Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 23:08, 21 December 2008

Royal Marines A.F.C.

Thank you for agreeing with me that it's notable. Any idea how I'd go about creating a new kit design for them? They have a rather distinct design, which certainly doesn't exist already. Stuartpgardner (talk) 00:27, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't know, but if you go to Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Football there's almost certain to be be someone who'll know how. It would probably help if you went to the HTML colour picker and worked out the exact HTML codes (e.g., Arsenal red is #C40303) so they can just be dropped into the template. – iridescent 00:32, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Much appreciated for pointing me in the right direction! Though I know all about HTML colour codes... *shudders* Stuartpgardner (talk) 00:37, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

It occurs to me that if it's not possible to do it the "correct" way in the template, you could always just take the image for Spurs, draw the hoops onto it in Paint, and upload it as an image. – iridescent 01:43, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Iridescent - Why did you decide this page was notable and remove the deletion template? You put in your summary that clubs that play at Levels 1-10 in English football are notable, which is of course correct - however Royal Marines play at Level 11 and obviously have never played higher as this is their first season. This page should surely be deleted asap? Sarumio (talk) 14:33, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Ah, you're right – South West Peninsula League Division One East is at step 7 in the pyramid (tier 11); I was looking at the Premier Division at tier 10. That said, although that doesn't mean they're automatically notable, it doesn't mean they're automatically deletable either, and this is a sourced and referenced article on a viable topic (plenty of other clubs in this league have their own articles). It does no harm to keep it, is potentially useful (which, as I never tire of saying, is Misplaced Pages's primary purpose; not "sticking to arbitrary notability criteria"), and nothing would be gained by deleting it. Feel free to nominate it for deletion if you really insist, but I'll be arguing strongly in favour of keeping it; that "top 10 levels only" rule is mainly to stop us being flooded with one-line stubs on Sunday League and school teams, which this isn't. – iridescent 16:48, 9 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes there are plenty of other clubs in the SWP League Divisions One East and One West who have articles but there's a good reason for this - those clubs who still have articles have played in FA Competitions (Cup or Vase in this instance). All clubs in these two divisions had articles until a while back, the ones deleted were in the same category as Royal Marines AFC - they had never played at step 6 or above and had never been involved in the FA Cup or Vase. I shall indeed be suggesting that Royal Marines AFC be deleted asap. Sarumio (talk) 09:34, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

(To Stuartpgardner and Sarumio) If you're not aware, its potential deletion is now being discussed here. – iridescent 20:16, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Banko-Stewart

? I don't see Young Artist Award as "a major award"; nor do I think of Pacific Palisades as "a major soap opera". Still, I will respect your judgment. --Orange Mike | Talk 19:08, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Produced by Aaron Spelling, starring Joan Collins and Kimberley Davies – it may have been a shitty show that got cancelled after one season, but it was certainly a significant one. Like I say, feel free to AFD it if you think it warrants it, but I don't see how that could possibly have been an A7. – iridescent 19:11, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

I've declined your {{prod}} on her as well. She's appeared in two major film franchises (Friday the 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre) as well as Pacific Palisades. Her roles were mostly pre-internet so she's not well documented online (although does get a respectable 12,700 ghits under her stage name), but there's a reasonable chance a horror-movie fan can source this one up to standard. (Article at Jennifer Banko-Stewart if any passing TPS wants to have a go – it should probably be moved to Jennifer Banko given that that's the name she's known under.) – iridescent 19:24, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

Henry Edward Butler

Hi, can you supply details of why this article was speedily deleted and what can be done about it. It was not a new article and I intended adding to it, but received information only today of its imminent deletion and it was already gone when I checked. Thanks, Hohenloh21:34, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

This is the full text of the article. It was deleted under CSDA7 (biography with no assertion of notability); although he may well have had notable children and a notable father, unless he was himself a peer (and thus a member of the House of Lords) there's nothing to suggest that he himself was notable by Misplaced Pages's somewhat specific standards. If he was notable, feel free to recreate the article with references to demonstrate notability, but this was a correct deletion. ("Not a new article" was an argument in favour of deletion, incidentally; with new articles, we try to give the benefit of the doubt in the assumption that it's being worked on, but this hadn't been touched for a month.)

Hope that helps! – iridescent 21:42, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

disney

In connection with the articles we've been de-speedying, you might want to take a look at the advice I have just given the author, User:Dlrpfan & see if you want to add or modify. I see some problems here, though he has very professionally avoided copyvio. DGG (talk) 21:37, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

I think you've pretty much covered it; when it comes to this kind of thing, I generally defer to you. I suspect they won't survive an AFD debate - or retagging and one of our heavier-handed admins coming across it - but as far as I'm concerned, quite aside from the WP:BITE issues of deleting a newcomer's entire history, these seem to be perfectly valid articles. I'm particularly impressed with how closely the author has avoided copyright violation. – iridescent 21:46, 13 December 2008 (UTC)

Damn kids...

That's you told. Now turn that music down, punk. لennavecia 01:56, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I like this guy, personally. "Horde faggot pansy ass blood elf faggot" goes above and beyond the usual "waah you deleted my band". – iridescent 03:54, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Man, I've been deleting crappy articles for a couple weeks solid now, and no one has bothered defacing my talk page. I feel left out! ;-) Jclemens (talk) 04:18, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

You just have to piss off the right sort of person. It doesn't have as much to do with what you do so much as who you do it to. For example, I got this gem back in March. I had been using Huggle for less than a month, and I had been fighting vandalism period for less than two. And (probably obviously) I was not even an admin. J.delanoy_adds 04:56, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Stupid links I can't read. — Realist 18:02, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

I assure you they're very dull ;) Majorly 18:11, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Rollbackers can see deleted pages now?

J.d, those are some jacked up messages, for real. I get some pretty colorful vandalism, but those pretty much take the cake. I stopped half way through the first one for fear I would be left stupiderer for having read it. لennavecia 02:19, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

←Misplaced Pages administrators who will provide copies of deleted articles is always happy to oblige:

The best "you bastard, you deleted my article" is still I see no reason why to delete it, as no person whould accidentaly look up something so specific, though. And Wet Floor Sign is still the standard against which all vandalism needs to be measured. – iridescent 16:56, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

With regard to the first one, "U r prolly a virgin too. LOL I get laid 8 times a day". My English skills must be deteriorating, I read it 4 times and still have no idea what that discussion was about. What ever happened to spell check, I use it all the time. — Realist 00:07, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Dork language Internet culture and slang. A rough translation:

Glad to be of service. If you are still having trouble picturing ] (] · ]), this (courtesy of Misplaced Pages Review) is roughly what you should imagine. – iridescent 19:16, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

OMG, you so should have warned me before pressing that link. Thanx for the translation...still very odd stuff. — Realist 20:08, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Jennifer Banko-Stewart

You're the ridiculous one! Beside not being civil you are arrogant enough to think you can say those things just because someone finds out that an actress just with a few appearances isn't notable enough!... Who do you think you are? You don't speak like that to other editors! Beside that, you're an ignorant, Jaime Ann Allman's page had much more films and appearances and she was deleted because most of appearances were just one episode per show!... SavetheArchduke (talk) 17:10, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

