these may be better split.
There appears to be substantially more evidence supporting the English common name for the dispute itself including both "Senkaku" & "Diaoyu" in some form. That is, that the dispute is a separate thing, with an independent name. Indeed, much of the evidence for the whole of this WP:RM only relates to naming of the dispute itself.
Therefore, may support move of the dispute article only (don't bold it down here... *do* copy and bold it up top) may support moving only  : Senkaku Islands dispute → Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute; with the article itself updated to include details of the various alternative namings for this dispute. I've updated my position, above, to reflect this change.- Ryk72 (talk) 05:55, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

I haven't done everything that could be done here, but hopefully my point is clear. Give your logical policy-backed argument in a few short words. If you need a paragraph toexplain, fine. If you need eight paragraphs to explain, use the collapse-tags, or even better, sleep on it, so that you don't post until you can boil it down. If you are bangvoting, and you have multiple opposes, or some sort of complex oppose-x && oppose-y && may support variation-x-doubleprime, group them all at the top. If you need to *change* your phrasing later on, after folks have already commented, use the (s)(/s) and the (ins)(/ins) tags to make it clear what happened, for others in the conversation, and also for lurkers. Therefore, get in the habit of never using (u)(/u) for emphasis. Use this or *this* or VERY rarely allcaps to emphasize things. Only use bold when you really need your point to stick out, for someone who is skimming the entire thread. The exception is inside collapse-tags, where the TLDR barrier is helped by the liberal use of boldface... somebody that uncollapses your long argument, may get the gist of it from reading the bolded portions, if you do this right. And hey, if you really did it right, maybe you can just delete the collapsed section entirely, and just keep the formerly-bolded-sentences-therefrom, right? Right.

  Anyhoo, as has yet again been dramatically demonstrated, I'm not the one to be giving *anybody* advice on how to stay terse. Did you main question get answered? You got blocked by mistake, based on admins acting from experience (aka statistical evidence) and tell-tale clues (which turned out wrong). You'll get unblocked by staying calm, lucid, and ... unfortunately ... extremely patient, while the wheels of wikiJustice grind slowly along. In the meantime, feel free to ask questions about the finer points that may be unclear, or even about the bloody obvious points which are staring everybody in the face. Good questions are hard to come by, in the wikiverse as well as the real-o-verse. Also, feel free to keep on editing, just use portions of your talkpage as a scratchpad, and ask the nearest editor to help you out by putting your stuff into mainspace when it it ready. Hope this helps, sorry about the uber-wall, and thanks for improving wikipedia. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 20:53, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ugghh... broke syntax with incorrect nesting, lower portions of the talkpage were thus busted. Fixed now. Sorry about that. Beware using raw HTML.  ;-)   — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 20:57, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi "74",
Absolutely what I was looking for! This answers a lot of questions; provides some solid, specific, constructive criticism; and palliates the soul. I can now understand, acknowledge, accept & (most importantly) improve. I am still absorbing some of the finer points, so will reply back later with something more detailed; including potentially some questions (if that's ok).
I really do appreciate you having taken the time to look into the specifics & write up your thoughts in this much detail.
Thank you! - Ryk72 (talk) 22:37, 9 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You're surely welcome, but as you may have guessed, an ulterior motive guides me. I'm writing up the one-page Wikipedia Jungle Survival Manual (aka Jungle Survival on Wikipedia) which is intended to give beginners practical tips about how to thrive here in the wikiverse. One of the tips is going to be, don't ever vote more than once, and if you do, see Ryk's talkpage first.  :-)
  Yes, questions are fine. WP:BOLD applies to questions, not just to mainspace edits.  ;-)   Hope this helps, hope you are doing well, talk to you later. — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 09:39, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
"Article titles should be neither vulgar nor pedantic." That sentence of authoritah is related to biology-articles and chemistry articles. The main title is Marijuana rather than tri-glycol-heptabenzene-mono which is too narrow and too pedantic, rather than plantus greenus leafus hashish marijuanii which is still too pedantic, and rather than one of the large variety of slang-names which are probably more common in spoken use but undoubtedly less common in journalism && academia (when the journalists and the researchers are not being pedantic and/or vulgar that is!).
  Place-names *can* be vulgar, e.g. the Big Apple for NYC, and place-names can be pedantic e.g. James VI and I#Titles_and_styles gives you an idea of the various names that the island-on-which-London-is-located as been called over the years. The non-vulgar non-pedantic typical-published-in-English-WP:RS-usage names for these places are Manhattan/New York City and Great Britain/United Kingdom. There *is* a link for Manhattan Island, but it is just a redirect to the borough of Mahattan... because the borough utterly covers the entire landmass, presumably... though I would argue that Manhattan Island the bit of rock, deserves a separate article. Anyhoo, that's the meaning of vulgar-n-pedantic, or at least, the gist thereof.
  None of the names competing for primacy in the Disputed Islands at 25N 123E article-triplet are of this nature, although Pinnacle Islands is borderline-pedantic aka has some tinge of being like the 'real' name of Marijuana. But methinks people like Blueboar are suggesting Pinnacle in perfectly good faith... they know it is an uncommon-bordering-on-archaic name, but see it as a way to reduce the disruptive fighting (compare the reasonably neutral West Bank as distinct from Palestine and Israel). Myself, *I* like Kendall's suggestion. We have no need to use a particular name in the title, when a generic one will do, with redirects from all the senkaku/diaoyu/diaoyutai/tiaoyutai/tiaoyu/pinnacle/combonames/etc which that have been utilized in WP:RS over the years. As for the prose, we can scrupulously refer to the islands, without ever needing to use a name. All the wiki-warriors would therefore be able to concentrate on a single paragraph in a single subsection, something like Conflict over the Disputed Islands at 25N 123E#naming which would neutrally lay out the historical names, the historical control, and the reasoning of the wikiNotable proponents behind various naming-conventions. But even in the child-article specifically *about* the conflict, I would still use the islands whenever possible, outside the sub-subsection about naming. And in fact, I may just propose this in an RfC at some point, after thinking it over a bit further. But in the meanwhile, let sleeping islands lie, or something like that. HTH. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 19:17, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Desperately trying to not re-argue the SI point, but at the same time respond. Let me know if I have failed on the "re-argue" and I will amend or delete this update.
Vehemently agreeing with you that "vulgar or pedantic" didn't really apply to the SI case; but then considering that, as a result, the next sentence in the quote also did not apply to that case.
That is, that the quote from WP:PG, "Neutrality is also considered; our policy on neutral titles, and what neutrality in titles is, follows in the next section. ... When there are multiple names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others." did not support the WP:RM, once the ellipsis was expanded & the following section, directly relating to "neutrality", examined.
Does that make sense? I emphasised that sentence because it was missing & because of its effect on the words around it; not because I felt it was directly relevant.
I also concur with many (but not all) of your later comments; I agree that there is a lot which could be done in the main text of those articles to "neutrally lay out" the details. I will not, however, put specifics here, as I do not want to be seen as attempting to influence the discussion.
The only example that came immediately to mind where "vulgar & pedantic" applies is an Australian football player whose nickname, & therefore WP:COMMONNAME, unfortunately includes a racial epithet; the article title used is the players actual name, not their common name, which has significant problems.
Also, I would be very keen to contribute to the "Jungle Survival Manual" in any way that I can; hopefully not just as an exemplar of "what not to do". :) I think making things easier for new editors is a good thing[tm], and will serve to improve Wikipedia (both as a collegial community of editors & as an encyclopaedia). I can do proofreading, provide a fresh set of opinions/experiences, or even just temper verbosity. :P
Note: if there is an issue with this update, please let me know; I will be happy to modify or remove as required.
- Ryk72 (talk) 20:23, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Your experience is too many standard deviations outside every orthogonal axis of the normspace, sorry.  :-)   You actually read some policies before diving in. You got indef'd after four talkpage posts. You have patience and a bunch of other good qualities. So yeah, you prolly are not only going to be kept out of The Survival Manual, we're prolly going to have to set the selection-bar a wee little bit lower. Because the point of the survival manual is strictly selfish and driven by an ulterior motive: we want it to attract Good Eggs (if possible outnumbering any Bad Eggs that may be thereby attracted). There are already plenty of tutorials, and so on. But most of them are idealistic and/or patronizing, like MODULA-3. I'm envisioning something pragmatic and terse. Wikipedia right now, has a wikiCulture, which is itself an environment. It acts as a sorting-device, selecting out the "desired" behavioral traits.
  Trouble is, not all of the selected traits are ACTUALLY desirable!  :-)   There are about 120k people here on enWiki who are currently editors in the technical sense, aka 1+edit in the past month. There are about 30k people here on enWiki who are actives, aka 5+edits/mo. There are 3k people who are veryActives, 99+edits/mo. My goal, in the long run, it to make that middle-number jump from 30k to 300k, and from 300k to 3m. This is about 1% of the enWiki readership, so we can afford to be very choosy. Furthermore, we already have a brand new set of 1000 actives who show up *every* month, which has been going on for month after month... but also, *every* single month, we lose 1050 editors, so our net trend of 5+edits/mo folks is downhill, and has been for years now. Just this past year, we started seeting a 4% decline (net!) in the veryActives, too. Extremely worrisome, to my mind.
  But the fix is simply: instead of driving away 1050 editors, out of every 1000 that show up each month, we just tweak the wikiCulture to drive away only 917 of them, which nets us +1k editors per year (indefinitely). That means we would have 50k editors by 2035, rather than 17k that trendlines currently predict. That's a three-to-one population-slash-personnel-slash-workforce advantage! Even better, only drive away (aka 'de-select') around 834 of those 1000 new editors we get for 'free' every single month... and we'd have 71k that year of 2035. However, I'm reasonably certain that we can retain a large percentage of the 1000 people who show up: if we retain half of each batch, by year 2035 we'd have 150k editors, and if we retain two-thirds, make that 200k. Fortunately, methinks there is no reason to wait that long.
  Namely, because once word gets out that wikipedia is *really* the top-ten website anyone can edit, that it is fun again rather than snarky, I'm pretty confident exponentially more people will show up each month (or show *back* up... there are 20 million registered usernames on file). We're retained point-one percent as actives, so far. Out of the entire readership of hundreds of millions of unique visitors every month, about 5% have tried their hand at editing, and about 0.006% of those hundreds of millions have been retained. I suggest we aim for retaining 0.6% of them; no worries, we can still feel cool enough, we can still reject 99.4% of the readership as unworthy!  :-) But 99.994 percent rejection, leaves us noticeably short-handed, busy-busy, and irritable.
  Part of the reason you got blocked, is that everybody is so busy-busy. But more importantly, that's why beginners get WP:NINJA-reverted, rather than helped. The editor-count is steadily declining, but the readership is growing, every year. One of the key numbers for any wikiproject is editors/article, and edits/article. However, methinks even more important is readers/editor, and then editors/admin, and then admins/arbs. If there are too few editors, the articles suffer. If there are too few admins, the blocks tend to be hasty. If there are too few arbs, cases tend to be either turned down (leaving the problem to fester longer), or hastily disposed of (see admins && hasty blocks). If we want to have time to deal with visigoths of all sorts... spammers, vandals, trolls, et cetera... plus more importantly the activists and spin-doctors and WP:PUSH sort of folks... if we want to have time to properly settle content disputes and properly mediate personality clashes and so on... we have got to have more editors.
  We already have plenty of bohts. We already have plenty of wiki-tools (albeit aimed squarely at deletion rather than additive-contributions... another of my Big Goals nowadays is balancing that slant out). We even have reasonably *decent* policies, considered one by one. But when considered as a mass, and when considered in terms of the wikiCulture they generate (and reward... in a cyclical sequence of selective co-evolution), methinks we are in big trouble. There *is* a lot of conflict-of-interest editing, going on. There *is* a lot of sneaky promotion going on. These things will get worse: the more the readership grows, the more valuable wikipedia becomes as a means of advertising, as a means of attaining mindshare, as as means of shaping opinion, and as a means of controlling information. This has always been the case, but now more than ever. There are fewer folks to enact wikiJustice, patrol for changes, and so on. But there are *very* few folks to help the beginners, to mediate the disputes, to improve the wiki-tools, and so on.
  This isn't because we don't have plenty of people amongst the 500M who would be willing and able. It's because we drive people away. Most aren't driven away by getting blocked on their first article, although some are, ahem. Most are driven away slowly, by a generally abrasive wikiCulture which is supposed to be WP:NICE but in practice is both unjust and unfair. There are problems with the conflict-of-interest-thing, as well: if debates are won by the last editor standing (not by the better policy-backed argument), or by counting noses (not by the better policy-backed argument), then only people with a vested interest will bother with controversial articles... and once this approach becomes the de facto standard, *every* article will naturally (by 'natural' co-evolutionary selection) become a battleground.
  Anyhoo, before I take you up on your offer to have a nice little collaboration on the one-page humorous Wikipedia "Jungle" Survival Manual, figured I better let you know that I'm a bit of a revolutionary fanatic.  ;-)   Of course, *you* need not become a wikiRevolutionary, out to solve the problems of the wikiverse. You can help proofread The Manual™ or do any other stuff which strikes your fancy, without getting WP:INVOLVED. But my aim is to attract a vast amount of new folks, which are anti-authoritarian (pillar five), *actually* nice (pillar 4), in favor of free-as-in-freedom (pillar 3), and devoted to neutrality-as-mirroring-what-the-reliable-sources-say-with-no-cheating-and-no-WP:PUSH-whatsoever (pillar two). Plus, they have to be interested in JimboVision™ of building a collaborative encyclopedia, the additive sum of human knowledge, distilled into wiki-markup.
more on the Disputed_Islands_at_25N_123E, in particular, don't put much emphasis on prose-layout in policy-pages, such is almost certainly meaningless
  p.s. As for the islands none shalt specifically name, you are blocked for "disruption" aka the generic not-a-reason. It would be *possible* for you to be disruptive here on your own talkpage, e.g. by constantly pinging WP:INVOLVED editors at the article, or by making personal attacks, or by posting thousands of kilobytes a second with some automated script, or somesuch. But you aren't topic-banned from the article, even though it was the only article you had messed with, at the time. Well... article-talkpage you had messed with, at least! Once you are unblocked, you will be free to return thence, if you wish. Probably a bit wiser, and more conscious that particular talkpage is more of a minefield than even the glaring red banners up top led you to expect, methinks.
  Or you are also perfectly free to stay well away, until you have gained some experience, and improved your character-class, gained some hitpoints... sigh. Wikipedia 'tis a jungle, in some ways. That said, we can speaketh further of the islands which shalt not be spaketh of, once your unblock is achieved. No point is digging up controversy, which is sensitive to your ears, as well as to the folks in charge of AE and ArbCom stuff.
  Your policy-point, is that sentence#3 == "When there are multiple names for a subject, all of them fairly common, and the most common has problems, it is perfectly reasonable to choose one of the others." You take this as being logically related to sentence#2 == "Article titles should be neither vulgarism nor pedantic." (The hotlink says *not* just poop and sex, and the racist nickname of the Aussie you mentioned, but "a broader category of perceived fault" ... from the Latin vulgus aka low-class-commoners. The article-title should strive not to be slang, even if slang is the most common name in reliable sources.) But just like the rest of wikipedia, the policies were written all-piecemeal, over long stretches of time. Every sentence is a well-considered addition, ideally, but they need not be directly related to their neighbors. Policy sentences, in particular, are often the distilled wisdom of a previous content-dispute.
  So we can well imagine why the 'not vulgar' phrase was added: the most common name in WP:RS was incorrect/wrong/pointlesslyOffensive/something, so an exception was needed, to the usual pillar-two-non-negotiable-approach of Reflecting What The Sources Say, religiously. Exceptions are allowed of course, per WP:IAR. Ditto for pedantic: the vastly dominantly most common name in WP:RS might be *technically* incorrect in some nerdly fashion, e.g. like the argument over whether the millenium celebration refers to parties on or around 1999-12-31 @11:59 ... rather than to the much smaller parties 12 months later, which were (pedantically speaking) *exactly* 2000 proleptic gregorian years since the starting-at-one-not-zero calendar system was retroactively enacted (cf 2000_millennium_attack_plots). Of course, the same general fact-of-wiki-policy-life, that disputes *are* how policy-pages get generated, is undoubtedly true for the "see next section" sentence (and the sentences in that next section!), and for the "iff problems using an altname is perfectly reasonable" sentence. We need not speculate on what caused those sentences.
  Anyhoo, sure, using an alternate name *is* perfectly reasonable, if there are actually 'problems' with the default pillar-two-mandated-name which need to be solved. If you look closely, the key is not that sentence#3 is after sentence#2; such layout-positioning is not crucial to the meanings of the individual sentences. The key is the word "problems" itself in sentence#3, which does not refer to WP:IDLI (that it not a 'problem' with the title but instead with individual editors); the word refers to *actual* problems, aka problems where the readership are confused/misled/lost/tricked/uninformed, and to a lesser extent, problems where the article-title violates pillars/policies/guidelines/whatnot.
  So what I'm saying here, is that you are incorrect: sentence#3 absolutely does support the plausibility of the WP:RM, prima facie, in my book. However, just because sentence#3 exists, does not therefore mean the RM is valid/correct/WP:NOTSTUPID, because what matters is following the *spirit* of the policy, not the letter of the policy, and following the *whole* of applicable policy, not one plucked sentence. That means, for the WP:RM to succeed (as opposed to be valid), it is necessary to comply will all the relevant sections of policy & pillars, to the extent possible, and with a focus more on the spirit than the letter. Sentence#3 says the name-change is *conceivably* within policy... but only if "problems" (see prev!) with the current name exist.
  What are the policy-n-pillar-related 'problems' with the various suggested titles? The main spirit of the policy, is WP:NAMINGCRITERIA: 1 recognizability, 2 naturalness, 3 precision, 4 conciseness, 5 consistency. Any sort of 'problems' must be of those sorts, or related to the spirit of the five pillars. The *underlying* spirit of the entire naming-related-policy is pillar two, NPOV, which says that wikipedia should mirror what the reliable sources say, just like for *every* other part of mainspace. In this case, unfortunately, what the reliable sources say, is all over the map. (Heh :-)
  "There is often more than one appropriate title... editors choose the best by consensus... it may be necessary to favor some of the [five naming-cretiera] goals over others". Yet no consensus has been forthcoming. Pinnacle fails 1/~2/5. DisputedAtLatLon fails 1/2/4/5. SI fails ~1/3 plus has caused years of WP:BATTLEGROUND. DI fails 1/3/5. TI fails 1/~2/3/5. SI slash DI fails 2/4/5. DI slash SI fails ~1/2/4/5. SI slash DI slash TI fails 2/4/5. WP:POVNAME flatly says that wikipedia titles need not be politically correct, fair to all sides, or similar, and specifically gives political examples of the boston *massacre* and also the teapot dome *scandal* to show that we use the name used by the WP:RS folks. WP:TITLECHANGES hammers that home. And of course, there is always pillar one, the root of those sections, which mandates that wikipedia is WP:NOT many things, including WP:NOTBATTLEGROUND. (As for pillar four, it only applies to interactions between editors... not to what mainspace says being 'nice' aka politically correct aka censored to everybody amongst the readership.)
  So here's the key to the naming-policy, which is pretty much derived straight from pillar two. "When the subject of an article is referred to mainly by a single common name, as evidenced through usage in a significant majority of English-language reliable sources, Wikipedia generally follows the sources." Of course, with the islands in question, there *is* legitimate question as to whether the RSes 'mainly' and by a 'significant majority' use the current title... which is why there are so many folks doing WP:GOOG work, trying to quantitatively weigh the majority. I did some myself; the results *are* inconclusive.
  In that case... now what? Well, WP:MOSAT gives some hope for Kendall's compromise of DisputedAtLatLong. WP:PRECISION suggests a forking-compromise (that I just came up with today), the creation of a quadruplet of 'new' articles called Pinnacle Islands, Great Britain + Senkaku Islands, Japan + Diaoyu Islands, China + Tiaoyutai Islands, Taiwan ... each documenting the history of *one* political facet of what the RSes say, about the rocks in question. I'm actually not entirely sure that WP:POVFORK would prevent this move... because, obviously, SIJ would be an article about Japanese territory (in the geopolitical sense as opposed to the strictly-geographic sense), and DIC would be an article about PRC territory (ditto)... and that these distinctly different geopolitical concepts, happened to reify to be *the same* little rocks in a cartographic sense, won't mess up our authoring of the articles in question! It particularly may not matter much, since nobody actually inhabits the rocks in question. They are the very definition of a 'political construct' and coverage thereof is almost entirely geopolitical.
  All that being said, at the end of the day, the most likely way to de-logjam-ify this naming-feud are WP:AND ("use a title covering all cases"), WP:TITLE#Treatment_of_alternative_names ("a separate name section is recommended"), plus WP:TITLECHANGES ("the choice of title is not dependent on whether a name is 'right' in a moral or political sense... debating controversial titles is often unproductive").
And on *that* note, I take my leave of you for today.  :-)   Hope this help, thanks for improving wikipedia, talk to you later. p.s. Hmmmm... I wonder what Ryk means by that curious phrase, to "temper verbosity" ... well, let us just shuffle over to wiktionary, and put two and two toge... HEY! Personal attack! Help, help, I'm being oppressed!  ;-) 74.192.84.101 (talk) 13:51, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi "74",
Where to start? Firstly, thanks for seeing the funny side in the comment above. As I see it a) some good natured & well intentioned ribbing is not not WP:NICE; b) you seem to have a decent sense of humour; c) we are probably both prone to a verbosity in need of the occasional tempering; ( e) mine also extending to an irrational love of lists ). Please don't for a second think that anything was either TL or worthy of a DR.
But, given the length, and the number of topics covered, I am slightly stuck on how to best reply and also maintain some semblance of coherency. I thought about going back and adding in a series of small comments throughout the text above; and can still do so, but if it's ok, I might try some collapses here instead. Ryk72 (talk) 13:26, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, sounds good to me. I added some sub-sections, those help. "Controversially" I also explain comment-splitting within the green boxen. But: just like TLDR, I strongly recommend you never do it to anyone else.  :-)   Same goes for ribbing, you can totally feel free to give Hafspajen trouble, they're tough, and of course my skin is thick like an oak tree, but in general, try to avoid humour like the plague except on the personal talkpages of people you personally know. WP:SARCASM applies, and people are often touchy already on article-talkpages... as you may be aware. See longer explanation, after this word from our sponsors. FEEL UNHAPPY? WISH YOU COULD HAVE FUN AGAIN? EDIT WIKIPEDIA! NOW!! HURRY BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE!!1!!11` Sorry about that, but hey, they pay the bills, so I let them stick banner adverts on the articles, begging for donation-bucks. This new "inline advert" campaign, though, is getting on my nerves a we little bit.  ;-)   On that note... behold: the Great Wall of text! 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:57, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

welcome to the jungle ... anchor subtitle added by 74, not by Ryk, who is too polite :-)

things Wikipaedian or sometimes Sisyphean - survival, fitness, traits, competition

Note before the note. Ryk, you will see that below I've split your comment up. To do so 'properly' the trick was that I copied your original sig (timestamped 13:26), and pasted it at the end of each "stopping point" aka place I felt the urge to insert an inline comment. Other folks will sometimes use small-tags, or alt-coloration, or similar... but rarely for SPLITTING other folks comments. And in fact, experience has taught me, DO NOT every split other folks comments, because even if you do the copy-the-sig trick, about 1 in 5 or maybe only 1 in 10 but a *sizeable* number of people will take it extremely poorly. The odds are on your side that, if you split somebody else's comments, nothing bad will happen. But just like playing russian roulette with a six-shooter having only one bullet, sooner or later, after repeated trials your luck will run out, and drahmahz the result. Do not do, what you see me doing here.  :-)   Also, of course, if YOU do not like me splitting your comments like this, feel free to revert it, or ask me to self-revert, and I will be in no way unhappy whatsoever. HTH. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:57, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: The intention of this section is to provide a frank & honest reflection & dialogue on the aspects of Wikiculture raised by "74", above; with the desired end goal being an improvement of the culture, leading to an improved encyclopaedia. It is not intended to be an unsubstantiated attack on Wikipedia, its culture, or it's constituents (either individually or collectively). If there is an issue with this update, please let me know; I will be happy to modify or remove as required. Ryk72 (talk) 13:26, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi "74",

