Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Sandstein (talk | contribs) at 13:28, 3 January 2015 (→Arbitration enforcement topic ban: Race and intelligence: new section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Thanks to all of you for the interesting conversations that occur here. We are here to build an encyclopedia, so let's discuss how to improve as many of the 6,938,938 articles on Misplaced Pages as we can. Tips from Wikipedians on how to edit better, and on where to find resources for sourcing better edits, are always appreciated. I see other user talk pages have announcements about where each editor will reply to posts. Usually I will reply to your comments to me, posted here, right here on this page. I'll do my best to learn to follow to where you want me to read your posts, and where to reply to them, if you have a differing preference.

Please see my how I edit page for a detailed discussion of my approach to editing Misplaced Pages. Note that I am rigid and inflexible in respecting the core Misplaced Pages content guideline of respecting reliable secondary sources, so I read actual books and review articles rather than blogs or fringe websites when searching for information for updating Misplaced Pages articles. Experience has taught me that it is pointless to prefer the world of blogs for information in an era when academic libraries are woefully neglected. Professional academic librarians (who are severely underpaid, in my opinion) are well qualified to advise you on what sources are reliable and what sources are laughable in the opinion of thorough, thoughtful scholars. Ask a professional reference librarian at an academic library for advice on what sources are reliable and mainstream. The librarian will be glad to help. (And, yes, anyone who answers questions like this should be paid more to answer the questions than is usually the case.)

Please note. Somehow some editor has been disregarding the immediately preceding paragraph here, so let me be especially clear. I happen to work on pages that are subject to active arbitration remedies, and the related ArbCom case included site bans for some editors who have returned to Misplaced Pages as puppets. I cannot always be sure that comments posted to this page are posted by someone who had nothing to do with the case that triggered those remedies. Therefore I will make full use of my right to remove comments from my own user pages. "The removal of material from a user page is normally taken to mean that the user has read and is aware of its contents. There is no need to keep them on display and usually users should not be forced to do so." I have the right to clean up my own user talk page and will do so. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, we may as well remember that it's always hunting season for that kind of duck.

Archives

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This page has archives. Sections older than 50 days may be automatically archived by Lowercase sigmabot III when more than 4 sections are present.

Editing statement

Terrific statement; hope all is going well for you on Misplaced Pages. I tend to check and verify sources, too - especially to see if they are being used correctly. Parkwells (talk) 22:11, 22

Thanks for your kind words. I see you have been doing some good work here on Misplaced Pages. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 21:50, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

GOCE March drive newsletter

Guild of Copy Editors March 2012 backlog elimination drive update Greetings from the Guild of Copy Editors March 2012 Backlog elimination drive! Here's the mid-drive newsletter. Participation: We have had 58 people sign up for this drive so far, which compares favorably with our last drive, and 27 have copy-edited at least one article. If you have signed up but have not yet copy-edited any articles, please consider doing so. Every bit helps! If you haven't signed up yet, it's not too late. Join us! Progress report: Our target of completing the 2010 articles has almost been reached, with only 56 remaining of the 194 we had at the start of the drive. The last ones are always the most difficult, so thank you if you are able to help copy-edit any of the remaining articles. We have reduced the total backlog by 163 articles so far. Special thanks: Special thanks to Stfg, who has been going through the backlog and doing some preliminary vetting of the articles—removing copyright violations, doing initial clean-up, and nominating some for deletion. This work has helped make the drive a more pleasant experience for all our volunteers. Your drive coordinators – Dianna (talk), Stfg (talk), and Dank (talk) To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list.

You have a reply at Talk:Genius (eom)

You have a reply at Template talk:Human intelligence topics#Template redesign and move (eom)

Books & Bytes New Years Double Issue

Happy New Year, and welcome to a special double issue of Books & Bytes. We've included a retrospective on the changes and progress TWL has seen over the last year, the results of the survey TWL participants completed in December, some of our plans for the future, a second interview with a Wiki Love Libraries coordinator, and more. Here's to 2014 being a year of expansion and innovation for TWL!