First, go read CSD A7 and see what it actually says. Pay particular attention to the part where it says speedy deletion is not appropriate if there's an assertion of notability in the article. Then, stop edit-warring to re-add the {{db-bio}} tag; if you want it deleted, take it to AFD. I am getting fed up reverting your tag-team's edit-warring over this; if you continue disrupting Misplaced Pages to make a point, you will be blocked from editing. – iridescent 17:16, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

First, I don't know every detail about deletion, second I doubt that such a small article can be asserted as notable, it's chriteria is too abstract for my taste, and third I don't have to take your lack of civility and much less the threat of blocking, as if you as an editor could block or order someone to block. Who are you? What authority do you have for that? I could suggest your blocking too: your challenging of an obvious deletion reason is the real disruptive work. Why don't they block you? You're the warring one, allways deleting my deletion requests! If you think there is a war, do like everybody else and call for a third part!... SavetheArchduke (talk) 18:04, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Iridescent is an admin, and can block you. He can also delete things and decline speedies (which anybody can do, actually). That's probably why he's not blocked. Apart from the fact he hasn't broken any rules or anything. Tombomp (talk/contribs) 18:36, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh! Since I didn't see any mention on his personal page I assumed he was just another editor!... SavetheArchduke (talk) 14:38, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

←Was

This user is an administrator on the English Misplaced Pages. (verify)

not enough of a clue? Or the fact that there are links to my block, deletion, protection and rights-management logs at the top of this page in quarter-inch-high dayglo letters? Besides, whether someone's an admin or not doesn't give you the right to descend on their talkpage and start spouting abuse just because someone does something you don't agree with. – iridescent 17:00, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Belated appreciation

What I said to Balloonman applies to you too, thank you. — Realist 17:29, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what happened and doubt you want people knowing, but sorry it went so awry.. I doubt even the most die-hard opposers hold anything against you under the circumstances. While I disagree with both of them about the remedy, I'm coming to agree with Majorly and Kurt that the way this site runs itself is suffering from a serious systemic failure, of which this is just another sign; the only place I really differ from the WR hardliners is that I believe we need the replacement framework in place before the revolution, not afterwards. (Call them Mensheviks and me a Bolshevik if you want an analogy – I'm sure Kurt in particular would be delighted by the comparison.) I know I sound like a broken record on the topic, but what was appropriate for a site with 1,000 editors, mostly highly-qualified technorati, and 50,000 articles does not scale up to a site with 8,519,289 editors, with a disproportionate number of children, not to mention carrying the dead weight of seven years of petty grudges. – iridescent 17:41, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Your comment on RFA talk page re FA quality

I'd like to invite you to expand your point why FA reduces quality of articles, particularly on images, per that RFA talk page comment. I'm not sure if I should be horrified, intrigued, bored, amorous, regretful, or disheveled. Too many emotions to choose from. --Moni3 (talk) 13:36, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd go with disheveled. It may not be the best choice, but at least it's interesting. Risker (talk) 13:42, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Now that I've had more time, perhaps I should be titillated. No, wait. Consumed with ennui. Might it have been the content of Iridescent's post or simply a hormonal imbalance prompting this exercise in vocabulary? --Moni3 (talk) 13:53, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

(And this is how I can tell you're not a regular reader of either my or Giano's talkpage, since this is a subject on which we can both go on at great length…)

The FA process does, at the moment, pay very strict adherence to MOS compliance, in my opinion at the expense of usability. When it comes to images, the MOS states that image widths should not be forced, and users allowed to set the widths in their preferences. Despite the fact that WP:MOSIMAGE does contain a list of exemptions where image widths can be forced, in practice the Defenders Of The Wiki will always argue about any attempt to invoke these exceptions.

On many articles, where the images are just there to provide "background colour" to the article, this policy works fine. However, on articles like Giano's architectural articles in which images have to be large to make specific architectural details visible and where cropping to the detail would lose the context of the building, or on geographical and transportation articles like mine, where detailed maps and annotated photographs are essential to understanding the topic, this policy breaks down. As I'm always saying in many different contexts, WP:USEFUL is not an argument to avoid; on the contrary, it's our core purpose and in my opinion, "go with what is most useful" trumps every policy (even neutrality and verifiability are just corollaries of "what is most useful?").

The most glaring example among things I've written is Broadwater Farm – despite the fact that the Misplaced Pages article is probably the definitive online resource on the subject (chunks of it regularly turn up in everything from charity fundraising guides to police training manuals; while Google throws up a lot of hits, virtually all are on the 1984 riot and not on the area in general) the article failed at GA, and would certainly fail at FA, because of the forced image widths. It contains two panoramic views which would look like meaningless strips of ribbon if displayed at 180px width; in addition, one of them is annotated to label the individual buildings in the complex using absolute-positioned text, which is an absolute no-no as far as the MOS-warriors are concerned, despite the fact that a "Buildings from left to right are…" caption would be less useful and ridiculously long. The article also contains a map of the complex which – despite being necessary to the understanding of the article (as the troubled history of the area is due in large part to the "wall of buildings" cutting the central area off from the police and fire services), just looks like meaningless squiggles at an MOS-compliant 180px width (see right). I appreciate the argument that anyone who needs to see the image at larger resolution can click on it to zoom it out, but that's a false argument – the general public (which is who, at the end of the day, we're supposed to be writing for) are not going to be aware of the workings of MediaWiki, and it would not occur to them to click on the image to zoom – plus, the "click to zoom" is meaningless when the article is printed.

This isn't just me being hypothetical; if you look at the history of the article you can see assorted well-meaning MOS compliance vigilantes resizing the images down to 180px, while the talkpage contains a lengthy diatribe from a GA reviewer lecturing me on image compliance. There are plenty of other examples of this process in action; from my articles alone, for instance, Hellingly Hospital Railway and Railway stations in Cromer contain diagrams which are virtually unreadable at 180px resolution but which I took down to that size in the knowledge that if I didn't the Reviewers would do it for me.

There are plenty of other parts of the FA style-over-usefulness process that irk me – "footnotes must come after punctuation" is one that particularly irritates me, since the relevant part of the MOS says nothing of the sort, and going by what the Chicago Manual of Style says is meaningless in the context of an article in British/Australian/Canadian etc English, on a British/Australian/Canadian etc topic – but you asked specifically about images…

While a lot of the regulars at FAC/GAN are genuinely helpful, they do – along with the other main "policy gone out of control" area, RFA – attract far more than their fair share of "per a strict reading of policy…" editwarriors who seem to sometimes lose sight of the fact that what Misplaced Pages is all about isn't a Camazotz-style slavish compliance to arbitrary rules. In some ways, I think a lot of these problems stem from a basic mistake on Jimbo and Larry's part when they used the word "encyclopedia". This is a holdover from Nupedia days, and while it may have been what they were aiming for it is not what today's Misplaced Pages really is. An encyclopedia is a collection of articles in a standardised format written in a similar style, with a low enough number of articles that a central style can be enforced (Larry's original FAQ talks about one day reaching 100,000 articles) whereas in practice todays Misplaced Pages (WP:NOT notwithstanding), containing 2,663,761 articles, is actually a de facto web host of loosely interlinked pages, with a somewhat heavier than usual level of moderation; however, many of our core process are still atavistic throwbacks to that idealised vision of Larry's in which all articles would be written to the same level and where there was a basic presumption that most contributors would be well-educated and well-qualified (it's only a few months since Jimbo said "admins should be college students or graduates"). In practice, we do have a lot of people here who don't understand the nuances and power of IAR, and have a "rules were made to always be followed" mentality that was never envisaged when our core policies were drawn up.