I am very hopeful that the sum total experience of my first few days as an editor of Wikipedia are indeed too many standard deviations outside every orthogonal axis of the normspace; but t.b.h. I'm concerned that a proportion of these experiences are all too common. Too many of the definitions in WP:WikiSpeak ring true. Ryk72 (talk) 13:26, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, wikiSpeak is ha-ha-only-serious. Almost all the humour-pages here, are exactly the same. They address a real need. My favorite is WP:BITED. Perhaps we should go through the list of humour-pages, and distill their wisdom-couched-in-funny-clothes, into a fabulously long List Of WikiProblems? Or is that just our inclination to listify, and read humor-pages, running amok? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:57, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I concur with your thoughts that the traits that the culture selects should be examined to ensure that they are (for the most part?) desirable. I would be interested in your thoughts on what traits would be desirable, but consider that these might include: disinterest; impartiality; some grasp or grammar; a modicum of intelligence or pith o' sense. Ryk72 (talk) 13:26, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Rather than give traits of my own devising just yet, I will debunk your suggested traits.  :-)   How do we get disinterest? How do we get impartiality? Those presume that COI is uncommon, and neutrality is common. But the world runs on self-interest. Everything is geared towards it. Pretending we can avoid it, is the mistake that billions of humans have made, forever. It only works in a wikipedia of 2004, when pageview are relatively small, and everybody is basically committed to The Mission and the JimboVision (see bottom of this wall-o-text for more on that). Methinks we must take the path of Adam Smith, and find a system of checks and balances that will harness self-interest, for the good of the encyclopedia. There was a reason he called it the invisible hand. See further commentary towards the end, where I speak of fun-versus-'fun' as a means of selecting Good Eggs, and making Bad Eggs seek greener pastures on the other side of the domain-name. I agree with DGG that promotionalism, POV-pushing, and other wolves *are* the key challenge of the next decade of wikipedia. The question is, how exactly do we solve the problem? See my conversation with Carrite (who is cool despite being wrong about many things :-)   and also Coretheapple (who is hardline against paid COI of any sort). Conversation on WWB's talkpage with him and CorporateM... which is an ocean I'm sorry to say... may also be illuminating.
  As for grammar and intelligence... unfortunately, those concepts are utterly incompatible with the encyclopedia anyone can edit. On average, intelligence is too low among the billions of humans on the planet. On average, most people don't speak grammatically, nor write grammatically, nor even *think* grammatically. But that's not a problem... unless we want to be the encyclopedia anyone can edit. Which we do! See explanation at the bottom, concerning the larger philosophy behind my support for WP:IAR. See also WP:UIAR which says it well.
  So I think we do *not* want to attract intelligent grammatical folks. You are one, and worth keeping, so Yngvadottir worked hard to save you. But that's not enough. We want to make wikipedia attractive to the majority of humans, ages 8 to 80 as they say on the board-game-boxen. Not because everybody is intelligent, let alone grammatical. But because knowledge is *distributed* throughout the billions of minds on the planet. We need to be able to suck that knowledge in, and process it into grammatical and intelligent sentences. But the key is getting the knowledge out of the brains out there. Half the folks are of below-average intelligence, overall... but everybody knows *something* worth knowing. Similarly, half the folks are of above-average intelligence... and thus tend to be waaaay to busy with important stuff in the real-o-verse to mess around with wikipedia.  :-)
revenge of the visigoths... we here highly resolve that these vandals shall not have spammed in vain
  That being said, I agree that grammar nazis of high intelligence are worth going out of our way to attract. Question is, how? I have a counter-intuitive scheme, which involves deliberately vandalizing mainspace with an automated RevengeOfTheVisigothsBoht. (And you thought you'd seen the farthest reaches of WP:IAR... yet the abyss of WP:IAR is fractally deep, if you stare into it long enough.  :-)   As a matter of fact, I'm gradually starting to believe that there should be a rule, that every.single.wikipedia.article must have at least one grammar-bug, spelling-error, mal-punctuated-sentence, typo, or similar. Preferably in the very first paragraph. Back in the early days, 2001 through 2008 or so, almost all corrections were done manually. As part of editcountitis, and also of course, in a good-faith-effort to improve the encyclopedia, folks have gradually developed automated bohts, and more crucially, semi-automated wiki-tools, which allow intelligent grammar nazis to find and fix literally thousands of simple errors like that in the space of an hour. The end result is that wikipedia is far more grammatical since 2010, than it was in 2005.
  But this is, counter-intuitively, a bad thing (net overall impact), in practice. We have achieved 99.99% grammatical correctness in mainspace. Any typo/spellCheckFail/grammarCheckFail/punctuationCatastrophe, is corrected within seconds of appearing, on average. Therefore: we effectively never(note#1) attract folks who, although they have never edited wikipedia, happen to notice an obvious mistake, and click edit for the first time to fix that sucker. Because there *are* no mistakes that the casual reader sees, just like there is almost no vandalism that the casual reader sees, nowadays. The bohts and the semi-automated-alert-tools are simply too fast. But what if there was a new RevengeOfTheVisigothsBoht, which was tasked to create subtle errors... the sort that only an intelligent grammar nazi type would notice? And thus... the sort that they might feel a little justified pride in correcting? That will get them a nice little thank-you note on their user-talkpage, perhaps? Pretty soon they will be WP:ADDICTED.
  Mull this over, please, and point out any flaws you see. Basically, the plan would be to modify the other wiki-tools and correction-bohts, so that they were unable to "see" the stuff introduced by RevengeOfTheVisigothsBoht. As errors were corrected by humans, RevengeOfTheVisigothsBoht would notice, and then introduce a new error, elsewhere on the article that was recently corrected. See also, honeypot in the computer-security sense. Anti-malware companies put a weakly-protected computer on the internet, to attract attackers. We can put subtle bugs into mainspace, to attract people that are sharp enough to notice subtle bugs... and care enough to click edit and fix them. Low-hanging fruit attracts the fruit-pickers, methinks. We would still have 99.4% grammatical accuracy in mainspace, and we could make the errors introduced be the non-harmful sort which have no impact on the *meaning* of the text. But is this idea crazy? Or perhaps, just so crazy, it could work? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:57, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  p.s. Note#1... the exception, where plenty of low-hanging-fruit easy-fixes are plentiful and abundant, is the WP:AfC submission-queue. Anne Delong got her start fixing small errors in the other articles in the AfC queue, while waiting for somebody to review *her* brand new articles. Methinks this is an extremely powerful finding. Most people that come to wikipedia (more than half) come to write an article on $foo. It will help us notice Good Eggs, if we make them wait in line a few days, before we review their submission... but give them the opportunity to speed up the line, by correcting problems in the *other* submissions in the queue. This is less iconoclastic than releasing the RevengeOfTheVisigothsBoht into mainspace... but I'd still argue for both techniques being valuable, independently and orthogonally, since one attracts readers with a good eye for subtle grammar bugs, and one attracts writers that are willing to help out if it will speed things up. Good Eggs, in other words. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:57, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Observations of factors influencing selection includes:

  • 1. the activation cost of successfully contributing to Wikipedia is high - in terms of: time cost to absorb policies; time & effort to follow process; general irritation / aggravation (deadly with the rude, tendentious or recalcitrant) - this then selects: interested people with COIs or POVs to push (bad faith editors?); and deselects: disinterested, impartial people who want to do the right thing (good faith editors?). Ryk72 (talk) 13:26, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • The significant word in your selection-factor being successfully. But you read the policies first. See my explanation of WP:IAR at the bottom. Nobody should have to read anything first. Back in the day™ the editing-env was oriented towards friendlyism, because bringing in more people to do the gargantuan amount of work required, was seen as key. Nowadays, to *many* people who are otherwise good contributors see banning the Bad Guys (who ... it just so happens ... are their content-opponents about 10% of the time) as the Nouveau Key... and such folks aren't all that worried about beginning editors, who are mostly spammers really, and too stupid to sign their posts, and grumble grumble RRRAAARRRrr!
  But yes, even if we assume good faith, even if we WP:IMAGINE, the current editing environment is filled with people who drive away others, by wasting their time, or by being annoying. For a project that swears up and down this is WP:NOTBUREAUCRACY, almost every single thing that *happens* is pure red-tape-bullshit. Which means it takes forever. Which means there are endless rulz. Which means, in short, that only the persistent survive. And I don't mean, the people who are willing to notice that somebody just deleted their stuff without a word, and resubmit what they tried to do again, as obviously that ninja-revert must have been a slip of the mouse. I mean serious persistence, which you know something about. I swear, it didn't used to be this way. And in fact, for about 80% of the pages here, it isn't that way. But the 20% which are tendentious, change over time. Contribute long enough, and sooner or later, you'll run into somebody obsessive and trained to be persistent and trained to warp the rules to their advantage (rewriting the WP:PG mid-dispute if required!) because they have found in practice that is how to Get Their Way.
  Fundamentally, the point of the Survival Manual is to help people understand that, first of all, the majority of wikipedians aren't actually tendentious taunting baiting wolves. Second of all, the Survival Manual explains *how* to deal with the wolves... because sooner or later, you *will* have to deal with them. (In your case it was sooner.) Finally, of course, the real goal is to craft the prose of the Survival Manual... and to construct an editing-env iteratively with the crafters of and the respondents thereto... such that eventually the Good Eggs domesticate the wolves, and turn them into Egg's Best Friend.  :-)   — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:57, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]


  • 2. the reward benefit of contributing to Wikipedia is low (for disinterested, impartial or mildly interested novices) - in terms of: risk of failure; lack of fun; need to push the same ball of Shishyphus up the hill repeatedly; this is the flip side of the high cost; and means that people without an interested viewpoint do not stay. In this regard, Wikipedia needs to compete with myriad alternatives for people's time; all of which are capable of being immensely rewarding. Ryk72 (talk) 13:26, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Correct. Fun-quick-teaming is the answer, methinks. Furthermore, that system can be parlayed into a virtual-content-dispute-jury-system, for quickly bringing a dozen new folks into a conversation (this will help in multiple ways: juries will be instructed to ignore arguments of anybody who was not WP:NICE, and furthermore that WP:IAR means exactly what it says so they don't have to bow to authorititah in their opinions, plus setting strict time-limits on jury-interaction will act as a deterrent to TLDR-afflicted folks like ourselves). Anyhoo, fully agree that we need to do our best to attract The Idealized Neutral Altruistic editor, who I shall henceforth refer to as TINA. But in general, TINA will be busy teaching children, saving strays, working at the local food-drive, writing haunting poetry, reading a good book after an exhausting dayjob at her idealistic altruistic workplace, or somesuch.
  We want to get the TINA-folks, if we can. But they're otherwise occupied. They're no match for the wolves, because they are outnumbered by the wolves. We need to have a system of checks and balances, where the wolves keep the other wolves in check, *without* scaring away TINA with all their snarling. We also need to accept that most of the Good Eggs we attract are simply not gonna be TINA, but will have some bias, something they want to promote, and so on. This is self-interest at work, and rather than fight it, we should win by yielding in a way that results in an improved encyclopedia. Still... agree that we need to seek TINA, and value her whenever we find her: protect her from the wolves, give her opportunity to resolve disputes, and thank her profusely for doing so. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:57, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]


  • 3. (some) people are just not WP:NICE - while the majority or Wikipedians that I have interacted with have been impeccable, charming even; there's no getting around the fact that a number of people are just plain rude - especially to those who do not share any strongly held beliefs. This is, of course, a universal societal problem, and not isolated to Wikipedia itself; but the juxtaposition of even a partial tolerance or acceptance of incivility with WP:5P is intriguing. Incivility increases contribution cost and reduces contribution reward. Ryk72 (talk) 13:26, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is not untrue, but you are misjudging the situation, because you are new, and parachuted into a warzone. The people on that page were acting in good faith, which means, trying to improve the encyclopedia. They aren't being rude, because they are rude. They are being rude because they are frustrated to the point of insanity, basically. See WP:CGTW, which memorably states, that the goal here is to accomplish as much as possible, until you are overcome with frustration, and thereby blocked for incivility.  :-)   Bishzilla's WP:OGTW is even more bitterly funny. But to my mind, even the folks that were rude to you here, or on the Disputed Islands talkpage, were good wikipedians. That's why sandstein didn't block them, and believe me, they have *zero* trouble with blocking folks. There *are* people here to be rude, see my conversation with User_talk:24.153.216.129#nexus. Such people get banned, if they don't decide to go elsewhere.
  Worse are the tendentious editors, that keep their 'civility' but coldly calculate how to bait you into getting banned. *Those* people get banned, as well... eventally... cf a related sort of example, User_talk:MilesMoney who from what my research into their contributions tells me, is some kind of psychiatric author, here to roleplay a just-barely-civil-enough persona, with the INTENT to get banned, as an 'experiment' in sociology. See their message on day 104 of their wikipedia adventure quoth unquoth. But I don't see trolls on the Disputed Islands page, because the dispute is a long-running one, nearly unsolvable. It is on the knife-edge of WP:AT ... and per WP:IAR and WP:NPOV, is prolly gonna get changed to $something_else. Who knows what.  :-)   Or maybe it will stay the same, and arbcom will ban the people that want it changed, for the 'greater good' of the encyclopedia. But I've seen that happen, more than once, and read about it happening... such hard calls have been going on for years now. It's totally unfair. It leads to unhappy folks still here, because they don't like wikipedia to be unfair! So I hope you and I can help the fine folks on the page solve their dispute, in a way that satisfies the parties. I'm not *too* hopeful, because some disputes are intractable, for instance peace in the middle east. Note the redlink.  :-)   — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:57, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]


  • 4. "busy-busy" causes shortcuts, knee jerks, inconsistencies & a lack of WP:AGF - you touched on this above, and I agree. I admire the editors for their efforts, and think their success is shown in the high quality of the end result: Wikipedia as an high quality encyclopedia; but I share your concern that there is far too much to be done, and not enough people to do it. Ryk72 (talk) 13:26, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yup.  :-)   See, I'm terse, sometimes. The inconsistency is especially maddening, to folks with corporate WP:COI ... their competitors get away with murder, they get speedy-deleted. Most of the folks with corporate COI are trained never to say anything about the competition, because it leads to bad press, but on wikipedia, they *have* to point out the transgressios of the competition, because who else cares enough to watch? Once it is pointed out, the neutral editors can step in and non-punitively fix the problem, watchlist the problem-pages, and so on. See my checks and balances talk, and harnessing self-interest talk, elsewhere in this missive. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:57, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]


  • 5. caste systems based on WP experience do the project no favours - Wikipedia essentially professes to be a meritocracy of ideas. Better ideas rise through having established themselves as the consensus view (by their inherent value) or through the explicitly stated method of determining results in policies for RMs, RfCs, etc. The quality of ideas are not determined by the number of months, edits or articles that have been put into Wikipedia. Imposing an alternate hierarchy on top of this adulterates this meritocracy; creates an impression of unfairness in the minds of editors; and is an implicit form of ad hominem. Ryk72 (talk) 13:26, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • But it isn't based on experience... it is based on *perceived* experience. If it was possible to have a caste-system really based on merit, I'd be all for it.  ;-)   But it's a statistical wiki-caste-system, just like you were blocked statistically, and this is a foolish and unfair approach to creating a caste-system, which itself is therefore harmful. The 'alternate' hierarchy, however, is prolly inevitable. It will arise, because people cannot help forming pecking-orders, we are pack-animals, like the wolves before we domesticated them.
  That said, wikipedia is actually not a meritocracy of ideas. Far from it. If you look closely at pillar two, it is intended to be the sum of the *current* knowledge that humanity possesses. Great ideas have no place here, to put it bluntly. Utter nonsense, as long as it is covered in newspapers and/or academia and/or teevee, is GUARANTEED a place here, with full brownie points. The trouble with thinking that wikipedia is a meritocracy of ideas, is that it only *reflects* the sources. And the sources are crap! Often enough. However, wikipedia gives editors some latitude, as the wolves well know. If we had enough Good Eggs, we could use that latitude to make sure the ideas with the most merit were *in* the encyclopedia, even if they didn't necessarily push out the mediocre ideas and the bad-but-popular ideas. That's enough for me; even if wikipedia isn't a meritocracy of ideas, as long as the ideas with the most merit are *presented* in wikipedia, sooner or later those ideas will conquer their competitino in the real-o-verse. Then the reliable sources will reflect the ideas in question, and then wikipedia can finally give those ideas the primacy of place they deserve. But it's a feedback loop. The key is to keep wikipedia in the loop, and keep the ideas coming in, methinks. Does this make sense? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:57, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]


I agree that a consistent, sustained loss of editors is an issue that should be addressed; - that without addressing it we run the risk of leaving WP to the COI/POV wolves, vandals & visigoths - and that finding ways to a) make WP more welcoming to new editors, and b) understand why editors are leaving, and remove or resolve those reasons; and c) just make WP more FUN! goes a long way towards addressing the issues.

Does that make me a WikiRevolutionary[tm]? I think not; I think it makes me someone who cares enough to see some issues and articulate them. I had actually read a fair amount of your talk page before offering to assist with the "JSM", and believe our thoughts generally align; but in this case, they need only align on "making WP easier for new editors is a good thing". Ryk72 (talk) 13:26, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

wolves
For the most part, the editing of wikipedia has already been left to the the WP:PUSH wolves: pro && anti forces battle on the talkpages and at the noticeboards for control... the hostile talkpage-speech itself (plus methinks more importantly the WP:NINJA-reverts of 100% of edits to mainspace) drives away neutral editors who otherwise might step in... but typically, the hostilities are escalated beyond bickering, to cold calculated WP:9STEPS gang-warfare behavior. If you can't beat 'em, ban 'em. There are plenty of articles which do not suffer from this problem, about glaciers or frog-species or classic novels or similar uncontroversial fare. But articles about politics (the obvious one... the hot topic of the moment is two factions of the Austrian economics school which have wide-ranging ties to the liberty-wing of the USA republican party and the entire libertarian party and are opposed by green party plus Keynesian dems and moderate repubs reverse-respectively), religion (hardline atheists versus minority-on-wikipedia-believers ... but to include paranormal phenomena like UFO stuff), medicine (e.g. acupuncture), physics (e.g. cold fusion is an INCREDIBLY bitter slugfest), and on and on.
  Everybody[citation needed] (among the potential 'anyones' who ought to be able to edit... in an ideal wikiverse) expects that the article on the West Bank might be just a wee bit controversial... and the article on the Irish Republican Army... but the Disputed Islands? No offense intended, since you do care about the issue (and now I'm a bit invested in it too), but I hope you agree with my point: compared to Israel/Palestine the Disputed Islands are pretty small potatoes, since nobody even lives there. Whether some theory about cold fusion can be described neutrally, or must be debunked by wikipedia? That is sooooo pants-on-head crazy, our job is to describe the conflict, never decide the conflict. (In theory... not in practice, anymore. The stakes have grown too high.) There was a drop-down drag-out fight to the wikideath over whether to call an article "A Boy Was Born" per the RULZ, or whether to call the article "A Boy was Born" which is what the original published title usually was (when not uppercased). Serious grudges over that. Mostly related to infoboxen-related battles, which stretch back to 2005. Think about that: 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and still going bitterly in 2014. Ten years!
  What's changed in ten years? This: wikipedia now has hundreds of millions of people that visit every month. There was a search-keyword study in summer 2011, of 14k keywords. Wikipedia did amazingly well: it was the top hit for 1.5% aka ~205 of the terms. It was on the first page (top 10 hits) for fully 19% of the keywords (aka 2600 topics of 14000). The relevant wikipedia article was in the top 100 search-hits for fully 55% of the terms aka ~7777 of 'em. Totally awesome. The same keywords were tested again, six months later, around Christmas 2011. Top hit for 9.5%, first page of hits for 39%, and top100 for 85% of the keywords. And *you* were thinking it was awesome, before!
  Flip the figures, and look at the bottom-of-the-barrel numbers: in the summer, 45% of the keywords had negligible hit-ranking on wikipedia. By christmas, that was down to 15%... which means, in six months, ONE THIRD of the keyword-topics chosen, went from being 'invisible' on wikipedia entirely, to being HIGHLY visible. Of the 30% of *all* keywords (4000/14k) that went from negligible-wikipedia-mindshare to strong-wikipedia-mindshare, 2800/14k moved into the top ten (1100 of *those* became Hit Numero Uno), plus ~1000/14k moved into the top25. This insane amount of mindshare-growth happened in.just.six.months. Which was TWO YEARS ago. Think about what it must be, nowadays, for those 14k topics. Wikipedia the top hit for 75% of them? Plausible. Wikipedia on the first page for 95% of them? Probable. We are a giant. If you have a pet cause to promote, or a pet product to push, or an election to win, YOU HAVE TO CONTROL WIKIPEDIA, if you want to control mindshare. 500m unique readers every month, and growing. 30k active editors, and shrinking. That all spells t-r-o-u-b-l-e.
  There have always been vandals and visigoths, but of course, they are getting more insistent, and more clever. A stage of 500m people awaits them. The real trouble, that I've begun to notice, is not the vandals and the visigoths, however. It is the people who have to deal with vandals and visigoths, and end up with an us-versus-them mindset: they want to keep out the bad folks, but have forgotten that the POINT is to protect the good folks. They end up driving away good folks, with false-poz reverts/templateSpam/deletions/blocks/bans/officiousness/bureaucracy. Not good. Similarly, although the visigoth problem is increasing, the troll problem is significantly increasing: there are people here specifically to start fights, and see how long they can go without being blocked. Some of them are bitter over unfair blocks in the past. Some of them are pushing an outside agenda, a product or a notoriety-internet-celebrity-status, or a paper/article/somesuch they plan to write on My Experience Trolling Wikipedia... and of course, some of them are just mean fucking people that enjoy causing trouble. Such folks are rare... but we have a *lot* of humans here, and precious little organized defenses against challenges of this nature.
  The true biggest problem, however, is not anybody here on-wiki, or anybody formerly here. The true problem is governments, and hypercorps, who would be happy to see wikipedia fail. They don't necessarily want to actively be *seen* to cause that sort of failure. Quite the opposite! It would be horrible bad press, to be labelled the killer of wikipedia. But they're happy to stand aside and let it happen. Wikipedia is too revolutionary, in terms of permitting free-as-in-freedom && free-as-in-beer access to facts. Wikipedia is extremely difficult to censor. Wikipedia has grown politically powerful, in the real-o-verse, not just in terms of our detailed coverage of politicians at the upper stratosphere, but in terms of our ability to protest (see SOPA and PIPA and maybe Aaron Swartz in a couple weeks). Wikipedians as a group are not aligned with the traditional political boxen... and millions of people trust what we tell them. There is a good chance in the next ten years that wikipedia will be forcibly absorbed into a government (it will be a quasi-gummint entity that does the actual absorbing... but control by powerful politicians will be the end result). There is a *much* higher chance that wikipedia will be de facto absorbed into some hypercorp or other, the most likely antagonists being Google/Microsoft/Facebook in that order... who will "save" the pedia from being absorbed by The Association Of Direct-Mail And Now Internet Marketing in cahoots with Experian and our friendly local telecom monopolists. Not everybody agrees that this is possible, or likely, but the chances of corruption (e.g. bribery of wikipedians to betray NPOV) goes up and up and up, and the chances of a BLP lawsuit and/or pornography lawsuit, ditto.
  Anyways, yup, you are a wikiRevolutionary. Sorry!  :-)   Caring is old-school, and has gone out of style; but I truly thank you for it. Plenty of people are happy with having fewer editors: good riddance to their content-opponents and their wikiPolitical-frenemies! Plenty of people are terrified of the necessary influx of additional editors: when they beg for more people commenting, or for more admins helping out, they almost always specifically mean, more people who agree with me and will thus help me WP:WIN. Any suggestion to make the tools better, or to make the templates-spams (and the procedures behind the template-spams) more friendly/amusing/nice, so that false-poz mistakes are less fatal, are typically rejected as nonsensical. Folks that are firmly entrenched in the idea that, first, nothing is wrong, and second, more people is not necessarily good, will resist mightly any suggestions otherwise. Especially from annoying anons and/or beginning editors, who not only have problems with verbosity, but who also like to make enumerated lists!  :-)
  Your ideas are eminently sensible. Stop the bleeding, in terms of editor-count. (I'm convinced we must reverse the bleeding, and get a steady infusion of new blood... 30k actives is fine for 30M readers/mo, but waaaaaay inadequate for 500m-and-soon-to-be-700m-readers/mo... we need to have dramatically more actives-to-readers if we want to put the wolves in their place.) Make the editing-environment more welcoming, in both WP:NICE and wiki-tools. Stop driving people away, if they have the potential to contribute. (Mistake != ninjaRevert. Mistakes != banhammer.) As for making things fun, yes, that is an essential component. We need fun usernames. We need fun pop-culture topics, on teevee and music and porn and hollywood and high schools and all the rest. We need fun-quick-team-editing-adventures. (I've got a whole chapter on that scheme.) But of course, fun by itself is not the goal; not every kind of fun will select the right sort of editors. Plenty of potential editors find it 'fun' to gang up on their content-opponents: witness the blogosphere. It might be 'fun' to insult the moronic positions of the unintelligent who disagree with you... but it sure is the opposite of pillar four, and for that matter, pillar one. Plenty of people find it 'fun' to add mountains of unsourced non-wikiNotable stuff to the article on Justin Bieber... but again, that's not the kind of fun we want to offer.
  So think over how to make things fun, given these pointers: how do we *select* the desired Good Eggs, by structuring things so the Right Kind of fun activities are enouraged, inherently, whereas the wrong kind of 'fun' is ... as best we can manage ... inherently not as 'fun' here on wikipedia? Trolls will be trolls, and spammers will spam, and POV-wolves will push their agenda. The key isn't to make them disintegrate: they key is to make the editing-environment of wikipedia non-conducive to their flavor of 'fun' so that they will head off to some other place on the internet (blogosphere / forums / facebook / www.PressRelease4Less.com / etc). Don't go away in a huff... just go away, to quote David in DC, himself quoting Marx. Sorry you had to read my talkpage, by the way... it is a bloody mess, which I've been meaning to clean up and organize, for almost two months now. Busy-busy doesn't just impact 'other people' but also myself. I wish there were more people Who Agreed With me... W.A.W. gimme my WP:PONY!  ;-)   Glad to here you agree with me, that making the 'pedia easier for beginning editors is a Good Thing. That alone shows you are highly intelligent, doubtless extremely good looking, and presumably thus also therefore awesomely wealthy. <grin> Or perhaps you just agree. But if we want to put our agreement into practice, it will be a long row to hoe. There are many folks around here that simply fail to agree there is a *problem* ... let alone on exactly *how* to solve it. Miriam thinks the key is to convert the WMF from a 503(c) into a for-profit corporation, and then float an IPO on the stock exchange (NYSE:W presumably) which would give us enough money to solve allll our problems, right? Sigh.
  Sorry, as usual, about the WALLOFTEXT. (Feel very free to split this comment, if needed.) But hey, you could have been WWB, or for that matter PiRSquared, they both got the ocean-of-text. Consider yerself lucky!  :-)   Please leave a note on my talkpage, when you respond, so I'll get that orange bar of doom alert. Anons cannot receive automated notifications, only the manual sort. I don't need a long one... "r" as the new-section-title and an empty section-body save for the four tildes will tell me what I need to know. Thanks for improving wikipedia, talk to you later. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:57, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]



Aside 1: You mentioned in a previous update that my inclination was "Lawful Good", which amused me. You may be correct. I don't think I necessarily favour your "anti-authoritarian" view on WP:IAR; I favour a strong requirement of "improving the encyclopedia" before throwing out the WP:PG. But I also don't regard the rules as immutably set in stone. They're there to provide us with a common ground / common framework in which to interact; but I'm more than happy to see them challenged & improved; and for the common ground to shift, bringing us all to a better place.

