Misplaced Pages

Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Commonwealth Games Village 2010

Hi there, regarding your comment on Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Commonwealth Games Village 2010. I have no intention of WP:CANVASS, but would you think merging is a better idea? After all, the Venues article has already covered the Commonwealth Games Village and the concerns and controversies across two sections already. ANGCHENRUI _WP:MSE♨ 12:38, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi AngChenrui. Don't worry - I don't consider this canvassing, as I'm aware of the discussion already. As I suggested, my vote for keeping a separate article is based on an intuition that there should be (or at least it's valid to have) separate games village articles. I can see your argument as I understand it, that "venues" can include the village and so obviate the need for a separate article. It is, in one sense, tidier. However, I'm of the view that games sporting venues and athlete villages are qualitatively different aspects of the games. My feeling is that from a user's point of view, someone doing research into venues would probably separate the issue. It's also true that athlete accommodation gets RS coverage as a matter of course these days. For me, this is a good example of the advantages of WP:NOTPAPER. Consolidation on Misplaced Pages is necessary when there's a mess of repeated and disorganised information. I don't see that issue here. In this case, having a separate article will probably attract more information, rather than simply more flab.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 13:41, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Noted, I understand. Thank you, ANGCHENRUI _WP:MSE♨ 14:52, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Welcome to the Climate change denial page.

If you've been around for some time, my apologies for not noticing, but I've seen several very thoughtful posts, and excellent sources added by you recently. --SPhilbrickT 13:38, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

Aw, thanks! You're not wrong - I've not been on the climate pages until recently. I had a wikibreak between last year and this, during which I found myself arguing a lot about climate change with some (ahem) "interesting" people on another internet site, during which I learnt quite a lot about both the science and the politics of the whole thing. It's a relief to be on[REDACTED] actually sifting through sources properly; the pointless slanging matches and Gish Gallops were getting tiring. It looks like I've joined in at a good time, when the arbitration committee has enforced a calmdown. Let's make progress in creating good stable articles! VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 13:53, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

You have just done a blanket revert of five edits I did on Spencers bio. So I guess what you mean by good is your POV and stable is only stable once it's what you want to see.

Please DO NOT blanket revert. If you have any particular issue with an edit take it to talk and resolve, What you did is the classic first slavo of an edit war. Calm down and get specific about any changes you want to discuss , Thanks. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.123.232.186 (talk) 18:12, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

It's called WP:BRD and it's your job to justify the changes - I'm currently engaged in discussing the value of your citing blogs.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 18:23, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the redirect help!

Of course I wouldn't expect you to keep this on your page, but I have another question. While I've created the redirect and have it working to where someone who searches "Skye Champion" will be redirected to the I'82 page (and thanks to your correction, down to the Characters section), I'm still having a problem on Melissa Disney's page. I added an entry there to note her voicework in the game, but putting in "Skye Champion" still only works as a red page-does-not-exist link. What do I need to do to correct it?Givemeausernameplease (talk) 04:12, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

No problem. The problem was that the original redirect you created was Skye champion (note the small c) not Skye Champion. I created Skye Champion and added the redirect. Apart from the enforced first capital, titles for[REDACTED] articles are case sensitive (See Thinking machines and Thinking Machines as an example). So your redlink appeared because it was actually pointing to a page that hadn't been created yet. But it's all solved now.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 04:19, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Much appreciated!Givemeausernameplease (talk) 04:35, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

"Linen" article on wikipedia

Hello,

Recently you have deleted my addition to the article "linen" which was the link to the excerpts from the book "Flax and linen". First of all I am not the owner of this website. I only a web designer and I placed this link as I found this material is interesting for anyone who wants to learn more about linen and flax. Second why is this link more promotional than others under this articles that lead to the e-commerce web-sites? I would greatly appreciate your answer.

Thank you Juliady —Preceding unsigned comment added by Juliady (talk • contribs) 05:10, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

As the designer of the page, you have a conflict of interest in adding it - see also here. I reverted it on sight, seeing that you were the web designer, and there was a bunch of credit card symbols at the bottom. However, I've looked at the other links (removed a couple that were clearly bad), and I think you have a good point. I've asked a question at Misplaced Pages:External_links/Noticeboard#Linen_-_commercial_links about this, as I'd like clarification on what should and shouldn't be included.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 05:39, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Hello VsevolodKrolikov,

Thank you very much for your answer. I do appreciate your response and I do not wish to violate any Misplaced Pages rules whatsoever. I have read very carefully the articles about COI and I did not find anything saying that if you are the web designer of the web site in question you cannot place a link to this web site as it will be the violation of the rules. As far as I understand the external link should lead to the material which adds to the article in question. I also understand that the link should be provided with a clear neutral explanation why this link is here. I think you would agree that absolutely every web site was created by someone and heretofore any link to any site can be classified as “promotion” or “advertising”. I do appreciate that you have decided to clear out this matter by addressing Misplaced Pages:External_links/Noticeboard#Linen_-_commercial_links. Please let me know if you will get the clarification. Thank you once again Best regards Juliady —Preceding unsigned comment added by Juliady (talk • contribs) 18:53, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Hi Juliady. The conflict of interest issue in this situation is most clearly explained in the external links policy here. But basically, if you were involved in the production of material, or in some way might benefit personally from wider exposure of that material, then there's a conflict of interest when you yourself add it to the article. This doesn't mean that it shouldn't go in, it's just putting it in yourself is not encouraged. Instead you should normally ask someone else to assess it. I took it out because at first glance it looked like someone merely trying to promote their own business (this happens a lot on wikipedia), but after you asked me to reconsider, I looked again, and I think I was too hasty in doing so. I'll wait to get more input from others at the External links noticeboard (they don't agree either). I apologise for appearing bureaucratic; this is simply a chance for me (just another volunteer like yourself) to get a better grasp of policy, so that I don't have to hum and hah in the future.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 08:21, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Hello Vsevolod,

I am grateful for the opportunity to learn more about rules on Misplaced Pages. As per the article in question let’s wait till there are more opinions from others. I know that this company plans to publish lots of materials about Russian Linen which can add more details to the article. History of growing flax and producing linen in Russia is not in any way less interesting than, for example, history of Irish linen. I understand now the point of adding links to the articles and will follow those rules in future. Thank you again Best regards Julia —Preceding unsigned comment added by Juliady (talk • contribs) 13:19, 27 October 2010 (UTC)

Articles you might like to edit, from SuggestBot

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Stanley Lewis fashion brand

Hello VsevolodKrolikov,

I have just added some content about my fashion brand Stanley Lewis. But unfortunately it was got deleted may be due to looking like promotional. We have only added information about our brand and not promoting the brand at wiki pedia.

Thanks

Satyendra —Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.180.146.162 (talk) 06:24, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi Sayendra. There are a few issues you need to overcome before inclusion of material on your company can get onto wikipedia. The first, as you noticed, is that we don't do advertising, and no PR push to make the company sound special - your text still did that, for example: "Stanley Lewis believes men need to focus more on finding an equilibrium in all aspects of life. This is demonstrated not only in the collection of accessories the brand produces, but also in the website." The second is the use of reliable sources. Most of what you used as sourcing were blogs, press releases and the company's own website, which I'm afraid are not at the level of independence and quality we like to have. A third issue is that you have a clear conflict of interest. This means you should avoid directly editing material on matters with which you have a personal or professional connection - instead you should ask other editors to include material. The last problem is the biggest: notability. I did a quick news archive search for your brand, and it looks like you haven't really made enough of an impact yet to pass our requirements on notability (one article in The Australian appeared to be it). Misplaced Pages only covers things already receiving decent coverage in independent sources; it shouldn't - inadvertently or deliberately - be a means of increasing visibility for a product. All the best, VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 06:44, 1 November 2010 (UTC)

Your Great Comment on the Causalities of 9/11 attacks Page

Greetings, VsevolodKrolikov! I wanted to thank you for your very useful comment regard total causality count for the 9/11 attacks (this page - Casualties_of_the_September_11_attacks. I added a possible link to your query and wanted your feedback on using this page. I put a brief quote from it under the NYC 9/11 causalities section but we can remove it if we decide there's a better source elsewhere. Thanks for your interest - are you involved in the September 11 attacks wikiproject? There's not a lot of people active in it lately so it would be helpful. Give me some of your feedback if you get a chance! Thanks... WiiAlbanyGirl (talk) 22:27, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi WiiAlbanyGirl. Thanks for your comments. I actually found a very good source, from the NY office of the chief medical examiner, and posted the link on the main 9/11 talk page, and made a promise to insert the figures where needed - which I haven't kept. (sigh) . I like that link best of all because it's the people who get to decide the official figures. Please go ahead and add it, if I don't do so first. Although you've helpfully reminded me, I can't today as I'm editing from an iPad and it's rubbish at keeping editing windows open when switching between windows. As for the project - I really should focus on other stuff first that I know more about, as wiki time is a little limited. But thanks for asking anyway..VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 05:45, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Southern Europe

The editor who made this edit is in Finland, which may explain why they would think of the UK as being "southern". This aside, I think he has a point: there's not much pro-life activism in northern Europe. Is there a way we could state this accurately? Dylan Flaherty (talk) 01:49, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

That might be the source of the confusion, although I would personally never consider Germany Eastern Europe because I'm British. Do we have sources that say there isn't much going on in the Nordic countries? Or perhaps it's Catholic countries plus the UK? (There'll be stuff in Ireland too, I'm sure).VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 01:54, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

It's not easy to source. The best I've come up with are articles that talk generalities, such as this one. Can you do better? Dylan Flaherty (talk) 05:00, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Here's one from 1996, which goes into some nice detail, although it would change what the article says. If you don't mind, I'll transfer this conversation to the Pro-life talkpage, so that other people can chip in.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 05:06, 5 November 2010 (UTC)

Do you have access to ... ?

Book Reviews: Radical, Religious, And Violent: The New Economics of Terrorism By Eli Berman. By Michael Mcbride. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Volume 49, Issue 3, pages 575–576, September 2010? The reason I didn't separate the refs myself is that I couldn't find this one, so I couldn't tell what's based only on it. Tijfo098 (talk) 07:25, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Perhaps a section on his book and reception thereof should be added as well. Insofar the article only summarizes Berman's research. Tijfo098 (talk) 07:27, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

I can't get at it (it's so new it doesn't even appear on google scholar). My institution doesn't subscribe to it, so I'm probably not able to see it even in a couple of months time. I agree we need secondary commentary. His work seems to be cited a lot, so he's clearly getting attention.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 07:39, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

But this has reviews. It doesn't help much, as we don't know how faithfully they are reproduced, but it's a pointer to where to look.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 08:29, 10 November 2010 (UTC)

Siberian nationality

Do you think, given the sources available on this topic, an article about siberian nationalism / the small movement would be justifiable or meet wiki standards of notability? --Львівське (talk) 04:39, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi. There's an article called Siberian regionalism already. I think that would be the best repository of information. It has nothing on modern-day movements, and the material about the census could go in there.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 04:50, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

POV

Hi ... I missed how the ref-supported reference you removed at Hellfire was POV. You can respond here. Tx much.--Epeefleche (talk) 05:03, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi. POV can occur in different ways, and one of those ways is what one does and doesn't mention. The way that "targeted killings" was used in effect gave a particular emphasis and legitimating interpretation of the use of the missiles that is in dispute (The Israelis claim careful, rational, legalish use, the Palestinians dispute this general characterisation). I was choosing a no-sides (let's not go there) rather than a both sides approach, appropriate for an article that should not be a fork for I-P issues.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 05:21, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

I hear you, but I'm not sure I see it. The use is the use by the UN (as they question it). The IP's point was, as I mentioned on the tp, IMHO akin to an article on what cars are used for saying "used for drunk murders" -- even though that's not the intention of the user. For targeted killing, I believe we have RSs (I can collect some) that say some countries have used it in Targeted Killings. This becomes important, because the level of the charge of the missile will ultimately related to proportionality, an issue for targeted killing (under Israeli, UN, Palestinian, etc. approaches). The article loses IMHO if we censor it out.--Epeefleche (talk) 08:03, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

It's not censoring. It can hardly be censoring if I think it's a coatrack/fork (ie this material belongs elsewhere). Furthermore, "targeted killing" is a contested term. It doesn't matter if you find RSs that use the word without comment as if it is neutral. There is, as I am sure you are aware, other RS that questions targeted killing as a euphemism for assassination, and other RS that challenges the assertion that "targeted killing" is carried out with the precision and oversight that the term implies and as is claimed. You might want to compare it with "unlawful combatant" and "enhanced coercive interrogation technique", which are terms propounded by one side. I fail to see how a simple statement to the effect that Israel has used them in the ongoing conflict in Palestine - which no one disputes - is POV. VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 10:14, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