Thus endeth the rant… – iridescent 15:06, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

And quite a rant it was. Once more, I have exhibited my provincialism by admitting just today I put your page on watch. My tiny little controlled world is so pleasant at times. I understand that societies such as Misplaced Pages, and even subcultures within them such as FAC, go through phases where some users are active, making several months or years the "Giano era" as such. I've only been somewhat active in FAC in the past year, and really, really active since April or May of '08, so some of what you're referring to I've missed. Consistency certainly is an issue in citation and images, and I find the inconsistency in how to read, for example WP:NFCC #8 troublesome. In light of these two of my experiences, I wonder if your and Giano's experiences in FAC or article assessment of GA or higher is attributable to an era or a few hard-line interpreters of image size issues. I've got a couple FAs through with varying image sizes such as Draining and development of the Everglades with this image in particular File:Florida Topo map with canals and designated Everglades areas.jpg larger than others. Though I do recall being told to make the rest of some kind of uniform size. I did, but protested with that one. However, I was not told to change the size of any images in Stonewall riots, and two are maps or building outlines dependent on size and text within. I even have a whopper wide image in Geography and ecology of the Everglades.

I have, somewhat foolishly I suppose, begun to take on image reviews in FACs. I guess this was my primary concern in asking for your clarification. There is, at present, no one else doing image reviews, and my experience is limited to my own trial and error, and the way I interpret image guidelines. And Elcobbola trying to explain things to me. At any rate, my point is that I don't think your issues are endemic of FAC, at least at the moment. You may certainly disagree, but my view is based on my experiences. --Moni3 (talk) 15:26, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Part of the problem is that so much depends on one person, at both FA and (especially) GA level. All it takes is one strict-compliance Defender Of The Wiki to latch onto the process to derail an article's candidacy at either, and unfortunately these areas attract said editors. While I generally agree with Giano's FA essay, I think he understates the chilling effect just one person like this can have. (The exact same thing happens with the "oppose, doesn't have 500 CSD-taggings" serial-opposers at RFA. I suspect you remember those.) – iridescent 15:47, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Break 1: On nitpicking, general fixes and assessment

A slightly different take on it. Suppose I am a solid writer. I have a good article that reads well and looks good. I want to get it to FA. When I get to FA I discover that I have to redo all of the citations, add mdash, and a bunch of other trivial work. This might take me 40+ hours of work to get it to FA quality, particularly to meet the MOS expectations that most people never notice and don't really care about. Plus, there will be a few other people who spend 10+ hours doing clean up on their own. That's 50+ hours crossing t's and dotting i's. During that same time period I could have taken 2 or 3 other articles and raised the quality on them to a level that looks good. It then has a demoralizing effect. *I* don't plan to ever push an article to FA again. It isn't worth my time/energy---I'm not going to jump through those hoops. Some people have a gift for writing and a knack for this kind of perfectionism, most don't. Most people don't bother with FA's because the bar has been set so high that most won't try a second time. Thus, they stop when the article reaches GA. GA is good, but in all honesty, not good enough. Thus, because the bar is so high at FA, the project is hurt.---Balloonman 15:32, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I think you (Balloonman) and I are saying the same thing in different ways. A1 road* is just as useful (or useless) an article to the general reader whether or not it has a little star in the corner, and there are more useful things I could be doing with my life than listening to variations of "zOMG you put spaces around an em-dash!" for hours on end. And I agree that the FA bar has been raised insanely high insanely quickly; it's only four years since these were considered to be our best articles (all FAs in 2004). – iridescent 15:40, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

*Deliberately chosen as an example, as it epitomises the "boring topic which Britannica wouldn't touch with a bargepole" field where Misplaced Pages excels.

I think this is where experience is helpful. I've pushed enough articles to FA (and reviewed enough) that I know the formatting intricacies, and as I write I include all of that. It doesn't take more than a second to type an mdash instead of a hyphen, and when I'm done with writing the article it doesn't need any more additional time to fix the formatting. New to FAC users generally don't know these little tricks, though, and no one has figured out a good way to help train them. I would happily support any effort to have the MOS trimmed down to a more reasonable size so we could eliminate some of the sillier rules (no date autoformatting is going to save me a lot of typing time :)). Karanacs (talk) 15:46, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

This is a salient point, Balloonman. I spent 4 hours fixing all the citations in my first FA to ensure its promotion, and was confounded by constant issues of what could be considered excessive pickiness with punctuation problems. However, I consider my entire journey starting on Misplaced Pages with my first edit a transformation of thought. What I thought was possible within myself is vastly different from what I do today. That is possible because of what has been asked of me from excessive pickiness. Essentially, I think that FA may be the fork in the road for many editors. I withdrew my first FA for To Kill a Mockingbird, angry, stubborn, and quite overwrought because I had already done a ton of work for it, and really - the expectations for literature articles were unclear. That's not very fair, is it? However, the ensuing addition of material and tinkering to the article makes it, in my view, an extraordinary summary of material on a very important book. I might even go so far to say it could be ranked among the most comprehensive addresses on the novel available anywhere, and it's free to boot. When I started on Misplaced Pages, I had no idea I would call people, places, and institutions to track down a photo, a citation, or permission to post an image. I had no idea I would ever speak to Daniel Nicoletta or Harvey Milk's nephew, or discuss issues in the articles I write with professors and experts in the field. Editors have a choice when met by this fork in the road at FA. I took both. I got angry and sullen, felt sorry for myself, then I got angrier that I might be defeated, and I got really good. My expectations changed, and I think that's possible of all editors. I wonder sometimes if expectations that this is only a 💕 that anyone can edit hinders editors and admins. It could be the best source of excellent information anywhere, and it's written by the faceless masses of English-speaking people, rewarded by nothing more than their own curiosity and an occasional "attaboy". Individual editors have a choice to be challenged by FAC, to challenge it back, or choose to work on something else. When I wrote the four satellite articles about the Everglades, from scratch in a sandbox, I incorporated my previous mistakes into the writing style, emdashes and and all. Even User:Maralia was a bit adrift on not having to correct my citation foibles. --Moni3 (talk) 15:56, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

What I really wish is that we had a better defined and recognized process for A class articles. GA is really the opinion of one reviewer and the expectations there vary vastly. A class should be the next level up, but with few exceptions (such as Milhist) there is no formalized mechanism for granting A class articles. I think a lot of people would be motivated to get A class articles if we could figure out a means to do so. Actually, this raises an interesting idea... why don't we have FAC confer A class to articles that are almost there? Keep FA with it's ridiculously high expectations, which preserves FA for our truly outstanding articles, but start emphasizing the A class level. This would have a multi fold effect. First, it would get people motivated to work beyond the GA quality. Second, it would increase the prestige of the A class article. Third, it would get people exposed to the expectations at FAC. Fourth, people would be able to go to FAC and walk away with an A class article with guidance on the things that need to be done for FA. This would in turn, affect how they right in the future because more people would have positive experiences at FAC and more people would be exposed to the expectations.---Balloonman 16:15, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Break-in-a-break: On A-class articles, and assessment in general

