User:Fvw/TalkArchive/2

This page has been archived, please do not edit it. New talk and comments on this talk go on my talk page.

Thank You!

Thank you for thanking me for testing wikipedia. --128.226.195.90 03:46, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC

Barnstar!

Yeah! My first barnstar! Thanks! -- Chris 73 Talk 11:04, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

Amin. nomination

I've just added my support to your nomination, I swear I didn't notice up to now you were nominated, despite the fact that I keep checking to see if anyone new has supported *my* nomination. (I don't trust my watchlist. I'm totally neurotic, I know). --Woggly 13:00, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thank you for supporting my bid for adminship! I told you it's all cabalism. You know you have my support too, try again in a couple of months. I totally agree with you on the whole VfD issue too. So what if you list a keepable article on VfD? So people vote, and it gets kept. What's the big deal? --Woggly 21:11, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks

For telling me about the {{del}} and {{delreason|}} tags - I didn't know about them. It'd be good if they'd have been better publicised ;). Estel 15:45, Nov 29, 2004 (UTC)

They're the same thing ;). Nearly anyway. Yes - I suppose it's worth it. You deserve adminship by all accounts. 193.63.168.208 15:58, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

speedies

I worry a bit about your speedies. There are procedures for different sorts of articles. For example, June Haver isn't a speedy candidate -- use {{notenglish}} for such an article. Similarly, Go Seonji is a redirect; those go to Wikipedia:Redirects for deletion. Assuming they don't really work. If you want to be an admin, you perhaps should your personal criteria for speedy deletion. --jpgordon{gab} 17:43, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Heya, thanks for your concern. A quick scan of June Haver revealed a lot of oddly-placed spacing and punctuation, and very little that could be a meaningful article, so I do feel it qualifies as patent nonsense. You can ofcourse never be sure patent nonsense isn't meaningful in some language, but I feel reasonable certain this wasn't a useful article being lost. As for Go Seonji, that was (at the time) a valid CSD according to WP:CSD 1.2.1, Redirects can be immediately deleted if they have no useful history and ... They refer to non-existent pages. Hope that addresses your concerns. --fvw *† 17:56, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)

One more thing you need to do is wait a bit before marking the speedy. Again, in the case of Go Seonji: you marked the speedy less than ten minutes after the article was posted; it's better to give the editor a chance to do the work he or she has clearly indicated he's going to do. And, in the case of June Haver, I guess I didn't realize you spoke Polish. To me it looked like a valid article about an actress, just in the wrong language. --jpgordon{gab} 18:10, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

funny rv lines

Thanks for your humorous rv with the Sex entry (diff). I'm not quite sure why, but it really made my day. -- Helixblue 21:41, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Bat bomb

Hi, I actually thought the Bat bomb edit you reverted was a good one; I looked up the two books and "Sunwing" does seem to be inspired, plot-wise, by the bat bomb project, whereas "Silverwing" isn't. Just a thought. I have a special affinity for this article, because it was my first one on Wikipedia (before I got a login)............ A2Kafir 23:15, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I assumed that since the books were one series having the link to the one with an article would be best, not realising it needn't be referenced in all books from the series. My bad, restored. Thanks for you vigilance! --fvw *† 23:18, 2004 Nov 29 (UTC)

Wow, you're quick! A2Kafir 23:20, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanks for the backup

Thanks for rving my user page-I've got the vandal listed on the vandalism in progress page so it's only a matter of time :) -Cookiemobsta 00:07, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Ancient Eleutherna--copyright vio

You flagged Ancient Eleutherna as a copyright violation (got it before I could!). You will probably notice, but a minute later the user erased the notice and put up sample Wikipedia images. I would have reverted, but another user came along and marked it for a speedy deletion. I don't know if it's better to just let it get speedily deleted or to make sure the copyright issues are resolved, so I'm leaving it for now—just wanted to let you know. — [[User:Knowledge Seeker|Knowledge Seeker দ (talk)]] 10:40, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Heya, thanks for the heads up. I don't really care what happens to copyvio's, as long as they're gone. I don't think they're actually speedy deletion candidates as they have a meaningful history, but I'm not going to kick a fuss. --fvw *† 10:49, 2004 Dec 1 (UTC)

Vanity

Thanks for pointing out that blatant vanity is not a sufficient reason for speedy deletion. I read the policy again and noticed that it is a proposed reason. Is there a place to vote on this? --MarkSweep 01:03, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Nope, I'm afraid things haven't gotten that far yet. I suppose you could try a proper vote on talk: (you should announce it at the appropriate places though), but I don't actually think it's a good idea, alluring though it may be. Vanity is too subjective for a single editor to be allowed to decide whether something is or isn't. Deletion is still one of wikipedia's weak points I fear. --fvw *† 01:07, 2004 Dec 2 (UTC)

Remember to warn

Remember to put {{test}} on the user pages of any user who creates a non-sensical page. -- user:zanimum

I thought I talked most of them, but occasionally one might get missed. I'll pay better attention in future. --fvw *† 01:27, 2004 Dec 2 (UTC)

Oh, good, glad to know you do so regularly. It seems too many admins that don't follow up on the user pages. -- user:zanimum

You were mentioned.

