Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Rossami (talk | contribs) at 21:01, 7 September 2006 (purging into pagehistory). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Purged into page history as of 22:05, 18 Mar 2004 (UTC)
Purged into page history as of 23:22, 2 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Purged into page history as of 06:01, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Purged onto page history as of 12:36, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Purged into page history as of 19:33, 25 July 2005 (UTC)
Purged into page history as of 04:44, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
Purged into page history as of 21:01, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Please accept this barnstar. I'm impressed that you never seem reluctant to handle the tough, convoluted VfD closing decisions that lots of people shy away from. Joyous 03:26, Feb 28, 2005 (UTC)

For your list of surprising VfDs

Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Warsaw Fire Brigade then DRV then Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Warsaw Fire Brigade (second nomination) is about a nice progression from "non-notable" to "decent article" as I have seen. --- Charles Stewart 17:01, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Your voting for cross-namespace redirects

Could I perhaps convince you to write a short essay and link to it when calling for a keep for cross namespace redirects? Considering individual discussions and not your history on RfD in general, which is what some who view the RfDs may do, your comments do not hold much water without further explaination and I don't want to repeatedly ask you to explain yourself anymore than you want to reply when I do it. The essay might for instance explain why cross-namespace redirects are a justified violation of WP:SELF and in what instances this applies to.

Also, I can't help but wonder whether you're coming from a minority in that policy doesn't seem to directly agree with your voting rationale at alltimes. You may wish to spark some debate on whether the WP:SELF policy needs to be revised if you feel that there is consensus for your interpretation of guideline precedence. Of course, I say policy—but it is a style guide.

As someone who frequently opposes your sentiments on RfD, I really think you should write the essay and link it when voting "keep despite CNR" as a way of solidifying your arguement. This would be of benefit to the RfD process. On the other hand, my encouragement for you to test the reform waters for the self-ref guideline is just that: encouragement. I do not mean to insist you do this to justify or prove your opinion on the guidelines. Anyways, let me finish by saying that I appreciate your differing views on RfD; I do not mean to chastise you or anything like that. I know that sometimes it is easy to misinterpret someone's intent when conversing through text alone. Feel free to ask me a question if I don't make any sense. Thanks! BigNate37_(T) 00:20, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

A good suggestion. I'm taking several days to think about the best way to do that. Thanks. Rossami (talk) 21:52, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

Annual Percentage Rate

I figured I'd bring this here to avoid cluttering up the main talk page. Interest in the US is not capitalized in ANY bank, because it's a very grey line in terms of legality. Most credit card companies capitalize monthly (both rates and fees) but the monthly minimum payment structure of the loan essentially wipes out this capitalization effect (some CC companies, in calculating APR, assume that there will be a 10 day capitalization effect caused by the lag time in payments... This is NOT universal). I am not an expert on the UK regulatory or banking rules so I won't pretend to understand the nuanced differences. But I can say with a pretty fair degree of certainty that 99.9% of consumer loans (the only field for which APR has any regulatory or legal meaning) in the US show differences in APR vs. Note Rate only because of fees and costs. Sorry about the interspersing of comments... it made more sense that way (i thought) but I understand your point... --Laxrulz777 15:00, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:What Misplaced Pages is not

Do you really think that a plot summary is not essential for an article on a work of fiction? And do you really think that an article that is just a plot summary should be deleted, rather than improved (in that case, what about something like Monkey Shines (film) ? The bulk of the content is a plot summary, the rest is just standard introductory and contextual fluff)? --SB | T 02:42, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Beyond question, I disagree. In fact, in some cases an "article" that contains nothing more than plot summary may even be speedy-deletable as a copyright violation. Could it be improved? Perhaps. But only be adding enough context that the plot summary again falls under the fair use criterion. And for a short article, that can mean slashing the plot summary down to a single sentence. (Bear in mind that a short article is all that some books deserve. This rule applies to more than just the works of Shakespeare.)

