Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 22:20, 25 May 2006

This talk page is probably the best way to get in touch with me. If I've blocked you, or an IP address you edit from, I will have your talk page (which you can still edit) on my watch list, so you can reply to me there, though obviously that might take a little while. If you need my attention in a hurry, you can try getting hold of me at the #wikipedia IRC channel. I welcome email but I don't check it very frequently, so IRC or the talk page will probably work best. Please add new sections in the normal manner (+) and sign notes within sections; I copy my reply here as well as to your talk page. I prefer your replies, if applicable, to appear here. Thanks for visiting!

Archive

• Archived 13 March 2005
• Archived 22 April 2005
• Archived 20 May 2005
• Archived 13 Oct 2005
• Archived 11 Dec 2005
• Archived 26 Jan 2006

Question

Hi Demi, My name is Jason. Your name just came up in a discussion. We were talking about Mark K. Bilbo and whether or not his entry should include a controversy section or simply a sentence about his offensive remarks to Christians on usenet. Bilbo is known for hosting the alt.atheism (alt-atheism.org) newsgroup web site. Now, I've provided 11 links from his usenet posts that show his offensive nature and someone used your name in conjunction with his opinion that those statements are inadmissible when it comes to Bilbo's entry. Is this really what you were intending or really what you said? Perhaps you can join us on the talk page. Thanks for your time. --Jason Gastrich 00:06, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Since the article is about me, I've been trying to stay out of this. But I'm finally getting tired of watching Gastrich and his ax grinding. Folks around here need to realize that Gastrich and I have a history outside Misplaced Pages beginning with one of his forays into alt.atheism to "minister" to the atheists. The climax probably being when he swiped a list of newsgroup regulars off the alt-atheism.org website and used it as a "prayer list" on his own site even after I'd blocked him from access to my website and without permission of the list owner/maintainer. What you may also not realize is that "Uncle Davey" is a friend of Gastrich and that's part of the reason for the Gastrich tirade over my (alleged) Usenet posts.

I did not ask for there to be an article about me here and I definitely do not want to see such a thing used as a platform for Gastrich's personal grudge against me. I would rather the article be deleted. Mark K. Bilbo 16:15, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Arbitration accepted

Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/WebEx and Min Zhu has been accepted. Please place evidence at Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/WebEx and Min Zhu/Evidence. Proposals and comments may be placed at Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/WebEx and Min Zhu/Workshop. Fred Bauder 01:30, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

noinclude tags

I saw on Jdavidb's talk page that the noinclude tags are thrown into the article wholesale when subst: is used - is that really correct? Is this something that can be fixed in MediaWiki (or hopefully has been)? -- nae'blis _(talk) 22:18, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

(copied to talk page):

No, they don't. I'm not sure why I had the idea that <noinclude/> somehow disrupted subst: usage; maybe I saw one of those templates saying "This template isn't suitable for use with subst: and made a wrong assumption. Demi /_C 00:38, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Ahhh okay, thanks for the clarification! -- nae'blis _(talk) 02:18, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Further information: You may not have been completely incorrect; either someone was misusing templates by copy-pasting them, or something, but I just removed about 7 "noinclude/Category:User warning templates" messages from anon talk pages. Huh. -- nae'blis _(talk) 16:25, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

A poem and a thanks for Demi

Roses are red
Violents are blue
All my bases
Are belong to you

Is it original? No. I stole the words from Bash.org, to which you introduced me. But it's heartbreaking in its pathos and its sincerity, as is the thanks I now offer for your support for my adminship. I promise to be as good an admin as I can, to never turn rouge , and should there be any way I can help you with anything, consider me at your beck and call! Thanky thanky, Babajobu 00:10, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

WP:RFAR

You write: "The fact is that these privilege wars (and there are many other examples, edit wars over the interface pages come to mind) seem to be becoming more common, and everyone involved thinks a) they are absolutely in the right and b) some kind of emergency exists that prevents us from tolerating the suboptimal situation for even a moment longer."