• It goes beyond that. The U.S. uses all sorts of weapons in its ongoing conflict on the AfPak border. It is known for using Hellfire missiles in TK, specifically because of the collateral damage issues. As I've pointed out at the Hellfire talkpage. Calling it "in the AfPak conflict" hides the ball from the reader. I have no reason to believe that people think TK means no collateral damage -- that's clear in the article, and in all manner of discussions by those who use the term, including the UN. It has to do with the killer having a target, but does not speak to the issue of collateral damage. And all manner of RSs, countries, the UN, law books, etc. use the term, not just fringe ones or two.--Epeefleche (talk) 12:16, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

The article is not about the propriety of the use of such weapons. That kind of discussion belongs in articles that cover the actions of governments. To try to introduce such a discussion here is coatracking. Your understanding of source use also appears to show a belief that[REDACTED] should tell "the truth", which it avowedly does not. Misplaced Pages does not take sides in substantive disputes. VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 13:59, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

• Yes -- I'm familiar with the fact that our goal is to reflect what is verifiable (i.e., what is reflected in RSs), rather than truth. That is understood in my comments. Of course it is not about the propriety of use of the weapons. Nobody said it was. But the features of the weapons are of moment, not at all coat-racking. The fact that they bear on issues relative to their use does not make it coatracking, concealing the focus of the article from view, anymore than it would be coatracking to have features of cars (safety being one of them, or their usefulness for certain purposes such as all-terrain vehicles) "coatracking". It's core to the functionality of the subject of the article, quite far from coatracking. Coatracking is where a nominal subject gets hidden behind the sheer volume of another subject, leaving the reader with a thoroughly incorrect understanding of the nominal subject, which of course isn't at all what we are talking about here.--Epeefleche (talk) 14:12, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

if you can link to the section in the instruction manual of the weapon that's entitled "when using as part of a 'targeted killing' political-military strategy" then I'll listen to your suggested editions. Otherwise, let's leave it, shall we?VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 19:43, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, yes, there seems little use having a conversation with you if rather than applying wiki guidelines you are applying personally constructed ones.--Epeefleche (talk) 23:56, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

So far you haven't actually cited any wiki guidelines here. I gave you what seems to be a fair criterion for establishing intended use, which we both agree is the salient issue here - and you're welcome to challenge it. I think it always is better to have one's editing guided by principles, rather than justifiying one's edits by whatever principles can be found. How about you?VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 01:17, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Use:Tornadofan

Hi,

You greeted User Tornadofan to Misplaced Pages for his intervention on Weather radar. It looked as an invertion of an IP vandalism but this edit was not a good thing as it eliminated the title of a section. I just wanted to let you know that I'm not so sure that this Tornadofan is a good editor. It seems to me an account created by the IP to confuse the situation and I had to return to the last good version of Weather radar. I will keep an eye on his future behaviour. Pierre cb (talk) 15:14, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi Pierre - and whoops, I missed user:Tornadofan's overenthusiastic deletion. (I was browsing the user creation log checking for vandals, thought s/he'd registered to remove vandalism, and so hit "welcome" on twinkle). My apologies. There's no evidence that this user is anything other than someone trying to remove vandalism who cut the whole line the vandalism was on instead of just the expletive, so I wouldn't worry about anything covert at the moment. I've warned the IP in question. All the best, VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 15:29, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Bindhyabasini Jagaddhatri

Hi, requested text is here Jimfbleak - talk to me? 14:39, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

Re:Creativity and intelligence

My understanding is that while there's been much effort to expand the definition of intelligence to include e.g. personality traits, these efforts have not generally been accepted by intelligence researchers. Creativity and genius often suggest high intelligence, but they invariably also imply traits that are not cognitive abilities in the sense that most intelligence researchers use the term.--Victor Chmara (talk) 15:21, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Creativity isn't a personality trait. Most commonly it's defined as divergent thinking - which is unquestionably a cognitive ability. I feel you're pushing for the "truth", but[REDACTED] represents the balance of RS. I'm fully aware that some researchers (and it's not true that "intelligence researchers" have a clear view as a body of people) would exclude divergent thinking from "intelligence". My point is that enough researchers explore the Otconnection/interrelation for it to be justifiable for creativity to be part of the "human intelligence" template. I also think that emotional intelligence should be part of the template. That may not accord with the views of some intelligence researchers, but that's what the articles can explain. Otherwise we have a template that is there to push a particular POV which does not have the consensus support of RS.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 15:30, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

The following quotation from the "Mainstream Science on Intelligence" statement explicates the difference between intelligence and other traits:

1. Intelligence is a very general mental capability that, among other things, involves the ability to reason, plan, solve problems, think abstractly, comprehend complex ideas, learn quickly and learn from experience. It is not merely book learning, a narrow academic skill, or test-taking smarts. Rather, it reflects a broader and deeper capability for comprehending our surroundings -- "catching on," "making sense" of things, or "figuring out" what to do.

2. Intelligence, so defined, can be measured, and intelligence tests measure it well. They are among the most accurate (in technical terms, reliable and valid) of all psychological tests and assessments. They do not measure creativity, character, personality, or other important differences among individuals, nor are they intended to.

Of course, the statement reflects the psychometric approach, but it is the dominant perspective among intelligence researchers.--Victor Chmara (talk) 15:21, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes, that's what some researchers say. Are these people experts in creativity research? No. Are they the clear majority of all researchers in intelligence-related topics, rather than those concerned with psychometric testing? No. And that's the issue. Misplaced Pages is not about "truth". There are far and away enough respected researchers in appropriate fields who consider creativity part of the general issue of cognitive ability to include creativity in this template. To exclude is to take a definitive, narrow position. To include, but have caveats and disputes listed in the articles themselves is NPOV. That's the principle you need to address, not which POV is "correct". VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 15:51, 18 November 2010 (UTC)

I should check Snyderman, Mark; Rothman, Stanley (February 1987). "Survey of Expert Opinion on Intelligence and Aptitude Testing". American Psychologist. 42 (2): 137–144. doi:10.1037/0003-066X.42.2.137. ISSN 0003-066X. Retrieved 15 August 2010. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)CS1 maint: date and year (link) and some of the citing secondary literature in the next day or so to clarify this interesting issue. I'd love to hear from you what you think about what this source says. Of course, there are quite a few other authors who write about this issue, and I'm still developing a sense of what their consensus is. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 03:48, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Creativity and genius are undoubtedly related to intelligence, but I think it's problematic to say that they are subcategories of the umbrella term 'human intelligence'. For example, if someone is a great painter or sculptor, most researchers would not regard them as highly intelligent just because of that. Perhaps someone like Howard Gardner would, but we must not privilege the controversial views of one or two researchers.

To make the template "inclusive" by adding all sorts of controversial constructs and hypotheses to it is not necessarily a neutral approach. Rather, it may favor those that support particular novel views and disfavors those that think that intelligence should be defined in a stricter manner. Undue weight should not be given to marginal views.

However, I think it's OK to list genius, creativity and emotional intelligence in the "Related" section of the template as long as we don't include the template in those articles.--Victor Chmara (talk) 16:06, 20 November 2010 (UTC)

Terminological distinctions

I was searching for something else, and came across a new book on psychology

with some discussion of the conceptual issues that you have brought up with your thoughtful comments on article talk pages and here. I may be able to circulate the book from the main research university in my town, my source for many of the books now in my office, in a few days. I'm trying to gather some quotations from standard sources on narrower (psychometric) or broader (common language or cognitive science) definitions of "intelligence." I think there are some straightforward ways to distinguish the broader and narrower senses of the term in Misplaced Pages article text through further editing based on reliable sources. See you on the articles. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 03:11, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks - I'll have a look a bit later.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 07:51, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

Second language learning merge proposal

Hi, and thanks for commenting on my proposed merger of Second language learning. This is just to let you know that I moved your comment to the talk page at Talk:Language education#Merger proposal as I didn't want it to get left out of any discussion. I hope I haven't caused too much confusion. — GypsyJiver (drop me a line) 07:08, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

That's fine. Thanks for notifying me.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 07:50, 21 November 2010 (UTC)

RfC regarding User:Otis1017

Hello,

I noticed that you have been involved in the low-level edit war taking place on Garry's Mod and was hoping that you would take the time to weigh in on an RfC related to the dispute: Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/Otis1017. Best regards, ~~ Lothar von Richthofen (talk) 23:43, 22 November 2010 (UTC)

I'm afraid I haven't been watching that page at all. Sorry.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 01:18, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

RFC/U

I might not know the right way to do this because I've never done anything like this at Misplaced Pages before. I didn't know my name needed to be there, but I added it now. I'm also not sure who I ought to notify about the RFC. Last month I commented in a thread where when the person who posted it contacted the various users who had been involved in dispute, the editor was accused of canvassing. If I don't notify the "right" people, I’m afraid of giving Mathsci more ammunition to use against me in the arbitration enforcement thread he posted. I'm sorry, but that risk is not something I want to subject myself to right now. You're welcome to notify any users yourself who you think ought to know about this thread, though.-SightWatcher (talk) 01:36, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Actually, I can't find anything on the RFC/user pages about notifying anyone or any page except the subject. That seems a little odd. I haven't ever set up or been "involved" in an RFC dispute as far as I recall, so I'm kind of in the dark. It may be worthwhile getting clarification for future reference, but that's another matter entirely. My main concern was getting it certified - which has been done by now. the RFC is to get outside comment, rather than transferring disputes to a different page.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 03:19, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Thanks

WP:Further

I agree WP:FURTHER could be codified a bit more, with a main page dedicated to it. One thing that often happens for example is that people add their self-published books to that section. The wording of Misplaced Pages:Spam#Bookspam is too fluffy to be of any use; people can always argue that their book contains "useful and relevant information". --JN466 15:52, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Hi. I'm surprised I haven't seen more abuse in Further Reading sections (I've seen loads in external links). It looks ripe for self-promotion and POV conflict. As per some comments on the WP:FURTHER talkpage, I tend to think we should simply remove such sections. If a book is that good, it should be in the sources. I can see a reader-based argument for a list of sources we would recommend to start on were a user interested in going deeper into a topic (including books already referenced in the main text), but in practice that would cause havoc on any topic where there are fundamental disputes, as well as raising issues of OR (who are we as anonymous volunteers to recommend one high quality source over a whole series of others?). What do you see as the function of these sections, given that the encyclopedia is in a more mature phase now than when they were introduced?VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 16:21, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

(posted after edit conflict cleared) Most professionally edited encyclopedias have further reading references at the end of their articles. That seems to be a general characteristic of many of the subject-specialized encyclopedias that are acquired by academic libraries. I invite the editors looking on here to try the experiment of visiting an academic library reference section and looking for encyclopedia sets on various subjects. Many of those dead-tree encyclopedias have articles that end with a bibliography of book-length works that readers can refer to for more information on the article topic. The Manual of style section on the issue makes clear enough that this has been routine practice on Misplaced Pages for years as well. What I try to do with further reading sections is to put well researched, thoroughly edited references into them as I discover those references, and then eventually (sometimes many months later) dig into those sections for sources for further edits of article text. Most of the 6,943,835 articles on Misplaced Pages need a lot more editing, but as far as I know most of us few thousand active editors are volunteers who are either working or studying full-time besides editing Misplaced Pages, so it's not surprising that not every possible edit is done at once. Listing a further reading source with an article, as long as it is a well chosen source, has immediate usefulness to every reader of the article, and it has lasting usefulness to any other editor who surfs by and thinks "I could improve this article if only I knew of a source on this topic." On my part, now that I have gathered hundreds of sources published by major commercial or academic publishers, purchased by major academic or public library systems, I simply don't have time simultaneously to edit all of the hundreds of Misplaced Pages articles that could be edited on the basis of those sources. I have my particular priority list of articles to edit on my volunteer time between work and family responsibilities. It may be that other editors have fewer means for finding such sources, but more time to use such sources once someone else finds them, so that if I share a reference to a source or sources in an article further reading section, those other editors can use their volunteer time productively updating the articles based on current, reliable sources. Division of labor helps everyone get more work done more efficiently. I have seen instances of further reading sections being spammed for political or commercial purposes, and I boldly delete sources from such further reading sections (which, fortunately, are not commonplace) if I find them. The main thing is to keep looking for reliable sources all the time that have usefulness for follow-up reading by readers of Misplaced Pages and eventually usefulness for editors editing Misplaced Pages. I would expect every active Wikipedian to be curious and to delight in learning about new sources. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 19:53, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

First, Misplaced Pages is not a paper encylopedia and it has hypertext, so it can use detailed footnotes, which encyclopedias typically do not. That is why we can dispense with further reading sections, which will implicitly have been used in the main body of a paper encyclopedia. Secondly, if you don't have time to read sources, you should not be adding them to articles. That's really simple. It's fine to put them onto the talkpage instead, with a note that they look useful. It's a real tragedy there are not a million dedicated people working night and day on content, but that's not an excuse for adding all these titles to the article itself. Further Reading is not for future sources as you were told seven hours before posting here, and ten hours before you posted this attack (second added paragraph) on editors (mainly me) disputing precisely such an (ab)use of the further reading section. I know you don't read the books you spam pages with, but it would be nice if you could demonstrate that you've read things that other people address to you on Misplaced Pages. Using the section in the way you do clearly causes problems in NPOV monitoring. This has happened, as Sightwatcher found, in the Linda Gottfredson, Richard Lynn and Glayde Whitney articles. These people are barely mentioned in the book you added (which you'd know if you'd actually, er, read it) and to put a title like that at the bottom of their articles sends a clear message to the reader that these people are unequivocally scientific racists. This is very troubling editing.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 23:35, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Yesterday WeijiBaikeBianji added books like this to "further reading" for around a dozen different articles. Half of them or so were reverted, but I feel that some of the remaining half might not be okay either. The books he adds always seem to be accusing the people of being racists, even when this isn't the only thing they're notable for. When "further reading" only has books like this it seems to be implying that their opinions on race are more important than anything else. Would either of you mind giving a second opinion about whether the rest of the articles he did this to were appropriate?

