User talk:UtherSRG/Archive Oct 2007

Cheetah

Maybe you shouldn't use pop-ups (whatever they are), but you reverted my edits to Cheetah and they improved the captions of those pictures. I don't know why you would revert a positive change. Maybe look before you leap next time. 66.189.137.113 04:31, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Your corrections made the captions' case usage not match the article's case usage. - UtherSRG (talk) 10:54, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Caps again

Do you have any comment on the last thread on Talk:Cougar? This is becoming tiresome. Marskell 11:05, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

Capitalization on common names is not commonly accepted in scientific writing. Biologists do not write that way, only laymen. Bugguyak 14:27, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

And Wikipeida is a general encyclopedia, not scientific literature. - UtherSRG (talk) 14:47, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

Right you are. I stand corrected. And as Wikipedia is a general encyclopedia it should make use of accepted correct capitalization.Bugguyak 01:43, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Just the opposite. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:39, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Please clarify. Wikipedia should NOT use generally accepted capitalization? Bugguyak 22:46, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Would you do me a favor and please take a look at WP:NOR. It's quite a good read. Lots of cool stuff is in it about how reliable outside sources (such as, I dunno, widely published dictionaries, which all happen to list "cougar" as a common noun which is not to be capitalized) are what we should be going on. In the meantime, lay off on reverts, will you? Matt Yeager ♫ (Talk?) 19:22, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. The version I revert to is what was agreed upon. You should stop reverting until a different agreement is reached. - UtherSRG (talk) 21:14, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

PUMA

Hi there. I'm just wondering why you moved Puma AG to PUMA and PUMA to PUMA AG, seemingly without discussion. There are several issues here: the article had been housed at Puma AG after an admin redirect per MOS:TM in February. A determined anonymous user (89.242.54.176) spent much of yesterday trying to blank this page and move the contents to PUMA, before being blocked. A similar IP address started the same again several hours ago, after which you made these moves. At present, the article is at PUMA AG, but the talk page redirects to Talk:PUMA. Could you explain why the moves were made, and fix the talk page problem? Thanks. Gr1st 09:28, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

It's all right, I see another admin has sorted the problem. Gr1st 09:59, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I saw that there was some copy-and-paste moves going on, so I put it back where I thought it belonged, with the histories all being swept together instead of spread over the three article locations. - UtherSRG (talk) 10:40, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

MSW3 and caps

The MSW3 uses caps? Why don't you list some examples. Even better would be to reproduce a page. Marskell 10:43, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Regarding your reversion

Hi UtherSRG, I made two edits to Cougar today and you reverted both of them. I understand your reasons for reverting one (although I disagree), but I don't know why you reverted this one: [1]. Would you mind explaining, or consider putting it back? Best wishes, Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 03:36, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

• BTW I just noticed that one of my edits had accidentally nuked a bunch of stuff too. I think a lot of good edits have gotten scrambled in all the flip-flopping over caps.... Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 07:08, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Quite likely. I've restored the one you pointed out above. Sorry about that. - UtherSRG (talk) 12:02, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

No problem. Thanks. Kla’quot (talk | contribs) 20:24, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion

Despite that I agree with your position, the majority rules unfortunately on wikipedia, and as such, even we have to follow suit. As such, I suggest you leave it for what it is. -- Kim van der Linde ^{at venus} 03:45, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

'Majority Rule' is not the be all and end all on Wikipedia. We have policies which at times (often, in fact) supersede consensus. ThuranX 03:47, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