Increased access to sources: 1500 editors signed up for 3700 free accounts, individually worth over $500,000, with usage increases of 400-600%

Deep networking: Built relationships with Credo, HighBeam, Questia, JSTOR, Cochrane, LexisNexis, EBSCO, New York Times, and OCLC

New pilot projects: Started the Misplaced Pages Visiting Scholar project to empower university-affiliated Misplaced Pages researchers

Developed community: Created portal connecting 250 newsletter recipients, 30 library members, 3 volunteer coordinators, and 2 part-time contractors

Tech scoped: Spec'd out a reference tool for linking to full-text sources and established a basis for OAuth integration

Broad outreach: Wrote a feature article for Library Journal's The Digital Shift; presenting at the American Library Association annual meeting

GOCE February blitz wrapup

Guild of Copy Editors Misplaced Pages:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Blitzes/February 2014 wrap-up Participation: Out of seven people who signed up for this blitz, all copy-edited at least one article. Thanks to all who participated! Final results, including barnstars awarded, are available here. Progress report: During the seven-day blitz, we removed 16 articles from the requests queue. Hope to see you at the March drive! Cheers from your GOCE coordinators Jonesey95, Miniapolis and Baffle gab1978. To discontinue receiving GOCE newsletters, please remove your name from our mailing list. Newsletter delivered by

Question of reliable source

Hello. You reverted this edit, stating that the article in question is not a reliable secondary source. I did not say it was a reliable secondary source, I said it was a reliable source on Misplaced Pages because it was peer-reviewed by a scientific journal. WP:RS specifically identifies this case in the "Scholarship" paragraph in that "Material such as an article, book, monograph, or research paper that has been vetted by the scholarly community is regarded as reliable, where the material has been published in reputable peer-reviewed sources or by well-regarded academic presses." To my knowledge the journal "Intelligence" falls into this category. Please identify what further caveat beyond this makes the article unreliable at Misplaced Pages. Thanks for your time. Airborne84 (talk) 14:22, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

The immediate context of your edit was inserting a wikilink to WP:RS in article text in mainspace. (Did you look at how that edit looked in the article after you submitted it?) Your wikilink insertion was next to a maintenance tag that (properly) calls for more secondary sources in an article that has long relied too much on primary sources (as the two kinds of sources are distinguished by WP:RS). I actually learned about this distinction between primary sources and secondary sources for purposes of editing Misplaced Pages from other Wikipedians as I began editing here in 2010. It is a good distinction to keep in mind, a distinction not emphasized enough in the undergraduate education of most educated people in the United States. I am a subscriber to the journal Intelligence as a member of the society that publishes the journal, and I am well aware that the editors of that journal describe it as a journal of primary research studies, primarily. So your edit, while factually correct in saying that Intelligence is fairly mainstream and often cited by researchers on its topics, was not responsive to the Misplaced Pages editing concerns for that article, which should be sourced much more to practitioners' handbooks and mainstream textbooks such as those identified for all Wikipedians in the bibliography for Wikipedians on human intelligence and psychology maintained in my user space. Thanks for writing. It will be a long-term effort to improve the sourcing of Misplaced Pages articles so that more Misplaced Pages articles are sourced properly as an online encyclopedia should be sourced, by citing reliable secondary sources (for example, textbooks and reference books for professionals in the discipline). See you on the wiki. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 14:42, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Hello. Thank you for your response. I apologize as I did not look at how the reversion appeared in mainspace. And I agree that there is a difference between primary and secondary sources. Yet, the use of primary sources is allowed, although caution must certainly be used. Editors here simply must be careful to present the analysis in a straightforward manner without interpretation. This is different than disallowing the use of primary research papers. In any case, I am not that familiar with the article or the author, so I'll simply list it on the talk page and let other editors weigh in. Thanks again for your time. Best, Airborne84 (talk) 18:30, 23 November 2014 (UTC)

Can you help with a rollback and a dispute in the talk page

Hi, there were recent bold edits to the Eugenics article that have started a discussion in the talk page. The edits were multiple deletions, so reverting all of them is impossible. I suggest a rollback to before the controversial edits began on 15:34, 29 November 2014‎. Misplaced Pages:Requests_for_permissions/Rollback. Please give your opinion in the talk page. Thank you, Purpletangerine (talk) 14:41, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I have just been gathering sources about that article topic. Today, I don't feel competent to judge the recent round of edits (which I have seen on my watchlist). As I get up to speed by reading more of the sources, I'll drive to scan the article text for places to revise according to what the sources say. Thanks for the invitation to join the discussion. See you on the wiki. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 15:09, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Minor edits to Scientific racism