He also did this a few months ago, such as- , , , and I feel these should be looked at too. And the first two are even about living people so I'm not sure if its okay to do this in a BLP.(Oops, just realized that the Roger Pearson article is a BLP too) -SightWatcher (talk) 19:22, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

I have just read this discussion, and added a comment in WeijiBaikeBianji’s RFC/U. Others might want to look at my statement there and see whether they agree. --TrevelyanL85A2 (talk) 04:05, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Request

Please could you move your comment to your section on WP:AE. ArbCom noticeboards are not forums for threaded discussion. Please read the instructions at the top of the page. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 05:16, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Done - I had mixed up the heading structure and hadn't realised it was still part of your initial report. Apologies. I had already read the discussion and personal sanctions list. I'm still in the dark as to the material difference between your topic ban and that of the other two. Voluntary bans are better, but if they're "binding", they're still enforceable, aren't they?VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 05:32, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Please accept my apology

I knew it was right for me to say sorry to you, and now I have. I appreciate the sources you have already told me about--I have to figure that anyone who is looking up interesting sources is an asset to the project and someone I would like to get to know better. So всего хорошего; 頑張ってください. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 01:57, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

It's much appreciated - I really don't enjoy wikistress, and get annoyed spending time not on content, especially now I'm using wiki editing as a means of guiding my immersion in a very new area for me (creativity). There's clearly a lot of wikipolitics and history going on in the intelligence articles that I do not have a handle on - I certainly didn't expect things to blow up like this (and it's disheartening finding oneself inadvertently on one "side" of some old religious divide). Anyway, you might be interested in this idea: Misplaced Pages:Village_pump_(idea_lab)#Source_Dumps_for_article_pages. I think it will, together with the further reading guidelines, solve the problem of where to put sources for future inclusion. I thoroughly appreciate your lists of new sources - just not where you were putting them! VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 03:21, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Advice

Details of the latest account that appears to be involved in meatpuppetry have been sent to an arbitrator, who has passed them on to the rest of ArbCom. On November 18 I sent you privately some information about my concerns with meatpuppetry, with no details attached. I wrote there that ArbCom seemed to share some of those concerns. The latest evidence appears to be more serious and in addition corroborates the previous evidence. In these circumstances, of which you must now be fully aware, might it not be a better idea for you to exercise a little more circumspection when making comments on pages which only concern decisions to be made by ArbCom? Thanks in advance, Mathsci (talk) 10:59, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Ah. If you had notified me of that email it would have helped. Like I imagine quite a few people, I have a specific account for[REDACTED] to safeguard privacy. I rarely check it. I have just now. I'll send you a reply shortly. VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 11:24, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Closing the RFC?

I looked through the RFC/U closing policy and it looks like it can be closed by agreement if there's consensus for it on the talk page. Do you feel that we're ready for that now? If so, would you mind making the motion to close, and propose a summary for the outcome? Seems like it would make the most sense for you to do that, since it was you that WeijiBaikeBianji apologized to and agreed to improve his behavior.-SightWatcher (talk) 23:26, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

WBB and I certainly want to move on, and it seems you do too. The one thing is that this RfC has opened up a can of worms. You know that you're under suspicion of being a meatpuppet/sock as are as far as I can tell, a couple of other users who commented on the RfC too. If you are a meat/sockpuppet, then matters will soon take their own course, or so I've been led to believe. If you're not, then there may just be more unnecessary wikistress in trying to reach formal agreement on a closing. My gut feeling is this: the record shows that we all consider the matter finished, want to move on and go back to editing. I'd rather just let it go inactive.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 00:26, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Advice to both VsevolodKrolikov and SightWatcher

I will repeat the advice I gave to SightWatcher on his talk page.

These detailed rules must be followed in closing an RfC/U Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/User conduct/Closing. In particular, if there is still activity, the RfC/U cannot be closed prematurely. That is a common courtesy to allow other editors to comment in different time zones and with possibly limited availability. It is often the case that those opening an RfC/U, will be criticized themselves. That happens fairly often, e.g. in the case of User:Charles Matthews who initiated Misplaced Pages:Requests for comment/SlrubensteinII.

As appears to be happening here, an RfC/U can turn into a criticism of those instigating it. That might be embarrassing for you, but it can provide helpful information for the community and in addition for the instigators, who can then use the feedback to modify their own conduct on wikipedia. You should leave the RfC/U open for at least one week more and should request an unvinvolved administrator to help with the closure. This RfC/U is as much about the conduct of both of you as of the user you set it up about. In other words WP:BOOMERANG probably applies here. Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 04:50, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Is it your plan to turn it into a criticism of the two of us, MathSci? If, as you claim, there is evidence against Sightwatcher more serious than just the RfC, then the RfC is not the place for it. As for my input, no one has suggested that the behaviour I raised was unproblematic, WBB has very gracefully recognised that his communication could be better, we have both expressed our desire to work well and collegiately with each other, and we're all happy to move on. As I said above to Sightwatcher, the RfC has been coloured by the possibility of more serious offences on his part. The RfC is not the place to resolve those, so letting it go inactive (which policy allows for) might be the most productive use of everyone's time and of best benefit to the encyclopaedia. None of us are interested in prolonging a dispute.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 06:44, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

I have no idea to what you're referring. I have no plan to turn the RfC/U into a criticism of you, since I have no intention of taking any further part in it. Your actions have been criticized in the RfC/U and it could well be that more criticism is to come. I don't think that warrants your uncivil reponse to me. Nor do I understand why you mention meatpuppetry here. Did I mention it here or in the RfC/U? Thanks, Mathsci (talk) 15:03, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

I welcome your decision not be involved in any more discussions in this topic. However, your accusations of incivility are simply not acceptable, and unless you can provide diffs, I would ask you to strike such accusations. More bizarrely, you claim you didn't mention meat puppetry. Anyone with a bit of vision can see just a few lines above above here, where you write "On November 18 I sent you privately some information about my concerns with meatpuppetry". That, and the suggestion that I've been criticised in the RfC (when I have not been), suggests a need for you to step back.　MathSci, I was serious in our email exchange when I said I thought you were a valuable editor for the project. You didn't accept this, but I still offer it as something I believe in. Please can we give this whole thing a rest?VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 16:54, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Krolikov, I’m not sure if this’ll make a difference to you, since I haven’t actually seen the evidence that Sightwatcher and Woodsrock are socks or meatpuppets. (I asked Shell about this in an e-mail two days ago, and so far she hasn’t responded.) But I think it’s worthwhile for you to know that during the approximately a year that I was involved in these articles, it’s been the case that every time a newly registered user gets involved in them, they get accused of being a sock or meatpuppet—especially if they disagree with Mathsci, who’s generally made this accusation more often than anyone else. In my own case, when I first got involved in these articles in summer of 2009, I was accused of being a sockpuppet of User:Legalleft (although not by Mathsci) despite my having been registered at Misplaced Pages since 2006. Now that I’m being called a sockpuppeteer rather than a sockpuppet, what it looks like to me is just more of the same inevitable reaction that happens whenever someone new shows up with this viewpoint.

It’s true that Mathsci has correctly identified sockpuppets several times in the past, mainly those belonging to User:Jagz and User:Mikemikev. But the point I’m making is that since this accusation gets made against every new user with this viewpoint on these articles, whether they’re actually a sock or not, I wouldn’t read too much into the fact that it’s being made yet again in this case.

It’s possible that this time there really is some convincing evidence that Sightwatcher and Woodsrock are sockpuppets or meatpuppets, but I kind of doubt it. According to his post above, Mathsci e-mailed ArbCom with his evidence about this on November 18th, almost two weeks ago. I think that if there were convincing evidence against these users, they would have been blocked or topic-banned already. --Captain Occam (talk) 16:41, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

　Occam- what's going on right now is all a bit of a dog's breakfast. I don't know if you're guilty of anything, if sightwatcher is guilty of something and so on. If you really are messing about, of course I want nothing to do with you. (Please don't take offence if such allegations are groundless) Furthermore, that you've been mailing an ARBCOM member, just like MathSci has, further makes procedures opaque to those not privy to discussions. I raised the same point with MathSci about openness; he didn't respond (off-wiki) at all well. I say the same to you - it's simply bizarre that topic banned editors are privy to information that editors in good standing taking part in this discussion aren't.

I got caught up in all of this over a dispute that is now resolved. I would like to remind those who want to prolong disputes that (a) editing[REDACTED] is a hobby (b) costumes are for Halloween and (c) egos are for wimps.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 17:35, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

It’s all right, I’m used to hearing this sort of thing about myself from other editors, especially from Mathsci. If you look through the evidence and findings of fact from the arbitration case, you’ll see that these sorts of accusations against me (as well as against a few other editors who’ve disagreed with Mathsci) have been going on since sometime this spring—I’d give specific examples, but it’s probably best for everyone if I don’t try to dig up old dirt now. And one of the things I learned from this case is that generally, personal attacks reflect more poorly on the person making them than on the person they’re directed at.

Also, I should clarify about my correspondence with Shell: she e-mailed me first, and my message was a response to her. She wanted to know whether Sightwatcher or Woodsrock is a member of an evolution community that I run at DeviantArt, and my answer was not that I’m aware of, but that the community has over two hundred members and I’m not personally familiar with most of them, so it’s possible that Sightwatcher and/or Woodsrock are members there without me knowing about it. I also asked Shell whether there are specific members of this group whom she suspects of being the same people as these Wikipedians, and if so what that suspicion is based on, but she hasn’t replied to that. --Captain Occam (talk) 18:06, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Your openness about off-wiki communications is appreciated. It's disappointing that MathSci has not yet chosen not to strike or back up his accusation against me despite my request, and his comments to Cirt are troubling - it doesn't lie well with the spirit of withdrawing from the discussion, or indeed, asking for a topic ban based on incivility to be lifted. Still, I suppose everything will be sorted once this evidence he says he has actually becomes available in one form or another.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 02:46, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

AGM-114 Hellfire : "Removing details of use in I/P conflict as per talk"

I noticed the section "Combat history" has been significantly shorten, with the removal of two examples that were both referecenced. In the meantime, facts without reference where kept.

In the title of your removal (]), you write is was "as per talk". My understanding of the discussion you refer to was not that these examples should be removed.

Why facts related to I/P conflict should be selectively removed? On which[REDACTED] rule do you base your removal?

My suggestion is to simply remove the title "political issues" and to reintegrate the facts recently removed in the section "combat history"?

79.89.14.185 (talk) 11:36, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Hi IP 79.xxetc. My reading of the discussion was this: three of us had agreed that specific mention of the Hamas killings and the ambulance deaths were inappropriate for that article. The principle we invoked was WP:COATRACK, which means that one article should not be used to present/discuss POVs of a completely different article topic on the sly. In other words, there was too much I/P conflict information in the article which didn't actually add to people's understanding of the weapon itself, but instead was a commentary on Israeli military actions. A fourth editor - you - had said "I believe the article will be better off without the section Political issues and that Combat history should list chronologically the uses of this missile, as it did before." This seemed to agree with the other three editors. I had understood your arguing over the ambulance to be contingent on the political issues section was left in. However, I must confess that I didn't go back and check thoroughly how the article was before the "political issues" section existed. I have now, and I see that mentions of both Yasin and the ambulance have been in and out of the article a few times over the years, even before the political issues section was there. The other editor was epeefleche, who opposed the exclusion, and who seemed to give up the ghost both on that talkpage and on my own (see above) without ever invoking policy guidelines. You also did not respond to the general move in the discussion towards removing both cases, even after your edit-warring block had ended, so in any case, there is still an argument for consensus to remove. Anyway, if you think my removal was unjustified, then you can revert and we can return to the talkpage. VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 14:51, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your prompt answer. I could not go back quickly to the discussion page, and when I did it looked like the issue was settled and the changes were made. I agree with you that a political discussion do not have be part of the page. But obviously, the various facts about combat history belong to this page. I am going to follow your advice by doing the revert and adding a paragraph on the discussion page. 79.89.14.185 (talk) 15:30, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

Captain Occam appeal at AE

• Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#Arbitration_enforcement_action_appeal_by_Captain_Occam

Captain Occam is appealing the decision made by EdJohnston at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement/Archive75#Captain_Occam. This is a courtesy note to make you aware of the request. Vassyana (talk) 04:32, 15 December 2010 (UTC)

The "left-wing" and "right-wing" labels.

