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Disambiguation link notification for October 16

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Misplaced Pages appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Félix Córdova Dávila, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page William Hunt (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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Fixed. Domi arigato, Mister Roboto. Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:14, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Disambiguation link notification for October 23

Hi. Thank you for your recent edits. Misplaced Pages appreciates your help. We noticed though that when you edited Félix Córdova Dávila, you added a link pointing to the disambiguation page William Henry Hunt (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver). Such links are almost always unintended, since a disambiguation page is merely a list of "Did you mean..." article titles. Read the FAQ • Join us at the DPL WikiProject.

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Fixed. Second try on this one (see above). Domi arigato, Mister Roboto. Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:13, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia NYC Meetup- "Greenwich Village In The 60s" Editathon! Saturday November 2

Please join Misplaced Pages "Greenwich Village In The 60s" Editathon on November 2, 2013! Everyone gather at Jefferson Market Library to further Misplaced Pages's local outreach for Greenwich Village articles on the history and the community. --Pharos (talk) 21:58, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

The "Oh my" Barnstar

	"Oh my" barnstar
	For using humor and invective in one of the most creative ways I've seen in a long time ;) Hasteur (talk) 20:04, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I spent far longer laughing at that than I would usually care to admit. :-) --(ʞɿɐʇ) ɐuɐʞsǝp 08:41, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

October 2013

Welcome to Misplaced Pages. At least one of your recent edits, such as the edit you made to Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case, did not appear to be constructive. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to Misplaced Pages, please take some time to familiarise yourself with our policies and guidelines. You can find information about these at the welcome page which also provides further information about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. If you only meant to make some test edits, please use the sandbox for that. Thank you. NE Ent 09:17, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

'tis the season

Louisa Venable Kyle wrote a children's book on The Witch of Pungo ;)

I placed my story here, first because November began but it relates to October, but also because of NE Ent's wisdom (linked under "season"), now archived, unresolved. I will need a course in Arbcomese. The closing statement of the clarification request is an abbreviation of something correct but by abbreviation incorrect, is not an answer to the first question at all (who created an article if not the one who contributed 80% or more of its content?), and not a good answer to the second question (will the addition of any infobox need to be sanctioned because I would want one, so it's "proxying"?). How do I proceed? Please see the end of my talk for some of the consequences of absurdity. It certainly makes for good conversations. I miss PumpkinSky --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:14, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

RfC on Infoboxes

Hey there. As an uninvolved participant in an ArbCom case on info boxes, I wanted to ask an opinion about this. Since you were the one who proposed a community-wide RfC on info boxes in order to address whether to adopt a policy or guideline addressing what factors should weigh in favor of or against including an infobox in a given article at that arbitration case (which was closed during my two-month long semi-retirement), I was wondering if it's possible to start up the RfC. Any thoughts or ideas about this? Regards, Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 03:59, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I recall that there was some discussion soon after the case about getting the RfC underway. I am blanking right now on where that took place (or maybe I was hallucinating it), but hopefully someone reading here would know. I think my arbitrator colleague Carcharoth had some thoughts on the issue, so you also might try him. As an arbitrator on the case I don't think I should start or take a leading role in the discussion, but I do anticipate posting some thoughts when it takes place. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:42, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

The case left us with unresolved situations like this ("Ah how fleeting, ah how futile") where someone with courage is needed. How about an arbitrator himself? Or can we establish someone to check if an infobox is good for the project? - An RfC was suggested in the case but those for whom an infobox is not a harmless tool of information but an attack were against it. See more thoughts here, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 15:44, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Gerda, that is a complete mischaracterization of both the content of Misplaced Pages talk:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Infoboxes/Proposed decision#RfC and of the views of the editors who contributed to that section, including me. Lord Sjones23, I suggest you read that section for yourself as well as the comments elsewhere on that page by Carcharoth and by Johnuniq. There are some good suggestions for any future RFC on the subject and how to avoid it becoming a train wreck. Voceditenore (talk) 14:25, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

