User talk:Bobrayner/Archive 3

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AFD

I understand you are trying to mediate and keep a calm head over the situation. But in the context of the AFD, especially when it appears you agree with Fram and have voted to delete, making comments on other editors even if rational and with an element of truth in them does little to help the situation and usually ends up blowing into something worse. Your words might hit home with some people but people who know me know that the worst thing you can possibly do if you want me to shut up is to lecture me or attack my edits or my behaviour. I only respond negatively to comments which I deem false or unnecessary, I am not going to let Fram imply I am false even if you think my cover story is "dubious". I have sworn that the Afghan list was generated by geonames in 2008. You should have both accepted this given that I have provided evidence to show Fritzpoll used it as a source. If you stop making further comments on AFDs which ridicule me for my editing or actions then I simply also will not comment. It adds fuel to fire, even if you genuinely are acting in good faith and want the situation to be discussed rationally. Understand I am not the sort of person who tolerates overviews of my behaviour in public forums, even if perfectly rational and level headed. Even worse is people who tell me what I should do. Maybe Fram genuinely believes deleting the articles will help wikipedia, but I see certain aspects of what he has done as quite the opposite. As far as I can see he has made little attempt to actually fix any of the articles except some much appreciated error fixes in my trail this morning. Yes he made a lot of edits assessing them yes, but the time he spent tagging them he could have easily replaced with a geonames source which he agrees is reliable. If the job was too much for him as it clearly was then he should have asked me to replace with the source he deems reliable which I've done to some 500 articles and counting ans which he accepts. So because of this and given his strong views on auto-generated short articles I think it has more to do with "sub stubs" rather than actual major problems, 99% of the entries are instantly verifiable in geonames so false entries they are not. He believes it would be best to nuke them and then create them one by one with much more content and sources which I agree is how they should have been created and is a much better way to build something useful for wikipedia. I just think now that that they've been created we should fix and build on what we have. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 14:08, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

stop abusing me

the comment you just left at freeloaders is unnecessary and abusive.

Of course i carefully thought about how i was to frame the answers to the questions i was asked by the wiki text in the mediation section. I thought i was working with a system that would send a mediator to help me rather than one of you to come along and accuse me of being difficult while you all fell about laugthing with the childish wonderful persons stupidity.

I genuinely feel you are all doing everything you can to keep wiki biased and i said as much and you have no right to come along an accuse me of dishonesty or anything shameful for acting as i did with total integrity. So back off and find somebody else to mess with please. Not one single time have you ever engaged with me in a conversation as a normal human being would do who had some interest in providing a better wiki experience for the reader. I have bent over backwards to communicate to the other editors and provided many hiqh quality citations and been knocked back again and again and again. Total humiliation and the page is just as it was when i arrived apart from the fringe area and minor changes. and then you talk about fighting systematic bias and great things about wiki. Wiki supposedly encourages people to be bold, have fun and enjoy the experience. And look what happens. Utter misery. And all assisted by you while you did nothing but encourage itAndrewedwardjudd (talk) 20:44, 13 May 2011 (UTC)andrewedwardjudd

(removed borderline attack by blocked editor)

Bobrayner, the articles you have proposed for deletion ALL have been well-cited with heavy references. Conjuring up support for a bogus removal cause just shows bias against the source and/or contributor. You propose a sweeping removal of four articles. This is non-sensical.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Rajpaj (talk • contribs)

This must be some new definition of "well cited" of which I was previously unaware.
  • File:Clopen symbol.png is wholly unsourced. You made it up. Wikipedia is not for things that you just made up one day.
  • Same again with Joey Koala. Two youtube videos, one briefly shows a koala logo, the other doesn't show anything at all, and there's certainly no evidence of an actual published cartoon character. Selfpublished stuff. No evidence that anybody else in the real world has ever taken this koala, or the associated gibberish, seriously.
  • Same again with United Under Economy. It's more word salad with selfpublished sources (which aren't even internally consistent). If scribd, youtube, and crunchbase let you upload whatever nonsense you make up, that's up to them; but it doesn't belong in an encyclopædia.
  • Ronald Ellis (American businessman) had two refs. One does not mention him. The other is an employer profile page. Neither establishes notability.
If you were to try writing about real, notable, encyclopædic things, that would be very welcome. However, a fictional crunchbase profile does not make a real business, and random words vomited into Google Docs do not make a significant new organisational concept. bobrayner (talk) 00:10, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
Had this page on my watchlist from a previous thread I had started and wanted to comment to Rajpaj (the title caught my attention, I admit): AfD notices shouldn't be removed from an article, though you can do so with PRODs. It's probably also worth noting that even if the articles had [arbitrary number]+ references, number of sources doesn't necessarily equate to notability (or even verifiability if they're unreliable sources); that can be an indicator but it's not absolute. – anna 00:25, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
Not quite certain about this article, even after looking at the history, but I think I see the problem. This IP is on a publicly shared network, so certain accounts (i.e., Wikidowd) and articles (Ronald Ellis) are essentially sockpuppeteered. Even still, you shouldn't presume that any related account activity comes from a single source, as you have been doing on various Wikipedia pages. At this geolocale, I think it's a safe bet to assume that our online representation has reasonable validity to create and edit these entities.--Rajpaj (talk) 10:22, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
You're still not making any sense. Made up stuff does not belong on wikipedia, regardless of whether it was added by one person or by several. bobrayner (talk) 10:39, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
My last post on this issue. It appears as if you're trying really hard to sabbotage something. I say this because your only activity on 19 May 2011 was targeted specifically at my disposal. You're entitled to your own opinions, of course, but that doesn't take away from the fact that these articles were supplied with references; whether or not you agree with them. The WP:MADEUP page you keep referring to itself even states this. Your best bet is to 'edit' the articles either with direction or persuasion, and not simply put them up for deletion. This should make perfect sense.--Rajpaj (talk) 10:59, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
I'm removing your fiction from wikipedia. You are surely aware that it's not possible for anyone to add better sources to these articles, because all that exists is your Scribd pages, your amateur videos on Youtube, and so on. If you have time on your hands you might create more content on other websites which have no quality threshold - I see Urban Dictionary, Crunchbase, and Knol have been tainted too - but citing those still won't make these subjects real or encyclopædic. (As an aside, saying that I onlyworked on your content on 19 May is yet another fiction. As soon as you stop adding this nonsense to wikipedia, other people will have more time on their hands to improve real articles.) bobrayner (talk) 11:14, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
Hi, Bobrayner. Did you construe this to be a personal attack? What the heck is a sockpuppet contra? --Diannaa (Talk) 22:39, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
Your guess is as good as mine Maybe it's a suggestion that 150.131.68.239 is my sockpuppet (or maybe you are rajpaj's sock). Who knows? Maybe it's best just to let the AfD run for a few days. bobrayner (talk) 22:47, 20 May 2011 (UTC)
I was gonna warn him about NPA and then I realised I had no idea what the message actually was. :) I will continue to watch but will not comment at the deletion discussions in case admin-tools are needed at some point. --Diannaa (Talk) 23:58, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Bobrayner, I don't know if you noticed the image File:Egglepple crayon.png, but if so was there a reason you didn't XFD it? I've just nominated it, but if you know of a reason it should be kept let me know. (PS Sorry for the multiple edits to your talk page, but I am the queen of derp this evening.) --NellieBly (talk) 01:59, 21 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes; there were also other other images which I planned to do but didn't get round to it. Thanks for your help, and thanks for the reminder. I FfD'd them. John has since deleted everything and blocked rajpaj. bobrayner (talk) 18:33, 21 May 2011 (UTC)
No problem. I'll keep a weather eye out for any recreations, as the editor appears sincere - and inappropriate sincerity is harder to dissuade than mere vandalism. --NellieBly (talk) 00:10, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
Just in case anybody stumbles across this discussion in future, the ANI thread has been archived here: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive697#A_small_scattering_of_WP:MADEUP bobrayner (talk) 17:41, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Policy Notification - Edit Warring

Location: VHEMT Article Wiki Regards,
Skyeking (talk) 15:37, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps there has been some confusion. I reverted twice; you have reverted that change three times and reverted other changes too, all whist proclaiming "do not revert this edit---no edit warring" and insisting that other people should use the talkpage. You are not exempted from WP:3RR, even if you believe that you own the article. In fact, you didn't even reply to my talkpage comment before you hit "revert" again - with another edit summary insisting that others should use the talkpage whilst you get your way on the article. This bizarre contradiction between what you do and what you say, and blind insistence on getting your own way, makes cooperation with other editors very difficult. Please try to cooperate and communicate better with other editors. bobrayner (talk) 15:48, 20 May 2011 (UTC)

List of rail accidents (2000–2009)

I've reverted your removal of flags. Explanation given at Talk:List of rail accidents (2000–2009). Please do not remove flags from any other lists while this issue is discussed. It may be that a RFC is needed on the issue, as it affects many lists. MOSFLAG appears to be aimed more at biographical articles than lists. Mjroots (talk) 10:56, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

OK; I disagree with you - I think that the article thoroughly violates WP:MOSFLAG, but will not revert whilst it's being discussed - I'm sure we can reach a consensus. If discussing a policy interpretation it obviously affects a lot more articles than that one (there has been a flag-frenzy across thousands of rail articles alone) so we should probably get a wider audience. bobrayner (talk) 11:08, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
Thank you for your comment about not reverting. I'm of the opinion that a RFC is probably the best way to go (or 2 RFCs, one for lists and another for ships). Mjroots (talk) 14:24, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
People disagree all the time around here; it can go one of two ways - either they aggravate each other and create a storm of reverts & drama, or they can back off a little & start talking. The latter is preferable. Since you replied on WT:MOSFLAG and it does seem to be a wider issue that needs input from others, I'll take the rest of this thread over to WT:MOSFLAG, if that's OK with you..? bobrayner (talk) 14:35, 22 May 2011 (UTC)
Sure, just mark it as copied from here, and don't forget to sign your posts at the RFC! Mjroots (talk) 17:13, 22 May 2011 (UTC)

Railway stations in Namibia

Hi bobrayner, I spot-checked a few of the altitudes, and they seem to be right. My source (a map) is unfortunately not really sufficient because it does not give the exact values.

From looking at similar articles it seems the altitudes are normally not referenced individually--would it make sense to reinstate the values for Namibia? --Pgallert (talk) 08:14, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, the person who added all these altitudes to lists of railway stations simply looked at the path of a railway on a national map, chose the names of towns next to that line, looked up the towns on fallingrain, and took the altitude from there. After being told that fallingrain was unreliable, they removed many fallingrain refs but left the article content in situ. This is problematic, because fallingrain is inaccurate, and the articles are supposed to be a list of railway stations, rather than towns-near-railway-stations. For instance, fallingrain says the altitude of my hometown is 164m, which is right in a sense - there is probably some part of the urban area at that altitude - but the actual elevation of that town's railway station is 135m.
No doubt many of the altitudes are approximately right, but telling readers 164m when the truth is 135m is simply not good enough for an encyclopædia. If you have a reliable source for altitudes of stations in Namibia, feel free to add them (and I'll help if you want).
To give a little more insight into the nature of the problem: Several of the lists used to give the same altitude - 1m - for railway stations in coastal towns. Of course, that's not the real altitude, but the editor seems to have reasoned that they're near sea level but you obviously can't say zero because waves would be lapping over the rails, so let's say 1m instead because we really have to give an altitude... and where there were several towns with the same name on fallingrain, the editor sometimes got a bit confused and asked the question in article-space, so there would be list entries like:
  • * Arbitraryville (20m) (junction) (there are six of them?)
(where "junction" means that this town is nearest to where two thick black lines cross on a national map). Also, we can't even be sure that a lot of them are stations; most of the list articles are really a list of towns along a railway regardless of what facilities/services are actually in place, intermittently updated with news reports about planned infrastructure work; in much of Africa, though perhaps not Namibia, there's a disconnect between "plans announced" and "actually built"... bobrayner (talk) 08:49, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
Railways in Cameroon
Legend
 Ngaoundéré
Bélabo
Nanga Eboko
Yaoundé
Mbalmayo
Edéa
Douala
Kumba
Nkongsamba
Also, a lot of the lists of railway stations are trying to be maps - it lists towns along a line in order, and if there's more than one line then an extra sublist is presented, and junctions appear on both sublists &c. Often with suffixes like "W" if a station is on a branch to the west &c. I'd like to replace some of the list articles with map templates, like the one to the right - it presents more information, more clearly. Do you think that would be reasonable/achievable for Railway stations in Namibia? bobrayner (talk) 08:56, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
Hi bobrainer, thanks for your response. I was under the impression that your "most certainly not right" edit summary referred to the high altitudes of stations in general, and to the difference of altitudes of adjacent stations, which I assume is unusual in Namibia. My apologies. If FallingRain is inappropriate then I feel there is no easy access to altitude information, and the values should indeed be left out.
Regarding the map templates, technically I do not know how to create them. I can supply rather detailed information of names of all stations along our railway lines, they are on many good maps. I am not sure, though, whether or not all stations should be included--the vast majority of them consist of a single sign in the middle of nowhere, for >80% of the stations in Namibia there is no town next to it. They are used to get off and walk to the nearest farm house a few kilometers away. If you want to get off the train at such a station you have to tell the conductor in advance, if you want to get on you have to wave a flash light.
So indeed, if you look up the name on Google Earth or FallingRain you get the station itself, not a settlement nearby. There is of course the question what value information like "Kanus is a railway station between Grünau and Karasburg" has for Wikipedia, considering that it is only a sign and nothing else, even if that could be referenced, and even if [7] was reliable.--Pgallert (talk) 10:58, 23 May 2011 (UTC)
Sorry about the long ranty response I can create map-templates if other people think they're worthwhile. Some folk over at Wikipedia:WikiProject Trains would argue that all train stations are inherently notable. If you have good sources and want to create some content (whether it's station articles or something else), just ask if you need a hand with anything! bobrayner (talk) 19:13, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

Aerodynamics problems

Hi bob, I've got a question about aerodynamics for you. The article North American XB-70 Valkyrie has an unrefed claims that says, "NAA's solution had an additional advantage, as it decreased the surface area of the rear of the wing when they were moved into their high speed position. This helped offset the rearward shift of the center of pressure, or "average lift point" with increasing speeds under normal conditions, causing an increasing nose-down trim. When the wingtips were drooped the surface area at the rear of the wings was lowered, moving the lift forward and counteracting this effect." I think you're more knowledgeable in this field than myself, so what do you think? Sp33dyphil Ready • to • Rumble 23:40, 23 May 2011 (UTC)

OK. Are you looking for a source, or a rephrase, or both? The text looks plausible, but...
  • Unref'd claims about a substantial part of a design are not ideal if you want to move an article up the quality ladder. There is currently a link to [8] which mostly covers the issue, but not completely.
  • It's not really readable to a layperson - so it could be better phrased too.
  • Also, it's crying out for more wikilinks on aerodynamics terms.
  • There's a lot of overlap with the "Design" section further down.
  • (PS. I'm not an aerodynamics guru, but do have a BSc in physics; happy to help within my limited sphere of competence ) bobrayner (talk) 08:06, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