And it wasn't flattering. See http://www.cornellsun.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2004/12/02/41ae87066c10f

On the bright side, this may be the next phase of natural selection: Fvw's 874 posts per day, one imagines, are not exactly being sandwiched between booty calls. (Although it is eminently possible that they are being sandwiched between sandwich calls.)

But on the less-than-bright side ... these really are the best and brightest of humanity. They've got DSL. And grammar. And encyclopedic, albeit utterly useless, depths of knowledge. It's horrible, but true: when ekOeOfhOpe and dArK_RaVeN and Sparky and Evercat are found rotting in their apartments, it will be their inferiors who have repopulated the earth in their own sweaty image. Ooh. Not so chipper anymore.

Enjoy the libel while it lasts! - Ta bu shi da yu 21:49, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

VfD - Nexum

Good afternoon, Fvw. Could I ask you to reconsider your delete vote on Nexum? I have been able to independently confirm that the topic is real. I only have one source on the date the concept was abolished but it's consistent with what's in the current article. I know that the current contents are not much more than a dicdef and I normally would vote to transwiki to Wiktionary. I don't think they'd take this one, though. As far as I know, it's not an english word. I'd hate to lose this stub because I keep hoping that we'll get a Roman-law scholar who will expand it. What little I understood of the sources I found certainly sounded intriguing. Rossami (talk) 22:12, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I understand your fear of losing this interesting tidbit of information, but I don't think Nexum is the appropriate place. How about merging the information into Debt and redirecting nexum (though I doubt many people will arrive via the redirect)? I'd support that fully. Alternatively you could transwiki to http://la.wiktionary.org or http://la.wikipedia.org, both of which I assume will happily take it, as long as you're able to translate it to latin, but that would mean the information is accessible to fewer people. --fvw *† 23:03, 2004 Dec 2 (UTC)

Speedy deletion

First of all, please don't come onto my user page with a chip on your shoulder. I am well aware of what I'm doing and I'm more than happy to discuss my actions in a rational manner. Second, untrue information is a speedy delete category. Obvious vanity is often speedy deleted as well. There's a problem with a series of bogus articles about one "Paul Paquette" that have been called to my attention. Stuff like that isn't only speedy-deletable, it's vandalism. - Lucky 6.9 23:55, 2 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Please check WP:CSD, untrue information is not a speedy deletion criterion. While it is true vanity often gets speedy deleted, that does not mean it is allowed. --fvw *† 00:03, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)

Vandalism most certainly is a speedy deletion criterion. I don't wish to engage in an edit war, but I did review the information. It is patently false. It is, therefore, a speedy deletion candidate and I will be retagging it as such. - Lucky 6.9 00:08, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Paul Paquette and CSD

See website: www.jessicapaquette.com Actually, in this case I agree with Lucky 6.9. It appears to be a hoax. I beleive it should be listed on CAT:CSD. It appears that it is a hoax along with "Canadian Town", the rock band "Arrowhead" (can't find any reference to this band!), "super star" Jessica Paquette or Augustine's Child. Do you have any information that this is not a hoax? - Ta bu shi da yu 00:56, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Further, I've reviewed the anon's contributions and he has also added Mr. Buck. This film doens't appear to exist either. - Ta bu shi da yu 01:03, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
- Er, hoaxes are part of WP:CSD. Patent nonsense is a criteria for speedy deletion, and hoaxes are listed under patent nonsense. It's valid to delete these articles. - Ta bu shi da yu 01:06, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
  - Actually, hoaxes are specifically listed under what is not patent nonsense. You can still delete them though, since misinformation is Vandalism: Sneaky vandalism - Vandalism which is harder to spot. Adding misinformation and typos. Shane King 01:10, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)
    - I'll admit, a strict reading does allow interpretating it like that, however to me at least it's pretty clear this is not what was intended, especially since hoaxes are listed specificly in the proposed CSDs (ie as an alteration to the current policy). I don't think hoax-ness should be judged by a single admin and I don't think the people who wrote the original CSD had that in mind. Luckily this doesn't come into play too often as almost all hoax articles (like the ones that started this discussion) also contain factual information. --fvw*† 01:28, 2004 Dec 3 (UTC)
      - I said can not should. :) I think a moderate approach is best, but I accept others interpret things more conservatively or liberally. Shane King 01:34, Dec 3, 2004 (UTC)
  - Bugger. I stand corrected. Sorry guys. I'm sure that Lucky made the same mistake and I'll let him know. - Ta bu shi da yu 01:13, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Grammar (WP:RFA)