There is a difference between "majority rule" and "consensus". In majority rule, we all agree that which ever position has the most support wins. In consensus, we all agree that when we all agree, we make the change. - UtherSRG (talk) 10:14, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Ummm, no. What you are describing is not consensus but unanimity. Quoting from WP:CONSENSUS: "Consensus does not mean that everyone agrees with the outcome..." Consensus, in the Wikipedia context, means discussion of the various alternatives to arrive at an outcome with which everyone will abide, even those who disagree with it. In order to achieve consensus, people who cling to a minority position, especially if that minority is a small one, must be prepared to "abide" by the position of the majority. It also requires those espousing a majority position to be sensitive to the points put forward by the minority and, to the extent possible without becoming tortured by the effort, to seek to accommodate as many of the minority points as possible. Your model of "we all agree that when we all agree, we make the change" would permit a single individual with an extremist position to hold up change, in fact to hold up true consensus, perhaps indefinitely. — Dave (Talk | contribs) 12:37, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. There must be unanimity of "abidence", so to speak. When we all agree that the change should happen, the change happens. If anyone does not abide, does not agree wit hallowing the change (even if they disagree with the change) then consensus is not reached. - UtherSRG (talk) 14:30, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Again, you say that, in your opinion, there "must be unanimity of 'abidence'". I think you severely overstate the case. There is absolutely no requirement for unanimity. In fact, quoting again from WP:CONSENSUS: "Note that consensus can only work among reasonable editors who make a good faith effort to work together to accurately and appropriately describe the different views on the subject. (e.g. insisting on insertion of an insignificant factoid into an article in opposition to many other editors has been judged a violation of consensus; see Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Charles Darwin-Lincoln dispute.)" and "It is difficult to specify exactly what constitutes a reasonable or rational position. Good editors acknowledge that positions opposed to their own may be reasonable. However, stubborn insistence on an eccentric position, with refusal to consider other viewpoints in good faith, is not justified under Wikipedia's consensus practice." So, in the context of Wikipedia, consensus can only be reached when all editors are prepared to move from their position. An editor who holds a minority position must know when to yield and must also be prepared to yield once his position has been made clear and efforts have been made to accommodate his points. Nothing is gained by "holding out" and refusing to yield other than a frustration of the consensus-building process. If the consensus policy required unanimity, as you seem to feel, any and all change could be held up by a single editor, or by a handful of editors, with an intransigent minority view. Thankfully, that is not the case. The policy also states that "No one person, and no (limited) group of people, can unilaterally declare that community consensus has changed, or that it is fixed and determined." The policy quotes a definition of what a practical consensus consists of and says, in part, that it includes "a mixture across the community of those who are largely agreed, some who disagree but 'agree to disagree' without disaffection, those who don't agree but give low priority to the given issue, those who disagree strongly but concede that there is a community view and respect it on that level, some vocal and unreconciled folk, some who operate 'outside the law'." Note that there is a distinction between consensus and unanimity, in any form. The consensus-building process includes and listens to those who feel differently. It does not require them to agree. All that remains for each of us is which of the camps we choose to reside in. What is clear, however, is that an editor or a small gtoup of editors who refuse to abide by the broader consensus reached by a larger number of editors risks falling into the "operating outside the law" category and can be branded as working against consensus. (Please note that I'm not saying you're doing this or that you've done this. I'm simply pointing it out as a possible position for recalcitrant editors and I'm using it to illustrate that unanimity is not a part of consensus.) — Dave (Talk | contribs) 15:17, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

One editor who does not agree to yield their point breaks consensus. Therefor, unless every minority opinion holder agrees to yield, then consensus has not been reached. Consensus does not require a minority opinion holder to lose their opinion, only that they yield. "Broader consensus" is a misnomer. "Majority opinion" is a better term. - UtherSRG (talk) 16:10, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Did you actually read Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Charles Darwin-Lincoln dispute that WP:CONSENSUS points to? It doesn't use "break consensus" at all in the way you do. For you, I suppose, finding consensus means that a single or a handful of minority opinion holders can refuse to yield indefinitely and can then claim that this proves that consensus has not been reached or, as you call it, that consensus has been broken. In the Darwin-Lincoln dispute, ArbCom censured a minority opinion holder for refusing to yield when it became clear that his refusal was disruptive. In other words, a minority opinion holder or a handful of minority opinion holders can resist good-faith consensus-building efforts only so long as their behaviour does not disrupt the consensus-building process. Once again, unanimity is not required and minority opinion holders must yield at the appropriate time to avoid being disruptive of the process. This sounds quite different to me than your description that says that until we've convinced every last individual with a minority opinion, that consensus is "broken". Rather, the minority opinion holder must be actively working in good faith to find a compromise position that allows consensus to be achieved. He can not slavishly cry out that there is no consensus because things aren't going his way. That is disruptive and that is operating "outside the law", as the policy states. Anyway, I didn't mean to beat this to death. I simply bacame involved in the discussion because I noticed that you were attempting to equate consensus with unanimity. Again, even a casual reading of WP:CONSENSUS will show that unanimity is not needed. — Dave (Talk | contribs) 18:15, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that it most definitely has disrupted the consensus-building process to engage in constant rollbacks of the numerous other editors who have clearly evaluated and come to agreement that a certain style should be used (Talk:Cougar, cougar). Incessant reverts are being issued despite that clear consensus per WP:CONSENSUS has been achieved, both at the WP:MOS level and even at the article level (a vote that shouldn't even have been needed, but ok, fine, done). The reverts and edit warring don't have any justification to them beyond just one single editors personal ingrained preference for a style described at WP:BIRD that isn't even binding for bird articles! Good faith means that when a statement like this is made: "The version I revert to is what was agreed upon. You should stop reverting until a different agreement is reached." (UtherSRG in comments above, Sept 14, 2007) -- you'll actually live up to your word. It came to a vote where by a large margin agreement was reached contrary to your personal view, based on laying out numerous authoritative sources, that's how it goes. What you're saying now is that you didn't really mean "until a different agreement is reached" but "until I personally feel like it (cough, never)", which is disruptive and non-collaborative. Beyazid 19:05, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I don't see that an agreement has been reached. I see that a vote has been taken and that there is a majority and minority opinion. Now is the time for discussion to reach a consensus, to reach an agreement. All the vote did was show there's a particular leaning of opinion. It didn't say that the majority is correct or better or anything else. Both sides have shown reasonable justifications for why it should be upheld. - UtherSRG (talk) 19:26, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

In Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Charles Darwin-Lincoln dispute, which is really interesting reading in a perverse sort of way, the minority opinion holder claimed, in essence, that his reversions were not disruptive because he had not violated the 3 revert rule (WP:3RR). ArbCom held that the number of reverts was not what determined disruptive behaviour but it was the editor's intransigence, his unwillingness to compromise and his refusal to yield to and to abide by the consensus reached by the clear majority of editors. It's unquestionable that, according to ArbCom, consensus does not mean that every last person needs to be convinced. Hence, that is not the position of the community nor is it in keeping with the policy articulated in WP:CONSENSUS. Of course, one of the ways to test whether a new consensus has been reached would be for a minority opinion holder to not revert -- that way he could see whether others are as keen on the status quo as is he. It's also clear from WP:REVERT that it's never appropriate to revert another editor's good-faith edit. Hope this helps. — Dave (Talk | contribs) 19:40, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Mr Fink's images

Hi UtherSRG, I've added a reference to Image:Deinogalerix.JPG - does this make it ok to use now? Addhoc 17:08, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

No. In fact, it shows just how far from the scientific literature his images are. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:27, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Ok, looking at this website the skeleton shown appears to be reasonably similar. Could you explain your concerns? Addhoc 17:37, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Feet are positioned differently, tail is held differently, snout is rounder. Add to this the snarl, the roughness of the fur, the bald/scaly tail, it strikes me as based on science, but showing off the artistic license that would be acceptable only in fiction, not in a scientific article. - UtherSRG (talk) 17:39, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that positioning the feet in a slightly different manner is original research. Or for that matter, a slight difference in tail positioning. Also, I personally don't consider giving the reconstruction dark brown fur and a snarl is original research either. Addhoc 17:59, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Could I suggest that you stop revert warring - you're already over 3RR. Addhoc 18:10, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Now that it's removed, sure. - UtherSRG (talk) 18:22, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Uther, Mr Fink has asked me to take a look at the situation. I've looked at Wikipedia:No_original_research#Original_images and it appears that the consensus is that such images as Mr Fink has created are acceptable on Wiki. Is there some other guideline that you are applying in this case that I've not looked at? Regards SilkTork *SilkyTalk 18:51, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

The guideline is too lenient. It doesn't take into account the quality or accuracy of the images. The guideline is fine for some purposes, but it is not specific enough for judging the suitability of the pictures or their content. In this case, as with the other images of Fink's that I've removed, I find they are not sufficiently accurate or descriptive, as well as including too much artistic license. - UtherSRG (talk) 19:30, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I understand your view. However, that needs a rewrite of the policy. You are currently removing his images and quoting a policy which actually supports the images. That doesn't look good! For the moment we have to allow the images and work on changing the official policy if we want them removed. The first step would be to have a discussion on Wikipedia talk:No original research. Because policy and consensus are against your current actions you should strongly consider taking this other approach. Regards again. SilkTork *SilkyTalk 22:17, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm not interested in changing policy, and I don't need to because of WP:IAR. The purpose is to make a good encyclopedia. those images degrade the encyclopedia, so they should go. - UtherSRG (talk) 00:53, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

It appears that you shift ground as it suits you. You hide your actions behind policy quoting until it's pointed out that the policy you quote is against your actions. Now you run behind the ultimate Wiki trump card of IAR. Jimbo said of IAR: "I now pleasantly ponder the paradox encountered by those who seek to rigorously follow this rule." Anyway, it's worth taking a look at Wikipedia:What "Ignore all rules" means and bear in mind that while you may find the images degrading it appears you have little support for that view. On the other hand those involved in natural sciences have praised Mr Fink's images. He has been doing some good work in that area for a while now. Check out his talk page. And also check out Wikipedia:Disruptive editing, especially the line that says "Rejects community input: resists moderation and/or requests for comment, continuing to edit in pursuit of a certain point despite an opposing consensus from impartial editors and/or administrators." Mr Fink has wide support for his images. Policy supports his images. And two experienced editors are asking you to stop your disruptive editing. There is a certain point up to which you may argue your point (though, so far, you've hardly done that - I've heard no decent argument from you; you appear mainly to have taken a personal dislike to the images!), but beyond that point you start to appear to be stubborn for no effective purpose. You have reached the point where you've indicated your dislike of the images. That has been noted. But your edits to take down the images are running counter to creating a good, stable and useful encyclopedia. You are on record now as saying you dislike the images. Let that be enough. And let's get on with making an encyclopedia. With respect SilkTork *SilkyTalk 07:39, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

Australopithecus

Hello. Yesterday I edited out some obvious vandalism from the Australopithecus article. It was subsequently revandalized, which you undid, along with my corrections, reverting it to the original vandalism. I'm sure it was an error, and I've fixed it again, just wanted to bring it to your attention to avoid future futility. Let me know if I've missed something, otherwise have a good one. Snickersnee 22:57, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Yup. My mistake. - UtherSRG (talk) 03:13, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Good edit

Thank you for this: [2]. (I originally put "Macacalypse" because I find that term to be rather amusing, but this is probably more recognizable to the reader). Captain Zyrain 16:07, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! - UtherSRG (talk) 18:05, 14 October 2007 (UTC)