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I do not use "talkback" templates, and it rarely if ever makes sense to leave me such templates. I could never see the point of the stickers I sometimes got in elementary school. Please do not embarrass me with "awards" or "barnstars" or the like.

Mediation Case

A request for formal mediation of the dispute concerning Genesis Creation Myth has been filed with the Mediation Committee (MedCom). You have been named as a party in this request. Please review the request at Misplaced Pages:Requests for mediation/Genesis Creation Myth and then indicate in the "Party agreement" section whether you would agree to participate in the mediation or not.

Mediation is a process where a group of editors in disagreement over matters of article content are guided through discussing the issues of the dispute (and towards developing a resolution) by an uninvolved editor experienced with handling disputes (the mediator). The process is voluntary and is designed for parties who disagree in good faith and who share a common desire to resolve their differences. Further information on the MedCom is at Misplaced Pages:Mediation Committee; the policy the Committee will work by whilst handling your dispute is at Misplaced Pages:Mediation Committee/Policy; further information on Misplaced Pages's policy on resolving disagreements is at Misplaced Pages:Resolving disputes.

If you would be willing to participate in the mediation of this dispute but wish for its scope to be adjusted then you may propose on the case talk page amendments or additions to the list of issues to be mediated. Any queries or concerns that you have may be directed to an active mediator of the Committee or by e-mailing the MedCom's private mailing list (click here for details).

Please indicate on the case page your agreement to participate in the mediation within seven days of the request's submission.

Thank you, Weaponbb7 (talk)

Wilhelm von Gottberg

Thank you very much for your help.Xx236 (talk) 07:40, 30 August 2010 (UTC

FYI

User_talk:YellowMonkey#Blocked_editor_humbly_requests_explanationsYogesh Khandke (talk) 19:22, 19 October 2010 (UTC)

Article Names for English places

I am on your side about having English places disambiguated by the county when possible as I have proposed Beeston, Leeds to be moved to Beeston, West Yorkshire and Oakwood, Leeds to Oakwood, West Yorkshire there is a discussion to move Beeston, Leeds to Beeston, West Yorkshire and one for Oakwood, Leeds. There is also a discussion about the issue. Homan's Copse (talk) 12:06, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

I think you misunderstood my position. It's absurd to disambiguate a locality that is not an independent village with a county rather than the city whose mayor the inhabitants of the locality help to elect. It's particularly absurd in a case such as Beeston, which is geographically quite clearly a part of the settlement Leeds.

While I was under the impression that there was a guideline that intentionally prescribed this absurdity, and that there was strong support for this guideline, I was prepared to support the move on consistency grounds. But it is now clear to me that that is not the case. Hans Adler 13:00, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Well put

I thought your statement here summed things up nicely. ScottyBerg (talk) 23:36, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

Request

Hello Hans: In case you are having a bit of unfamiliarity with sockpuppetry allegations, you might consider reading this once , specifically this quote "The tool should not be used for political control; to apply pressure on editors; or as a threat against another editor in a content dispute."
Your allegations, baseless at best, suggest that you are trying to put unnecessary pressure on me. TheEngineer 05:31, 30 October 2010 (UTC)

Brown Lady

Hi, thanks for your message. I dispute the allegation that the article is a copyvio. While I accept that I did paste material from a website (which was wrong) and got a Copyvio message from a bot, I removed the tag not because "I was disguising my edits" but because I entirely rewrote the content. Jack1956 (talk) 10:59, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

You did not entirely rewrite the content. You presented the same ideas in the same order, only changing some inconsequential words and superficial sentence structure. Original:

The Pons Neronianus or Bridge of Nero (54-68) was built to connect the westernmost part of the Field of Mars with the Campus Vaticanus ("Vatican Field"), where the imperial family owned land along the Via Cornelia.

Caligula had built a circus on the right bank of the Tiber and Nero used this park to entertain the Romans after the great fire of 64.

The gardens were also the place where –according to Tacitus– Nero tortured the Christians to death (text), and we can imagine that the Romans who went out to see the executions of the arsonists, crossed this bridge.

