User talk:Coppertwig/Archive 5

Just a passer's by comment

Coppertwig, I wish to give you a large thank you for your unrelentless support over the past two weeks, it's proved invaluable and you've often AGF in places where others haven't. If you ever are to go through a RFA, just drop me a line and I'll do a co-nomination (that being because I'm probably not the only one wanting to nominate) :) Regards, Rudget . 16:25, 5 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

That picture is a good addition, and no problem about the co-nomination offer - you deserve it. Rudget . 15:46, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!

Thanks for letting me know of the discussion on the new speedy templates! I personally think that the best way to do it would be to have a subpage of WT:CSD for the discussion (split into four would be fine as well), and place a noincluded note on each template page with a link to that discussion. A hatnote could also then be placed at the top of the CSD talk page. From a quick glance, they look like they're coming along quite well, I'll review them in more depth once the discussion is ready to start.

As to the rest, no worries at all. :) At that time, there were a lot of "silent" edit conflicts, where two edits got posted at once rather than the last person getting an edit conflict. That certainly could make conversations hard to follow and make replies appear to be to the wrong thing. It seems that bug is fixed now, I haven't had that happen in a while. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 00:00, 7 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Article protection

I've changed my mind on article protection and am asking that FGC and RR be protected. I withdraw my request that we not edit the talk pages. As always, thanks for your continued GF participation. --Phyesalis (talk) 20:19, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

RE: Re your comment on an RfA

Ahh yes. Thanks for telling me, that was a typo on my part. Thanks again!--Sunny910910 ^{(talk|Contributions)} 23:05, 9 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Copper, is your comment supposed to be attached to the #45 or did you retract your support? I think you are supporting Seresin, but I can't tell---indented comments like yours usually indicates a retracted support?Balloonman (talk) 23:44, 9 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for pointing that out. That was my attempt to format a multi-paragraph vote. I've modified it. I'd appreciate it if you know of any way to further improve a multi-paragraph formatting. --Coppertwig (talk) 23:54, 9 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

About your reply: No problem, I'm just glad it didn't go unnoticed for a long time.--Sunny910910 ^{(talk|Contributions)} 00:05, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your modified version works for me... I didn't want to "fix" it without checking with you. Thanks.Balloonman (talk) 00:06, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fine, thanks for not "fixing" it, but if you (or anyone) can tell me about a better way to format multi-paragraph votes I'd appreciate knowing for next time. Anyway, it's all fine. --Coppertwig (talk) 20:10, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Timeline

Re formatting of a vote on an RfA. I'm collecting this information for purposes other than to criticize Cometstyles, Balloonman or anyone else.

17:13 9 Feb 2008 I voted, attempting to format a multi-paragraph vote. I put one line which was totally blank except for "#" (hash), followed by four lines beginning with "#:" (hash colon); the first of these four containing the word "Support".
23:44 Balloonman suggested that it wasn't clear whether my vote was intended as a valid one (Thank you for pointing that out, Balloonman.)
23:49 I removed a colon beside the word "Support". At this point, there was a line which was blank except for "#" (hash), followed by a line beginning with "#" (hash) and also containing the word "Support". The page rendering showed a correct vote count, treating these two lines as one combined item, but apparently the bot counted them as two. I should have deleted the line which was blank except for "#" (hash). (Sorry about that.) (wrong bot count begins, I think)
06:01 and 06:05, 10 Feb Cometstyles modified my vote (combining two paragraphs into one, inserting "and" between them, adding my signature to the end of the second paragraph and making the indentation of the first part different from that of the last paragraph) and in the next edit removed the line which was blank except for "#" (hash), allowing the bot to count the vote correctly (Thank you for noticing the problem, pinpointing it and fixing it, Cometstyles.) (wrong bot count ends, I think)
03:38 11 Feb I "restored the original wording" of my vote, and also combined the three paragraphs into one and insserted "(paragraph break)" between them. --Coppertwig (talk) 13:26, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

wikitext	display	number of votes in display	bot count
#'''Vote #1''' text of vote #'''Vote #2''' text of vote #'''Vote #3''' text of vote	Vote #1 text of vote Vote #2 text of vote Vote #3 text of vote	3 votes	3 votes
#'''Vote #1''' text of vote # #:'''Vote #2''' text of vote #'''Vote #3''' text of vote	Vote #1 text of vote Vote #2 text of vote Vote #3 text of vote	3 votes	3 votes
#'''Vote #1''' text of vote # #'''Vote #2''' text of vote #'''Vote #3''' text of vote	Vote #1 text of vote Vote #2 text of vote Vote #3 text of vote	3 votes	4 votes (apparently)
#'''Vote #1''' text of vote # # #'''Vote #2''' text of vote #'''Vote #3''' text of vote	Vote #1 text of vote Vote #2 text of vote Vote #3 text of vote	3 votes	5 votes?

--Coppertwig (talk) 01:39, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification

Im sorry I wasnt clear about the problem... I do not want to change Huautla de Jiménez into a redirect. It is the name of a town and the seat (capital) of the Municipality of Huautla de Jiménez. Is there a way to merger the information of the two articles without turning one of them into a redirect? Thanks Thelmadatter (talk) 17:31, 10 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

re:Formatting of RfA votes

Sorry for not notifying soon, but I had to leave soon afterwards, and I returned 4 hours later and it slipped my mind..sorry :) ..--Comet styles 06:02, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

No problem, as I said on your talk page. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:11, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

formatting suggestion

I noticed you put (paragraph break) inside your comment at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Seresin. Many don't seem to be aware of the option that you can use <br /> to create a paragraph break that retains the indentation.
Using <br /><br /> you can create a paragraph break with an empty line.

User:Dorftrottel 15:06, February 11, 2008
Let me try. Suppose this were the first paragraph of my vote.<br.>This would be the second paragraph, then.
It works! Thanks a lot -- that's what I was looking for. I won't change the formatting of my vote in this RfA, but I expect I'll be using it in future ones -- I often have longish votes. --Coppertwig (talk) 00:57, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

:) you're welcome. User:Dorftrottel 01:03, February 12, 2008

Protected template edits

Given that there is objection to the edits, I'm afraid they can't be made to protected templates unless a strong consensus were shown in favor of making them. To do otherwise would violate the protection policy. They're not a necessity in any case, a link on the talk pages would be fine if people find the template notes objectionable. Seraphimblade ^{Talk to me} 19:47, 11 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

re welcometemplates

In reply to your message, we have {{welcome-anon}} and {{welcome-anon-vandal}} templates out there, as well as quite a few others. The Friendly javascript tool automates adding these template messages and quite a few others - I recommend having that and Twinkle installed just to simplify your life a bit - these addons provide a number of extra tabs to save time and prevent mistakes in complex processes. Triona (talk) 03:42, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dual use of List & Disamb

I palce another comment at the Help Desk regarding this issue & would be interested in your comments. I do appreciate your assistence & opinion. Tahnks! FieldMarine (talk) 17:39, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your time & comments. Semper Fi, FieldMarine (talk) 03:20, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Consolidation complete on the List of jail and prison museums & the situation is resolved. Thanks again for facilitating the discussion. FieldMarine (talk) 06:12, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

IAR is what makes Wikipedia great!

<div style="position: fixed; right:0; bottom:0; display:block; height:{{{1|150}}}px; width:{{{1|150}}}px;"><div style="position: relative; width: {{{1|150}}}px; height: {{{1|150}}}px; overflow: lolz"> <div style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; font-size: 300px; overflow: hidden; line-height: 300px; z-index: 3">[[WP:Ignore all rules|...]]</div> <div style="position: absolute; top: 0px; left: 0px; z-index: 2">[[Image:Undertow seal.png|150px]]</div></div></div>

Regards, QuackGuru (talk) 20:18, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I realized something about Wikipedia. It has no rules. Just consensus. Therefore, we are all IAR. QuackGuru (talk) 01:17, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It has consensus? Where? I missed it!!! :-) --Coppertwig (talk) 01:19, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly. How can we have consensus when there is no broad agreement. That means there are no rules... QuackGuru (talk) 01:25, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

If there's no consensus, does that mean we can do anything -- or does that mean we can't do anything? :-) --Coppertwig (talk) 01:28, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Take a quick look at the chiropractic talk page. Copyright violations, deletion of cited material (there are four chiro groups), and a whole series of problems. We can do something about it if we IAR. QuackGuru (talk) 01:35, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I will if I can find time. I have some things I need to do. Possibly soon, or in a couple of days. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:46, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

(Additional answer to same message) Using IAR as a tool to enforce policies? Fighting fire with fire? Maybe if you like fire. That seems to me a somewhat paradoxical way to proceed. I tend to use a calmer, wetter, far-less-likely-to-get-blocked approach, which I really think is much more effective, much more likely to arrive at the closest thing possible to a solution everybody agrees on, and also therefore on average more likely to arrive at a solution considered better from any given POV. Note my "harmonious editing club" and "self-revert" userboxes on my userpage. --Coppertwig (talk) 13:25, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've been going over Chiropractic and expect to continue. By copyright violations I think you mean long quotes. I don't think they're copyright violations. One could argue that they are because they're too long. I think it's a matter of opinion. There's a page to put in a request for an administrator to look into cases of suspected copyright violation; you might want to try that if you haven't already. However, I would expect the administrator would say that it isn't a copyright violation. See Wikipedia:Copyright problems. Also, I suggest waiting until a week or two after your block expires before (possibly) putting in a request on that page, as just putting in such a request about the issue which has already been discussed may be seen as disruptive. Maybe I shouldn't even be suggesting it to you. You might want to ask someone's advice, e.g. maybe that of one of the admins who reviewed your block, before doing something like that. --Coppertwig (talk) 13:28, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Adoption request