I agree that this was true in the case of one deletion. I did indeed think that the page in question should be deleted as soon as possible. On the other stuff I was involved in, something else seemed to be happening. I was for the most part undeleting an article during an ongoing AfD, and allowing the article to remain deleted would have prevented people properly participating in the AfD. It seems to me that in both cases the overriding purpose of the other parties for engaging in warring was that they wished to impose their own concept of process (Geogre, who was involved in warring on Warren Benbow, has explicitly stated that undeletions, even of speedies, must be discussed first on VFU , though I don't know whether he still holds this to be the case). --Tony Sidaway|Talk 10:44, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Subpage

Were you aware of this page?

User talk:Demi/Wikipedia is not a reference to fictional worlds

I just came across it when checking "Special:Allpages" for subpages of my own user page. - dcljr (talk) 10:55, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

(copied from talk page)

I hadn't seen that page--thanks for pointing it out! I found another, too, when I went to look. Demi /_C 17:00, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

UK Internet for Learning IP block

I have just stumbled on your research at Misplaced Pages:Administrators'_noticeboard/IncidentArchive54#Recent_activity while trying to find out what has or can be done to deal with the massive amount of vandalism coming from the IP block 62.171.194.0 - 62.171.194.45 (owned by Research Machines/IFL up to 62.171.195.255, though no vandalism seems to be coming from the rest) which is the network for a school or several schools in the UK. You originally suggested that users be blocked individually for a few hours at a time. The vandalism seems to have died down during the holiday break but now is coming back in full force (except for the weekends). In particular, there have been some especially nasty edits like subtle word changes (bonds to bondage on Three Gorges Dam) and numerical changes (33% to 37% on Asch conformity experiments) that weren't caught for days and that I only caught because I was checking for vandalism from these users. This is in addition to countless incidents of blanking and childish vandalism, dozens happening just today (the 10th) during school hours.

Most of these IP addresses have been blocked 5-15 times, and it doesn't seem to be doing the trick. In fact, the vandals probably don't even notice they have been blocked most of the time. I propose blocking anonymouse users from the whole set (about .5 - .45) indefinitely, and allowing only valid user accounts (there is at least one administrator who accesses his user account from this range). Is this possible? I would hate to see dozens of people working hours each day to chase down and revert the changes these IP addresses make, not to mention the many harmful edits that might make it through unnoticed.

I am a relatively new user to Misplaced Pages and am not sure if there is a good process to go about dealing with vandalism from schools, but it seems to me it is not worth the effort to continually warn, re-warn, block temporarily, and repeat. There must be a better way. I thought about adding this to Administrator alerts but as you have had prior experience dealing with this and done great research, I would consult you first.

Thank you. Please respond on my talk page if you can! -- Renesis13 23:33, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

(copied from talk page)

You wrote:

I propose blocking anonymouse users from the whole set (about .5 - .45) indefinitely, and allowing only valid user accounts (there is at least one administrator who accesses his user account from this range). Is this possible?

Unfortunately it is not. When an IP range is blocked all edits from the range are blocked, including editors with user accounts. I was on the fence before about blocking the whole range, the fact that there is an admin editing from the range as well as an increase in vandalism. I would like other people's attention--would it be possible for you to copy the discussion out of the archive and bring it up on WP:AN/I again? Thanks so much for looking into it. Demi /_C 23:40, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

I have added this to the WP:ANI - (direct link). Thank you for your response and suggestion. You might also like to know that there has been much vandalism again in the last 7 hours :( -- Renesis13 15:59, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Template talk:US-airport

Hi, Demi. I saw your comments in Template talk:US-airport and request that you reconsider before your independent voice weighs the scale. The site in question is not really a resource like the other sites in the template. However, it is an incomplete and largely commercial advertising service for charter services that is surrounded by other forms of advertising. Additionally, it only has hand-entered data on a handful of airports whereas the template is used by every US airport, so the majority of the links yield no results. Any wikipedia user clicking the links would end up wading through advertisements and confusion rather than a genuine resource. You do qualify your remarks by saying "At first blush" and I'd appreciate you taking another look since this is clearly a case of commercial link spamming on a pretty wide scale. Thanks. Dbchip 21:41, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

(copied from talk page)

Thanks for the comments. I followed the link from my local airport, which is quite small, and the resulting information seemed useful. I don't have much of an interest in whether the link stays or goes, but I prefer to do so on the merits of the information itself rather than the perceived motives of the site operators. Therefore, I think your comments would actually be more helpful as a response on the template's talk page rather than mine--do you mind if I move them there? Or perhaps you would prefer to do so? Thanks again. Demi /_C 21:50, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

DYK

Did you know? has been updated. A fact from the article bat ray, which you recently created, has been featured in that section on the Main Page. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the "Did you know?" talk page.

