Misplaced Pages

Blip Festival

Hello and good evening! I noticed you raised some questions about the Blip Festival's notability. I added some articles from prominent news sources to the references section, I hope that clears up any issues. I've attended some of the past festivals, and I will say they're pretty notable, at least in New York, around the time they're happening. --ParkerHiggins ( talk contribs ) 05:21, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the speedy reply! --ParkerHiggins ( talk contribs ) 05:25, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Tag team

Hello Shell. You suggested on WP:AN/I recently that I was a member of a "tag team". Perhaps I misunderstood what you were trying to say or you were repeating what somebody else had told you off-wiki without checking it for yourself. Do you not realise that making such unsupported suggestions constitutes an extremely offensive and highly uncivil personal attack? Please take a little time to explain the basis of your accusations, if that was indeed what you were trying to say. Many thanks, Mathsci (talk) 01:46, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I could take offense to the fact that you've suggested I'm hiding things off-wiki, being led around by the nose or don't have the sense to do my own leg-work and simply parrot things other people tell me - that's a grand number of assumptions all squeeze into one weighted question. I'm genuinely surprised though, especially given that we've had this conversation more than once before, that you're still claiming its a horrid personal attack to accuse people of working together on a cooperative project. I understand that others may have used poor language in expressing their concerns to you, for example, calling any group on Misplaced Pages a "lynch mob" is clearly inappropriate, but I think if you'll take a look at my comments again without coloring them with the same brush, you might see them differently.

There's nothing wrong with working together on Misplaced Pages or forming supportive or cohesive groups. The problems generally occur when a group develops a siege mentality and begins to see any editor disagreeing with them as an attacker. For example, just for commenting on that ANI thread, my integrity and honesty have been attacked multiple times - in fact, I was even labeled a "fringe supporter" and remarks were made about my level of intelligence. So what is of concern there is not editors working together, but editors who allow or even encourage each other to treat other editors poorly if they're "on the other side".

However, none of this has anything to do with my request that you try to remain civil, even in heated discussions, so instead of deflecting, please take the suggestion on board and find more constructive means to express your concerns in the future. Shell 02:05, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Do you remember making these comments on WP:AN/I on July 21?

Randrake, Slrubenstein, Mathsci - can I ask why it is we keep seeing the three of you show up in places together and the threads quickly degenerate into snippy comments and personal attacks? "derail[REDACTED] policies" "integrity of Misplaced Pages depends on this" "wasting the time of good faith editors" -- c'mon, are we really supposed to take you seriously when you throw out comments like that? You guys need to take a breather and try to come at your editing on race related articles in a much more calm and civil fashion. If there's crap going on, document it, present it factually and deal with the comments you get - this persistent drama when you're not getting the outcome you want is really unnecessary. Several people suggested actions here, such as requesting protection and community discussion forums - is there any reason not to try that? Why do all of the threads started by this group end up looking like they're out to get another editor? If an editor is that much trouble, there's pretty standard methods of dealing with it through user RfCs and ArbCom; roasting them over ANI isn't really a preferred method (though sometimes tasty).

Elonka said similar things on Moreschi's talk page, except she made a more explicit reference to a tag team. Here you seemed unconcerned in finding out what was going on (Elonka's decision to act and edit on Zero g's behalf, a week after an uncontentious merge decision had been made on a forked article, created as a result of my addition of two book reviews to Richard Lynn). Your sweeping generalisations do seem to indicate that you had already formed some kind of strong opinion, possibly as a result of off-wiki conversations. But I am not part of a team, even on WP:AN/I. In fact on WP:AN/I I have appeared to discuss User:Muntuwandi's sockpuppetry (he was blocked indefinitely) and also made some remarks about the use of Johanna Nichols' book as a source, during which User:Log in, log out harangued me on my talk page - he turned out to be indefinitely banned User:M.V.E.i. The attempt to add unsourced libelous material to the biography of Michael Atiyah (principally by User:Bharatveer) has mostly been handled off-wiki with administrators, including at a late stage Alison. Most of my mainspace edits involve some kind of scholarship, as at the moment. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 07:09, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Futher comment. One of the original disruptive characteristics in Elonka's original definition of tag team in Misplaced Pages:Tag team closely matches your first sentence above. Did you discuss this with Elonka at any stage? These points have now been struck from the essay. FYI, Shell, I rarely make reports at WP:AN/I. The only one so far was about the "polite troll" User:MoritzB who was indefinitely blocked by MastCell. One of the first comments I made was here about User:Fourdee, permabanned minutes later by Jimbo. Please could you try in future to be more careful when making sweeping generalisations, particularly when they fall so wide of the mark? Many thanks, Mathsci (talk) 12:52, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