WP:RFA2011

Task Force news: Recent updates include basic minor changes and condensing at the main page, additional comments on the main page talk page, a new project sub page and talk for Radical Alternatives, and messages at Task force talk. A current priority is to reach suggested criteria/tasks for clerks, and then to establish a local consensus vis-à-vis clerking. Please remember to keep all the project and its talk pages on your watchlist. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 03:26, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

New resolution proposal

Hi. Just wanted to let you know that a new proposal has been made in a thread you contributed to at AN/I concerning the possibility of prohibiting a user from initiating actions at AN, AN/I, or WQA. Thanks,  – OhioStandard (talk) 06:29, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Airbus A330 FAC

Hi Bob, I've got great news regarding Airbus A330. The article had bypassed the A-class review and headed straight to FAC at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Airbus A330/archive3. Could you voice your stance on the article on whether it should be FA or not! I'm beginning to wind down on editing the article after 5 months of toil, and move on with other things, not least the master plan! Sp33dyphil Ready • to • Rumble 07:26, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Since I've helped you on the A330 article, I could hardly be an impartial reviewer, sorry - but I'll try to respond to issues raised by other reviewers. bobrayner (talk) 14:47, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for helping me out, don't underestimate how much support your willingness to assist gives. Anyway, you don't have to reviewer, just support or oppose, because this is not like GAN. Even more heart-warming, included yourself as a co-nom, if you feel the article's up to scratch! Sp33dyphil Ready • to • Rumble 07:17, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

Links to Railpage Australia

It appears you have just gone on a wide-ranging hunt to remove external links to Railpage Australia using WP:ELNEVER as your justification -- could you please explain why? The site is notable enough to have its own Wikipedia article, and if you object to people posting news articles etc in its forums, then the non-asshole thing to do would be to fix the references to point directly at the original sources, not remove them entirely! Jpatokal (talk) 10:15, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

Somebody else created a huge mess and I'm putting in many hours of work trying to fix it. The first step is to remove the links to copyvio; that is a high priority - "Material that violates the copyrights of others per contributors' rights and obligations should not be linked". A look at my contribution history should show you that I've added lots of good refs for such news items in the past, and I'll continue to do so in future, after cleaning up this mess.
There are two possibilities here:
  1. It's possible that you have looked closely at the work I was doing, saw that I was removing links to forum threads which blatantly copy & pasted somebody else's copyrighted content, and you came here to call me an asshole anyway, instead of blaming the person who created this mess. I cannot fathom why any right-thinking person would do that. You may or may not have noticed that I avoided removing the railpage links which just show some random person on an australian webform chatting about trains, because those are a lesser problem. (We shouldn't be relying on them, but hey).
  2. It's possible that you didn't look closely at all the work I was doing, and just assumed that I was removing links and waving an WP:ELNEVER flag because I'm a big meanie. However, this one seems implausible too as I can't fathom why an experienced editor would make such rash and combative decisions.
Maybe there's a third explanation which I missed. Had you approached me more politely - or even tried to help clean up the mess instead of heckling somebody else who was cleaning up the mess - you might have got a much warmer response here. I'm not in a good mood about this; I'd much rather be writing (and referencing) new content, but the person who created most of these problems also created a very large volume of other problems on rail-related articles, and I simply don't have enough time to clean up all this shit... bobrayner (talk) 10:39, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
Bob, I noticed that in removing these references, as here it left an uncited statement. I've added a {{citation needed}} with reason=previous reference to www.railpage.com.au is WP:ELNEVER to the statement, which I think you should have done (perhaps with a different reason).
I think this is important, as most of the statements referenced by these fora are highly questionable, and should not go unchallenged, and those that are true need the original reference added (as per Jpatokal's comment above). Tim PF (talk) 12:54, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. The links to that forum basically fall into two categories:
  1. A link to a copy on railpage of a report from some other, more reliable source (a mixture of mainstream newspapers, specialist media like Railway Gazette, and wire services like AFP). I have been removing these instances of WP:ELNEVER; but in principle each statement is something which originally came from a reliable source so I feel they are generally less "questionable" than most content on rail articles (which are often awash with uncited statements)! Feel free to tag them with "citation needed", but ideally somebody should give a link to a better source - I will work on this whenever I have time, but it would be nice if others could help. Note that several of the cases had two refs so now they're left with a single ref which is unlikely to be problematic.
  2. A ref to some random internet people chatting about trains on an Australian forum. I think that those are more questionable in the sense that the statement supported by a link to railpage is less likely to be accurate/neutral. However, I did not remove those because removing or tagging everything in rail articles which is merely poorly sourced, rather than directly linking to copyvio, would take far more time than I have available. If you want to remove, tweak, or tag the "Category 2" ones however you see fit, I certainly wouldn't complain.
If you would categorise them differently, I'm open to suggestions of course. Broadly speaking, the "Australian" rail articles which link to railpage tend to fall into category 2, and the "global" rail articles which link to railpage tend to fall into category 1. Hence my WP:ELNEVER remediation tended to visit many "global" rail articles, even though a large proportion of the railpage refs are on Australian articles. bobrayner (talk) 14:07, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
I've started some work on finding replacement refs for the ones in Category 1, and it appears that a lot of those comments don't even match the copyvio'd source. Which is frustrating. Some snippets (never prose; just awkward phrases) need deleting; some snippets need a rewrite.
Tim PF, did you have any plans to deal with the ones in category 2? bobrayner (talk) 11:13, 28 May 2011 (UTC)
See the reply that I left you on my talk page. Tim PF (talk) 00:58, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Elevations

As you delete hundreds if not thousands of elevations from files such Railway stations in Brazil, you have not bothered to replace these so-called faulty data with data that is satisfactory. The so-called bad data is IOM reasonable, yet you have replaced/destroyed/purged them with nil/zilch/NOTHING. So when will we see good elevation data which you have been keeping hidden from everyone. Tabletop (talk) 05:11, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

I will copy and paste a comment from over 6 months ago on your talkpage, since it addresses exactly the same problem, you didn't reply there, and policy has not changed:
It has been established that fallingrain is not a reliable source; most of all when it comes to elevations. If the elevations cannot be trusted then they should not be put in an encylopaedia. You may feel that it's important to put elevations on all these lists, but that importance does not justify using unreliable numbers; quite the opposite. There is a lot of dubious content that somebody will have to clean up. How many articles have you added elevations to? If you could let me know what kind of articles (rail-related only? Or others?) then I could plan the work out. The same applies for "proposed" stations, fanciful lists of breaks-of-gauge, and so on.
I would also suggest that going through lots of rail articles adding a "maps" heading and then a bullet point saying "No UN map" wastes your time and more importantly wastes many readers' time. The same goes for "breaks of gauge" which are actually gauge differences between unconnected networks, &c. We don't need to fill pages with placeholders just to fit in a framework of your own creation; we don't need 2 page articles listing railway stations (and speculated elevations!) in a country that in reality has no railways; and so on.
...
bobrayner (talk) 21:27, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Decius

If you ask me, disagreement is in the past already! :)

Well, its not only Decius, i noticed that several Roman emperors articles don't have regular sources for some basic data, like birth place, death place, years of rule, etc... And i wanted to fix those! So i started with Decius. Do you know some good sources on that one? I wanted to add one by one... :) --WhiteWriter speaks 17:54, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

OK. For basic, general information it's probably best to use a single general book which spans much of the Roman empire. A good start would be this because a lot of relevant pages are visible in Google Books preview. Also, this is a notable book in its own right - you can get the full text free here - but remember that history has made a lot of progress in the last 235 years.
For more detailed coverage of individual emperors, it's probably better to use more specialised sources like these: [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]. Wikipedia has a bias towards sources that are freely-available on the internet and aimed at lay readers - I like to counter that bias by using more academic sources. bobrayner (talk) 18:50, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
Emailed some journal articles on Decius. Have fun! bobrayner (talk) 23:03, 26 May 2011 (UTC)

A plate of sausages for you!

WhiteWriter has given you a plate of sausages! Plates of sausage promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a plate of sausages, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Friendly!! :) All best!†

Identifying articles with high proportion from one editor

I saw a question to posed to MRG.

Are you familiar with this tool?

I fear it is not automated enough for you, as it works with a single identified articles. For example, if you know you had edited Inflatable boat, of course you could go to the page history and see your contributions, but entering the info in the tool tells you that you have exactly one edit. It is faster than perusing the history.

I still suspect you need something more automated. But perhaps someone with tool skills could pass the list are articles, and spit out both the number of edits by the person of interest, and the total number of edits, this crudely estimating the proportion, and decently estimating high target articles.--SPhilbrickT 01:03, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

You obviously can get the top ten from X!'s edit counter, but I thought there was a way to extend that list substantially; unfortunately, I can't remember where I saw it. Village pump would be a good place to ask, either for something that exists, or someone who could customize something for you.--SPhilbrickT 01:06, 30 May 2011 (UTC)
That's very helpful, thanks. However, I pulled all the contribution history into a local textfile, and after a couple of hours of vbscript and Excel, I now have tables of most-edited files, certain categories of edit summaries, &c - which is as far as you can go with tools, really. The detective work will have to be manual. bobrayner (talk) 11:00, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Invitation for a Short Research Survey

Hi, I am a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University doing some research into editing and reverts on Wikipedia. I am asking Wikipedians that I have found have made contributions to genetics articles on Wikipedia to complete a short survey that will help me develop interfaces and tools for newcomers and administrators. The survey will take about 10-15 minutes, and will involve you pretending that you are editing the page on genetic engineering and making some quick judgments on how controversial or likely to be reverted a word sampled from an edit might be. This will help me to validate a model that predicts which words will be reverted based on the history of an article, which if successful will be turned into an interface. If you would like to participate, please complete the survey on SurveyMonkey here. You can find out more about me on my user page and personal home page. I'm more than happy to talk more about this research on my talk page or by email, and thank you for your time. JeffRz (talk) 02:47, 1 June 2011 (UTC)

25 DYK medal

Hi Bob, just wanted to say that you did a fantastic job with the Ottoman tax articles. It's not often that we see 25 article hooks, so great job! Yes, I know this is a month late. Crisco 1492 (talk) 09:44, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! (Don't apologise; belated praise soothes the ego just as well as fresh praise)
I wanted to do some more, but was running out of time, and adding a couple more just to leapfrog over User:Hamiltonstone would be petty. Wikipedia's history articles often seem sparse when you venture beyond lists of kings and battles (and the interests of nationalist pov-pushers), so there are lots more gaps to fill in... bobrayner (talk) 10:06, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
Indeed. I recently made an article regarding the Trisakti shootings, which helped lead to Suharto's resignation and yet had nothing here. Ancient history, modern history... I guess it is all proof of systemic bias. Crisco 1492 (talk) 10:50, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
That's a nice article. Such a shame that a turning point in the history of the world's fourth-most populous country didn't get an article until now - but we've had an article on Charmander for nine years. bobrayner (talk) 19:02, 6 June 2011 (UTC)
Better than still having articles on all of them. Crisco 1492 (talk) 08:45, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Bobrayner. You have new messages at WhiteWriter's talk page.
Message added 11:38, 8 June 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Re: Review

Hello, Bobrayner. You have new messages at MC10's talk page.
Message added 22:47, 8 June 2011 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

—mc10 (t/c) 22:47, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Quantitative easing

Let's try and add sources shall we? Vexorg (talk) 20:28, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

And we won't be edit warring will we? I've added extra sources for the correct information restored. Thankyou Vexorg (talk) 20:37, 9 June 2011 (UTC)

There's a discussion going on on the talk page; you are invited to participate. Lagrange613 (talk) 06:01, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Flags

I've decided to put Template:Flag up for TFD. See Wikipedia:Templates for discussion/Log/2011 June 11. Either we accept flags or we don't.♦ Dr. Blofeld 19:04, 11 June 2011 (UTC)

That seems needlessly pointy, since a lot of people on the RfC seem to be in favour of flag use in limited conditions. "We" are capable of more nuanced decisions than "flag everywhere" or "no flags at all".
I would vote "keep" if such a TfD were genuine. bobrayner (talk) 21:33, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
"It really, really doesn't help your case to write off a long stream of legitimate arguments on the MOS talkpage as "I don't like it"". Understand one thing amigo. Nobody, I mean Nobody messes me about with double standards on here. We either use flags in infoboxes or we don't. I'm sick of people like you disrupting the system, picking and choose when flags suit you and when they don't. The fact that you claimed to vote keep illustrates to me perfectly your warped ideas of guidelines. If a flag is not permitted in an infobox for a settlement it should not be permitted in any other infobox or shape or form.♦ Dr. Blofeld 21:48, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
It is not a matter of keep all flags or remove all flags. The aggressive language is unfortunate; it doesn't cover up the huge logical fallacy at the heart of your argument. Such language only discredits you further.
You are wrong on the other point too; consensus is needed for widereaching rule changes. I recommend that you contribute to the discussion over at WT:MOSICON, because contentious decisions should be made by the community; and if the community disagrees with you then it would be better to go along with the consensus instead of throwing the rattle out of the pram or calling the other parent. bobrayner (talk) 22:02, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
"Throwing the rattle out of the pram". More than that, I'll throw the pram at any editors who plague wikipedia with bending rules and using them in one place to oppose and in another to support something just to get their own way. The fact is that the VAST majority of Template:flag uses are by no means any more needed than flags are in infoboxes on settlements. Thousands upon thousands of sports and international relations/military history articles list oftne tens of flags in articles when simply the country or belligerent names could be given without a flag. Its the same with infobox settlements. SO either we accept flags to represent a country name or people stop coming up with the bullshit using MOS:FLAG to remove them when there is no consensus to. On the contrary consensus is also needed before people brandish MOS:FLAG as a formal guildeine and using it to remove flags from settlement infoboxes. There is no such consensus.♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:14, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
"Throwing the pram"? Please. That's no substitute for a civil, reasoned discussion. Now, on top of the previous absurdities and fallacies, you've added some completely new bizarreness - the idea that it's OK for you to act against guidelines, but other editors acting in line with guidelines must get consensus first. Do you have any reasonable points to make? If so, and if you are able to make them civilly, feel free to add them here; and if you actually want to suggest changes to WP:MOSICON then join the discussion on the talkpage. Otherwise, further additions here will only achieve three things - wasting your time, wasting my time, and further reducing your credibility. bobrayner (talk) 22:43, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
Also, a couple of apologies:
  1. My language above was a little too strong in places; sorry. I shouldn't have responded to you in kind. If you'd like me to strike through anything, just say so; I shouldn't have risen to the bait.
  2. I indented your comments for readability. It is not clear to me whether you prefer to have all your comments unindented, or you simply do not know how to indent them. If it's the former, and if this layout is uncomfortable for you, feel free to undo it. bobrayner (talk) 22:49, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
In that case you also need to watch your civility with your "throwing the rattle out of the pram" comments. Glad you've apologised for that. A reasonable point? How about a] We accept flag icons. b] We create an option in your preference with a tick box Hide all flag icons. This way the editors who dislike them can hide them from visibiliy and those who like them get to keep them. I agree that for biographes a flag seems completely unnecessary but I think for settlements it seems natural, at least it does to me who has probably worked more on them than anbody on here I think.. ♦ Dr. Blofeld 22:53, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
Are you standing by the arguments you made earlier, or is this a fresh start? I just want to get things clear, and I really shouldn't have to remind you that opening with various rhetoric like "Nobody, I mean Nobody messes me about with double standards on here" is unlikely to make people agree with you or reply politely; people are tempted to reply in kind, which just winds you up more, and so on. Seriously, I've seen that corrode agreements and sour compromises in the past - remember the epic discussion on Geographic stubs? - so a calmer approach would really help you achieve your goals.
My concerns, as discussed at length on WT:MOSICONS, are more about accuracy, neutrality, and avoiding drama; I think that these should be the default, not something that people opt into. Æsthetics is secondary to me (although the æsthetics can be a problem too). You've taken multiple stances on multiple pages and I'm trying hard to follow it; I've tried to stick to one line and I've done it on a single talkpage so it shouldn't be difficult for you to address my actual argument even if you don't agree with it (many wouldn't). bobrayner (talk) 23:44, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
I'm open to persuasion on a flag in each settlement article, within reason (as long as we don't end up with flags by each mention of settlements in lists) since there's much less room for ambiguity or distortion when stating the nationality of a settlement, compared with people, organisations, &c. However, it's a difficult subject and has the potential to fuel drama on more articles than you'd think (including every settlement in the UK, quite a lot of eastern Europe, Israel/Palestine of course, and various other places) because flags provoke strong feelings among nationalists. We even have historic issues: Because many settlement articles have been created automatically but not expanded/updated, some settlement articles are basically EB1911 text about a historic settlement quite unlike the current one (I found one deeply anachronistic article on a town whose main product was, supposedly, rose water). Should articles like that get a historic flag? If not, should Leptis Magna get a Libyan flag or some historic standard?