I never really understood A-class or how it works. Quite aside from anything else, the C-B-GA-A progression makes no sense to me; every bit of my intuition screams out that the "lettered" steps on the pyramid should be below the "named" steps – every other hierarchy has the named set above the numbered set, from a deck of playing cards, to the Football League, to the Tarot. Plus, GA comes with the little green blobs and an application-and-validation process; you never see "this user has 5 A-class articles" on a userpage. – iridescent 00:53, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

With VERY few exceptions, A class doesn't exist in any meaningful manner. The only place where it has any weight (IMHO) is MILHIST. At MilHist it truly is the next step up from GA, but not quite FA. At MILHIST, you will nominate an article for A Class, and people will review it (unfortunately, it is insular and the people who will read it are all interested in MilHist.) In order to pass, it has to get 3 people to support it as A class. If FAC were to start awarding that class, when they deemed an article worthy, I think it would encourage people to show up there and learn the real expectations.---Balloonman 17:25, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

We don't have enough reviewers for FAs, and you want us to pass A-class too? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:28, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

It's not so crazy an idea; if one thinks of A class as "almost FA", then it would inevitably be the same people reviewing both, wherever the discussion took place. Were I designing Misplaced Pages from scratch, I'd have a single WP:Assessed content dishing out FA/A/GA, and abolish the meaningless B/C/Start distinction. Aside from anything else, it might end the willy-waving between GA and FA which has gone on as long as I've been here. – iridescent 18:47, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

As a fan of both FA and GA I'd welcome anything that put an end to the unproductive willy waving between the two, or at least reduced it to little more than friendly rivalry. I've admittedly been guilty of it myself in the past, or at least guilty of being a little over-tetchy in the face of criticisms of GA, but I still don't think unifying the two is the way to go. GA and FA have different aspirations and goals, each in their own way worthy, just different. I'd agree about abolishing the largely meaningless and arbitrary distinctions between B/C/Start though. In particular I think that whoever's bright idea the new C class was must have under the influence of narcotic substances when (s)he thought that was a good idea. --Malleus Fatuorum 19:03, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

After months of discussion over short articles, context, notability, et al, I'm talked out on process reform; someone should revive Mike Christie's Content Review Workshop (link escapes me at the moment) and hash away over there. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:07, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

If you want to name-and-shame everyone who thought C-class was a necessary change, here's your rogue's gallery. My personal opinion is that the assessment scale should be FA/GA/everything else, and that the whole assessment-scale thing was based on a need to assess articles for the CD release, which with the growth of the net is about as useful as feet on a fish. But what do I know? (FT2's "list of interests" on the assessment project page did raise a snigger in light of recent events, though.) – iridescent 19:15, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

What I am proposing is that if an article fails FAC, but is close that rather than a flat out "failed RfA" that said article MIGHT be promoted to A class. As A-Class isn't really well defined, this would be a way to add meaning to A Class. It would also help soften the blow of a failed RfA. How many people would walk away from FAC in a better mood if their efforts were acknowledged by moving to A class? Eg it is "almost there"---Balloonman 16:48, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I assume you mean FAC, not RFA… I think that's a good idea, personally; the FAC reviewers are certainly competent to judge, it wouldn't waste any time (since they're reviewing the article anyway), and it would avoid sploshing the ugly and demoralising "this article was nominated but failed…" template across quite so many talkpages. – iridescent 16:53, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Break 2: On strict compliance and sex with biscuits

A certain MfD has drawn me back sooner than I expected, so I've just seen this. A few points in no particular order. FAC has no mandate or authority to confer anything other than FA status on an article, and neither should it. With the notable exceptions of a few projects like military history, A class means rather little, and is often conferred by a single editor without any formal review whatsoever, so hardly a significant step up from the much-maligned GA. Even the Misplaced Pages:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment/A-Class criteria suggest only two reviewers, something that a number of GANs routinely and increasingly get anyway. GA is certainly awarded by a single reviewer, but that doesn't mean that there's only a single reviewer involved, or that the judgment of that reviewer can't be be challenged at WP:GAR; it frequently is. And of course GA, unlike A class, has a sweeps process to check on the quality of GA articles. All in all, I think GA is, in most cases, a far more credible goal than A class.

So far as FAC is concerned, like every other review process it suffers from a lack of reviewers. It also suffers from misconceptions, that it's inordinately skewed towards nitpicking at minor MoS issues for instance. As someone else said above, I've never seen an article fail to be promoted just because there were some MoS issues unaddressed. Also, very few (that includes reviewers) have apparently taken the trouble to read what the MoS actually says on a number of recurring themes, such as setting image sizes, or whether citations should be before or after the punctuation. It is not forbidden to specify image sizes, and the citations can be either before or after the punctuation so long as they are placed consistently throughout the article. Aside from the endemic lack of reviewers, the biggest problem I see at FAC is the rudeness of some of the comments made by reviewers. I saw an example earlier, which to paraphrase went along the lines of "I'm probably wasting my time in mentioning this, as it appears that the main editors do not understand their subject well enough to address this point, but ...". Comments like that, all too frequent at FAC, are hardly designed to creat a collegial, collaborative environment.

Sorry this turned out so long ... so much to say ... so little time. --Malleus Fatuorum 18:52, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

Nobody ever asked me for a black and white statement on my position about MOS, but if I had to issue one, it would read thusly: The phrase 'MOS breach' constitutes the ugliest two words ever used on Misplaced Pages.

I am constantly on the lookout for writers in the *precise* situation Balloonman described: if the writing is good and the content and sourcing are there, I don't give a rat's ass if the article is a hot mess from a MOS standpoint. I'll *happily* do shitty MOS work to get an article to FA because (1) I want to push a deserving article over the line but more importantly (2) I don't ever want technicalities to discourage a good writer. To that end, I often do MOS cleanup work directly on FAC articles myself, while trying to give lucid explanations for the same, gauged to the experience and frustration level of the nominator. Often, writing said explanations causes me to reevaluate my own interpretation and application of the minefield that is MOS, and I welcome that, because it is there after all to facilitate excellent articles, not to hamstring them. Yes, it takes a fair amount of work on my part, but it works, and it may be the most important thing I do on Misplaced Pages, because they come back for more. Sounds like I'm gearing up for a rant at WT:FAC, methinks. Maralia (talk) 18:59, 18 December 2008 (UTC)

I think Malleus (as usual) pretty much nails it, or at least inasmuch as I see the problem. The FAC process – like all our other allegedly broken processes was designed by and for people with an expectation that they'd have an in-depth knowledge of the policies involved. However, there are some people at FAC (and possibly even more so at GAC) who couple a strict "rules are there to be enforced" mentality with a lack of understanding of exactly what those rules say and what the legitimate reasons for disregarding them are. At the much-maligned GA, its pot luck as to who reviews the article so any given article has a good chance of avoiding these people; at FA level, so many people are involved that it's very likely that at least one "despite having a 25-1 aspect ratio there's no justification for forcing this image width" or "this book is not in my local library, therefore it is not a reliable source" opposer will latch onto any given candidate. (Not mentioning any names, but we all know them…)