Aside 2: It would be a wonderful luxury to be able to exit survey departing editors, but if there's not motivation to continue with WP, there might not be motivation to provide insight into their reasons either. And, it would probably be better to catch things earlier. Are we able to survey editors? (I mean WP officially, not "74" & "72") - Ryk72 (talk) 13:26, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For a1, your opinion is exactly correct, in the sense that, it matches what most of DahCommuhnity here believes. Folks here see the RULZ as a means to guide interactions, for the overall benefit of all concerned. This is similar to how folks in the real-o-verse see governmental fiat. See the Nolan chart for a good two-dimensional overview of political positions in the real-o-verse (which of course are often mirrored in folks who edit politics-related articles like the Disputed Islands... but can also describe how folks approach the WP:PG and enforcement thereof). My position is not anti-authoritarian, here in the wikiverse: my position is pro-improvement. If any rule, in some specific concrete actual situation in the wikiverse, fails to improve the encyclopedia, it is not a rule and can be ignored. If any rule, improves the encyclopedia, ignoring it by definition cannot improve the encyclopedia, therefore WP:IAR does not apply. There is some tension here of course: *most* rules will have some area where they are buggy. But in fact, a clear-as-day two-sentence-long rule, which has many situations (which are obvious to everyone) where an exception is warranted, is ideal. Use the rule when it applies; igngore when it doesn't apply, per WP:IAR. There is strong desire around here to make rules with no exceptions. You stayed blocked for 3 weeks, rather than for 3 days, because the arbcom rule (do not unblock unless you are the blocking admin) was specifically written to be airtight with no exceptions permitted. Now, there will be a long discussion, about how to FURTHER EXPAND the already overly-complex rules in this little pocket of the rule-o-verse, so that all exceptions are documented. The end result will be a documented two-page process, for appealing AE-related blocks, that is once again designed to be airtight, and that once again leaves as few openings for WP:IAR as possible.
  Folks with the 'lawful good' alignment see this outcome as not just helpful, not merely morally correct, but wisely practical. Folks who believe WP:BURO means exactly what it says, see that outcome as manifestly incorrect. The key advantage to WP:IAR is that it permits the mission of the encyclopedia to be practical. We are striving to be the encyclopedia anyone can edit. (Why this is so in a minute.) For that mission to be conceivable the editing-environment must be such, that a person who.nevah.read.any.rulz.evah can blunder into the middle of an article, attempt some good-faith changes, and come out not merely unscathed but actually *encouraged* to keep doing exactly what they're doing. Only WP:IAR permits this sort of editing-environment. Repetition for emphasis: only WP:IAR permits this sort of editing-environment. Furthermore, the rest of the JimboVision™ is not merely "to be" the encyclopedia anyone can edit... but to collaboratively create the sum of human knowledge. We have to metaphorically *add up* all the knowledge of all the humans in the world, to get the sum of human knowledge. That, in a nutshell, is *why* wikipedia is "the encyclopedia anyone can edit" ... which in turn is *why* WP:IAR is a pillar (and largely... ditto for WP:NICE and WP:NPOV ... they permit the mission!).
For a2, there *are* surveys, and if you search my talkpage you'll find them. But I'd rather you see what a little digging of your own turns up, if you don't mind. I've done my own digging, and of course I don't want you wasting time retracing my steps, but I've strong reason to believe that *many* surveys exist... and that I was unable to find them. Or rather, that I've got such a high opinion of my own keen insight into the minds of our tens of thousands of active editors (hundreds of thousands if you count more broadly than registereds with 5+edits/mo) that I stopped looking after I ran across just one survey, from early 2011 methinks.  :-)   It will help if we have more, methinks, so if you wish then please start hunting for surveys, and then we'll put our findings together, and distill out a paragraph for the Survival Manual. (("why edit wikipedia?" or maybe "motivation for surviving" or somesuch)) 74.192.84.101 (talk) 00:57, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

on names

things Pinnacalian &/or spherically pedalian - names, policies, forks & futbol

Note: Placeholder for discussion of naming policies, POVforks, resolving conflicts, etc - Ryk72 (talk) 13:26, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: if there is an issue with this update, please let me know; I will be happy to modify or remove as required.
- Ryk72 (talk) 13:26, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi , I just noticed the edit summary for your previous update above, and finally worked out that you were responding to the implied question in my previous: "vulgarity or pedanticism(?)". I'm a bit slow today. The question mark was only around the word that I used, "pedanticism"; which definitely isn't English. I realise that this should've been "pedantry", but wanted a strong tie to the actual text used in the relevant WP:PG, which is "vulgar or pedantic"; so built my own English, in the style of The Bard. Hope this makes it clearer? As mudlike? - Ryk72 (talk) 12:49, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Heh heh... okay, *that* is funny.  :-)   I'm so used to using bad grammar when spachen ze poliseez, it literally never came anywhere near to the occur of me, to think you were putting the qmark as a way of pointing out that pedanticism is a totally logical yet totally made up word. As you probably realize by now, I'm a bit annoyed at the need to stay grammatical in mainspace, so I tend to blow the doors off, in talkspace. Anyhoo, yes, now I gotcha. Still, glad I *thought* it was a question, writing the answer was useful for organizing my own thoughts(?).  ;-)   74.192.84.101 (talk) 13:51, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Which way to proceed

Extended content

Ryk72: I hadn't seen the unblock request and Arbcom appeal draft above until today, sorry. Did you decide not to e-mail Arbcom? It still appears that having you do that would be the simplest way, since the blocking administrator, Secret, is no longer an admin. If you have decided not to do that, I think a discussion on the Admins' Noticeboard might be preferable to a formal Arbcom appeal, but the e-mail route might save us all from having to go through either of those. Yngvadottir (talk) 22:16, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Yngvadottir, I hope this finds you well.
It wasn't so much a decision not to email ArbCom; more than I re-read the following section of WP:AEBLOCK;
"To request that such a block be lifted, you may:
  • address your appeal by email to the blocking administrator (using the "Email this user" link on their talk page), or
  • make an unblock request using ((unblock)) that asks the reviewing administrator to initiate a community discussion about your appeal. You should prepare the appeal in the form provided by the template ((Arbitration enforcement appeal)) on your talk page, below the unblock request, so that the reviewing administrator may simply copy it to the appropriate community forum. You are not entitled to a community review of your block. The reviewing administrator may decline to initiate a community discussion if you do not prepare a convincing appeal before making your unblock request.
If neither of these appeals is successful, you may appeal by email to the Arbitration Committee (at arbcom-l@lists.wikimedia.org)."
and thought it seemed to indicate that the email to ArbCom should be after (at least one of) these two options had been explored.
So, more a case of trying to complete the prerequisite actions than anything else.
I am, however, inclined to go with the suggestions of those more knowledgeable & experienced that I; so will send something through to ArbCom later today.
Thanks again for your time, and for your assistance. It is always appreciated. - Ryk72 (talk) 22:51, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I see. I think at this point I'll add your talk page to my voluminous watch list; let us know how it turns out. (By the way on those two scale articles, see WP:Merging for instructions on proposing a merger.) Yngvadottir (talk) 23:03, 7 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Yngvadottir, thanks for the advice on WP:Merging; looks a long process, but therefore clear and cautious, which are both good things. I noticed that on "74"'s Talk page, you mentioned that you were on IRC, so went looking, but could not find you. I am still there, with the obvious nick. Please also let me know if you advise that I close out the "unblock" request above & instead focus on an email to ArbCom - I'm basically just trying to follow the rules & at the same time not bother too many people; so am happy to take the less complex, less involved path. Thanks again. - Ryk72 (talk) 00:23, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I should probably procedurally decline that open unblock request, but it seems like a mean thing to do. If you are amenable to sending the e-mail, I'd say do that and then if they unblock you, one of them can accept it. And I just pm'd you on IRC; I use the nick Rihan there :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 00:34, 8 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, what's happened? Did you e-mail them? I spent much of the last calendar week in a fog of sneeze-and-coughiness, with housemates standing over me ordering me to bed, so I avoided doing anything involving higher-order thought or admin tools, but I'm wondering whether there's been any change. Yngvadottir (talk) 13:19, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Yngvadottir,
No change as yet; but fortunately, the ball is still firmly in my court. I, likewise, spent most of the last few days sick in bed; so have not yet sent the email to ArbCom; the positive side of this is that I feel I can now suggest that I have tried the alternative avenues per WP:AEBLOCK.
The world outside the doorstep is taking precedence over the world beyond the keyboard today, as I catch up on a few things; but I am hopeful of popping an email through later in the day; will update here when so.
Hope you are feeling much improved & back to your usual self. - Ryk72 (talk) 22:40, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, I completely understand. Hope you're better now :-) Yngvadottir (talk) 22:46, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Yngvadottir, just letting you know that the email to ArbCom is sent; but pending approval of the list moderator before it gets forwarded to the ArbCom members. A copy of the text is in the "December 2013" section above. And yes, much improved healthwise; hope you are likewise. - Ryk72 (talk) 10:37, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Point of order, yer honour... emailing arbcom *is* fine methinks, because your unblock-request (please will the admin file me an appeal) has been ignored so far. However, it would be wrong to say your unblock-via-appeal-at-AE has actually failed because the appeal (at AE or more properly AN methinks) has yet to happen. By my reading of DahRulz, though, contacting arbcom is always possible, specifically because ArbCom *can* give permission for some uninvolved admin (like HJ_Mitchell... who was specifically worried about possible Arb-related repercussions) to go ahead and CrossTheArbEnforcementLineInTheSand. Without that permission, it is not 'safe' for any admin but Secret to unblock you (sans appeal at AE).
  But the arbs may insist on dragging things out, if they do not wish to give non-endorsing-merely-procedural permission for an uninvolved admin to (at the admin's own discretion!) unblock you... whilst carrying their arbcom-written-procedural-permission-in-hand, thereby avoiding the risk of summarily-desysop'd-actions. Point being, if the arbs punt, then we'll get you an appeal at AN or AE or something like that; your request for appeal-at-AE-or-AN has failed to be acted upon, but the appeal-at-AE-or-AN itself has not yet therefore happened, and thus has not 'failed' in the usual meaning of that term. See also WP:DEADLINE and one of my favorites, WP:REQUIRED. HTH. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 17:08, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi "74",
You had me worried there for a second; worried that I'd suggested that an AE appeal had failed. As you quite rightly point out, this is not the case; an appeal hasn't yet happened.
I think I would be comfortable with either ArbCom directly overturning the block or sending things to an appeal at AE or AN. Based on the feedback here & elsewhere, I think that there is every chance of an appeal being successful - for reasons of WP:ROPE & WP:UB_CHEAP if nothing else.
But I'm also prepared for things to take some time. I keep in the back of my head that everyone here is a volunteer, and is doing this in their spare time - so I appreciate everything that is being / or might be done.
We'll wait and see what comes back from the email. Will keep you both posted. - Ryk72 (talk) 20:47, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, So much to respond to; especially a few massive updates from "74" for which, given the time taken to write them, it would be churlish to not provide a response. And then to do some actual Wikiwork on building a better encyclopaedia. Will come back to here with a "sitrep" shortly. - Ryk72 (talk) 08:17, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Yngvadottir & "74",

Just a quick note to let you know that I haven't heard anything as yet from the email to ArbCom. Given that the previous auto-response suggested that I would receive a notice if the email was not approved by the moderator, I'm considering that this is a case where "no news is _no news_" rather than anything else; either good or bad.

I am hopeful of hearing something back in the next day or so, but will send a follow up email if I have not heard anything soon - likely asking for a positive confirmation of receipt if nothing more.

Hope you are both well. Thank you for making Wikipedia, and my experience of it, better. - Ryk72 (talk) 13:37, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ryk72, I was thinking it had been a long time, so I chose a member of Arbcom to bother with an e-mail. I've now received a response saying your e-mail was not apparently received, and you should send it again. I'm glad I asked .... Yngvadottir (talk) 22:54, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Yngvadottir,
I too am glad that you asked. I have just now resent the email.
Thanks again.
R - Ryk72 (talk) 23:06, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsed: - Ryk72 (talk) 09:33, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Adolf Fredrik's music school

a school, an article, some advice, a success

Hej Andersneld,

I'm not sure if this is exactly what you are looking for, or indeed if it helps in any way; and I do not claim to be any sort of expert on things Wikipedian; but I had a look over the article proposed at WT:Articles_for_creation/Adolf_Fredrik's_music_school, and here are some thoughts:

  • Article Title: Not wanting to open a can of worms; but should the "music school" part be "Music School" (or even "Musikklasser")?
You are right, I will change. On the school's English language web page they use "music school" and "Music School" without any apparent system. They don't write "musikklasser though". After changing: The article's name doesn't change ... how do I accomplish that?
It is a bit strange at first, but try to sign each mini-posting with the four tildes, that way, I can see who is Ryk, and who is Andersneld. This is 74, of course! And the answer is, you should not try to change the article-name midstream, just put a big bold note at the top of your AfC page which says please make article title == xxxxxxxxxxxxxx and the problem will be corrected before the page is created in mainspace. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 09:58, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Lead section: Move the reference links to end of sentence "The school has three youth choirs of high international standard." - it currently breaks up the sentence & moving would look neater & flow better.
Yes, done
  • History section: "Stockholm's music classes" seems like it might be a transliteration of a Swedish proper noun for a particular organisation or group; if so, suggest that it needs to be qualified with a generic noun - "Tom, a cat, until 1960..." or similar - to distinguish it from the concept, "all music classes occurring in Stockholm". - please let me know if this doesn't make sense.
I made a change, what do you think of the new version?
  • History section: "Mariaskolan, Eriksdalsskolan and "Small Adolf Fredrik" at Dalagatan 18, at Hälsingegatan 2, in Vasa Real, and finally the Swedish National Defence College's old premises at Valhallavägen" reads somewhat strangely; could this be "Mariskolan, in Dalagatan 18; Eriksdalsskolan, in Hälsingegatan 2; "Small Adolf Fredrik" in Vasa Real; and finally the Swedish National Defence College's old premises at Valhallavägen"? Alternately, if this part is mostly about "Stockholm's music classes", and not AF music school, then suggest removing it.
I changed the text, better now?
  • History section: Split or move "Facilities" sub-section out of "History" section. - basically "is this the history of the facilities, or a description of the facilities including some history?"
Good suggestion, done

I also went looking in the suggested places for additional references in books, academic journals, etc - there are not many for "AF music school"; but found the following for "AF Musikklasser", which you might want to use:

  1. "The Cambridge Companion to Choral Music" - http://books.google.com/books?id=b79Dc9sHDtMC&pg=PA323&dq=%22Adolf+Fredriks+Musikklasser%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PVnQUsSCC8rnkAXGsIGYDg&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22Adolf%20Fredriks%20Musikklasser%22&f=false
  2. "Nordic Sounds" - http://books.google.com/books?id=EHlPAQAAIAAJ&q=%22Adolf+Fredriks+Musikklasser%22&dq=%22Adolf+Fredriks+Musikklasser%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=PVnQUsSCC8rnkAXGsIGYDg&ved=0CFAQ6AEwBg
I will look into this and the iTunes suggestion

I don't think there's much detail that isn't already mentioned in the article; but additional references certainly speaks to notability.

From the perspective of demonstrating notability, there's also:

  • Some nice videos of performances on Youtube, which might be nice to link to, for people who want to have a listen to what the choirs sound like - again, suggest you check with someone to make sure this is ok.

Feel free to use or refuse any & all of these.

Best of luck! I am looking forward to saying "GRATTIS!" when the article is accepted. :)

Note: if there is an issue with this update, please let me know; I will be happy to modify or remove as required.

- Ryk72 (talk) 21:40, 10 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Terrific, many thanks for all the suggestions! I have included comments in the text above. Andersneld (talk) 07:04, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I found the book links above to be a little thin, but I found a Swedish book that I included under the Wider influence section Andersneld (talk) 07:42, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WP:ELNO and WP:ELMAYBE are helpful here. Linking to itunes/amazon/ebay/similar is a no-go, per WP:NOTPROMOTION. We link to amazon.com from the Amazon.com article, of course, as their homepage, but we don't litter the rest of wikipedia with links to explicit commercial content. "Coupons" in the middle of the encyclopedias was a good tactic in the 1930s when encyclopedia sets were sold door-to-door, one volume at a time, but this is the internet age, right? We already have enough spam on wikipedia, with talkpage-template-spams, and mainspace-snark-tag-spams, and those annoying WMF donation-banners.  :-)   Anyways, no itunes.
  Also no youtube, for a different reason. Youtube links are often a copyright violation, see WP:COPYVIO for all the gory details. And in particular, the school sells their copyrighted performances on itunes, and wikipedia does not want to get into trouble over COPYVIO infringements in violation of WIPO. What would be nice, not immediately but eventually, is to get some recordings of the school choirs that are under CC-BY-SA-v3 or GFDL or similar wikipedia-compatible-licensing. That would require permission from the school, the singers, and the person (possibly Andersneld and possibly not) doing the recording-session-work. Uploading photos is similarly difficult; ideally, it is best to personally take the photo yourself, with your own digital camera, so that there are little-to-no-copyright-hassles.
  Ironic that the school's name is in contention.  :-)   As I learned on the Hotly Disputed Islands Of The Pacific Over Which Nobody Has Recently Died But The Day Is Young page where Ryk first enjoyed dipping their toe into the wikiverse, the usual approach is to use the English name which the WP:RS predominantly use. When the group travels to other countries, and the local English-language paper at their destination prints an article about the concert, what is the school called? Similarly, what is the school called in the google books hits? There can always be *redirects* which use variations, but the 'main' name of the Adolph article should be the one found in the RSes. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 09:58, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  Oh yeah, and forgot to mention. When creating an AfC article, or any new article for that matter, WP:42 applies, and it speaks of 'significant' coverage. Usually this is translated as "depth" of coverage, aka non-trivial non-incidental mention. Pages and pages? Great. Helps prove WP:N, just find two more or so, to cover the 'multiple' part of the basic rule. One sentence out of fifty? Not enough for WP:N prolly, but might by WP:NOTEWORTHY, as long as the source isn't merely a directory (e.g. the yellow pages are not counted as WP:RS). Hope this helps, thanks for improving wikipedia, folks. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 10:03, 11 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi 74.192.84.101,
I just wanted to say thanks again for the detailed response above. All very useful stuff which I am in the process of assimilating, but which will prove useful on future articles. I thought that the YouTube & iTunes links would be "borderline at best"; hence the caution to check with someone more experienced; and yes, I do see that if they were to be allowed that it would open a veritable can of worms.
And yes, I do also see the irony in my questions around the name of the article; especially given my brief, but interesting time here. :)
Good to see that, as Andersneld suggests, the article has now made its way into the main Wikipedia. A tribute to his efforts, and to the capable assistance of Yngvadottir & yourself. - Ryk72 (talk) 11:44, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

To my immense relief the article was finally approved yesterday :-) Thanks for all the help !!!

It is interesting that the school's own web page has youtube links. They might be the copyright holders though.

Regarding the school's name I have just e-mailed the school's principal. I informed him that all four words now begin with uppercase letters on Wikipedia, and suggested that the school should adopt this as a new standard in English translations. I didn't say this quite as bluntly of course. The problem is that this is not how it would be done in Swedish (Adolf Fredriks musikklasser) so for many Swedes it takes some getting used to. Andersneld (talk) 07:11, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hej Andersneld, GRATTIS!!
I am really very happy for you. It's nice to see your efforts produce a good result. And I, personally, think that it is good to have Adolf Fredrik's Music School included in Wikipedia; that it makes for a better encyclopedia.
W.r.t capitalisation of the school's name; all capitals is the convention used where I am from, and I think it's fairly usual in English speaking countries worldwide.
I agree that the references that I found were thin, but would still be inclined to see if you can work the "The Cambridge Companion to Choral Music" reference in somewhere. Cambridge University Press is a well respected publisher, linked to the university itself, and unlikely to be questioned as a reliable source.
But still, good to see the article accepted; a tribute to your hard work. I hope I was able to help in some small way. Feel free to let me know if I can help with anything else that you are working on.
And finally, a big thank you for dropping by here to let me know about the success. Really appreciate it.
Best regards, - Ryk72 (talk) 09:56, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Updated - Ryk72 (talk) 10:32, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hej again Ryk72, I did manage to weave a reference to the "The Cambridge Companion to Choral Music" into the article :-} Andersneld (talk) 13:07, 13 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the youtube links from the school's website, it depends on what they are linking to. For instance, Yngvadottir had to chase somebody around from Stockholm the other week (back before Yngvadottir got totalllllly llllaaaazzzyyy and spent all that time lounging around in bed... slothful I say... disgraceful :-)
  This not-very-WP:NICE-person came here to put speculative unsourced defamatory language into a WP:BLP article, libelous unsourced defamatory material into a corporate article, and a link to a youtube video which was a full-length-rip of a copyrighted 1957 hollywood movie uploaded by some shady character deep in cyrillic territory.
  PLUS THEY EVEN SAID THAT ACACIA-HONEY IS MADE FROM THE ACACIA-PLANT, when as every botanist knows acacia honey is made from the *faux* 'acacia' plant!  :-)   Shockingly enough, somebody actually *did* know that fact, and when the visigoth inserted their unsourced and incorrect scientific not even wrong sentence into the article about the plant, it was fixed a few minutes later with the correct edit-summary. Impressive!
  Getting back to the point... merely linking to youtube, is not a copyright violation, aka WP:COPYVIO. The problem is, there are plenty of things on youtube which *are* infringing on copyright. You have to have a situation like this: person A creates a copyrighted movie, person B is the syndicate-holding-company which owns the copyright, person C buys the dvd and uploads the entire movie (to which they don't have the copyright... that would belong to person B remember) into their youtube account, person D inserts a link to that illegal-in-the-USA-content into a wikipedia article, and person E — an enemy of wikipedia — sues the pants off the WMF (and wins), or calls the upstream backbone provider which gives fiber-optic-access to the WMF datacenter (and forces them to pull the plug). That is the problem here.
  Now, what happens if there is a link to the same youtube video, from the website of the junior high choral-singing magnet-school in Sweden? Nothing. Why? Because there is not anybody to play the role of person E who will sue the school, or get their ISP to blacklist them, or other nefarious tricks. On the other hand, what is the school is linking to one of the 99% of youtube videos which are *legitimately* uploaded to youtube? Well, nothing. There's no law against linking to youtube.
  Wikipedia is careful about linking to youtube, because we have a *lot* of people that want to insert the specific links which are specifically in the 1% of youtube which is COPYVIO terrirtory, and more importantly, because there are plenty of groups willing to play the role of "person E" and sue the pants off wikipedia. Nobody is out to get the nice school in Sweden; but plenty of people would like to control wikipedia, or simply, get their hot little hands on some of the tens of millions of dollars that wikipedia has in donation-moolah. So we have to be extra careful about youtube. It's a dangerous game to play. The stakes are very high: if we "win" then we get to have a link to some youtube video... prolly not that big a "win". If we lose, the entire server-farm is taken offline, and possibly, millions of bucks in donations evaporate into thin air. NOT GOOD!
  As for iTunes, we pretty much never link there. Nor to amazon, nor to any other online store, for the most part, unless per WP:IAR... I may have to link there for auto-parts-cites, soon, as a matter of fact. (To an auto-parts-remanufacturer website... not to iTunes! :-)   Instead of hawking the wares of the school, by linking to their iTunes store, wikipedia would prefer to get some recordings of their content that are uploaded and copyright-licensed in such a way that they become free-as-in-freedom, for everyone in the world to enjoy. The owners of the school may not be interested in doing this, depending on how much money the school is trying to make from selling their wares on iTunes. See for instance here, The_Doon_School#School_songs, which has some sound-sample uploads, plus the lyrics of a few of the songs (which requires copyright-release-permission from the composer and/or syndicate-which-holds-the-composers-copyright).
  p.s. Congratulations to you and Andersneld on getting to mainspace. Nice work!  :-)   VirtualAvi would like some assistance on cleaning up Sapience, if you feel like messing with that one next. Or you can mess with Bob Huff, or one of the other suggestions, or just pick some other poor hapless article from the AfC queue and start fixing it up. p.p.s. Like the allegedly sick Yngvadottir, I too am curious about the unblock sit. You emailed, and then...? Or are you still waiting for somebody to file you an AE-appeal-thingie, per your blue-request, up above? Maybe you are expecting me to unblock you. Well, that's no problem, I'll do it. <huff> <huff> <puff> <puff> WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWIOOOOOOOOHOOHHHHOOOHHHHOOOOOOO!!!!! ( I'll huff... and I'll puff... :-)     okay ya got me, I cannot unblock you. But I can bug somebody, if'n the necessity exists. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 07:55, 14 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi "74",
Thanks again for the clarifications on YouTube & iTunes; makes a lot of sense, and I certainly understand the risk/reward balance falling on the side of excluding such links.
I have updated the "Which way to proceed" section above with the latest information, including details of my email to ArbCom, which is now (finally?) sent. Thanks for your continued concern; really do appreciate it.
I will have a look over the next candidates to see where I think I can offer some assistance. - Ryk72 (talk) 00:59, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sapience Analytics

Extended content

Hi Ryk72,

Thanks for accepting to make changes to tone of the article.

I also made the following changes to the article today 1) Added company infobox - the article now needs to get into company category instead of software. Not sure how to change that to leaving it to you 2) Retained product infobox - can we retain this? because this is the only product we intend to have and hence the comapny and product are synonymous to each other. If not, then please feel free to remove it 3) Toned down the non-verifiable portion and tried to make it NPOV 4) Added logo

Please let me know if I this looks good. Also if everything looks good, do I need to Submit it for official review or you can do it and push it to main space?

Thanks to User:74.192.84.101 and you in advance for your help, VirtualAvi (talk) 12:58, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Quick notes. Logo is trademarked, cannot stay in AfC queue, no worries, it can be added back (per fair use) once article is in mainspace. Not sure if dual infoboxen are allowed, ask Gerda_Arendt who loves such things waaay too deeply <grin>, but I suggested the double-infobox-idea since it seems like a good plan (alternative is to keep company-infobox && convert product-infobox into html table and/or wiki-table and/or prose). Categories are a bit tricksy. They are not allowed in AfC queue, to avoid messing up mainspace category-stuff (cat-codebase has a bug methinks). However, it makes sense to *have* mention of the cats, even when *in* the AfC queue... unlike the logo, this is not a one-easy-step thing, and so it is better to have the appropriate cats at the bottom of the AfC-submission, in the apprpriate place. So the trick is this: rather than saying [[Category:Companies founded in 2009 in the country of India which make software]] at the bottom of the page, you instead use a leading colon, and say [[:Category:Companies founded in 2009 in the country of India which make software]] which looks something like Category:Organizations with a bluelink when done properly, and gives a redlink when done improperly. Use the most specific available category(ies), do not use the general/abstract/broad categories simultaneously... CompaniesOfIthaca is best (you don't als need CompaniesOfNY and CompaniesOfUSA and CompaniesOfEarth and Companies ... just the first one is fine, the subcat system will Do The Right Thing beyond those. HTH. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 18:34, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Categories: I think you can you put a leading ":" in, [[:Category:Abc]], then they show but are not active. The things I am not supposed to mention: you can have 2. I don't love them, I find them useful, - that's about the opposite of love. I think that every article would be better if the reader could see right away what the topic, time and location is. I love some of the people who think the same - and miss too many of them. Look at Cremation and enjoy the lead pic, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:00, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Gerda loves them. Luuuuvs them. She has pictures of revealing infoboxen on her walls. She carries an infobox in a small locket, next to her heart. She send a dozen red roses to the post office every valentine's day, addressed to "infoboxen, ♥ ♥ ♥, general delivery, wikimedia foundation, san francisco california". p.s. Gerda, you find *me* useful, right? <super big grin> On that note, I gotta run, p'raps for my life. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:12, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi VirtualAvi, Hoping that I can help you get the Sapience article approved for inclusion in Wikipedia mainspace. I am only new to Wikipedia myself, so cannot claim to have all the answers for you, but will let you know where I am not sure, and try to call some other people in for a second opinion.