That's good advice. I'll look into it. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 22:26, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

My brief suggestion would be, please wait until the new year (only 2 months away), and please go immensely slowly, especially at first - the way an RfC is introduced, and structured, is critical for bringing light (instead of heat, and tl;dr problems), to the issues involved. I gave more detailed thoughts at the arbcom case pages. –Quiddity (talk) 18:39, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

As long as we're passing out advice for Sjones23 on launching the RFC, I saw over on his talk page that User:Mackensen really missed the boat with this: "Arbcom punted the case when it cast it in terms of a project-wide dispute, when it was really more of a localized issue involving about three wikiprojects with overlapping editors (and, of course, Andy on the outside)." No, wrong. May have looked that way to those not following closely because so many folks stayed away because of the nastiness. I don't know if I'd say ArbCom punted the case, but if the perception that they did exists, it was for lack of evidence when they probably rightly sensed that the disruption surrounding infoboxes was a huge issue, and the whole case was a proxy for broader user conduct issues and editor alliances. But no one presented that evidence (I didn't 'cuz I had more important stuff going on in real life and doing it justice would take two weeks of diff gathering). Sjones, if you buy what Mackensen stated, you are less likely to craft a workable RFC that will reach productive conclusions. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:19, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I like every attempt to speak about infoboxes factually. I am part of an "alliance" (we call it a project) agreeing that infoboxes are helpful for readers. I learned the term "attack" here, please excuse me if I misunderstood and simplified too much above, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:12, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, you are: How's that working out? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:57, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Timely quote " ... WP:QAI's shenanigans at Featured Articles ... iridescent 10:16, 7 November 2013 (UTC)". SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:19, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

As below: I would learn something if anybody (not only SandyGeorgia and Iridescent) could supply a diff for a "disruptive" adding of an infobox by an active QAI member after (!) that member joined the project :) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:50, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't think there's much sense in re-fighting an old RFAR. The simple fact of the matter is that I repeatedly asked for proof that this was a true project-wide dispute and none was really adduced. If Arbcom seized on lack of evidence as proof of a broader dispute then they did everyone a grave disservice. There's a raw statistic which might help shed light on this: {{Infobox}} is used on 1.8 million articles, or roughly 41% of all articles on the English Misplaced Pages. Even that number is low as there are plenty of infoboxes which don't use it as a base. If there's truly a project-wide issue I would have expected broader participation in the RFAR and a greater groundswell for RFCs to resolve these matters. None of this is happening, because for most people this isn't a controversial issue. This is leaving aside the entire question of content re-use and portable data, both of which are pressing matters in web design. Whatever. I spend enough time fighting that battle in my actual job; I'm not going to fight it here, too. You don't have to buy my view that this was ultimately a parochial dispute with a small cross-section of editors. I'm not selling it. I'd rather be editing articles, and the portions of the project I edit aren't disturbed by this intractable problem. Mackensen (talk) 12:53, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Then I'm additionally concerned that you may be out of touch with how people feel about getting involved in arbcases; a (correctly formulated) RFC (vs RFAR) will likely generate more feedback. And that there are 1.8 million articles with infoboxes may not reflect how individual editors working on individual articles feel about them, rather a wiser "pick your battles" issue. I have inaccurate information in medical infoboxes imposed by WP:MED convention upon articles I edit, and I choose not to do that battle. I saw uncited, undue information in FAC after FAC, plopped into infoboxes, and although I refused to promote those FAs, they are promoted today; did that come up in the RFAR? (Sample, promoted version, uncited info in the infobox that is nowhere to be found in the article.) A productive RFC needs to decide at what level consensus for infoboxes is determined. I have bowed to WP:MED consensus on medical articles in the interest of keeping the peace with other editors I respect, not because I want to spread inaccurate information in articles I edit. We have had extensive discussions about this at WT:MED, but you didn't hear about that in the arb case, did you? Who gets involved in an arbcase is not a measure of how extensive the issues are-- particularly when the arbcase involves the amount of and extent of acrimony and factionalism and other issues as that case involved. Further, arbcases are rarely about what they seem to be about on the surface, and the infobox case is a classic example of the case really being about other underlying issues. Perhaps you perceived it involved only three or so wikiprojects because those are the areas the most disruptive editors focused on. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:50, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Please let me understand better: give me a diff for one edit of a QAI member adding an infobox in 2013 that you would describe as "disruptive". --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:01, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Sandy here. The issue is not confined to classical music projects (broadly construed). It is an ongoing source of disagreement in articles on many arts subjects. Mackensen, I suggest you read the evidence I presented at the RFAR, which attempted to communicate some of this. Most of the evidence presented by the named parties and observers focused on classical music articles, because that was the flare-up that directly led to the case. However, that gives a skewed view of the situation. Like Sandy, I think that a thoughtfully drafted RfC could provide a much more complete picture and give everyone a pause for thought, even if it will probably end up reaffirming Misplaced Pages:INFOBOXUSE. – Voceditenore (talk) 15:44, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