Your first version, correctly tagged by CorenSearchBot for copy and paste:

The Pons Neronianus or Bridge of Nero was an ancient bridge in Rome built to connect the westernmost part of the Field of Mars with the Campus Vaticanus ("Vatican Fields"), where the imperial family owned land along the Via Cornelia.

The Emperor Caligula had built a circus on the right bank of the Tiber and Nero used this park to entertain the Roman crowds after the great fire of 64.

The gardens were also the place where, according to Tacitus, Nero tortured to death the Christians who were accused of causing the fire.

Your 'entirely rewritten' version:

The Pons Neronianus or Bridge of Nero was an ancient bridge in Rome built during the reign of the emperors Caligula or Nero to connect the western part of the Campus Martius with the Campus Vaticanus ("Vatican Fields"), where the Imperial Family owned land along the Via Cornelia.

The Emperor Caligula had built a circus on the right bank of the Tiber and Nero later used this park, renamed the Circus of Nero, to entertain the Roman crowds after the Great Fire of Rome of 64 AD.

It was in these gardens, according to Tacitus, that Nero tortured to death the Christians who were accused of causing the Great Fire.

This is not just blatant plagiarism, it is also a very obvious case of a derived text, subject to the copyright restrictions of the original. You have nothing to win by lying about blatantly obvious facts. Hans Adler 11:22, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

• Three sentences in the entire article? Plus I do not appreciate being called a liar, which is not assuming good faith. I may be mistaken, but I am not a liar. Carry on in that tone and I will report you for your lack of civility. Jack1956 (talk) 11:29, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
  • In addition, I was referring to my 'Brown Lady' article. Jack1956 (talk) 11:31, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
    • Then you're on the wrong person's user talk page. Uncle G (talk) 11:53, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
      • No, I'm on the right person's user talk page. Jack1956 (talk) 12:00, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
    • CorenSearchBot did not detect your copyvio on the Brown Lady article. Unless you have a much longer and more recent history of reverting CorenSearchBot than is apparent from the contribution history of the account Jack1956, it simply makes no sense for you to claim that you were referring to the Brown Lady article (which has no bot edits in its history ) when you wrote the following: "While I accept that I did and got a Copyvio message from a bot, I removed the tag not because 'I was disguising my edits' but because ." Perhaps I wasn't clear when I said it for the first time: It is not in your best interest to lie about easily verifiable facts.
    • Additionally, if you want to lie without being called to account for it in plain language, you are indeed on the wrong talk page. I do not believe in making it easy for dishonest editors to deceive themselves about their character. You are very welcome to draw additional attention on yourself by reporting me for my "lack of civility". We will need all the eyes we can get to clean up your copyvios, some of which are probably from offline sources and thus very hard to detect. Han s Adler 12:21, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
• My mistake in referring to the CorenSearchBoot finding a copyvio on 'Brown Lady' - I thought that was what we were discussing and I wrongly assumed it had put a message on the article. I am not a liar or dishonest and I am reporting you for your rudeness and incivility. You are the sort of editor who makes working here unpleasant and you seriously need to look at the way you interact with other editors! Jack1956 (talk) 12:31, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