I've had a quick look over the article as it currently stands; at the comments from the previous reviewers; at some of the relevant policies; and at some of the links that "74" found when searching for information on the company. I think that there's a lot that we can do to build a really good article. If / when you have time, and if you haven't already, please have a look over these two Wikipedia documents: WP:BETTER & WP:WORDS. These are about writing good quality articles and going to be what we use to form the basis for making the article look like it really belongs in an Encyclopaedia. Which is what we want, right? :)

Now, for some of the questions that you asked, we already have some definitive answers from "74" & Gerda Arendt, as follows:

  • We can't use the logo while the article is in the AfC queue, for some legal reasons that I don't understand; but it can go straight back in once we make it to mainspace - if you could edit to remove the logo, but keep the file handy, that would be good.
  • We can have 2 infoboxes, so keep both the Company & Product boxes in there. I am considering that you might want to categorise the company as being in the "Information Technology" or "Software" industries rather than "Services". You probably also want to clean up the title on the product infobox (it doesn't need "Articles for creation/"). And maybe having the website in the second box is redundant.
  • As the article is now going to be about the company, not the software, we're also going to need to change the title; which we do by adding a big bold line at the top of the article which says: please make article title == Sapience Analytics or similar (whatever the common name for the company is) - please go ahead and make this addition.
  • You can also fix up the categories as described by "74" above - don't forget to add the leading colon inside the brackets.

We also need to be incredibly careful to avoid advertising in the article. This is a big issue in the Wikipedia space - we need to ensure that whatever we say is based on & backed up by reliable sources. But, given the sources that we have available, we can still say a lot.

Looking at the article, I think there's going to be issues with the Features subsection of the Products section no matter how we try to work on it. But, to be honest, the people who are looking for this level of detail, are going to be the people who jump across to the Sapience website; so you can tell them all this there.

I think we're better looking for quotes from the articles listed by "74" which enable us to use the "Just the facts" style as at WP:PEACOCK - e.g. "Dylan was included in Time's 100: The Most Important People of the Century, where he was called "master poet, caustic social critic and intrepid, guiding spirit of the counterculture generation".[refs 1] By the mid-1970s, his songs had been covered by hundreds of other artists.[refs 2]".

I will look through some of the articles looking for things that I think might be appropriate, but suggest that you should do likewise - an easy example would be to mention that Sapience Analytics has been listed as an "IT Company to watch" by the Times of India or the Economic Times (or whatever the specifics from these sources actually say).

Hopefully this is enough for you to carry on with. I will look over the sources in more detail & let you know what else I come up with.

A final note. I am currently blocked from editing Wikipedia outside this Talk page, for reasons which would take too long to go into, so will not be able to make any edits for you.

Hope this is helpful to you. Please feel free to let me know if you have any questions. - Ryk72 (talk) 11:44, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And a quick call to Hafspajen who might be able to also have a look over the article, or to confirm my thoughts above?

Hi Hafspajen, a pleasure to meet you. "007-4711" speaks highly of you (see note in sections above), and thought you might be able to help on this one. :) I would really appreciate the benefit of your experience, but please feel free to say "no". - Ryk72 (talk) 11:59, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • If you call this speaks highly of me .... well, I don't know: "Hafspajen who justs sits around gazing at imagefiles most of the day " :-) but I can try to help a little. Hafspajen (talk) 13:32, 16 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hafspajen has my respect. I mean, if they were to invade Kvenland and bring me the sword of invincibility, then they would get away without with considerably less of the ribbing. Or, I suppose WP:REICHSTAG, now *that* would get my most cordial respect indeed.  :-)   p.s. I hammered down the features-section into a shorter form, which is descriptive without being promotional. Generally, it is better for the features themselves tobe *sourced* aka some reviewer of the software wrote and article and mentioned that the thing is client-server[1] and that it caches logs locally[2] so that you don't have to be always connected to the internet[3]. That proves that each feature is WP:NOTEWORTHY individually, and keeps the prose from being wiped someday by some trigger-happy-deletionist out to challenge anything they see. These *are* more common on company-n-product articles, because of the ever-present risk of spam. See my mention below about the sources; if you do end up going through the WP:RS, to write up the awards & reception section good-n-proper, please make notes when the WP:RS mention a specific feature, so that we can inline-cite the feature-sections. And if this bores you to tears, skip it.  :-)   Not supposed to be drudgery, supposed to be enjoyment-at-improving-the-top-ten-website-in-the-world; whatever floats your boat. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:12, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi VirtualAvi, I notice a lot of changes to the Sapience article by yourself, Hafspajen & 74.192.84.101. It's looking a lot better now, I think; and certainly some of the previous issues have been resolved. I notice that there's a note in the article that the "Reception" section needs expansion - so maybe we should look to do something there. My understanding is that we can put information about the awards, "Top 10"'s, "best emerging companies", etc in here; but that it probably needs some verbage around it. I will try to put something together for you to copy into the article; but can you also have a think about what could go here? - Ryk72 (talk) 21:39, 17 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I put that tag in there, when I got lazy.  :-)   If you read the references (the numbered ones which are WP:RS as opposed to the lettered ones which are questionable or WP:ABOUTSELF) there are some reviews of the software, some info about the company, and so on. For cases like Bob Huff, where there are literally thousands of newspaper stories, it is simply impractical to read all the refs. For cases like Sapience, where there are only half a dozen, you can (if you wish) just hammer through them, and summarize each story into a sentence. Note that there are a bunch of stories from the local EconomicTimesNewspaper (or somesuch I forget the exact name) which should not be given undue weight... they are just one publisher, even if they have published a bunch of pieces. Part of the reason that Avi has held back putting in the prose themselves might be that they feel a bit uncertain. I encourage both of you to be WP:BOLD and hammer out some sentences, paying attention to staying neutral and just-the-facts (skimming through WP:NPOV won't hurt either). There is also WP:NCORP and WP:NSOFT. But in general, you can skip reading through all the bazillion rules, and just concentrate on writing an encyclopedia article which describes why the company is WP:NOTEWORTHY to the readership. HTH. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 01:12, 18 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]


Copying the Sapience article "Reception" section below, to facilitate direct editing of the markup; with a view to having it reviewed & copied back to the article if found good.

cf. WP:SECONDCHANCE

- Ryk72 (talk) 23:42, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Commenting the Sapience article "Reception" section, as editing can now occur in the actual article.

- Ryk72 (talk) 09:33, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]


Hi Ryk72, Thanks for your help, looks much better. I did the following 1) Replaced "services" with Software under the company infobox 2) Kept website url in product infobox also as it is handy for readers who will scroll down and want to look at the web right from there. Also in future company and product website may become different 3) Added in bold please make article title == Sapience Analytics 4) Removed redundant categories from the bottom, my challenge was that there is not a perfect match for Sapience as it rightly falls under Employee Productivity category (doesn't exist) instead of Time Management

No idea what to do for the comment "This section requires expansion." under Reception section

Shall I go ahead and submit it for evaluation? Or you will be able to do it yourself? VirtualAvi (talk) 11:15, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi VirtualAvi, I agree it's looking better; but cannot claim the credit, which is due to Hafspajen & "74". I see your dilemma with the categories; but am not sure how to go about getting a new one. I also see your points about including the link in both infoboxes; and agree that this would be handy for readers who want to click through.
"74" actually left the "This section requires expansion" comment to let us know that this bit still could use some work; if you see their comment higher up on this page, there's also some high level instructions on what to do. I personally think that we should expand this part before resubmitting for evaluation; and I can spend some time on it in the next few days, if you would like.
I think we would greatly improve our chances of success if we were to do just a little bit more work. But also feel free to submit if you would like.
Hope this helps; and thanks for improving Wikipedia - Ryk72 (talk) 11:50, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]


Hi Ryk72,

Thanks to you, Hafspajen & 74.192.84.101 for helping me you.

I tried again on the Reception section. Looks like that's it from my side. Request you to make appropriate corrections as needed and submit it with correct title "Sapience Analytics".

Keeping fingers crossed! VirtualAvi (talk) 11:21, 23 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I made a few changes, there are some hanging commas, and the overview-section could still prolly use prose-i-fication, but I suggest you submit it onw. There are 1k articles in the AfC queue, so this takes a bit of time before somebody will see it. There is a little button at the bottom of the two declines, which looks like this:

Resubmit Please note that if the issues are not fixed, the draft will be rejected again.

Click the button, you will be prompted with some annoying message, read it to make sure, then click save. You'll see a big yellow 'waiting for review' box added to the Sapience article, if everything went well. If everything went haywire, you can ask WP:TEAHOUSE or yngvadottir or myself (or any random AfC person you see on the WP:AFC page, to help you get the thing submitted correctly. Once it's in the queue, go ahead and mess with it, if you feel like doing so. I'm pretty sure it will pass as-is, however. Plenty of refs for WP:N aka WP:42, and now satisfies WP:NOTPROMOTION. Danke. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 11:39, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Resubmitted. Thanks for all your help on this one "74", and also to Hafspajen. I feel as though I haven't done much at all on it; but the resubmit suggests it might take 2-3 weeks, so still some time to make improvements. Thanks again. - Ryk72 (talk) 12:02, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, well, well. Good for you. Hafspajen (talk) 13:25, 25 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, sometimes three days, but they say weeks, so folks don't get impatient. In fact, there is no.system.whatsoever to the process.  :-)   Well... that's not fair. There is a system. There are chronological categories, and sometimes folks follow them, and other times they don't. I'm one that is in the don't category. Tikuko looks for stuff about animals, and skips most other stuff. WP:REQUIRED applies, as always. Same goes for you, Ryk72, if you get bored with Sapience, feel free to leave VirtualAvi to the queue. Most likely they won't get eaten by zombies. But if you wanna stick around, and get that time-management-app into mainspace, go for it. Now that you are a free agent once again, you can start processing your TBD-list, or just wipe it and go find something completely new to mess with, in the vast jungle of articles. Speaking of which, has somebody explained the watchlist thing to you? Hafspajen knows about them. But disdains to use one, from what I can tell.  :-o   — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 23:35, 26 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Psst, IPs can't have watchlists. Or get notifications or Echo-thanks. It's discrimination! Ryk, Help:Watching pages, just in case you weren't aware. I have a fairly humongous one: mostly articles I've created, plus articles I've come across that tend to be vandal targets. But some people don't use them. Yngvadottir (talk) 04:44, 28 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
....Oh, I don't despise watchlist - I just made up my mind not to have more than a certain amount of articles on it. If I put sometnig new on it, I take off something else. Hafspajen (talk) 15:55, 30 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hafspajen and I are the same. Every time I want to add something to my watchlist, I force myself to take something off. Leaves me stuck at zero watchlisted pages, of course. Sigh. It is discrimination; there is no technological reason anons cannot have watchlists, just as they have user_talk. Anons cannot participate in most of the wiki-tools, for purely social caste-system reasons. It helps reinforce the stereotype that anons are untouchable vandals. But it's bad for wikipedia. Anyhoo, Ryk, if you reply here, until I get my home-grown-anon-watchlist-scheme up and running, I won't see it. That's not cause I don't like ya, it's because I got no watchlist. Same with all other anons. If you reply to one, leave them a talkback on their user-talkpage, so they see the orangeBarOfDoom. Hafspajen, how big is your watchlist? 3? 6? 9? Ohhhhhh.... burn!  :-)   Adding pictures to your watchlist doesn't count you know, they have to be *articles* you watchlist if you want as much respect as Yngvadottir.  :-P   — 74.192.84.101 (talk) 17:04, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Yngvadottir, Hafspajen & "74",

Firstly, many thanks for the advice on watchlists; eminently useful, and much better than reloading page histories to check for changes as I was initially doing. :)

I see that Sapience Analytics has made it to mainspace, which is pleasing; and entirely due to the efforts of Hafspajen, "74" and VirtualAvi.

Despite our efforts, the page feels a little bit unloved at the moment - with the orphan tag at the top & also with There is currently no way for people to find itthe page unless they search on the exact company name. Do you feel that we might have a case for a disambiguation page for "Sapience"; which currently directs here? Or, failing that a quick italicised "For information on the software company, see Sapience Analytics" line on that page? I can set up the latter with a WP:BOLD edit, but would appreciate a pointer to setting up a disambiguation if that is the more appropriate option.

Many thanks for all your assistance again. Apologies for the slower than ideal responses - too much going on real-o-verse wise.

Hoping to find some time for an update in response to "74" above & also to work on some more musical pages (trombones, scales, etc). - Ryk72 (talk) 15:36, 30 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Updated; orphan tag has been removed: - Ryk72 (talk) 08:07, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Cool, good work. Yes, put a {{for}} template, or something like that, at the Sapience#sapience page-subsection. My hunch is that 'most' readers will not be looking for the software company, so a disambig page is overkill. There is some way to see the number of pageviews, but I'm not sure if there is a way to see the number of pageview for a redirect. Maybe ask at the WP:TEAHOUSE or at WP:VPT if somebody can tell you how many pageviews to Sapience were immediately followed by clicking Sapience Analytics ... then check every couple of months, to see whether it is 9:1 the first (leave redirect as-is), 1:9 in favor of the second (change redirect to point at company), or about even (create disambig page). If this shorthand explanation is not making sense, please say.  :-)   74.192.84.101 (talk) 17:04, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent. Makes absolute sense. Concur with your hunch, and with all that follows on from there. {{for}} template has been added; feel free to edit or amend as appropriate.
I think almost done with Sapience for now; but might just keep an eye on it to see if the dust settles on the logo image - some questions around whether it's ok (free) to use; but I recall you mentioning the possibility of a "fair use" option.
Thanks again for helping us to improve Wikipedia. - Ryk72 (talk) 21:32, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsed (& merged): - Ryk72 (talk) 22:17, 1 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

on the counter-intuitive value of excessive blocks... avoids timeout-syndrome, easier to overturn iff wrong, said overturning shows in the log

Extended content

You struck through "and is manifestly excessive." Which is probably an excessively fair thing to do.  :-)   But to my eyes, the indef was manifestly excessive, but more importantly, manifestly a mistake. The bright side is that, it is easily undone. Or well, easy in the technical sense of clicking one button, proving to be mildly difficult in the social sense, due to a novel series of coincidences. But my point is this: an indefinite block has hurt nothing. Your skin was thick enough to survive it. You've been getting good work done despite not having direct access to anything but your own user-talkpage. If the block had been AT ALL proportional to the very minor disruption actually further caused... as opposed to, the pretty blatant disruptive environment which already existed, you might have been given 31 hours. (Not sure why... that number is commonly picked, maybe as an in-joke of some sort related to WP:42's etymology... or maybe because counting timezones the day is 31 hours long... or who knows.) Of course, a stern warning would have served as well, methinks, especially if accompanied by some instructions about TLDR and being careful to keep one's bangvotes clustered tightly and non-misleadingly together in a nice huddle. Heck, even a WP:NICE bit of friendly advice, what's with the stern-warning-you-are-bad-stuff, right? Right.

Anyhoo, the silver lining is this: the friendly advice would have been ideal, but a proportional-yet-unfair block which isn't overturned is actally considerably *worse* than an indef block which is manifestly *wrong* aka The Wrong Thing For Improving Wikipedia, and therefore will be *especially* easy to overturn, once you get through the oddball obstacle course. If you were only blocked for 31 hours... pretty much the definition of a kindergarten-timeout-block, which is punitive-not-preventative and therefore utterly against blocking policy... probably nobody would have overturned your block. As it turns out, your block *will* be overturned, and the block-log will show that it was overturned (prolly personally by an arbcom member or by an AE regular's own hand). That's helpful in the long run: if you are editing some controversial topic with bitter WP:BATTLEGROUND stuff going on, a few years from now, or otherwise get sucked into an unhappy situation, it is better for your block-log to show that you were indef'd on your second day, but that the indef was overturned, rather than showing that you were blocked for disruption... and then... stay silent.

In the meanwhile, sucks to be blocked.  :-)   Sorry about that, don't let it get you down. Hope this helps. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 18:21, 15 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi "74",
It does help, and I thank you for the continued encouragement, it is greatly appreciated. I too had considered the silver lining & the counter intuitive nature of the indefinite; and am looking, in the unblock request above, for the block log to explicitly show an overturn. It's good to have you confirm that this sort of thing is possible (in the right circumstances, of course).
I must admit to finding similarly intriguing the thought that someone genuinely here only to be disruptive or to fulfil a single purpose wouldn't be overly concerned by having an unrevoked block on their record. It may be just my sense of humour.
I am, of course, not looking to throw myself headlong at any WP:BATTLEGROUND situations; but do concede, that in a, hopefully, multi-year Wikipedia career, it is possible; given a genuine desire to build a better encyclopaedia. And that if it were to occur, it would be better to have a clean record.
You are also right in your thoughts that I would've worn, and probably not even requested an unblock for a block of 31 hours, or even 31 days. I would've put it down as a lesson learned, and sought out some advice on how to do things better; which I am extremely grateful to you for having provided.
But by far the biggest boost to my joie de vivre for all things WP has been seeing the work that you, Yngvadottir & Andersneld put into the Adolf Fredriks article rewarded by a move into mainspace. It helps to give it all a sense of purpose. And I think it also means that the best thing I can do is to work on some actual articles.
I am still WP:HERE; beaten, but not yet broken. :)
Note: if there is an issue with this update, please let me know; I will be happy to modify or remove as required.
- Ryk72 (talk) 09:21, 21 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsed: - Ryk72 (talk) 09:33, 31 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Formal welcome with cookies

delicious

Hey Ryk72

Thanks for the note on my talk page, and I'm glad things seem to be working out OK now. Hopefully it can be the beginning of a long and fruitful contribution to the encyclopedia! It looks like you haven't received one of the standard Wikipedia welcome messages yet, so let me extend one to you now, including a plate of cookies. There are links there that can hopefully take you to an area you're interested in contributing to - fixing up articles and correcting errors is often a good way to start. If you need any assistance from me, just let me know on my talk page. All the best!  — Amakuru (talk) 14:14, 22 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome!

Hello, Ryk72, and welcome to Wikipedia! I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, please see our help pages, and if you can't find what you are looking for there, please feel free to leave me a message or place "{{helpme}}" on this page and someone will drop by to help.

Collapsed: - Ryk72 (talk) 21:12, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the message

and thank you, Oda Mari, for the champagne and flowers

I was glad to see your message on my talk page. Let's have a champagne toast! And here's a bouquet for you with my WikiLove. I bet you can be a great contributor. Happy editing! Oda Mari (talk) 09:05, 24 January 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsed: - Ryk72 (talk) 21:02, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

election season

step right up

Howdy there Ryk my friend.  :-)   Yngvadottir has asked for some help with Talk:Laurie Smith and Laurie Smith, which has an *actual* SPA.  ;-)   I've left a bunch of sources for Yngvadottir to do the hard work. Since it is a Sherriff's page, rather than a more-visible office, it is prolly a good place to get your toes wet, if you have any interest. See also David_in_DC who is a bit of a specialist in building great BLP articles, and well worth following around to watch-n-learn, if you've got the hankering. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 16:10, 2 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi 74.192.84.101, I had a chat with the good Yngvadottir, who suggests that Laurie Smith is fine as it is currently; but that it would be worthwhile having someone else "watch" for any changes. Which I have agreed to do. I'll also have a look through David_in_DC's work. I'm sure there is a lot for me to learn there.
As for actually doing something... it's back to (Bob) Huff-ing & Puffing (trombones). And finally getting back to you on the names & ideas discussion above. - Ryk72 (talk) 05:54, 3 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, yngvadottir is mostly interested in somebody watchlisting it. yngvadottir was also *quite* snooty about Manual-of-styling my lazy dashes into ndash form! Why, I never!  :-)   As for me, like usual I'm good at sourcing but too lazy to do the prose construction work. See Talk:Laurie_Smith#sources if you feel motivated, usually each source is summarized as a paragraph, *unless* the source is covering an event already covered by a sentence in mainspace, in which case you just add another clause to that sentence with more details. In particular, the "methinks WP:RS but I didn't verify each one" subsection has the meat of what I found but did not act upon. {{as of}} trick in yngvadottir's last edit was new to me; handy, see WP:REALTIME for guidance of why specifying dates is always nice. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 22:25, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

questions three

Extended content
File:African swallow.jpg

(( creaky old man voice ))

  1. what is your name?
  2. what is your quest?
  3. what is the airspeed of a full-grown swallow?

:-)   Monty Python and the Holy Grail, if you don't recognize the catchphrase. Correct answers are Lancelot, Holy Grail, Blue. ... but the movie is funny, so I won't spoil it beyond that. Plus, I gave the answers to a different set of questions. Tricksy of me!  ;-)   Actual questions:


  1. what is your IRC nick?
  2. what is your edit-quest, and do you want any help messing with it?
  3. do you have any interest in List of Japanese films of the 2010s, or the NSA, which are surprisingly *both* controversial?  :-)   Oh yeah, and also United States Naval Attack Squadrons, which are not controversial... but there are a ton of them. My friend Lou Sander is hammering out several hundred new stubs, which may need various degrees of cleaning/completion, since the public-domain dataset he is working off of is from a couple decades ago. I've partially helped with one, and Lou will prolly get a standard figured out at some point. Or not.  ;-)

Yngvadottir was telling me about their cat, and I thought of you, and contacted Ryk on IRC.

Which of course turned out to be someone else.  ;-)   Not sure how to say 'wrong number' when I dialed a name. Of course, *they* could have said wrong number, but that is another matter. You can /query seventyfour if you like. Talk to you later, TFIW. 74.192.84.101 (talk) 22:09, 21 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Collapsed: - Ryk72 (talk) 20:41, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Now here due to distraction

Alright. I accept that it is sufficient distancing, but now I'd like examine the "reliable source" aspect. This muddies it from being a purely "living person" aspect by combining it with the definition of what is a reliable source. I see two ways to apply it, which hinges on whether the basis is the existence of the label or whether or not the source is reliable and suitable for the statement being made. Obviously the former case is without dispute - since the text would fail WP:V if it was not in the text, but the latter presents the actual issue. I seem to have combined both in my BLP issue question because they are inseparable in essence. Someone with an agenda or bias obviously presents an issue per WP:BIASED and WP:QS, but it is weaker for the mere existence itself. Then that presents a weight issue - if the source only spares a half-sentence in a 300 page book, is that even appropriate? Now this presents an actual case example - but there are numerous cases where politics, scholars and others - when does WP:WEIGHT enter into the issue? It all seems a bit interconnected with relevancy issues going to NPOV again. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 04:43, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There's certainly a lot more to think about when we're looking at an actual article instead of in the abstract; a lot more to consider. I'll have a look and a think and see what I can come up with in terms of a reasoned opinion. If I have something abstract I'll put it on the original WT:BLP page; if something more related to this instance, then on WP:BLP/N; if something not in one of those then back here.
Hopefully I can be of some help, but please do keep seeking other opinions. I am by no means an expert. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 05:04, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've had others, but this was more a general matter since I do need to work on several biography articles in my editing areas. The problem lies in the fact that allegations (similar at times to those Cwobeel hopped on) exist in these spaces. While not under BLP, some of these seem to be quite far-fetched and I've been resolving issues by notes and simply providing additional context. Specifically delineating the accepted issues with Allan Dwan. The Restless Spirit currently shows the contentious nature surrounding Dwan's claims which tended to be exaggerated in some aspects and cannot be independently confirmed even by the biographer. Unbeknownst to most readers - I've found and structured the claims and specifically worked hard to reflect the knowns and unknowns with proper relevancy. I've made a few editorial judgements including the addition of notes for the likely source of the material for two cast credits (actors were unbilled at the time). An actual biography presents far far more balancing and I've been worried about doing an in-depth one for some time now. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 05:23, 30 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@ChrisGualtieri:, I've had a quick look at three of the sources that are mentioned, and they don't look as strong as might be supposed by just looking at the publisher (Cambridge Uni Press, Washington Post & Palgrave Macmillan related to MacMillan Publishers?); the fourth source is behind a paywall. The reports are based on either comments from a Twitter account (in WaPost) which I don't think is likely to be usable per BLP policy; or referencing publications from Center for American Progress (in the other two sources that I looked at). We'd need to check how reliable their opinion is (They have a WP page, which speaks to them having notability, but I'm not familiar with the organisation at all, so can't really comment any further). I any case I think we'd also want to couch it as their opinion; not that of WaPost, CUP or otherwise.
The Cambridge Uni Press & Palgrave Macmillan works also appear to be collections of essays, which reinforces that they're likely to be opinion pieces. The mentions of the living person in question are also quite brief, and we'd need to consider how that fits in.
I'm going to try to do a full compare & contrast with the relevant policies BLP, NPOV, V & NOR; and write something more formal up to go on the BLP/N board. It will be a good intellectual exercise. At this stage, my advice would be to leave it out of the article, until we can be sure that we're sufficiently protecting WP by satisfying policy. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 11:07, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Definately an additional and interesting analysis of the material sources - I was hinging more on the trivial mentions by people Emerson is in conflict with. Emerson has made faults and gaffs, but I was more concerned over the lack of argument for the claim and the only one (Cambridge Companion) was actually false. By leaving the unsupported bigotry accusations out we can instead focus on Emerson's actual issue and the actual issue the organizations have with Emerson. CAP calls Emerson a "misinformation expert" because of his errors and his alarmist stance to jihadic elements. Emerson himself says the religion is not violent or extremist but the dangerous elements clothe themselves in scripture. The very person who's essay is being used to pass the Islamphobia expert agrees with Emerson on this fact and gave an hour long lecture on ISIS and other elements which parallels Emerson. The difference in the two - stance. Emerson wants to sound the alarm - the others warn of the presence and say the actions are not condoned - granted much has transpired since either of them voiced those concerns. It sums up with the whole "one 9/11" away from deciding what to do that American political pundits squabble over like a bunch of male chickens (to be polite). Each one greeting the new day with screaming from the highest tower they can reach in hopes of awakening the masses to their perspective - obviously not everyone agrees. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 14:31, 31 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi ChrisGualtieri. Please accept my apologies. I have been engaged with things outside WP and not able to devote the time to doing a compare & contrast with the content of the sources & WP:BLP. Is this still an ongoing discussion, for which it would be worthwhile doing the comparison; or has the requirement resolved itself? Please let me know either way. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 11:16, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's still a mess and I'm not dealing with BLPs anymore - Emerson's page is still locked, but no one seems able to agree about what is balanced. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 14:30, 12 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

ARBCOM Clarification Request Party Notice

You are involved in a recently-filed request for clarification or amendment from the Arbitration Committee. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification and Amendment#Editing_of_Biographies_of_Living_Persons and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the Wikipedia:Arbitration guide may be of use.