There are two disparate conflicts intersecting under the infobox heading here. The business of Andy pushing infoboxes and music editors resisting had been going on for something like seven years prior to the most recent case, and this may be what he's referring to. This overlaps with WP:QAI's feud with the FAC regulars, which seemed to blow up more recently. (I'd say about 2 years, when TCO brought out his infamous report.) Outside of infoboxes, my impression is that Andy's role in that fight, which encompasses FAs and potential FAs in general, has been peripheral, rather than central.

Anyway, I think the argument that because X number of articles have an infobox, uncontentiously, and Y number of people are not complaining, is based on a fallacious premise: that the use or non-use of an infobox should be determined on an encyclopedia-wide basis, like the use of reliable sources. Some subjects are very well-suited to infoboxes (say, chemistry); other subjects tend to suffer when crammed into key-value pairs, particularly in the humanities. I'd contend that the controversy centers on the music-related projects not because they happen to be hopelessly parochial, but because they have both a subject matter that's not very well expressed in infoboxes and an editor base well-knit enough to coherently resist that tool being forced on them. Of course, there won't be visible conflict in areas where infoboxes work well with the subject matter, which are many, nor where the editor base is spread too thin to register organized resisting (as in Sandy's example of WP:MED above). Choess (talk) 17:53, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't disagree with any of this, and I've read Voceditenore's evidence. I don't think infobox use should be determined on an encyclopedia-wide basis. Hence my question as to what, exactly, is the purpose of this RFC? As I said on my own talk page: " Projects that use infoboxes use infoboxes. Some don't. An RFC which either tried to impose them on those which don't want them or conversely tried to remove them from projects which did want them would probably be considered invalid." I also said this: "Crafting a binding content guideline regarding templates sounds like the source of endless controversy and I'm unconvinced that it's a wise use of anyone's time." Seriously: what exactly is anyone looking to accomplish here? Mackensen (talk) 22:23, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

While I agree with the general gist of the comments by Choess and Voceditenore, Choess's analysis misses a fair chunk of history. The issues spread by a small but vocal minority of editors in the FA process (leading to the departure of numerous writers, reviewers, delegates, technical support people, and the FA director) pre-date TCO's "report" by a few years, and he was but a small part in a bigger situation that unfolded. The only real significance of the TCO "analysis" was that he exempted certain editors (cf Iridescent post linked above, where he describes said FA writers) from the same criticism he made of other editors (ie, alliances, if I like you and you're my friend I won't criticize your cookie cutter FAs that you used to climb the WP:WBFAN greasepole).