Silly me LATAM Airlines Group

BR: Corrected date to match source. (This is preferable to leaving the wrong date but giving it fancy formatting).

  • Me: Yes, silly me! What was I thinking (here). Glad you liked it. Cheers! --Inetpuppy (talk) 06:23, 12 June 2011 (UTC)
    • No worries. Have a good one! bobrayner (talk) 11:36, 12 June 2011 (UTC)

unblock request; a quick look at contribs should show that I'm not the same person as Isaartrust (talk · contribs).

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Accept reason: Collateral damage --jpgordon::==( o ) 13:52, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Religion article revert

No Bob, you need to read the reference, and not just look for words. That is in fact what it says if you understand the premise of the original statement in the section. However, even if that was not true, how can the entire set of included subjects (three monotheistic religions) be a model to itself? Its a logical fallacy since there can be only one model to a given set. What the term "Abrahamic religions" does is displace Judaism as that model by assigning the three religions (the set) the same common denominator of Abraham, though we have no extant texts that confirm this. Even the Oral Law laments that Abraham had 400 chapters in the tractate on Idolatry to the extant five. Neither Christianity nor Islam can claim this equivalence of the social context, nor the particularity of Israelites required for a social construct model. However, both Christianity and Islam promote their own Replacement theology that seeks to a) abrogate the Jewish social context, and b) deny particularity.

Hence I quote from the very reference I added to the article:

3.2.1 Social functions and motivations in religion Sociology quite obviously directs its particular attention to the function of social integration religion can fulfill. Sociology of knowledge often depicts religion as a "social construction of reality"; it unifies people on the basis of an orientation system which interprets reality and defines the human being, and so contributes to the smooth functioning of society. Sociologists concerned with value-ethics emphasize the harmonization religion can bring about between individual aspirations and societal demands.

I note that Judaism, unlike Christianity and Islam, had unified its adherents (at least until the modern era c.1820), and provided a system, halakha, that interprets reality and defines the human being in ways that were never adopted or achieved in Christianity or Islam. Moreover it contributed to the smooth functioning of the Israelite society even while its leaders were in conflict! Even today, when there are significant disagreements between sections of the adherents to Judaism, there is no observable conflict in the degree observable in Christian and Islamic denominations.

As the social constructionism article says, "The underlying assumptions on which social constructivism is typically seen to be based are reality, knowledge, and learning." and this is present in Judaism which through its judicial principles defines reality, and through over three millenia of learning has accumulated substantial social knowledge with which it is constructed. It does however contradict the social constructionism as a theory in that it allows for countless human choices, AND laws resulting from divine will. Islam has dispensed with the former, while secularism has dismissed the later in Christianity.

As for belief, note I edited at the start of the section, and happy to repeat here, that there is no statement anywhere in the Jewish Scriptures, i.e. Tanakh, or in the Oral Tradition, i.e. the Talmud, that asks for belief in God. The entire point of Judaism is to know God, and do so intimately, seeking to emulate Him. If this was not true, how else would He ask that those who received the Torah Walk in His ways(Devarim [Deuteronomy] 28:9)? How does one walk in someone's ways while only believing to be doing so? There is another similar logical premise in Be holy, for God is holy (Vayikra [Leviticus] 19:2) which again presupposes knowledge of God, and not a belief, since "God is holy" is a statement of fact in Judaism. This may be challenged in Western philosophy, but knowledge of God rather than belief in Him is a distinct part of Judaism Koakhtzvigad (talk) 15:48, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia should not be written from an in-universe perspective. No doubt there is a specific holy text which says that a particular deity exists and that people must know this deity, but encyclopædia articles should be written neutrally.
May I suggest a compromise? If we could rephrase it so that this "knowledge" is framed so that it's clearly within the religious belief system, rather than saying or implying that it's real (much the same way as we might use "Person X said..." to avoid preventing controversial quotes as fact), I would be happy with that. bobrayner (talk) 15:59, 14 June 2011 (UTC)
I note that you have not addressed the point about Judaism being a social construct model for other monotheistic religions.
WP:INUNIVERSE says "An in-universe perspective describes the narrative from the perspective of characters within the fictional universe, treating it as if it were real and ignoring real-world context and sourced analysis."
WP:MOSFICT = Manual of Style (writing about fiction)
I had contributed to the section that deals with Judaism as a religion.
Judaism is a system of life for individuals and their communities that has a 3323 years of continuity in the real World context, and not a "fictional universe". Therefore when editing about Judaism, I deal with facts and not figments of my imagination, i.e. fiction, as you suggest in your 'compromise'.
In what way was my version of the section not have "knowledge" framed clearly within the Jewish religious belief system? This system of beliefs is framed within the context of an existing and enduring relationship between God and the Nation of Israel. In Judaism it is described as a marriage where while statements by the spouse may be expected to translate into action, there is certainly the knowledge that at least the spouse exists to make those statements even if the actions they require may be delayed, or not performed as expected.
The quote I presented deals with a notable event in Judaism, its historical continuity, and the belief in eventual redemption that is central within the system of beliefs.
It seems to me that it is your, and likely other editors' POV that makes my editing controversial, because facts are facts. I quote from a published English language work which is translated from the original Hebrew by qualified translators. It is accepted as an authoritative translation by almost all denominations of Judaism, and certainly by the orthodox practitioners.
Are you asking me to adulterate the text to fit Wikipedia's "noncontroversial" policy? The text used as the basis of Judaism is real, and there is no other logical way of interpreting it within the Jewish religion other than that the individual who accepts this text as true, also by definition has to accept that statements made within it are true. This is pure logic.
I have now illustrated to you three such statements that can not be interpreted in any other way.
Exactly how do you remain "neutral" while presenting facts or make logical statements? Koakhtzvigad (talk) 00:52, 15 June 2011 (UTC)
If you start with an axiom that a religious text is true, that its content is real, and that framing it as an old religious text rather than absolute truth is adulteration, then it is unlikely that we will be able to find a compromise. That axiom may be appropriate within a religious belief-system but it's not a good basis for writing encyclopædia articles. As you say, "facts are facts"; but words in a religious text are words, not necessarily facts, and that should be a cornerstone of how we write a wikipedia article on religion. bobrayner (talk) 09:57, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Follow-up on USEPA contributing to Wikipedia

Hello. This is a follow-up to your comments and suggestions on the username discussion page related to USEPA creating a Wikipedia account. As is usual for the government, it took a while to get approval to proceed toward a new frontier. But I finally got the OK to set up the account and begin suggesting edits to content that falls within USEPA's purview. You volunteered to help out or point me in the direction of folks who might be interested. I have a bullet list of proposed edits w/citations for a particular chemical page on Wikipedia, but to avoid the appearance of lording over Wikipedia content we would prefer not to edit pages directly. If you're still interested in helping out, please contact me. USEPA James (talk) 19:05, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Hi!
It's good to have you back. I'm still happy to help; will try to keep replies on your talkpage (it's easier for you to find things there, and you're automatically notified of changes to your talkpage). bobrayner (talk) 19:11, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Inactivity

I'm going to be less active on wikipedia for most of June. I'm very busy at work and at university. Also, at the end of June, I'm taking a 10-day roadtrip around France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. I will not be online so often. In the unlikely event that you need a quick response from me, use your common sense. (If you don't have any common sense, do something fun).

Task force WP:RFA2011 update

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Follow up question at Birnen, Bohnen und Speck

Hi Bob. I've not only reinstated the recipe link, but found the English version of it. However, User talk:MatthiasHuehr has reverted it again citing linkspam. But it isn't linkspam by the definition given in WP. How do we deal with someone who is intent on causing irritation/disruption like this? Is it trolling? I'm less bothered by the article in question (who cares if there's one or two links to typical recipes?) than Matthias approach which seems non-consensual and aggressive. What's your advice? --Bermicourt (talk) 20:17, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I think that the link does not count as linkspam, so I have re-added it.
However, it's probably not worth letting escalate into an edit war. If MatthiasHuehr still wants to remove the link from the article, we really need discussion. Some at WP:3O would reject a request for a 4th opinion; it might be a good idea to get input from a wikiproject. What do you think?
Sorry for the delayed response; I'm on holiday. bobrayner (talk) 21:41, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

"Luther" redirect move discussion re-opened at new page

I'm inviting everyone who contributed to the previous discussion to weigh in (again) at Talk:Luther (disambiguation). Thanks, Aristophanes68 (talk) 20:33, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

Your input is requested

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Please look though the ideas and leave a comment on the talk page on the proposal(s) you would most like to see go forward. Your feedback will help decide which proposals to put to the community. And, as always, feel free to add new suggestions. Thanks!

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Re: your encouragement

link=User talk:<John Eight Thirty-two>#[your encouragement]
link=User talk:<John Eight Thirty-two>#[your encouragement]
Hello, Bobrayner. You have new messages at [[User talk:<John Eight Thirty-two>#[your encouragement]|User talk:<John Eight Thirty-two>]].
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Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Worm_That_Turned

This was a singularly perceptive and clever remark. Very positive, very true. Someone should write an essay on that. Pedro :  Chat  18:33, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the compliment; but I can hardly take credit. Just as a stopped clock is right twice per day, and a thousand monkeys with typewriters will eventually type out A Tale Of Two Cities, it is inevitable that sooner or later an RfA comment will appear to be insightful. bobrayner (talk) 19:23, 29 June 2011 (UTC)

WP:RFA2011: RfA on other Wikipedias

A detailed table and notes have now been created and posted. It compares how RfA is carried out on major Wikipedias (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish). If you feel that other important language Wikipedias should be added, please let us know. This may however depend on our/your language skills!

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of RfA reform 2011 at 22:47, 3 July 2011 (UTC).

A330 FAC

Hi Bob, I'm here because a point raised by Nikki a few days ago about the A330. It's regarding this phrase which you added the ref "However, the programme was not formally launched because of insufficient customer interest." Nikki said the content did not back the claim, "FN 115 and 119 are the same source, but it only supports the material cited by FN 119." – the refs have been moved a bit. Anyway, I'm a bit concerned about it because there isn't any press coverage of the cancellation, why we do know that the variant did not precede. Sp33dyphil "Ad astra" 01:21, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Hmm.
  • Refs must have got shuffled round. I did a quick search of the FI archives and didn't find anything on cancellation. If it can't be sourced, it's got to go.
  • Bear in mind that "HGW" isn't boolean, as there can be less high profile, incremental changes throughout the lifespan - I've seen Aircraft Value News refer to more recent A333s as "HGW" even though they're definitely not the variant being discussed in the article.
Have fun; bobrayner (talk) 02:13, 7 July 2011 (UTC)

Calling to arms

Ever heard of the Pugachev's Cobra? Ever heard of a Sukhoi, or a MiG? Ever heard of "Foxbats", "Flankers", "Fulcrums", or Fullback"? Do you know what they are? Do you know what the Soviet aerospace industry is like? Do you know who the Americans really fear? Do you know how much headache it caused to the West? Do you know how much attention the fighters are getting? If the answer is NO, then there are clearly some catching up to do. During the next few days, I'll be working on the MiG-29K, Su-34, Su-35 and Su-37. I want to bring them all up to the same standard as the Su-33. If you want to participate, please come along and help out. Don't be hesitant. Give the Soviet aerospace industry the recognition it really deserves. Sp33dyphil "Ad astra" 11:42, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Happy to help. Will watchlist. If you need a hand on any specific sourcing issue (or even tech stuff), just shout. Do you have access to Janes? bobrayner (talk) 11:53, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Busy

I'm still quite busy with work and with study; there are several clashing deadlines... So, I will continue to be relatively inactive on wikipedia (just a handful of edits per day) until about 20 July. I can usually respond quickly to queries, and I'm always happy to help with sourcing, and of course my watchlist is still watched, but don't expect me to take on any really big new tasks. Have fun. bobrayner (talk) 18:42, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

follow up

Hi Bob.

"Is Breivik notable or not? It's difficult for me to interpret your text. And in what way is it a desirable feat of IAR apply if somebody *claims* to be following a policy but, in fact, that policy does not support their actions?"