Thanks, (Note, you are not named as a party, but you are mentioned in the case so this notice is just a courtesy. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 02:10, 14 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@EvergreenFir: I'd like to thank you for raising this request for clarification from ArbCom, and also for the notification. I am appreciative of your attempt to progress the discussion towards a resolution. While I think we probably disagree on some of the finer points of WP:BLP and its application, I believe that we (and the vast majority of Wikipedians) agree that we should have a policy (and an interpretation of that policy) that facilitates improvement of the Encyclopedia. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 15:01, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Ryk72, you may be interested that I've closed and archived this arbitration clarification request to the Editing of Biographies of Living Persons case talk page. For the Arbitration Committee, --L235 (t / c / ping in reply) 18:17, 17 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

April 2015 Wikification drive.

Greetings! Just spreading a message to the members of WikiProject Wikify that the April drive has been started. Come on, sign up! :) One hand on the mouse, one hand on the keyboard... and the feet can do the rest! Hee-hee! (talk) 03:52, 2 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Easter!

File:Chocolate-Easter-Bunny.jpg
All the best! "Carry me down, carry me down; carry me down into the wiki!" (talk) 23:23, 5 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

Good, I have the source for add it. --Pediainsight (talk) 17:06, 19 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

May 2015

a warning
This message contains important information about an administrative situation on Wikipedia. It does not imply any misconduct regarding your own contributions to date.

Please carefully read this information:

The Arbitration Committee has authorised discretionary sanctions to be used for pages regarding all edits about, and all pages related to, (a) GamerGate, (b) any gender-related dispute or controversy, (c) people associated with (a) or (b), all broadly construed, a topic which you have edited. The Committee's decision is here.

Discretionary sanctions is a system of conduct regulation designed to minimize disruption to controversial topics. This means uninvolved administrators can impose sanctions for edits relating to the topic that do not adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, our standards of behavior, or relevant policies. Administrators may impose sanctions such as editing restrictions, bans, or blocks. This message is to notify you sanctions are authorised for the topic you are editing. Before continuing to edit this topic, please familiarise yourself with the discretionary sanctions system. Don't hesitate to contact me or another editor if you have any questions.
Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 12:03, 8 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

regarding [32]. Wikipedia is not a bureaucracy. Can you explain how your position will actually work to improve the encyclopedia. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 00:42, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi TheRedPenOfDoom. Firstly, many thanks for your inquiry, and for having raised it here. I will attempt to provide you with a full, albeit brief, answer.
I firmly believe that a core principle of Wikipedia is reaching consensus through discussion. I do not agree that involved editors closing discussions facilitates consensus; rather, I believe that it works directly to prevent it. Consequently, I cannot agree that the "hatting" actions "improve the encyclopedia".
I fully support WP:5P5/WP:IAR, but consider that (if challenged) the onus is on those proposing that we ignore the rules to show the benefit of doing so. In this regard, I do not believe that such a burden has been met.
I hope that this is helpful to you in understanding my thoughts. I understand that your thoughts may not align with mine. Please feel free to ask any follow up questions. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 22:35, 11 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
What precisely "consensus" that accurately represents the sources and meets our policy requirements do you think would be possible other than essentially the representation of the sources that currently exists? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 00:00, 12 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi TheRedPenOfDoom. Many thanks for your question. As I noted above, the onus is not on those supporting following Wikipedia policies & guidelines (and, therefore, long standing community consensus) to show an improvement to the encyclopedia - reaching consensus through discussion is implicitly assumed to result in improvement.
Consequently, it is not incumbent upon me, or any other editor, to propose an alternate version of the article or demonstrate how it might be better.
The onus is on those proposing a suspension of normal policies & guidelines to show the benefit to the encyclopedia of doing so. I do not believe that a benefit has been articulated, far less demonstrated - the burden has not been met.
If editors earnestly believe that an improvement to the encyclopedia can be achieved by preventing Talk page discussion, I welcome & invite their explanation of how this is so. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 06:45, 13 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

BLP redactions

I'm curious about your redactions at Talk:Gamergate controversy, particularly this one. Per WP:RS, we take into account author identity and qualifications, including areas of expertise; and per WP:DUE, we consider whether the author's view is that of the majority or minority. Additionally, the instructions at WP:RSN make it clear that our discussions about sources are based on such policies and guidelines, so we necessarily must be able to discuss them. The information you removed was neither contentious nor negative, merely the context of how (or if) we should include the article by Auerbach. What's ironic is that my (redacted) comment asked that we proceed with sensitivity given the past on-wiki dispute (found here and here). In other words, you removed my request that we be sensitive about BLP concerns, as a BLP concern, when we were discussing factors that our policies and guidelines require us to consider. I'll assume that you weren't aware of the past dispute, or perhaps simply misread my comment. I would prefer if you reverted yourself and restored my comment, at least. (I can't speak for User:MarkBernstein.) If you feel that I should clarify my statements by linking to the ANI discussions above, I can certainly do so, though I may be away from the computer for the better part of a day. Woodroar (talk) 02:55, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Woodroar, Many thanks for your inquiry. I am happy to provide some clarification.
In addressing the concerns raised by the subject at WP:BLPN, I removed any comment on the subject that was a) unsourced, and b) not directly relevant to the determination of the reliability of the source being discussed. In doing so, I erred on the side of caution, as required by WP:BLP for "challenged", "unsourced" material (WP:BLPSOURCES).
I concur that the intent of the comment, as you have explained it above, was not clear to me at the time of the redaction; despite having read the comment. I concur that that intent is far from a malicious one. I would like to make it clear that the redaction was not, and should not be seen as, a comment on the actions of the editors whose material was redacted; no implication of wrongdoing should be inferred.
I agree with you that, per WP:RS, we definitely need to be able to discuss author identity & qualifications, areas of expertise. We do, however, need to balance this with our responsibilities under WP:BLP. Some of the information redacted, though not necessarily your comment, was unsourced, unsubstantiated speculation.
I would be comfortable to partially revert myself on the diff that you have identified above, restoring your comment. I would be appreciative if you were, in turn, to refactor the same such that it no longer passed comment on the subject - as a minimum change, I'd suggest "Keep in mind that we've had issues in the past where we may have misrepresented his statements. I don't recall the specifics, but it's something that I certainly feel we should be sensitive towards."
Such refactoring is, of course, not WP:REQUIRED. Please let me know if you have any follow up questions. Regards - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 14:04, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the revert. Your own request was fair and I have amended my own statements there as well. :) Cheers! Woodroar (talk) 22:32, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

June 2015 Wikification drive.

Greetings! Just spreading a message to the members of WikiProject Wikify that the June drive has been started. Come on, sign up! :) "A wiki of beauty is a joy forever." Seriously. That's how long it'd take to read! (talk) 04:55, 2 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Bone china

Hello. Please could you have a look at recent edits of this article. User:ClemRutter is unnecessarily hacking apart your references. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 103.56.218.188 (talk) 13:28, 3 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Welcome Template

If you're not aware there {{welcome belated}}, might have been more what you wear looking for over there. Also, you should give WP:Twinkle a try, automates a lot of that stuff for you. — Strongjam (talk) 01:02, 11 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Strongjam, Many thanks; genuinely appreciated. I recall that I did look over a number of the Welcome templates, and decided to standardise my welcomes on {{Welcomeh}}, which I thought had the most detail (and the least "cute"); but I do agree that for belated welcomes the template that you suggested would be better. I also appreciate the pointer to Twinkle. I've tried to stick with just editing "natively" thus far, but will give it a look over. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 01:27, 11 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Strongjam, I really must thank you. I just reverted a couple of vandalism edits using Twinkle. Very quick & easy. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 07:06, 11 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Where it really shines is those tedious, but easy to screw-up things like AFD's, CSD's, reporting users to WP:AIV, it's a wiki-life-changing tool. — Strongjam (talk) 13:29, 11 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

WP:AE

You make a good point. Do you think I should revert that comment? 208.76.111.246 (talk) 22:31, 14 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi "208", Thanks for your words above, appreciate them. I am happy either way. If you do choose to do so, I will do likewise with my follow up comment. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 22:45, 14 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well since the comments would still remain in the history of the page I believe I'll leave it alone. I'll just acknowledge your point and bid everyone involved adieu. I don't think my presence is needed there further. 208.76.111.246 (talk) 22:53, 14 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi "208", No worries. But please don't feel that you need to not contribute to the discussion there. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 23:04, 14 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Bonnie Ross

Hi Ryk72, noticed you wrote a draft for Bonnie Ross. I was just looking for sources to do the same! This might be useful for you, it's the best source I've found so far.

  • Basak, Sonali; Bass, Dina (December 15, 2014). "Microsoft's Ross Breaks Mold in Male-Dominated Video Games: Tech". Bloomberg Business.

— Strongjam (talk) 01:31, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Strongjam, Thank you for this; really fantastic. There's definitely information in this source that we could & should include. And Bloomberg coverage helps with WP:GNG. If you have a few minutes, please also have a look over the draft here. It's only short at this stage, and any advice on improvements is greatly appreciated. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 01:39, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like a good start. The only thing that stands out to me at the moment is the "more than 20 years of experience" reminds me of something you'd see on a resume. The first game she worked on was a basketball title, the only one that would fit is NBA Full Court Press, released by MS in 1996. I'm trying to find a source the says that directly but am coming up empty at the moment. Also, sorry about that misspelling. — Strongjam (talk) 12:56, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Strongjam, Thanks for the feedback; greatly appreciated. I agree w.r.t the "more than 20 years" phrasing; but am having trouble finding an alternative phrasing which captures the length of Ross' career; which I think is noteworthy - I'll think it over a bit more. Looking at the List_of_basketball_video_games & LinkedIn profile, I'd agree that NBA Full Court Press looks like the only one which fits; but don't want to fall foul of WP:SYNTH. I also think the "support for diversity" aspect could be fleshed out a bit more, there are other sources to add in; but I might look to do that after going "live" with the article.
Which bring me to the next question - would you suggest going the more formal AfC route or just moving the page to mainspace? - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 20:03, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Agree, can't include the game name without a source, but maybe something will turn up. At least it helps with those google searches. As for next step. Be bold! Move that into namespace. — Strongjam (talk) 20:21, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
 Done Bonnie Ross - and I added some extra using the Bloomberg Business article you listed above. There's more that could be done; some section headings might be good. I'd also like to say that I really appreciate your assistance with this; you've been fantastic to work with. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 20:37, 24 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hey Ryk72, good work on this. -Starke Hathaway (talk) 00:11, 25 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Mind if I refactor

Would you mind if I refactored your comment here Talk:Bonnie Ross#Sources into a {{refideas}} header? — Strongjam (talk) 12:47, 26 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Strongjam, That sounds like an excellent idea. Please do. I had a look at the template & thought about making the change, but would be keen to see your implementation of it; what information you include other than the URL, etc. Cheers, - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 23:07, 26 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

IP

Good find, I'll block and revert in due course - I agree it's very likely the same editor. GiantSnowman 17:29, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Gamerghazi

Nice work advising AmericanEnki on BLP. I've reported the edit warring/squatting. AfD seems clear to pass but will take a few days. DS needed on this article now. Would you consider mentoring Enki, currently very battleground. 98.210.208.21 (talk) 07:11, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • It was Snow Deleted, if you even consider vandalism (which you took part in) removal to be edit warring, that might be on you. Also, I dont need someone else to tell others that I need mentoring, especially when they cant sign their posts. AmericanEnki (talk) 15:43, 1 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.

Hi 98.210.208.21 & Enki,
W.r.t accusations of "edit warring", I respectfully suggest that it takes more than one to tango. The article history is deleted now, but I did notice a number of editors, including some who (IMHO)should not be editing in this topic area, editing only to remove information from the article. The edit which I reverted was particularly egregious; it replaced the entirety of the article with unsourced information using non-neutral language. Destructively editing articles while they are at AfD is not appropriate; as is called out in the AfD header on the article page. I also respectfully suggest that this Talk page is not the appropriate forum for aspersions about individual editors to be made.
W.r.t mentoring, I do not wish to comment on individual editors in this regard; too close to aspersions. I am, however, always happy to offer advice to any other Wikipedian who seeks it. I had in my early days here some excellent advice from a number of experienced editors, which has proven valuable.
Finally, I can heartily recommend the healing power of constructive editing of the encyclopedia - both the Guild of Copy Editors & Women in Technology WikiProjects could use a hand; alternately, editing in a non-controversial topic area about which you are not an expert is a great way to gain experience & knowledge of something new. Hope this helps. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 01:30, 2 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

AfD notice

Hi! I'm leaving you this note because you recently particpated in a discussion that resulted in a deletion request which you may be interested in. NickCT (talk) 14:37, 3 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi NickCT, Many thanks for your message. I was away, and unfortunately missed the AfD; which I see did not result in any deletions. I thank you for your interest in this space & for your efforts. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 10:07, 5 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Bob Huff

Thanks for your close attention and reasoning for the revert. However, changes to the website will be made tomorrow reflecting the Senator's new home. I hope you will allow the change to be made then. --Billbird2111 (talk) 02:36, 20 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Billbird2111, Absolutely! I was in the process of leaving a message on your Talk page to exactly that effect. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 05:14, 20 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Ryk72! Changes to Senator Huff's website have now been made. It reflects his current hometown. I will let you make the change as you see fit. Thank you. --Billbird2111 (talk) 16:58, 20 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Indian cinema - comment requested

Hi there, this is a form letter. (Aren't you special!) Since you edit around Indian cinema articles, your comments are solicited at this discussion at the Indian cinema task force. The question is: Should box office gross totals be labeled as estimates?

Thanks, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 17:25, 25 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you!

Thank you for that formatting fix. Being out-of-sorts about Wikipedia combined with a busy day at work was driving me nuts! I very much appreciate the touch-up. Can you tell me what I was doing wrong? Dumuzid (talk) 17:21, 31 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Replying to Ryk72

I appreciate your questions on both topics Ryk72.
If you have any more questions I would be more than happy to help you.

Template: Sydney Roosters Current Squad

I list all players' positions by how many games they have played at a certain position.
I use information from this website, if a player has not made their debut I will find the best possible source elsewhere.
Here is Roger Tuivasa-Shecks information: RLP

James Maloney

James Maloney currently plays for the Sydney Roosters.
The appropriate information can be changed to the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks after the Sydney Roosters play their last game for 2015.

KC Roosters — Talk 08:11, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ls

@ryk > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Territorial_disputes_in_East,_South,_and_Southeast_Asia#Ru_pa_ocean_islands --Zafer14ur8 (talk) 12:52, 28 September 2015 (UTC) r&s[reply]

Thanks!

Thanks for stepping in to help with Beholder (horse). Have you joined WP:WikiProject Horse racing? Do you want to? Friendly bunch there, you'd sure be welcomed! (Over 9000 articles tagged for the project! Lots to do!) Montanabw(talk) 06:15, 30 September 2015 (UTC) Also, as of this second, my browser just decided to pout and not read pdf files, so I'm dead in the water for a bit until I do some software upgrades.. meh. Have at it! Montanabw(talk) 06:21, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Montanabw, Apologies for the delayed response. Thanks for the thanks; happy to help out. Sometimes it's good to work on something collaborative. :) I'm not a big racing fan, but I am a Wikipedia fan, and would be delighted to join the WikiProject. Hope the browser issues are resolved. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 21:52, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
They are, but I hate software upgrades, they never fix what needs fixing and they always seem to fix what ain't broke... sigh.. Montanabw(talk) 23:46, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(didn't like to start a new thread, and we work collaboratively) Thanks for moving the house. Consider DYK, please! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:24, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Gerda Arendt, I've made a nomination at DYK; hopefully an interesting enough hook. I've put you down as a co-author, in appreciation of your assistance in getting it ready for mainspace. Thanks also for fixing the categories; I completely forgot. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 10:50, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Just Gerda is fine ;) - thanks for the honour, a nice extra gift on a special day (look for expired on my talk), --Gerda Arendt (talk) 11:03, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Grants:IEG/Wikipedia likes Galactic Exploration for Posterity 2015

Dear Fellow Wikipedians,

I JethroBT (WMF) suggested that I consult with fellow Wikipedians to get feedback and help to improve my idea about "As an unparalleled way to raise awareness of the Wikimedia projects, I propose to create a tremendous media opportunity presented by launching Wikipedia via space travel."

Please see the idea at meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Wikipedia_likes_Galactic_Exploration_for_Posterity_2015. Please post your suggestions on the talk page and please feel free to edit the idea and join the project.

Thank you for your time and attention in this matter. I appreciate it.

My best regards, Geraldshields11 (talk) 22:07, 13 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Undid revision 687433383 by Ryk72 (talk) unexplained removal of substantial content by (Ryk72)

you didn't make an explanation on the user talk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Alignment_(Dungeons_%26_Dragons) 166.175.191.200 (talk) 16:09, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm also fairly confident that this is JeffryBloom IP-hopping, if so we have a WP:SOCK problem in addition to all the other problems. 73.168.15.161 (talk) 23:04, 25 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi "73", Based on the writing style, I am inclined to agree with you. In my less charitable, more realistic moments, I also consider that we may have a WP:CIR problem. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 00:56, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Look at this one

Here's another one, with a connection to Peter Tarlow and Sara Alpern, that needs to be looked at for notability: History of the Jews in Brazos County, Texas. I started to work on it, then just got too frustrated to continue because I think most of the content should be removed. At the very least, it requires a major cleanup. Lots of very trivial info that has no business in an encylopedia, lots of non-notable people named, and attempts at sneaking direct links into the body. Would any of the content about these various places and people stand on their own as notable? Sennater (talk) 09:19, 30 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Oy vey ist mir! Sennater, I share your concerns. While we would perhaps hope to consider ourselves inclusionists, I think this particular article probably warrants a formal discussion. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 10:34, 30 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Oy vey is right! :) I couldn't resist starting to work on it even though it's so frustrating. It's a strange article because it's like a mish-mash - a vague subject with a bunch of random places and people thrown into it. As you'll see, some sections/places were just thrown into the article with absolutely no sources whatsoever, nor any indication of notability. And most of the sources are inadequate or downright inappropriate. If you think some of these places are notable, shouldn't they just have their own articles? I see the editor who created and wrote much of the article was taken to the sockpuppet noticeboard in 2010, then stopped editing right after that. Please take a look at my very bold edits and feel free to revert or change anything you think is inappropriate. Sennater (talk) 20:09, 30 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I can't believe I forgot to mention this to you initially, but the title of the article - History of the Jews in Brazos County, Texas - is completely misleading because the article is not at all about that subject. It is merely a random listing of some non-notable or maybe barely notable Jewish organizations. The article does nothing to explain the history of "Jews in Brazos County". A history article details the series of past events related to the subject. And of course Jews (the people) is a different topic than Judaism (the religion). Sennater (talk) 21:41, 30 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

ryk what's your baseless argument this time?

you failed to explain the removal of 3k worth of content for like the 90th time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.175.62.102 (talk) 23:59, 3 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your questions.

Ryk72, i saw your questions to all the candidates, and i think they're excellent. I wanted to thank you. Pardon my joke but i have to say when i saw your username on all the candidates in my watchlist, i said "Oh look, a Ryk-roll...." No need to laugh. Not so funny. Anyway, thanks for asking what i consider to be very relevant questions. I've been incubating an idea of an anti-bullying task force of volunteers who would receive a bit of guidance on recognizing and dealing with bullying behaviors, to be available as advocates for users who perceive themselves to be bullied in Wikispace. I've put the idea up here if you're interested in being part of that conversation, since your questions seemed to be intersectional with this topic. SageRad (talk) 16:28, 23 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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) 17:05, 24 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This seems like a good place to leave my question.  :-)     Over on the voterguide talk of Smallbones, you responded in the section about the voting-system that you "concur that there are several issues with the system currently used". But you didn't get more specific, so, can you please be more specific? See also the discussion at User_talk:Kevin_Gorman about the same kind of stuff, about which I somewhere have a tab open with my reply moldering away. p.s. If you have time to mess with the signpost again, I've done some more work, and would appreciate some double-checking / cuts / fixes / etc, should you wish. Best, 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:15, 28 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi "75.108", I thank you for your question. As intimated in the comment at Smallbones' voterguide Talk, I think discussion of alternatives / improvements is better held outside the election voting period proper, so will not go into too much depth. My concerns are echoed in the comments of some of the editors at Kevin Gorman's Talk page, but not all. Certainly, Kevin's comment at 00:35, 22 November 2015 (UTC) resonates - both w.r.t ArbCom representing the breadth of the community, and also the underlying mechanics. Other comments there resonate discordantly. Hopefully that provides an inkling. Please do feel free to ask any follow up questions. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 20:54, 29 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Disambiguation link notification for December 1

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Wikipedia appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Skaill House, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page Dovecot. Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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DYK nomination of Skaill House

Hello! Your submission of Skaill House at the Did You Know nominations page has been reviewed, and some issues with it may need to be clarified. Please review the comment(s) underneath your nomination's entry and respond there as soon as possible. Thank you for contributing to Did You Know! Edwardx (talk) 19:25, 1 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Edwardx, Thank you for your efforts on DYK, and on this particular review. I have updated the article in line with the comments. Please let me know if anything more is required. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 04:54, 5 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

ethnicelebs

For the record, ethnicelebs is not user-generated. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 01:29, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi All Hallow's Wraith, Thanks for your post. Unfortunately, looking at the submit-a-celeb and terms pages^, I am afraid that I'm not able to concur with this assessment of the site. ^particularly Term 5. Nature of Service - The information on Ethnicelebs is provided for entertainment purposes only. Although we may vet information to ensure its accuracy, we make no assurances that all information on our Site is accurate. ...
If you are keen to seek opinions from other editors, I suggest posting at the reliable sources noticeboard. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 01:51, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I know you can submit information to the web site, but there's no guarantee of it being published. Similarly, you can submit a correction to The New York Times, etc. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 01:55, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
While I concur on these aspects, I don't concur that they are sufficient for the site to not be WP:USERGENERATED^^; and certainly not sufficient for the site to be reliable for facts about living persons. ^^in this regard ethnicelebs is similar to IMDB.
Other editors may hold different opinions; the best way to form a wider consensus is at WP:RSN. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 02:32, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't say it was necessarily reliable, I'm just saying it isn't user-generated. All Hallow's Wraith (talk) 03:14, 3 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Signpost

Brought some cookies and coffee with me. Hope you like them.

Hi Ryk72. I'm the Signpost recruiter and I am happy to meet you! I understand you might be interested in joining the Signpost team. I wonder if you have any questions about the Publication area of the paper (the section you were interested in), or anything else Signpost related? I have your talkpage watchlisted, and I hope to hear from you, but if you're busy with other things, no worries. (copy: @Gamaliel:) --Rosiestep (talk) 04:09, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

please do NOT yet send out any signpost-exit-poll stuff.

User:Floquenbeam has asked that we get consensus first. If you've started already , go ahead and halt for the moment, please. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:38, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like it was already sent out. Ryk72, please see the thread User talk:GamerPro64#Signpost spam when you get back online. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:40, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The horse has, unfortunately, done the proverbial. Or, to view it another way - I have already halted - having reached the end of the list. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 15:42, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for halting so promptly; minus 1 hours is, admittedly, pretty fast. I'm not angry bear mad, but I do wish you all hadn't done this, and hope you won't do so in the future, without a clear consensus somewhere that it's OK. --Floquenbeam (talk) 15:44, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes; appreciate your calmness Floq. I wasn't intending to make trouble for Ryk72 and Gamer. (Sorry Ryk72!) Agree that any such future move would need wider formal consensus, than was locally & informally sought. Apologies for the mistake. 75.108.94.227 (talk) 15:50, 9 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, if Gamer has stripped out the usernames-and-email-headers, and emailed you the five-or-six-or-seven responses that were made thataway, I suggest you combine that email-dataset (PrimeHunter, Sumanah, Nellis, Apwoolrich, Erpert, any others who may have emailed) with the following on-wiki responses who answered, but did not "submit" their answers: Kopiersperre, DGG, Gobautista, Dweller, Ale2006, and Jehochman. Call this group batch#3 (PrimeHunter-to-Jehochman), with the 20 other on-wiki responses being dubbed batch#2 (Mirokado-to-Jd2718) and batch#1 (Nathan-to-ptAufrette). This approach will give you a batch#3-size slightly bigger than ten, but the only downside to that is the round-number-percentages like 20% will not be as likely to occur.

p.s. As far as validity, by my calculations we have the following types of bias:

  • Self-selection bias, wikipedians are already a self-selected (and those who vote in arbcom elections and pay attention to usertalk messages are a *much* smaller self-selected subset thereof)
  • Participation bias, not every wikipedian who cared about the arbcom election actually voted this year (see also non-response bias below)
  • Selection bias, we used the rough procedure of picking every 18th raw vote, thus biasing our subset slightly towards the people who re-voted
  • Non-response bias, we only managed a 20% response rate (cf reporting bias), which might or might not be testable & correctable in terms of statistical validity
  • Framing bias, when the form of the questions impacts the answers received (I was glad to know many wikipedians reject the idea that RfA and/or editcountitis-thresholds matter)
  • Response bias, the arbcom voting was secret-ballot but most of our responses were on-wiki which means we'll get different answers ... plus some folks forgot their picks during the time-gap, and so on

Feel free to make any correlations you see fit. And of course, most definitely feel free to do some analysis-magic, that will correct for the above-noted biases.  :-)     However, I suspect that we are just getting a rough journalistic-quality sampling, flawed in many ways, rather than a scientific sampling that one could use to draw firm conclusions.

p.p.s. That said, I do think the responses we got were pretty illuminating, and in particular, the averages relate to edit-count were *very* low compared to what I would have expected. Some of the pull-quotes are also insightful. If you have time to work on whipping up some output-tabulation for batch#3, Gamer has already started the arbReport for this week. WP:BEBOLD please. Best, 75.108.94.227 (talk) 16:47, 18 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

NPA at ITN

Hi Ryk72, WP:NPA says "Recurring, non-disruptive personal attacks that do not stop after reasoned requests to cease can be resolved through dispute resolution and third opinions. In most circumstances, problems with personal attacks can be resolved if editors work together and focus on content, and immediate administrator action is not required." Since the editor in question refused to cooperate, I took it to WP:3O. WP:NPA also reads " Extraordinary situations that require immediate intervention are rare, but may be reported on the administrators' noticeboard.". So if WP:3O isn't the place, and WP:ANI isn't the place, where should such behavior be reported and who can help? --68.115.239.114 (talk) 22:03, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi 68.115, I see the conundrum; you are correct that WP:NPA directed editors to WP:3O. However, WP:3O is a means to request an outside opinion in a content or sourcing disagreement between two editors; it is not a forum for discussion of editor behaviour, and it is not a forum for resolution of matters involving more than two editors. I have updated WP:NPA to remove the link.
For resolution of personal attacks which do not rise to the point at which you feel WP:ANI is required, I would follow the steps outlined at WP:NPA; which would start with a message on the User_Talk page of the editor involved. It would be hoped that an amicable agreement might be reached.
I would, however, caution that, having reviewed the page in question, my own opinion is that the comments do not constitute personal attacks, and that a reasonable observer would not consider them as such. Notwithstanding that, I concur that it may be advisable for all involved to take a step back, think carefully before submitting comments, and actively work to remove heat from the discussion.
Also ping: The Rambling Man - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 22:26, 20 December 2015 (UTC) Updated: Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 22:41, 20 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Happy Yuletide

Happy Yuletide!