As a rule, I tend to oppose broad terms such as "left-wing", "right-wing", "far left", "far right", especially the last two without extreme due care. Hence, I'd describe the SWP in the first sentence as "a Trotskyist political party" -- even though the wear the term "far-left" with pride --, the EDL as an "anti-Islamic protest group" (or even, "Islamophobic", but we must be careful there), and the UAF as a "anti-fascist pressure group". That'd even extend to the main parties, where there is no dispute about the Labour being "centre-left" (I'd use "social democratic") and the Tories being centre-right (I'd use "conservative"). (With the Lib Dems, there's a marked Beveridge/Orange Book split in the party, so I'd just use "liberal"). To our credit, for the main parties, we do that.

On Misplaced Pages, though, we do have a tendency to jump to attacking the far-right more than anyone else. This debate actually shows this: we're having a long protracted battle over the non-dirty "left-wing" where the use of "far-right" in the BNP or the EDL articles was disputed a little but eventually used. One of the things I try to do on Misplaced Pages is to limit usage of these words as much as possible, because they don't really mean anything. I eventually was able to get the lead section of Osama bin Laden to dispense with all the scholar name dropping and just use terrorism in relation to international law enforcement agencies.

I mean, really, what reads better: "The British National Party is a far-right political party", or "The British National Party is a political party"? Personally, I think the second version does. Adding a few extra words doesn't pollute the lede, and we should be writing articles such that we can describe them in the lede and infobox alone. With "far-right", you end up with a lot of citations and rambling about political positions, and the "he said/she said" bullshit we could more easily cover in the first sentence! For example, the first paragraph of the EDL article rambles a lot. For example, I've just written a version of the first paragraph off the hoof just now:

The English Defence League (EDL) is an anti-Islamic political group operating in the United Kingdom. Formed in 2009 by members of the football casual subculture, its stated aim is to oppose the spread of Islamism, Sharia law and Islamic extremism in England and uses street marches as a method of protest. It presents itself as a "multi-ethnic" and "multi-faith" group, but has shown hostility to the general Muslim population at several marches. The EDL's membership figures are ambiguous; in October 2009, their leadership claimed to have "thousands" of members with 300 active supporters. In 2010, a march in Newcastle-upon-Tyne had an estimated attendance of 1,500 to 2,000.

From there, we can describe why it's far-right in a more natural manner: association with the BNP, Sweden Democrats, the far-right in America. The lede also needs to talk about the EDL/UAF conflict as it's extremely important to understanding of the group -- certainly more so than the splinter/sister groups, which should be near the bottom of the article, really.

In general, though, we need to have more intelligent debate. Blind devotion to "the sources" is never good; what we should be using these talk pages for is to dissect all the sources for the contentious stuff to make sure we get the best sources and the best presentation. That's what I really want on Misplaced Pages. Less use of Searchlight in these articles, more use of political dissertations and theses! If we do that, the articles get better, the talk pages get less confrontational, the editors are more cordial, and who knows? We might draw some people away from the EDL; they can complain about left-wing smear pieces all they want, but when confronted by beautiful political argument, and not rhetoric, the far-right really can't retort.

So, thoughts? Sceptre 05:22, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to post a thoughtful message. I agree that the labels right-wing and left-wing can be problematic. In modern British political discourse, both Labour and Conservative leaderships have favoured "centre-left" and "centre-right" to describe themselves, as if left and right used starkly indicates extremism of some kind. Where they are used consistently and in volume by sources with a good (rather than a passable) reputation for objective characterisation, I would still want to use them. Academic analyses still use the terms, and if used carefully, they do actually mean something. I'm rather uncomfortable with equating the EDL and UAF situations. The EDL is consistently characterised by all reliable UK news sources as right-wing (far-right, extreme right). It's probably one of the most common adjectives used. Do we keep this out of the lede, as your version does? There are certainly concerns raised in some RS about the direction of the UAF leadership, but the consistency of reference, the quality of sources and their volume simply isn't there for the first sentence. Certainly for a paragraph further down, I've no problem with that.

I'm more generally worried by the underlying reasons for this dispute. Several editors have wanted what they see as "equivalent" treatment for the UAF compared to the EDL and also the John Birch Society, while at the same time and in the same breath stressing that they do not like labels. This seems to be pointy and politically motivated editing. They do not show any interest in comparing the quality of sourcing in the different cases (and sourcing quality and volume is important in such circumstances). How else can one characterise the proposed use of the Daily Star and random racists websites, or the cynical attempt (with laughable sourcing) to reclassify the Conservative party as in the centre rather than on the right of British politics?

To be honest, I'm not sure that removing the categories of right-wing and left-wing would bring any peace. Islamophobic will no doubt be challenged for EDL (I wouldn't be surprised if they then try to insert anti-semitic into UAF). I agree on the notion of "less use of Searchlight in these articles, more use of political dissertations and theses." However, given that the John Birch Society article uses pretty much exclusively good quality academic imprints to source its description and yet is still seen as an example of unfair labelling, I'm not convinced it will change much. Beautiful arguments won't hold any power over people fixated on specific outcomes. There does not appear to be any attempt to put forth their own standards for label sourcing; at least one involved editor can be found right now arguing precisely the opposite sourcing case for Glenn Beck. That's the frustration here. There is no negotiation or persuasion, no consideration of evidence according to widely accepted principles. Outside views were asked for, they came back pretty clear, and were ignored, caricatured, misrepresented. It's difficult to reach consensus with people behaving like this.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 06:17, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

We don't keep far-right out of the lead section at all; we leave it out of the lead sentence. If anything, the lead sentence should be tweetable summary of the entire article, much like the lead section is equivalent to a book blurb; hence why I think "anti-Islamic" works better than "far-right". The first paragraph of the EDL article I wrote here was what I would write were I creating the EDL article from scratch. An article about the EDL, though, would probably need two or three paragraphs in its lead section; the second paragraph would then go into its history and its association with the far-right. This way, we make a more convincing case for the movement being far-right than if we just do the "he said/she said" thing we do on many articles relating to extremism, including the EDL article. Indeed, this rewrite of the EDL article says more about them being on the far-right than the current version does.

On the subject of the "volume of sourcing", I think there is also a case of there being too much of a good thing. On white power skinhead, there used to be sixteen citations for a single sentence! I have a simple personal rule that if you are unable use three or fewer authoritative sources to cite a fact, then it probably isn't a fact at all -- or, at the very least, disputable enough to not be used with attribution. On the whole, however, the quality of sourcing on articles about extremism is generally excellent.

Your point about the JBS is actually interesting, in that it shows some systemic bias on both Misplaced Pages and in the sources themselves. The JBS shares about 99% of its viewpoints with the Tea Party movement: i.e., far-right economic views, and nothing more than lip-service to social liberalism. In fact, Google Scholar throws up some sources that appear to make this comparison. However, there was, for a long time, a disparity between the articles of the two movements in that the JBS was described as far-right but the Tea Party wasn't. Maybe it's due to the fact that there are seasoned editors that are also Tea Party sympathisers on the project, or that the SPLC doesn't have them on their list of hate groups (but it still scathing in its criticism of the Tea Party nonetheless), or even both. But this, to me, strengthens my opinion that care really needs to be taken with these terms. Sceptre 18:22, 16 December 2010 (UTC)

When I say that labels need to have lots of sourcing, I mean that on the talkpage, any editor presenting a case for a controversial label has to demonstrate that there is a lot of very good sourcing. It's not necessary to include all the sourcing in the article itself. And by a lot, I mean going into dozens, or at least five or six good academic analyses from acknowledged experts.

The tea party issue is a good one to raise, because of the similarities with entryism in the UK Labour party in the 1970s and in student politics too. Tea partiers (including Birchers or Birch-ish fellow travellers) are doing the same thing to the Republican party; I wouldn't be surprised if there have been a few tea-party people reading up on Militant and the SWP's work in the UK, which are seen as classic examples of how to take control of larger political organisations.

But the teaparty is lacking a clear ideology; they're basically "angry". I wouldn't see JBS -style views within tea party groupings as a sign of anything substantial yet - the tea party seems to house a great number of contradictory views. But there are people on that part of the spectrum in the US (who are taking their lead from Glen Beck and others) trying to rehabilitate the JBS and its worldview, it seems to me in order to give the tea party movement a philosophy. We see it on Misplaced Pages with visiting IP editors and the rhetoric they try to insert. This habilitation of the radical right may happen, and sources may cease to characterise it as extreme or radical, or even "right wing". However, Ludwigs2 point on this was excellent -[REDACTED] is not part of that process. Misplaced Pages changes after, not before or during.

The solution to this is, instead of engaging in political discussions, focus on applying principles of sourcing. I absolutely do not see this as a battle of left against right (I do not push my own politics on here at all). It's a battle between POV (which in this case is right-wing) and NPOV. There seems to be some interesting sources to support a short paragraph's critiquing SWP activities within the UAF, and how the SWP views the group as a whole. But it's abundantly clear that there's very little out there (some of the sourcing efforts are frankly comical), compared to the plentiful and high quality sourcing there is for labelling organisations like JBS, EDL or SWP. That should, if we were all good wikipedians, be the end of the matter. VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 05:53, 18 December 2010 (UTC)

Further reading guideline

Hi there, just wanted to drop by and see what you thought about turning this into an actual guideline now. It's been a while since anyone posted about it. I have no idea how to go about turning it into one, but I figured you would.-SightWatcher (talk) 02:33, 30 December 2010 (UTC)

Good New Book

Hi, VsevolodKrolikov,

I've been digesting ideas I learned from human intelligence scholars at the International Society for Intelligence Research conference in December 2010 and reading some of the latest literature. I thought I'd share here the full citation of a book that I may have already mentioned to you on an article talk page.

Preiss, David D.; Sternberg, Robert J., eds. (2010). Innovations in Educational Psychology: Perspectives on Learning, Teaching, and Human Development. New York: Springer Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8261-2162-2. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help); Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help); Unknown parameter |laydate= ignored (help); Unknown parameter |laysummary= ignored (help)

The article by Keith Stanovich and Paula Stanovich in this book is especially good for defining the term "intelligence" in relation to such terms as "cognition" and "rationality." My impression of the current literature is that this framework will become the accepted mainstream framework soon, and already it is an influential minority view among widely published psychologists, who have been citing Stanovich's writings for years. The terminological distinction Stanovich draws is useful for resolving some of the ambiguities present in other professional literature on the subject.

I'll be posting some updates to the source lists soon to reflect the most recent reading I have been doing. I hope you are enjoying a happy new year and are not quite as buried in snow as people here in Minnesota are. Amazingly, we are still getting out for walks and my wife has even been on a bike ride in the last twenty-four hours. Take care, and see you on the articles. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 14:28, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

P.S. You mention on your user page that you're still trying to figure out how to format the arrangement of user boxes more to your liking. Try out the Fix bunching template (you'll see an example on my user page), which has some helpful documentation, and see if that gets you what you desire in terms of layout. As always, всего хорошего; 頑張ってください. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 14:36, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Feedback requested on new R&I lead

I just made a proposal here about a possible change to the lead of the race and intelligence article. Feedback about it would be appreciated.Boothello (talk) 19:49, 13 May 2011 (UTC)

Completely new abortion proposal and mediation

In light of the seemingly endless disputes over their respective titles, a neutral mediator has crafted a proposal to rename the two major abortion articles (pro-life/anti-abortion movement, and pro-choice/abortion rights movement) to completely new names. The idea, which is located here, is currently open for opinions. As you have been a contributor in the past to at least one of the articles, your thoughts on the matter would be appreciated.

The hope is that, if a consensus can be reached on the article titles, the energy that has been spent debating the titles of the articles here and here can be better spent giving both articles some much needed improvement to their content. Please take some time to read the proposal and weigh in on the matter. Even if your opinion is simple indifference, that opinion would be valuable to have posted.

To avoid accusations that this posting violates WP:CANVASS, this posting is being made to every non-anon editor who has edited either page since 1 July 2010, irrespective of possible previous participation at the mediation page. HuskyHuskie (talk) 20:06, 4 July 2011 (UTC)

Feedback requested

Your input would be appreciated in the discussion here.Boothello (talk) 05:23, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Formal mediation has been requested

The Mediation Committee has received a request for formal mediation of the dispute relating to "Opposition to the legalisation of abortion". As an editor concerned in this dispute, you are invited to participate in the mediation. Mediation is a voluntary process which resolves a dispute over article content by facilitation, consensus-building, and compromise among the involved editors. After reviewing the request page, the formal mediation policy, and the guide to formal mediation, please indicate in the "party agreement" section whether you agree to participate. Because requests must be responded to by the Mediation Committee within seven days, please respond to the request by January 31, 2011.