Thanks again for adopting me. As you may have noticed, I don't overload you with questions. However, a friend of mine who is new in Wikipedia asked me if I knew anyone who accepts a new adoptee. She is prepared to learn more and already very active in Wikipedia. I would appreciate it if you could adopt her.--Kerres (Talk) 08:24, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Adoption request

Hi Coppertwig! I was wondering if you could adopt me. I am new in wikipedia but I am aiming to contribute quite regularly. Please, take a look to some recent contributions I am looking for some help with editing but also some assistante with getting to know the especifics of how wikipedia works. Thank you very much. .--anunezsanchez (Talk) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 138.220.83.143 (talk) 14:10, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi! I saw the request from Kerres above. I'm sorry I just haven't had time yet to have a look at your contribs. I expect I'll answer within about 24 hours. --Coppertwig (talk) 23:29, 13 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Your comments on museum lists on FieldMarine's talk page

Thanks for your comments there, which helped me to think through the matter more. Whether or not to split lists or categories by nationality isn't really something covered by NPOV, I think, because the consideration should be what helps the reader and what lists may be too long, and that just depends on the information we have or expect to have. I'm not sure what's most useful for readers when it comes to lists of jail/prison museums, and since the list is sortable, it's only a minor inconvenience to readers if we get it wrong (alternately, it's a minor improvement if we get it right). Again, thanks. Noroton (talk) 19:08, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree: NPOV does cover how lists are divided up. In most cases it probably doesn't matter. However, grouping geographical things in a particular way could, in some particular situations, be seen as legitimizing controversial borders. There are people who feel very strongly one way or another, I believe, as to whether Turkey is or is not part of Europe, for example. In the case of these museum lists you probably don't have to worry about this sort of thing much, but it can come up. Anyway, go forth and be bold. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:11, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okie dokie!

[1] - Apologies for any confusion caused! Scarian ^{Call me Pat} 02:15, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

66.100.163.146 and Kittenpants.com

I was not the only person who deleted the kittenpants.com link (which was not related to the article), two other registered users also did likewise. I feel I am being the one singled out for Bites. Her/his attempts to clean up the rest of spam only came after 6 or 7 attempts to insert the kittenpants.com links and two warnings (one from me and the other user). I might understand singling me out if I was acting alone, or if I was unduly rude to the anon user. You assume good faith of someone who attempts to insert non relevant spam, but I am not extended the same courtesy? Jacksinterweb (talk) 02:22, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I apologize for the tone of my message. I thought it sounded too harsh as soon as I'd posted it, and posted a gentler one to Scarian, partly also because the user only posted one vandalism warning to that user while you posted two. I'm not sure what third editor you're referring to, but in any case, I had no problem with people deleting the link; I was focussing on the vandalism warnings posted at User talk:66.100.163.146.

I'm sorry that I didn't study the user contribs and talk page history as carefully as I could have, and jumped to the conclusion that your last warning was referring to the edit which the user appeared to think it was referring to, i.e. this edit, which was not vandalism. I see now that it would be much more reasonable to assume you were referring to the edit a minute earlier which re-added kittenpants.com. You can reduce the chance of such confusion in future (by the recipient of the warning or by others such as myself) by including specific reference to which edit you mean when you post vandalism messages, although this doesn't excuse me from making that error. (This is similar to what I said to the other user about edit summaries.)

I still haven't completely figured out what happened, and maybe it's not worth taking the time to do so, but it seems to me that the user inserted "kittenpants.com" twice and received three vandalism warnings, so something wasn't quite right. Scarian has deleted the vandalism warnings and posted an apologetic message at the help desk.

It's possible that your warnings were technically correct, and I apologize for making a similar error with you that I was accusing you of making with this new user.

I encourage you to have a look at the help desk thread if you haven't already, to get an idea of how your vandalism warnings were experienced by the user. Possibly more than one user was bitten.

You could still try treating the addition of links as a content dispute rather than as vandalism; explain in a little more detail to new users why their edits are considered vandalism; and post welcome templates so the users have some chance of figuring out what types of edits they are or are not supposed to be doing. --Coppertwig (talk) 12:36, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Or you could have checked the history of the article to see the sequence of events and this "content dispute". You would have also seen the third person who saw the spamming and removed the last bits of it. Instead you pronounced me guilty and pounced.

Or you could have checked MY contributions and see that I revert many times without using boiler plate warnings, often reverting small hijinx made hours earlier and moving on (little point warning an anon IP when that user has moved on).

I do revert spam links many times without calling spam vandalism. In this case she/he used a Trojan horse to conceal spam (a so called "fact" with external link to pvt website selling kittenpants.com products). He/she made several attempts to make the link work before I issued first warning. I in fact checked the website to see if it was just an innocent mistake (did you?) and saw no connection but saw a site selling a book and kittenpant related products. Possibly a COI but more likely just a kid pushing his/her fav site. Scarian and I overlapped, and indeed the last of the eight or so "edits" was not in fact spam, but in light of previous 7 edits her intent wasn't so clear nor so innocent, but I was still in error on that one.

Yes, I did see the Help Desk, did you? If you had you would have seen that he/she misrepresented what actually happened (no mention of spam link, no actual yelling - just the claim that she was only trying to insert a "fact" and then correct it...but you didn't check the article's history so you wouldn't know that wasn't so much the case). I also saw another editor responded to his/her request, and make note on Anon's talk page....but you decided to pile on too and issued harsh baseless rebukes. All that aside; ignorance of guidelines and rules does not make one innocent or a victim but you treated him/her as such.

It boils down to this: you took as gospel the word of an Anon user with 8 edits all involving spamming over the history of a registered user with over 13,000 edits and no record of mischief and issued a rebuke, which you stand by in spirit if not totally in tone.

Or you could have taken time to investigate before firing off "harshly worded" rebukes. If you didn't have the time to investigate, perhaps you should have just let it go since someone else already addressed the situation.

Or you could have amended your message to me once you "thought it sounded too harsh", but you made the decision to let it ride (I was guilty and not due the respect offered to Anon user, right?).

Or you could have resisted the temptation today to assume bad faith, that all my activites in the past are in error too.

You are no doubt a very smart person (your user page implies this), so let me ask you this, who did more harm to Wikipedia? Was it the Anon user pushing a spam site? Or was it me, in posting a boiler plate template to get her/him to stop? Or was it a third party who gave the 'green light" to a spammer/victim and then pivot to insult, tried to humiliate and chase off an established user with no record of disruptive behavior for trying to revert anon user's actions?

In the end, You Win! The accussation (and your pronouncement of my guilt) remains on the Help Desk and Anon User page waiting for the next "helpful" person to chime in. But more important you needn't ever worry about you and I crossing paths again.

I wonder what special Barnstar you will receive for your very "special" contribution to this matter? Jacksinterweb (talk) 16:11, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I made a mistake. I apologize. I would strike out my comment on your talk page, except that you've already deleted it. I'm sorry for all the trouble I've caused you. Next time I feel like rebuking someone for BITE I'll literally do 10 pushups first and then recheck the contrib histories etc. again. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:21, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm also sorry to have taken up so much of your time. I would like you to know that at every stage of this incident, I assumed that your actions were carried out in good faith, whether I thought they were constructive or whether I mistakenly thought they didn't appear to be constructive. I never had the slightest reason to suspect that you might not be acting in good faith. I'm sorry if I accidentally gave an impression otherwise. --Coppertwig (talk) 14:25, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies accepted and sincerely appreciated. We all have feet of clay. WP provides a thousand and one guidelines and rules that we can cherry pick and hide behind when we do something clumsy or wrong, but you chose not to. You actually thought for yourself and displayed grace; for that I am very appreciative and impressed. I am not interested seeing you embarrassed nor do I need a permanent display of apology, so unless you just like hairshirt threads on your talk page, please feel free to delete our discussions (no one should have the word "kittenpants" on the talk page). Thank you. Jack

Jacksinterweb (talk) 16:36, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. I'm very relieved to get your message. I was worried.

My standard practice is to archive messages from my talk page, not delete them. I don't think it will bother me having this here until my next archiving action, now that it's resolved.

I'm planning to take up some new habits that will help me remember to check things more thoroughly in situations like that. --Coppertwig (talk) 16:55, 16 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Just saying hallo

Hi Coppertwig, thanks a lot for your offer. Whenever you are bored, you can always review any of the articles on water supply and sanitation, especially those about Latin American and Caribbean countries. Any comments are welcome. Greetings!--Kerres (Talk) 11:24, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot for your comments! They are very useful for the articles. Mschiffler and I already made some minor changes to it. Concerning the other articles, I mean all those which are included in the navbox on my user page and at the end of each article. At the moment, we nominated Water supply and sanitation in Colombia as a good article. Your comments are welcome!--Kerres (Talk) 19:54, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

How are you? I added a table you may already have seen in my sandbox to Wikipedia. Do you think that it was a good solution to establish a link here or would it be better to include the table in the article? By the way, I hope you are at least a little interested in the issue and the articles don't bore you.--Kerres (Talk) 10:43, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Editors claim that repeatedly misrepresenting a source is OK

Hi Coppertwig , thanks for your input. I have replied on my talk page [[2]]. I disagree strongly. I am interested in continuing this conversation. Am also trying to include SeraphimBlade in this discusion. All the best. SmithBlue (talk) 08:29, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Have replied on my talk page [[3]] thanks SmithBlue (talk) 11:51, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Coppertwig - a question: Have you read the actual lengthy discusions I have had with PresterJohn and Skyring/Pete on this issue? Or are you discussing with me a hypothetical situation of an editor misrepresenting sources? I am feeling misunderstood by you and the admins I have contacted on this matter. And can only make sense of the response I have got by thinking none of you has read the discusions I referenced.