Merry Yuletide to you! (And a happy new year!)

Rhoark (talk) 00:28, 24 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting comment

This comment interests me. I'd like to help, although the amount of free time that I have is rather severely limited at times. I wonder if this would be a good time to propose a new one-off WP:VG collaboration to the wikiproject at WT:VG. I don't really know for certain but I suspect that the interest level in this topic may be higher at present than it has been in the past. A new issue of the WP:VG newsletter is due to be published quite soon (January 6), but it would be cool if we could get a plug for the collaboration in the news and announcements section. Any thoughts on this? -Thibbs (talk) 11:41, 26 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Thibbs, It's an excellent idea. Would very much appreciate the support developing the articles. What do I need to do to make it happen? - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 23:33, 26 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The WP:VG collaborations (linked above) are no longer active at an institutionally recognized level, but the project does still engage in these sorts of things from time to time. I suppose the success of such a project depends on how much is going on in WP:VG at the time the request is made. But anyway you would start by posting a proposal outlining the collaboration to WT:VG. I think the next thing to do would be to publicize the idea by contacting some of the top contributors on articles like Women and video games (top contributors can be seen here) and Women in computing (here). Further publicity could be generated with the Newsletter (you can request a mention in news and announcements here), and there is also WP:Women in Red which is a WikiProject devoted to expanding biographical coverage of notable red-linked women. I would drop a not there as well. Hopefully that would be enough to get the ball rolling. Let me know if you have questions or need any help with this. -Thibbs (talk) 14:14, 27 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Thibbs, I've just the now put something up on both WT:VG & WT:Women In Red. Hopefully not too late to get something in the Newsletter. Please have a look over what I've written & make any changes or amendments that you think will make it more effective. Thanks again. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 02:17, 6 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WP:VPIL#Using "like" as a preposition

You have a reply. --George Ho (talk) 08:16, 27 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

DYK for Skaill House

Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:01, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Precious

gnome

Thank you quality articles such as Skaill House, performed in collaboration, for gnomish help in keeping articles clean, for good questions to arbcom candidates and work in reviewing the election results, for a supermodest user page, for thoughtful questions, - you are an awesome Wikipedian!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 13:49, 29 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

GG at AN

Got your mail but my smtp server must be playing up - can't reply at the moment. Say whatever you want, wherever you want - I was just throwing out an idea. - Sitush (talk) 08:18, 8 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Asking for help

Hello, Ryk72! Me - Wikipedia beginner is writing to you - Wikipedia professional. I have been working for months on one article about bicycle history in my country and I tried to publish this article Draft:Gustavs Ērenpreis, but it didn't go through. Just wanted to ask you, if you could take a look and please help me if it's possible. I know I have done wrong thing - tried to publish it through Articles for Creation, but now I don't know how to fix my mistake. Ance P. (talk) 10:53, 11 January 2016

Hi Ance P., I am not sure that I would call myself a professional, but I am honoured by the compliment. I had a quick look at the Draft; and at the reason that it was knocked back. I thought that we could perhaps expand on this section - Gustavs Ērenpreis was decorated with the Order of the Three Stars medal and the Cross of Recognition of the Republic of Latvia. - which might help to show why Ērenpreis is notable (for more than the bicycle factory). I am not able to read the Latvian sources; are you able to briefly explain why he was awarded these medals? Hope this helps. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 10:56, 12 January 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Ryk72, what I was told by Wikipedia user Carite Carrite is that I made a mistake - I submitted this draft to Articles for Creation instead of just creating a new article. There is some kind of problem with Articles for Creation. Anyhow, yes, it is good suggestion to switch to the notability about medal awards. Gustavs Ērenpreis was awarded with these medals for meritorious service to Latvia, meaning - for founding and directing the factory - devoting your work to the country. It is the highest reward that the one can have from the president of Latvia. Ance P. (talk) 13:13, 19 January 2016
Hi Ance P., I noticed that the article made its way from Draft to Mainspace. Sveicieni! - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 02:35, 19 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Bahar Mustafa Incident

Hello Ryk! Just to let you know, I have opened up a discussion over at Talk:Bahar Mustafa race row incident regarding whether or not BLP:Crime applies to the article or not. All the best for now, Midnightblueowl (talk) 23:57, 18 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Midnightblueowl, Thanks for the notice. Appreciate you working through the BLP process & raising it on the Talk page. I'll try to look it over & add anything I think might be useful to helping reach a consensus. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 02:29, 19 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

FYI, 3RR

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Please be particularly aware that Wikipedia's policy on edit warring states:

  1. Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made.
  2. Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing.

Especially odd that you're edit warring for an unsourced summary. PeterTheFourth (talk) 03:55, 20 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

ANI courtesy notice

Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. Specifically, you were mentioned at WP:ANI#Alleged_BLP_vios_on_Talk:Christina_Hoff_Sommers. This is just a courtesy notice. Thank you. EvergreenFir (talk) Please {{re}} 00:54, 24 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Refactored from Talk:List of scandals with "-gate" suffix

Ryk72- you have an odd habit of, when reverting for issues raised with a veritable alphabet soup of policies, reverting to a problematic and often unrepresentative summary of the sources. I've noticed this on the Hashtag Activism page as well, where you reverted an edit I made as 'not representative of the sources' because you preferred an unsourced version. Why is this? When you only revert somebody multiple times, and don't actually contribute towards something you do think would be in line with our policies, I worry that the reason for your reverts is not policy-driven and that the policies you cite are merely excuses. PeterTheFourth (talk) 23:31, 27 February 2016 (UTC) (refactored from Talk:List of scandals with "-gate" suffix)[reply]

March 2016

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Talk:Rosin Jolly

Wow, man, I just happened upon the discussion at Talk:Rosin Jolly and my mind is boggled. I had removed this block of poorly-written vague garbage on the basis that we are not a gossip site (or a gibberish site). I was quite astounded to be reverted, and given the spotty edit history, I'm surprised it happened so quickly. Seems a shame to waste RfC time on this, but I think it might be the only way to address this. What are your thoughts? And am I correct in assuming that the core issue is that people basically want to slut-shame the lady for an alleged affair with a married man? I don't see anything at Brad Pitt about his alleged affair with Jolie when he was married to Aniston... Cyphoidbomb (talk) 10:50, 1 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Cyphoidbomb, From my understanding of the situation, I would say your assumption is fairly close to correct. From what I can gather, there's not even an alleged affair - people appear to want to slut-shame the lady for having been portrayed as being a bit too flirty on a TV show. Given that there is coverage in Indian daily newspapers, albeit the gossip pages, there is a case, though not necessarily a strong case, which could be made for something to be included - but it would need to be far better than the salacious nonsense that's been added to this point. I would support an RfC; alternately we might look at semi-protection, as the re-inclusions are largely by IP editors. I've re-removed the information, again. Thoughts? - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 11:32, 1 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I've been typing up a strongly-worded talk page comment. While I have the ability to semi the article, a proper discussion should occur first (at which point I will be involved and will no longer be able to semi...) and a clear consensus should be established by the strength of arguments, not by IP votes. I have a feeling this discussion is going to drag on for a bit, though. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 11:39, 1 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Comment has been made. I've also directly invited the dude who reverted me. I should also note that there is parallel content at Rahul Easwar. I'm going to cut it and see what happens. Cyphoidbomb (talk) 11:54, 1 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. I've also watchlisted Rahul Easwar; though I note that the phrasing there is certainly better. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 12:00, 1 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

March 2016

Information icon Please do not attack other editors, as you did at Talk:Gamergate controversy. Comment on content, not on contributors. Personal attacks damage the community and deter users. Please stay cool and keep this in mind while editing. Thank you. Gamaliel (talk) 22:49, 23 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Reference errors on 5 April

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Meta discussion refactored from WP:AN/EW

@Ryk72:, it looks to me as though all potentially relevant topic bans in the link expired over a year ago? Dumuzid (talk) 00:48, 8 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Dumuzid, If you scroll down, you will find an indefinite topic ban, restraining 3 editors from the topic of each other; Imposed at 17:04, 13 March 2015 (UTC); modified, but not resinded, at 22:50, 8 November 2015 (UTC). Hope this helps; please let me know if you have any other questions. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 01:09, 8 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the answer -- and I originally contemplated asking here. You're probably right that it's preferable. Dumuzid (talk) 01:22, 8 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Rahul Easwar

If, after four years, there is anything further to discuss, then it would be better that it be done at the article Talk page. - Ryk72 talk 09:16, 24 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Hi Ryk, if you had any additional comments to add at Talk:Rahul Easwar, they would be appreciated, although no pressure if you're not interested. Regards, Cyphoidbomb (talk) 06:31, 10 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Cyphoidbomb, Done, though mostly it is to concur with your thoughts. Also, appreciate the pp-blp. I had not realised that you are "enmopped". If this is a newly found status, you have my congratulations. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 07:01, 10 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Ryk, the information which i have added is valid and there is video on youtube.the formatting may be wrong but facts are facts. Sawjansee (talk) 01:15, 02 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Sawjansee, I would suggest that even a cursory examination of that video would be sufficient to show that it would require significant interpretation to get to the contentious material that was added to the article. If, however, you believe differently, then I encourage opening a discussion on the article Talk page. If (and only if) there is consensus for inclusion, I am happy to help with the formatting. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 17:24, 2 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Firstly there is also some ethics for quoting reference.

If there is a video in which Rahul eeshwar is spitting venom then there is no need of any other explanation or reference.

Sawjansee (talk) 09:10, 24 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Gaming 30/500

Hi, Ryk. I'm not sure about the consensus of three admins you suggest… I just get impatient with all the rules creep. But what I really came here for was to endorse your comment that users should either qualify for extended confirmed or not, only on the basis of their history, and users gaming the 30/500 system can be dealt with by the usual blocks and bans. I completely agree. Not least because that is making it simpler and less rules-creepy. It reminded me of the only full-blown case of gaming the restriction I've seen — there may be more — anyway, this one was egregious, and I indeffed the user. I don't usually like to block people, but that felt quite good. Bishonen | talk 17:29, 11 April 2016 (UTC).[reply]

Hi Bishonen, Many thanks for your kind words. I definitely feel that it is important that the user right not be revocable once obtained through editing & time spent. Part of the reasoning is that it will be used in contentious topic spaces, and I feel that we want to remove potential for admins to be open to accusations of partially when using their tools; this happens already, of course, but I think it would be worse with more options and with options with more finesse. I have outlined in more detail my concerns w.r.t individual admins applying the restriction. I agree with you on the gaming, and thank you for the block; I have seen one or two borderline cases, with editors who have not appreciably improved mainspace, or eddited outside the standard ban topic space, since attaining the 500. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 12:56, 13 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You know better than to post links to crap like that. You can dispute whatever policy issues you want to without doing so. I understand that you feel that it proves your point, but it also contains attacks on living individuals and is clearly inappropriate to post on Wikipedia. Gamaliel (talk) 12:41, 13 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Excuse me, what? A link to an AE thread is "clearly inappropriate to post on Wikipedia"? I don't know what you're talking about mr arbitrator. If the AE is so inappropriate, why don't you courtesy blank it or oversight it or something? Bishonen | talk 14:12, 13 April 2016 (UTC).[reply]
Hi Bishonen, I believe the message above is to me, rather than your good self. I don't believe there's any suggestion that your AE link is improper. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 14:21, 13 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
@Bishonen: This was directed at Ryk72 regarding his posting of links to reddit at AE. I have already revision deleted the edit containing the links. Gamaliel (talk) 14:18, 13 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

WP:ARC

I don't know how respected I still am, but yes, I will do my best to look at the request. I'm not sure how much I have contributed to discussions about that editor, but I appreciate the ping. These are just busy days and I may have spent all my words already in that ridiculously long statement I made in the other request. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 14:33, 13 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Length of statement at WP:RFAR in BLP case

Hi Ryk72, I currently make the length of your statement in this case to be in excess of 900 words, where the instructions make it clear that "Without exception, statements (including responses to other statements) must be shorter than 500 words". Can you please reduce the length of your statement to be in line with this standard? If the case is accepted, as it looks like it will be, discussion can take place through the evidence and workshop sections. Lankiveil (speak to me) 05:48, 16 April 2016 (UTC).[reply]

Hi Lankiveil, Many thanks for your clerking work. I have reduced the statement & now make it at approx. 480 words. Please let me know if there is still an issue; no reply needed if everything is now in order. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 09:03, 16 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Gamaliel and others arbitration case opened

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/Gamaliel and others. The scope of this case is Gamaliel's recent actions (both administrative and otherwise), especially related to the Signpost April Fools Joke. The case will also examine the conduct of other editors who are directly involved in disputes with Gamaliel. The case is strictly intended to examine user conduct and alleged policy violations and will not examine broader topic areas. The clerks have been instructed to remove evidence which does not meet these requirements. The drafters will add additional parties as required during the case. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gamaliel and others/Evidence.

Please add your evidence by May 2, 2016, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gamaliel and others/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. This notification is being sent to those listed on the case notification list. If you do not wish to recieve further notifications, you are welcome to opt-out on that page. For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 13:39, 18 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Vienna Institute of Demography

Hi and thanks for your suggestions/changes but actually, they do not seem like improvements to me :-\ The main statement of the sentence you modified is that the three major research topics of demography are fertility, mortality and migration, and my invisible links to the entries on mortality rate and human migration to properly direct the links should not be made visible because it distracts from the statement. It would feel impolite for me to remove your editing but I'd like you to consider the question, and then maybe do it yourself? In the meantime, have a nice timeout! rgds --WernR (talk) 09:56, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi WernR, Many thanks for your message. I had a look at the page, and I think there might be some confusion as to the syntax for wikilinks; which is [[target_article|text]]. In the version before my edit, the links were [[mortality|mortality rate]], producing mortality rate and [[migration|human migration]], producing human migration. If we want the text to say "mortality" but to link to mortality rate, which I agree is better, then we need to reverse the order to [[mortality rate|mortality]] to get mortality. I am happy for either you or I to make such a change. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 10:12, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
As I was on the page already, I have made these changes. Please feel free to change again or back, if needed. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 10:17, 20 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks mucho, that one may have been my own blunder from the start (I know the rule but might have mixed it up). As for the {cn} under Research Activities, I'd like to refer to the VID anniversary brochure "40 years of the Vienna Institute of Demography 1975–2015", is that okay or not (because no independent source)? If I do so, there is already a reference to it (currently #10), how could I refer to the same source at another place? Best --WernR (talk) 10:23, 27 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Hi WernR, While we need independent secondary sources to establish notability, we don't require them for every piece of information. In this case, I agree that this source verifies the statement. As for the technical details of using a source more than once, I would use a named reference; as in this edit[33]. Hope this helps. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 12:03, 27 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Neat, thanks! (never cease learnin'!) --WernR (talk) 13:00, 27 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Gamaliel and other case - evidence removed

Good day,

Just to let you know, this case is not accepting evidence purely relating to GamerGate articles and conduct. As your evidence appears to be focused on this area, I've reverted your additions as a clerk action.

Thanks, Mdann52 (talk) 21:26, 6 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Mdann52, Respectfully, my evidence relates directly to the administrative actions of the named party, and is firmly within scope. Please revert your removal. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 21:29, 6 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Discussed on noticeboard, replied there to keep discussion in one place. Mdann52 (talk) 22:46, 6 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gamaliel_and_others/Workshop#Application_of_the_BLP_policy

You thought you were long-winded? Your measly 1923 characters are left ice-cold in the shadow of my 2592-character behemoth of a reply. And I tried to prune it some... Thanks, and my apologies if I rambled there. I do need coffee. Drmies (talk) 14:31, 12 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

ygm

Hello, Rotary Engine. Please check your email; you've got mail!
It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.

NE Ent 22:59, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gamaliel and others closed

An arbitration case regarding Gamaliel and others has now closed and the final decision is viewable at the link above. The following remedies have been enacted:

  1. Gamaliel is admonished for multiple breaches of Wikipedia policies and guidelines including for disrupting Wikipedia to make a point, removing a speedy deletion notice from a page he created, casting aspersions, and perpetuating what other editors believed to be a BLP violation.
  2. DHeyward and Gamaliel are indefinitely prohibited from interacting with or discussing each other anywhere on Wikipedia, subject to the usual exemptions.
  3. DHeyward (talk · contribs) is admonished for engaging in incivility and personal attacks on other editors. He is reminded that all editors are expected to engage respectfully and civilly with each other and to avoid making personal attacks.
  4. For conduct which was below the standard expected of an administrator — namely making an incivil and inflammatory close summary on ANI, in which he perpetuated the perceived BLP violation and failed to adequately summarise the discussion — JzG is admonished.
  5. Arkon is reminded that edit warring, even if exempt, is rarely an alternative to discussing the dispute with involved editors, as suggested at WP:CLOSECHALLENGE.
  6. The community is encouraged to hold an RfC to supplement the existing WP:BLPTALK policy by developing further guidance on managing disputes about material involving living persons when that material appears outside of article space and is not directly related to article-content decisions.

For the Arbitration Committee, Kevin (aka L235 · t · c) via MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:38, 4 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Gamaliel and others closed

Reference errors on 26 July

Hello, I'm ReferenceBot. I have automatically detected that an edit performed by you may have introduced errors in referencing. It is as follows:

Please check this page and fix the errors highlighted. If you think this is a false positive, you can report it to my operator. Thanks, ReferenceBot (talk) 00:18, 27 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Image removal

Please stop removing images which have explicit MOS:PERTINENCE to the topic of the article, as you did on Sex and gender distinction. TimothyJosephWood 13:56, 27 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Please do not direct me via edit summary to get consensus for an image that was included per consensus on talk, which you have so far not participated in. Your image removals today have been borderline disruptive, and not conducive to the improvement of articles, especially ones that had literally no images on them this morning.
If you have suggestions for improving the article with better images, you are welcome to boldly include them, or discuss them on talk. Otherwise, please stop removing images from articles as a matter of personal taste. Please review Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images and contribute constructively to these articles, or cease being disruptive. You may consider this a warning. TimothyJosephWood 22:01, 27 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Timothyjosephwood, Respectfully, there is no discussion of the inclusion of these images at Talk:Gender role. I do not concur that an image of interlocked Venus & Mars symbols is pertinent to the topic covered by the article Gender role. Categorisation of this as "a matter of personal taste" is objectionable. Please get consensus for this inclusion. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 22:06, 27 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
There is consensus between myself and two other editors. I believe it's three threads up from the bottom. TimothyJosephWood 22:07, 27 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
One "supported" does not a consensus make. The second "other" editor is commenting on a completely different change to the article, and the wider discussion is about the inclusion of a completely different template. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 22:13, 27 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
One editor supporting, one editor supporting the diff after the change, and another editor commenting on the issue that prompted the change.
The correct response in this situation is to go spend some time at Wikimedia Commons, find a picture that works better, and include or propose it. I did, and what you see are the most neutral and relevant images I could find. If you're not satisfied with that, then create an image or find one in the public domain that we can use. Images on WP have restrictions, which means we don't always have the cover-of-the-New-York-Times options to work with, and we often have to settle for ones that marginally enhance the article, over no images at all, which is exactly what MOS:PERTINENCE tells us to do. TimothyJosephWood 22:50, 27 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]
On review, it is difficult to discern whether the "support" is for the use of that image, or for the wider discussion of moving the LGBT Portal down the page; both are contained in the phrase which the editor "supported". I would not wish to hang my hat on such a response. Lectures on "correct responses" are offensive, objectionable "'splainin'". The text at MOS:PERTINENCE does not match the summary description above. The image does not enhance the article, and is not significant and relevant in the topic's context. There is, now, an active Talk page discussion. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 22:59, 27 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

ANI

Information icon There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. TimothyJosephWood 13:12, 28 July 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Gamergate

Thought I'd test the waters. But first responses weren't good (antipathy rules), and subsequent responses about the lede have immediately been somewhat laced with POV (or equal faults - some rather egregious). I don't want to have to sandbox my own version of the article, but after looking at Rhoarks effort, I realised that may be the only way that would work. Koncorde (talk) 20:51, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Koncorde, I apologise if any of my own comments there have caused consternation. I share some of your concerns, but consider that there is scope within the second proposal for those concerns to be addressed; for example, the sentence which you explicitly highlighted could simply be removed. I would be genuinely interested in seeing a version which you created, but am not hopeful that we would see consensus for any change. Part of me considers that the discussion needs new voices, which is why I have not participated for some months. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 21:24, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Ha, no consternation here. I think they're heading down the same path. They're writing a lede for an article that it doesn't yet (or, more likely, never will) represent, and then it will be reverted via successive edits until it re-represents the content. The content will then be edit warred over as each part is cited (and apparently sacred), so it should remain, rather than looking to condense, make concise and improve. It needs wholesale culling, each section written afresh with sources not so literally and liberally quoted for the sake of emphasis (it seems every source gets at least one quote per paragraph which I have never seen in any other article) but any start is never going to work because it always draws back in the same groups (as my trigger point seems to have done so easily). Koncorde (talk) 22:03, 8 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Bishop

I recently discovered that most, if not all, of the citations to Bishop, were added by him or at his behest. The journals in which he publishes are typically low tier, and the papers themselves have virtually no cites from other work. He is an activist running a nest of websites promoting an agenda, and has been refused charitable status because his work is overtly political. In the absence of credible independent evidence of the significance of his work, we should exclude it. I'm considering adding his sites tot he spam blacklist since they have all been abused. Guy (Help!) 22:50, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Guy, Thanks for the elaboration. That's a different, and larger, concern than the "self published" that I was looking to address. I had updated the ref to use cite journal, which reintroduced the source, but have happily self-reverted. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 23:01, 21 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, subtle abuse and only spotted by coincidence. Thanks for your understanding. Guy (Help!) 21:33, 24 August 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Links added by 24.153.35.143

Since you've reverted the Ryukyuan people edit, you probably want to look at other edits by the same user. I removed links to the "The Trans-Siberian Railway Encyclopedia" purchase page from Russia-related articles as clearly inappropriate. I'm not 100% sure about Okinawa ones though (1, 2, 3). Perhaps a travel guide might be helpful in one of those articles, so I'm looking for someone more familiar with the topic. Thanks. Salmin (talk) 10:56, 6 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Salmin, Thanks. I'm not yet convinced that a travel guide adds anything to these particular articles, but happy to keep an open mind. I am, however, sure that a link to a sales website, even one as ubiquitous as Amazon, doesn't add anything. If I had to choose, I'd say it fails WP:ELNO #1 & #13. Appreciate you taking care of the Trans-Siberian Railway edits. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 13:20, 6 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

General Disclaimer and Permanent Protection

How is the general disclaimer related to the Wikipedia Protection Policy? Thanks Wetit🐷 0 07:44, 9 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Wetitpig0, I was not the editor who reverted your change. You may want to ask Evad37 (diff) or Andy M. Wang (diff). - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 07:49, 9 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Page mover granted

Hello, Ryk72. Your account has been granted the "extendedmover" user right, either following a request for it or demonstrating familiarity with working with article names and moving pages. You are now able to rename pages without leaving behind a redirect, and move subpages when moving the parent page(s).

Please take a moment to review Wikipedia:Page mover for more information on this user right, especially the criteria for moving pages without leaving redirect. Please remember to follow post-move cleanup procedures and make link corrections where necessary, including broken double-redirects when suppressredirect is used. This can be done using Special:WhatLinksHere. It is also very important that no one else be allowed to access your account, so you should consider taking a few moments to secure your password. As with all user rights, be aware that if abused, or used in controversial ways without consensus, your page mover status can be revoked.

