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Your post to Misplaced Pages talk:Did you know about misuse for political gain

Hi Betsy. Thanks for the thread you started about the misuse of the DYK process for political gain. I hope you don't mind that I re-named the section in a way that I think is more descriptive, and more likely to draw attention and comment. I provided an anchor to the section, under the name that you gave it, and verified that the link you provided on Gatoclass' talk page still works. But you started the thread, and if you disapprove of the change, I'd have no objection to a revert. Will probably comment there soon. Thanks for your attention to the problem: it definitely needs much more "sunshine", much braoder exposure and comment from the wider community, imo ... I don't suppose people will try to change the policy page now that you've raised the issue there? I'll have to watchlist that. ;-) If you'd like to reply, you can do so here, as I've temporarily watchlisted this page. Best,  – OhioStandard (talk) 08:41, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

OK, thanks for letting me know. I changed the link from Gatoclass's page to a diff for what I actually posted. I also tweaked the new title (removing quotes) and readded the old in text, just for clarity. I hope that the discussion there will focus on the policy rather than attacks on people for calling attention to the policy. betsythedevine (talk) 12:37, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

No longer sorry

Hi Betsythedevine, I'd like to let you know that I am no longer sorry for what I told you. I am afraid my first impression about you was absolutely right. Please have a nice day.--Mbz1 (talk) 03:52, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for this impressively elegant notification. You actually made your renewed hostility clear three weeks ago, after I did something else that met your disapproval: . For anyone eating popcorn at home over this, the story of Mbz1's brief "sorry" is here:
FWIW my objection to the politicization of DYK is not aimed at you personally. I really think letting people -- any people -- turn DYK into a propaganda weapon is a bad thing for DYK and for Misplaced Pages. betsythedevine (talk) 04:41, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
Betsythedevine, I am very sure you declined DYK not because of me personally, but it does not mean your decline is a valid one. This article promotes nothing. It is a review of a book, and I used both positive and negative reviews. You are absolutely, more than welcome to add any review you want, but from RS. --Mbz1 (talk) 04:51, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Edit warring

You made many more that 1 revert in less than 24 hours, and besides you added POV tag against clear consensus. The source you used was found to be absolutely unreliable Please revert yourself.--Mbz1 (talk) 04:53, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

That source, which you yourself added to the article, is alleged to be unreliable by Rym Torch. The article has many problems with neutrality, the fact that several editors under ARBPIA sanction have flocked here to keep it non-neutral is not what Misplaced Pages has in mind as "consensus." The NPOV tag states "The neutrality of this article is disputed. Please see the discussion on the talk page. Please do not remove this message until the dispute is resolved." Please discuss issues with the article on the article talk page, not here. Please discuss issues with my behavior at some appropriate noticeboard, and be sure to include diffs of my alleged edit-warring when confronted with you and Broccolo tag-team removing the NPOV tag. betsythedevine (talk) 05:29, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
Actually Broccolo has never removed the tag, so I am not sure what are you talking about, and a warning about edit warring should be placed at a user's talk page, and not at an article's page.
There's no dispute about the article. It is only you who claim it should be tagged.--Mbz1 (talk) 05:34, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
You are right that Broccolo did not remove the tag, instead he repeatedly removed something else he considered POV. My mistake. But that being the case, I don't see any reverts by me in 24 hours other than putting back the POV tag that you inappropriately removed. betsythedevine (talk) 05:42, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
You are mistaking about the reverts. I know it is very confusing, but actually each and every change of the article could be counted as a revert. For example this is a revert and of course there are quite a few more like those.--Mbz1 (talk) 05:48, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

<--So every time I edit an article it "could be counted" as a revert? I have been editing Misplaced Pages for years without knowing this ... fascinating. betsythedevine (talk) 07:07, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Here it is--Mbz1 (talk) 07:22, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
Mbz1, the fact that you wrote the entire article in your talk page before posting it does not mean that nobody else can try to improve said article 3 times in one day, even though in a sense every edit involves changing "your" work. But you better caution Gilabrand, who has made many more changes in the last two hours than I made in 24. betsythedevine (talk) 07:48, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
I have never said nobody could edit it. Just the opposite. I asked you and Gato, and everybody else to edit it, and to add more reviews but only from RS. I am still asking you to do it. It is much more productive approach than creating dramas. Gila did not violate revert because another rule states that a continues edit of the article is consider to be a single revert, in other words, if you go ahead, and change a few sections in a few sessions followed one after another it is one revert. I cannot find the rule to link to, but you could ask any admin, and they would confirm it.--Mbz1 (talk) 13:21, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

<--Footnote, for clarity, I want to put in diffs to the edits Mbz1 is complaining about here.