And, yes, I think that there are some excellent articles about works of fiction which do not have plot summaries at all. If I want to know the plot of a book, I'll read it. I don't need or want it spoon-fed to me. The only reason I would look up a work of fiction in an encyclopedia is to understand all the things that I couldn't understand from reading or watching it - the context, historical effects, connections with other works, etc. Rossami (talk) 10:56, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I sincerely hope you never edit articles related to fiction.--SB | T 06:01, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, allow me to share in that sentiment. Luckily for both of us, the power of a wiki is the community interaction which leads to consensus. I find little to no value in a plot summary. You apparently find little to no value in anything but the plot summary. The right answer is, as always, somewhere in the middle and the collaborative editing process is amazingly effective at getting us there. In the meantime, the copyright violation problem is law - not subject to community-based decision-making. Articles which exist solely as plot summaries can not be permitted to exist. Rossami (talk) 13:51, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Encyclopædia Dramatica

Hi Rossami, I see that you redeleted this page. For the record, did you check the deletion log? Xoloz restored the page for ArbCom evidence purposes on August 27, and I just want to have it cleared that this reason is no longer in effect. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:24, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

No, I missed that. My apologies. Should I undelete? Is the investigation still on-going? Rossami (talk) 13:25, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure if the history for E.D. is still needed, but this arbitration case (I think that is the relevant one) is still ongoing and in the evidence/workshop phase. Sjakkalle (Check!) 13:28, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, you may want to undelete it until the arbcom is finished.--MONGO 20:38, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Done. Apologies. Rossami (talk) 20:44, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Pseudonymous editing

copied from an email received offline

Hi,

I'm not quite sure how this works, but your wrote in my deletion review, "you say that your name and address are available, but your contributions to Misplaced Pages are pseudonymous."

Does this mean I hadn't registered? I did so last night, and not under a pseudonym as most people have. I always use my real name in signatures.

And I don't know how to post to your talk page because there appears to be no "post" link.

Thanks, Dennis Bathory-Kitsz bathory@bathory.org bathory@maltedmedia.com

Thanks for your message but I think perhaps my meaning was still unclear. Whether you register or not doesn't really matter since anyone can register under any name. I could go online and register a Misplaced Pages account as George W. Bush (at least, if it's not already taken). Misplaced Pages has no means to authenticate your identity independently. All that we know - all that we can know - is what you choose to claim about yourself.

That's what I meant by pseudonymously - any registration, even if you say that it's your real name, is technically a pseudonym. It is not independently verified against some external identity database. And for the most part, that works out very well on Misplaced Pages. We want users and editors to establish themselves through their actions and to demonstrate their expertise through their edits, not by making claims to outside credentials.

By the way, anyone could also register as Dennis Bathory-Kitzs. That trivial misspelling would be easily overlooked by readers but would still be accepted by the system. Such a person could sign their name the same way you do, attempt to mimic your pattern of speech (well, writing really) and make subtle edits just to discredit you. That, in fact, is a real problem for established editors of Misplaced Pages. When we find usernames that are suspiciously similar to established users, we look very carefully for signs of vandalism or deceit. Users who appear to have done something like that on purpose are generally banned from Misplaced Pages. But those are all manual checks. There is no system that can automatically detect or prevent it.

Likewise, no one can inherently trust the email address. The way internet domains are set up, anyone could register bathory.org and create any email name they wanted. Like Misplaced Pages accounts, emails and internet domains are unverified against any external identity authority. And that's before you consider the problems of email spoofing and forgery - both of which are far easier and common today than any of us would like to admit.

Most people are honest. But there are enough dishonest people out there that we have to build our systems and our procedures in such a way that it doesn't matter whether they are telling the truth about their identity or not. That's why Misplaced Pages has a policy against original research (which we mean as "a contribution or assertion based on personal experience") and why we never rely solely on self-published materials and why we bias our policy so strongly in favor of reliable sources such as websites owned by and operated by large, well-known organizations - organizations with both a vested interest in and the resources to find and stop spoofing.

Sorry to bore you with all this but my non-Misplaced Pages profession is information security. The inherent problems of identity management and authentication occupy much of my waking hours. How can a bank know that you're really you? And how far can that trust be extended? Under what conditions can an assertion be treated as reliable? How do we balance that against the need to make systems and computers easy and accessible. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers short of establishing a national identity database - something which would be in great tension with my role as a privacy advocate.

Anyway, I'll get off my soapbox now. Thanks for your message.

To post to my Talk page, just go to the page and edit it like you would edit any page on Misplaced Pages. The most common technique is to use the little plus sign next to the "edit this page" tab at the top. That will automatically create a new section and give you a line to create a section header without having to know the wiki-markup symbols. You should also get in the habit of signing your posts on Talk pages. You can do that easily by ending your comment with four tildes (~~~~). When you save the page, the MediaWiki software will replace the tildes with your username and the date-timestamp.

Again, welcome to Misplaced Pages. Rossami (talk) 20:16, 7 September 2006 (UTC)