So what you're saying is that either I'm guilty simply by association or that because you're so focused on Elonka's use of the "tag team" analogy that you've decided my comments on civility must have been meant to say the same thing? Maybe since you're unfamiliar with AN/I, you don't realize that it is fairly common place for someone to drop by and comment on varying aspects of the post and those comments may not be what you wanted to hear especially in the case where the editor(s) doing the reporting are displaying some issues themselves.

Contrary to your claims, my remarks were not generalized, in fact, I pointed to specific comments made during that particular thread that I found to be over the top and incivil. My experience with you and Slrubenstein in particular has been almost completely confined to responding to reports of edit warring and personal attacks that other editors have made against you; I believe having reviewed contributions further, that it was unfair of me to lump Ramdrake in as well since he seems to remain civil even when dealing with difficult situations.

So frankly, none of this required me to be prodded by someone on or off wiki. Your own recent actions bear out my point - you recently managed to call another editor "intellectually dishonest", "hysterical" and "stupid" all in one feel swoop or as another example, called another's edits "childish" . I understand that Misplaced Pages can become incredibly frustrating, especially in the second example where an editor was clearly making inappropriate edits, all I've suggested is that you persevere and try to avoid making things personal. You do incredible work on articles and if you can avoid becoming incivil when pressed, I think you'll find it much easier to point out the editors who truly are a problem. Shell 14:29, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

P.S. I have had nothing to do with the tag team essay; I was not involved in the working group that produced it. Shell 14:32, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

You deleted my images that were properly tagged with copyright information

You deleted a lot of images that I spent a lot of time locating and posting to Misplaced Pages. They were images in the public domain, mostly from the Florida Photographic Collection that's owned by the State of Florida. I had them properly tagged.

Is there any way to get them back? You wasted many hours of my effort and I'm not going to go and locate them again and re-post them. What you did has basically discouraged me from ever putting that kind of work into Misplaced Pages contributions ever again. If the images can be recovered from a history log then I'll add as many copyright badges as I possibly can to prevent somebody like you from deleting them yet again. If not then they're just lost, and what you did to those articles was vandalism.

When I first discovered that the images had been deleted, I thought that it was due to a malfunctioning bot. It really sucks that I spend all of that effort and it's gone now due to a malfunctioning HUMAN.

Sobesurfski (talk) 21:09, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Could you give me an idea what images you are referring to? In the case of images from the Florida Photographic Collection, I attempted to locate the images in the database and add license tags whenever possible. The only case in which I would have deleted them would be images whose copyright status was unclear, or the image could not be located. If you have any specific cases you need to have looked at, please let me know and I'll be happy to check why the image was deleted. Its probably also important to note that the vast majority of images from the Florida Photographic Collection were only tagged with the FPC tag and not an additional license tag - the FPC tag is only appropriate to indicate the source of the image, since the copyright status of images in the collection varies widely. Shell 21:14, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

And Yet More on Bob Hymers

Hi, Shell. There's more on the Hymers talk page. I'm taking your suggestion and reading up on neutral point of view, conflict of interest, etc. It's very important if I ask for adjudication that I accept direction from those like you who are being of service in this way. So I'm going to at least take a break, and perhaps recuse myself entirely (though I am ambivalent about that, give that Kyu is as partisan in one direction as I am in the other).

My only concerns would be:

(1) if Hymers is calling an attorney in, is that a threat in and of itself?

(2) For Hymers' attorney to suggest that the pastor of a church/supervisor of a group of churches can call one of his church elders/subordinate pastors--a man clearly under his authority, and half his age--a "kike" and that this only amounted to "kids horsing around," is disingenuous in the extreme. Even if the pastor in question called Hymers a "goy." A proportionate response to that might be "yid" or even "heeb." But "kike"? That's pejorative in a way "goy" is not. Heck--it's pejorative in a way that "shiksa" is not. (I've certainly been called a "skiksa" a number of times, and that's no compliment. But I have never, ever called anyone a "kike.") This was a power-play on Hymers' part--a way of demonstrating to himself that those under his authority would accept physical and verbal abuse from him without protest.