I have replied briefly to your latest post on my talk page. Hope to add more soon. SmithBlue (talk) 04:23, 20 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your detailed reply.

The allegations/accusations being misrepresented are specific ones; "attended a number of al-Qaeda training courses at various camps around Afghanistan, learning guerilla warfare, weapons training, including landmines, kidnapping techniques and assassination methods.[6] He also participated in an advanced course on surveillance, in which he conducted surveillance of the U.S. and British embassies in Kabul, Afghanistan". On one occasion when al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden visited an Afghan camp, Hicks questioned bin Laden about the lack of English in training material and subsequently "began to translate the training camp materials from Arabic to English"."

Before the edit in which I wrote, "Ummm.... I have not disputed that many reliable sources show Hicks training with AlQ.", PresterJohn repeatedly responded as if "Hicks trained with AlQ" was all that needed to be correctly sourced. (There is is a list of specific allegations as shown above and PresterJohn is required to give a correct source for them all under VER and BLP.)

However after I made it clear that I was not disputing that "Hicks trained with Al Qaeda" PresterJohn continued to edit as if I was. This effectively created a strawman - something he could loudly disprove while ignoring the issue of misrepresentation.

User:Prester John's contribution page shows his first edit as 02:03, 27 August 2006 (hist) (diff) Alexander Downer‎ (I have changed "off Australian " waters to)

[|wannabe_kate edit counter] shows

Mainspace 4313

Wikipedia: 207

total 6263

User:Coppertwig shows

Mainspace 2175

Wikipedia: 519

total 6819

User:SmithBlue shows

Mainspace 501

Wikipedia: 24

total 1408

PresterJohn has a comparable number of edits to you.

He is familar with Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents having posted there 32 times which is similar in number to your posting there. He is not a new user and could be typified as experienced.

And yet he apparently misunderstands the necessity of accurate representation of sources. I wonder - especially given his continued promotion of the strawman of "Hicks trained with Al Qaeda" after I pointed out that that was not disputed.

You write, "I'm not aware of any policy stating that articles have to "accurately reflect the content of sources.""

You seem to be relating this to my statement "This discusion is about accurately reflecting the content of sources."

In the case to hand I am discussing edits/"material inserted into article" needing to accurately represent the content of the cited sources. If the information in the edits does not "accurately reflect the content of sources" then it will, at least, be misleading. The reader will assume that the material in the article accurrately represents the source given as this is the established convention.

I have put in a [Wikipedia:Editor_assistance: Editor repeatedly misrepresents content of source on BLP]. I have tried to frame it in line with your suggested layout. I would appreciate your view of it. If you are too busy I do understand that priorities are very important to maintain. SmithBlue (talk) 06:19, 22 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm planning to reply within a day or two. Feel free to remind me if I forget. --Coppertwig (talk) 03:44, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

OK, from your description it seems that you're dealing with an editor who thinks it's OK to leave out the word "allegedly" when quoting from a newspaper. (Of course it's not OK to just use a source that says "allegedly" as if it didn't contain that word.) This sort of thing is not uncommon. I myself have learned (mostly from Jakew) better habits of quoting sources more precisely, during my time here at Wikipedia. In my opinion, the primary method of educating users about this sort of thing is discussion on the article talk page.

Are you thinking of doing an RfC (article content) or an RfC (user conduct)? They're two very different things. However, in my experience, RfC (user conduct)'s are unlikely to do any good and are very likely to do more harm than good. I think I've heard that there have existed RfC (user conduct)'s that did some good, but I haven't actually seen one. :-)

You're talking about edits that happened weeks ago. I advise you to just drop the matter. It may be that Prester John has (without wanting to admit it) learned from your earlier messages and has stopped doing those kinds of edits. I advise that you keep the page on your watchlist and be ready to revert any unsourced or improperly sourced edits, and be ready to take other actions if and when they're needed.

I note that you haven't followed my advice about beginning with a single sentence which expresses the main point you want to get across. (What is the main point you want to get across?) Also, you've listed diffs of edits by Prester John, but you have not put into the same list any diffs of comments by you to Prester John (e.g. on the user's talk page) coming chronologically between the user's edits and explaining why that sort of edit is unconstructive. Therefore your argument is weak. Also, you're including a lot of information near the top of your post that is only tangentially related to your main point, requiring the reader to do a lot of mental work to try to figure out what you're getting at.

Try to get along with other users. A friendly approach is more likely to get a positive response than making a fuss with AN/I and other processes. Try to focus on article content rather than the behaviour of other users. Focus on user behaviour only if quite necessary. Since the last problematic edit seems to have been Feb. 3 according to your post at Editor assistance/Requests (the link you give above), it seems to me that everything is fine now. --Coppertwig (talk) 13:01, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Coppertwig, thanks for being a good sounding board. I seem to have found some traction and presented my view on the article talk page and asked for other views on the matter. If I was confident that my AGF was well placed I would agree with your suggestion to let it go. Rather I think continuing to explore this matter will make editing WP a more fruitful experience for me and others. Whilst I have not always agreed with what you have written on this matter you have helped a lot in getting my thoughts clarified. Thanks for confirming my views on RfC User - am thinking that Mediation may work better. I hope so because an admin pointed out that as ANI failed to address issue then ARBCOM is open. But, while I think this issue is very important, I really dont want to take up valuable time unless it becomes last resort.

The issue I wish to deal with is that Prester John and Skyring promote editing practices that involve breaching:

WP:NOR, which states "Information in an article must be verifiable in the references cited.", as the source given does not verify the information in his edit.
WP:BLP which states "The writing style should be neutral and factual, avoiding both understatement and overstatement." Presenting allegations and accusatons as fact or as admitted is neither neutral nor factual.
WP:VER which states, "Editors should provide a reliable source for quotations and for any material that is challenged or is likely to be challenged, or it may be removed." Prester John did not provide a reliable source for material that had been challenged.

In addition Prester John continued with these edits knowing that they were disputed and did not have consensus support. He later was supported by Skyring for having continued with these edits.

To me the defense of the misrepresenting edits disrupts and works to destroy Wikipedia. It may be that I am wrong. But so far my earnest efforts to be shown how I am wrong have not succeeded.

Thanks for your support over the last weeks - it has been very helpful. I think I'll be right on my own two feet from here. If I can be of any assistance please let me know. SmithBlue (talk) 08:18, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm glad you've found my comments helpful.

I doubt that Prester John and Skyring admit that the practices they promote breach those policies. You could present your point in a more neutral fashion by stating that they promote certain practices (described in a neutral way such that they would agree that those are the practices that they promote) and state that in your opinion these practices breach those policies.

If the last edit in question is indeed Feb. 3, your use of the word "continued" seems somewhat misleading to me. When saying something like that, I think it's worthwhile adding more information to qualify what you're saying to make it clear that you're talking about one or two edits weeks ago after receiving a warning (if that's what the situation is) rather than a pattern that is currently continuing. Avoiding exaggeration or any appearance of exaggeration in your argument is more courteous to the other people involved (including those who have to read what you say and figure out what's going on) and also leaves your argument less open to distracting counter-arguments. --Coppertwig (talk) 12:49, 24 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Coppertwig, a messagte to WP:VER talk produced this; WP:NOR#Using sources "Information in an article must be verifiable in the references cited." Knowing this will make things easier to explain next time. Thanks for your time. SmithBlue (talk) 02:00, 28 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Thanks for helping out a new user

That's usually my policy. :) Anything to help other people contribute whilst not being discouraged by deletions of recently created pages is a big must. The source supplied looks appropriate and verifiable enough, so it was all in a day's work. Regards, Rudget . 11:46, 17 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Do you think you're ready for a request for adminship now? If so, I can contact Moonriddengirl because she also seems to have pretty close relations with you aswell. If not, no worries. Regards, Rudget . 19:10, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I replied by email. --Coppertwig (talk) 00:25, 19 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

point de vue neutrale a l'article de chiropratique

Salut Coppertwig,

J'aimerais bien vous feliciter pour tes efforts a l'article de chiropratique. J'espere que tu decidera de rester avec nous pour donner votre POV et nous aider avec des changements controversiaux; on a besoin plus d'editeurs objectif! A la prochaine, EBDCM (talk) 03:09, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Merci beaucoup, et merci d'utiliser quelques de mes suggestions. --Coppertwig (talk) 03:16, 18 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Rewording of CSD templates

While your suggestions for rewording the CSD templates are interesting, they don't seem to have gained very much support or discussion. How are you planning to proceed? Happy‑melon 14:01, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

As co-doer of that, I'll just note that silence equals consent. Of course, that isn't true in policy pages or guidelines, but in templates there's no reason to presume it isn't. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 14:07, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The plan is as descibed at User talk:Moonriddengirl#CSD stuff, i.e. if continued silence after one more notice, then WP:BRD. I'll wait a short time for you to comment on this procedure if you wish, happy-melon, before posting that notice at WT:CSD. I really appreciate your comments -- nice to get a few comments, anyway! Some of your comments required some thinking, (e.g. the list of which templates transclude which, which I haven't finished,) which is why I haven't answered them yet, but still plan to; however, I don't think this necessarily requires delaying implementing the other changes. --Coppertwig (talk) 14:17, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks!

Hey thanks for the advice! Now that i've looked I found a userpage that I'd like to use. Plus more information on my page (ALOT more) would be helpful! =) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Letter 7 (talk • contribs) 19:28, 21 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you!