Breivik is clearly notable. My text was deliberately a bit vague as I am a bit on the fence about this, although he is notable he also doesn't immediately require or demand his own article - he currently sits well imo in the main article - I though that Errants redirect was good when I saw it, and a correct position in regard to BLP considerations erring on the side of caution in reporting about living people - I am also a bit on the fence about the interpretation of the BLP1E, I see it as open to a bit of interpretation, which I read wiki policy/guidelines should be. I didn't bother voting in the merge discussion because imo policy is regularly violated in these feeding frenzies of high profile news events. Although I don't really support it, I have come to accept this situation, hence my vague comments about it - I hope my comments have helped you understand my position, regards. Off2riorob (talk) 00:16, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

OK.
Unfortunately, tempers were a bit high at the time. I think there have been some misinterpretations of policy, as well as people standing on mutually-contradictory bits of policy, but it's not the first time - so there's obviously some potential to tidy up the rules, in one way or another, to reduce the risk of dramatic disagreements in future. Didn't we go though something similar with Jared Lee Loughner and Seung-Hui Cho, both of which were redirected but are now standalone articles? Conversely, Ľubomír Harman has always been a standalone article and Tristan van der Vlis has always been a redirect. (I'm just using high-profile spree killing suspects as a handy example, obviously the same concern covers a lot more high-profile people) bobrayner (talk) 10:39, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Thank you kindly

Thank you for your support
Thank you very much for your support on my RfA. I shall endeavor to meet your and the community's expectations as an admin. Qwyrxian (talk) 07:39, 26 July 2011 (UTC)


Noted and Done

yah that page needs deletion the real page is here Wikipedia:Incremental_service_awards

with all the fixed requests. see se also section of page.Iamiyouareyou (talk) 17:36, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Thanks

I made a loud snorting sound when I read this. Thanks for the laugh. Yobol (talk) 16:28, 29 July 2011 (UTC)

List of Indian Rail Incidents

I am the author of the book in question. Yes, it is self published and only 112 pages, but regular publishers are not interested in niche subjects like this. What is more relevant is that it is the result of collection of data mainly from official records of India's Commissioner of Railway Safety as well as major Indian newspapers. Please refer to the "preview" pages of the book: (Link is blocked by Wikipedia as it does not like lulu dot com). You may see this link from another publisher, though the preview does not show the Preface and Introductory Notes: http://pothi.com/pothi/book/ajai-banerji-major-railway-accidents-india-2000-09

The Preface and Introductory Notes pages should make things more clear. You can also see the next few pages to get an idea of the amount of detail added. I feel that my book is more comprehensive and more reliable than most of the other entries in this particular Wikipedia article. In fact, it is better as it gives the "follow up" and inquiry findings and not just contemporary news clippings (like most of the other entries). This book does deserve to be listed as a reference on Wikipedia. Perhaps it could be put among the other footnotes instead of being in the main article. But then, as the book refers to the entire period of 2000-09 it may be better to have it at the bottom of the 2000-09 section instead of being in the footnotes.
Regards, Abn397 (talk) 07:33, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

List of Railway Accidents, 2000-09

The same issue again. Just to reiterate that it has been researched from various sources. See the link http://pothi.com/pothi/book/ajai-banerji-worldwide-railway-accidents-2000-09 and read the first few pages of the review. I feel that it deserves to be a reference. Abn397 (talk) 11:45, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Planned Parenthood

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Jimmy Warnock.

This edit http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jimmy_Warnock&curid=8923580&diff=443160121&oldid=443158120 is against the manual of style. Please stop enflaming edit wars and revert your incorrect edit. thank you so much. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOS:IE#Biographical_articles — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ruairí Óg's (talk • contribs) 13:38, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

The three cites all repeatedly refer to "United Kingdom" rather than "Ireland". this calls him an "Ulsterman" more often than "Irish". He was born before 1922 but, in line with the policy you mention, I did not change his birthplace. He was a child at independence, and as his recorded bouts were all long after independence, it's perfectly reasonable to describe this boxer in post-independence terms. This, too, is in line with the policy you mention. If you have anything else which supports your point (perhaps a different policy), please let me know. bobrayner (talk) 15:30, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Disruptive editing - deleting links without consensus

Hi Bob. This issue seems to have been archived here without any conclusion being reached. Am I missing something?? Regards, --Bermicourt (talk) 11:46, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

It looks like nothing happened. Unfortunately, not every thread on AN/I has a happy ending! Is the link-removal still ongoing? bobrayner (talk) 11:52, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

A330 FAC

Hi Bobrayner, I'm just wondering if you'd like to be a co-nominator for the article Airbus A330 for its fourth(!) Featured article candidacy? I mean, you did have some input into the article (and I'm very thankful for it), but you seem reluctant to support or oppose during its third FAC. I'd really love it if you say yes, since I have someone to refer the article to when it runs into some sticky points. At the same time, I'm sure you'd like to see the article achieve the star. You don't have to, though. Cheers Sp33dyphil "Ad astra" 11:03, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

That's a very kind invitation. Has the article settled down a bit? IIRC, there were concerns at the last FAC about a lot of back-and-forth editing (though that was on particular tech details & refs rather than drastically changing the article). I'm also a little concerned about "spamming" the FAC people with a fourth request so soon after the last one. Do you have any other articles lined up for FA? I'd be happy to help with any of them... bobrayner (talk) 06:50, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
I'm pretty close; Northrop YF-23 had passed MILHIST A-class review and McDonnell XF-85 Goblin at the moment has three supports at its MILHIST ACR. For the former, do you mind criticise it as best you can? Fnlayson just wants it to be polished before he agrees to be a co-nom for YF-23's FAC. Cheers! 10:07, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
OK, will have a look at it and try to look for any possible flaws/improvements. I'm not familiar with wikipedia's conventions for military aircraft, but maybe an outside view would help... bobrayner (talk) 20:28, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
 Done bobrayner (talk) 19:36, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Aug 2011

Please stop your disruptive editing. If you continue to blank out or remove portions of page content, templates or other materials from Wikipedia, as you did at LGBTQ_symbols#Genderqueer_symbols, you may be blocked from editing.

Iamiyouareyou (talk) 15:10, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Because it appears that you may have a single-person-bias. Befor you take out the content again please start a discussion of the disputed content on the talk page and add this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Disputed-section to the section. Iamiyouareyou (talk) 15:17, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps you have misunderstood what "disruptive editing" means. Repeatedly adding non-notable, made up content is more disruptive than removing it. I have no doubt that you are passionate about your flag images, but wikipedia is not the place for them until they are actually widely used in the real world. If you are unfamiliar with our policies on notability and verifiability, I (or somebody else) will happily offer further advice on the talkpage. bobrayner (talk) 15:18, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
Well one person having a dispute against a singular piece of content always looks/reads like vandalism. Especially when said person never adds a Discussion to the talk page explaining removal of content. So I did that part for you Talk:LGBTQ_symbols#Disputed_content_.28Gender_Queer_flag.29
Iamiyouareyou (talk) 15:32, 11 August 2011 (UTC)
Let me clarify a couple of points:
  • Removing blatantly unencyclopædic content is not vandalism; it is a Good Thing. Please don't accuse good-faith editors of vandalism.
  • I did start a talkpage discussion - two weeks ago. You didn't reply. Instead you just hit the "revert" button to add cruft back into the article. The article history is quite clear.
I understand that wikipedia policies can be complex and daunting so it may be understandable that you're not familiar with several of them; and I'll cheerfully forgive the confused wording if English is not your first language. However, I must ask you not to lie. bobrayner (talk) 15:42, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Cadence Industries

Responding to RFCs

Remember that RFCs are part of Dispute Resolution and at times may take place in a heated environment. Please take a look at the relevant RFC page before responding and be sure that you are willing and able to enter that environment and contribute to making the discussion a calm and productive one focussed on the content issue at hand. See also Wikipedia:Requests for comment#Suggestions for responding.

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on Talk:Cadence Industries. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! However, please note that your input will carry no greater weight than anyone else's: remember that an RFC aims to reach a reasoned consensus position, and is not a vote. In support of that, your contribution should focus on thoughtful evaluation of the issues and available evidence, and provide further relevant evidence if possible.

You have received this notice because your name is on Wikipedia:Feedback request service. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from that page. RFC bot (talk) 14:05, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Maersk Triple E class

Hi Bob. Best of luck with the GA nomination. I pondered reviewing the article myself, but it felt a bit like a COI for me. I do have some notions on the article that you can take or leave as you see fit:

  • The specifications list seems a bit out of place. It largely repeats whats in the infobox, while the information isn't discussed in the text. I'd recommend converting it to text and distributing that to the appropriate spots in the design section.
  • Recommend moving the CG image to the top of the infobox
  • Not sure if the lede currently fully summarizes the text per WP:LEDE.
  • I have an inkling that the orders and market sections could better be combined into a "History" section.
  • the "two days longer" factiod seems questionable to me. I ran the numbers using distances between ports for Singapore to Gibraltar and got a 5-day-difference. I understand it is WP:V, but it seems odd...
  • I wonder if customizing an image like this might add something to the article...

Again, best of luck with the process and let me know if you need anything. Regards. HausTalk 21:24, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

All good points; thanks for your support and suggestions.
Re: your last point, there's a similar comparison image here; I was thinking of modifying that. However, I don't have a good silhouette yet (the ones on Maersk's flickr page are not ideal).
bobrayner (talk) 21:32, 14 August 2011 (UTC)
Hey Bob. I took a swing at the lede - feel free to use it or not as you see fit. I have suffered through other editors "helping" during the GA process and understand it can give one the vapors. :) I think in re the diagram that the E-class silhouette would be close to indistinguishable from the Triple-E. Two more things occurred to me while I was playing with the lede: the first is that I think there are hyphenation issues (if I recall correctly, it would be "the Maersk Triple E class", but "Triple-E-class ships"). The second is italicization: if it comes up, the reason it isn't italicized can be found here. Cheers. HausTalk 00:28, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
Unfortunately, this is where I start disagreeing with you :-)
  • The Triple E has that quirky forward superstructure / aft funnel arrangement, unlike the E class; and that also implies some differences to the facilities for containers upfront (compliance with SOLAS visibility rules); and it's also claimed to have quite boxy lines compared to the E class' notably fine lines. The choice of twin skegs presumably makes a difference to the silhouette at the stern, too. There are surely other differences which haven't been reported on. Therefore I would not feel comfortable just "reusing" an old silhouette even though those comparisons are just eyecandy rather than being a serious analysis of the design.
  • Personally, I preferred having the picture in the body next to the photo of her older sister, allowing a bit of comparison; however I appreciate that most people would prefer to have a picture in the infobox. No biggie.
  • As far as hyphenation is concerned, I doubt either of us wants get involved in that religious war, but I'd be happy to follow what sources say, where possible. A Manual of Style is a valuable thing but I'm wary of changes to articles to suit some internal wikipedia standard which take them further away from what sources say. (Taken to an extreme, we get cases like British Rail Class 70; a locomotive introduced 12 years after British Rail stopped running, but people felt that "All our other articles on older trains have titles like "British Rail class X...", so it had to be given a name which simply doesn't exist in the real world. Surely an encyclopædia should describe reality faithfully, rather than shaping it to fit internal conventions).
I don't own the article and I'm not terribly worried that you'll undermine my claim to a GA scout-badge. If you want to improve it - and you have surely made good improvements so far - fill your boots! bobrayner (talk) 10:32, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Advance Centre for The Scotson Technique

Here are some articles that mention the Advance Centre for The Scotson Technique

Are any of these articles good enough to allow the entry to be reinstated? Johnalexwood (talk) 09:18, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

Reji

Hi, Bobrayner. Thank you for your contribution. I'm not expert on the economy. When you have time, could you improve the article Kararname of 1296 ? Thank you. Takabeg (talk) 04:35, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

OK. I added it to my list; thanks for pointing it out.
  • Be wary of using "Kararname" (or kanunname) in isolation - there will be thousands of different documents referred to with that name.
  • Do you have any good sources?
  • Do you want to expand it far enough for Did You Know? If so, we have 5 days to write 1500 characters...
  • I still have a long to-do list - I wrote {{Taxation in the Ottoman Empire sidebar}} and most of the bluelinks, but there are still a lot of redlinks left. After that, maybe the Byzantine economy...
bobrayner (talk) 08:33, 17 August 2011 (UTC)
 In progress bobrayner (talk) 07:38, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Flags

Re your recent removal of flags from various lists of railway accidents, I've raised the issue at WT:TWP as the recent RfC did not come down against the use of flags in this way. Your comments are welcome there. Mjroots (talk) 04:55, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for notifying me.
There was a pretty clear consensus at the RfC; six opposes and zero supports for your proposal to permit thousands of little flag pictures in lists like this. Other people's proposals got much better support where they encouraged the removal of flags from lists. I cannot square this with your description of the RfC.
  • I'm not sure why you started a thread at WT:TWP after earlier saying "I've no problem with mass removal after the RFC closes should consensus be that the flags are to be removed". Personally, I think there was a pretty clear consensus; the proposal to allow this kind of flag use, emphasising the nationality of non-national items in lists, was unanimously opposed.
  • I've no intention of removing every little flag picture from wikipedia; I'll just remove the ones which satisfy three criteria:
  1. They're ugly, distracting readers from relevant article text;
  2. They unduly emphasise nationality (a minority are actually false, misleading, or anachronistic);
  3. They violate the consensus formed at the RfC.
If a new consensus is formed over at WT:MOSFLAG in future, I would go along with it. Would you? bobrayner (talk) 11:51, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

GA review

Hi Bob, I'm reviewing Maersk Triple E class right now, so, could you review one of my GANs in return? RAH-66 has been nominated for a few months already. Thanks Sp33dyphil "Ad astra" 08:21, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Certainly; it would be a pleasure. (I'm very busy at work but could start in 48 hours, if that's OK with you) bobrayner (talk) 09:41, 23 August 2011 (UTC)
 In progress bobrayner (talk) 12:18, 25 August 2011 (UTC)
  • You have not responded to my comments at the RAH-66 review. Try to check back in on it when you have time. Thanks. -Fnlayson (talk) 23:18, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

List of rail accidents (2010–2019)

your WP:MOSFLAG changes to List of rail accidents (2010–2019) have been reverted. Perhaps there is an overuse of flags, however the country name is important to the article since it identifies the country in which each accident occurs. If you wish to remove the flags, please replace them with the country name. Thanks, Truthanado (talk) 00:54, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Online Ambassador

I responded on my talk page.--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:55, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Groovy; thanks. bobrayner (talk) 20:50, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

Mediation request to be closed

Since there has been no discussion at Wikipedia:Mediation_Cabal/Cases/2011-04-12/fractional_reserve_banking in several months, and the mediator who accepted the case has, per his talk page, apparently chosen to leave Wikipedia. I will close the listing after 22:00 UTC on September 2, 2011, unless someone edits that page to ask that it be left open. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 21:43, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

BS 1363 - Counterfeit Plugs and Fuses

The subject of counterfeit plugs and fuses is a well established issue affecting BS 1363 and BS 1362 products.

The seriousness of the problem can be gauged from the references supplied in the counterfeiting section of the main article, as the British Electrotechnical and Allied Manufacturers Association says "Counterfeit electrical products can cause injury, fire and KILL!"

Please refrain from removing this section without discussion, and with no supporting arguments. Deucharman (talk) 00:22, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Proposed compromise on BS 1363

I've suggested an amended version of the much-reverted Counterfeiting section on this article; please take a look at the talkpage when you have a moment and pass judgement. Yunshui (talk) 09:32, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

Welcome to the Wikipedia Ambassador Program

Hi Bobrayner!

Congratulations! Your application to join the Global Education Program as an Online Ambassador has been accepted. The steps you need to take now, a few things you need to read, are bolded.

When you get a chance, please add your username to the official list of Online Ambassadors and add a profile for yourself here (which helps match Online Ambassadors with classes in their areas of interest).

Here are some things you should know to help you get started:

The role of the Online Ambassador

The main role of for an Online Ambassador is to join the "pod" for one or more participating classes. The pod is the team of people helping a class of students contribute effectively to Wikipedia, consisting of the course instructor, the local Campus Ambassadors who will work with the class in person, the Online Ambassadors who work with the class online, and the Regional Ambassador for the pod who will check in periodically with the pod to make sure everything is going well.