Discussion relating to the mediation request is welcome at the case talk page. Thank you.
Message delivered by MediationBot (talk) on behalf of the Mediation Committee. 01:47, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Tatars

Dear Vsevolod,

Could you please undo the changes by Papersteamboat and return it to

1 August 2011 96.49.122.85 (talk) (35,016 bytes) version ?

I tried hard previously to put together all the nice photos... JackofDiamonds1 (talk) 11:48, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi Jack. This is really an issue for talk:Tatars. Papersteamboat gave reasons for editing the photos that seem reasonable to me. What's wrong, in encyclopedia terms, with the changes Papersteamboat made? VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 15:08, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Apology?

You owe me an apology for saying "This looks like an attempt to misdirect ARBCOM" with regard to me. I understand how it looked, but now you know what you said was wrong, even if you didn't know it when you said it. If you're not willing to admit that you jumped the gun and made a serious but entirely inaccurate accusation, and sincerely apologize for it, well, I really don't want to have anything to do with you any more. And I doubt you would with me if the tables were turned. --Born2cycle (talk) 06:55, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

You don't seem to acknowledge that there is anything improper at all in you editing - without declaration - the text of a policy that is at the heart of a dispute you are involved in, and in your favour. And it looks how it looks (note the words) - that's the point of people recusing themselves from processes where there is a potential conflict of interest (and I'm not talking about WP:COI). So, I don't "know" that I was wrong. Essentially, you're asking for an apology before you give one yourself (which in my opinion should be given to the people in the dispute on the ARBCOM page). I also notice you don't remove insults directed at me ("you moron" and "kiss my ass") from your talkpage, although you will edit it for civility at other times. VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 07:21, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I apologize for missing those insults and thank you for bringing them to my attention. I saw them, but I did not read them as references about you, but you're right and I've struck them now .

You're right that I don't acknowledge that there is anything improper in my editing - because I'm not aware of anything improper about it, and nobody has pointed out anything substantively improper about it. If I did something improper, like change wording to favor my position and then quote that wording - like you wrong accused me of doing - then I would apologize. But that's preposterous for I would never do anything like that.

I understand recusing and why it's done. I simply don't agree that everyone or anyone involved in a dispute that is about some policy page should recuse themselves from all edits to that policy. I don't hold anyone, including myself, to that.

Now, moderators, arbiters, and anyone else who will be making a judgment, sure, they should recuse themselves and be concerned about appearances. But a schmo? I don't see the point.

In any case, what you accused me of is clearly wrong. Why don't you acknowledge that and apologize for it? --Born2cycle (talk) 08:45, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

What I have not redacted is the charge that you shouldn't have done what you did. Here I hope we are on wikipedian, rather than personal grounds. You have said that you don't care about appearances - but this is counter to established notions of due process. I'm sure you know the phrase "justice must not only be done, but be seen to be done". The sentiment of that applies also to wikpedia. Even if your edit to policy text was - in your terms - innocent, because of the obvious possibility that it could be cast as partisan, it should not have been made.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 03:20, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

I think "appearances" are important, sometimes more important than actuality -- in TRW and in WP -- to people who are in positions of power... judges, teachers, professors, police, politicians, managers, admins, moderators, etc., because of the appearance of impropriety can be a serious problem to them, while to ordinary citizens and editors what really matters is actual impropriety. In other words, for ordinary folk, concern over "appearances" is optional. I don't know how appearances are relevant to due process except in regard to people in positions of power.

I can see that the timing and appearance of my edits might seem bad to someone who violates AGF policy, but his or her failure to AGF is on them, not on me. We are supposed to assume good faith, and act accordingly. We are not supposed to assume that others won't assume good faith, and act accordingly, which is what you seem to think I should have been done. Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding. --Born2cycle (talk) 03:37, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

You seem to be arguing that impropriety can only occur if there is bad faith. That isn't true. There may be explicit rules for admins and arbitrators on dealing with wiki-conflicts of interest, but the idea behind those rules applies to all of us. People who edit policy pages should avoid making any edits to policy pages that impact upon disputes they are currently involved in, and especially without any declaration of interest (this is not only my view, remember, it's what other editors have called "unacceptable" and "not a good tactic". My initial strong reaction was because I thought this principle would be so obvious that you must have known what you were up to - something I now accept isn't true). While you personally are utterly convinced of your interpretation of policy, it should be very clear to you that this interpretation is not universal - after all, a mediation has just finished where the !majority clearly didn't see it that way, and nor did the closer, a very experienced and trusted editor. We are supposed to demonstrate good faith too, which means taking care not to make it difficult for others to AGF. Hence we should give the impression of propriety, not simply trust in our own sense that we're good guys meaning well.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 04:49, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

I am not arguing that impropriety can only occur if there is bad faith. I'm saying that characterizing good faith edits to policy pages, for which no substantive problems are actually identified, as impropriety, is contrary to AGF.

I am not convinced all of my interpretations of policy are consistent with consensus.

These notions are novel to me:

• "the idea behind applies to all of us"
• " taking care not to make it difficult for others to AGF."

I agree with this:

• "People who edit policy pages should avoid making any edits to policy pages that impact upon disputes they are currently involved in"

But the corollary of that is:

• "People who edit policy pages may make any edits to policy pages that do not impact upon disputes they are currently involved in"

And what's relevant here is that behavior that appears it might be the former must be assumed to be the latter, per AGF, until proven otherwise (i.e., when in doubt ask, rather than jumping to conclusions). --Born2cycle (talk) 05:16, 6 August 2011 (UTC) (reworded) --Born2cycle (talk) 05:47, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't think we're getting anywhere here, as I've made clear I've withdrawn any accusations of bad faith. This will be my last comment on this matter.

• WP:AGF explicitly states that assuming good faith does not preclude criticising the actions of others. My criticising what you did does not mean I am not assuming good faith.
• If a principle is violated in good faith, the good faith does not make that violation go away.
• The difference between the two situations you outline above is not whether or not good faith is present (it's irrelevant), it's whether or not the editor is making changes that impact upon a dispute they are having. Three editors believe that it does.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 06:15, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

• It's true that criticizing actions is not necessarily a breach of AGF. But criticizing someone for not acting in good faith (which you did) is of course not assuming good faith. That's a syllogism! Further, criticizing someone for behavior that merely might be against the rules, or against consensus, without verifying that it is actually against the rules, or against consensus, is also not assuming good faith. You did that as well.
• Agree - a violation is a violation regardless of whether it's done in good or bad faith.
• No, three editors say they believe that it might impact upon the dispute, and object to it on those flimsy grounds, without even making the effort to explain how it might impact the dispute, and, apparently, without even making the effort to look close enough at the changes in question to see if they really do have that potential. Frankly, that's just disruptive.

--Born2cycle (talk) 06:47, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

This Guy No Like Engrish

This guy deleted my funny edits! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.6.130.177 (talk) 03:40, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Vsevolod, I admire you

I admire the fact that you have modified your position on Born2cycle's recent edits to the WP:AT policy. And, anyone who appreciates The Great Wave off Kanagawa can't be all bad. So, I apologize for the little jabs I've been aiming at you. I will do my best to cease and desist, immediately. (I think it's your username that irritates me -- every time I see it I say "I'm not typing all that!") --Kenatipo 05:16, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

I should have read your remarks above before I wrote this. You seem eager to take back with your left hand what you've just given with your right. My advice to you is: AGF! --Kenatipo 05:38, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Can we work on this?

Vsevolod,

I hope that I can address you by your first name. It’s kind of difficult to say which etiquette to follow :)

I know that one etiquette that I’m violating here is the reason why I’m contacting you. I do hope that you will forgive me this.

I’m contacting you to find out if you will agree to evaluate options for working together on a further development of a creativity management method. So, initially I would like to know if you would just consider what I’m offering below.

I found information about you because of other reasons, but working together would interest me the most.

Another Misplaced Pages administrator recommended contacting you because I have trouble with having an article on CreativityModel Method creativity management method posted in Misplaced Pages. So, that’s how I found information about you. However, after reading material that you have posted in various places, I am much more interested in trying to find a way to work with you on CreativityModel Method development and usage related areas, than I am on trying to persuade you to help me to publish an article on this Method in Misplaced Pages. In order to avoid confusing the topics, I would prefer leaving the article posting out of our discussions altogether.

So, that’s the background. I also have to say that I don’t know if what I can offer is suitable for you, because it all involves development. More specifically, I do not know if you would like to work on developing a large scale project from an early stage to a successful outcome. That kind of work can be very different from evaluating material – which, as far as I can tell, you can do superbly well, if you want to.

So, that being said, is there a way we could communicate on possibly working together on CreativityModel Method development and usage related areas?

Please at least consider it and let me know what do you think. You can contact me via Misplaced Pages or Creativity Management Network, CreativityManagementNetwork.com (Thomas Eklund).

I do believe that when CreativityModel Method development and usage are concerned, reasonable people who are interested in creativity as a subject matter can work out solutions that are mutually beneficial. In essence, this describes the spirit of the discussions that I would like to have with you.

ProjectDeveloper (talk) 04:39, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I'll have a look at this over the next couple of days.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 15:51, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you.

ProjectDeveloper (talk) 04:26, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry for taking a long time to reply to you. Unfortunately, I'm not sure I can help you much. I agree with user:Born2cycle's view that a page on Misplaced Pages for CreativtyModel method is (for the time being) inappropriate. As an encyclopedia,[REDACTED] is not a place to publish original work. That is, we are not a way of gaining recognition, nor a way of advertising new ideas, organisations or websites. Before there can be a page on CreativityModel method, it has to be recognised in the real world - what we call notability. This means there are academic articles and books written on the subject, and/or substantial non-fringe news coverage. Alas, CreativityModel method doesn't seem to qualify. (If your User talk:ProjectDeveloper/CreativityModel Method were put up as a real page, it would probably be deleted by newpage patrollers within a few hours on grounds of notability and probably advertising.) If it gets established and has good third party coverage in reliable sources then a page would be appropriate. (As B2c points out, you would need to work within our policy on conflict of interest). All this citing policy may seem complicated - but it's just part of how we get thousands of anonymous volunteers from around the world to create a quality encyclopedia. If you do have expertise in certain areas, please feel free to join in the fun.

As for working together on the project - again I will have to disappoint you. My interest is in creativity in education, rather than in business; I already have enough on my plate to branch out of that little ghetto.

If you are looking for people to exchange ideas with, there appears to be quite a few people on twitter around the world bouncing around ideas on creativity in business. You might find that a way of making contact with likeminded people. If you search on the hashtag #creativity, you should turn up quite a few people. They generally have blogs where you can check out their specific interests. I hope this helps. VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 04:27, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, this is quite OK :)

ProjectDeveloper (talk) 06:03, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Request for mediation rejected

The request for formal mediation concerning Opposition to the legalisation of abortion, to which you were listed as a party, has been declined. To read an explanation by the Mediation Committee for the rejection of this request, see the mediation request page, which will be deleted by an administrator after a reasonable time. Please direct questions relating to this request to the Chairman of the Committee, or to the mailing list. For more information on forms of dispute resolution, other than formal mediation, that are available, see Misplaced Pages:Dispute resolution.

For the Mediation Committee, AGK 21:33, 10 August 2011 (UTC)
(Delivered by MediationBot, on behalf of the Mediation Committee.)

RFAR on Abortion

An arbitration case involving you has been opened, and is located at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abortion. Evidence that you wish the Arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence sub-page, at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abortion/Evidence. Please add your evidence by August 26, 2011, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can contribute to the case workshop sub-page, Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abortion/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, - Penwhale | 05:14, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

The removal of the News Corporation link

Please re-add the link or explain here why not (your arguement is not valid) http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:Climatic_Research_Unit_email_controversy#See_Also_section_-_Adding_News_Corp_Scandal_link Gise-354x (talk) 01:45, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I have explained, and I won't revert. I'll explain again here: the grist article is by its own admission speculation, and the newscorp page doesn't mention climategate at all. You are sailing very close to the wind in terms of your editing behaviour in a heavily regulated topic area. I suggest you take things down a notch. By the way, have you ever edited[REDACTED] under another name?VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 01:57, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Please use the discussion page at the wiki in question, I did not saw your reply, prior to me posting here. Gise-354x (talk) 02:20, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Removing of Link to hacked Climate Emails

Please re-add the link you just removed from the News Corporation Scandal wiki entry. The argument you bring forward is not valid. There are indeed facts supporting a connection between both cases! Please use the talk page at the NCS wiki for a further discussion. http://en.wikipedia.org/Talk:News_Corporation_scandal Gise-354x (talk) 03:01, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

No - and I've replied. I'll ask you again - have you ever edited[REDACTED] under a different name?VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 03:11, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Why do you ask me this? Why do you ask me to leave[REDACTED] and go blogging ( at the talk page of the CRU emails)? I get the feeling that your intentions are unfaithful, because you keep ignoring facts and what you say to me. Gise-354x (talk) 03:37, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I ask because you've launched yourself at great speed at a single topic which has been plagued by single purpose accounts in the past. A simple answer would have done; it's disappointing that you don't feel able to give one. As for accepting that you are editing in good faith, that's precisely what I'm doing when I suggest you blog about the topic instead, if you are most of all keen to get your ideas out rather than follow the principles of building the encyclopedia. By accepting your actions as being in good faith, I am drawn to the conclusion that you are not clear on how Misplaced Pages works. Misplaced Pages is not about "the truth" as you see it. It's about condensing already established reliably sourced information. We don't do research here, we just put together other people's work.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 03:48, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Dude stop with the accusations, you ask for facts, i provided them, you ask for original research i provided that. And again with the Ben Santer controversy the link is well established between News Corp and CRU. Your words are the opposite of your actions, you refuse to bring up valid arguments, ignoring mine, you have clearly an agenda. Gise-354x (talk) 05:46, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