(3) The issue regarding Vitamin C had nothing to do with whether or not it's a good idea for people to take Vitamin C. The issue is that the way Hymers proclaimed and enforced the edict shows the degree of control he exerted over the lives of those in his church. There are much worse examples--ones that make this one pale in comparison--but this one is well-documented and well-sourced, and therefore the one I felt ought to appear in the article, for the sake of balance.

Again--I have left entire paragraphs full of flowery language alone. My conduct has not been perfect, but neither has the other sides'.

(4) I am slightly concerned that I've been accused of violating neutral point of view as much as I have, when Kyu has introduced not just press-release-style language about Hymers, but on several occasions has used prose that purported to speak from inside Hymers' head--essentially using Hymers POV while maintaining the third person grammatically (e.g., "Hymers became concerned when he saw over a million abortions performed in the U.S. per year"; "Hymers said something he hadn't intended to say"; "Hymers prefers to call it Ruckmanism"; etc.).

All that said, I deeply appreciate the patience and the fairness that both you and Xymmax have put into this situation. I know it can't have been easy, and I appreciate your forbearance.Scooge (talk) 18:07, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Shell. Just a few more little clarifications:

1) Hymers is within his right to speak with an attorney over many things and just the fact that someone might do so is not what Misplaced Pages calls a "legal threat", however, if someone (account or IP address) were to indicate that they were taking legal action against an editor or Misplaced Pages itself then the account or IP address would be blocked from editing Misplaced Pages until such time as they indicated that the legal business had been concluded or that they were withdrawing the threat of legal action. In other words, while saying someone is consulting an attorney verges on being inappropriate and will likely get someone counseled about the no legal threats policy, its not quite to the level of requiring a block (unless its repetitive or used to try to discourage other editors from participating).

I wasn't requesting a block, only indicating factors that could have affected MY OWN frame of mind when I wrote the thing *I* wrote that sounded like a threat. And I really did mean it like: "If the final product is too biased in one direction, one of the other survivors (like, some of the guys who lost a decade or better to what they call "the cult"), might become more active again, so the other side shouldn't overplay their hand, if negative publicity is what they are concerned about." A couple of the guys have told me that they HOPE Hymers actually sues them, because then they could give depositions, and get even more of this documented.

So, just a clarification. 'Nuff there.

2) What someone's attorney says or what we think really isn't the focus here; what Misplaced Pages articles do is report what was said by other reliable media. So, for example, if a reliable source states that Hymers use of certain words or tactics is a power play on his part, we can record that in the article and cite the source. On the flip said, if the source only says that he used an offensive word, we can't draw our own conclusions about it being a power play, so we would only put in what the source said (see WP:OR for a discussion of not using what Misplaced Pages calls "original research"). And again, if someone else suggests that the incident was "just horsing around", we don't put that in the article or change what is in the article unless they can provide a source which backs up their claims.

Again: I was only trying to point out why I felt that Hymers' attorney was being a bit clumsy in covering up what was, in my opinion, OVERTLY inappropriate and controlling behavior from the head of a church organization. I do not want my "power play" language used in the article, but I feel strongly that that incident--and the physical abuse mentioned in the L.A. Times article--should not be kept out of the final article.

I agree that any negative material should be stated as clinically as possible, letting the reader draw his/her own conclusions.

3) I'm not aware of the vitamin C issue, so could you point me again at the source for that? If its a notable incident, we should be reporting what the source has to say about the subject, being careful not to include things that the source doesn't say about the subject.

I'll send you the text of the Eternity magazine article. One awkward thing about this whole article is that a lot of the press coverage of Hymers was from the 1970s and 1980s, and that makes it hard to find online. (Not to mention documenting his television coverage from the 1980s, when his conduct was most outrageous--he had a habit of walking off the set in the middle of an interview--very dramatic.) Is there an address to which I could send you actual clippings from the material that is not available online? Here's my address (please copy and delete): <redacted for privacy>). It's just so awkward when I have material from mainstream sources, but I only have 'em on paper.