Yes, Sandy will generally disregard things like this, but it's an unpleasant experience for anyone having their work ripped to shreds for no good reason – and to a newcomer who's not familiar with the personalities involved, they have no way of knowing which of the opposes are valid MOS concerns and which are petty nitpicking. As an example, take my Hellingly Hospital Railway article I referred to earlier. This would probably pass FA with very little work – although short, it covers every aspect of the topic to the extent that any non-specialist would ever want to know, and is stable, fully MOS-compliant and fully sourced/cited. Were it to go to peer review/FAC, however, I can pretty much guarantee that someone would complain about the citations not being Harvard-style, and probably also complain about the lack of images. While I know that neither of these are actually issues, a hypothetical new editor submitting this article wouldn't necessarily know this – or know the appropriate policy pages to check – and would potentially spend hours "fixing" things that don't need to be fixed. Like RFA, one well-timed "oppose" on an FAC can torpedo a candidacy by introducing doubts, whether or not the concerns are actually legitimate. – iridescent 17:50, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Hellingly Hospital Railway is in many ways a nice little article, and like you I've got an affection for articles on obscure topics like that. It's a way from FAC though, and not because of trivial issues like lack of images, image sizing, or MoS compliance. The lead, for instance ... but heck, you know that anyway. ;-) Where I think you are right is that the FAC process could be more supportive, or at least disallow candidates doomed to fail. The other side of the coin though is that articles shouldn't be taken to FAC to get fixed up, as that ties up the severely limited pool of reviewers ... is there any process on wikipedia that isn't broken in one way or another? --Malleus Fatuorum 01:05, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I know HHR wouldn't pass at present, which is why I said "with little work" and not "with no work" – you'll notice that I've not submitted it to FAC! – but I chose it as an example as the article of mine which is most in line with the MOS. There is method in how I choose my examples; of the Lordship Lane Tryptich of The Mall Wood Green, Bruce Castle and Broadwater Farm one would be ripped to shreds by Sandy, one has too many gaps, and one is a horse that's been flogged too often already today; the road articles are in many ways just long collections of stubs stuck together in a daisy-chain; the Hammerton's Ferry, National Police Memorial etc "trivial geography of Southeast England" series are all MOS-compliant, more or less, but are too short and boring to pass FAC, even though they all IMO say anything a reasonable person would want to know and any expansion would just be padding.

Just wait until I get Biscuit pornography written, and maybe I'll visit FAC; I would love to see this image on the Main Page, or at least the tortured arguments as to why it's unsuitable. (Yes, those are Oreos, Bourbons and Rich Teas; and yes, it's genuine. You probably don't want to open it at work, though, unless you want to get some very strange looks.) – iridescent 01:21, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Biscuit pornography? I'm obviously in the presence of a master, please forgive my untutored impudence. :lol: --Malleus Fatuorum 01:48, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Hey, if I managed to get a viable stub out of Cats That Look Like Hitler I'm sure I can get a viable biscuit-sex article up. IIRC, FAC never did agree on a minimum length, so provided the references all check out and the em-dashes are all in their proper places, I trust Sandy will wave it through. – iridescent 01:57, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

If anyone could do it, my money would be on you. Jammie Dodger sex featured in an episode of Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps after all, now I come to think of it. --Malleus Fatuorum 02:08, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Break 3: On unbroken processes and easing the way of newcomers

Well, I picked a fine time to be really sick; between here, WT:RFA, and Tony's thingie, that was a lot to read. I'm as struck by where the conversation is occurring as what is being said (and that I almost missed it all). But I suppose discussion at WT:FAC has become increasingly difficult in recent months. I'm always curious about this MoS notion, since most of us just dig in and fix those things ourselves when the article meets other criteria: a FAC is not going to fail on MoS issues or image sizes (although the shape that Acid association constant article was in the first time it came through might have made me eat my words). Yep, the biggest issue at FAC right now is lack of reviewers. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:21, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

The original conversation is at WT:RFA and was about whether "Successful FAC nomination" should lead to an automatic sysopping (read WP:WBFAN and just look at some of the names there to see why I don't support this idea). The only reason this has spilled over onto my talkpage is because Moni was questioning a point I made in the original discussion ("the strict compliance with WP:MOSIMAGE which some FAC reviewers insist on can reduce the usefulness of an article by rendering detailed images unusable"), and this has somehow spiralled from here. This is usually a "Giano topic" – as you know, I have virtually no dealings with FAC and most of my articles are brief railway stubs that would never come onto a reviewer's radar, and this is a subject he can go on about at very…great…length – but the last thing he needs at the moment is more drama. (Administering yet another beating to a much-flogged dead horse, but if you look at Talk:Broadwater Farm or the history of the article, you'll see exactly the "MoS notion" in action, with assorted letter-of-the-law people resizing images like the one shown at the right down to unusable sizes – there's also plenty of one of my least favorite misunderstandings-of-the-way-Misplaced Pages-works, "clean up; removing redlinks". As I'm trying to say somewhere in the morass above, I know and you know and all the current participants in this conversation know which concerns are genuinely significant and which are petty nitpickings or misunderstandings of the MoS on the reviewer's part, but a relative newcomer unfamiliar with FAC won't know what they can disregard – and will possibly also be intimidated by some of the personalities involved – and feel they need to "fix" every issue raised, whether or not it's to the detriment of the article.) – iridescent 15:29, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

On the notion that anyone who writes an FA should be automatically sysopped, reference Archtransit (talk · contribs) for but one example. I can't recall who put that notion forward in all the catching up I had to do yesterday, but it's misguided on many counts. The curious thing to me about the idea that FAC is a MoS-nitpicking den of evil is that I've seen so much more of that kind of silliness in other processes and from non-FAC editors, so I'm unsure why we get the bad rap. Yes, there's a danger that new nominators may be intimidated, but usually the "regulars" chime in with a voice of moderation at FAC when unreasonable demands are made. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:41, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I can explain where I think the notions that FAC and RFA are full of nitpickers comes from; it's that everyone coming to them has invested a lot of work (I personally think we should get rid of the whole "triple crown", WP:WBFAN high-score table mentality, but it's not gonna happen), and they both have enough people participating that the chances of meeting at least one nitpicker is fairly high. For the sake of argument suppose User:Well Intentioned Newcomer submits at article to FAC which is broadly compliant but contains some niggling stylistic problems. Once it gets there:

• Malleus quietly cleans up the typos but reserves commenting on the FAC;
• Moni quietly checks out the images but reserves commenting on the FAC;
• Tony quietly standardises the units of measurement but reserves commenting on the FAC;
• Ealdgyth quietly checks out the references but reserves commenting on the FAC;
• User:Nitpicker posts "Oppose, I cannot support an article that uses the unicode ½ character when the MOS clearly states {{frac|1|1|2}} is the preferred format, if the author can't even be prepared to read WP:MOSNUM I don't know what they're doing here".

Which of the above is likely to stick in the nominator's mind? – iridescent 16:00, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, but. It's a Wiki; how can we fix that? (Share your sentiments on Triple Crown, but think that WBFAN has some usefulness when it's not misapplied, although it frequently is. Triple Crown, on the other hand, encourages those problematic award-seeking types through other processes that receive less scrutiny than an article does at FAC.) (By the way, I used to try to intercede, and quickly, whenever I saw unreasonable demands being made at FAC, but of late, anything I say has been twisted, so I've stayed out more often, leaving intercession to others.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:08, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Hopefully the response from Moni citing the Giano essay, telling the opposer that it probably took as long to write the oppose as it would have taken to fix that thing, and prodding him to give an opinion on the whole article. Even if I miss it, which I tend to do sometimes, there is an element in the nominator that I hope shows through, that s/he may realize some FACers are pulling for the article, and some are picky. --Moni3 (talk) 16:16, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Since I'm still fever-ish and still catching up, pls toss me a cluestick if we're talking in generalities or about a specific current FAC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:22, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

AFAIK we're just talking in generalities – I certainly don't have a particular one in mind.