A prototypical pod might look something like this:

  • An instructor who is fairly new to Wikipedia, leading a class of 20 students assigned to make significant contributions to new or existing articles related to the course subject.
  • Two Campus Ambassadors, one of whom is an experienced Wikipedian and one of whom is new to Wikipedia. The Campus Ambassadors will have gone through a training program on the basics of Wikipedia and how to help students contribute effectively.
  • Two Online Ambassadors, one moderately experienced on Wikipedia and one very experienced, who can answer basic questions and give good editing advice and find others to help when they get in over their heads, one of whom has a particular interest in the subject area of the course.
  • One Regional Ambassador, a moderately experienced Wikipedian who is working with 15 different pods spread across a big geographical region.

(That's an idealization, but it gives you an idea of the spectrum of people in each of the roles in the program.)

The expections for an Online Ambassador in a pod (and what you can expect from other pod members) are laid out in the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between pod members. In short the role of the Online Ambassador is to:

  • Help students in your class(es) when they ask for it, answer their questions, and generally watch out for them
  • Help students to get feedback on their work (whether from you or other editors an interest in / knowledge of the subject area)
  • Be a good example for students, modeling good wiki communication and editing practices
  • Communicate regularly with the other members of your pod about how things are going and problems are coming up

To join a pod, go to the MOU signup page, which lists the courses for the current term, and leave your signature in one of the Online Ambassador slots for the pod you want to join.

You can also help as an Online Ambassador outside of your role as a pod member, anywhere you see students who could use help. Feedback on the substance (rather than style and formatting) of student articles, in particular, is always a need.

If you use IRC, please consider adding #wikipedia-en-ambassadors and #wikipedia-en-classroom to your channel lineup. The latter is the main help channel for the program, where students and instructors come from time to time in search of live help.

Wikipedia Ambassadors are expected to follow the Wikipedia Ambassadors Principles. Please review them.

Communication channels

There are three main places for news, updates and discussion about Wikipedia Ambassadors and the Global Education Program:

  1. Wikipedia talk:Ambassadors
  2. The Ambassador Program announcements list, which all ambassadors should join. It is a low-traffic email list that is only used for significant announcement that are relevant to the whole program. Please sign up as soon as you get a chance.
  3. The Wikipedia Ambassadors Google Group, a discussion list shared by Online Ambassadors and Campus Ambassadors. It's not required, but it's strong recommended and most of the ambassadors are on it. Request to join the Wikipedia Ambassadors Google Group if you would like access.

Newsletters about the program, or messages for Online Ambassadors particularly, may be delivered to your talk page on occasion.

Thanks for volunteering as a Wikipedia Ambassador! If you have any questions, please let me know.

--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 18:40, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

Communication, Leadership, and Entrepreneurship

Hey there,
Thank you so much for offering to help me with this semester's course!! I sent a message to the students with your name.
I truly appreciate it! Starvinsky (talk) 17:48, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

No worries.
I've watchlisted everything (including students' talkpages &c).
Are more students likely to sign up? bobrayner (talk) 17:53, 3 September 2011 (UTC)

There is a mop reserved in your name

I have observed some remarkable contributions from this account. I am curious, why are you not an administrator. Pardon that you have struck me as the kind of editor who could be a good one, and that you seem qualified by a cursory review. You exemplify the essence of an Administrator without tools! I hope you will consider serving in the fuller capacity.

My76Strat (talk) 02:59, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

That's very kind of you.
At the moment, I think I could do a fairly good job, but I'm not sure I could pass the interview ;-)
That's not necessarily a dig at the interview panel; the community knows best, and I'm not sure my CV is as good as some expect. Several projects are keeping me busy (on-wiki and off-wiki), and the on-wiki ones are hopefully improving the encyclopædia so it would be selfish for me to drop them just to chase a mop. After those projects are done, I'd happily ask for the extra buttons. Does that sound reasonable? bobrayner (talk) 08:33, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

RfA Reform update

Hi. It's been a little while since the last message on RfA reform, and there's been a fair amount of slow but steady progress. However, there is currently a flurry of activity due to some conversations on Jimbo's talk page.

I think we're very close to putting an idea or two forward before the community and there are at least two newer ones in the pipeline. So if you have a moment:

Thanks for reading and for any comments that you've now made.

Delivered by MessageDeliveryBot on behalf of RfA reform 2011 at 21:38, 6 September 2011 (UTC).

African highway PROD

Yes, fair enough. But I don't see a deletion proposal; guess you'll create one. Tony (talk) 13:18, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Narrow Gauge Down Under

If you still want to get rid of this I suggest AfD. It does not look to fall into any of the speedy delete criteria. Personally I would like to see Wikipedia have more articles and good coverage of periodicals, rather than getting rid of stubs. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:30, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Fair enough; thanks. bobrayner (talk) 06:14, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Yellow Muddah, Yellow Faddah

I see that you've nominated Flavescent for deletion. What do you think about Fulvous, which seems to me another likely candidate, being essentially a dab page (with dicdef) consisting entirely of partial title matches, since none of the things named in the entries would normally be called "a fulvous". Deor (talk) 21:36, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

In principle, I would agree. However, Fulvous has a lot more content, and even if that list of yellow birds doesn't change the fact that it's a dicdef in my mind, it's likely to influence a few !voters at AfD. We'd probably get a result like "Turn it into a dab instead of deleting". Nobody would actually put in the effort, though, so the article would continue to be a mess. So, I don't want to AfD it - but if you want to try, feel free! bobrayner (talk) 09:19, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

There is a mop reserved in your name

I have observed some remarkable contributions from this account. I am curious, why are you not an administrator. Pardon that you have struck me as the kind of editor who could be a good one, and that you seem qualified by a cursory review. You exemplify the essence of an Administrator without tools! I hope you will consider serving in the fuller capacity.

My76Strat (talk) 12:20, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Your second invitation is flattery indeed. I will probably consider RfA later in the year (see my earlier reply).
In the meantime, I take a marxist stance; I wouldn't want to join any clique that would accept me as a member.
Thanks; bobrayner (talk) 12:23, 11 September 2011 (UTC)
I knew I wanted to send this message to you, I somehow missed that I already had. I do hope you've seen the essay, because in my assessment, you are without doubt, an ADMAN. My76Strat (talk) 12:34, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Color template revisions

I'm somewhat confused by your revisions to remove "improperly sourced colour blocks" from the template. As far as I can see, none of the colors on any of the templates have any sourcing at the template or the template talk page, and the template lists absolutely no requirements for sourcing. I then thought you were removing the colors that are up for AFD, but the first two examples I checked -- Isabelline (colour) and British racing green -- aren't up for deletion, and the sourcing on the articles appears to be fine. It also seems weird that these articles are included in the categories for Shades of Color but not on the templates for Shades of Color. At a minimum, I would suggest that if you have a standard in mind that articles must meet to be included on the templates, you should amend the templates' documentation to state this standard, because right now it's very unclear to this editor why these colors should be excluded. Theoldsparkle (talk) 15:18, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi,
  • I was unaware that anything shown to readers was exempt from sourcing. If we don't have a source for the RGB values in the target articles, why do we show a template full of RGB values to the encyclopædia's readership?
  • For colours whose RGB values are not known, I'd be happy with other forms of navigation which don't involve made-up values; and those forms of navigation are still being preserved (we still have categories, "Shades of Brown" parent articles, &c). If any other navbox exists which does not present made-up values, I haven't touched it yet, and I would happily coexist with it.
  • I'm using a fairly low threshold for sourcing at the moment; even where the RGB values in the target article were made up by somebody looking at a box of crayola, or they differ from an external source, or they differ from List of Crayola crayon colors, I've taken them at face value for now.
  • On a different point, the template design is a bit clunky (after adding or removing any entry, it seems necessary to renumber all subsequent entries three times over) and I plan to fix that when I have spare time. This would be a change to the machinery, not to the appearance. Do you have any suggestions on template architecture?
bobrayner (talk) 15:35, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
If I understand what you're saying, you removed the colors from the templates because the specific RGB values shown for those colors in the infobox are not sourced in the respective articles. Is that correct? If so, that makes sense, but I don't think that was adequately communicated by the edit summary "removing colour blocks which are not properly sourced", nor do I see that the templates' documentation indicates that for a color to be included in the template, the RGB value must be properly sourced in the respective article. I have no objection to that standard, but if you intend for that to be the standard, it should simply be stated in the template documentation so that it's possible for others, like myself, to understand why those colors are being removed.
I agree that the template design is pretty awful, for the reason you describe (as I encountered when I removed some colors awhile ago because the linked articles weren't actually about the colors). Unfortunately, I don't know much about the complexities of template construction so I don't have any ideas for how to improve it. Theoldsparkle (talk) 15:55, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
Gotta go with Sparkle on this one. The point of the template (or any template) isn't to represent color values, the point is to link articles. For example, you removed Burnt sienna, a common shade of brown, from Template:Shades of brown. I have reverted your edit on brown Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 16:06, 12 September 2011 (UTC)
OK; I'll stop these template changes for now. (There are plenty of other colo[u]r problems to fix anyway) bobrayner (talk) 16:24, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

NNU class project

Hi Bob -- thank you for your help with the class project! It's probably the biggest one I've ever seen. By the way, don't forget to add these to your sandbox page.  :) All the best, Antandrus (talk) 15:48, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Hey bob, I should have mentioned earlier that many accounts are also in this form Thanks for your helping attitude.--My76Strat (talk) 16:59, 18 September 2011 (UTC)
No worries. Any new good-faith editor who wants to improve content in wikipedia's weakest areas is worth their weight in gold; so we have several tonnes of gold here. bobrayner (talk) 17:30, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject China/NNU Class Project

The content from your subpage has been added to Wikipedia:WikiProject China/NNU Class Project. We are preparing a notice to direct student and teachers there. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 04:47, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Please add your name if you like to the list there. We could also use some advice on connecting articles with students there, as you have done at your subpage. And thank you again for starting the list. It has been very useful. Cheers. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 04:47, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for adding you name to the list. One of the course instructors is chatting on irc right now in a channel we have set up for this project. If you would like to join, that would be fine. You can use the link on the template we intend to add to each user page. Right now it is only on the one teachers page until we work out any bugs. User:Njnu-ban-xueshenghao Maybe we'll see you there soon.--My76Strat (talk) 10:16, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Groovy; thanks. I'm busy at work and can't IRC at the moment; maybe later in the day. bobrayner (talk) 10:26, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Help on ruling

I believe the admin "Kuru" is made a very serious mistake here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/Edit_warring#User:LardoBalsamico_reported_by_User:Sillystuff84_.28Result:_page_protected.29 I've been trying to engage on his talk page. Sillystuff84 (talk) 15:03, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

He has all but admitted his mistake here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Kuru#3RR_or_4RR.3F Sillystuff84 (talk) 15:14, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

Guanqian Street-help request from NNU student

--NNU-11-22100515 (talk) 02:44, 21 September 2011 (UTC)I'm a student from Nanjing Normal University.I've written an article on wikipedia.Cause this is the first time that I have written an article on wikipedia.Would you like to look at it and give some advice? Thank you!

OK. Nice work! I will look at Guanqian Street and make some suggestions on the article talkpage. bobrayner (talk) 12:37, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

anthropomancy

You'll find plenty of good sources in G Books. I shall add them if you don't, but you could have easily done it in the first place instead of prodding. In general, first look for sources, & if not found, only then nominate for deletion. See WP:BEFORE. "no sources" is not a reason for deletion. "no sources after 4 years" just means nobody has yet done it, so you have the opportunity. DGG ( talk ) 18:13, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Feel free to add sources; that would be helpful.
The first few results in Google Books seem to refer to Julian the Apostate - who had been removed from the article some time ago (by others), over reliability concerns. More generally speaking, the first search results I got were based on Julian the Apostate, or the current version of our article drawn from that unreliable source, or passing mentions in indiscriminate lists (including Gaule's Magastromancer). And, of course, Herodotus, who is not exactly reliable on the quirky cultural practices of foreigners. Is there credible evidence that antropomancy was ever practiced at all?
Still, you removed the prod. It's only for uncontroversial deletions; if you disagree and can find reliable sources for anthropomancy as a method of divination (or perhaps rewrite the article so it's about an obscure myth about a method of divination), that's fine by me. bobrayner (talk) 19:10, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

North Korean famine

As the article notes, agriculture in the DPRK was heavily dependent on imports from its communist trading partners, especially the USSR. While it had those imports, there was no famine. When the trade network collapsed and it lost the imports, then there was a famine. The specific trigger was its sudden trade isolation (and yes, whatever decisions led to that isolation), and not some vague "mismanagement" that hadn't been a problem for the previous 30 years. 24.22.217.162 (talk) 19:24, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

Famine in North Korea has a long history - going hand in hand with government mismanagement. Have you read this?
  • "land belonging to Korean landlords and Japanese colonialists was seized and redistributed to the peasantry during 1945–46. This land reform was accompanied by a dramatic fall in agricultural output"
  • "Following the Korean War, North Korea’s agriculture was collectivized ... The country experienced food shortages"
  • "In response to food shortages in 1970–73, the degree of centralization of North Korea’s agricultural planning was intensifed"
  • "The same year, 1987, the government initiated several somewhat contradictory policies in the agricultural sector ... led to ... a reduction in crop yields"
Statistics of food imports actually suggest a massive increase in the proportion of food imports as aid during and after the famine - and reliable sources also show that the government has gamed the system to affect the "aid" that it gets.
To conclude: North Korea has been hungry since the dictatorship took over; the level of hunger depends on issues directly caused by the dictatorship, such as abysmal productivity, input-intensive agriculture, the irregular availability of those inputs, inefficient logistics, ecological damage, and even isolation from some donors (although other donors continue to be very generous). bobrayner (talk) 20:22, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
Also: When government policies cause erosion which exacerbates (or even, according to one reliable source, causes) flooding, and when government policies make industries and infrastructure more vulnerable to that flooding... is the flooding truly a natural disaster? bobrayner (talk) 20:46, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

The Civility Barnstar
I award you the Civility (Tutorial Friendly) Barnstar for helping me over Wikipedia 
FRYugoslavHero (talk) 23:31, 24 September 2011 (UTC)
Thanks; you are very kind. bobrayner (talk) 00:21, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

SPI, Militant atheism and you

I've removed the entire "An aside" section on Talk:Militant atheism that you added in here.

I'm sure you're wondering why. The reason is: this is an article's talk page. This is a place to discuss article improvement and shape the encyclopedia without interfering with regular readers. This is not a place to open up shop attacking other editors and trying to prove them as sockpuppets.

I appreciate your dedication, and I'd encourage you to create an inquiry at Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations. If you feel so strongly that there is sockpuppetry going on, then raise this concern in the proper venue. However, please keep defamation off of the article's talk page.

I'd expect that it goes without saying not to restore your section to the talk page. You're welcome to open an SPI case, but keep it off the talk.