  • "Remove contentious quote, replace with more relevant quotes from reviewers being cited" (I think this was my first edit to the article.)
  • "More intelligible quote from the review already cited"
  • "NPOV" (I changed "points out" to "says" as the introduction to a quote.)
  • "Ongoing dispute on talk page as several editors demand that a negative review must not be quoted here" (This is where I added the POV tag.)
  • "remove some editorializing" (I removed phrase "with no natural resources" from the lead.
  • "neutral language -- "says" not "admits"
  • "CFR is the publisher of the book. This section gives way too much space to material from this publisher's blurb -- an ad for the book --not a "review" as first paragraph claims"
  • "Reverted to revision 427180555 by Betsythedevine; Restore POV tag, the POV of article is disputed. "

It is my opinion that the only "revert" was my reversion of her inappropriate removal of the NPOV tag which thoroughly deserves to be on the article. betsythedevine (talk) 13:04, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Q

I got a kick out of this. I really envy the lucky guy who got Q. Qrsdogg (talk) 05:51, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

There are probably 26 lucky old editors somewhere ... and wasn't Q the boss of James Bond? So make that 25 lucky old editors and 1 extremely lucky one who is your namesake... betsythedevine (talk) 07:00, 3 May 2011 (UTC)
I grew up watching Star Trek, so this Q was always my favorite. Qrsdogg (talk) 13:05, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

AN3

ברוקולי reported you for edit warring here but he doesn't appear to have informed you. Sean.hoyland - talk 06:46, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the notice, I will go take a look now. betsythedevine (talk) 11:26, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

I have closed that discussion as no violation, but honestly, you escaped being blocked by the thinnest of hairs. Please take care in the future to establish that you really have consensus for restoring material in a highly contentious article. I saw no consensus clearly evident on the talk page for one of the reverts reported that you claimed had consensus. ~Amatulić (talk) 22:27, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your forbearance, I really appreciate it. I will try to do a better job in the future but I am not used to editing such contentious articles. betsythedevine (talk) 22:30, 5 May 2011 (UTC)
The collection of articles related to Arab/Israeli conflict is a hornet's nest in which nearly everyone who becomes involved eventually seems (to me) to face charges on WP:AE and/or accumulate blocks in their user logs. I can find plenty of more pleasant things to do on Misplaced Pages than become embroiled in the daily disputes going on in that area. But some folks thrive on conflict and controversy. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:02, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

NPOV?

Hello,

ברוקולי/Broccolo has (once again) removed the NPOV tag from Start-up Nation, citing the Talk page. I don't see any consensus there. I know you placed the tag in the first place. Do you agree that it can be removed? — Malik Shabazz /Stalk 21:37, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

No. The article gives enormous weight to enthusiasts for Israel and for the book but fiercely censors critics. From my iphone and i wd appreciate it if somebody else cd restore it. betsythedevine (talk) 21:44, 5 May 2011 (UTC)

Sorry

Sorry I blasted you. I left another appology and a response at the relevent DYK discussion. Best, 4meter4 (talk) 03:27, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually I just figured out how blastable I was being, so apology accepted and my own extended also. Thanks for the kind words, they are appreciated. betsythedevine (talk) 03:36, 6 May 2011 (UTC)

Talkback

Hi, Betsy! I want to thank you for your very kind remarks at my talk, which I saw just a short while ago, and to which I've now responded. Btw, there seemed to be good support at DYK for requiring notification on article talk when a DYK for that article is proposed. What say we take it to the Village Pump proposal section once that DYK thread rolls to archives? I've never done that before, and don't know the protocol for floating a proposal, but I'd fully support the effort, or would take the trouble to learn how to do it, if you have no idea. I've watchlisted your page temporarily, btw, so we can discuss the idea of such a proposal here, if that's okay, rather than intermingling the previous thread on my talk with this new one. Oh, also: In case you noticed Khazar's request at my talk, I'll just mention that I've replied to him as well, saying that I'd already told Gato that I wouldn't oppose removal of the tag he asked about there. Cheers,  – OhioStandard (talk) 03:11, 10 May 2011 (UTC)