The process isn't fixable, in the sense that there's nothing really wrong with it, but I think a lot of the "nitpicky" perception of FAC/RFA could be cleared up were some of the more pedantic commentators dealt with more harshly (which is possible – witness how much saner RFA has got since Kurt and Majorly stopped using it as a wrestling ring). Also, whether or not it's true, a lot of people see you (plural) as an elite, and take criticism from FAC reviewers more seriously than they would from a passing editor; I'd very strongly support a realistic "what to expect" guide for those coming to FAC for the first time, either as nominators or reviewers, to make people realise that these are normal people, not the Misplaced Pages Gods casting thunderbolts from ivory tower somewhere. (That cuts both ways; remember how annoyed Tony got when people were hassling him for not cleaning their articles up fast enough?) As I say above, while I generally agree with Giano's essay, in this section I think he's writing from the perspective of someone familiar with the personalities involved, and underestimates how off-putting it can be to have something you've put a lot of work into nit-picked over for trivial reasons, especially when all the barnstars-and-crowns culture has possibly given one an exaggerated level of respect for said critic, and where people may be reluctant to argue with people perceived as "special". (A lot of people would be afraid to argue with you or Raul, for example, even were they to think you were clearly incorrect – instead, they'd just go off and sulk. This isn't unique to FAC by any means, but is a symptom of an exaggerated respect for "authority" on Misplaced Pages - look at the way this guy's tone suddenly changes when he notices the "This user is an administrator on the English Misplaced Pages".) Something Dereks1x/Archtransit does deserve credit for is the fact that he stood up to a particularly withering barrage of nitpicking without snapping.

The exact same thing happens at the other area with this reputation, RFA – Moni, Karanacs and Malleus all had some fine ridiculous opposes, which were they made on a talkpage would have barely drawn any attention but in the heated context can lead to grudges, long-running grievances, and a general distaste for the whole process. (I'm still full of righteous indignation over the "oppose, candidate is an advocate for newspeak" on mine, more than a year later.) Again, this is another process that will never be "fixed" because of the inertia of seven years of history and the lack of viable alternatives. – iridescent 16:35, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Break-in-a-break: On a putative FAC guide and the Misplaced Pages Elite

On the "realistic 'what to expect' guide", couldn't agree more, had it half composed in my head for a Dispatch until a series of things derailed my time, and issues at WT:FAC convinced me that I should consider taking more of a backseat. I 'spose I could still try to write it, after the holidays, but alternately, it may be better for me to be more hands off, as Raul was/is, and let the community sort things. If I write it, it continues your "A lot of people would be afraid to argue with you or Raul, for example, ... " problem. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:44, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

If I had to propose someone to write it, my nominees would be Giano and Malleus; there are uncontacted tribes in the Amazon rainforest whose only knowledge of Western civilisation is that Giano is not part of the Misplaced Pages Elite. Some of the other long-term damned editors familiar with the process (SlimVirgin, Bishonen…) could probably contribute usefully to it; I'd envisage the end product looking like a cross between a shortened version of Giano's essay and Balloonman's How to pass an RfA walkthrough. – iridescent 16:51, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't understand this "afraid to argue with X or Y" mindset, but p'raps that's just me. --Malleus Fatuorum 16:54, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd write that. Having no idea who is in the Misplaced Pages Elite, I don't think I'm in it. Rather, I consider it a shared delusion perception among people who wish they could be considered in it, and people who label themselves as such in order to further an agenda. --Moni3 (talk) 16:57, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Wiki Elite?  :-) I went from having the power of the Oppose button (as a FAC reviewer) to the glorified bean counter, yet "they" think I'm in the "elite" :-) Did I ask for that? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:00, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

The "Misplaced Pages Elite" is any combination of two or more people who disagree with you on whatever your pet topic happens to be. Have none of you ever read the Misplaced Pages Review? – iridescent 17:06, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

WR, are you kidding? I wouldn't be caught dead around the likes of that Obesity fellow. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:09, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Hey, WR loves me: "Iridescent clearly has an intelligent attitude , so if she's posting here, I'd like to personally flag her posts with a mental note of additional respect." – Greg Kohs – iridescent 17:13, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Dead link alert. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:20, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Live, but in one of the sooper-sekrit members-only fora. – iridescent 17:22, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

For the elite only? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:24, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Or "irredeemable", if you follow the WP:BADSITES line. Since I still lag well behind NYB, Cool Hand Luke and Alison on post-count, I'm not going to be too concerned. (FWIW, I think WR serves a valuable purpose in highlighting where we go wrong, and I also think a lot of the "exiles" there do have genuine grievances against WP – we do have a very unappealing habit here of treating anything we don't want to hear as "incivility" and issuing hairtrigger blocks on the flimsiest of WP:IDONTLIKEYOU pretexts.) – iridescent 17:31, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I don't either; could be that I'm still at half mast and shouldn't even be posting, or could be that I'm obtuse. But I think Iri is saying that we don't understand because we're accustomed, while it's very offputting to newcomers. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:58, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

← (Outdent, re to Sandy) Yes – and I'm not singling FAC out. It's no worse or better a process than most others; it's just that we forget just how confusing Misplaced Pages is to a newcomer. For all that people still talk about "ease-of-use" and "all you need to know is WP:FIVE and WP:TRIFECTA", in reality not only are we a site that uses a unique markup and syntax system, but we expect strict compliance from all users with this laundry list, a reasonable expectation of compliance with this mutually contradictory mess, plus whatever arbitrary guidelines the WikiProjects decide to impose; said compliance is then imposed by a bunch of admins, many of whom don't understand the policies themselves (we have over 200 guidelines alone; can you honestly say you've read all of them?), and consequently fall back on "I'm an admin, do as I say or you're not here to build an encyclopedia", with the usual foul-tempered consequences. The problem has more of an impact at FAC because the people coming to you have generally invested more time and effort than the cut-and-paste-from-Myspace articles on bands I delete by the shedload, so you're more likely to get negative blowback. If everyone nominating to FAC received a boilerplate template on their talkpage along the lines of "People are going to say some things that seem really nasty; most of them are genuinely trying to help, and if you really feel someone's being genuinely disruptive then talk it over with someone experienced with the process: here is a list of people who will be willing to help discuss these issues" then I think it would improve the process.