Any questions are welcome, and your cooperation is appreciated. Cheers, m.o.p 15:31, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

This is very frustrating, as there have been serious and repeated concerns about sockpuppetry, on-wiki canvassing, and off-wiki canvassing on the talkpage. I can understand why anupam would try to prevent further discussion on the talkpage, but not you. What, exactly, is so defamatory about a long series of diffs? If you could point out exactly which bit of text you feel is defamatory then I will cheerfully restore discussion of one of the article's most serious problems whilst omitting the words that you find objectionable. bobrayner (talk) 15:34, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
See my reply on my talk page. m.o.p 15:48, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
If I may interject here, Bob, my advice would be that the material m.o.p. deleted could indeed be taken to SPI, and also could very well end up being the basis for evidence in a user RfC or, eventually, arbitration, but it doesn't really help to put it on an article talk page. Please don't feel discouraged about it. Best wishes, --Tryptofish (talk) 21:11, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
Your interjections are always welcome; but:
  • As I said on m.o.p's talkpage, I do not believe an SPI would be a net positive. I believe that somebody running a long-term sock in this way is quite capable of technical measures which would thwart checkuser. Also, given the wide range of canvassing on- and off- wiki, I think it likely that within a few minutes of me creating an SPI, an admin with a suitable background would get an email suggesting that there's an SPI case which needs their attention. And if the SPI case delivers a null result it would be used in the same way that previous administrative comments have been used on that article - which would be bad for the article and bad for the encyclopædia.
  • It doesn't matter how loudly the duck quacks; civil pov pushing is the most serious threat to wikipedia, coordinated civil pov-pushing especially so because it undermines the encyclopaedia's defense mechanisms. And it's happening right before our eyes.
  • I had planned to fill in the section with more diffs of problematic editing by two other SPAs, which were not socky. But what's the point? Those too would be deemed defamatory (previous suspicions without diffs raised no eyebrows; it seems to be the addition of evidence that makes these concerns "defamatory") and they wouldn't be eligible for SPI anyway. At worst they could go to WQA which is likely to generate more heat than light, and if the discussion is not derailed then the miscreant gets the lightest possible slap on the wrist. POV-pushing will continue, new SPAs will appear when a poll/RfC threatens the status quo, much time will be wasted - and even if the article actually gets unprotected, it'll still be impossible to remove all the SYNTH and POV.
That's why I'm giving up. Since I'm not inclined to revert-war or sock or canvas, I'm fighting with one hand tied behind my back, and my preference - a neutral article - will not prevail any time soon. bobrayner (talk) 21:43, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
There's a reason SPI is our main venue against sockpuppets - because they've got a plethora of tools that extend beyond checkuser. It's a bit strange to say "this is pointless" without trying, especially when SPI is your only option - not to mention it's an option you haven't even consulted yet.
Anyway, it's your choice whether or not you submit this case to SPI, but please don't accuse us of inaction if you're not being proactive about this case. m.o.p 22:02, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
I was under the impression that problems should be discussed on the talkpage first, although it's very hard to reconcile that policy with the response on your talkpage. I spent hours analysing thousands of diffs and you removed it with a couple of clicks, so I'm surprised and frustrated that you now try to fault me for not taking the initiative.
If I posted the other suspicious diffs that I've collated from a couple of other (non-sock) SPAs, would that be defamatory too?
bobrayner (talk) 22:16, 25 September 2011 (UTC)
As I said, your effort is appreciated - however, you did not take the appropriate venue, which is WP:SPI. Bringing things up on the talk page is for regular disputes, not sockpuppet investigations.
As for the other SPAs, it's not defamatory if you do it through the right channels. Bring it up on ANI if you want to. The talk page isn't really the place. m.o.p 22:26, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

News and progress from RfA reform 2011

RfA reform: ...and what you can do now.

(You are receiving this message because you are either a task force member, or you have contributed to recent discussions on any of these pages.)

The number of nominations continues to nosedive seriously, according to these monthly figures. We know why this is, and if the trend continues our reserve of active admins will soon be underwater. Wikipedia now needs suitable editors to come forward. This can only be achieved either through changes to the current system, a radical alternative, or by fiat from elsewhere.

A lot of work is constantly being done behind the scenes by the coordinators and task force members, such as monitoring the talk pages, discussing new ideas, organising the project pages, researching statistics and keeping them up to date. You'll also see for example that we have recently made tables to compare how other Wikipedias choose their sysops, and some tools have been developed to more closely examine !voters' habits.

The purpose of WP:RFA2011 is to focus attention on specific issues of our admin selection process and to develop RfC proposals for solutions to improve them. For this, we have organised the project into dedicated sections each with their own discussion pages. It is important to understand that all Wikipedia policy changes take a long time to implement whether or not the discussions appear to be active - getting the proposals right before offering them for discussion by the broader community is crucial to the success of any RfC. Consider keeping the pages and their talk pages on your watchlist; do check out older threads before starting a new one on topics that have been discussed already, and if you start a new thread, please revisit it regularly to follow up on new comments.

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  1. Improving the environment that surrounds RfA in order to encourage mature, experienced editors of the right calibre to come forward, pass the interview, and dedicate some of their time to admin tasks.
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The fastest way is through improvement to the current system. Workspace is however also available within the project pages to suggest and discuss ideas that are not strictly within the remit of this project. Users are invited to make use of these pages where they will offer maximum exposure to the broader community, rather than individual projects in user space.

We already know what's wrong with RfA - let's not clutter the project with perennial chat. RFA2011 is now ready to propose some of the elements of reform, and all the task force needs to do now is to pre-draft those proposals in the project's workspace, agree on the wording, and then offer them for central discussion where the entire Wikipedia community will be more than welcome to express their opinions in order to build consensus.

New tool Check your RfA !voting history! Since the editors' RfA !vote counter at X!-Tools has been down for a long while, we now have a new RfA Vote Counter to replace it. A significant improvement on the former tool, it provides a a complete breakdown of an editor's RfA votes, together with an analysis of the participant's voting pattern.

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Update on courses and ambassador needs

Hello, Ambassadors!

I wanted to give you one last update on where we are this term, before my role as Online Facilitator wraps up at the end of this week. Already, there are over 800 students in U.S. classes who have signed up on course pages this term. About 40 classes are active, and we're expecting that many more again once all the classes are up and running.

On a personal note, it's been a huge honor to work with so many great Wikipedians over the last 15 months. Thanks so much to everyone who jumped in and decided to give the ambassador concept a try, and double thanks those of you who were involved early on. Your ideas and insights and enthusiasm have been the foundation of the program, and they will be the keys the future of the program.

Courses looking for Online Ambassadors

Still waiting to get involved with a class this term, or ready to take on more? We have seven classes that are already active and need OA support, and eleven more that have course pages started but don't have active students yet. Please consider joining one or more of these pods!

Active courses that really need Online Ambassadors:

Courses that may be active soon that need Online Ambassadors:

--Sage Ross - Online Facilitator, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 23:11, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Boeing/Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche/GA1

Hi what's happening with the Talk:Boeing/Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche/GA1 review it seems to have stalled. Jim Sweeney (talk) 07:18, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

Please comment on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Aviation/Style guide/Lists

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Tahrir defterleri

I queried your edit here Talk:Defter#Tahrir defterleri, and it would be great if you could address it. I probably should have come here first but, well, I was recently nudged toward a talk page. Hope it's OK. It sounds intriguing. Thanks. Swliv (talk) 22:41, 10 October 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately, as with so many concepts related to Ottoman government, exact meanings can vary over time and over parts of the empire, and may not translate neatly into English. :-)
  • "Defterleri" is the plural of defter; a book, register, or catalogue. There were different official documents called defters (and different officials/agencies responsible for defters) at different times. By the end of the empire the defter-i hakâni had become like a modern Land Registry Office.
  • The tahrir was a fiscal survey; a government effort (though, as in modern western countries, all kinds of government work could be farmed out to private service providers) to find out how much tax could be collected.
So, tahrir defters are official registers of taxes. Premodern governments weren't good at recording information about the day-to-day lives of citizens and saving it for posterity, but they were very keen to record what taxes people were liable to pay, so surviving defters are useful to understand history as they preserve lots of data about people, about land, and about industry and commerce. (cf the Domesday Book). bobrayner (talk) 20:39, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
No problem on the delay and thanks for this. My next questions, if you'll allow me, are: How does this (use of) "tahrir" connect to today's "liberation"? Is the Arabic the same for the two? If those are not hopelessly dumb questions. And if you happen to have the time to answer them. The slow march of progress, right? Thanks for what you're doing. This is definitely interesting. Swliv (talk) 16:24, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
I don't have the language skills to answer that one definitively, sorry!
Tahrir was a term in Ottoman Turkish vocabulary for several centuries, with a bureaucratic meaning quite unlike the Arabic "liberation". Maybe it's a loanword (perhaps from the Seljuks). Or maybe it's a false friend. The helpdesk might be a good place to start looking for a turkish-arabic linguist who can answer that definitively...? bobrayner (talk) 22:31, 1 November 2011 (UTC)
I'm not sure of the helpdesk procedure, but have posted a query back where we started, as a start. I will say I'm pleased to have narrowed the discussion here to the question now at hand: Seems it was all worthwhile. I'll also say I think I assumed you saw this as the question from the start but also, now, am sort of charmed that you didn't. Am glad I didn't fall ever into frustration. That's to your credit. (Hope that makes sense.) Thanks. Swliv (talk) 16:50, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:AlgoSec

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Help needed for a student class project

Please see Wikipedia:WikiProject Classroom coordination/SFSU Class Project and consider adding your name.

The scope of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Classroom coordination/SFSU Class Project is mainly concerned with new articles.

According to the teacher's instructions, this group of students may not create a lot of new articles, but may instead focus more on improving existing articles.

So, there may be little for us to do in the way the Wikipedia:WikiProject China/NNU Class Project required. The students may, however, still call on us for guidance in other areas. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 09:15, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Lynette Nusbacher

Just FYI, really; seems this case might not be as closed as was thought; [15].

Sounds like just Onlymath (talk · contribs) pushing for it, and several others (inc me) removing the changes - see recent hist on Lynette Nusbacher (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views).

But if there is more to it than that, please keep me in the loop. Cheers,  Chzz  ►  20:10, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for the belated response. I've got it watchlisted; at this point there's not much else we can do other than wait and see who does what. bobrayner (talk) 20:44, 31 October 2011 (UTC)
Yes, fine. Thanks.  Chzz  ►  12:26, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Law of mentoring

Hey. I just used your mentoring equation at ANI. Thanks for writing it down. --Guerillero | My Talk 05:42, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

No worries. Have fun!
Every organisation has to make decisions about how to allocate resources in order to best achieve its goals. En.wikipedia is an unusual organisation, but it still has to figure out the best way to allocate resources in order to deliver our main output - making more and better encyclopædia content. We don't run on money; our commodity is the time and goodwill of editors. The worst problem editors are those who absorb the time and goodwill of others; if we're to make a decision whether to mentor or to block/ban, we have to make that decision on the margin. (I actually drafted something with more probabalistic stuff, but that would have been too geeky). bobrayner (talk) 20:55, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Foxconn

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Survey for new page patrollers

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talkback

Hello, Bobrayner. You have new messages at Purplebackpack89's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 22:50, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Your question in RFA

I will answer that question later on tonight, when I get home. Right now I'm editing from my office computer, and then I have other plans tonight, so don't make it seem like I'm ignoring the question. Thanks Secret account 22:19, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, thanks; no rush. bobrayner (talk) 22:30, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Please comment on Talk:Mellanox Technologies

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Color removal

I was wondering...did you ever get a consensus for your mass removal of color boxes, templates, etc? Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 01:10, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:V is pretty clear - Anything that requires but lacks a source may be removed.
Nonetheless, there was pretty strong support for the cleanup on the project talkpage. If you'd like to reinstate unsourced or badly-sourced content, I think it's up to you to get a consensus for it (or a good source). Wikipedia's mission is to build an encyclopædia, not to collect as much content as possible regardless of quality.
You might also review the following AfDs, where the community's position became quite clear:
If I find any other content which falls so far short of community standards, I will probably remove it.
Hope that helps. bobrayner (talk) 19:33, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
Yeah, I read the discussion, but I fear it wasn't publicized widely enough to get a general consensus for as far-reaching things as you did, and much of the discussion seems to be you talking about all the BOLD removals you made. It seems to meat that your AFDs didn't consider merging or redirecting as enough of an option. Also, keep in mind guidelines like WP:BEFORE...rather than just axing a lot of content, as you have done, you should try finding sources for it. I believe that sources can be found fairly easily, and that it would behoove you to add them instead of axing so much. It seems to me that some of the people involve in your discussion where you claim "strong support" (and I'm not seeing "strong" support) would prefer you take the WP:BEFORE approach rather than just axing everything Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 19:37, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
People are free to !vote "merge" or "redirect" at AfD, and it's a common outcome. However, in these cases, the consensus was to delete. (Although a certain other editor has restored some of the content in other places, or with cosmetic changes which do not address the problem; it's unfortunate that so much adult supervision is required). If the AfDs didn't go the way you wanted, you have my sympathies, but consensus is sovereign around here. If you'd like a broader discussion, perhaps an RfC, I would happily start one. bobrayner (talk) 19:52, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
People only !voted on your AFDs...I'm also talking about your BOLD removal of content on pages and templates that are still there Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 19:57, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

The core of the problem is that somebody will always decide to add some new variation on a colour. If they bother checking a source, and if the source gives the same name as a different hue, then they'll create a totally new name for it which is unencumbered by sources. Then they hit up google images and find some image which is approximately the same hue and pretend that's a valid source for the colour:name pairing, when in reality it's anything but. There are thousands of different printed colour charts; just take a random selection and guesstimate the RGB values and pretend they're notable. Some sources give multiple hues for a single name; but that's not a problem because the mission is to put in huge volumes of text and templates, rather than to provide encyclopædic definitions. Hatnotes were nonexistent and dab pages ignored, and the colour articles were populated through the most simplistic of searches, so (for example) the Bronze (color) article attracted large volumes of trivia about the metal rather than the colour. And so on. It's a stain on the encyclopædia; and it's worse that people blindly restore this stuff without solving the actual problem. Let's try a more recent example:

  1. I found a colour article in a typically bad state. I removed the worst bits, added an unsourced-section template for one particular hue, and left the remainder;
  2. Keraunos removed the template, replaced it with sources which do not mention that colour, and restored the other cruft;
  3. Now what? If I remove the shamelessly fictional content from the encyclopædia you would consider it unacceptably bold, and anyway Keraunos will just add it back in some other way. Where do you think the main problem lies? bobrayner (talk) 20:57, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
I think that the scenario could be avoided if the following happens: You or I add sources to either your or Keraunos' template; and if some punk reverts it, point out that they don't have sources. I think the problem lies with anyone who doesn't add sources. If Keraunos or me or some punk are adding or restoring cruft, it's with us (and from now on, I will source anything I put back). But if you're removing content, you're not adding sources either. And if you added sources instead of removing content, you'd have less problems with Keraunos et. al. Also, it seems like your beef is as much with Keraunos as with me Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 22:55, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
I don't have a beef with you! Heaven forbid. I have a beef with crappy content.
It may be unhelpful to assume that all of this content can be sourced; much of it is simply made up, or picking one arbitrary hue out of many, or creating a new name for a hue. Expecting somebody to find a good source for content like this rather than simply removing it is not a good move for quality-control. bobrayner (talk) 23:04, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
You have a knack for picking the examples it's impossible to refute! For something like "Amarath", I'm fine with removing alien references. But for a common color like Peach, I think finding references would be nice. Not that you have to find one for that one in particular; I found one this morning Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 23:14, 7 November 2011 (UTC)
Finding references would be nice, but it should be genuine sourcing rather than theatre. Here we have a template saying that "Peach" is #FFE5B4; it's counterproductive to add a reference which does not have the colour "peach" and which does not have the RGB triplet #FFE5B4. It's very difficult to trust people's edits when reading the source reveals that it doesn't actually support the content. bobrayner (talk) 01:50, 8 November 2011 (UTC)
Huh...I thought it had it in there...the search said it did Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 02:09, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Japanese Mahjong yaku