• Hans: May I enquire what is your rationale for evaluating Jack1956's contributions to this article as a copyvio? You say that his edits are plagiarised from an offline source; if that is so, then what text(s) specifically? Disclosure: My attention with regards to this copyvio has been solicited directly by Jack, on my talk page—though this is my first involvement in this matter. AGK 20:00, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
  • I didn't say there were any offline sources, I brought this up as a possibility that would make things much harder to check. What do you mean by "this article"? The Brown Lady article was pulled from the main page (by Future Perfect at Sunrise) before I even got involved. In my first post to this very section you can see my analysis of a copyvio in Pons Neronianus. The source from which Jack1956 copied was pointed out in the page history by CorenSearchBot, but for your convenience, it's . There is also Walter Dew, which includes an obvious copyvio from (which of course might be a copyvio itself, but predates the Misplaced Pages article, as I have verified). I checked three of Jack1959's over 80 DYK articles and found copyvios in two of them. Obviously that's where the idea of offline sources came from. Hans Adler 20:11, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
  • PS: There is also Charles Fitzroy Doll, which Uncle G has identified as a copyvio plagiarism from a book by Oxford University Press. See WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents/Plagiarism and copyright concerns on the main page#Multiple plagiarized DYK submissions by Jack1956 (not my section title). Hans Adler 20:17, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
    • It is not an OUP copyvio - it was taken from Answers.com here. My point is that making genuine mistakes does not make me a liar or a dishonest editor. See discussion here. Jack1956 (talk) 20:33, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
      • OK, Uncle G has identified it as plagiarism from that OUP book (via the web page), not as a copyvio. That would make it slightly better but still not OK at all. But I am not sure he is right. This depends on relatively fine points of American (Californian) copyright law, with which I am obviously not familiar. The fact that you didn't rephrase the extremely odd construction "was demolished in the late 1960s, and, like the Hotel Russell, stood in Russell Square" certainly gives reason to serious concern. Hans Adler 22:06, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks

		What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar
		For thinking of a way to use WikiStalk to identify repeat copyright infringers that will make my life better. Moonriddengirl 14:45, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Seriously. Sometimes what may seem like a straightforward suggestion to you can revolutionize somebody else's work! I have always slowly scanned for notices in people's talk page histories before. This is going to save me a ton of time! Bless you. :D --Moonriddengirl 14:45, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Does that mean you will be able to do even more work while the rest of us stays lazy? :) Let me know if you need further ideas. :) Hans Adler 16:05, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

LOL! We're all busy in our own ways. :D I can't think of any specific ideas to ask for at the moment, but if any spontaneously present feel free to let me know about them! --Moonriddengirl 17:40, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

It's raining thanks spam!

• Please pardon the intrusion. This tin of thanks spam is offered to everyone who commented or !voted (Support, Oppose or Neutral) on my recent RfA. I appreciate the fact that you care enough about the encyclopedia and its community to participate in this forum.
• There are a host of processes that further need community support, including content review (WP:GAN, WP:PR, WP:FAC, and WP:FAR). You can also consider becoming a Misplaced Pages Ambassador. If you have the requisite experience and knowledge, consider running for admin yourself!
• If you have any further comments, input or questions, please do feel free to drop a line to me on my talk page. I am open to all discussion. Thanks • Ling.Nut (talk) 02:22, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Original research

I saw your comment about the expansion of WP:NOR, but I'm not sure what you mean. How has it expanded beyond the "reasonable bounds"?   Will Beback  talk  23:29, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