I do appreciate that I'm being somewhat hypocritical, in that I'm commentating on a process in which I never take part and on an experience I've never gone through. In an ideal world, these concerns would all be raised at peer review so the nominators would be immune to criticism by the time it reached FAC (and articles likely to attract criticism would never reach FAC), but in practice peer review looks to be following Requests for feedback down the lack-of-participants slippery slope. – iridescent 18:31, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Your comments are not hypocritical; they are thought provoking. My replies are terse because I'm seriously still under the weather. The forum for writing something to address all of this is WP:FCDW. Someone needs to do it. (I spent my first many many months on Wiki with a note on my user page saying something to the effect of "who wrote the user manual for this thing"). Wiki needs a major simplification across many pages, including MoS, but I've been singing that tune for years and no one can or will do anything about it. On the other hand, we devoted months of energy, discussion and procedures to getting dates delinked. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:37, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

That's because it takes months of discussion to get ANYTHING done on Misplaced Pages. If several other organizations I was involved with weren't just as disfunctional, I'd worry more. (waves at Iri!) I used to have time to do a once a week pass through Peer Review looking at sourcing for anythign that said it was headed to FAC, but right now, time is at a premium. I like to think helping out at PR helped some over at FAC, but I just can't do it alone, it's hard enough to get the sourcing stuff done at FAC. As a rule, Wiki needs more people who pay attention to content and less to the drama of the moment. Ealdgyth - Talk 20:04, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Wait until Flagged Revisions goes through; then all the IPs will stop vandalising and decide to start writing articles instead. Hey, it could happen…

In all seriousness, it's possible that the resounding kicking the "old guard" got in the Arbcom elections could finally provide the nudge that sends the "Spirit of 2001 for ever!" Usenet and Nupedia Alte Kämpfers out of Misplaced Pages, freeing up the way for some major rewriting of policy and rethinking of the purpose of Misplaced Pages. (Unbundling the admin tools, anyone?) Jimmy Wales's giving way on the topic of flagged revisions, despite the wails of the "anyone can edit means anyone should edit" brigade, is a hopeful sign.

Sometimes, it's hard to avoid the drama of the moment. As Sandy can testify, once you reach a certain level of visibility, then like it or not the drama comes looking for you. – iridescent 22:43, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

A whole new experience…

The phrase "U r prolly a virgin too. LOL I get laid 8 times a day."… A 70kb thread with what appears to be the whole of FAC commenting on it… A torrent of abuse from someone I've never heard of before… A fairly blatant troll account trying to start an argument about religion and sexuality… I feel like the winner of a competition to be Giano for the day. – iridescent 22:43, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Ah, aren't you lucky! (grins) Ealdgyth - Talk 22:45, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

What was the second prize? Being Giano for two days? :lol: --Malleus Fatuorum 22:58, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

There's a fairly obvious contender for second prize… At least two Certain Editors haven't decided to grace my talkpage with their wisdom yet. – iridescent 23:00, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm no good at puzzles Iridescent. I was thoroughly confused by that recent Guido de Brueder(?) episode, and still don't understand what happened there. --Malleus Fatuorum 23:05, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

As I understand it, he posted the results of an "experiment" he'd been conducting on his userpage; someone removed it; he came to ANI to complain; someone took a closer look and realised the "experiment" consisted of systematically inserting misinformation into articles to see how long it would last, leading to him being blocked.

Disclaimer: I was not involved in this, didn't follow it particularly closely, and don't know if it's true or not. The DRV – with links to all the other places the debate took place – is here, if you want to try to make sense of it. – iridescent 23:11, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Maybe it changed, I don't know, or maybe I need to get new glasses, but about half-way through the AN report I started to read Giano, not Guido. It's clear what happened now, although I don't agree with it. Fault injection is a well-established practice in software engineering, for instance. --Malleus Fatuorum 23:40, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes but… I think (again, with that "I don't know all the circumstances" disclaimer) that Guido did himself no favours with his "I am submitting a full report on the failings of Misplaced Pages to the United Nations" posturing; he also, outside the bounds of the "experiment", had a history of frankly nutty obsessiveness with policy minutiae; my sole interaction with him AFAIK was in a batshit-insane dispute over whether "2009 will be a common year starting on Thursday" needed a citation. ("Technically, it violates WP:CRYSTAL, as the world might end before then".) Anyway, I think we get more than enough faults injected already! – iridescent 23:51, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

WTF just happened?

Could you take a look at this?, I gave him a warning for systemically altering genres in the infobox of music articles. His reply shows that he has no clue when it comes to policy, that's not the concern, it's the link to Godhatesfag's.com that alarms me. — Realist 17:34, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

I would hope that he thought he was pasting a link to something else but accidentally hit ctrl-c on the wrong page and pasted the wrong link in (I've certainly done that in my time). My first thought when I saw that was {{voa}}, but a look over his history shows that he's generally making legitimate edits. See if he gives a legitimate explanation. – iridescent 17:40, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

His explanation thus far is I felt like adding a source, I just took the notion, and that was the first website I thought of. Really random, he doesn't have a history of being a troll as far as I can see. However it seems he did want to add the link and follows up with "god bless you". A really bad joke or something more sinister, who knows...We should give him more chance to expand upon his explanation though. — Realist 17:46, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Either way, to Iridescent's reply, he still might have been surfing through the page, and as much as I doubt God is a Mac gamer, I doubt he hates fags. As a matter of fact, gay men and women have been found to have longer cerebellums, which actually make them think to be homosexual, and God made them that way. Not implying that I believe in Christian beliefs that God made every person before conception, just that if that were so, He would not hate 'fags'. Alex Bieser (talk) 20:35, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

There may be a suitable place for this. My talkpage is not it. – iridescent 23:01, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, my intention when bringing this to Irids talk page was not to start some religion/political/social debate. Please don't. — Realist 00:09, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

An extremely boring and eminently deletable question & suggestion

Hi Iridescent. I was drawn here by your reduced-font-size metacomment on FACs within Tony's splendid let's-machine-gun-the-admins conspiracy page.

I too am dismayed on the (very rare) occasion when I receive a generic wikilurv template or similar. They make my flesh creep and I certainly can't bring myself either to respond as I presume is hoped or to pass on or spread the lurv. So I'd like to have a warning similar to that under which I am now typing my eminently boring and deletable etc. Pardon my iggernance, but how's it done? (Just give me the link to a page that explains.)

Secondly, your CSS or other hocus pocus results in any reply to any question posted here coming out in a typeface that (at least on the computer I happen to be using right now) is peculiarly unattractive and difficult to read. (More likely this computer is not rendering the intended face because it lacks it, and is substituting something horrible). Of course I could cavalierly override all your settings, but that seems a pity: I'd lose the going-livid-with-rage background color and the other delights of your talk page. -- Hoary (talk) 03:30, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

User talk:Hoary/Editnotice --Closedmouth (talk) 05:17, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Neat-o. Thank you. And as for the irritation, I'm now using my main machine (set up two years ago as opposed to eight) and everything's in the same very legible typeface. -- Hoary (talk) 10:48, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

What font are you seeing? It should be displaying in Tahoma – which was deliberately chosen as (a) it's more "compact" than the variations of Arial/Helvetica/Univers that most browsers default to and (b) it's part of the basic font-set for all versions of Windows, all Apple products and is automatically installed with MS Word, so should display correctly on anything from Win 3.1 to an iPod; in the (unlikely) event you don't have Tahoma installed, it should just default to whatever your default proportional browser font is. Is anyone else having problems with this? If so, let me know – it's a matter of seconds to change it. – iridescent 15:37, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