Funny, I was also thinking of how and where to re-propose your idea about notification of DYK nomination on article talk pages. Surely one of our clever bot-makers could cobble this up and get lots of praise for it. Also funny that while you were writing on my talk page, i was over at yours replying to your post there. Now I'm going off to sleep for a while, take care and be well. betsythedevine (talk) 03:15, 10 May 2011 (UTC)
Great minds think alike? ;-) I won't open a new talk page section to mention it, but I did see your recent addition to the AE thread that AGK began. I also saw there that our friend who threw out the psychotic and hater characterizations wants credit for having "promptly deleted" those comments. What he's neglected to mention, however, is that he deleted his remarks only after EdJohnston asked him to, along with a very lightly veiled suggestion that there would be consequences if he didn't. He also would have everyone believe that he apologized for them. Could he be referring to this, perhaps? There's no apology there that I can see; what I do see is a user who recognizes he's a hair's-breadth away from being blocked and who doesn't want to be. More to the point, when he first had an opportunity to actually apologize, at our first interaction (his comments seemed primarily directed my way), he chose to continue to be derisive, instead. I remarked on that (scroll down in diff), and received no response at all.
He didn't apologize anywhere I've seen; on the contrary he seems to have made it clear that he had no interest in doing so, and planned to continue to express contempt for those who oppose the tendency of his editing here. It also troubled me that he showed up at Start-up Nation only after making those comments and that his first action there was to delete a sentence (re AIPAC) for which I had been the principal proponent on Talk, even though Khazar had actually introduced the content. I'm afraid I don't have the time to do justice to commenting in the AE thread, but I don't think it's right that any editor should get by with misrepresenting his actions so blatantly, either, especially in a quasi-judicial context. Overall, though, I think socks are our biggest challenge in the topic area at present, followed closely by organized POV editing. I liked what I saw of AGK's subpage comments; did you notice Gato's proposal, I wonder? I really liked that, too. Cheers,  – OhioStandard (talk) 11:04, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Thanks for these thoughts -- good to hear from you. I will look more closely at Gato's proposal after I get a bit more of my packing done, trip coming up and a lot to get done before then. Thanks for fixing the format on my proposal for DYK too! All best, betsythedevine (talk) 17:35, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

A modest proposal

Whereas, all the sanctions and blocks and topic-bans and noticeboards seem to be generating more bad feeling and sockpuppets than progress toward civil collaboration in contentious areas...

What about if, instead, we "penalized" warriors by requiring them to spend one week and make 10 cleanup edits in a contentious area that is not their own personal contentious area. That is, I/P warriors would be "sentenced" to monitor WP:AGF, WP:NPA, WP:RS, etc. among warriors about abortion, Armenia, pseudoscience, or ... you get the general idea ... and vice versa.

I think POV warriors would find it eye-opening to spend time reading and critiquing the POV things people try to sneak into (or out of) Misplaced Pages in other areas. I think they would be saddened as well as educated by the sincerity and urgency of content warriors, on both sides of most disputes. I think it would be especially educational for warriors over XYZ to look at the generally mixed share of praise and blame in bitter disputes elsewhere, disputes that cannot be explained away with a claim that one side is 100% right, and no other side would exist if it weren't for some pathological hatred of XYZ. betsythedevine (talk) 18:05, 18 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks to Jonathan Swift for the origin of this section title. It is a wacky suggestion which I also considered heading up as "A Cunning Plan" with a hat-tip to Blackadder. But I admit to thinking there's a bit of truth in there too. betsythedevine (talk) 04:23, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Interesting. This is close to something I did. I looked at conflicts in three difficult areas (AA, RI and IP), occasionally commented at AE, and spoke with some people who edit in these areas. Yes, it helps to look at other battlegrounds to realize: this is something you do not want to be involved in. It is amazing how nice and intelligent people start attacking each other. But rephrasing Leo Tolstoy ("each unhappy family is unhappy in its own unique way"), every battleground is ridiculous in its own way. In EE area people fight over naming conventions of cities, in "Race-Intelligence" area they argue how many times someone should be called "racist" in his BLP article, and so on. But what if someone was not involved in any content disputes at all? That's not a problem. Just call him someone's "buddy" every time when he comments about something. This is not to blame anyone. Just an observation.Hodja Nasreddin (talk) 13:02, 19 May 2011 (UTC)
A part of this is poor knowledge of subjects. I can agree that we do not need experts who know a lot of detail, but we need people who at least understand basic concepts. For example, someone who comments on Time must know definition of time in Physics, someone who comments about human races must have an idea about biological populations, someone who comments about pseudoscience must know the difference between actual pseudoscience like Lysenkoism and simply "non-science" (like religion or certain empirical practices), and someone who does something in history and politics must be aware of disinformation sources that are freely available on the internet (such as that one, for example). Hodja Nasreddin (talk) 15:30, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