• The most obvious example is of course Gavin Collins, see WP:Administrators' noticeboard/Archive217#User:Gavin.collins. Stonewalling, intimidation, misrepresentation of policies. I am sure he really believes his outrageous OR claims. Although he is only an outlier, it was the fundamentalism of a significant part of the community which made this possible.
• See WP:Articles for deletion/Sam Blacketer controversy for the other side of the medal. Apparently Misplaced Pages has an obligation to lie about itself if only the lies are "verifiable". This fatal ideology may have started with this Arbcom decision: "It is disruptive to remove statements that are sourced reliably, written in a neutral narrative, and pertain to the subject at hand." This was written carelessly, so that it labels even a consensus-based complete rewrite of a broken, rambling article disruptive unless you find a way of including every single tidbit that is marginally relevant to the topic but better replaced by something more important. This is made even worse by the fact that nowadays it's usually remembered in the form "removal of sourced information is disruptive", which many tendentious editors interpret literally, ignoring the obvious restrictions on applicability.
• Rlevse didn't invent the idea that close paraphrasing of sources is required. If you don't do it you always risk getting under attack, and the attackers will never be sanctioned even if they are unreasonable. It takes independence of thought to realise that the negative feedback that you get for proper encyclopedic work and proper summarising of sources is not supposed to make you learn not to do it and plagiarise instead. That this negative feedback comes from idiots who you must ignore because you can't fight them.
• For a recent example of how this works in practice, look at the discussions on Talk:Climatic Research Unit email controversy about the, apparently dubious, claim that the emails were published "illegally". This has gone for ages, but in the most recent episode Alex Harvey is claiming that a government report isn't good enough as a source for the illegality because some other sources use milder words, and anyway, only a court can decide this. He doesn't actually argue it wasn't illegal (because it obviously is), or that it's not relevant (because many sources use that word), but he is painting it as some form of OR, against all reason and with no consequences for himself. This the kind of tendentious editing that the science-oriented editors are facing in the climate change area all the time, and Arbcom's "solution" is to block all sides equally. Apparently Arbcom is also of the opinion that Misplaced Pages can't independently decide that publishing personal emails on a hacked website without the copyright owners' consent is illegal, or other similar questions.
• Look at User talk:Roger Davies#Disappointed, where an otherwise very sensible Arb is defending a purely structural approach that completely ignores the sensibility or otherwise of editorial decisions. It is a famous conundrum that Misplaced Pages has no formal mechanism for ultimately resolving content disputes, yet somehow manages to get the content mostly right. What the Arbs don't seem to realise is that this is because at all levels the underlying content disputes influence the decisions about the behaviour. What we need is intelligent Arbs with common sense, who understand the content disputes and see which side (sometimes both) is being reasonable or unreasonable. Who then come to a fair decision that is informed but not at all determined by the content dispute. What we don't need is Arbs who too successfully fight against this natural inclination. Such Arbs might theoretically be good for Misplaced Pages as a community, but they are unwittingly working on the destruction of the encyclopedia as such. Their fundamentalism will make the introduction of content arbitration inevitable, sooner or later. I did not argue for a decision about content, and I did not argue for treating climate change as a special case. I argued for using common sense for all topics.

We have a vicious circle in which policies and guidelines are tuned for deciding conflicts and then applied by POV pushers to make disputes about technicalities of policy application where they would lose immediately if things were treated correctly as matters of editorial discretion and subject to consensus of editors on the facts and presentation. As a result, editorial discretion has become almost illegal in the same way and by basically the same mechanism that "truth" has become an invective. Hans Adler 11:03, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Hans, I take issue with your allegation that in the climate change area, Arbcom's "solution" is to block all sides equally – their disproportionate and unequal solution was to topic ban editors with a history of productive well sourced work in that specific area, and as a sort of balance to also topic ban editors with interests in other areas, whose main purpose in that specific area was to restrict the productive editors, as suggested here. It's a clear endorsement by arbcom of WP:PUSHing. . . dave souza, talk 11:59, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

I don't really have a good overview over the participation and dynamics in that area, especially concerning the things that happened before I really got involved. (I mostly stayed out of the topic until the topic bans made me feel obliged to get involved, but it's so stressful that I am already on a bit of a break.) I simply don't know whether what you are writing is true, although I am inclined to believe you. If it is true, then I still doubt that it was intentional. I am sure that most Arbs are pushing the project towards the abyss in very good faith. (Actually, at least one is generally pushing in the right direction.) It's important to find out why that is happening, so that we can make it stop. Hans Adler 12:20, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Right now on my watchlist, as if to demonstrate how widespread the problem is: Talk:Death of Ian Tomlinson#Needs source. Verifiability is simply being treated as a game with no relation to the goal of writing a correct encyclopedia. Hans Adler 14:48, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

You write wisely. Clearly all the editors I'm discussing have shown imperfection, the question is whether imperfection should be weighed in relation to the aim of producing good article content. The current conventions tend to treat it as a game where conformity to rules of interaction are more important, but it's not an easy decision either and I'm sure the arbiters were trying to reduce the stressfulness of the topic area. Alex Harvey shows how keeping within civility guidelines can succeed, up to a point. . dave souza, talk 17:41, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