RFC enforcement

I've created Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Enforcement in response to the comments on WP:AAP that RFC may need some kind of enforcement. I'd appreciate your opinion on this. Radiant_>|< 14:36, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

Bat ray

(Moved comment ("from commons talk page to here)

You're letting your ego get in the way of a good article again, Demi. It is common practice in cartography to exaggerate small ranges on world maps when they would not be seen otherwise. The Bat ray world map you created shows nothing at the scale used in the article. With my map, the article was front page news, but not with the goofy grey thing you have there now. --Jamal al din 20:04, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

Please stop PERVERTING Template:User antifa

If you were a halfway decent person, much less a halfway decent administrator, you would actually bother to look at the antifa userbox and see that it's been vandalized - that is, Silence (and now you) have repeatedly put an icon of Hitler-worship on it. I'll agree to a change in wording - I will not abide by an act of vandalism and censorship.

And I would warn you in the future to stop acting like a Neville Chamberlain in granting impunity to known racists and fascists while forcing better minded people to fight back with one arm tied behind their back. --Daniel 21:50, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Hello

No hard feelings towards your block although you could have been a little nicer. ;) But thanks for responding and you can stop "watching me" now. Thank you. --a.n.o.n.y.m 21:53, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

(copied to talk page):

Thank you, I do appreciate it. I am sorry if I sounded snarky. Cheers! Demi /_C 21:59, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Unfair Blocking Complaint

I will post here the same text I posted to WikiEN-l mailing list in search of answers: -- 68.50.103.212 10:01, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Context

This concerns the article Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/United States Congress, within the subsection "The established conduct methods have not been used." This section erroneously states "Both the Senate and the House have established ethics bodies which, so far as I can see, have not yet been used in an attempt to resolve this matter." (only members of the respective body can refer matters to the ethics committee)

Background

I possibly erroneously removed this . User:Kim Bruning reverted my changes reminding me not to delete comments from an RFC. I then corrected myself moving the erroneous text to the discussion page , explaining "Comments are misguided and statements are blatantly false, moved to talk." User:Kim Bruning immediately reverted my changes, ignoring my comment and saying "RV political vandalism. Please watch, block" I later reminded Kim that this was not vandalism and again moved the erroneous material to the discussion page , and explained "These comments are in the talk area and contain factually incorrect accusations. please do not revert again (3RR)."

Blocked

Administrator User:Demi then unilaterally intervened and blocked me for 12 hours with the brief explanation of "Repeatedly removing valid comments from RFC." I believed this was an abuse of administrative privileges. I do not see how was in violation of any Misplaced Pages policy. The Misplaced Pages article for blocking policy under the category "Excessive Reverts", links to the Three-Revert Rule. ("The policy states that an editor must not perform more than three reversions, in whole or in part, on a single Misplaced Pages article within a 24 hour period.") which as you can see I am not in violation of.

Follow-up

I have twice emailed User:Demi asking for an explanation, arbitration, or leniency for the excessive 12 hour block.

As explained in these emails to Demi, I am one of the primary contributors to the article in question. I am the original author and primary contributor to the related article Misplaced Pages:Congressional Staffer Edits. I also was the user who originally uncovered the extent of the abuses by the Congressional IP address beyond Congressman Meehan. I have repeatedly worked to revert vandalism in Misplaced Pages as represented by my contributions. All of my edits have been in good faith. I believe this absolutely falls under the Misplaced Pages:Blocking policy for Controversial Blocks.

Plee

I ask that some form of arbitration be introduced to this situation. I still protest that my edits were correct and leaving factually incorrect information in the RFC degrades the credibility of the RFC and Misplaced Pages as a whole.