<--Part of the problem in contentious areas is unintentional disinformation as shared urban legends are told and retold without fact-checking by people who genuinely believe what they heard, as for example that in 1983 no Palestinian schoolgirls were really sick, the "poisoning" was a plot from start to finish, after which the UN condemned Israel for poisoning children. WP:RS don't support any of that -- although some fakery occurred, early incidents were genuine if mostly stress-triggered suffering -- both Israelis and Palestinians at first claimed there was "poisoning" and predictably each side blamed the other -- the UN did not accuse Israel of poisoning, nor did they (as Israel's ambassador wanted) apologize to anyone for having asked for an investigation of "poisoning" after doctors determined there had been no poison. We need a Snopes.com with more wide-ranging interests! betsythedevine (talk) 16:14, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it is exactly what I am talking about. But I received my "battleground vaccination" in this area and should move to different subjects. (Indeed, I did not study this particular poisoning story and therefore did not make a single edit in the article. ) Hodja Nasreddin (talk) 17:00, 19 May 2011 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Sockpuppet investigations/NoCal100

I have closed and declined this case because previous checks have confirmed (through both technical and behaviour evidence) that User:Red Stone Arsenal is not engaging in any sockpuppetry activities because checkuser result reveals accounts related to Red Stone Arsenal (if any) even if they're not listed in the report. The result came back is negative. Also, if you want to accuse someone engaging in sockpuppetry, you should gather more evidence and a search (located right here with a big search bar and button that says "search all cases and archives") would instantly revealed that it is not the case. Since Red Stone Arsenal and you have opposing POV at Start-up Nation, I really believe that you use the sockpuppetry case to try and assassinate his character. Therefore, I am cautioning you not to abuse the process and use SPI as a venue to silence editors with other POVs. OhanaUnited 06:34, 25 May 2011 (UTC)

It seems to me a striking failure of WP:AGF to accuse somebody of using sockpuppetry "to try and assassinate his character" on the basis that you know a lot of stuff about how SPI should work than I do. I did not know that a past SPI checkuser would show the user had no other account; in fact my impression was the opposite. I thought that the reason you have to state which account you think somebody is an SPI of is that checkuser is not a fishing expedition. Furthermore, if you review the SPI case for Rym Torch, the person I thought was the same as Red Stone Arsenal, you will see that Checkuser evidence was not sufficient to reveal his identity with NoCal 100. I have no intention of using SPI to silence editors with other POVs, but I intend to use it whenever I encounter a brand-new user who jumps right into taking up the arguments of a banned user. I hope I will be equally willing to file SPI if the banned-user-lookalike is on the same side of the argument as I am. And I appreciate the tutorial you have offered on how SPI is supposed to work. betsythedevine (talk) 07:10, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
It is our job to treat all accounts as equal, be it involving an IP, an anonymous registered editor or someone editing under real-life identity. Two checks were run on April 27 and May 8 of 2011. Let me repeat my message again. Checkuser will reveal (if any) accounts used by Red Stone Arsenal even if they're not listed in the case. The software does that for checkusers. Both times the result turned up nothing. Checkuser software reveals these accounts if they're less than one month old (or longer?). Since the first report involving Red Stone Arsenal was filed on April 27, it would have already identified Red Stone Arsenal by then if any connections exist. Two cases have passed through different checkuser and clerks' eyes. They agreed that they're not related to each other. Therefore, I arrived at the conclusion that the case was meritless to begin with. OhanaUnited 17:22, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
The Rym torch banned account, which is the one I thought is the same as Red Stone Arsenal, successfully evaded checkuser but was caught by some other (apparently secret) SPI method. Therefore even if Red Stone Arsenal has twice been checkusered against all other Misplaced Pages accounts, something I didn't know, those same checkuser tests did not reveal the true character of Rym torch but some other method did. The fact is the Red Stone Arsenal does not act like a new editor, he acts like a heavily POV-pushing experienced editor, as both Nableezy and HelloAnnyong, who filed SPI before I did, also noted. I really think it is hugely unfair to accuse me of trying to character-assasinate a POV-opponent by filing an SPI against somebody that many others besides me think acts just like a sock. betsythedevine (talk) 20:35, 25 May 2011 (UTC)
I have started a topic to obtain third party's comments. OhanaUnited 21:28, 25 May 2011 (UTC)