Useful links:

If you do not want the page mover right anymore, post here, or just let me know. Thank you, and happy editing! Widr (talk) 12:09, 10 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Widr, I thank you kindly. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 12:38, 10 September 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Always On My Mind

Dear Ryk72,

Re. 'Always On My Mind'. My understanding is that Brenda Lee's and Gwen McCrae's versions were first released. I know that Brenda's was recorded in September, 1971. Elvis' version was recorded in March 1972. However, B. J. Thomas' version was released in 1996 on the CD '22 Classic Tracks' on the label Intercontinental 4005. He recorded it in January, 1970. I also refer to Dick Rosemont's internet site 'originalsproject'. Michael. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Thunderbelch (talk • contribs) 23:11, 9 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Thunderbelch:, If (and only if) we have a reliable source for the B. J. Thomas inclusion, then it may be worth including. Though, I am inclined to consider that the noteworthy aspect is the initial release, especially where so much time passes between recording & release. It may be best to amend the text to focus on earliest release. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 02:27, 10 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hijra

What kind of evidence do you want for the general pattern described by an external source for the article hijra Are these sources not sufficient for the general pattern http://m.indiatimes.com/news/lgbtq-the-truth-about-how-hijras-are-made-in-india-because-they-re-not-always-born-that-way-257525.html http://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2008/12/the-eunuch-reality/ Blazearon21 (talk) 23:02, 23 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

"Lotus"

Please be much more cautious in disamming this. The "lotus" can only confidently be sent to Nelumbo nucifera in Indian and Chinese art. In the Egyptian & some other cultures Nymphaea lotus or another Nymphaea will be correct, & often the plant is uncertain & the term is best left undisammed. See the List of plants known as lotus. Johnbod (talk) 13:23, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Johnbod, I saw your edit. I'm going through & fixing now. Many thanks for your attention & your kind message. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 13:26, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks - the motif (or motifs) was often carried far away from where the actual plants grew, & used by artists had never seen real plants, & just used a generalized shape. One day I'll do Lotus in art, but it is confusing. Johnbod (talk) 13:28, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]
I understand now. Much like the "elephant" at Nikkō Tōshō-gū. For the non-Asian (Indian & Chinese) art, I'm changing to List of plants known as lotus, per your edit. For Indian & Chinese, I will leave as Nelumbo nucifera. Please let me know if you have a better choice. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 13:34, 2 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

kathiawari horse

i am from kathiawar region of gujarat where this breed is found, i have researched on kahiawari horse for 19 years, the information provided is wrong in the article. the title is wrongly written we call kathiyawadi not kathiawari.it is genetically proven that horse is not from arab descends so please help me to correct this article because i have poor english. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aniruddhbhaidhadhal (talk • contribs) 06:09, 3 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Why didn't you talk to me?

I returned from having stepped away from my desk to find that you'd done this and started this whole talk page section without bothering to get any input from me.

Now, as it is, I agree that some of the sources cited may have been dubious (although I would include the one from Alice Dreger; she's notable in her own right). And I thank you for calling it BOLD. I have written a much shorter section now, using one less impeachable source.

But ... you could at least have made an effort to try to get some input from me. It's how we do things here. All I was trying to do was get to the point where we could take that tag off.

Could you remember that being bold also includes working with your fellow community members? Please? Daniel Case (talk) 03:25, 7 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind. As I have now realized, it was my fault for being too busy at the time to notice. Daniel Case (talk) 04:01, 7 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Extended confirmed protection policy RfC

You are receiving this notification because you participated in a past RfC related to the use of extended confirmed protection levels. There is currently a discussion ongoing about two specific use cases of extended confirmed protection. You are invited to participate. ~ Rob13Talk (sent by MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:31, 22 December 2016 (UTC))[reply]

Precious anniversary

A year ago ...
gnome
... you were recipient
no. 1321 of Precious,
a prize of QAI!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:56, 29 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Four years now! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:27, 29 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Censorship or copyright issue?

Sorry if I came across as a little stingy, but the idea of censorship on Wikipedia is important to me and I really think we ought to have in depth discussion before doing something like this. We can see what the responses are at the Village Pump. I will not revert if anyone else removes the link, but I think it's best if both you and I leave it alone for now.

Best, Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 20:09, 18 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

CFCF, Please self-revert pending resolution of the discussions, and formation of consensus, as required per WP:ELBURDEN, and per WP:BRD. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 12:38, 19 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

A kitten for you!

For hard work and keeping a level head even when others don't... Sorry..

Carl Fredrik 💌 📧 20:10, 18 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

List of scandals with -gate suffix

I know you are busy, but I am also aware you have experience in dealing with vandals. Could you take a look at "list of scAndals ending in -gate" when you have a moment? Appears to be some vandalism/pov-pushing/tag-teaming going on. There was a well established consensus which was summarily trashed and deleted for reasons I cannot figure out. Thank you for all your efforts in keeping Wikipedia free from vandalism. 23.114.214.45 (talk) 23:20, 4 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

New RfC at Plummer v. State

There is a new RfC at Plummer v. State RfC, dealing with the Internet meme section. Please visit and comment on the proposed language for the section. This is revised from the first proposal, and you are receiving this notice due to your participation in the first RfC. GregJackP Boomer! 20:36, 20 April 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Why did you reverted the first edit ?

It's discussed on the talk page and I was agreed by Miki Filigranski https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Ryukyuan_people

I'm referring the problem with this edit it should rephrased properly

" Recent genetic and anthropological studies indicate that the Ryukyuans are significantly related to the Ainu people and mostly share the ancestry with the indigenous prehistoric Jōmon period (pre 10,000–1,000 BCE) people, who arrived from Southeast Asia, compared to the Yamato people who are mostly an admixture of the Yayoi period (1,000 BCE–300 CE) migrants from Northeast Asia (specifically the Korean peninsula).[3][8][9][10] "

This should be wisely rephrased and should at least be on the "origin". It says "mostly share" ancestry with the indigenous prehistoric Jomon people " . " compared to the Yamato people " The newest study shows they have only 28% Jomon admixture which makes them only 72% Yayoi this means they are also closer to the Yamato people, so it is incorrect to make this this claim. DragoniteLeopard (talk) 08:57 April 22 2017 (UTC)

Controversial Reddit communities

Afternoon, I would appreciate your input to an RFC introduced by an SPA relating to the inclusion of SRS in the "Controversial Reddit communities". SPA has canvassed to overturn 3 years of consensus on a 4 day vote. Koncorde (talk) 15:09, 16 May 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The Fine Young Capitalists good article re-assessment

The Fine Young Capitalists, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for a community good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. PeterTheFourth (talk) 07:48, 7 June 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Whataboutism

Hello Ryk72, thanks for your remark about the copyright status of Euromaidan videos that I had nominated for deletion; then probably the deletion requests should be re-opened.

Wouldn't this situation best be addressed on the talk page of Whataboutism? After the epic failure of dispute resolution, I'm not going to touch this partisan article again soon; feel free to do what you think is right, and I might support it if I think it's right too.

Kind regards, — JFG talk 09:57, 10 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I've removed the embed at Whataboutism; removed the erroneous licensing details from the files at Commons; and reopened the deletion discussions. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 03:24, 11 July 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Artistes?

Hi! Messeging you after your recent edits on Coke Studio (Pakistan). See [34] and [35], then decide what was right on Coke Studio. No need to explain more, hope you understand. Thanks! M. Billoo 13:29, 20 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

"Artistes" is anachronistic and twee; it is not in common usage. And, while we're at it, the language above reads as though you intend to leave the decision to me, and that no further discussion was required or desired, not that you would revert. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 15:20, 20 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Districts of Belarus

Thanks for your help at Category:Districts of Vitebsk Region. Could you also do Category:Districts of Minsk Region, move X Raion to X District? Then finally the process started in 2013 will be finished. WP:UE, and consensus at https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Belarus&diff=799906317&oldid=799905144 (Ymblanter who made the statement is an admin). 77.180.150.87 (talk) 14:32, 13 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Re: "at" vs. "of" again

I'm bringing this to your talk page because this issue is at risk of becoming an edit war. The sentence was very carefully worded "at Rome" rather than "of Rome" because the family did not originate at Rome, which is one of the basic connotations of "of" but not of "at". I understand your argument that it isn't what you're using "of" to mean, but nobody else can tell that from reading the sentence. More particularly, your edit and the previous identical edit by KintetsuBuffalo on this and numerous other articles, seems to proceed from the belief that one preposition is "right" and the other is "wrong". From my point of view, "of" is wrong because it carries implications that are not intended and would not be accurate; at best it's ambiguous and potentially misleading in a way that "at" is not.

But supposing for a moment that "of" could apply here: how would this substitution constitute anything other than your personal preference with respect to the choice of words? It seems to me that if the rationale for changing a single word used in the same way in many articles is, "this is how I say it, and how the people/examples I remember say it", then the edit shouldn't be made. It would be like changing all occurrences of circa that one encounters to the abbreviation ca., or converting instances of "that" to "which" or vice-versa, not because it makes a clear difference, but because you prefer one version over the other. Describing someone or something as being "at" a town or city is no less valid or correct than being "of" it, unless some subtle shade of meaning in one of them makes that preposition less helpful or less accurate. And in this type of construction, "of" is at best ambiguous; "at" is not. Please consider restoring the original wording. P Aculeius (talk) 23:31, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Respectfully, in the context of the sentence, "The gens Maria was a plebeian family at Rome", the use of the preposition "at" is not English. As Kintetsubuffalo intimated on their Talk page, "Rome" (in any of its meanings of city, city and surrounds, civilisation or empire) lacks the specificity or precision that we would need to use "at"; it is not a sufficiently particular place. Clicking through to the wikilinked article, Rome, makes a use of "at" seem even stranger; Ancient Rome refers to the Roman civilization ...; one cannot be said to be "at" a civilisation. Consequently, one preposition is "right" and the other is "wrong". What "of" may lose in any perceived ambiguity (Multifaceted though it may be, it is, of course, a common enough word for each of its meanings to be understood by English speakers of all varieties and dialects on an everyday basis), it gains tenfold in coherence. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 12:39, 23 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Disagree with "Rome" being ambiguous. Except in the loosest possible context, it always refers to the city of Rome, not to random places in Gaul, Dacia, or Egypt. Neither ancient sources nor classical scholars would speak of visiting any of the provinces as going "to Rome". Someone who lived at Burdigala didn't live at Rome. Someone executed at Ravenna wasn't killed at Rome. But by the same token someone speaking so imprecisely as to use "Rome" to describe the entire Roman Empire would not use "at" to describe persons within its boundaries, any more than someone might be described as "at" the United States or "at" Russia. It's even more absurd to imagine someone using "at Rome" to mean "somehow involved with Roman civilization". You're inventing ambiguities that don't exist. The fact that the article "ancient Rome" encompasses Roman history, including the Roman empire, doesn't make "at Rome" ambiguous at all. And your distinction between "the city" and "the city and environs" is only meaningful if you use "in", which was carefully avoided for that very reason. There's only one reasonable interpretation of "at" Rome, which makes it appropriate in this context. But "of" Rome in the same context makes the statement inaccurate or misleading, for no reason other than the personal preference of an editor who has no other involvement with the article. P Aculeius (talk) 13:13, 24 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Please read what I have written again; carefully. I have not said that "at Rome" is ambiguous. I have said that it is nonsense in this context. In the sentence "The gens Maria was a plebeian family at Rome", the indirect object, Rome, is Ancient Rome - the civilisation. Someone speaking ... to use "Rome" to describe the entire Roman Empire would not use "at" to describe persons within its boundaries, any more than someone might be described as "at" the United States or "at" Russia. It's even more absurd to imagine someone using "at Rome" to mean "somehow involved with Roman civilization". Precisely! Use of the preposition "at" does not make sense! Please also review WP:FOC, WP:ASPERSIONS and WP:OWN and refrain from comments about personal preferences and involvement with the article. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 17:39, 24 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
No, it's not. Nobody would ever use "at Rome" to mean "Roman civilization" rather than "the city of Rome", precisely because such an interpretation would be nonsensical. "At Rome" necessarily refers to the city of Rome, which is exactly what was intended. You seem to be interpreting the sentence to mean that the gens Maria was a family found throughout the whole of the Roman empire; but that's not what it's supposed to say, which is why it wasn't written in a way that could be interpreted to mean that. The sentence doesn't mean what you're saying it means, and thus the argument that "at" makes no sense is based on an incorrect premise. I've called it a personal preference on the part of some editors because there is no apparent reason why "of" should be preferred to "at" when referring to a particular location (not an empire, not a civilization). Insisting that another word has to be substituted without a clear advantage is inherently arbitrary.
I'm not claiming ownership of anything; before you start rattling off links to policies you think I'm violating, you might want to review WP:ACCUSE and WP:AGF. What I'm saying is not that you need involvement with an article in order to edit it; it's that running through an otherwise random selection of articles, making the same change to the same wording, without any clear advantage or improvement in meaning or clarity, is unconstructive and frustrating to other editors. It's not casting aspersions to point this out; numerous policies in the MoS are based on the fact that in the past some editors have crusaded for particular styles that they preferred, changing otherwise acceptable language in various articles in which they had no other interest. I don't believe that WP:ASPERSIONS has any application here. Since by this point it seems exceedingly unlikely that you're willing to be convinced, I won't take this any further; if you don't intend to revert the change in question, then please just let this argument die here, and I won't post any more. P Aculeius (talk) 03:04, 25 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Closure rationale

I am completely baffled by this closure and would really appreciate it if you could explain why you haven't discounted the !votes that have no basis in Wikipedia policy. On the one hand, you have a large number of unchallenged WP:RS describing the result as either an "FLN victory" or a "French defeat", and on the other hand, you have a bunch of anonymous editors disagreeing with the scholars without bringing a single valid source to back up their irrelevant personal opinions. The one and only editor who attempted to proffer countervailing sources failed miserably: first, they misrepresented a source by claiming it said something it clearly didn't, and when challenged, they brought 3 irrelevant sources and shamelessly highlighted bits of text about the battle of Algiers (an event that happened 5 years before independence). M.Bitton (talk) 22:02, 22 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

I will attempt an expanded explanation later today. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 00:47, 23 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the explanation. I think I can see where the problem is:
I further found no guidance within the parameter documentation as to how editors should decide whether to use the "See Aftermath" (or equivalent) option; how they should decide that the "X victory" or "inconclusive" options are not sufficient to accurately describe the outcome. Without any such additional guidance, such a decision is a matter for consensus (agreement) among editors - that is: opinion, not on the article subject itself, but on where to draw (or ignore) the lines of the parameter documentation (particularly the "See Aftermath" provisions), if it is neither fallaciously reasoned nor demonstrative of a lack of understanding, is within the discretion of a consensus of editors.
I don't know whether you missed it or don't agree with it, but the documentation of the guideline is crystal clear: the result parameter may use one of several standard terms: "X victory", "Decisive X victory" or "Inconclusive". The choice of term should reflect what the sources say. In other words, what goes into the Infobox is determined by WP content policies, which are not negotiable, and which cannot be superseded by editors' consensus (based, in this case, on nothing more than personal opinions and WP:OR). The "See Aftermath" section is only meant to be used in cases where the standard terms do not accurately describe the outcome (see my first comment on why this is clearly not one of them). M.Bitton (talk) 18:09, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Clarified. I will also note, that, as a general point, if none of the respondents to an RfC are supportive of the proposed changes, it is extremely unlikely that any editor will close in favour of those changes. It's not impossible, but it would need to be demonstrated that all of the opposing !votes should be discarded: those that flatly contradict established policy, those based on personal opinion only, those that are logically fallacious, and those that show no understanding of the matter of issue. I was not able to so find on this occasion.
A question: What specific action or outcome is sought from this discussion? If it is a reversal of the RfC closure, I am, as yet, disinclined; but would not be offended if a review were requested at AN per Wikipedia:Closing discussions#Challenging other closures. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 23:57, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
What specific action or outcome is sought from this discussion? To understand the rationale behind the closure.
those that flatly contradict established policy, those based on personal opinion only, those that are logically fallacious, and those that show no understanding of the matter of issue. Am I correct in understanding that, as far as you're concerned, none of the !votes fall into any one of the aforementioned categories ? M.Bitton (talk) 22:57, 25 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I feel this was covered in the first expanded explanation: In reviewing the discussion, I did not find any arguments that contradicted established policy; any that were particularly fallacious; or any that showed no understanding of the issue - I did not, therefore, discount any arguments on these bases. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 13:58, 27 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. I will proceed as you suggested and request a review at AN. M.Bitton (talk) 20:57, 28 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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NPOV/N

I'm not going to prolong that thread by replying to you there, but seriously: If you read that Pew study and don't think I accurately conveyed its meaning, I would be interested to see your take on it. I'm not thrilled to see you searching for particular character strings that I did not present as quotes or the exact wording of the Pew piece and then disparaging me with the gratuitous signoff about "optics." Not cool. Thanks. SPECIFICO talk 01:18, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I do not believe that the Pew study[36] supports the assertion what it does say, right on the first page, is that a quantitative survey determined that so-called left-leaning and centrist media base their reporting on multiple credible sources and fact-checking, whereas "right-leaning" sources tend to present general narratives and speculations based on their constituencies' prior beliefs rather than facts and sources; I read through the whole text of the study and could not find anything supportive (either using the terms verbatim or synonyms). There is no section of the study which addresses the quality of sourcing or reliability of sources used by news media. Consequently I put forward the challenge to demonstrate how that assertion is supported.
What is covered, in one section of the study, is the number of types of sources used in stories by news media, and this is broken down by the political leanings of their audiences. Those types as surveyed by the study are: 1) Trump or a member of the administration, 2) the Trump organization or a family member (not in the administration), 3) a congressional Democrat, 4) a congressional Republican, 5) an issue-based group or interest group, 6) an expert, 7) a poll, 8) a journalist (other than the reporter or anchor of the story) or news organization, and 9) a citizen. It should be fairly clear that many of those source types are far from reliable for anything more than their own opinion. A news piece which uses more of these types of sources is not necessarily more reliable or better sourced than one which uses only one type. Even though the study finds that media with left leaning audiences uses multiple types of sources for each story more often than media with right leaning audiences. This does not speak to credibility. Credibility of news media is not examined by the study.
What is covered by the study, in the section Compared with past administrations, coverage of Trump's early days focused less on policy and was more negative overall (p. 11), is the extent to which news media's stories made positive or negative assessments of Trump. This was compared to the extent to which news media made positive or negative assessments of the previous 3 Presidents (Obama, Bush, Clinton). The contrast is striking:- President:positive/neutral/negative -> Clinton:27%/44%/28%, Bush:22%/49%/28%, Obama:42%/38%/20%, Trump:5%/33%/62%. Striking not only in the vastly higher proportion of negative assessments, but also in the lower proportion of neutral assessments. The study also finds that media is much less focused on policy and more focused on character than for the corresponding periods of the previous 3 presidencies:- President:%policy stories -> Clinton:58%, Bush:65%, Obama:50%, Trump:31%
Masem is correct to state that this section of the study is indicative of both a bias against Trump and of greater polarisation in the media.
Again, what from the study is supports the assertion that left-leaning and centrist media base their reporting on multiple credible sources and fact-checking, whereas "right-leaning" sources tend to present general narratives and speculations based on their constituencies' prior beliefs rather than facts and sources? - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 03:38, 8 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Agnes Kagure Kariuki

Thank you for your interest in improving the POV and reliability issues for the Agnes Kagure Kariuki article. Can you offer some remarks on the reliability of this source? For example, could the article say that she was involved in a land dispute and that the National Land Commission report on the matter in September 2017 said that her claim to have purchased a 5.2 acre property in 2011 was not valid, saying "The Registrar whose signature has been appended on the Conveyance has also disowned the signature as a forgery. No Day Book Number Entry exists for this document and there is no entry for Stamp Duty either. Agnes Karure [sic] Kariuki's conveyance document is an outright forgery." —BarrelProof (talk) 19:17, 24 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@BarrelProof: Thanks for your message. Your changes look fairly good to me; and I think we're fairly aligned on what's reliable and what's not. I'll put some additional thoughts down on the article Talk page. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 22:32, 26 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you. —BarrelProof (talk) 23:38, 26 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

My apologies

Hello, Ryk. I see that I reverted one of your improvements to Miss Universe 2004. That was accidental -- I was going after the vandalism that took place in the edit immediately after yours. Sorry about causing you the extra work. NewYorkActuary (talk) 17:37, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi NewYorkActuary, Thank you for your kind message. It is appreciated. I did figure that your edit was addressing the vandalism, and would not have re-reverted otherwise. Appreciate your efforts in helping to make Wikipedia better. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 23:16, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Did you read the source?

Discussed at Talk:Ryukyuan people#Jomon migration

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.

Here again the conclusion of the source from hideo matsumoto:

Regarding the roots of the Japanese, Hanihara1) proposed the ‘‘dual structure model’’, which suggests that the Jomon (12,000-2300 years ago) and Yayoi (2300-1700 years ago) peoples originated from South Asia and North Asia, re- spectively. This model assumes that people of the South Mongoloid lineage settled Japan first, later followed by a considerable number of immigrants of the North Mongoloid lineage and that the Mongol- oid of both lineages mixed with each other to form the present-day Japanese people. Furthermore, the Ainu are assumed to be Jomon people of the South Mongoloid lineage that had evolved with little or no mixture with other races. This model was based on the computer multivariate analysis of the results of osteometry, an outdated, uncertain method. It is known that such physical measurement values easily change with nutrition, environment, and culture in a short time, as is well understood from the physique of the present young generation. Instead of morphological studies, polymorphic markers harbored in macromolecules such as pro- teins and glycoconjugates including blood group systems have been widely applied during the last century to studies of genetic variation in human populations because of their simple Mendelian inheritance. Among them, Gm types are unique genetic markers that can define a Mongoloid population in terms of its origin by the combination pattern of the gene types and the ratios of them, even though Gm is a classical marker. In sharp contrast to the ‘‘dual structure model’’, our data on the geographical distribution of Gm gene types throughout the Asian and American Continents, and Pacific islands show that the Japanese popula- tion belong basically to the northern Mongoloid group; that the Ainu, as well as the Ryukyu islanders, are genetically closer to the northern Mongoloid group than to the general Japanese population; and that Taiwanese have a Gm gene composition characteristic of the southern Mongol- oid group. The extent to which Japanese were admixed with the southern group is estimated at as low as 7–8%, assuming the admixture with southern groups having the highest frequencies of the Gm afb1b3 gene. The results of a population study by Bannai et al.,22) who analyzed HLA polymorphisms, sug- gested that the Ainu might share the same ancestor in eastern Asia with native Americans (Tlingit and Amerindians). Their findings indicate that the indigenous Japanese people, i.e., the Ainu, belong to the northern Mongoloid group, and are in good agreement with our results that the Ainu have the northern Mongoloid Gm genes at higher pro- portions than the present-day Japanese people.

Please help to update and fix wikipedia. Thank you 212.95.8.170 (talk) 11:20, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

because the other user again could nt read carefully i point it here out aswell:

Last part of the conclusion: Their findings indicate that the indigenous Japanese people, i.e., the Ainu, belong to the northern Mongoloid group, and are in good agreement with our results that the Ainu have the northern Mongoloid Gm genes at higher pro- portions than the present-day Japanese people. —> indigenous japanese=jomon=ainu(and partially ryukyuans). So when the ainu and ryukyuans have more northern DNA than mainland japanese, it is clear that jomon are of northern origin as ainu/ryukyuans are closer to jomon and yamato closer to yayoi. Thank you212.95.8.170 (talk) 11:53, 19 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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.

Australia's head of state, again

Howdy. An Rfc at Monarchy of Australia has been opened concerning the topic Head of state. GoodDay (talk) 20:24, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

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your Qs

I thought about pinging you, but I see you were watching. Just finished the last of em--though one cursorily. Thanks, Drmies (talk) 03:33, 26 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Drmies:, I thank you kindly for your responses, my dashing prince. In truth, none seemed cursory; and each provoked thought. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 11:25, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Mo Ghile Mear? So much to learn, so little time... Drmies (talk) 14:57, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
One day I might learn to leave Wikipolitics well enough alone. - Ryk72 'c.s.n.s.' 15:18, 28 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

SPI required

Indeed, I do smell socks at Constitution of Japan article. GoodDay (talk) 20:40, 25 October 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@GoodDay: well that RfC got WP:BLUDGEONed quick. - Ryk72 talk 23:52, 2 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. Having checked over his contribs, he's also an WP:SPA editor. GoodDay (talk) 00:03, 3 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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Be well at Christmas

Have a WikiChristmas and a PediaNewYear

I hope you are well Ryk72. Have a peaceful Christmas. SilkTork (talk) 17:31, 24 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help this dispute come to a resolution. Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you!. Snooganssnoogans (talk) 18:42, 28 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Give a copy-edit (rewrite)?

Hey, I don't suppose you'd be willing to go through the etymology section and make at least one, preferably two or three, changes to each sentence?