I have made no accusations, and I specifically said you should NOT do original research (as any editor knows not to do). Take a break to read what the policies say about the use of sourcing and the prohibition on users' original research. It would be the courteous thing to do, given the number of times you've been asked to do so.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 05:56, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikiquette discussion

Just that you know, i have started a discussion about you Misplaced Pages:Wikiquette_assistance#User:VsevolodKrolikov Gise-354x (talk) 08:37, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Why thank you. I appreciate the homage. VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 08:42, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

A treat to share

see my comment at GWcontorversy

Hi I replied to you in the middle of this vote discussion Talk:Global_warming_controversy#Merger_proposalNewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 18:51, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Category links

When discussion a category, say "Foo", you need to enter ]. If you just enter ], it just puts the talk page into category "Foo". — Arthur Rubin (talk) 02:25, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Cross-post at your talkpage - but thanks again. My general question about the colon still stands, but not if it's too much trouble.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 02:27, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Far-left politics

I agree with your comment on symmetry. It is interesting that the terms "Left" and "Right" are also asymmetrical. Left means Communist, socialist, etc., but there is no agreement over what groups should be called right-wing. TFD (talk) 04:21, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

Heh. That's true, especially when you add libertarianism and the similar social liberal/economic conservative combo into the mix. The paradox is that far right is much clearer than far-left. It's also clearly "cooler" to be left than right (comedians, rock stars are a case in point), which is probably a major reason why any tag of "right-wing" for anything less than far-right gets disputed.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 04:30, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

The term "far right" is used because there is no other term available to describe the political group that includes neo-nazis, the KKK and various other groups. TFD (talk) 15:02, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

New Right

Coincidentally I just read an article about the "New Right" in Blackwell's dictionary of modern social thought that is consistent with your definition. But I have seen the term used differently. Murray Rothbard claims to have coined the term to refer to modern American conservatism. Other sources use the term to refer to people such as Ernst Nolte. The article seems to be just original research. I would suggest we cut down the article, use the intro to the Blackwell as a source, then mention the other two definitions. TFD (talk) 14:54, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I think that's a good idea, if I understand you correctly, although I think we can have a basic binary division. There is, as far as I am aware, a consistent-ish use covering the UK and the US (what I think of in its ideal type as late Thatcherism - anti-collectivism, free markets and strong defence shored up with social conservatism). Thus, I suspect (but could be wrong) that the Goldwater-Reagan part of modern American conservatism is, in RS, not considered genetically different to the British New Right. Put another way, in both cases social conservatism (or the co-opted Christian right) is meant to counterbalance the anomie of marketisation. The other half of this binary divide deals with names for movements in other languages that literally mean "new right" but not new right in the anglo-saxon sense, such as Nouvelle Droite, the case of Ernst Nolte or the Japanese shin uyoku I mentioned above. These can be included in something like a generous see-also kind of way, unless there is RS identifying them as connected.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 15:27, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I would just state what the dictionary says about the meaning of the term, unless there is some source that provides more detail. Otherwise it would just be another POV fork. Since Thatcherism/Reaganomics comes under neoliberalism, all we have to say is that the meaning of "New Right" includes neoliberalism and readers can go to that article for further information. TFD (talk) 04:15, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

The POV fork issue is a good point. My instinct is that there's more to an encyclopedic article on the topic than neoliberalism. I'll have a look around a few sources. I admit I probably have a bias in this: publications about the "New Right" were peaking right when I was studying politics at university, including the work of one of my tutors.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 14:10, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks

Hello V. Thank you for your message. While I have studied Mishima quite a bit over the years (I even tracked down old copies of Life magazine that he had written articles for and the one that has the photo of the office after the suicides and beheadings) I am not versed in other languages. Thus, I appreciate your filling me in on what is going on. Cheers. MarnetteD | Talk 03:50, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

No problem (^o^). Ironically I know embarrassingly little about Mishima beyond what[REDACTED] tells me. (Well, I read Kinkakuji, and failed to get past the first chapter of Spring Snow, all in English alas.) VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 03:57, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

Thanks! (my first barnstar!) And thanks to Blueboar, It looks like peace might be breaking out, however temporary.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 01:30, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

If I may interject:

Please don't ], unless you intend to make a positive contribution. I would be most intrigued if you could find something on my talk page to warrant your remarks on the GW Controversy talk page. You seem not to appreciate that the RS stirred up quite a discussion among its own members by publishing unscientific and partial views about AGW. Get your contributions in order and withdraw the remarks about my talk page. Thanking you in advance. --Damorbel (talk) 18:58, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

You were warned at least three times on your talkpage for using article talkpages as general forums and for pushing fringe theories. As a pointer, one of those warnings can be found in the decline to your appeal against a block for edit warring, which I presume you have read. Keeping talkpages focussed on article content rather than soapboxing is a positive contribution.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 01:53, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

VsevolodKrolikov, you should pay attention to what is going on, the 'warnings' you refer to on my talk page are from contributors who, at least in one case, have had their editing severely restricted officially, i.e. they were banned from general editing, for seriously interfering with the contributions of others. I leave them there for my amusement, to remind me of just how unpleasant some of the contributors are. What you are doing in trying to warn me off is in the same genre. This is obvious in that you make no comment on my point that the RS was forced to modify its imaginary consensus because the AGW fanatics had not made a case for it and were merely pursuing their own agenda. How does this fit in with your position 'that no organisation does not share the consensus? --Damorbel (talk) 05:25, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Two admins as well as Kim warned you, so I stand by my remarks. Could you explain what the Royal society's treatment of J J Waterston's paper 180 years ago, or the CRU email theft, or your opinion that the National Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Science, the Académie des sciences and numerous other institutions as well as the Royal Society do not have any "intellectual acceptability" have to do with whether or not we have sourcing to state that "No scientific body of international standing disagrees with this view, though a few organizations hold non-committal positions"? Finally, I hope that I never wrote "no organisation does not share the consensus" as it's a hideous sentence with very unclear meaning. Do you have a link?

"Two admins as well as Kim warned you" Ah! you have revealed your sources. And what about their friend Connolley? As for the consensus you are onto an impossible task, demanding to find seriously independent organisations like the RS who issue policy 'documents' on AGW. The only reason the people at the RS issued the (withdrawn) policy document was because they have no scientific case. Why would they need a policy document if they had a scientific case? Perhaps you do not realise that the 'scientific' argument relies on the Earth radiating 'like a black body', a completely absurd position, repeated like a mantra (throughout Misplaced Pages too!) by AGW climate 'scientists' without a shred of discussion. Sorry about those Wiki admins., some of them keep on getting banned, ever wondered why? --Damorbel (talk) 06:39, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

I revealed my source at the very beginning. It's User talk:Damorbel. On the subject of sources, you don't appear to understand how sourcing works on wikipedia. Our own opinions on these institutions are absolutely irrelevant, as are your own independent attempts to understand the scientific principles behind anthropogenic global warming. If, on the other hand, you're having trouble understanding the topic and need answers in order to navigate and edit the page, that's another matter. At the moment it seems unclear if :

a) you are claiming that the Royal Society is not a body of international standing and that the sources we use are suspect because they consider it to be so.

b) you believe the Royal Society has not issued currently standing statements in support of the theory of anthropogenic global warming - in which case this link from their website may help clear that up

c) you are confused as to why national science academies from so many countries felt the need to publish statements in support of mainstream climate science

d) you don't understand why reliable sources mention the fact that they have published these statements when analysing the public debate about global warming

e) you think there's been a huge conspiracy among scientists going way back to the 19th century in order to get funding for climate change and as a result Misplaced Pages's reporting on science is fatally doomed and should be abandoned

and/or

f) you think[REDACTED] is a place for you to publish your own theories.

It would be helpful, instead of making accusations about things I haven't actually written, if you could deal with each of these points. It might help you in your editing. VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 09:41, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

a/ The RS produced a paper backing the IPCC 100% and then withdrew it in favour of the current, completely bland document because too many members complained about the quality of the science in the first paper - the rest of your point at a/ & b/ is your own invention.

As for c/ that is your own invention also. I haven't seen any other "national science academies" writings - the comments I make are based on real publications and if they really believe the Earth emits "in the infrared" "like a black body", then they would be better off digging potatoes.

d/ I do physics. I haven't the slightest interest in what you call a "reliable source". How do you know a source is reliable? Did somebody tell you it was?

e/ I put ignorance long before conspiracy, and since the belief among climate scientists is that an object orbiting a star has a temperature dependent on its albedo, then they are stuck with a belief system that cannot be supported by any established understanding of physical processes i.e. their understanding is based on ignorance.

f/ Misplaced Pages is a place for people to learn about many matters. Since on thermal physics I have only the publications of Clausius, Maxwell, Planck, Boltzmann, Carnot, Kirchhoff, Wien, Einstein and a few others, I choose these as my sources. Which sources do you choose? Do you read original papers? Currently I am translating Fourier "Mémoire sur les Température du Globe Terrestre et des Espaces Planétaires" (no CO2 effect to be found there!). I have translated a few others such as Aarhenius and Kirchoff, these are the souces I use.

I read what is in Misplaced Pages with an open mind, much of it is good but the thermal physics is disasterous! Too many contributors who know nothing about thermodynamics wanting to prove CO2 is a danger to mankind. --Damorbel (talk) 11:52, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Don't do that

The IP will now say you are censoring (I assume you are). How about you relax and let the guy present the beggining of a discussion. You know where the sources are yourself already and if you realy don;t then you can google it. I am not attempting to partake in a discussion (it is a waste of time due to gaming on the article) but I do think it is important to note on the talk page requests for additions if they are viable. Since RS is available (=even though it is not necessarily to provide RS to start a discussion as long as BLP is not violated) then I am happy with my part in assisting a newcomer. Cptnono (talk) 03:29, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Censoring? Thanks for that. Several editors are of the opinion that this is simply soapboxing and inappropriate. If you know of RS, don't ask other people to google it. Bring it to the table yourself, and go busy yourself on the IP's talkpage telling him how to do things better. Otherwise, it looks like you're simply "enjoying" what he's doing (and your POV on the group has been made abundantly clear previously) rather than trying to improve the encyclopedia.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 03:36, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Creativity

Hi! Thank you for the response. I was trying to match the main Creativity article with the History of the concept of creativity article; at first glance, the premises of the two articles seemed contradictory, one argues that modern creativity predates the Renaissance, while the other does not. This can be chalked up to the fact that, as Runco and Albert explains, while pre-Renaissance thinkers believed in creation, they saw individual inspiration as conduits of divine creation (the Christian God, the Muses, etc), and not creation by the individual, which is the modern definition of creativity. The modern notion of creativity gradually developed during the Renaissance, alongside the appearance of numerous "great artists", emphasizing the role of the artist's talents and abilities in the act of artistic creation. This view becomes more apparent in the Enlightenment, in the writings of Hobbes and Locke.--Realdaytoday (talk) 08:23, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

The problem with the History of the concept of creativity is that where it actually has sourcing, it's entirely sourced to one book by Władysław Tatarkiewicz. I've never seen his name in the creativity literature that I've read. Judging from what Google scholar tells us about where that book has been cited, he's known in the field of aesthetics rather than creativity research per se. He's not in the index of the Encyclopedia of Creativity, and google books can't find him in the Cambridge Handbook of Creativity (my paper copy isn't to hand), and those two are the best general summary books. That doesn't mean his points are not valid (what snippets I've read look very interesting), but it does seem odd to be relying so much on someone not particularly recognised in the field.