Thanks. Now I know how notable Takkō Ishimori is.Kitty53 (talk) 03:43, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re: Criticism

Howdy Coppertwig! Thank you very much for the RfA support; I really appreciate you taking the time to !vote on it. And also, thank you very much for the message and well detailed and [clearly] well thought out "criticisms". In reply to those consecutive (1 minute gap) vandal warnings: As you probably know WP:HUGGLE queues up edits... e.g. 1) A user makes an edit and I perceive it as vandalism and revert... Huggle then blacklists that user (anon or registered) and pulls up other unreverted edits that that user has done for me to check over... That's how the situation of edits made at 14:18 and 14:29 ended up getting warned at 14:52 and 14:53. The edits are queued up (eventually creating a backlog)... I understand that I should notice the time difference and take into account a users ability to read and take heed of a warning within a certain amount of time.
Welcome messages... Hmm... I did used to do them. Quite a few months ago actually. But then I realised that the vast majority of {{welcomeg}} tags I placed were ignored and the user's never edited again. So it never provided me with any sort of "satisfaction" so to speak. I do realise and acknowledge that I should start doing it again and that the welcome templates can do a lot of good in welcoming and bringing new users into our community.
I think those are my explanations [I have such a poor memory]... So the warning troubles can be blamed partially on Huggle with me accepting that I should pay more attention to time discrepancies. And I should begin welcoming users again simply as a matter of curtesy and politeness. My user page colours... Hmm... I'd be willing to change them if numerous users found it difficult to read [I don't mean to be rude but I personally like the colours and the guy who made the page for me put a fair amount of effort into it and I personally have no idea how to change the colour on it].
I hope you find my answers satisfactory. If you have any follow up criticisms please feel free to message. I hope you are well, friend. Thanks again for the message, I really appreciate you taking the time. Take care, Scarian ^{Call me Pat} 18:49, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

boserup versus böserup

thank you for your input. ludo86--Ludo86 (talk) 20:04, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks

Thanks for the help. It really helped my understanding of Wikipedia. The reason I ask people to post massages on the the archive is because it means people don't clog up my talk page with answers. It helps me to keep up with talk and answers without the mixture of both. There are some riddles on my user page. Chubbennaitor (talk) 20:10, 23 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

j stalin

i also think the selling candy on BART sentance should be removed, it may is embarassing. Its also illegal. It's even more of a liability since its law breaking as a child. user wikidemo reverted my removal of the selling candy on the bart train, and also removed my {{fact}} on the non contentious claim that he started rapping at age 13 which is cited based on unpublished album notes which cannot be found. this is on the J Stalin article, would someone intervene and revert and also discuss?Icamepica (talk) 07:53, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

AfD nomination of J Stalin

An article that you have been involved in editing, J Stalin, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/J Stalin (2nd nomination). Thank you. Icamepica (talk) 05:01, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Templates

Yes, you've done that pretty much correctly. It would be helpful to pass the parameter |bot={{{bot|}}} to ensure consistent support for the new bot-tagged feature, which I forgot to do in the four I did. As you correctly noticed, the documentation pages should be at {{db-xN/doc}}, not {{db-xN/new/doc}}, and try and put everything, including shortcuts, into the documentation, so if we ever do need to protect them again, the documentation can still be edited. Other than that, it looks good.

My own knowledge of bots is only moderate, based on the pywikipedia framework. I actually knew nothing about python until I started playing around with it, but it's a very intuitive language and a fairly shallow learning curve. If you've done any other programming before, you could pick it up fairly quickly. Happy‑melon 09:28, 25 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Speculation about Mona Lisa

Hi Coppertwig, I wanted to let you know that I reverted your correct and well-researched contribution to Mona Lisa only because the information is more aptly covered in the 'Speculation' article, wherein several theories are offered regarding the lady's smile. The creation of the 'Speculation' entry is recent, and now acts as the home for this and similar scholarship. I wanted to contact you directly because yours was a very good faith edit, coming from a good contributor. Respectfully yours, JNW (talk) 02:37, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It is difficult for me to undo an erudite contribution! Your subsequent revisions, and explanation, make perfect sense. I may change the tense in one of your sentences from present to past--if you find me in error, please revert back. Cheers, JNW (talk) 03:07, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The footnotes are great--my apologies for not being more thorough and moving them there myself. The original Mona article had gotten pretty unwieldy, and the speculation section was split off into a separate article. My (unexpressed) trepidation was that just such occurrences would result, but the links you added address this smartly. Thanks. JNW (talk) 03:25, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

j stalin

he immediately reverted you edit. i reverted his blatantly disregarding edit which seems to be a WP:OWN problem now too and warned him in his talk page which you may want to comment at.Icamepica (talk) 11:53, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm under the impression that you've admitted to being a sockpuppet, and that the person you're admitting to be has been blocked indefinitely for disruption. (See Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Boomgaylove.) --Coppertwig (talk) 03:12, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

J Stalin article

Hi there. Please realize that I'm trying to keep some order around here. I've gotten sucked into dealing with a bunch of sockpuppets, who are busy attacking me and creating forks all over the place. I'm not trying to blindly revert stuff, I just don't think we can have a reasonable discussion about the content of these articles while they are under attack. If you can hold on for half a day you'll find me quite reasonable. I have no agenda regarding the content other than that trying to keep a lid on disruption and sockpuppetry until things return to normal. The status quo for these articles is that they mentioned the statements about drug dealing, with the same sources they do now but not in reasonable citation format. I've improved the citation formats, added a bunch more sources to the article, reorganized and improved it, and added some content, all so the sockpuppets could not game the system by appealing to notability. Just hold on a bit and we'll work it out, okay? Thanks, Wikidemo (talk) 12:08, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re J Stalin article: I understand that there are allegations of sockpuppetry involved, and I've made some edits to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/J Stalin (2nd nomination) and to Wikipedia:Suspected sock puppets/Boomgaylove in support of the sockpuppetry allegations. Nevertheless, WP:BLP states clearly "immediately and without discussion". While you've asked me to "hold on a bit," you haven't provided anything that looks to me like a reason for doing so, so I am turning down your request. Your edit violates WP:BLP and you have not provided counter-arguments supporting your edit, therefore it also violates WP:CONSENSUS. Please do not re-insert the disputed material again. If it had not already been reverted I would be asking you now to self-revert it. --Coppertwig (talk) 12:22, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You can delete BLP violations immediately and without discussion. This is not a BLP violation, so deleting it amounts to edit warring. I see that's the fourth time you've made the untrue statement that I have not justified my edit. I will re-insert the sourced material at some point if and when the sockpuppet issue dies down. If you want to discuss it at that point we can do so in the appropriate forum and you're willing to make your argument and seek consensus. For the moment you have none. I've offered and pleaded with you to handle this in a reasonable calm way, and you say you refuse to do so. The reason to hold off is that you are tag teaming with the sock puppet to delete sourced content. All I can conclude is that you want to edit war on the side of the sockpuppet instead of dealing constructively with this. Incidentally, you've responded here and on my talk page. If you would care to discuss this further we should choose one or the other. Wikidemo (talk) 12:40, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I contend that it is a BLP violation, as poorly-sourced material. I've provided arguments that the sources are poor. I apologize for being unclear: I didn't mean you hadn't justified your edit. I meant you hadn't provided counter-arguments to my last two posts at Talk:J Stalin. If you've previously justified the edit, please either restate the arguments or provide links to those arguments at J Stalin below my posts. (Update: I see that you have provided responses there now.) Please do not re-insert the material at any time unless there is first a consensus at Talk:J Stalin that sufficiently reliable sources have been found. I'm willing to discuss it at any time. You say "For the moment you have none". I don't understand this. Do you mean I have no argument? I've posted arguments at Talk:J Stalin based on WP:BLP, WP:CONSENSUS and WP:RS. I believe I'm handling this in a reasonable and calm way. You misquote me: I have not refused to handle this in a reasonable and calm way. Please don't misquote me. Deleting sourced content is fine, particularly when it is, as I contend in this case, poorly-sourced contentious material that WP:BLP requires deleting "immediately and without discussion". Please assume good faith: I have no desire to edit war or to do anything for the purpose of being on the side of a sockpuppet. In accusing me of "edit war[ring]", are you admitting to doing so yourself? You've reverted the contentious material into the article three times in a 24-hour period, against the edits of 3 other editors (only one of whom is accused of sockpuppetry, I believe). --Coppertwig (talk) 13:00, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I was going to come back and refactor to be a little less combative - sorry I didn't get to that in time. The procedure is that I don't need a consensus to insert, you need a consensus to remove. Your opinion that they're a BLP violation does not trump my opinion that they are not. If we have a dispute over that we follow the normal dispute rules, but we also have BLP/N or administrative intervention/help available. Any dispute resolution forum is vulnerable to the sockpuppets, so the only real way to deal with it is to appeal to a neutral administrator who's willing to sort it out...if willing. Many would avoid it as a content dispute; others might offer their opinion. Of the editors, one is a likely sockpuppet, one is a serial disruptive editor (look at the block history), and you're not being very patient if I must say. And 2-1 doesn't make for consensus anyway. But if you'll notice, User:Neil has blocked the one account for 24 hours, which (if it's not lifted) will probably give everyone time to figure out if it's a sockpuppet or not. If so my guess is this and some other accounts will be indefinitely blocked. If it's conclusive that it's not a sockpuppet I'll owe the user a big fat apology. So I think we can probably sit back now and take things a little easier. I do know you're acting in good faith. It's just really hard to operate when you're getting attacked left and right, by socks and regular editors alike.Wikidemo (talk) 13:13, 26 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for your assumption of good faith. You also seem to be acting in good faith and getting somewhat frustrated with the way this issue is being dragged around to so many different fora.

You said, "The procedure is that I don't need a consensus to insert, you need a consensus to remove." I don't remember seeing anything like that in any policy or guideline. At the moment I see no reason why I should agree to such a procedure.