I'll take a look later. That first machine is the only one I use that has Windows; it's Win2k, which refuses to die or even (probably because it's only connected to the net for short periods) to get infected with malware. The article here on Tahoma says that it comes with Win2k and even is the default sans-serif font; all I can say offhand is that it's not my setting for default s-s font within Firefox, which is my main browser on that machine. This (second, main) machine is running Kubuntu and I've never bothered to install Tahoma on it. I suppose you're doing this with CSS, and Tahoma as first choice and unspecified sans serif as last choice; if so, I fear that the problem (for my one machine) is Tahoma rather than its absence. -- Hoary (talk) 04:24, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Tahoma it is. I'm now using my Windows antique. (Gratuitous plug for the pricier Toshiba machines, or at least the older ones: this Toshiba "Portégé 7200" has outlasted two or three computers used by the missus -- one of them a Toshiba "Satellite" -- and one of my own floortops. About half a square centimetre at each corner of the screen is dingy and little hairs poke up from between the keys; otherwise, it seems as good as new. Even the white lettering is fully legible on all but two of the keytops. When this one eventually dies, I'd happily buy a replacement from Toshiba -- except that I'd have great difficulty paying money for some MS OS that I'd replace with Debian.) The computer has "Tahoma (OpenType) Version 2.80. Typeface and data © 1995-1999 Microsoft Corporation". I created a little "web" file of my own with CSS directing that all should be in Tahoma as the first choice and generic serif (no, not sans-serif) as the second. The result is similar to my view of your page, though at a greater point size. Many letter pairs (e.g. "ur") almost touch, and "th" and "tb" actually do touch. Simply, this screen font (or anyway this version of it) has so great a contrast of letter widths, and so little space between letters, that it's a lot worse than the default. -- Hoary (talk) 15:27, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I've experimentally changed it to Verdana, which is the most "generic" font family there is; what are you seeing now? I prefer keeping it as "Tahoma first choice, default font as second choice" – I think the Tahoma and Trebuchet families are the most legible for lengthy on-screen reading, but a lot of computers don't have Trebuchet installed. I'm wondering whether someone somewhere has a fiddly sig that's confusing your browser, if it's one of the old ones with a "maximum number of font changes per page" setup. – iridescent 15:34, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm now seeing text which is easy to read. Thank you! (I've never heard of a browser that gets tired of font changes, though some browsers of course have a limited tolerance for the tag soup that's pandemic in web pages.) -- Hoary (talk) 15:50, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

On second thoughts, let's take out the font altogether. That way people can specify what they want it to be. Hell, there might be someone who likes the MediaWiki defaults. – iridescent 16:33, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Requested move of Québécois

Hello, since you participated in the AfD debate on this article, I'm contacting you in case you might like to comment on a move I've requested to Québécois (word). You can comment at Talk:Québécois#Requested move. Joeldl (talk) 05:37, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

That was two years ago!!!. No strong opinion, but whatever you propose be prepared to be shouted at by angry Canadians. – iridescent 15:38, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

RE: Rollback

I am fully aware already that this was an incorrect rollback.

Unfortunatly the grammer differences between alumni and alumnus through me off a little.

I have already apologised to the user who made the edit.

Also i do not belive that all ip edits are vandals. However i do find that most vandal edits are made by anonymous users. This however does not effect the way i treat edits. Kira Chinmoku (talk) 17:57, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

No problem… As a rule, if you're not sure something is vandalism, don't revert it. If it's vandalism, someone else will spot it (particularly once Flagged revisions goes live). – iridescent 18:01, 20 December 2008 (UTC)

Round 2

OK, the latest story is, Jackson has a rare lung condition, is near blind in one eye and on the verge of death. Again, one newspaper is reporting it and other sources are reporting on the primary sources claim. Jackson's people have not commented. This could be another nightmare in the waiting. — Realist 17:29, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Is the newspaper reliable? If it's the New York Times, it probably at least warrants an "in December 2008, it was reported…"; if it's a supermarket tabloid, MediaWiki:Editnotice-0-Michael Jackson may need to come out of retirement. – iridescent 17:33, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Aah, it's Rolling Stone, which might actually be an RS on music-related issues. Anyone watching this talkpage have an opinion on this? – iridescent 17:35, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Is it Rolling Stone or not, I couldn't make heads or tails of it. It's coming from someone who used to work for Rolling Stone, but he's writing a book on Michael Jackson and is making these allegations which will appear in the upcoming book. I can hear the cash register now. — Realist 17:39, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Ian Halperin is writing it, he looks like he has some good credentials behind him...but seems to have gone...down market in recent years. Anyone who has anything to do with Court TV should come under scrutiny, they made a lot of money out of portraying Jackson as a beast during the trial. — Realist 17:47, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I'm really not sure about this one. A couple of threads up from this you have virtually the whole of WP:FAC, so one of them may be able to advise as to the reliability of sourcing on something like this, or Lara might be able to advise. My gut instinct is to fall back on WP:NOTNEWS and leave it for a couple of days; either he'll issue a press statement (or be photographed in hospital etc) or he won't, or an indisputably reliable source (by Misplaced Pages's standards; having watched one of their crews fabricate a story when nobody would speak to them, certainly not mine) like the BBC will pick it up. Unfortunately, the IPs are not always so patient. – iridescent 18:02, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

And neither are all of the reliable sources ;-)---Balloonman 18:04, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Having had the unfortunate experience of having the BLP-hell that is Mary Lou Lord on my watchlist, I'm inclined to discount anything coming from the author of a book called Love & Death: The Murder of Kurt Cobain. (If anyone wants to take up watching MLL, do feel free; I've long ago washed my hands of that one.) – iridescent 18:11, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I'd say... wait and see. If it's just ONE person saying this, it starts smelling of rumor mongering. If Rolling Stone or someone else had picked it up, you could do the "According to ..." route, but a single author, with no backup, calls for "wait and see". (See! Being talkpagemonitored by FAC is paying off!) Ealdgyth - Talk 18:20, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I have hesitation whenever someone tries to profit financially, which is almost always the case with Jackson. Hopefully he will issue a statement soon, he's usually upfront and open when it comes to his past health issues. Frankly I'm gutted if it is the truth. I've watched this guy overcome almost unimaginable person issues; child abuse, drug addition, vitiligo (yes there's photographic proof for the haters), certain depression, other mental health issues, weight problems, 2 allegations of child molestation, one trial played out before billions of people, 20 years of tabloid crap (for the most part). None of that got him! Yet some lung illness that he can't control might get him? Darn, it was fun watching him stick two fingers up to every obstacle. He makes Elvis's and Kurt Cobain's problems look insignificant (all due respect to them guys BTW). — Realist 18:24, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, I think Elvis and Kurt Cobain would happily trade with him on the "not being dead" part… – iridescent 18:36, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, true. Oh well, we will soon find out. This could be a long Christmas and I'm hoping I get a PS3 for Christmas and won't want to be writing about this over the festive season. :-( — Realist 18:57, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

It would solve the BLP problem, though – iridescent 19:05, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

I've always believed that most BLP issues should extend to dead people actually... — Realist 19:22, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Dead people can't sue. ;-) --Malleus Fatuorum 19:29, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

OTRS

Misplaced Pages:OTRS says "The contents of e-mails handled by OTRS members are confidential." Unless you are actually privy to the information leading up to the agreements made ... One can certainly question, whether your recent posts are productive and/or professional. --Law Lord (talk) 23:08, 21 December 2008 (UTC)