BTW User:Gavin.collins has now been banned from Misplaced Pages. It seems it was some blatant copyright violations that did it finally rather than his interminable civil POV pushing. Minus times a minus is a plus I believe. Dmcq (talk) 23:12, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Sarcasm

This is just to let you know in as friendly a manner as possible that your perception of sarcasm is erronious, and countering the imagined sarcasm with genuine sarcasm demonstrates that a touch of GF would not be amiss. I am quite aware of what's being discussed at the RfA talk page, and I'm not the only one to stumble on Jimbo's page by coincidence.--Kudpung (talk) 16:11, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Jimbo's talk page traditionally has a function very similar to the Village Pump. It has practically the same number of watchers as WP:VPP and only about 10% less than WP:RFA. WT:RFA is of course the proper forum for changes to RfA, but it has a strong fatalist consensus that makes it very unlikely to successfully start a reform. It needs a strong impulse from outside. I am sorry you did not like the way I expressed this thought. I did not mean to offend you. Do you want me to strike or correct something? Hans Adler 16:23, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Hallo Hans. Thank you your frank and sincere reply. There's nothing you need to strike or retract, I'm generally a Wikignome but I can be outspoken at times and I can take any flak I get ;) However, I have indeed had some mild success in the past at drawing fragmented discussions about major issues together, and ultimately to a consensus. I'm only too well aware that not all contributions to the perennial discussions at WT:RFA are productive, but as some of our heavyweight users participate in depth there as well as on the JB page, I feel that WT:RFA is ultimately the place to be. The consensus is, like it is on the JW page, very much that the RfA system has broken down, and as a result too few editors of the right calibre are prepared to come forward and run for office. All the necessary comments have been made long ago and are now repetitive; there is no cabal, but I'm thinking of marshaling a workgroup together, so if you feel strongly about RfA, perhaps you are one of those 'strong impulses', and I would very much look forward to working together with you towards galvanising people to some real action. MfG, --Kudpung (talk) 02:42, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Jimbo has now chimed in as I had hoped, with a strong appeal to keep the discussion on topic. If this is successful, and with him now in the chair, his talk page may well indeed be the better venue after all. I have no preference where the action takes place as long as some action does takes place, and I would be quite happy to migrate. --Kudpung (talk) 13:55, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

I have no preference either. Unfortunately, at this point I also don't have any good input to the discussion. Hans Adler 13:56, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Plagiarism discussion moved to WP:VP page

http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia_talk:Village_pump#Plagiarism_vs._WP:SYN_and_WP:NOR

Thanks! I have taken the liberty of reformatting the thread. I hope that's OK. Hans Adler 21:41, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Talkback

+1 and ANI. ╟─TreasuryTag►duumvirate─╢ 12:17, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Reply

Are you using a different definition of "harassment" along the same lines of the different definition of "tag-teaming" which you invented in the ANI thread? Because WP:HA makes no mention that correct use of the {{talkback}} constitutes harassment.
Furthermore, WP:UP#OWN suggests that editors do not have the authority to ban others from their talkpage, either in general or with specified contractual conditions.
If you would rather I simply copy all my replies to you onto your talkpage, rather than just responding on my own and leaving you a template, so be it, but I can't see any valid reason for you to hold such a preference. ╟─TreasuryTag►constablewick─╢ 12:48, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

You asked for it, so you are hereby banned from my talk page for a period of 6 months. Bullying another user into replying to you on ANI is not a correct use of the talkback template. It is well established practice that users can ban other users from their talk page if those have abused editing privileges on it, which you have done. The relevant section of WP:UP is WP:UP#Editing of other editors' user and user talk pages, which has a pointer to WP:TALK, which seems to say nothing about the matter. Therefore general practice applies, which says that I can ban you from my talk page, but it is not clear whether you are then allowed to send me required messages such as ANI or RfC notifications. To remove any ambiguities, I explicitly declare all required notifications to be exceptions to the ban. Hans Adler 12:59, 8 November 2010 (UTC)