I'm sorry for the impatience; that's because of WP:BLP saying "immediately". Thank you for your own forebearance. I think it would be helpful to get the opinions of some more editors. We could consider posting to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard. However, maybe you're tired of having various fora dragged into this. --Coppertwig (talk) 03:04, 27 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Sample Standard Deviation Denominator N-1

Thanks a lot, with your explanation for why using "N-1" it finally "clicked" for me. About the proof for it: If we would go to higher dimensions, would it still be "N-1"? I was told that for 2-dim it would be "N-2", but it just doesn't sound right to me (but this is only a gut-feeling :-). Stevemiller (talk) 04:54, 28 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you very much for the compliment. I suppose you mean this edit by me, which was one of my first few edits on Wikipedia, so it was fun to look back at it.

Two-dimensional: OK, suppose you have two paramters -- suppose they're the two parameters specifying the equation for a line. Suppose you have some samples from a population which are randomly distributed close to the line but with random errors; but you don't know the equation of the line. If you knew the equation of the line, you could estimate the standard deviation of the errors using the deviation of each point from the line. But you don't. So you first estimate the equation of the line, based on your samples, then use that to find the deviations. But the estimated line will be closer to your points than the original, unknown line. If you knew any one of the two parameters in the equation for the line and you were estimating the other parameter, you could use N-1 instead of N in the denominator to correct for that. If you knew both parameters, you would simply use N in the denominator. But if both are unknown, you use N-2 to get an unbiased estimate. Maybe some day I'll try to come up with a simple proof of this. To be honest, it tended to mystify me too, in statistics class. Look up the concept of "number of degrees of freedom." I find it makes sense intuitively but don't always have a firm handle on connecting it to actual proofs. --Coppertwig (talk) 13:09, 28 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the pointer to more information - it really helped. So for e.g. a 3-dim problem I cannot calculate the sample standard deviation if I only have 3 samples (I would divide by zero) and should not calculate it if I have only two (get a negative number under the square root; a complex standard deviation doesn't make sense, does it?). So I always need at least one more sample than the number of degrees of freedom? (Well, I understand to avoid overfitting I need even more than that, but that's a different topic) --Stevemiller (talk) 04:30, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal RE: User:Mikkalai's vow of silence

You are a previous participant in the discussion at WP:AN/I about User:Mikkalai's vow of silence. This is to inform you, that I have made a proposal for resolution for the issue. I am informing all of the users who participated, so this is not an attempt to WP:CANVAS support for any particular position.

The proposal can be found at: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Proposed resolution (Mikkalai vow of silence) Jerry talk ¤ count/logs 02:07, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Karma

If you're cool with it, so am i Tom.mevlie (talk) 00:06, 2 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Radical environmentalism

Thanks for the message, I realised it was a very short article (for what is a much bigger topic leading to many others) so decided to get to work at it. I also noticed it had previously been written almost exclusively from only one source which was quite vague to say the least at describing things. I'll keep adding sources and including information, I have a cold at the moment so I haven't got much else to do! Thanks again. Blueberrypie12 (talk) 01:36, 2 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Be Like Others

Hi Coppertwig, thanks so much for the message, I'm glad you enjoyed reading the article. --Beloved Freak 18:11, 2 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

re: An edit

-> "I think the last sentence of this edit of yours at User talk:Mikkalai was unconstructive."

Perhaps you are right, I shouldn't have wrote that. But there's just something about a person who randomly, out of the blue, attacks your edits and calls you stupid that makes you react in a different way that you usually do -- you know what I mean? I don't know who this guy is, and then I go to his user page and I receive this you're a jerk message... anyway, you're still right. It was unconstructive. Cheers,  Berg _{Drop a Line ޗ pls} 18:58, 2 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You understand

Indeed. I think a lot of people forget number 12, the way people tend not to think about obvious things they see every day, like they don't notice the picture on the wall until someone takes it down. Number 38 is maybe even more important. Every time one of these good people leaves, it's a huge, and poignant loss to the project. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 20:29, 4 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm trying to learn to hesitate and re-check and re-think things a lot before criticizing established editors. I need to remember that different people have different standards. The consensus system means that not everyone is following exactly the same set of rules. --Coppertwig (talk) 00:24, 5 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Water supply and sanitation

Thanks a lot for your contributions to Water supply and sanitation in Latin America and your suggestions concerning Water supply and sanitation in Colombia. I was busy in the last days but I will work on the articles now. Greetings --Kerres (Talk) 15:40, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Greetings! Thanks for your message. I'm glad to hear my suggestions were appreciated. I'm planning to do more work on Water supply and sanitation in Colombia soon. :-) --Coppertwig (talk) 01:27, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks !!!

Just a quick thank you note. I really appreciate that you took the time to respond to me yesterday... —Preceding unsigned comment added by Raandrade (talk • contribs) 22:34, 7 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Ignore all rules

This discussion is closed. No longer necessary. Preferable to spend time writing articles.

Extended content

See also Perspectives on incivility.

Ignore all rules "is policy on the English Wikipedia, and according to Jimbo Wales, it 'always has been.' Ignore all rules was Wikipedia's first rule to consider."

Rules are still important, but they are not to be followed blindly, used as technicalities, or enforced for their own sake, as if following the rules were the ultimate purpose of this project.

I apologize to Mikkalai for having engaged in wikilawyering, without realizing that that was what I was doing, when I had much less of an understanding of what was bothering him.

The remedy for wikilawyering is "Ignore all rules". It's the way to freedom. I've put up the "Ignore all rules" banner (originally bestowed on me by QuackGuru) on my talk page and user page, and plan to leave them up for a while, in solidarity with Mikkalai and in support of my Ignore all rules thread at WT:RFAR. See also SOW/REAP. --Coppertwig (talk) 18:10, 8 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Moonriddengirl: the two girls in the poem you link from your userpage could be like the two hemispheres of the brain. When editing Wikipedia, I and many others spend a lot of time focussed on sentences and sentence structure, wikitext symbols, and other left-brain-type things, and it's possible that Wikipedia as a whole tends to be rather left-brain-y. The occasional glance at an image gives a slight bit of relief from that.

(The following is told with poetic license.) One side of me tends to follow rules religiously, to make up rules, and to expect other people to follow the rules too: rules of grammar, rules about how to format Wikipedia articles, rules of games, rules of behaviour, rules of this, rules of that. I like using creative thinking (and there the right brain gets to come into play a bit) to come up with modifications of the rules that will work well in a variety of situations. And pretty soon I have pages of rules in fine detail, and I'm running around telling people, "no, no, you're supposed to do it this way." If Wikipedia gets like that, there will be less and less freedom and it will be dry, vacuous, boring, lifeless.

But then the other side of me comes along as a river and says, "I am soul. I am freedom. I am truth. I am emotion, understanding and depth." And it flows, pours, floods, smashes and washes away all those puny, fiddly little rules. --Coppertwig (talk) 00:23, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've got it! εὕρηκα! (Eureka) The remedy for wikilawyering. You know how in WP:WIARM it says "A rule-ignorer must justify how their actions improve the encyclopedia if challenged."? Well, let's turn that on its head! It goes on to say, "Actually, everyone should be able to do that at all times." In other words, when following or applying a rule one should be prepared to justify why one did that, too! If we eliminate the following of rules for no good reason other than the following of rules, I think we eliminate wikilawyering.

It also says, ""Ignore all rules" does not stop you from pointing out a rule to someone who has broken it, but do consider that their judgment may have been correct." I figure: when someone breaks a rule or does something wrong or counterproductive, that doesn't necessarily justify criticizing them for it. Criticizing is an action in itself and has a fairly steep cost in terms of alienating users and driving them from the project. Criticizing is sometimes necessary, but often it's better to say nothing. --Coppertwig (talk) 00:23, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to make what I think is an important point here: "wikilawyering" is about more than just linking to policy pages. The above suggests that that's all it is, but it really isn't. Wikilawyering, in this particular context, is about asserting the primacy of "the letter of the law" over its spirit. It's also about citing policy pages specifically as a means of justifying bad edits. For example, if I were to make an edit that was totally against the NPOV idea and then, when challenged, responded, "I can do what I like - see WP:BOLD and WP:IAR", then that would be wikilawyering. On the other hand, if I were to insert unsourced, controversial content into an article about a living person, and you reverted saying, "WP:BLP says no unsourced, controversial content", then that would not be wikilawyering since it is fully in keeping with the spirit of biographies of living persons, respecting the way in which we need to be more careful when putting unsourced info into such articles.

My problem with this whole wikilawyering issue with Mikkalai is that he routinely (well, not any more since he's stopped being communicative) throws the term at people simply for citing policy pages even when what that person is doing is not consistent with what wikilawyering is. At the same time, he himself routinely cites those same policy pages when reverting other people's edits elsewhere. To be honest, it's pretty clear that he uses "wikilawyer" simply as a means to dismiss people, and that isn't reasonable behavior, imo. -- Hux (talk) 03:44, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your message, Hux. It's good to have this opportunity to discuss this with you.

I already agree with you about the definition of wikilawyering – perhaps you couldn't see that because I didn't include a definition of wikilawyering in my above posts – except that I'm not sure whether you mean that all wikilawyering is about justifying bad edits, whereas I think only some wikilawyering is about that and some is about other things (or maybe everything that happens here is an edit, so maybe it is always about justifying bad edits, including bad reverts and bad criticisms of people.) I didn't intend to suggest that wikilawyering is merely linking to policy pages; that wasn't what I meant at all, and since Mikkalai was (reportedly) citing policies from time to time too, I don't think that's what Mikkalai meant either. Actually, I have trouble seeing how you could see my above posts as suggesting that wikilawyering is merely about citing policy. I see my above posts as being very much about emphasizing the spirit rather than the letter of policy.