I wrote the explanation for my edits on the talk page of Scientific racism, and I did not revert.--Mark v1.0 (talk) 22:23, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll take a look. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 22:25, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Wiki Project Psychology

Thanks for mentioning this one in the message. I will certainly follow it - if I figure out how to do it :-) (talk)

Hogwash

If you insist on messing around with the English article until it looks like something found on one of those (self-claimed) "cleansed" websites, go ahead. I'm not going to argue and edit war with you just because the Featured article police have chosen to waltz on in and disrupt the article.

This is completely ridiculous and you know it. If you honestly think that just because a source uses one wording, that we can't use an equally appropriate different wording in our article on the subject, then you are clearly just grasping at straws.

I also suspect that many of the other editors that have been reverting your edits on the article will also get tired of arguing with you as well. I, for one, was open to compromise with you, but you seem so starkly against compromise that that is evidently not going to happen. And if you aren't willing to be reasonable with things, then I'm not going to deal with you because I have more pressing matters to deal with at the moment. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 16:32, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

You should assume good faith, as that is one of the rules here. And while we are here discussing how to improve the article English language, do you have any suggestions for especially useful reliable sources for responding to the concerns of editors who have commented about the article in previous good article reviews and peer reviews? The most recent peer review was very thoughtful and thorough, matches well with recent comments in edit summaries and talk page comments about what the article is still missing after all these years, was performed by a person well trained in linguistics (a fine second-language writer of English), and was performed by a Wikipedian who has substantial experience in improving Misplaced Pages articles that have long needed improvement. (I think he has both good articles and featured articles to his credit, and I know from his work on subjects that we both watchlist that he is meticulous about using reliable sources.) It's a missed opportunity to improve the encyclopedia for readers to not take a close look at that peer review. (We should, of course, be taking care at all times while working on all articles to refer to the best reliable sources. That's not only a good idea, but also Misplaced Pages policy.) -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 19:19, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

I was assuming good faith. I always assume good faith until someone acts in a manner that clearly is in bad faith.

Furthermore, whilst I am certain that your edits were made in good faith, they seem to be quite forceful and stonewalling. Having an attitude like that of a stonewaller is not very productive on Misplaced Pages. One should be always open to compromise.

I have told you before that, aside from sources describing in great detail some particular dialects of English, and several of the sources already cited on the English page, I have no additional sources that I can present to you.

In addition, I believe that I have already said that I am always happy when the English page gets improved. However, changing "primary" (majority, first) to "majority native" is not improvement. As I have said three times now, "primary" comes off less biased than "majority native" does. Believe it or not, I actually don't have any particular problems with the wording "majority native". Nevertheless, it is not helpful to change a wording that doesn't really have any particular bias behind it to a wording that presents a potential of coming off biased. Tharthandorf Aquanashi (talk) 22:41, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

New Misplaced Pages Library Accounts Now Available (December 2014)

Hello Wikimedians!

The Misplaced Pages Library is announcing signups today for, free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for:

• Elsevier - science and medicine journals and books
• Royal Society of Chemistry - chemistry journals
• Pelican Books - ebook monographs
• Public Catalogue Foundation- art books

Other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Misplaced Pages projects: sign up today!
--The Misplaced Pages Library Team.00:25, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

You can host and coordinate signups for a Misplaced Pages Library branch in your own language. Please contact Ocaasi (WMF).

This message was delivered via the Mass Message tool to the Book & Bytes recipient list.

"dominant language of diplomacy during by the twentieth century"

(from English language#Significance) I'm not aware that "during by" can ever be correct English, hence my edit. Please explain. Enginear (talk) 06:44, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

OK, someone else has now corrected it -- to by rather than during. There's an arguable case for that, so although I think during is a little better, I shan't revert it.

