Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 06:23, 27 November 2009

ArbCom Election RFC courtesy notice

A request for comment that may interest you is currently in progress at Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee 2. If you have already participated, then please disregard this notice and my apologies. Manning (talk) 08:37, 1 November 2009 (UTC)
You received this message because you participated in the earlier ArbCom secret ballot RFC.

Reference Desk archiving interval

There's a discussion running on the RD talk page about decreasing the archiving and transclusion thresholds to reduce the page size, perhaps to as few as four days. I don't care one way or the other, but I'd like to make sure any consensus includes input from some long-time regulars, so I'm dropping this note on the talk pages of a few that pop to mind. (I hope no one feels this is improper canvassing.) —Steve Summit (talk) 01:19, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Question regarding "banned editor"

I'm a bit confused about your recent edit to Gerontology, for which you referenced "rv banned editor". I assume this is because the original poster, Shustov, has been indefinitely blocked. However, I'm confused why his/her block would make any content s/he uploaded unusable. Assumedly if there's a problem with the content, it should be deleted from Misplaced Pages. Otherwise, it seems reasonable to use it in Misplaced Pages articles. Is this a flawed assumption? Many thanks for any clarification you can provide. —Zach425 /contribs 15:20, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Ah, that makes sense, thanks for the clarification. I'm not a fan of empty self-promotions, so I can certainly empathize with the cause. Sounds like quite a large job to monitor, though! Anyhow, I've put up a new, related picture on the gerontology page that I think is equally, if not more, appropriate for the tone of the page. Thanks again! —Zach425 /contribs 15:55, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Brews/IAR and all that

I cannot explain the point I was making in just a few lines. The basic problem is that Brews' topic ban is so huge that one has to be careful with this. Physics is a huge field and Brews is an engineering professor. So, his topic ban would be similar to a topic ban on all politics pages for some editor who is a politics professor for having made trouble on one or two pages. If such a topic ban would mean that nothing even remotely related to politics could be mentioned at all, it would lead to problems.

I've been in contact with Brews for a while now and from everything I told him it should be clear that I am not now saying that Brews should violate his topic ban. Brews, I think, could be persuaded to work on wiki policy. Now, we have to understand that the real reason why Brews ended up in trouble leading to his topic ban was that Brews has/had a tendency to dominate discussions, to argue more or less the same point over and over again against consensus.

So, from a pragmatic POV, one would have to see if Brews is not going to dominate discussions in the same way as he did on the speed of light page. That's where the real potential for disruption lies. As I made clear a few times, the physics nature of the speed of light discussions had little to do with the problems. Now, on the NOR talk page, the regulars there asked Brews, me and other participants to give concrete examples of problems, and Brews gave a link to a relevant previous discussion that happened to be physics related. But he did not re-open that old discussion. Then, given that we don't want never ending discussions, I don't think that was such a bad thing.

This is one aspect of what I really mean by IAR right now: Brews sticking to his topic ban to the point of not even being allowed to give that concrete example, would not have been helpful at all. And I think that Admins like you, not Brews himself, should be the ones to invoke IAR under such circumstances.

Another aspect of IAR is different and has nothing to do with Brews. I explained that on the NOR talk page. That has to do with local consensus being able to overrule core policies. That can then be used to make better guidelines that would not have the necessary support to become official policies. Nevertheless editors of certain articles can always decide by consensus to stick to such unofficial guidelines.

It is here that I can see Brews contributing constructively. Brews seems to have a lot of time and energy, so he could draft alternative versions of the NOR, V, Synth, etc. policies that would be more suitable for some science articles. You then don't have endless discussions. Also, when he does that then we should not put all his contributions under the microscope to see if maybe something in there can be construed as being related to physics in some way. That's then another appeal to IAR that the Admins should stick to, i.m.o.

So, in conclusion, I would say that in these cases it should be the Arbitrators and Administrators who should invoke IAR to let Brews contribute in a constructive way. I'm not saying that Brews should make trouble by violating the topic ban in a non-essential way and then invoke IAR himself. Also, Brews should not shoehorn whatever else he is doing in order to violate his topic ban (e.g. he should not correct typos on physics pages). Count Iblis (talk) 21:13, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

It was bad enough that you tend to ignore things that people (including me) have told you, and that you tend to repeat the same arguments over and over again. Why on earth are you expecting me to listen to you now that you've moved on to implying that I'm a vandal, troll, or malefactor? Let me be very explicit. I don't want to hear from you about Brews ohare any more, unless it's to tell me that he's spent a reasonable span of time – let's say at least a month – making uncontroversial, productive contributions to Misplaced Pages. Until you can tell me that with a straight face, I am extraordinarily unlikely to be persuaded that his restrictions should be relaxed — and there's no reason for you to continue to try to argue with me. Period. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:26, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

For the record, I quoted Rickk who said that: "There is a fatal flaw in the system. Vandals, trolls and malactors are given respect", and that clearly means those troublemakers who get off with a minor slap on the wrist. Count Iblis (talk) 03:42, 9 November 2009 (UTC)

Without fanfare

Hi, re your comment about my edit to wp:sock, may I draw your attention to the thread that I first started on Misplaced Pages talk:Sock puppetry#restoring an example. As well as my edit summary when I restored that example. ϢereSpielChequers 23:44, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

You're right, I didn't see that edit on the talk page. Still, I think it was rather deceptive to omit any mention (at the time) of exactly why you decided to add that passage in. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 00:35, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Invitation to participate in SecurePoll feedback and workshop

As you participated in the recent Audit Subcommittee election, or in one of two requests for comment that relate to the use of SecurePoll for elections on this project, you are invited to participate in the SecurePoll feedback and workshop. Your comments, suggestions and observations are welcome.

For the Arbitration Committee,
Risker (talk) 08:35, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

Essay contributions

I'd appreciate some further feedback about your comments. The essay has been modified considerably. I hope you can oblige. Brews ohare (talk) 20:00, 12 November 2009 (UTC)

typo

Hi Ten, seems you made a little typo here: You point to this diff twice. I'm sure the first referral should be to this diff instead. Cheers, DVdm (talk) 15:17, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks! Fixing now.... TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:24, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

Page move

Hello can you help with a page move Airport Express Train to Flytoget. reason

Article was called Flytoget when it received good article status, pagename was moved without discussion. Flytoget is used as english language name (english version of company website, general reporting etc) Discussion on talk page reveals no strong reason for the original page move. Also "Airport Express Train" requires disambiguations as per Airport Express Train (disambiguation) - specifically with respect to HongKong airport train service

Basically a page move needs reverting, I have the disambiguation page. Discussion of page move (to original status) is here Talk:Flytoget#Flytoget.

Shortfatlad (talk) 23:22, 14 November 2009 (UTC)

It's not clear to me why you would specifically ask me to make this page move for you — as far as I know I have no experience in the topic area or knowledge of the discussion. In any case, I'm not prepared to barge in and impose a solution on what appears to be some sort of content dispute on the basis of the very equivocal discussion that you linked. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 22:05, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Question

Are you exempt from the policy of NOT editing editors' comments on talk pages ?? I can live with what I wrote ... it should have been left in place. Duke53 | 06:23, 27 November 2009 (UTC)