What I'd ultimately like is for the section to be completely overwritten by others so that practically none of the original prose is mine, which would allow me to shake the perception in some quarters that I am WP:OWNing the article and finally was my hands of the whole thing. You're getting the request for a first pass at it for basically two reasons: (i) you commented on the talk page within the last day, and (ii) Nishidani and SMcCandlish have already made brief passes at parts of it.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:15, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@Hijiri88: Was planning on proposing some text in the next couple of days. More than happy to have a look over the current article & make amendments instead. But a wee bit under the weather at the moment, so not sure how fast I'll be; and not sure I'll find 2-3 things to change per sentence without it seeming contrived. - Ryk72 talk 02:15, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
That's fine. Anything you can offer would be most appreciated.
BTW, do you read Japanese? I read this comment, but that's as much about Chinese as Japanese. I ask because I was on the fence about asking you to take a cleaver to the whole think and keep only what seems worthwhile, but unless you've read Hasegawa yourself that might be a bad idea. (In which case I'll probably ask Nishidani or one of the folks at WikiProject Japan to take the final pass at it after you and maybe HAL, SMcC and whoever else takes a shot.)
Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:52, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
I can kind of slosh my way through a Japanese text if I have a good dictionary sitting next to me. But I would be slow at it, and the results would not be of the quality that you or Nishidani would produce. - Ryk72 talk 11:53, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, sorry; I just wanted to know if you'd be able to verify or falsify my text (Nishidani's text is, if I recall correctly, all in the lower paragraphs and based on the English sources) with the source, if you wanted to change the meaning of anything. So sloshing with a good dictionary (which gets more fun to say every time ;) ) should be fine. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:00, 30 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
@Hijiri88: Speaking of dictionaries, would you have a copy of 広辞苑 and/or 大言海 to hand? I'd like to reference those directly for the definitions, and would need the page numbers.
(Small FYI: I monitor pages I've recently edited -- something that is probably partly to blame for the "bludgeoning" people sometimes talk about -- so it doesn't matter here, but in case you weren't aware pinging someone doesn't work unless you sign your post.)
Sorry, no luck on 大言海, and while, as I said here, I have a 広辞苑, it's a later edition with slightly different wording for (ii) and a slightly more significant difference in (iii). Adding the exact quotes from the later and probably now more readily available edition in a footnote or three might be good, so if you'd like I could furnish those?
I've also got myself a copy of the Ōbunsha dictionary cited by Siniawer (I promised myself I wouldn't waste any real-world money on this silly affair, but it's a dictionary that might actually be worth having in general). It would technically be OR to insert any direct comparison of Siniawer with her own cited source into the article (spoiler: almost nothing in Siniawer 2018 is actually related to the Ōbunsha dictionary she cites for her translations; she obviously originally cited it in 2014 for the "collection of 13th century tales" factoid, which was excised from the 2018 version), but if we need a third dictionary to explicitly mention inline...
Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:42, 31 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
(I can't believe I forgot to sign that. Did I mention the "under the weather"?)
Where sources cite other sources, I have a preference for including the original as a reference, if possible. If nothing else, it's a sanity check on how reliable the original is. cf. Yamaori Tetsuo. It's funny you mention acquiring a copy of the Ōbunsha. I'm seriously considering getting Siniawer's book; only because I think it'd be a decent read. I'm still working my way through the parts of the relevant section that I can see online; some pages seem to be readable or not based on the TLD in the URL. Let me think about whether the later edition of 広辞苑 and Ōbunsha would be useful; possibly the former would be, but that might mean swapping out some of Hasegawa's quotations.
(PS. I hope you have some good soba to eat tonight.)
- Ryk72 talk 08:59, 31 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]
Happy New Year! Yeah, I'm happy "swapping out" Hasegawa's quotations, as long as it's clarified in a footnote or wherever that the wording he gives is slightly different and that we are using an updated version. Most of the content of the first paragraph can't be verified in the dictionary alone, so the Hasegawa refs themselves would probably need to stay largely intact if switching out the quotes is all we're doing, mind you.
BTW, what do you mean by "including the original as a reference"? I'm inclined to think you mean providing both sources in our refs, but given that "as a reference" means something slightly different on Wikipedia from what it means in everyday speech, there is also the possibility that you mean to remove the references to Hasegawa and Siniawer altogether in favour of their original sources; but I'm actually sympathetic to the view I think espoused by Francis (it's very difficult to take anything he says as being sincere at this point...) that we shouldn't just be citing dictionary definitions. (See also point 2 of this comment.)
Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:50, 1 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Happy New Year! Sorry for the delayed reply. Been busy, and thinking. For "including the original as a reference", I guess I mean both; depending on the situation. For example: If source A includes claim #1, referencing it to source B, without further comment or transformation of that claim, then I'd rather just reference source B. If source A does add some comment or transformation, then I'd prefer to cite source A, but might cite B alongside it. - Ryk72 talk 08:02, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Hijiri88: I found Sato Yuriko's article here. Parts of the text render strangely for me, and hidden pages are a lottery, but you should be able to get the gist. - Ryk72 talk 09:27, 12 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Hijiri88: I'm a wee bit lost for words. I think I'll probably just buy a copy of Siniawer. There's enough in preview to get the main points, but I'd like to be able to say something dispositive. - Ryk72 talk 05:57, 3 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

The book or the article? The article is on JStor, and if I recall you can access it and two other articles over a three-week period with a free account.
As for what's going on on the Wikipedia talk page at the moment -- yeah, I'm at a loss for words too. The last thing I needed the same day someone who has apparently been copying out sloppy reproductions of my Wikipedia work on a blog, without crediting me anywhere, and then linking to their blog on the Wikipedia articles I wrote. (Actually I didn't write any of the articles they'd added the link to so far, but they definitely did consult Wikipedia for some of their other blog entries.)
Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:42, 3 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I did mean the book. But thanks for the reminder on the article; I'll re-review that. That second scenario sounds utterly bizarre. Let me know if you need a hand cleaning up anything. - Ryk72 talk 06:47, 3 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm quietly amused by the parenthetical; and have now in my head: "What's the intrinsic value of things?" "無". - Ryk72 talk 09:11, 5 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Imperial Rule Assistance Association

Please stop removing content from the page, it is clear that the party was Far-Right and anti-Communist, just because the text doesn't explicitly say this, doesn't mean it wasn't, nor does it mean it should be removed. -- 187.114.156.37 (talk) 07:43, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Regardless of how clear something might appear to be to individual editors, our policies & guidelines require that it be sourced to reliable sources; and that, where there is a range of opinions or viewpoints, we reflect the relative prominence of those in as they appear in reliable sources. Suggest starting with WP:5P, particularly WP:NOR, WP:NPOV & WP:RS for explanation of those policies. If there are some sources supporting the material, then those can be discussed on the article talk page. If it is just the original research of individual editors, without sources, then it doesn't belong in the article. - Ryk72 talk 07:57, 6 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Also, how can the ruling party of an anti-Communist regime not be anti-Communist, why did you remove anti-Communism from the infobox? -- 177.207.53.191 (talk) 03:31, 7 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Replying here because...

I'm not sure if it was intentional on anyone in particular's part, but that RSN thread seems to have already gone into TLDR territory before any outside parties were able to comment. (A certain user posts there occasionally and would no doubt use the 2018-02 RSN discussion as a pretext for having watchlisted the page despite having barely been active on the noticeboard both in recent month and in the several months prior to 2018-02, but I digress...)

Anyway, you seem to have mistyped or misremembered (your comments on the article talk page last month seemed to indicate that you hadn't misunderstood the issue at that time), but Taylor is technically correct that the word appears in the Genpei Jōsuiki -- the problem is that he gets the point in the text where it appears completely wrong, instead citing a narrative where the actual text (transcribed into modern Tokyo Japanese, because that's what Taylor and all the other English sources seem to do) says asamashii (in the case of the Genpei Jōsuiki) or kuchioshii (in the case of the Heike Monogatari). He is contradicted by other sources like Hasegawa that cite the correct part of the text (obviously Japanese who are not working with English translations are less likely to make this error), meaning that if we are going to go into detail on the narrative in which it appears we should probably use a different source; the problem is that the way it is used in the Genpei Jōsuiki is also not, apparently, in the modern "wasteful" sense, so going into such detail would probably be pointless.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:18, 8 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Misremembered, unfortunately. Have removed the bit on Taylor from my comment. When I get a spare moment, I'll have a look over the discussion & sources, and re-add something. - Ryk72 talk 04:17, 9 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Milan Nedić

Why are you repeatedly removing the Category:Fascist rulers from the Milan Nedić article? -- 177.158.171.122 (talk) 21:19, 13 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Because it's unsourced and not directly supported by the article content. Why are you repeatedly adding unsourced or poorly sourced content to multiple articles, Pedro? - Ryk72 talk 21:22, 13 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Already explained why, I wasn't stating he was a Fascist, there isn't any indication he was, I added that category simply because he ruled a puppet regime that was established by a Fascist one, which is why I didn't add the Serbian fascists category. -- 177.158.171.122 (talk) 21:45, 13 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Funny thing

I've been advised to step away from the mottainai article for ... reasons. Reasons which I totally agree with, mind you.

That being said, while typing a comment about something else (I wanted to satirically point out that a book from a reputable scholarly press had taken its information from Wikipedia), I noticed that actually the Taylor source came from a quasi-predatory publisher who use the name of one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the world while not actually being affiliated with said university. I briefly considered posting this fact on the article talk page, but given that no one is talking about that content at this point it seemed pretty redundant.

It still speaks somewhat to the mindset, though -- either they were aware that the book was not a reliable source and decided to pretend it was peer-reviewed, quality research anyway, or they just Googled up the Wikipedia content they wanted to verify and found a book from a company with both "Cambridge" and "Scholars" in their name. (^^;)

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:23, 10 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Hijiri88: Well, that there is a funny thing indeed. I was just in the process of drafting something along the lines of "All roads lead to Kawanishi". Because when I look into the proported "reliable sources", they all seem to be citing "Kawanishi 2007" - including Sato, and Taylor. The only thing I can find by her in that year is, of course, David Kestenbaum's NPR show. What's more, listening to the recording of that show, is it's actually Kestenbaum who says that it's an "old Buddhist word", not Kawanishi. - Ryk72 talk 04:45, 10 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Holy shit... well, if that's the case, there's no way we can allow "deutero-A" to stay in place, no matter how many suspicious new editors claim to believe "in good faith" that the content is properly sourced.
Regarding the "many suspicious new editors", a simple head-count at the RFC is currently 8-6 in favour of keeping the bogus content, if we include Nishidani as a !vote against. Among those supporting the inclusion, the average edit count is 418.625, with the highest individual being 755, while those opposed have an average edit count of the rest of us is 33,599.5, with the lowest being Imaginatorium with 6,126. Moreover, it seems that all but two of them registered their accounts in 2018 or later, while the youngest account among us is yours, having joined in 2013 and become active in late 2014 and early 2015. Only two of them edited prior to 2018, with Challenger.rebecca having made her first edit in May 2015 and Hko2333 having first edited in 2008 but hardly touched the project thereafter until June 2015. This pattern seems really suspicious ...
Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:31, 10 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Notice of Dispute resolution noticeboard discussion

This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the WP:BLP/Noticeboard regarding WP:NPOV. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help this dispute come to a resolution. The thread is "Carl Benjamin's rape joke".The discussion is about the topic Carl Benjamin. Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! --Amaroq64 (talk) 09:54, 23 April 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Proud Boy ip editor

Ryk72, do you think this editor (and the other related IPs) are a sock of a previously blocked editor? They certainly seem to know their way around Wikipedia. While I get why they might focus on Masem, I'm not sure why they continue to mention me, as if I've been a major player in this discussion. I'm not a major player in that discussion and certainly haven't weighed in on any of the specific content (yet I made it to the PB page![[37]] Anyway, this feels very POV pushing sock to me. I just wanted to get your thoughts. Springee (talk) 02:44, 10 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Springee: I think it's possible, of course; my evil twin on a bad day wants to say likely. I do tend not to take precociousness itself as a sign of malfeasance; we put the policies & guidelines up for anyone to read, if they have the time & inclination. But I also think the assumptions & accusations of bad faith, the strawmanning, and the reliance on WP:THETRUTH arguments are rapidly becoming disruptive enough that socking or not will soon be moot. - Ryk72 talk 03:02, 10 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure if you are still following this. The IP editor now has an account [[38]]. I have to say their behavior is very much more of the same battleground behavior. I'm largely not interacting with them so this hasn't been directed at me but I think this is the sort of thing that can make AP2 harder than it already is. My sock concerns still exist as well. Springee (talk) 15:07, 26 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]


I am the other IP editor and just wanted to thank you. I don't get a chance to follow on a daily basis and missed a lot in between visits but did notice that you took the time to in part validate my point. I appreciate that. Thanks.2601:46:C801:B1F0:1C62:B9D7:AE9A:BEB0 (talk) 06:02, 11 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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A concern

You might want to take another pass at Mottainai. I thought removing the two short sentences I had tagged last November would be unproblematic given the outcomes of the two RFCs and the fact that Francis Schonken and the various other burner accounts hadn't touched it in well over half a year, but within 30 minutes I got a message that freaked me out enough to self-revert and put myself under another self-imposed temporary page ban. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:52, 1 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Hijiri88: If only there were a simple word for expending effort on something disproportionate to the benefit gained by that effort. On looking now, I do see that the RfC has been formally closed, and that steps could be taken in accordance with that close. Will give it a day or so to let the dust settle on the close & then look to act. - Ryk72 talk 23:20, 2 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Precious anniversary

Precious
Five years!

If my card 1 or card 2 speaks to you, take it, with best wishes for a new year. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:52, 29 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

That thing

Hi! Any chance you could restore this edit per the following day's RFC closure? I'd do it myself, but I have no more reason now than before to believe someone isn't going to try to unilaterally claim I am subject to some kind of page-ban. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:08, 24 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Hijiri88: I was thinking about this only yesterday. Yes, I think I could. - Ryk72 talk 00:46, 25 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Censorship

Please don't Censor the Valid and Respectful opinions of other users..
If you think something is Wrong, or have a Different Opinion you can just comment on it.

There's no need to right out Delete and Censor other user's comments, specially when they're made in the Talk section,
for that's the sheer purpose of the section, to Discuss..

Regardless of how Valid and Respectful opinions might or might not be, Wikipedia is not a forum for general discussion. Talk pages are for discussion of the article, not the subject. Talk page comments should directly relate to improving the article. - Ryk72 talk 12:16, 16 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

...and so it continues.

A 'certain' editor has already ('bout 11 days ago) attempted to edit in, that the Governor of Tasmania & the Governor of New South Wales were heads of state. Thankfully, he was reverted. GoodDay (talk) 13:28, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

PS: Now, if I could only figure out why CBC News uses only a female to do the french-to-english translations. It sounds quite odd, when a male politician is speaking in french, with a woman's voice in english. GoodDay (talk) 13:47, 23 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Now I'm wondering what they do when translating English to Quebecois. - Ryk72 talk 07:23, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@GoodDay: We're about at the stage where RFC is not the appropriate TLA; something a little earlier alphabetically should be considered. - Ryk72 talk 07:06, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Are you thinking about Arbcom? GoodDay (talk) 07:09, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I was thinking AN. There's a long-term failure to drop the stick that's disruptive; and continual bludgeoning of discussions. - Ryk72 talk 07:19, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
At least two editors in an RFC, have already been easily taking apart his sources. The conclusion is either the Skyring/Pete is being dishonest or incompetent, with his sources. IF only I was good at collecting evidence (which I'm not), I'd report him to AN. A topic-ban or some kinda sanction is the only thing that'll break him away from the Australian head of state topic. Amazing, 15+ years & counting. Heck, he was banned for roughly the same behaviour, around that topic, in 2005. GoodDay (talk) 07:31, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'm gonna try & cool down a bit now. There's just something annoying about the guy. GoodDay (talk) 07:38, 24 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Well, that cooling off plan of mine, worked ;) GoodDay (talk) 02:05, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hah. Clearly. :) Come try your hand at Japanese neologisms instead. It's ounces of fun. - Ryk72 talk 02:13, 25 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

If it's not a republican-agenda pushing Australian, being a pain (he'll be back, to start where he left off, after his 1-week break)? It's a Brazilian control freak pushing non-english on english language Wikipedia. If both topic areas, had hundreds of interested editors? both those guys would've been topic-banned long ago. GoodDay (talk) 01:33, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Was enjoying the silence. But wasn't aware of the 1-week break. Self imposed? - Ryk72 talk 01:41, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]
So he seems to say at Nick-D's talkpage. I suggested he take break until Australia became a republic. GoodDay (talk) 01:46, 29 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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PoV pushers, eh.

It's starting again & big surprise, the main advocate joined in. GoodDay (talk) 23:51, 23 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@GoodDay: Today, I find myself intrigued by the thought that WP:RS/AC wants for a corollary. - Ryk72 talk 21:30, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
What can I say? It's just gonna keep happening, over & over. GoodDay (talk) 21:35, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Gaelic is not my strongest language, about as strong as my Hindi, but I found amusement this morning in imagining conspiracy theorists & sock hunters finding a sky connection by way of An t-Eilean Sgitheanach. (For those playing at home, that's not an accusation; it's a comment on the paucity of evidence often used - and the human tendency to seek out connections). - Ryk72 talk 23:07, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Haha. GoodDay (talk) 23:23, 24 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the cryptic, I read it as a counterargument to the comment it's replying to. - Ryk72 talk 03:39, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I see. Sometimes, I find TFD's posts difficult to understand. GoodDay (talk) 03:54, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I would say the same of myself. :) - Ryk72 talk 04:08, 25 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I must've been sleeping. The same IP attempted (Nov 24) to re-instate that which doesn't have a consensus. Me thinks, the IP won't stop, until it's blocked. GoodDay (talk) 02:19, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The text has now again been removed by Jack Upland. I did notice the re-instatement (by virtue of a "your edit was reverted"), but chose not to re-revert. Thinking overnight, I had planned to open a new section specifically about that text, pinging all previous participants; that currently seems moot. A re-re-instatement, without talk page participation, is probably enough for a note at ANI or ANEW. - Ryk72 talk 06:51, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Also spent a fair amount of time reviewing a series of historical talk pages, going back some 17-18 years. Though enlightening; compelling, it was not. - Ryk72 talk 06:51, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
No doubt, you found a constant presence, throughout those years. GoodDay (talk) 23:05, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The email preview stopped short at "No doubt, you found a constant", and so I immediately drafted "I found a constant inconsistency. Less charitable minds than mine might have gone as far as to use another word. Hip... hip... hip or something." I found a lot of WP:OR, a lot of WP:FORUM, and a lot of inconsistency in the expectations of editors: While some are admonished against original thought, even against paraphrasing, and are required to source every statement; other editors (most notably that same admonisher) are free to selectively quote, to misinterpret, perhaps even to misrepresent sources, and to introduce completely novel thought, unsourced. Due to its lack of collegiality, I do not particularly favour the practice, but reasonable minds would consider that we are at, if not already beyond, the stage of simply reverting or hatting OR & FORUM from Talk pages. - Ryk72 talk 23:35, 27 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

NPOV

Hi Ryk72. I noticed your partial deletion and appreciate your clear edit summary: "partial rv bold, but good faith, change; fundamentally changes policy & should be discussed and a consensus formed first." Fair enough. I'd like to hear your thinking about the deleted part: "Editors should not censor or neuter the source's point of view."

NPOV refers primarily to "editorial" neutrality (not source or content neutrality), and editors are supposed to edit in a neutral manner. They should not allow their own POV to trump a source's POV and then alter it accordingly. That applies to inclusion, exclusion, and alterations, such as censorship and neutering to make wording seem more "neutral".

Would you agree that such editorial alteration/censorship would be an NPOV violation?

See my essay at NPOV means neutral editing, not neutral content. -- Valjean (talk) 17:55, 31 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

@Valjean: Thank you for your kind message.
It is an interesting essay. There’s a lot with which to agree. That it argues against the common Fringe-ist conception of "neutral" - that articles should "reflect all views" or "teach the controversy" - is a positive.
But, there are points of significant disconnect...
In particular, many of the “pull quote”-able parts don’t seem consistent with WP:NPOV as currently written. Much of that will doubtless be due to semantic differences with certain terms, but some editors will share those semants, with consequent negative impact to neutrality of article content. (By "pull quote"-able, I mean the snippets which will likely be quoted in discussions.)
That the essay argues that NPOV is effectively not a content policy, and does not require neutral content, is not a positive.
NPOV is expressly concerned with content - most demonstrably so at WP:ATTRIBUTEPOV and WP:IMPARTIAL - and does mean neutral content; for a strictly defined meaning of “neutral” (which may not be the common meaning or understanding of that term). It is neutrality as our own "term of art".
NPOV certainly requires that our content reflect the prominence of views found in reliable sources, but it also requires that that content be written in a disinterested tone, and that opinions be attributed. In that manner, and to that extent, NPOV does require that we censor or neuter the source’s point of view. That we do not carry forward tone bias in sources into the tone of wiki voice. The anodyne product of this is a feature of the policy. (It may be that this is not the intended meaning of “censor or neuter” in the added policy text, but it is, at least, a reasonable understanding; and one which some editors will assume - that we must reflect source bias in the tone of article text).
Note that the added policy text was in the paragraph titled Prefer nonjudgmental language., and so will be understood by editors to relate to tone of article content. Despite the added text appearing immediately after a very nice paraphrase of ATTRIBUTEPOV (which I left intact), editors less scrupulous than you or I will selectively quote the added policy text in support of introducing biased tone into article text & writing opinion as fact. We see this already commonly enough, quoting WP:STICKTOTHESOURCES or “follow the sources” in support of partial tone.
Further, while NPOV’s sections on "balanced" & “due” content are operative at the level of the broad corpus of reliable sources, the added text is operative at the level of the individual source. Where there is genuine disagreement amongst reliable sources, this leaves the editor with a conundrum. The added text requires that they write biased content from opposing viewpoints.
And, where the content referenced to a biased source is limited in scale, it may actually be undue to carry that source bias into article content. As an example. if an otherwise reliable source for the simple content “Event A occurred on date X” is overly effusive in its praise of the participants, (perhaps a recently deposed “Leader of the Free World” or some such), editors should not be required by policy to bring that effusiveness into article text, even attributed.
I do conceive that a likely intent of the addition is to reiterate BALASP, GEVAL & DUE; that articles should reflect the prominence of viewpoints in reliable sources, and should not display a false balance; a view with which I certainly concur. But "reflect the prominence of views" &c is not congruent to "reflect any source bias"; and it is better to summarise those sections in their own terms than to introduce text with different, uncertain meaning, open to misinterpretation or misapplication. In this regard, the proposed text lacks specificity; to its detriment. And, if the intent is to reinforce those policy sections, as mentioned above, the text is misplaced.
As an aside, note that if “bias” is considered to be “disproportionate weight in favor of or against an idea or thing”, then NPOV, in requiring proportionate weight, does not favour including bias.
As to the specific questions posed above: Certainly, editors should not substitute their own POV in place of a source's POV. But editors should write article content which has a dispassionate and impartial tone, and attribute POV where it is included; as is required by the policy. It is not a violation of a policy to do a thing explicitly required by that policy; it is a violation to not do that thing.
That said, a couple of worked examples of how the added text would positively affect editorial decisions, and how its absence would negatively impact, would be assistive in informing a consensus building process.
That process should occur at WT:NPOV, and, given NPOV is a core policy, should probably be advertised at WP:CENT.
I should also do you the courtesy of writing a companion essay in reply, and will endeavour to do so in the next couple of weeks. - Ryk72 talk 09:33, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wow! I love it! Thanks for such a thorough and insightful analysis of my far-from-perfect essay. Rarely has anyone bothered to even begin such a task, and I really appreciate it. The need for "other eyes on this situation" is very apparent here, and you are doing me, and the community, a great service.

I started editing here in 2003 (as an IP), before we reached our first 200,000 articles on February 2, 2004. That doesn't mean I understand everything, including all facets of our policies, but my fingerprints are still in most of our major policies, especially NPOV, so I understand a little bit, but I have huge blind spots. My son is an aspie, and I suspect I have a touch of it too. High IQ and wisdom don't always inhabit the same universe. You have wisdom, and I really appreciate that. You see the flaws in my argumentation. I word things awkwardly, wax long in a seriously TLDR manner. I repeat myself. My thoughts are often misunderstood when I express them. I really need someone like you to look over my shoulder and aid me.

I'm also "language confused". I'm American, but lived the first nine years of my life in Asia and have lived in six different countries. I also speak two languages every day. Living in Europe for most of my adult life and rarely speaking English broke my once near-perfect English grammar and other English language skills. Now I'm handicapped by that. I make mistakes I never made when in high school and college. So my ability to communicate effectively is severely handicapped. I'm also a poor debater because I don't always immediately understand the point, get distracted, and express myself incompletely and awkwardly. Idiots pushing dubious ideas run circles around me. My whole life has been one big Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood: "Oh, I'm just a soul whose intentions are good. Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood". Every. Single. Fucking. Day. That sad thing is that it's often my own fault because I've expressed myself poorly. Here's Nina Simone's beautiful rendition.

Another factor that affects my thinking abilities is what survivors call "fire brain". We lost everything in the 2018 Camp Fire, and PTSD tends to affect survivors negatively, some more than others. My wife and I are both affected. Our memory, both short-term and long-term, was suddenly and severely affected, much more than can be explained by our age. (I'm 70, which is a youngster in my family. We live to be over 100.) Even three years later, our sleep is still disturbed, we get flashbacks and nightmares, we overreact to the smell of smoke, sirens, strong winds, etc. Fear just invades our minds. There are no doubt other ways in which the fire damaged us.

I suspect that if I had worded things better, we would be in more agreement. For example, my wording that pushes one side of the issue leaves the impression that I don't understand the other, or worse yet, am advocating views I don't even believe in. I don't mean to advocate for biased language in wikivoice, unless it's clearly the mainstream view, and then "bias" is in the eye of the beholder. In that sense, I don't believe "bias" is always negative. We should be biased toward RS and facts. Fringe editors and readers will consider such facts to be biased, but that's on them. We should usually attribute such things to avoid such situations. I just haven't made that clear. I am pushing back against the view by visitors and newbies that NPOV means "no point of view", that all biased language should be removed, and that no bias should be evident in an article, even if it's from a biased and RS. I'm also concentrating on the editorial side, rather than the content side, of NPOV, but that means I have apparently downplayed content neutrality too much, especially since NPOV does not require source or content neutrality.

I'd really appreciate it if you went to the essay's talk page and list a number of misleading and awkward essay points and then propose better wordings. Maybe I should downplay the "content" side and make clear I'm dealing mostly with editorial behavior. -- Valjean (talk) 16:27, 1 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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It may take a few minutes from the time the email is sent for it to show up in your inbox. You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{You've got mail}} or {{ygm}} template.Isabelle 🏳‍🌈 13:34, 18 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I've sent a new email, Ryk72. Do let me know if it reached you and feel free to answer it at your earliest convenience. Thanks! Isabelle 🏳‍🌈 13:45, 20 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]
@Isabelle Belato: Thank you. Have replied with some initial thoughts. - Ryk72 talk 06:19, 21 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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— Ixtal ( T / C ) ⁂ Join WP:FINANCE! 09:45, 27 May 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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Template talk:Shōwa Statism

Please participate. Mureungdowon (talk) 09:19, 3 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hideki Tojo

According to this 1948 Time magazine article, Tojo claimed that Japan's actions were motivated by "saving East Asia from the danger of bolshevization and at the same time to make herself a barrier against world bolshevization", he also said that "The present condition of the world two years after the end of World War II eloquently tells how important these barriers were".

https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,794040-2,00.html

This is supported by other sources too. -- 2804:248:FB52:A000:7518:B091:CE86:4DC5 (talk) 01:27, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

That was an interesting read. Thank you. Tojo's post-facto rationalisations for early to mid 20th century Japanese imperialism, particularly his leveraging of Western post-war concerns around communism - during the beginning of the Cold War - are very interesting; as is the general tone of the contemporaneous coverage in Time. - Rotary Engine talk 03:24, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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Precious anniversary

Precious
Eight years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:53, 29 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Japan as a military dictatorship

I get that there is controversy over labeling Imperial Japan "fascist", but wasn't Japan a military dictatorship by the 1930s and 40s? Real powers was in the hands of the military at that time. -- 2804:29B8:5183:100C:E470:A27F:5112:DC22 (talk) 01:25, 4 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:BESTSOURCES do not consider it to have been so. Suggest reading something like Ben Ami Shillony's Collected Writings. Chapter 12 expressly deals with the question of whether wartime Japan was a military dictatorship; deciding that, while the power of political parties & the Diet declined and the power of the military increased, ultimately it was not. Most other mainstream scholars reach the same conclusion. - Rotary Engine talk 14:13, 9 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Conflict of interest management: Case opened

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For the Arbitration Committee,
~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:02, 6 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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