Furthermore if you have a review process for administrators I would recommend it for administrator User:Demi as I was blocked with no warning from any administrator, no arbitration was offered. Demi posted on my user discussion page but gave no explanation of my block other than he “disagree with your description of the situation.” Admin added to the discussion that “This isn't a democracy, we don't have to present you with laws (policies) that you violated . You did the wrong thing.”

Questions

I ask the Misplaced Pages Community, are there no rules or regulations for administrators? Can administrators make unilateral decisions as to that what is “wrong or right?” How can any user know what is wrong or right? Were the actions of User:Demi correct?

Can any user post false declarations in an RFC? -- 68.50.103.212 10:01, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

(copied from talk page)

I'll take my best crack at answering your questions and concerns. First, I hope you don't feel I've been unresponsive; as you have asked about the situation other editors have answered you as well as or better than I could have, but I have been paying attention. Secondly, a user may post "false declarations" in an RFC, but they should definitely be called on it--the cure for that is a response, not to make someone "unsay" their words. Thirdly, administrator actions by their nature are "unilateral", which is why I make sure any controversial block I make is posted on the adminstrator's noticeboard for further attention (the noticeboard is divided into subpages that are well-watched by administrators and others). And fourth, an administrator may block users for being disruptive. In general, the community does ask administrators to use their judgment as to what constitutes disruption, so I do that the best I can.

A further note--in your email to me you protest against my blocking you because you edit without a user account, if that's why I blocked you. I assure you it's not. I have no problems with anyone editing without a user account. Demi /_C 15:34, 3 February 2006 (UTC)

Potential 3RR about to happen

See User:HeyNow10029's upload of copyright material, disregard of notices, then subsequent reverts of my removals. He needs a spanking. Or whatever you admins over here at en: do. ℬastique▼♥♑ 19:37, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

(copied to talk page)

I didn't see close to four reverts, so I have not explicitly warned for that. I've offered my opinion that these images do not meet fair use guidelines, and that ambiguity over this should be discussed (at the article, since fair use is about use and not the image itself, which seem to be properly tagged). If anyone does violate the 3RR, the proper thing to do is report it at WP:AN/3RR for enforcement. Demi /_C 20:09, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Disregard of notices?! You left notices ... I didn't see any? (RM Copyvio ... not everyone spends their life on Misplaced Pages and lives and breathes Wiki-vernacular, so excuse me for being new to Misplaced Pages and not shaking in my boots when I read rm copyvio) And maybe if instead of flamboyantly removing people's edits and then coming and bashing them to the admins you explained why you removed them people wouldn't try to revert them. It's people like you that keep others from contributing to this community. Finally, I'm sure you're in dire need of human contact, but I'll have to pass on the spanking, you're on your own there, bud ... I'm not really into that. HeyNow10029 20:21, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

City seals?

Hey, you just left me a message about copyright violations in pictures that I had uploaded onto the Coral Gables and Miami Beach topics. Although you didn't bring up whether or not the two city seals I added are also copyright violations, as they were also removed by Bastique along with the pictures.

Coral Gables http://en.wikipedia.org/Image:SealOfCoralGables160.jpg

Miami Beach http://en.wikipedia.org/Image:MiamiBeachSeal.gif

Once I take a picture of Coral Gables and Miami Beach can it be added to the infobox? Thanks! :) HeyNow10029 20:10, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I think it's fairly clear that a city seal is highly relevant to an article on the city and can't be obtained any other way than claiming fair use. Freely-licensed photographs of a city are encouraged for an article on the city--I also encourage you to upload those free photos to the Wikimedia commons. Cheers! Demi /_C 20:12, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

So I can add the city seals that I uploaded to their respective cities' topics sites? Just want to be clear before I make another change and save you from Bastique coming in and whining ... lol. HeyNow10029 20:25, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with that. On the other hand, I don't usually edit city articles, so there maybe other comments. I'd add them back in (just them, without the images), and if anyone disagrees they can discuss the matter on the talk page. Demi /_C 20:46, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

And I don't whine. :P ℬastique▼♥♑ 20:56, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Kelly Clarkson page

Maybe you can help me here.