In support of during:

• British passports carried the "Her Majesty requests and requires..." paragraph, and the other fundamental information, in French as well as English up until well after English became an official language of the EEC when we joined it in 1973.
• One claim as to why the Anglicised spellings of m'aider, panne panne, sécurité, silence m'aider & silence fini were developed in 1923 onwards as aircraft, and later maritime, distress signals was that while English was to be the lingua franca of air traffic control, French was still the lingua franca of diplomacy, including international requests for emergency assistance (another claim is that mayday was coined at Croydon Airport, whence many flights were to France, but that doesn't explain the rapid international acceptance of that local usage)
• The original and only definitive language of the 1906 Hague Convention and the 1929 Geneva Convention was French see 1st para of proclamation by POTUS (but the 1949 Geneva Convention was originated in both French and English, with both to be deemed "equally authentic" see Article 54)
• Our own article List of lingua francas#French claims that English only superseded French for diplomacy in the "mid-20th century".

In support of by:

• The British Empire + the USA made up nearly half the world population by the beginning of the 20th century, and there must have come a tipping point where other countries realised that, whatever the "formal" lingua franca, it was in their interest for their diplomats to be able to speak the first language of the British and US embassies, even if the latter were still having to sign treaties written in French; so in that sense, English may well have been "dominant".

I shall be leaving this topic now, but if you think by is correct, you might like to adjust the Lingua franca article to match English language, unless you think that due to the different wording (the language v dominant usage) they are both correct. Enginear (talk) 12:26, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the detailed rationale. The evidence I would look to especially for a "dominant language of diplomacy" is what language was the working language of international conferences or international organizations. And I am still gathering sources on that issue. The earliest international conference I know of with English as the working language was the Berlin conference in which Bismarck agreed with other world leaders on spheres of influence in colonial possessions. Crystal's book English as a Global Language, which I have at hand, gathers a lot of the sources and evidence. I especially appreciate your suggestion to check another Misplaced Pages article to make sure that the articles are in agreement. I'll keep checking and rechecking, and it may be that that article section will be revised some as to article text--it will certainly be updated to cite more sources. Have a happy new year. See you on the wiki. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 15:42, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Wow, 1885; I suspect Victoria was quietly pleased -- one can't marry one's children into a republic -- if they reject being an empire, one's own empire should rule the conferences! I agree, the language of the majority, or at least plurality, of large diplomatic conferences and international organisations vaguely in the diplomatic field, is the best evidence we're likely to get. I wondered for a moment whether that should read newly-founded organisations, and whether it mattered that, eg, Médecins Sans Frontières was so-named principally because its founding doctors were French, rather than due to any view on linguae francae, but I think the beauty of your words dominant language is that they imply a de facto test of the status quo, regardless of why the dominance has arisen or whether it only persists due to inertia. I've been intrigued by this issue since four years ago, when I discovered the claim about the reason for the Mayday kludge -- a French title fixed on the front of an English radio transmission, but I've never had (and still do not have) time to look into it properly, so I'll be interested to see how you leave the article when you've finished researching (for which, thanks in anticipation). Enginear (talk) 05:04, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

Your reversion at the Misplaced Pages article Intelligence

Please leave an edit summary for a major change; removal of more than 8000 characters from Intelligence certainly is a major change. If you would like to collaborate in improving the article, let's discuss ways to do that. I did quickly skim the section in question; it did contain useful information, and the inline cites were of a form that Misplaced Pages accepts—but the reference section for those added cites was missing (and the added cites should have been in the same form as those previously used). — Neonorange (talk) 20:12, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Neonorange, going to the diff, I think you have posted this to my talk page rather than to the talk page of the previous editor, who did the blanking of sourced content and inserted a personal remark that doesn't belong in the encyclopedia. I was using Twinkle to rapidly revert that apparent vandalism (the previous edit looks like unconstructive editing to you, doesn't it?) and then posted to that editor's talk page a Twinkle warning. It's too bad Twinkle's default behavior in that case was not to show an edit summary. Thank you for checking. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 20:18, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, WeijiBaikeBianji, for your gracious reply. I've tried to come up with an explanation of how I went wrong. The best I can come up with is, well, not even believable to me. I see the deleting editor has redeleted. So now I feel responsible for the task of rewriting the section to make the references conform to the format used in the first part of the article. What's odd is that the refs are familiar. I saw your language user boxes—I'm impressed. The only language (other than English) I've ever studied is Latin—good for Jesuits and computer programs, but not much help for languages East of the Urals. I seem to have no ear. My daughter, however, studied Chinese at Pitt and then in Bejing for a year and a half. We'd planed to take the train to Tibet, but stuff happens. — Neonorange (talk) 05:04, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