Please remember that there are different points of view about the same situations. A few weeks ago, you posted a definition of wikilawyering to Mikkalai'a talk page, apparently thinking he had been misusing the term because he hadn't known what it meant. I thought that post came across as very patronizing. In my opinion, Mikkalai seemed to have already known what wikilawyering meant, and I could well see how the definition of wikilawyering could be applied to what he had been applying it to. (I wouldn't necessarily say that I actually agree that it was wikilawyering, but I could clearly see that it was a reasonable and understandable opinion to consider it wikilawyering.) The people responding to Mikkalai's charges of wikilawyering did not address his point adequately, apparently because they did not understand the point he was making. Clearer communication is needed. People need to be aware of their own biasses and to be open-minded enough to be able to comprehend the concepts being put forward by others. This requires constant effort to handle one's own biasses. Remember, too, that Mikkalai may have more difficulty expressing himself in English than he would in his native language.

When something happens that Mikkalai considers to be wikilawyering, it would be helpful to understand why he considers it to be wikilawyering and what differences he sees between that and what he himself does on other occasions -- for surely he sees such differences. It could be in some cases that there is some subtle point of policy that he doesn't understand is being invoked. In that case, a clearer and more detailed explanation of the original statement invoking policy might be helpful, but a repeat of the definition of wikilawyering would be unhelpful. In other cases, there could be some subtle point of policy that the person accused of wikilawyering is missing. In that case, it might be helpful to tactfully encourage Mikkalai to explain his point further. Again, just stating "no it is not wikilawyering!" would only cut off communication. In general, when accused of doing something, it's helpful to communicate more clearly or in more detail than merely saying the equivalent of "no, I'm not."

I think I've understood some of the points Mikkalai has made, so I might sometimes be able to help facilitate communication, without claiming that I would necessarily either be taking a neutral position or attempting to act in Mikkalai's interests. I invite people to call on me in such situations.

For example: in the post I mentioned above where you told Mikkalai the definition of wikilawyering (as you also told it to me just now, although I also already knew it,) you don't mention what posts you're replying to, but I assume that this may be one of them. While I don't condone telling someone to go away nor putting such a negative term as "despicable" that close semantically to an editor, in my opinion Mikkalai's use of the term "wikilawyering" here is understandable. The policy is that Wikipedia is not a dictionary, and it might not be useful to write into the policy an exception that it's OK to have a certain number of bytes of dictionary-like information at the beginning of an article (pronunciation, etymology, definition etc.) Nevertheless, Wikipedia articles often do have dictionary-like information in their first sentence or two, from time to time including etymological information, and often such information is not a summary of anything appearing later in the article. They're like that because that's what's deemed to be most useful to the reader. Apparently it appeared to Mikkalai that someone was deleting etymological information simply because a rule (WP:NOT) said so. Perhaps the other person doesn't value etymological information, or values very concise lead sections more than other people do. Personally, I'm fascinated by linguistics and always like to see etymological information. Different people will have different values. Apparently Mikkalai thought that it might have been reasonable to move the information to another part of the article but that to delete it was to destroy useful information; and apparently Mikkalai did not see how the spirit of WP:NOT could justify such deletion. I must confess, being blinded by my bias in favour of including linguistic information, I'm having difficulty seeing that myself. The correct response is for the person favouring deletion of the information to explain what they see as being the spirit of WP:NOT as it applies to this situation and to explain how they see the deletion as following that spirit; or else to apologize for the deletion and restore the material. Unless I'm forgetting some other creative solution, any other response to the situation is to miss the point Mikkalai was trying to make.

In other words: Mikkalai believed that deleting the etymological information was a bad edit, and that a policy was being cited to justify it: in other words, he saw it as a wikilawyering situation. The thing to do is to discuss meaningfully whether it was a bad edit or not, rather than getting sidetracked into any side issues.

One problem might be people assuming that certain things are obvious. Mikkalai may be assuming that it's obvious that deleting information is bad, and therefore that he doesn't need to say that. Someone else might be assuming that it's obvious that deleting information that goes against policy is good, so they think they don't need to say that. Actually, they do need to say it, and to explain why they think it's good or bad. Establishing communication with people with different points of view can be difficult but rewarding: it involves stretching the mind to be able to see things in ways in which one didn't see them before. It's difficult because when you're starting out, you don't know in which direction to try to stretch: it will be a direction you didn't even imagine existed. --Coppertwig (talk) 14:24, 19 March 2008 (UTC) (See also my reply at Perspectives on incivility.) --Coppertwig (talk) 15:36, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the the (very!) detailed response. I think it's important to note something from the outset: none of us has a direct line to another editor's understanding; we can only gain insight into their mindset based on their edits, so if you think I've misunderstood your understanding of what "wikilawyering" means then you need to bear in mind that I'm coming to that conclusion based on what you've written because that's all I have to go on. My response to you on this is informed by what you wrote on the topic just as my response to Mikkalai was informed by what he wrote on the topic. In both cases, what I'm reading suggests that your understanding of the concept is incomplete. I don't say this to cause offense or to be patronizing, it's just an observation, and the examples you've provided seem to support that observation.

For example, above, you cite this diff, saying that it represents a regrettable instance of you engaging in wikilawyering. The trouble is, I see nothing in that diff (or indeed anywhere in your surrounding statement) that actually constitutes wikilawyering. You're clearly not ignoring the spirit of Wikipedia for the sake of focusing on the "letter of the law", nor are you trying to cite policy unreasonably. All you're doing is making observations of behavior and suggesting that such behavior is inconsistent with what Wikipedia strives for. I think that is perfectly reasonable and if anyone were to accuse you of wikilawyering as a result I would call foul. The diff you posted where Mikkalai asked me to explain "the reason of your wikilawyering" is another example of the same thing. All I was saying there was that extended etymological discussion doesn't belong in the lead section of an article (which is true, from a stylistic perspective; "leader bloat" is a common problem on Wikipedia) and that such discussion would be better placed further down the page. This is not wikilawyering by any stretch and Mikkalai's response was a prime example of what I'm talking about: using the term to unreasonably dismiss contrary opinions.

I think his response to the diff above is quite telling: without ever having communicated with me before, Mikkalai appeared to have made the decision that I agreed completely with Matisse's actions and thus that I was simply wrong in general. (You can see this by the way in which he assumed that I was supporting Matisse's deletion of the text when in fact at no point had I ever suggest that it should be deleted, only that it should be moved.) Having made this decision, he then curtly brushed me aside as someone who was simply getting in the way. This view of disagreement as something that involves only two "sides" is unfortunately very common (see the way in which FOX News in the US constantly talks about representing "both sides of the debate", for example). However, as should be obvious, such a viewpoint is inherently unproductive when it comes to solving problems because people invariably have a range of different opinions. Wikipedia is not, from my perspective, a place filled with editors who are either with me or against me; for any given editor, I agree with some things they say and disagree with others. Mikkalai's comments strongly give me the impression that he views his interpretation of the way things should be as "correct", and thus anyone who disagrees with him goes into a box marked, "people who are wrong". This is regrettable.

What should have happened in that particular exchange, in my opinion, was that if Mikkalai viewed my suggestion as a poor one he should've discussed why he thought it was poor, perhaps by arguing - just as you do above - that sometimes it's good to have etymological discussion in the lead section and that this was such a case. Instead he instantly dismissed my input as wikilawyering and pushed me out of the way, and I see nothing wrong with pointing out the unreasonable and unproductive nature of that approach.

So, hopefully this longer response gives you better insight into where I'm coming from now. But if not then I will be happy to elaborate on anything that comes across as unclear. That's my responsibility, after all. :) -- Hux (talk) 19:14, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for tolerating my very long post and for providing lots of detail yourself! This is another very long one and I hope it isn't too long for you.

I agree that we can never know exactly what's in another's mind, so I hesitated a bit to say that I was using the same definition of wikilawyering as you, because although the ideas in two peoples' minds may be similar they're never exactly the same. I'm trying to be open to the idea that maybe, as you say, the situation is that we're using significantly different definitions of wikilawyering. In any case, we seem to have some sort of difference of opinion or possibly a misunderstanding. I hope that with discussion and thinking it over we can come to a mutual understanding. That doesn't have to mean we have the same opinions, but that we will understand each others' opinions and hopefully understand why we disagree.

I think wikilawyering means citing policy in a way which is technically correct but which is inappropriate in some way. It could be inappropriate because it goes against the spirit of the very policy being cited; or because it is not particularly supported by the spirit of that policy, but goes against the overall purpose of generating an encyclopedia; or perhaps it could be inappropriate for some other reason. (It's more-or-less the same thing to say that the action of citing policy is inappropriate or that the edit being supported by the citation of policy is a bad edit.) In any case, it will be a matter of opinion whether something is inappropriate or not, whether something is bad or not, and therefore it will be a matter of opinion whether a given action is wikilawyering or not. Perhaps this makes the term "wikilawyering" rather useless: rather like the term "bad" or "good": too vague. The argument could devolve into "That's a bad edit!" "No, it's not, it's a good edit!" "No, it's a bad edit!" etc., which is not very useful. More detail needs to be given to make progress towards consensus. Using the term "wikilawyering" might allow similarly useless arguments to happen without people realizing quite as easily that that's all they are.

I said that it was wikilawyering when I posted a statement on an Arbitration Request page that Mikkalai had carried out "inappropriate use of admin tools in semi-protecting the page Poon..." (As you probably realize, the diff mentioned was where I struck out the alleged wikilawyering.) If someone else had posted the same thing I probably would not have accused them of wikilawyering. I can apply stricter standards to myself than I would to other people. Also, I had access to knowledge of my own motivations.