Refer to Template:Expand Japanese and Japanese Wikipedia. Thanks. 220.156.1.46 (talk) 09:36, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank You

Bobrayner, Thank you for everything! And don't worry, I'll definetly stay active on wikipedia!!! ;)You seem like a good person and i admire you for helping newbies (like me :) ) learn how to use wikipedia and have a good time! Sorceress150 (talk) 18:32, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Groovy. Enthusiastic new editors are the future of wikipedia. I hope you stick around (and maybe do some of the boring chores as well as the fun stuff). If you're unsure of anything, just ask... bobrayner (talk) 18:43, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

SriLankan Airlines destinations

Please stop adding Melbourne as a future destination of UL. To add a future destination, an exact date is required (late 2011 is not an exact date). A similar case was when the airline announced plans to resume flights to Kochi in Jan 2011, but it was not until March this year, that a conformation was received. So as per the project guidelines, we list future destinations only when an exact date is announced, (Snoozlepet was right in removing your addition) and until then it is just a speculation. — Abhishek  Talk 13:49, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Why is an exact date required? Wikipedia should not distort what sources say to fit a procrustean bed. The source says that the service is planned in future; therefore classifying the service as "discontinued" rather than about-to-resume does a great disservice to sources and to readers.
I fear that interpretation of WP:BALL is inside-out; the policy says "Dates are not definite until the event actually takes place" and yet in this project it appears that specific future dates are treated as definite, and if a specific date isn't given for an event, it's not definite and the event is removed. That's rather odd. If the project has guidelines which classify something as speculation despite a good source treating it as fact, then I suggest that project guidelines should be adjusted so they're more in line with reality. (Although I haven't yet touched on services that have specific future start dates, I'm baffled by the implication that they're exempt from WP:BALL)
I would be happy to add a caveat which says "(planned)" or something similar. Would that be acceptable? The same caveat would, of course, apply to specific dates too; we both know that specific service-start dates have been missed by various airlines. bobrayner (talk) 14:07, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
You may raise the issue at WT:AVIATION. — Abhishek  Talk 15:40, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
Or you may raise the issue at WP:AIRLINES. Snoozlepet (talk) 16:53, 10 November 2011 (UTC)
I did, however, put the addition in the history section of the airline saying that the airline will resume or begin service to MEL in late 2011 (also the airline plans to fly to Canada and Vietnam but no cities were given) [16]. I would wait until Sri Lankan Airlines gives out a press release announcing service to Melbourne (hope which will be in the coming weeks) then we can readd it. Snoozlepet (talk) 16:35, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

My apologies

I saw content that had been removed without any justification so I restored it. I will be more careful in the future. Blaziken (T-C) 11:11, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

No worries. Have fun! bobrayner (talk) 13:22, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Revisit RfC for Notability (astronomical objects)?

Hi Bob, would you consider revisiting this RfC discussion? I replied to your concern, and I hope that if there is anything that can be done to clarify/improve the language of the guideline, you would consider changing your oppose vote to support. Cheers, AstroCog (talk) 14:48, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, will have a look. Thanks for the reminder. bobrayner (talk) 19:55, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

They are not real, they are not 'perceptable' - that was the point

Hi Bob

Just so you understand, I thought your edit on the astrology page was fair enough, but still think the footnote is directly relevant on the Musica universalis‎‎ page and ought to be left there. The theory was not concerned with audible sounds but energy tones. I don't think the footnote proves anything but it is of interest that those Nasa sounds now exist, and show very different types of sounds which seem to match with the qualities suggested by Pytahgoras. Not a big thing but I wanted you to understand why I undid your first edit. At first I thought you put "metaphysical stuff" and thought how refreshing it was to see an editor make an edit summary without seizing the opportunity to take a swipe at metaphysical ideas - but then I noticed it was "fluff" not "stuff". Ah, one little letter ... such dissapointment. -- Zac Δ talk! 17:35, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

That "music" is not a real observation. The statement "Nasa has recently confirmed that the Sun, Moon and planets emit sounds in their orbits, each very different due to their various speeds and distances" is, quite simply, false. Fiction. A wild misunderstanding of simple physics. The sounds are a representation invented by somebody on earth, and any pretence that they support somebody else's notions about sounds of the planets themselves is pure synthesis. (The sounds represent something which is not caused by planets' orbits, incidentally).
Consider this map. It's a reasonable map; it's based on real evidence. But could anybody reasonably edit Orange (colour) - or any other article - to say that "NOAA has recently confirmed that North Dakota is orange"? Of course not; because the orange is just some random person's choice to represent a certain volume of raindrops. It doesn't even mean that the raindrops are orange. bobrayner (talk) 18:35, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Future of the US Education Program and the Ambassador Project

There is a discussion about the future and the growth of the US education program along with the future of the Wikipedia Ambassador Project here. Voceditenore (talk) 18:08, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Conservatism

Could you please explain this edit deleting other editors' discussion which you made without an edit summary. TFD (talk) 05:42, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Hmm, that's very odd. It certainly wasn't my intention to remove others' comments. Looks like an edit to an old version of the page? (I did have a look through the history of the page so that's the most plausible cause of the mistake...)
Sorry for any hassle. I see that the comments have been restored but if any other cleanup is needed, I'd happily help. bobrayner (talk) 09:30, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
Not a problem. TFD (talk) 18:47, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Dispute Resolution

You may be interested in this. Peter jackson (talk) 17:49, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks! bobrayner (talk) 18:10, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Your recent removal of several sections of information from the astrological zodiac-sign pages

Hi, I noticed that you blanked out whole sections of referenced information on some of the astrology pages. You may not be aware that there is discussion regarding the content you removed in the Wikipedia Astrology Project. There is strong consensus that the content is appropriate and should remain. If you would like to make any arguments please do, and specify exactly what your concern is, so that the issues can be addressed. Or use the talk page of the articles involved to do that. As your edits have gone against the concensus of editorial opinion that it shoukld remain, I'll restore the previous content. Thanks. -- Zac Δ talk! 18:23, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

There was also quite a bit of discussion over at the Fringe theories noticeboard. Would you like to join the discussion there?
It is unfortunate that people want to retain synthesis and WP:INUNIVERSE content in articles. bobrayner (talk) 20:00, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
(pagestalking)Bob, this goes back to a bigger issue. The issue is that even if something violates guidelines (and SYNTHESIS and INUNIVERSE are guidelines, not policy), you still need a consensus to do so. Particularly if you get into a BRD situation, as this could well become if it isn't already. You have made a lot of big removals without much consensus, or a consensus that's been overly extrapolated to the point of misuse. You probably should have participated in the FTN discussion or a discussion on the article's talk page before making big removals like that Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 20:21, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
Wait, what? You mean I have to get a consensus from pro-astrology editors before I remove some of the more egregious pro-astrology cruft that stains wikipedia, even when it clearly breaks one or more rules? That is... unhelpful. A few days ago the same editor reverted scientifically-illiterate content into an article after I had removed it. Even somebody with a rudimentary understanding of science would have realised that it was outright fiction; but to astrologers it looked pretty nice. bobrayner (talk) 20:28, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
You don't have to get a consensus from them, necessarily; but a consensus from somebody would make sense. If you feel that multiple editors are adding cruft content, you can bring it up on one of a number of community noticeboards; either to get a consensus for removal of the information from uninvolved parties or to prevent further bad information from being added elsewhere. If it's just one editor, you may want to mention him in ANI or a related noticeboard. I'm not saying that you are wrong to think that they've been adding cruft; merely that large BOLD removals aren't necessarily the way to go Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 20:38, 25 November 2011 (UTC)
Good points. PS. Talkpage stalkers are always welcome

I see that you substantially changed the text affecting the zodiac pages content again. You are aware that there is full, extensive discussion concerning this text, (and the structure and design of the astrology sign pages), and clear consensus in favour of utilising the text you have removed. If you have reasons why you dissaprove of the text please contribute to the discussion and explain those reasons so that those who are currently working on guidelines for structure and content on these pages can understand your objections. This would be useful. Continuing to remove reliably referenced information without consensus is not, and leads to edit-warring. Also, please be aware that the thread on the Fringe noticeboard is a highly misleading one, full of misinformation and quite a few patent lies that break a number of WP polices. I have asked for it to be closed. It is the complaining editors, who asked for the astrology project to discuss this and create guidelines - since this is being fdone please don't disrupt the process but add your views for consideration. The relevant discussion is here. -- Zac Δ talk! 06:09, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

  • I did a little research and I noticed an ANI thread related to the discussion Zach speaks of (specifically that the Astrology Project people are trying to ram it through) and sort of related to your removal of unsourced content is at Wikipedia:ANI#WikiProject Astrology discussion snowing. You might want to bring up what you're trying to do to the community there; you may find enough sympathetic ears to get the bad content removed with a working consensus Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 16:59, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

ANI thread involving this astrology thing

Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you.

I mentioned your involvement in the astrology debacle best I could, and suggested that a greater community discussion (i.e. one that isn't dominated by astrology peeps) should be started. Feel free to correct any misstatements I may have made Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 17:09, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

FYI, in the course of the ANI, someone issued this warning that says that if you (or anyone else) reverts on that page, that person will be blocked. Just a heads-up. I'm pulling for you here, just want the proper channels done, and at this point the work is going to have to be done on community pages Purplebackpack89≈≈≈≈ 18:13, 26 November 2011 (UTC)
Thanks! bobrayner (talk) 21:02, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks!

Hi Bob, thanks for the welcome. I'm really excited to have a wikipedia article up! Cdlangan (talk) 18:53, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

No worries. It's a fine article; well done. In the unlikely event that you need a hand with anything, just ask... bobrayner (talk) 21:02, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Welcome

Hi Bob, thank your for the warm welcome. I am excited to join the Wikipedia community, am learning along the way and hope to make my tiny contributions to the ocean of knowledge and information (some information are not knowledge).Ginger Maine Coon (talk) 16:42, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Groovy. Have fun! bobrayner (talk) 22:36, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Please comment on File talk:North Strathfield Bank.JPG

Responding to RFCs

Remember that RFCs are part of Dispute Resolution and at times may take place in a heated environment. Please take a look at the relevant RFC page before responding and be sure that you are willing and able to enter that environment and contribute to making the discussion a calm and productive one focussed on the content issue at hand. See also Wikipedia:Requests for comment#Suggestions for responding.

Greetings! You have been randomly selected to receive an invitation to participate in the request for comment on File talk:North Strathfield Bank.JPG. Should you wish to respond to the invitation, your contribution to this discussion will be very much appreciated! However, please note that your input will carry no greater weight than anyone else's: remember that an RFC aims to reach a reasoned consensus position, and is not a vote. In support of that, your contribution should focus on thoughtful evaluation of the issues and available evidence, and provide further relevant evidence if possible.

You have received this notice because your name is on Wikipedia:Feedback request service. If you do not wish to receive these types of notices, please remove your name from that page. RFC bot (talk) 15:15, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Robo-Signing And Lavalle

Bob, we've noticed on a couple of pages tied to foreclosure pages and Nye Lavalle that you have made comments about his papers and reports and denounced Scrib as a source. Could you kindly accept our input on this matter since our advocate group of lawyers, professors, and consumer advocates are more knowledgable on the subject matter on a day-to-day basis. On many occasions, I would agree with your edits. However, since both government and media ignored these frauds for so many years, it is vitally important to create a real history of events.

Lavalle is widely considered among advocates and lawyers as the first to research and document foreclosure fraud and especially robo-signing. See his reports on 4closurefraud such as this one http://4closurefraud.org/2011/08/19/nye-lavalle-after-the-storm-foreclosure-fraud-robo-%C2%ADsigning-continues-must-read-report/ We have done searches for term and practice in media and mortgage articles. His reports are the first we can identify on the subject. Too many newcomers and media think this is a recent practice, its not. It's important for media and for regulators to know that Lavalle warned others and identified the practice over a dozen years ago and was ignored. Too many think robo-signing is a by product of the increased foreclosures of the recent financial crisis, its not. It was a patented process identified by Lavalle over a decade ago. We need to let people know its not a recent event, but a fraudulent practice documented to go back over a dozen years so that government and the banks white-washed. If you have time, read the reports and you'll be shocked at what he found and reported on. Please leave the references in. Many thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MortgageProf (talk • contribs) 01:56, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Who is "we"? I presume you mean the AAML, which means Nye Lavalle.
Scribd is not a reliable source. Anybody can upload any old rant onto scribd; and I see you have - there is clearly no editorial oversight of these documents. Long copy & paste sessions, simplistic rhetoric, big red text, and references back to wikipedia content which you wrote surely suggest that these docs on Scribd should not be treated as reliable sources. If you wish to pretend to be a pioneering economic campaign rather than one or two internet commentators using free search tools and free hosting, there are other places where that might be done, but wikipedia is not the place for it. bobrayner (talk) 02:59, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
After a little more research, I'd like to ask some questions:
  1. Does Lavalle also edit his articles whilst logged out? [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22]
  2. Is the AAML solely a vehicle for Lavalle, with his parents, the Pews, providing signatures to make it look like a real organisation?
  3. Would it be fair to say that instead of being a professor, lawyer, or acclaimed mortgage industry professional, Lavalle actually lives with his parents and spends his time writing angry "reports" which are hosted on free internet hosting services?
  4. Does anybody else exercise editorial control over these reports, or has any reputable outlet republished them?
  5. Does Lavalle have any special access to information about the mortgage market, other than what google will reveal, plus using his parents' mortgage as an example?
  6. Are you Nye Lavalle?
I suspect the answers are yes, yes, yes, no, no, and yes respectively. (Although I'm less sure on the last one). In which case Lavalle's beliefs on mortgages - no matter how fervently he holds them - do not belong on wikipedia, and I will try to clean up some of this mess which has been strewn across many articles. If I'm wrong on any of the points above, I would welcome correction... bobrayner (talk) 04:11, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Medieval monuments

Hi Bob! I hope you are well! Just to let you know that per UNESCO official page and attitude, Medieval Monuments in Kosovo are designated to Serbia, as Serbian Medieval Monuments. If UNESCO and UN recognize RoK's sovereignty over those monuments, and edit that in designations page, we should reflect that then. And link is not toward countries, but toward other UNESCO designations anyway... All best! --WhiteWriter speaks 12:11, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Amazing Race

Before you keep removing this information, we have come to a consensus to list unique subnational entities such as the Special Administrative Regions of China, the collectivité territoriale of Corsica, the autonomous regions of Italy, the countries of the United Kingdom, and the island of Zanzibar as separate from the larger nation due to their unique political, geographic, and cultural statuses.