Hi, thanks for commenting. I left the conversation on my own talk page, to keep the thread in one place (feel free to copy it over here and/or delete this msg). --Wernher 14:16, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

User talk:The Cunctator

Hi, I moved that "Talk:The Cunctator" page over, and went to User talk:The Cunctator to tell them where it went, and I saw your comment about a problem, but I couldn't figure out what you had noticed. What gives? Noel (talk) 16:11, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Oh, I get it - "The Cunctator" is now a redirect to the real (Roman) one. No problem, I checked and the Talk: page was 100% content for the user, not about the general, hence OK to move to User_talk:. Noel (talk) 16:17, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Redirects to User: space

You don't need to bother listing them on WP:RfD - just forward me a list and I'll dispose of them. (If you could filter out the ones that have history, that would be really useful, though. Those have to be dealt with more carefully.) Noel (talk) 20:42, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well, I'm totally snowed under already with stuff that's backed up. I'll delete the x-space redirs that have no history for you (fixing an occasional link to the about-to-be-deleted-redir in the process), but that's about all I can sign up for, alas. As to references to pages you move, you really ought to fix them - at least ones from article talk pages. If you don't, then sure as shooting some time later someone will be write a 'bot that finds dangling references, only by then the info on where the reference ought to go will be gone! :-) But I wouldn't bother asking people where they want them - just use your judgement, and then leave them a note (Like I did with the Cunc's page) - if they don't like where you put it, they can move it! Noel (talk) 22:18, 6 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Well, I did a flock of them (towards the end of the sub-page section there's a large block of red that's my handiwork) before I couldn't take it any more. I did ones where I had to patch links, but passed on the ones which had a history. (Oh, I skipped one where I would have had to patch about 30 links - it should stand out.) Bug me again towards the end of the week, and I'll do some more. Noel (talk) 03:38, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks

Thanks a lot. Somehow I didn't find when I searched for it.

Article Licensing

Hi, I've started a drive to get users to multi-license all of their contributions that they've made to either (1) all U.S. state, county, and city articles or (2) all articles, using the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike (CC-by-sa) v1.0 and v2.0 Licenses or into the public domain if they prefer. The CC-by-sa license is a true free documentation license that is similar to Wikipedia's license, the GFDL, but it allows other projects, such as WikiTravel, to use our articles. Since you are among the top 2000 Wikipedians by edits, I was wondering if you would be willing to multi-license all of your contributions or at minimum those on the geographic articles. Over 90% of people asked have agreed. For More Information:

Multi-Licensing FAQ - Lots of questions answered
Multi-Licensing Guide
Free the Rambot Articles Project

To allow us to track those users who muli-license their contributions, many users copy and paste the "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" template into their user page, but there are other options at Template messages/User namespace. The following examples could also copied and pasted into your user page:

Option 1

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions, with the exception of my user pages, as described below:

OR

Option 2

I agree to [[Wikipedia:Multi-licensing|multi-license]] all my contributions to any [[U.S. state]], county, or city article as described below:

Or if you wanted to place your work into the public domain, you could replace "{{DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual}}" with "{{MultiLicensePD}}". If you only prefer using the GFDL, I would like to know that too. Please let me know what you think at my talk page. It's important to know either way so no one keeps asking. -- Ram-Man (comment| talk)

Thanks!

Thank you for reverting the vandalism to my user page. :) -[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 19:55, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Sorry... don't agree with your deletion proposal.

It's interesting and creative but I personally just don't buy it.

If I understand... you say "the current deletion system doesn't scale and works very differently from the anyone-can-play system most of Wikipedia uses." Your proposal is basically to replace deletion with page-blanking, with some kind of cosmetic change to MediaWiki so that a blanked page looks more "deleted" than it does today.

The strongest part of your argument is that all of the issues with "anyone-can-play" deletion of entire articles exist today with "anyone-can-play" deletion of portions of articles. This is also the weakest part.

I am not a Wiki absolutist. Wikipedia is not a wide-open system; there are levels of authority and there are, in particular, differences between what sysops and non-sysops can do. I acknowledge that the extreme openness of Wikipedia works much better than I might have imagined, and that the "Wiki way" got Wikipedia where it is today.