Apparently you believe that my mention of the Poon page was appropriate. I believe it was counterproductive and done for bad reasons. Would you agree that, if it was counterproductive and done for bad reasons, then it would fit the definition of wikilawyering?

Obviously, at the time I mentioned Poon I thought it was productive to do so. My thinking evolved afterwards, based on a number of things including pondering a comment by GTBacchus which took time to digest, "Get to that place of understanding, and you'll find Mikkai already there."

The reason I mentioned Poon wasn't because I cared about that page specifically. I had searched through Mikkalai's contribs looking for examples of things like admin abuse or unanswered complaints. Technically, I think my point was valid. In practice, it was the sort of minor mistake or difference of judgement that many admins make from time to time and that are often worked out by discussion. (I know -- that's one of the problems -- Mikka wasn't discussing.) It wasn't a de-sysoppable offense.

If I were someone who cared about editing that article, it might be very reasonable to post a complaint about it. Searching through someone's contribs for examples of wrongdoing can be OK too, at times: I do it when participating in RfA discussions, for example, and I think it's fine then. It was just too petty for an arbitration request; and my motivation was wrong. For some reason I don't understand I (temporarily) took on the role of looking for evidence against Mikkalai. I think that wasn't a helpful thing to do in that situation. If there had been actual victims, OK. In this case as far as I know nobody was significantly bothered.

The point is: we need to find a way to improve the situation. Criticizing Mikkalai had already been tried and had not helped. More criticism was only going to make things worse. He was already complaining about wikilawyering; he was going to see the whole arbitration case as more wikilawyering. We needed to do something different -- something like showing Mikkalai that we understand his side of the story.

Criticism is very useful at times. It's like the cry of a baby. The cry is useful because it signals the parents to pay attention to the baby and fix things that are wrong. But when a baby cries more than the parents are able to tolerate, then more crying just makes things worse. If the baby cries so much that the parents get no sleep etc., then more crying is not going to get more attention from the parents -- it's going to get less attention, because the parents are overwhelmed already and have no more to give. I think we'd reached that point with criticizing Mikkalai. Note that it's a function not only of the amount of criticism but also of how much the person is able to take. Anyway, I believed that more criticism would only make things worse, and struck out my comments about Poon. Later I withdrew practically my whole statement in the arbitration request, for somewhat similar but not exactly the same reasons; I don't claim that the rest of the statement was wikilawyering, though I'm guessing Mikkalai thinks it was.

With the etymological example: You believe that it's true that the long passage on etymology didn't belong in the lead. Mikkalai apparently disagreed. Would you agree that, if it really was better for the encyclopedia to have the long etymology section in the lead, then to cite a policy to support removing it would be wikilawyering?

I think Mikkalai's response was rather aggressive and no doubt caused rather hard feelings in you. Those feelings in turn make it harder for you, I think, to see his point of view.

It's not at all clear to me that Mikka thought you were supporting deletion of the text. From what I see in the diff there, it looks as though Mikka preferred to keep the text in the lead section and was annoyed because you opposed that. You stated clearly that moving it was an option and Mikka didn't state clearly that you didn't think moving it was an option, so I don't see any reason to jump to conclusions that Mikka thought that.

I agree that we need to get out of a two-sides paradigm and think in terms of complex, multiple opinions and getting along with each other.

I agree: Mikka should have discussed why he thought it was a poor edit. However, I'm not sure whether it does us much good to talk about what Mikka could do differently. Maybe we don't have much influence over him on such matters. If we have influence over him, maybe talking about what he should do differently is not the way that that influence can be exercised.

Assuming you are perhaps open to direct influence, I'll say that I think also you should have discussed in more detail why you thought it was a good edit -- unless maybe it didn't seem possible to do so in the climate of not-a-smooth-piece-of-cake posts. Once wikilawyering is mentioned, then that's the signal to discuss why you think it's a good edit in terms that go beyond merely citing policy.

When one person is acting angry and apparently unreasonable, it's often possible for the other person to fix the situation by being very diplomatic. One might think it's unfair to have to do that. One doesn't have to do that. But one can. This is about building an encyclopedia, not about getting an equal share of points in a game. One can (try to) show the other person that one understands their point of view, which usually results in them calming down, and then after that gently re-express one's own point of view. It can be very difficult to do this if one has just been insulted, though. It takes a lot of calmness, careful thinking and tact.

As far as the definition of wikilawyering is concerned, I think we need to separate out the definition from differing opinions of whether a particular action was good or bad. Then we'll be able to see more clearly whether we're both using the same definition or not. I've asked a couple of questions above to try to clarify this.

I just thought of something: there's a sense in which there's no such thing as wikilawyering. Or at least, there's no such thing as something that someone can admit is wikilawyering while they're doing it. While they're doing it, or while they continue to hold the same opinion as when they did it, they obviously think it was the right thing to do. But if it was the right thing to do it couldn't have been wikilawyering. So only other people, or the same person after having later changed their opinion, can think of it as wikilawyering. That makes the term "wikilawyering" rather useless in discussions between people of different points of view. The word "wikilawyering" is not an objectively verifiable quality of something. It's like the words "inappropriate" or "horrible" -- a word people apply to others' behaviour but not to their own.

I've run out of time for now, and will look forward to replying to your comment in the Perspectives on incivility section another time. Thank you for participating in this discussion. I'm finding it interesting and I hope it's productive :-) and I hope Mikkalai isn't offended by it. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:01, 20 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Your helpful comment

I noticed your helpful comment on Igorberger's page regarding Wikipedia:WikiProject User scripts/Scripts/WikiBreak Enforcer. Just thought I'd tell that Cardamon had also given that link to Igor a few edits previously (on his talk page) but he had just ignored it at that time.--VS ^talk 02:58, 9 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, thanks for letting me know (and for calling it a "helpful comment" under the circumstances – I appreciate that!) I suppose I could have used my browser search function to check for that before posting it – next time I'll think of that. It's like when I add items to "See also" lists – now I know to check whether they're already wikilinked in the text. Whether Igor chooses to do anything with the script is totally up to him. --Coppertwig (talk) 13:48, 9 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Perspectives on incivility

This discussion is closed. No longer necessary. Preferable to spend time writing articles.

Extended content

Here's a hypothesis: There's nothing wrong with Mikkalai.

Here's an analogy which may help explain the above hypothesis. It's a story about something that happened to me. An analogy compares two situations which have some similarities and some differences; therefore stating that it is an analogy is not an assertion that any particular aspect of the two situations is the same – for example, swear words play quite a different role in the two situations, I believe. Some of the details in the story as told below may not be exactly as it happened, as I've filled in some details that I don't remember in order to make a coherent story, but basically it's what happened.

I went to a meeting of an organization I belonged to, but that time only one other person showed up. So we were sitting there talking. The other person used some swear words (obscene words). I told the person I wasn't comfortable with that and asked them not to talk like that. The other person argued that those words had been allowed by a judge to be used in a court of law and therefore they were OK to use. The person was not angry at me, but was talking to me in anger at some other people who were not present, and used swear words again rather loudly and angrily. I suddenly picked up my coat and stuff, said "Well, bye" and walked rapidly out of the room.

I paced back and forth in the hall for a while, calmed down, then after several minutes I went back into the room. I smiled, said "Sorry about that," sat down and started talking to the person again. After a while, the person started swearing loudly again. Again, I picked up my coat and stuff and walked suddenly and rapidly out of the room. I paced in the hall again for a while, my heart beating rapidly from adrenalin, and I thought, "What's wrong with me? Usually in recent years I've handled a variety of situations calmly. Here I've acted suddenly, impulsively and impolitely. What's wrong with me? Am I angry? Did something happen earlier today that made me upset, so I'm on edge? Did I not get enough sleep last night?"

I thought it over for a while, and eventually the answer came to me: There was nothing wrong with me!! The way I reacted, walking out of the room like that, is/was my usual and correct reaction to situations like that. It's just that I didn't know it was my usual reaction because such situations hadn't come up before. I had acted correctly. I couldn't think of a better response to the situation. It was what I had wanted to do and would do again if a similar situation repeated itself.

All Wikipedians deserve to be free of being subjected to incivility, whether the incivility takes the form of swear words that might seem to be directed at them; or having their good-faith edits referred to as vandalism; or having AN/I threads about them continuing on long after the people actually affected by the alleged events have been satisfied that enough has been said already; or having messages posted to their talk page when they've asked not to have such messages posted; or having people speculating about their emotional state, etc. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:08, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

See also the "Ignore all rules" thread two sections further up on this talk page. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:14, 10 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not really seeing how the analogy backs up your hypothesis. If anything I'd say it supports the reverse. I mean Mikkalai has certainly been the object of incivility, no doubt about that, but when you say that everyone "deserve[s] to be free of being subjected to incivility" it's hard to see how that can be read as a statement of support for Mikkalai given how uncivil he has been to others. What it does suggest, though, is that if you, I, Mikkalai or anyone else is attacked on Wikipedia then what we should do is ignore it. That's something I completely agree with and right now that's what Mikkalai is doing also with his pledge of silence. The downside of that pledge, though, is that it conflicts with the responsibilities of being an Wiki admin. -- Hux (talk) 04:06, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It might be helpful if you would you explain in more detail what you mean by the reverse of my hypothesis and how you see my analogy as backing that up, although I'm not necessarily encouraging you to do so if it would tend towards violating NPA.