Also, it is custom to include the various subnational regions in the lists of areas visited on the articles, because racers often travel to different parts of the countries.—Ryulong (竜龙) 00:20, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Hmm. Even though they're not actually countries...? I'm wary of treating them as countries, although it's reasonable enough to mention them in prose. However, the use of little flag pictures seems to go against WP:FLAGICON. bobrayner (talk) 00:22, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
Yes. Even though they are not actually countries (except for the case of England and Scotland which are countries), because the show says "FLY TO HONG KONG" and not "FLY TO HONG KONG, CHINA" or the competitors are told "WELCOME TO SICILY" or "WELCOME TO CORSICA". And they are not being mentioned as countries. They are merely listed as specific locations that have been visited, which happen to be unique from the nation that they are a part of.
On flagicons, the MOS says "In lists or tables, flag icons may be relevant when the nationality of different subjects is pertinent to the purpose of the list or table itself." This is most definitely a case of lists where the nation is important.—Ryulong (竜龙) 00:30, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
And on Zanzibar, it is a unique entity within Tanzania considering that it used to be its own country for a while. Again, we are not bolding "new countries". We are bolding the main geographic and political entities that the TV show visits each season. Hong Kong, Macau, Corsica, Sicily, Sardinia, the Azores, Madeira, Zanzibar, Puerto Rico, Guam, the Virgin Islands, both halves of Saint Martin, the former Netherlands Antilles, the Faroes, etc. are unique enough geopolitically that we bold them and include them in the section titles.—Ryulong (竜龙) 00:35, 13 December 2011 (UTC)
In fact, the only issue we have come across is whether or not to list the Palestinean territories as unique from Israel when the Aussies went to Jericho.—Ryulong (竜龙) 00:39, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Help a newbie?

Hi! I'm writing on behalf of a user who is very new to Wikipedia. He and another user have been trying to add Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/SourceLink, LLC to the mainspace. I have declined it because it wasn't neutral in tone and had several parts to it that had a promotional tone. There is a concern of a conflict of interest since both editors that have worked on the article are employed by the company and the user is frustrated because of this. He's also concerned that employees of the company would be the only people who would know about the article. I'm sending him in your direction, so I wanted to drop you a note so you're aware of him. It's user User:ChazMcGreedly and User:Matthewhaskell, although the most recent edits have been from McGreedly. If you could help them write this article then that'd be great. I've steered them in the direction of Wikipedia:WikiProject Business, but I wanted him to have an experienced user help him out. I've also asked another user to help this guy out since the two seem to be trying in good faith but don't really know how to progress past what they've done so far. I just don't want them to feel like I'm being unfair. I don't think the article in its current state is ready for mainspace and I'm really against the idea of anyone with a COI editing/creating an article, but I do think that this company might pass WP:CORP.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 07:15, 13 December 2011 (UTC)tokyogirl79

OK; will try to help. bobrayner (talk) 12:23, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Moody's

Hi there, Bobrayner. I noticed yesterday that you made an edit to the Moody's article, related to a POV section there. I am the editor who added those warning tags back in August, and I expect you may agree the article still suffers from serious problems.

Further background on my involvement: For a few months now, I have been defending Moody's and related articles from vandalism. It happens to be the case that I do so on behalf of Moody's, so I've tried to be very careful to watch my COI.

Anyhow, if you interested in further improving the Moody's article, your edit comes at a good time, because I've just finished work on a major new draft of the article, which covers all of the current information, but more fully and accurately. That draft is here, and I have also posted a longer discussion on the Moody's discussion page.

I am seeking input from others as well, but I would be grateful if you would be willing to help, too. I hope to see you on the Moody's discussion page. Many thanks, Mysidae (talk) 21:53, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it would benefit from improvement; looks like a lot of hard work has gone into your draft!
I'll reply on the talkpage. bobrayner (talk) 21:57, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

A venn diagram about fringe etc would be useful

FYI, I replied to your comment here [23] NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:06, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Paul Dacer

I am sorry but there is significant evidence to suggest his neo-nazi beliefs and if I cant here I am just going to start a smear campaign somewhere else!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Justgravy (talk • contribs) 13:59, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Don't. bobrayner (talk) 16:43, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

MedCab case (Strings)

So, you're mediating this one with me, are you?

If you've done this job before, I'm following your lead...--Thehistorian10 (talk) 15:20, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure it would be in safe hands with just you alone! Happy to help though. bobrayner (talk) 16:07, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Fairtrade Impact Studies

Dear Bob, you asked if I would be interested in doing a major edit of this page. In fact I had just put up a POV warning and Primary Sources warning for this page when I saw your message. I felt that it was being used as a blog page or bulletin board to advertise certain people's publications. It was highly biased in many ways. But this is because they are trying to do what an encyclopedia cannot, to give a couple of lines on the (favourable) results of each of the primary studies carried out on a subject - and so far they have put in only a handful out of more than 1000. I really feel that this is not an appropriate page to have on Wikipedia. Do you think you could tell me if I am overreacting? Here is my discussion page comment:

The Fairtrade Impact Studies page does not meet any of the Wikipedia criteria. It provides short statements of some of the data in some publications.

quite a lot of text which is also on the article talkpage
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

Wikipedia as a bulletin board or blog

There is no attempt to provide representative research. Instead people seem to be using the page as a bulletin board or blog to publicize their publications. This is not a legitimate function of an encyclopaedia.

Wikipedia as an abstracting service

Wikipedia is not an abstracting service: it is an encyclopaedia – CAB international, Agricola, etc would be appropriate places to put abstracts. They do attempt full coverage, while this page has been recipient of a targeted selection of publications

The selection of cooperatives to study is biased

There are two related biases. First there is a bias in which Fairtrade cooperatives to study. Second there is a bias in which of the studies to present on this page.

It would be misleading and biased to publish full details of the very few people who smoke 100 cigarettes a day and reach the age of 100, and to claim or suggest that this heavy smoking leads to longlivety. Honesty requires that the large number of people who do not smoke and reach this age are also mentioned, and the high death rate of those who do smoke is mentioned. Suppressio veri, suggestio falsi applies: to suppress the truth is to imply a falsehood. These studies are biased because the people doing the research choose to research what seem to be successful Fairtrade cooperatives. There is no attempt to look at the unsuccessful cooperatives. There is no mention of or impact study of, say, the 50% least successful cooperatives. Some of the studies cited on this page, probably nearly all, were written by people already committed to Fairtrade when they started their investigation. Indeed some of the publications cited in Murray, Raynolds and Taylor 2003 were written by members or employees of Fairtrade cooperatives, implying bias in both the selection of the sample cooperatives and in the carrying out of the study.

Selection of studies to report

The selection of studies to report here is biased. For example, there is a failure to include papers which give the opposite picture. For example, Bacon 2005 is cited, but not papers which produce the opposite conclusion[ Bacon, C. 2005. Confronting the Coffee Crisis: Can Fair Trade, Organic, and Specialty Coffees Reduce Small-Scale Farmer Vulnerability in Northern Nicaragua? World Development Vol. 33, No. 3, pp. 497–511is cited, but not Mendoza, R., & J. Bastiaensen, J. (2003). “Fair Trade and the Coffee Crisis in the Nicaraguan Segovias.” Small Enterprise Development , 14(2), Valkila, J., Haaparanta, P., & Niemi, N. (2010). Empowering Coffee Traders? The Coffee Value Chain from Nicaraguan Fair Trade Farmers to Finnish Consumers. Journal of Business Ethics , 97:257-270, Valkila, J. (2009). Fair Trade organic coffee production in Nicaragua - Sustainable development or a poverty trap? Ecological Economics , 68 3018-3025.

Selection of data to report

The page gives a line or two of ‘results’. Few of the studies reported were intended to be ‘impact studies’ and fewer still meet the normal requirements for ‘impact studies’. They are instead case studies, which may give a lot of valuable information, on how the cooperative worked, how the Fairtrade fitted in, and what problems arose, and what unintended harmful effects were observed, for example. Some are little more than unevidenced journalism. It is misleading in the extreme to select one or two favourable outcomes, a couple of sentences from a 40,000 word report, perhaps, and present it as a definitive ‘favourable impact’. No meaningful impact study identifies just a single impact. No meaningful impact study fails to recognize that there are negative effects as well as positive effects to any intervention.

Selected raw data from primary publications

Wikipedia has firm guidelines on this. Wikipedia forbids the citation of primary studies like these. The guideline does not consider the possibility that people might go a step further and select a particular datum or selection of data from a primary publication and present it as being in some way representative of all. I do not believe that the editors considered that anyone would do it.

Commercial

It is relevant that Fairtrade is a commercial brand which big businesses in the rich countries are making a lot of money out of.

re this comment

Quick question. I was a little confused by your support for proposal 2 as that would appear to be "favouring one side or the other". Perhaps I've misinterpreted? NickCT (talk) 17:29, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

D'oh. You're right, it was a typo on my part. Thanks for the correction. bobrayner (talk) 17:30, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Cool. Just checking. Thanks for participating in the RfC! NickCT (talk) 18:54, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
One more quick point. I bolded part of your comment, to make it easy to tell what you're support. For future reference, this is standard practice with RfC. If you dislike the bolding, let me know and I'll undo it. NickCT (talk) 20:07, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
No worries. I preferred non-bold since it was more of a textual answer than a simple support / oppose; but if people find the bold more readable, that's fine too. bobrayner (talk) 22:10, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

John Craven

I saw your edit comment on the above and I agree that it doesn't do any harm in this case however if we were to agree to every edit request such as this then where would we be? The village is properly referenced and thus in the public domain? Paste Let’s have a chat. 18:18, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

I think we can resist the slippery slope for now! For instance, if somebody were trying to remove legitimate criticism or (say) an Ig Nobel then my first response would be "no", as would most other editors. Lately I've been dealing with just that kind of editing on certain other articles.
In this case, It's just the name of a village on a minor BLP, and it's not really connected to the person's notability, so I thought it best to go along with a good-faith request; of course others might differ and if the community reckons the village should be mentioned, I'll concede with no ill-will. bobrayner (talk) 18:54, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

String theory

Hi. Just as an idea, regarding the above mediation, I think it might be useful if anyone could produce any recent widely accepted comparatively recent reference works which have content of some length relating to the subject, and how much, if any, weight those works give the material in question in their articles. If, of course, the matter of contention has its own, separate article in those works, that might be useful to know as well. Just an idea, anyway. John Carter (talk) 22:27, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

That's a fine point. And "What do the sources say?" is almost always a good path to follow... bobrayner (talk) 22:42, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Season's tidings!

FWiW Bzuk (talk) 03:17, 25 December 2011 (UTC).

Multiple DYK noms?

Hey, I hear you're pretty good at getting multiple articles nominated for DYKs. I was wondering if several articles nominated for a single hook would be allowed to overlap in content. Abyssal (talk) 18:18, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

  • I am very flattered that you would think so! I'm not a DYK guru; I just write content in bursts, and one burst involved a week in the library and 30 new articles...
  • Some of the rules of DYK seem to be a little malleable, but fairness - and rewarding writers of new content - is always an important guiding principle. If you actually need to duplicate content in order to "top up" articles to the minimum length, the DYK community is unlikely to be very happy about it. Ditto for wordcount-stretching measures such as describing peer articles in prose rather than in a navbox. Bringing in non-core content might also be a trick to justify using extra sources so an article looks superficially more notable. There would be similar concerns if content was spread across multiple articles which would normally be collected together in a single article in order to bump up your article count. Apart from concerns such as those... I don't think that a small amount of overlap would be much of a problem if they are written like normal articles. Almost all articles duplicate some content, as it's impossible to write an article without giving background information (how many different articles mention in some way that Paris is the capital of France? Surely at least a hundred). So, it seems to boil down to one question: Can you honestly say that the overlapping content isn't "cheating" or "working the system" in some way?
  • What are the articles? Looking at your userspace, I guess they're something palæontological...? I know nothing about that science, but am happy to offer you unskilled assistance (I have pretty comprehensive access to journals &c). Are they currently drafts or have they recently gone live? If the latter, then the clock is ticking.
  • Do you have an interesting hook to tie the articles together? bobrayner (talk) 02:31, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for being so helpful. The articles I was thinking of are the ten here. They're just at the starting phase, not especially near nomination. The overlap is substantial, perhaps bordering on "cheating" as they now stand, but I've got more sources to draw on for future additions. Hooking them together shouldn't be a challenge because they were all found together in one coal mine excavating a single geologic formation. Abyssal (talk) 08:20, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
OK. I don't want to be the bearer of bad news, but... it would appear unfair to count that "W3 main" paragraph towards the size requirement of several different articles - considering that some articles have very little other content. Using one or two sentences might be more reasonable. Ditto for "Cretaceous bird and mammal tracks". These chunks of content could even be an article in their own right - your articles should be connected in some way but they don't have to be about the same class of object (for instance, I had a double DYK involving a railway line plus the organisation building the line). Some of the shorter ones might have to be left out of your multiple DYK. Do you have any other draft articles with a looser connection to this formation? bobrayner (talk) 11:41, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
Don't worry about being the bearer of bad news, if I didn't have my doubts already I wouldn't have asked about them. I guess I'll have to do expand each one substantially with independent content. Abyssal (talk) 16:58, 27 December 2011 (UTC)
Good luck. Anything I can do to help? bobrayner (talk) 17:07, 27 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard#Dieudonné M'bala M'bala, Holocaust deniers and the French far right

You're welcome to comment. If you may. --Insert coins (talk) 14:12, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. bobrayner (talk) 15:00, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Moody's follow-up

Hi Bobrayner, if you have some time would you be able to take a look at my proposal for Moody's once more? If you check the Moody's Talk page, you'll see that I've replied to the questions that you asked on the draft's Talk page. Not only that, but I've now split the draft up into three separate articles, following suggestions from you and another editor. Before I go forward with making any edits or open a new discussion, I'd like to invite you to review the separated articles since you are already familiar with the topic and have been so far helpful. Many thanks, Mysidae (talk) 23:00, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

OK. Replied on talkpage. Thanks for your hard work! bobrayner (talk) 02:27, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
Thank you very much! No problem if it takes you a little bit longer to complete. I can upload any missing logos for relevant pages and, if you agree, I would like to suggest disambiguating Moody's to redirect to Moody's Investors Service. Otherwise, I am extremely grateful for your effort on behalf of improving these articles. I don't know which barnstar is most appropriate here, but I would gladly award you with one. I am looking forward to completing this project, with your assistance. Many thanks, Mysidae (talk) 10:02, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Guaraní language edits

Thank you for the Guaraní language edits and for adding the references thereto. Sorry about the punctuation remark; I could have sworn you were starting a new sentence.

Thanks, Dave (djkernen)|Talk to me|Please help! 00:01, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

No worries; have fun. (I should have added a source the first time) bobrayner (talk) 00:10, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
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