The rest of that article is a slightly random list, that looks very much like what we call a fork - it's actually trying to cover the same material as the main page on creativity. Personally, I'm not sure it merits a separate article from the main page on Creativity. History of the concept of creativity isn't a big topic in itself, as far as I can see from what's been published. But if you can find other stuff, that would be great.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 10:19, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the article does rely heavily on one source, which is strange. Other sources I've gone through, such as Genius: the natural history of creativity by Hans Jürgen Eysenck and the Cambridge Handbook of Creativity, make essentially the same point (that the Renaissance was when the modern concept of creativity was popularized, and that ancient philosophers did not see creativity as a form of individual creation). Prior to research into creativity in psychology and neuroscience, creativity was mainly a topic for philosophers, including aestheticians, so it's no surprising that Tatarkiewicz has much to say about it. With the exception of the first paragraph, most of my changes to the main creativity article were sourced to Runco and Albert and not Tatarkiewicz. However, if there's time, I'll try to work on the history article too.--Realdaytoday (talk) 12:38, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Metrication in UK

I didn't try to own the page, That's a dumb thing to say. I supported a wise compromise. There will NEVER be agreement while stupid posts are made saying that ALL my points have been refuted. That's idiotic and NOT designed to aim for consensus. Don't attack me. Attack people who are not trying to achieve agreement. HiLo48 (talk) 10:35, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I wouldn't describe your edits as seeking to achieve agreement - as evidence by your attacks on other editors (I'm POV and "dumb", apparently, and DeFacto's comments are "stupid". I think you are displaying ownership because, amongst other things, more than once in the past few days you and Martinvl have made edits that clearly ignore the fact that there are disputes about them on the talkpage. We all would like a "wise" compromise, but that's for us all to work out, not for you to assert. Compromise involves more than one side.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 10:47, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

A discussion that you may be interested in

Hi VsevolodKrolikov, I believe that you are interested in the way opinion polls are dealt with in articles. There is a discussion taking place in Misplaced Pages talk:Identifying reliable sources#Polls and surveys, releated to changing the guidelines with respect to these, that you may be interested in. -- de Facto (talk). 14:38, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for this. As you'll no doubt have seen, I've put a note on the metrication in the UK talkpage. Not notifying people is pretty bad form.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 15:06, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

VsevolodKrolikov, I have demanded a public apology for what you wrote about me on the page Misplaced Pages talk:Identifying reliable sources#Polls and surveys. You can respond to me there. Martinvl (talk) 15:38, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

It's really not clear what you're asking me to apologise for. The best sense I can make is that you are asking me to apologise for disagreeing with you. That would be odd.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 15:42, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Apology demanded

You wrote: "The other side of this dispute would say that Martinvl doesn't understand the difference between primary and secondary sourcing, and that he struggles with the concept of original research and why Misplaced Pages is not the place for it." I demand an appology for this comment. The apology should be published at Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Measurement where the original insult was posted. Martinvl (talk) 18:17, 18 October 2011 (UTC)

While I'm sorry that you feel upset by people questioning your understanding of policy, what I wrote seems to me to be a fair summary of the problems other editors have with the content you want to include in Metrication in the United Kingdom, both in that dispute and in some other parts of the "Current usage" section. So I'm not apologising for what I wrote. Your demand is also a bit rich considering that in your canvassing at WikiProject Measurement, you told the project that you

have been questioned by a number of editors whose record of editing measurement-related articles is minimal. I would welcome some input from people who understand measurements.

I don't think anyone in this dispute has shown difficulties in understanding the concepts of kmh and mph. It's interesting that you haven't mentioned other people's lack of understanding of measurement in the dispute. It's a puzzle why you sought to suggest such a thing on the project page.

Regarding these problems with primary and secondary sourcing, I maintain that you do not appear to understand the importance of using reliable secondary sources to make general claims about a topic, given your insistence on assembling primary sources and synthesising other ones to support material (I realise you don't think you're doing this, that's besides the point here). The thing is, it's not just me saying it. When there are several editors making the same point, it's always a very good idea to listen. Maybe we're wrong, but you need to engage and persuade, rather than simply insist, or indeed demand sanctions against people for disputing your edits, as you did previously. It's also important to accept that sometimes you're not going to persuade: it should never feel like losing a fight.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 07:32, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Animal Farm in Popular Culture

Just wanted to thank you for getting involved in this discussion. I think it might be helpful if the comments at RSN were copied over to the article's Talk page as well, but I'm not sure what protocol is in such cases. Doniago (talk) 19:39, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

No problem :-). There isn't really a protocol afaik - whatever keeps the discussion best managed. I wouldn't cut and paste a large amount of material, though.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 03:22, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

"domain of science"; better to source to secondary literature

I am a newcomer for editing wikipedia. It is interesting to see how it works from inside, construction of articles. Could you explain me some details about the topic, please? If it is not a proper place for discussion, you can contact me dk.seecore@gmail.com and I would be glad to learn from you.

"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." –Anatole France

This is a situation we are facing with TRIZ.

Just for information: author of method to invent (G. S. Altshuller, The Innovation Algorithm: TRIZ, systematic innovation, and technical creativity. Worchester: Massachusetts: Technical Innovation Center, 1999, p. 312. - originally published in 1969, the English version of the book appeared in 1999) suggested to build a theory, in order to advance the method. It seems a normal scientific practice, does it? However, most of the people around the globe didn't read the book. Therefore, confusion exists. May we reduce this confusion by informing people? IMHO, the cause of any problems is ignorance.

dk.seecore (talk) 09:27, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

A quick answer for the moment. As for my edit: TRIZ isn't really a domain of science (a domain would be something like nanotechnology, or genetics), it's a technique. It's usually better if possible to source material to secondary literature: primary literature, especially when publicising an idea, may often use peacock terms (and "domain of science" is awfully grand).

Certainly, please add material to the TRIZ page. As you're new, make sure you understand the three core content policies: source all content to reliable sources, be neutral about the topic and do no original research yourself.

I began revising the TRIZ page a while ago before real life distractions took over. The main problem we've had there is material that is not sourced properly - editors' own research without sourcing at all, or links to websites from companies and groups promoting TRIZ (and their own particular version of it). I see from your userpage you are interested in publicising TRIZ and are attached to an organisation that promotes TRIZ. Given that, make sure that whatever you add is neutral, and there is no advertising for your organisation. (We have to maintain neutrality).

Altshuller's works are primary sources. This means we should be very careful working directly from them. Wherever possible we should try to use someone else's published commentary on what he wrote. (Our own analyses would be original research, which breaks a core policy. We need that policy to stop random internet users from trying to publish their own theories about anything and everything.) So neutral, descriptive summaries would be OK.

I hope this helps, and feel free to ask for help (from me or others) anytime.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 10:32, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments and explanations. They really help to understand things.

If we look to history of rising the TRIZ, it's clearly not a tool. If you are so sensitive to the word "science", let us define it as a "domain of knowledge". Algorithm for Solving Inventive Problems (ARIZ) is a method and can be considered as a tool. When TRIZ - theory of inventive problem solving was suggested in order to develop methods like ARIZ. Some draft version of glossary can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/User:2011dmitry_k/OTSM-TRIZ:_Glossary#TRIZ

You are right, there are a lot of interests to promote services using free of charge brand TRIZ. Therefore there is a lot of fuzziness what is it. Advertising doesn't help when newcomers try to learn about TRIZ.

Be neutral. If you look carefully at my present point of interests (www.seecore.org), I am not a TRIZ-man. I had never had any TRIZ-certificates and so on. What happen with me regularly, people ask my service as an instructor about TRIZ and TRIZ-based methods. Actually I'm a member of research laboratory in the state organization (http://www.seecore.org/id4-01.htm). Technically, it is not a problem for me to build all the necessary content apart of Misplaced Pages. Actually I learn what does it mean to build a piece of content in projects like wikipedia ;)

Please, give me your arguments, why "It's usually better if possible to source material to secondary literature"? Personally I made literature review for recent literature about TRIZ (http://www.seecore.org/d/2007_02.pdf). Regrettable results. There are a lot of misunderstanding and empty research trials, IMHO. My non-TRIZ colleagues agreed, that this is due to the lack of access of English speaking researches to the original publications in Russian. Is the book (one among many: http://www.trizminsk.org/eng/book.htm) of founder of theory (he dedicated more than 40 years) a reliable source for getting definition of what is TRIZ? Or a questionable paper of newcomers about arbitrary selected articles of another newcomers is more reliable source for citation?

My research interests are about technological forecasting, but not about TRIZ. IMO, TRIZ shows reliable results as a theory; there are dozens of method for inventive problem solving have been made using concepts from TRIZ. In border of our research, we apply TRIZ-knowledge for developing methodology of reliable forecasting. By trying to contribute for content about TRIZ, I try to remove necessity to retrain people (it takes a lot of time) only.

130.79.179.123 (talk) 13:02, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your considered response. The glossary looks good as a page in development; it needs citations and sourcing for each of the concepts.

The article you wrote is a good example of secondary literature - it was published in Procedia Engineering, which is peer-reviewed and so we have some assurance about its quality. The one cautionary note is that we have guidelines on conflicts of interest, and you have one here, as it's your own work. That said, just be open about the fact that it was you that wrote it, and make sure to use other people's work as well. You'll gain people's trust if you include any criticisms of your work too.

Using Altshuller's work itself is OK, if we're directly quoting. We prefer secondary literature to make sure that we're not introducing novel or unusual interpretations of his work.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 11:22, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

In general we prefer reliable secondary literature because it's an indication that (a) the world has taken sufficient notice of something to include it in the encyclopedia and (b) that a particular interpretation of the primary topic and texts has been validated by editorial oversight. Anyone can edit Misplaced Pages: we need policies to keep out unusual or simply crazy interpretations of articles.

Russian (or any foreign language) sources are acceptable on English wikipedia. The policy is WP:NOTENG - basically, if another editor asks for a translation of the relevant part of a foreign language text, it should be provided, but otherwise you can just cite the reference.

Regarding how to define TRIZ in English: Russian wiki has "область знаний исследующая механизмы развития технических систем с целью создания практических методов решения изобретательских задач". The problems is that "domain of knowledge" doesn't sound right in English (or area, or region, or field, or however one translates область). Can you give examples of other things you would call "область знаний"? In English sources it's not called anything so grand. For example, in this article it gets called a philosophy, a method and a collection of tools and strategies.

I have to say, it's good to have someone on here who knows about TRIZ without being partisan. I am an amateur; I came across Triz in my research into Creativity. My main contribution to the page was trying to make it follow our policies on content and sourcing.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 11:22, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Mediation Cabal: Request for participation

Dear VsevolodKrolikov: Hello. This is just to let you know that you've been mentioned in the following request at the Mediation Cabal, which is a Misplaced Pages dispute resolution initiative that resolves disputes by informal mediation.

The request can be found at Misplaced Pages:Mediation Cabal/Cases/17 October 2011/Metrication in the United Kingdom.

Just so you know, it is entirely your choice whether or not you participate. If you wish to do so, and we'll see what we can do about getting this sorted out. At MedCab we aim to help all involved parties reach a solution and hope you will join in this effort.

If you have any questions relating to this or any other issue needing mediation, you can ask on the case talk page, the MedCab talk page, or you can ask the mediator, Alpha Quadrant, at their talk page. MedcabBot (talk) 18:33, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Yukio Mishima

Hi Mr VsevolodKrolikov.
You noted as original research in the Edit Summary of Yukio Mishima, Have you read 三島由紀夫2000『決定版 三島由紀夫全集〈35〉』(新潮社）in Japanese? --Watson system (talk) 03:08, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

I've only read fragments in that work about Kosaburo Eto that I can track down on the internet (to check what the reference says about Eto), but that's actually not the point here. What "original research" means precisely this - a Misplaced Pages editor takes two ideas, or two sources, and puts them together to make a statement that cannot be found in published reliable sources. In this case we have:

• In 1969 Mishima mentioned (and only very briefly) the recent suicide of Kosaburo Eto in one of his writings.
• In late 1970, he committed ritual suicide (in a very different, much more traditional manner).

You're putting these two together to say

• Yukio Mishima's decision to commit suicide was significantly influenced by Kosaburo Eto's example.

This third idea is your own conclusion, also known as "original research". There are several biographies of Mishima, and as far as I (or another editor) know, none of them refer to Eto's actions as having an influence on Mishima's decision to kill himself at all. Obviously, Mishima's suicide has been considered by a lot of scholars. If Eto's actions were an influence on Mishima's they would mention it. They don't appear to.

The connection you make isn't obvious, either. Maybe Mishima saw his own and Eto's suicides as fundamentally two different acts (after all, self-immolation and seppuku are not the same). Maybe he had largely forgotten about Eto (he doesn't appear to mention him closer to his death, for example). Maybe Mishima had decided on this course of action long before Eto's death. Your idea is one of many imaginable possibilities, and most importantly, it's not an idea that published scholars have suggested.

The thing is, you may be perfectly correct that it was a big influence on Mishima's decision to commit seppuku. However, being correct is not enough for Misplaced Pages. In order to provide readers with assurance that this view is correct or established, we need a published expert to write about it. We don't have such a source, so we shouldn't publish the idea on Misplaced Pages. We're not an academic journal that publishes new ideas, no matter how good they are. This encyclopedia reflects current scholarship; it does not write it.

If you feel very passionate about this, you'd be better off trying to get your ideas about Kosaburo Eto published somewhere (an academic journal, a book etc.).

I'll copy and paste this to the Mishima talkpage, as it's more appropriate there.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 04:42, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi VsevolodKrolikov. I read your opinion, but have a different position against you. I will write back soon, please wait for a while. --Watson system (talk) 10:53, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Input requested

If you have a moment, would you mind offering your opinion about the change I'm suggesting here? The edit I would like to make has been reverted once already, but no one is responding to my talk post where I explained the justification for it. I'd like to have at least one other editor's opinion about this edit before I try to make it again.