It often happens on Wikipedia that one person is being very uncivil and that same person is also the object of much lesser incivilities. Or it often appears that way; though I suspect that usually in such situations the one carrying out the obvious incivilities doesn't see it that way, but sees subtle incivilities against themself, or incivilities that others are not even aware of, as being just as bad or worse than their more obvious ones. This is not to say that that point of view is necessarily the right one -- just that that's how people tend to see things. Incivilities against oneself tend to be greatly exaggerated in one's mind. For example, someone might see something like a revert of their edit as being a gross incivility, and respond with harsh words. Others might see the harsh words as being totally unprovoked. Some detail, such as whether the revert was explained or not or some other aspect of the situation, might explain why the same person also carries out reverts of others' edits and doesn't consider them uncivil.

I don't understand: I don't see why you're saying it's hard to read what I said as a statement of support for Mikkalai. I am not in any way intending to support any incivilities by Mikkalai. I acknowledge that he is, as he puts it, not a smooth piece of cake. But why can't I support Mikkalai by opposing incivilities directed against him? OK, I know, at the emotional level it's hard to focus on that point of view because a strong emotional response about other aspects of the situation gets in the way. For example, it was probably hard for people to listen to Mikkalai's message about wikilawyering because he also included harsh words in the same post.

When someone is being uncivil, it is still possible to oppose incivilities against that person -- even ones that appear to be much smaller or harder for some people to understand as being incivilities than what the person is doing. I would go further and say that it's particularly important at that time to oppose incivilities against the person, in order to defuse the whole situation.

I'm having trouble understanding some of what you're saying. Do you mean that you think if someone is being uncivil, we should not support that person by protecting them from incivilities from others? Remember that one can support a person without necessarily supporting or condoning all of their actions.

The analogy I present above is just an analogy, therefore it is not a strong argument. It may help those who are open to the idea to see the situation from a different point of view. The main point of the analogy is that sometimes it's appropriate to cut off communication even if it seems uncivil to do so.

Mikkalai described himself as reacting like a cornered wolf. Apparently he felt he had few or no options. Apparently, from his point of view, cutting off communication was the least bad of a number of bad options available.

Often ignoring is the best response to incivility, especially incivility against oneself. I wouldn't necessarily say it's always the best response and I don't see how my above post supports the ignoring option. I don't consider walking out of the room to be "ignoring". Remaining seated and listening quietly would have been ignoring. For incivilities against people other than oneself, opportunities come up more often to do things more productive than ignoring, although still often ignoring is the best option I know of.

You say that Mikkalai's silence conflicts with his responsibilities as an admin. I don't see that. Earlier, when he had general insults on his talk page, a vow of silence etc. and was performing admin actions I think there was such a conflict. But when he had instructions on his talk page about going to WP:DRV etc., I don't see a significant problem there. And now he has no communication-blocking message on his talk page, and in the time during which that has been the situation I haven't seen any unanswered complaints about admin actions by him. Maybe you'd like to explain in more detail why you think there's a conflict with his responsibilities as an admin. --Coppertwig (talk) 15:30, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I think the confusion may be caused by my misunderstanding the "players" in your analogy i.e. I assumed that you were you and the uncivil person you walked away from was Mikkalai. Hence, I took the analogy to be an argument that people bear no responsibility for their uncivil actions and that if one is offended by them one should simply leave. Instead, it seems that the you in the story was supposed to be Mikkalai and the uncivil person represents everyone who's been uncivil towards him, hence the analogy gives an explanation for why Mikkalai decided to "leave", i.e. cut off communication. If I'm correct in that assumption then I can see where you're coming from: in some scenarios I think it makes good sense to diffuse an escalating situation of incivility by making the decision to not respond at all. However, I disagree that this is one of those situations.

I don't think your analogy applies very well here because in it you did nothing to push the exchange in the direction of incivility. You simply objected to the incivility that was already extant and, when your polite objection didn't change the situation, diffused it by leaving. With Mikkalai we have a situation in which he himself is routinely both the object and (until recently) the instigator of incivility. In that situation, taking the decision to be silent and citing the reason as feeling like a "cornered wolf" suggests that he doesn't think his part in all of this is in any way problematic. Coupled with the fact that the cause of a lot of unreasonable comments - the nature of his edits - is still going on, I feel that giving people the silent treatment is unreasonable. He needs to take responsibility for his actions, both in terms of the edits he makes and the responses he gives. That's a responsibility that I think all editors have, but it applies especially to admins.

Due to the - how shall we say - prolific quantity of his administrative edits, it is inevitable that he's going to attract more uncivil responses than most editors, but it is also inevitable that if one acts uncivilly oneself then those responses are only ever going to increase in frequency, and the more that happens the easier it becomes to regard all disagreements as attacks on one's position. This is the position that I suspect Mikkalai views himself to be in, hence the "cornered wolf" response. The trouble with that is that choosing not to communicate as a last resort against what one perceives as near-universal condemnation ignores an important fact: it takes two to tango and I've yet to see any acknowledgment on Mikkalai's part of his own responsibility in creating this situation. For example, when someone attempts to politely object to something he's done, or some position that he holds, they are met with uncivil behavior (e.g. "read the f***ing edit summary") or, as is the current trend, silence. The former response is unreasonable on its face. The latter response, while outwardly neutral, is not reasonable in this case given the "cornered wolf" justification behind it. It's as if to say, "I'm still right and you're still wrong, so I'm just gonna do what I like anyway and not talk to you". Passive-aggressiveness, basically. I wish there was some way that he could step back and recognize that not all objections are personal attacks, but he doesn't appear to be able to do that, so his solution is to ignore everyone. For a regular editor this is not a big deal, but for an admin I don't think that's appropriate and, for what it's worth, neither does the arbitration community.

Don't get me wrong: I agree with you that it's possible to oppose incivility against Mikkalai even as he himself is being uncivil. However, if that support lacks any criticism of his uncivil actions then such support is, in my opinion, unreasonable and misapplied. Nobody should get a free pass to be rude to people and that goes double for an admin, in my view. -- Hux (talk) 21:23, 19 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

CSD templates (2)

Hi. Sorry I didn't get to them yesterday; busy day at work, and I could never etch out a large enough block of time. Looking at Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Templates (other), something seems to have happened to t3 hardcode? It lacks the bottom material, including a pointer to the criterion. Otherwise, everything seems fine on that page. I corrected one typo. :) Off to look at the next in line. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:36, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, a couple of changes to Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Templates (images) which you can see documented in the history. (P.S. If you want to move this into the above section on the subject, feel free. I'm putting them here to ensure that they aren't lost.) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:51, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 15:55, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

At Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Templates (general), we probably need to keep the note at G6. I'm not going to delete an article on Ringo Starr under G6 for instance, but if the reason template is used and tells me that there's a history merge needed from Ringo H. Starr, then I know what's up. Other changes have been made there, and I've broached a discussion with you on that talk page about the wording of G12. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 16:57, 11 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, wait. Maybe you've just been looking at the wording in the tables on those pages? I meant the actual draft templates, for example Template:db-a1/new. Still, thanks for checking, I'll have a look at those ones. By the way, note that there's a message addressed to you, Moonriddengirl, in the middle of the Ignore all rules section above. Also, I hope you don't mind that I edited your user page. The link to the poem wasn't working. --Coppertwig (talk) 00:55, 12 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Re T3 hardcode: You mean the 3rd bullet point? Note in the discussion below it that Happy-melon and I seemed to have agreed on removing the 3rd bullet point. It seems unnecessary to me, being essentially a repeat of the same idea and therefore redundant and superfluous and can therefore be left out as something not needed :-) --Coppertwig (talk) 01:01, 12 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Period in i3: Good catch. I've propagated that change to Template:db-i3/new. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:05, 12 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You're right; I misunderstood you and was verifying the suggested wordings, not the new templates. My bad! I can go through the new templates and do it all again tomorrow. :D (I meant the ts hardcode on the talk page, which is missing the bottom part that says "Templates in this category may be deleted after being tagged for seven days (CSD T3)") --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 01:06, 12 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Sorry I wasn't clearer. Don't worry about T3: the draft template has that note at the bottom. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:08, 12 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Note also that in User:Coppertwig/Sandbox4 I have convenient links that open up edit windows on the templates. I think I'm about to modify it so it will also have ordinary (not edit-window) links. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:24, 12 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

When you edit the tables, it would be helpful to mention in the edit summary which one you're editing, e.g. "I6". Thanks. Not a big deal. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:34, 12 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In the tables, a the left, there are convenient links to the draft templates and to the template documentation (e.g. Template:db-a1/doc.) In most cases, the template documentation is not currently showing in the current templates. It's mostly new documentation created by me, based on Happy-melon's suggestions and other material. When the draft templates are copied to the proper names, the documentation will start to display. It would be helpful if you would have a look at the documentation pages, too. --Coppertwig (talk) 01:47, 12 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Based on your comments, I went to add a feature to Template:db-g6/new to allow the user to specify a reason. I started to add the feature, then noticed that "wording=" already allows you to do that. So I added a description of that to the documentation, at first with "Ringo H. Starr" as an example but then I got boring and BLP-ish and changed it to "Example merge page". :-) I think the "note" you're mentioning is still in the draft template. --Coppertwig (talk) 02:02, 12 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

←Starting over. I don't know what went wrong with this one, but it lost part of itself somewhere in the coding. I don't know how to fix it, so I'll leave it to you. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 20:33, 12 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've made a couple of changes directly to the new templates listed here. (I'm sure you have them watchlisted.) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 22:10, 12 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A couple of small changes to the templates listed Wikipedia talk:Criteria for speedy deletion/Templates (images). Probably my biggest (maybe only substantial) change is to Template:Db-i5/new, bringing it in line with proposal. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 23:36, 12 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done with the last two pages. Left a note for you there about G12. :) --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 23:53, 12 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Great, thanks, Moonriddengirl. No, I'd forgotten to watchlist them. I've just closed the barn door by setting the option to watch pages I create. :-) I'll have a look later.--Coppertwig (talk) 01:26, 13 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]