User Eternal Equinox removed the following images from the Kelly Clarkson page: (http://en.wikipedia.org/Image:YoungKellyClarkson.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/Image:KellySNL.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/Image:Kelly_Award.jpg) claiming that they didn't fall under fair use even though they are screenshots and screenshots are used all over Misplaced Pages. I explained this to him but it doesn't seem to be sinking in. Thanks. HeyNow10029 03:42, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

Death penalty in the People's Republic of China

Bigamy, pornography, generally theft and gambling are capital crimes in RPC after revision of penal code of 1997? Vissar talk

Merrimack, New Hamphire

Hey, M@ asked you a question in regards to that article(the forum), but I think he forgot that you're not a townie(me and him both live there.) Figured i'd let you know. Karmafist 04:55, 14 February 2006 (UTC)

Final decision

The arbitration committee has reached a final decision in the Misplaced Pages:Requests for arbitration/WebEx and Min Zhu case. Raul654 19:11, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Orphaned fair use image (Image:Demi-London-11161008.jpeg)

This media may be deleted.

Thanks for uploading Image:Demi-London-11161008.jpeg. I notice the 'image' page currently specifies that your image can be used under a fair use license. However, the image is currently orphaned, meaning that is not used in any articles on Misplaced Pages. If your image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why your image was deleted. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful.

If you have uploaded other fair use media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Misplaced Pages page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that any fair use images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Shyam 15:49, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Orphaned fair use image (Image:Demi-London-11161321.jpeg)

This media may be deleted.

Thanks for uploading Image:Demi-London-11161321.jpeg. I notice the 'image' page currently specifies that your image can be used under a fair use license. However, the image is currently orphaned, meaning that is not used in any articles on Misplaced Pages. If your image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why your image was deleted. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful.

If you have uploaded other fair use media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Misplaced Pages page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that any fair use images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. Shyam 15:49, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:WikiHangman Tournament

I am attempting to revitalize the WikiHangman Tournament. Seeing as the page has been around since last year, I have decided to contact all interested users ("interested" being defined as one who had added their name to the signup list) and see if they are still interested.

Which is why I am contacting you today. If you are still interested in the tournament, please bold your name in the signup list. And if you aren't, no big deal, just remove your name from the list. Thank you for your time, and I hope to see you there! — Ian Manka Talk to me‼ 19:55, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

Demi, thanks for deleting the personal attack that User:Shaft121 had posted on his user page, and for the related warning you left on his discussion page. Just wanted to let you know that the user restored what you deleted. I've taken this issue to WP:PAIN, rather than continue to try to engage in dialog with the user, but no admin has responded as yet. Regards, PKtm 08:03, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

(copied from user's talk page)

I have blocked User:Shaft121 for ignoring personal attack warnings and gaming the restriction. Demi /_C 06:55, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Demi. -- PKtm 15:21, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Macai

Demi, if you have a chance, could you take a look at User talk:Macai and what I've written there, to see if I've got it all wrong, and chip in if necessary? Macai apparently hasn't been able to edit since May 9. In haste, Bishonen | talk 09:38, 22 May 2006 (UTC).

FU images

1. Image:Melissa_Tkautz_-_The_Glamorous_Life.ogg
2. Image:Melissa_Tkautz_-_Read_My_Lips.ogg

Thanks :) --Rory096 05:29, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Philip Sandifer

It's obviously not a speedy, if you want it deleted put it up for AfD. Jayjg 22:09, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

What are you up to? Jayjg 22:14, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Demi, what's going on? You've deleted it twice, and now created a new page that only has the speedy tag on it. Can you explain what your concern is? SlimVirgin 22:15, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I can't make heads or tails of your explanation. Can you explain why you have deleted it? Jayjg 22:17, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

P.S. It's encyclopedic and well-sourced. I'm not understanding what possible rationale you might have used for these repeated deletions. Jayjg 22:19, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Demi, you've deleted it twice. I didn't understand your note on Jay's talk page. What is your objection to the article? SlimVirgin 22:20, 25 May 2006 (UTC)