A few editors have complained that this article needs a lot of work, especially to replace lengthy quotes from reviews with summaries. Your input would be welcomed here, as I think most people involved in this area regard you as neutral and reasonable. If you feel up to the task of helping to improve the article, it would be appreciated.Boothello (talk) 01:24, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

I've made a comment. I don't know if I have the necessary wiki-time to get involved in the page; I'm very much a layperson, so it involves a good deal of reading each time to re-establish my bearings as to who's said what in the literature.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 08:54, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

That's understandable. But a lot of the article's problems are just failures to comply with the manual of style, which are likely possible to fix without an in-depth understanding of the source material. Even if you don't think you have the time to fix other problems, though, it would be helpful if you could stay involved for long enough to help resolve this dispute over what the article should say about the PF. Sometimes these sorts of issues are difficult to resolve without a neutral third party.Boothello (talk) 21:17, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry to bother you again, but I'd really appreciate it if you could respond to what I asked you on the talk page for that article, even if you don't want to get more involved. I'm not completely clear on what you were suggesting be added to the article from the Tucker and Valencia sources. The Tucker source doesn't appear to discuss this book at all. The Valencia source does discuss the book and the Pioneer Fund together, but most of its criticism seems to be about how the PF has financially supported the book. Would you mind clarifying to me and Marek on the article talk page what you were suggesting from these sources? Thanks.Boothello (talk) 00:58, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry about not picking up on the discussion - I've got the hyperactive WP:Verifiability RFC discussion on my watchlist at the moment and it's drowning out other articles. I've put a comment on the talkpage.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 06:39, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I don't mean to be pushy, but before this issue can be resolved I think Marek and I will need to know whether to wait for you to make the changes you suggested on this article, or whether I should do it. Marek said in his last comment there that he prefers that you be the one to make the changes, and I do too, if that's possible for you. He and I are so often deadlocked on these articles that we aren't usually able to resolve our disagreements without a neutral third party.Boothello (talk) 23:40, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi Boothello - I've been a bit busy IRL to settle down to do this. If you can old off until Monday morning, I'll try get something done tomorrow evening (9 hours ahead of GMT here).VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 04:45, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Do you think you'll have the time to make the rest of the changes you were intending for this article sometime soon? I recall you said you'd get around to it in a week or so.Boothello (talk) 00:35, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I'll have a go tomorrow. I've had my wiki time taken up with a very tedious mediation, but the instigator appears to have picked up their ball and gone home. I appreciate your forbearance.VsevolodKrolikov (talk) 17:05, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure if you saw my comment, but I found a PDF of the Gottfredson review. I don't know if the Snyderman review is available online, but I think I found which issue of National Review it was published in. Are you still intending to make these changes? I'd consider just making them myself, but the last time I tried Volunteer Marek reverted me because he said I needed to wait for you.Boothello (talk) 23:14, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Mediation Cabal: Case update

Dear VsevolodKrolikov: Hello, this is to let you know that a Mediation Cabal case that you are involved in, or have some connection with:

Misplaced Pages:Mediation Cabal/Cases/17 October 2011/Metrication in the United Kingdom

is currently inactive as it has not been edited in at least a week. If the issues in the case have been resolved, please let us know on our talk page so we can close the case. If there are still issues that need to be addressed, let us know. If your mediator has become inactive, also let us know. The case will be closed in one month if it remains inactive. You can let us know what's going on by sending a message through to your mediator, Alpha Quadrant, on their talk page. Thanks! MedcabBot (talk) 13:40, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

William Duff (writer)

Thank you for not reverting and giving me time to reply. I will try and convince you that the current format is better and that there is a policy covering this. If at the end you are not convinced then I'll revert the changes to the non DNB citations.

First of all though let me explain how I came to this page over the millions variable to edit. There is a project called WikiProject Dictionary of National Biography. The copyright on the text of the project has expired and for British biographical subjects. For those where all the primary sources had been found by the end of the 19th century, the text can be copied into Misplaced Pages verbatim and then modernised in the usual Misplaced Pages way.

To help make the copying easier there are three templates:

• {{Cite DNB}} which is like {{cite book}} but fills in some of the fields automatically.
• {{DNB}} which calls {{Cite DNB}} but adds a string at the front to says that some of the text originates elsewhere.
• {{DNB poster}} this puts up a box and is designed for "Further reading" or "External links" and is designed to link to a DNB article on Wikisource that is not being used as a reference.

The current trouble is that one editor recently decided to automate copying the articles across. This has caused three problems.

1. The parameters passed into the {{Cite DNB}} were passed in a novel way, and this causes the created by the DNB templates be messed up.
2. The citations method used {{Cite DNB}} should have been {{DNB}} to cover concerns about plagiarism (see WP:PLAGIARISM). Note particularly the sections on "Public-domain sources" and "Where to place attribution"
3. No inline citations were used. Without them someone can not tell what parts of the text were copied verbatim and so again it breaches the plagiarism guidelines.

So I came to William Duff (writer) because it is next on the list of articles to repair. It is a little different from most of them in that the text was added to an article that already existed rather than being a new one.

The design of the {{DNB}} is to add it to the "References section" of an article. within the template the parameter ref=harv is set. This means that it works well with short citations. For example if you click on this link and then click on the author date link you will see that it jumps to the long reference in the reference list. Given that we have to attribute the text short citations for the DNB cites are appropriate particularly when they include citations themselves (WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT) See another article in the list James Grant Duff#Notes

I think that short citations linked via {{harv}} family of templates have several advantages over other ways of citing text.

• It allows for a sorted list of references to be presented at the bottom of the page, without the repartition of an unsorted list directly above
• The are less obtrusive in the text as it is being edited, which is an aid to editors. I am sure that you have been in the situation where one paragraph that carries half a dozen full length citations is next to impossible to read whist being edited.
• If one does not use short citations, what happens when a book is cited multiple times, does one have to include the full citation every time a new page is cited at the end of another sentence or paragraph?

There is a suggestion in the WP:CITE guideline that the citation style is consistent. If we are going to use short citations for some of it (which is rather forced upon us if we have to use {{DNB}}) then for consistency they all should be short citations. There is an alternative to {{DNB}} with the inline= parameter set like this: {{DNB|inline=1}} which creates this:  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help) which would clutter up the "Notes section" needlessly.

Of course we do not have to follow the WP:CITE, but one of the things my tidying up the citations did was to highlight that the book citations that were already in the aricle did not include page numbers. Something required both because it is in WP:CITE and also because without them one is faced with 100 of pages of reading to check a simple citation. To exaggerate to make the point: Misplaced Pages has over 10,0000 articles that carry the template {{1911}} without any parameters what it says is "that some or all of the text in this article is copied from somewhere in the 29 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica but I am not going to tell you where". Having fixed a number of those types of articles, it would have been nice if the original author of the Misplaced Pages article had included the name and volume of the EB article!

So I have laid out my wares, if you want to revert the conversion of long to short citations then pleas do so, and I will not revert the revet, or if you want me to do it, then let me know and I'll self-revert. -- PBS (talk) 23:39, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

The simplest thing to do is to add the template {{page number}} at the end of the long citations. It does not stand out as much but that is not necessarily a bad thing (these things are not meant to be a badge of shame). As it happens I have today edited a page which had one of the worst examples of not being able to read the text from the citations (as in wood for the trees), that I have ever seen. (See Sir James Pulteney, 7th Baronet and edit that old version, then have a look at the second section "Military career"!). If you compare the look of the page now Sir James Pulteney, 7th Baronet to the old version you will see little has changed in the appearance of the page. But if you edit the most recent version, you will see that the text is now cleared of the confusing citations. This was done using "list defined references", which if you like the long reference style in your {{reflist}} allows you to have your cake (text clear of citation clutter) and eat it (long citations in the {{reflist}}). Hope that helps -- PBS (talk) 05:54, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

There are are three techniques that I know of. The first you already know is the use of a author sorted general reference list and short citations (my preferred solution). The second is to cite the article using citation templates on its first usage with ref=harv set, and then use short citations after that. In that case the {{harvnb}} will jump to the citation even though it is displayed in the {{reflist}} and not in a sorted general list. The third solution and given your preferences the one you will probably like the most is a template called {{rp}} see Template:Rp/doc for usage. -- PBS (talk) 07:01, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

A word to the wise though, the {{rp}} is actively disliked by a number of editors. -- PBS (talk) 07:04, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry, rereading what you have written I realised that we may in part have been talking at cross purposes the template {{page number}} produces it is a request to add a page number to either a short or a long inline citation. Inside citation templates such as {{cite book}} there are page= or pages= parameters for displaying page numbers. But what I wrote above still holds true if you need to cite a source several times with different page numbers. -- PBS (talk) 07:19, 5 November 2011 (UTC)

Mediation Cabal: Case update

Dear VsevolodKrolikov: Hello, this is to let you know that a Mediation Cabal case that you are involved in, or have some connection with:

Misplaced Pages:Mediation Cabal/Cases/17 October 2011/Metrication in the United Kingdom

is currently inactive as it has not been edited in at least a week. If the issues in the case have been resolved, please let us know on our talk page so we can close the case. If there are still issues that need to be addressed, let us know. If your mediator has become inactive, also let us know. The case will be closed in one month if it remains inactive. You can let us know what's going on by sending a message through to your mediator, Alpha Quadrant, on their talk page. Thanks! MedcabBot (talk) 14:14, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

WikiProject Russia task forces and an interview for the Signpost

Hello! You are a notable member of WikiProject Russia, so I suggest you to sign up for some of the project's task forces. I believe you might be particularly interested in the Language and literature of Russia task force. You may find the full list of task forces on the main page of WikiProject Russia, top right corner.

I kindly ask you to sign up, because the more participants a project has, the more serious and promising it looks, which means more people would like to join in future. Also, this will help other editors and newcomers to identify the people who work in the Russian topics in order to ask them for some advice or help. In case you do not wish to join formally for some reason, you might be made an "Honorary member" and you'll be there anyway

Also, here is an invitation for you to give an interview for the Signpost newspaper:

• The WikiProject Report would like to focus on WikiProject Russia for a Signpost article. This is an excellent opportunity to draw attention to your efforts and attract new members to the project. Would you be willing to participate in an interview? If so, here are the questions for the interview. Just add your response below each question and feel free to skip any questions that you don't feel comfortable answering.

GreyHood 23:11, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abortion closed

An arbitration case regarding all articles related to the subject of Abortion has now closed and the final decision is viewable at the link above. The following remedies have been enacted:

• All articles related to the subject of Abortion:

1. shall be semi-protected until November 28, 2014;
2. shall not be moved absent a demonstrable community consensus;
3. are authorized to be placed on Standard discretionary sanctions;

In addition:

1. Editors are reminded to remain neutral while editing;
2. Structured discussion is to take place on names of articles currently located at Opposition to the legalization of abortion and Support for the legalization of abortion, with a binding vote taken one month after the opening of the discussion;
3. User:Orangemarlin is instructed to contact the Arbitration Committee before returning to edit affected articles;
4. User:Michael C Price, User:Anythingyouwant, User:Haymaker, User:Geremia, User:DMSBel are all indefinitely topic-banned; User:Michael C Price and User:Haymaker may appeal their topic bans in one year;
5. User:Gandydancer and User:NYyankees51 are reminded to maintain tones appropriate for collaboration in a sensitive topic area.

For the Arbitration Committee,
- Penwhale | 04:17, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Arbitration motion regarding Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abortion

Resolved by motion at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Clarification that: The Abortion case is supplemented as follows:

Remedy 1 of Abortion is amended to the following:

• Any uninvolved administrator may semi-protect articles relating to Abortion and their corresponding talk pages, at his or her discretion, for a period of up to three years from 7 December 2011. Pages semi-protected under this provision are to be logged.

For the Arbitration Committee, Salvio 12:23, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Discuss this

Mediation Cabal: Case update

Dear VsevolodKrolikov: Hello, this is to let you know that a Mediation Cabal case that you are involved in, or have some connection with:

Misplaced Pages:Mediation Cabal/Cases/17 October 2011/Metrication in the United Kingdom with outside discussion at Talk:Metrication in the United Kingdom#MedCab mediation offer

is currently inactive as it has not been edited in at least a week. If the issues in the case have been resolved, please let us know on our talk page so we can close the case. If there are still issues that need to be addressed, let us know. If your mediator has become inactive, also let us know. The case will be closed in one month if it remains inactive. You can let us know what's going on by sending a message through to your mediator, Alpha Quadrant, on their talk page. Thanks! MedcabBot (talk) 13:42, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

AE thread

No doubt you're used to me asking your perspective on content related stuff, but another issue has come up where your input might be valuable. I've been accused of being a sock of someone topic banned during the R&I arbitration case (if there's any question about it I'll go on record as saying no, I am not a sock). No one has started an SPI about it. Most editors commenting so far have opposed me over these articles before, so they might welcome the chance to get rid of me. I think it would be useful if someone could offer their input who's familiar with my editing but doesn't have an obvious reason for wanting me gone.Boothello (talk) 21:38, 14 December 2011 (UTC)