And, Andy's role should be viewed in the context of other assaults made on FAs to promote personal stylistic preferences by like-minded technical editors, and the effect that (and the alliances) had on the FA process. Keep in mind that in most historical lame technical style issues, style warriors attack FAs first (in one recent case, moving from one sock to another to escape detection and achieve maximum changes to FAs without detection, aided, fyi, by some arbs), because they believe that if they can install their personal preferences in FAs, they will achieve trickle down to other articles. Same happened with the date-delinking debacle, the stylistic citation preferences furthered by a one editor, Br'er Rabbit et al and his associates, and in the infobox wars. Whether Andy's role was peripheral or central, FAs are often a first target, which is why most of the FA community has long known just what was going on.

In response to Mackensen, it doesn't strike me that you are reading what is on this page any more than Gerda is; diffs are there, please read them. There is still disruption, there is still proxying, and there are still undefined issues about infoboxes. I hope you will work to understand those issues, and realize that Misplaced Pages is not the same place it was five or eight years ago. It is much nastier, and it is much harder for the arbs to get a handle on things, so they perhaps have made a decision to limit the scope of cases, and focus only on the worst offenders in each case. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:12, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

If the diffs are there, please be so kind to supply one as an example for what you call a disruptive addition of an infobox (within the time frame: Br'er Rabbit was not active, Andy joined QAI on 25 January as you will have found out), because what you call disruptive I may just call bold or not even that. How can we talk if we don't know what a term means for whom. After "disruptive" I will have to understand what exactly you mean by "proxying", "nastier" and "worst offenders", but one after the other please. - You will have read that I was against the redundancy of infoboxes, but learned something within half a year, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:52, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Right location for ArbCom discussion?

Hey NYB - I was wondering what the right place would be to raise discussion of an old ArbCom subject. Specifically, we're coming up on the three-year anniversary of Case/Abortion, at which point some of the remedies expire. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 13:27, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

It depends on exactly what you think needs to be done, if anything. If it's just an informational post that the remedies will expire soon, the requests talkpage or the article talkpage might be the right place. If you think that extension or modification of the remedies is necessary (and can support that with evidence and you believe other editors would agree with you), then you could file a request for clarification or amendment. If you think the ArbCom remedies should be succeeded by community-based remedies, then I suppose that would go on WP:AN. If any other arbitrators are watching this page, please feel free to add your thoughts. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 14:40, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

I think some of the expiring remedies should be extended. Where would I file a request for clarification/amendment? –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 16:46, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Roscelese, what do you see as expiring in WP:ARBAB? There was a provision allowing admins to apply semiprotection on abortion related articles and talk pages imposed by motion in December 2011, which protection may not extend beyond December 2014 by my count, on any one article. The whole topic area remains under discretionary sanctions indefinitely. The DS provision could itself be used to impose longer semiprotections if needed. There does not seem to be any imminent change in the system established by Arbcom that might cause concern. It is regrettable that the Arbcom-endorsed RfC on the article titles seems to have reached no conclusion. The new article names, once they were agreed on by an RfC, were intended to last for three years. EdJohnston (talk) 19:22, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

The semiprotection is what I'm most concerned about. There are tons of minor pages in this topic area that get disruptive attention from IPs. I also noted the article names provision, but hopefully the article name fight won't start up again; it's seemed pretty quiet. –Roscelese (talk ⋅ contribs) 19:33, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Articles can be semiprotected, where warranted consistent with the protection policy, even after the formal ArbCom remedy expires. Newyorkbrad (talk) 19:41, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

Correction

Just wanted to make one correction to your statement on the Noticeboard talk page. I never took a position on the Manning article name change, either for or against. I did not participate in the move discussions. I just presented evidence of what I perceived to be open activist involvement in the matter. Cla68 (talk) 23:59, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Noted. Regards, Newyorkbrad (talk) 00:04, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Peter David

Hey, Brad! I didn't know you were familiar with Peter David or comics! Are you a fellow comics reader like me? Nightscream (talk) 05:01, 8 November 2013 (UTC)