4) I know it may seem like things are unbalanced at this point because Misplaced Pages editors tend to be a bit more watchful about negative information in biographies of living people, but Kyu has also been advised of the conflict of interest guidelines and asked to refrain from editing the article. I'm sure there are still a number of things that need fixing in the article, such as the sentences you pointed out that may be giving information not really contained in the sources - my changes certainly didn't fix everything, but I hope they were a start on the way to a better article. Lets see if we can't use the talk page of the article to discuss what points still need improving and how best to handle them.

You're a paragon of patience; I want to be just like you when I grow up!  ;) Scooge (talk) 21:33, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Just realized something

My thread title "sigh" on Abd's talk page could have been interpreted as disatisfaction with your unblock decline. It's actually just the title of the thread I was originally planning to use hours ago when I was going to unblock him. It had nothing to do with your decision, which I understand, even if I don't quite agree. --barneca (talk) 23:46, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

You know, I hadn't even thought about it that way - so no worries, I didn't take it as a comment on my unblock decline. Like I said, I don't think its clear cut and I wouldn't object if someone else felt an unblock was a better idea - given the pages and pages I had to wade through to get an idea what's gone on over the past few days, I completely understand why you'd be sighing at this point :) Shell 00:43, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks!

Thanks for spending some time at Terren Peizer‎. There hadn't been an edit war for a couple days after I unprotected the page, but evidently, the day I left town is the day they chose to start again. And good call with the sockpuppet case. I'm just out of my element dealing with BLP issues. You've really been a big help. Okiefromokla 00:26, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

No worries, you were doing just fine over there. There's no harm in trying to unlock articles, unfortunately this time the problem hadn't quite gone away yet. There's several other editors who are helping keep an eye out now, so hopefully we'll get any further problems resolved rather quickly. Shell 00:45, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Sure. I see you've seen the recent user to chime in on the article's talk page. How would you feel about throwing him (User:BeltKingIn) into the related sockpuppet case? Okiefromokla 03:24, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Ah, nevermind. I see you've already tried. Okiefromokla 03:26, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Since he just came back and called me a "crybaby" which Ani4mate did earlier, I've just blocked him as a sock. Thanks for keeping an eye out. Shell 03:28, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Good. I would have been satisfied if the blocking rationale had been incivility and BLP violations. From now on, if the arguments and wording lend suspect to further sockpuppetry by this person, I'll just block any new account there on sight. Okiefromokla 03:41, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Spelling: "travelling" is correct spelling in much of the English-speaking world.

In a recent edit, you changed one or more words from one international variety of English to another. Because Misplaced Pages has readers from all over the world, our policy is to respect other forms of English in Misplaced Pages articles.

The guidelines are simple. For subjects exclusively related to Britain (for example, a famous British person), use British English. For something related to the United States in the same way, use American English. If it is an international topic, use the same form of English the original author used.

In view of that, please don't change articles from one version of English to the other, even if you don't normally use the version the article is written in. Respect other people's versions of English. They in turn should respect yours. Other general guidelines on how Misplaced Pages articles are written can be found in the Misplaced Pages:Manual of Style. If you have any queries about all this, just ask anyone on Misplaced Pages and they will help you. Thank you. --Srleffler (talk) 02:59, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Honestly I wasn't trying to change anything from British-English or vice versa, I'm only going after actual spelling mistakes. I'll add this to my list so it doesn't get caught again. Its kind of disappointing that you'd just toss a template on my talk page and assume that was my intent. :( Shell 03:20, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Novak Djokovic

What happened in this edit of yours? Your edit summary was "Reverted 1 edit by 203.177.92.101 identified as vandalism to last revision by Phatom87. (TW)", but you did not revert to the last revision by Phatom87 ; instead, you ended up deleting much of the page. I don't use Twinkle so I don't know if it's a problem with that software, but if it's a problem with Twinkle, you should report the bug to the tool coder. If it's not a problem with Twinkle, try to be more careful (no big deal, though, everybody makes mistakes once in a while when editing quickly). —Lowellian (reply) 05:49, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Holy cow, that's definitely a Twinkle issue - I must have missed it because I had the ip page pop up for a warning. Thanks for catching that and letting me know! Shell 05:53, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

RfA thank you