January 2015

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Pearson

I don't understand why you think this edit is okay. BLP policy says that when material appears to be a BLP violation, there must be a consensus to include it BEFORE it's added back. This is even more confusing because when you were reported at AE a few months ago, you made this argument yourself to justify your reverts on the Charles Murray article. I'm going to remove the disputed material again, and please get a consensus before you add it a third time. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 154.127.48.63 (talk) 04:13, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Well, let's discuss on the article talk page then what you think would be good sources for the article at hand William Shockley and additionally over on the talk page of Roger Pearson feel free to discuss what are good sources about his life and activities. P.S. And don't forget to sign your posts on user talk pages. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 04:17, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

AE notice

I have reported you at AE: http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#John18778 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 154.127.48.28 (talk) 23:07, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

I can't blame you for thinking that the newly registered editor is a sock of me (however, he is not) and I thank you for properly notifying me about the enforcement request by your note to my user talk page. I can categorically deny without fear of contradiction that the editor User:John18778 is any kind of puppet of mine. Nor did I communicate with that editor in any manner before the user's account was created nor before the editor committed edits to the article William Shockley that we are both watching and editing. You will note that I have welcomed him, as I habitually welcome new editors, by creating a talk page for the editor and offering the usual Twinkle plate of cookies that I have offered to dozens of new editors in the last year. (I read in Wikimedia Foundation public statements that Misplaced Pages continues to have an editor retention problem, and I try routinely to welcome to Misplaced Pages new editors whose edits I encounter I pages I watchlist.) You will also note, in terms of my own activity as an editor using my own account, that I have essentially agreed with your critique of my edits yesterday insofar as I will first of all dig deeply into the sources, to make sure that further edits to article text in the William Shockley article have inline citations (at least paragraph by paragraph, and often sentence by sentence) as the article text is further revised. (First of all, I will be checking the remaining references already in the article, as I yesterday discovered that many of them are cited with incorrect page numbers. I have the sources at hand in my office as I type this, and I encourage you to read all the sources too, as they are quite interesting.) I especially appreciate your concern about statements about living persons, a crucial issue on Misplaced Pages after the Misplaced Pages Seigenthaler biography incident, and note that that is a two-way street, as fans of the dead Professor Shockley should not be allowed to calumniate his living critiques through insertion of unreliably sourced material into the article. Thanks for letting me know about this. P.S. Please don't forget to sign your posts to user talk pages. You may desire to register a Misplaced Pages account to simplify communication with other editors. -- WeijiBaikeBianji (talk, how I edit) 23:29, 2 January 2015 (UTC)

Arbitration enforcement topic ban: Race and intelligence

The following sanction now applies to you:

You are topic-banned from everything related to the issue of race and intelligence for three months.

You have been sanctioned for the reasons provided in response to this arbitration enforcement request.

This sanction is imposed in my capacity as an uninvolved administrator under the authority of the Arbitration Committee's decision at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Race and intelligence#Final decision and, if applicable, the procedure described at Misplaced Pages:Arbitration Committee/Discretionary sanctions. This sanction has been recorded in the log of sanctions for that decision. If the sanction includes a ban, please read the banning policy to ensure you understand what this means. If you do not comply with this sanction, you may be blocked for an extended period, by way of enforcement of this sanction—and you may also be made subject to further sanctions.

You may appeal this sanction using the process described here. I recommend that you use the arbitration enforcement appeals template if you wish to submit an appeal to the arbitration enforcement noticeboard. You may also appeal directly to me (on my talk page), before or instead of appealing to the noticeboard. Even if you appeal this sanction, you remain bound by it until you are notified by an uninvolved administrator that the appeal has been successful. You are also free to contact me on my talk page if anything of the above is unclear to you.  Sandstein  13:28, 3 January 2015 (UTC)

Please refer to the AE thread for more details. In particular, you must in the future not add unsourced derogatory comments about persons, particularly living persons, in Misplaced Pages's voice, and you must not disguise potentially controversial edits by marking them as "minor" and using misleading edit summaries.  Sandstein  13:28, 3 January 2015 (UTC)