Nevertheless, as it says in Wikipedia:What Wikipedia is not, Wikipedia is not a

Mere vehicle for testing anarchism. The fact that Wikipedia is an open, self-governing project does not mean that any part of its purpose is to explore the viability of anarchistic communities. (If you want to do so, you can use Wikipedia fork Anarchopedia.) Our purpose is to build an encyclopedia, not to test the limits of anarchism. But of course none of this is to deny that a great deal of our success has been due precisely to our openness.

Deletion is contentious because of some fairly fundamental disagreements between Wikipedian on what an "encyclopedia" is, and what should be included in it. There is no easy way to make that go away.

Your proposal tips things slightly in the anarchic direction. (Or if that's POV language, the egalitarian; or democratic; or open; or meritocratic direction).

But I think that as Wikipedia matures, if our purpose is truly to build an encyclopedia—as I understand the meaning of the word—we may need to tip things in the authoritarian direction. The higher the quality and more complete Wikipedia becomes, the harder it is for a casual contributor to improve the quality and coverage, and the less likely it is that the average random edit will be an improvement.

By the time an article is at a "version 1.0" level, the most likely reason that a casual outsider would suddenly come in and edit it is that they are a POV-warrior.

So in brief, yeah, I think it's good that we have sysops and that they are privileged characters. (Whether that has anything to do with my being a sysop I will leave for you to judge).

As for the comment that VfD doesn't scale, I don't really agree with that either. A lot of the complaints about VfD are simply complaints by extreme inclusionists who bring up every possible argument against deletion of anything.

Yes, there are technical issues with the page itself, and technical solutions are possible.

In general, the number of Wikipedians interested in participating at VfD ought to increase proportionately with the number of contributors. Now if you assume that every such Wikipedian participates in every VfD discussion, then you do have a scaling problem, because as Wikipedia double both the number of articles on VfD and the number of comments in every discussion double. But this is easily and naturally remedied; I think it solves itself. If you assume that every Wikipedian has only a certain limited amount of time they are willing to spend in VfD, then if every Wikipedian spends constant time, the number of comments per article remains constant, and perhaps the quality of the debate improves (because people participate only in the articles where they have an interest and knowledge).

Figuring out how to break up the page into manageable pieces, and making it easy for people to skim and find the discussions they are interested in is once again a technical problem.

The political issues are not so easily solved. A lot of the problems with VfD are created by inclusionists who simply object to deletion. And a lot are created by people with POV about whether or not certain kinds of articles should be included. Your proposal isn't going to solve either of these problems.

One argument in favor of the current process is that whereas revert wars and edit wars are interminable, most VfD discussions are relatively contained. They result in a decision. The decision, once made, usually sticks pretty well. Relatively few deleted articles go to Votes for Undeletion. And relatively few kept articles get nominated again. When they do it's mostly the innocent action of new observers unfamiliar with the previous debate. As nearly as I can tell, the charge that people nominate articles for deletion over and over again until they get the desired result is a straw man. It doesn't happen. There is widespread opposition to relisting and relisted articles get an overwhelming number of "keep" votes.

Another is that VfD is that it, and "featured article" nomination, are only things we presently have that resemble a real review process on an article-by-article basis. In both cases, we review after the fact. But I think the fact that both involve group process and cannot be performed by a single individual is important.

All that said, I don't agree with your proposal, but if implemented it probably wouldn't do all that much harm.

(BTW have you noticed that a lot of the inclusionist/deletionist contention seemed to have eased off since User:RickK left/went on vacation?)

[[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 21:03, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Comments on place where I don't think I'm understanding you or vice versa.

You say sysops have "power, not authority." The definition I once heard that has stuck with me is "authority is anything you have that you can use to get people to do things." Power (in the form of additional technical capabilities) is one form of authority. Actually I'm surprised by your comment because the misunderstanding is usually the other way; many people thing that the only kind of authority is formally defined power, without seeing that there are other forms (e.g. peer acknowledgement of competence).

Second, when you say "Hmm? I'm not claiming they should be done by individuals," I'm puzzled. As I understand your proposal, it would make it possible for any individual to delete any article at any time. If you would continue to have a human, socially-implemented rule in place that says nobody should blank an article without a VfD discussion, then I don't see how this affects the VfD process at all.

By the way... how is your proposal different from simply making the present MediaWiki deletion and undeletion capabilities available to all users? [[User:Dpbsmith|Dpbsmith (talk)]] 23:01, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Dueling proposals

Read your deletion proposal. The wiki I mod for has decided to go with the "pure wiki" method of deletion when it becomes available (my sources say version 1.5). We were wondering what to do when the inevitable revert wars started up. Your proposal will help a lot in deciding our policy. I've added some comments of my own. Anyway, I have a proposal of my own which might help getting a definitive answer on your proposal. I'm basically done with it, but I'd like to get it beta-tested before I bring it up with the Village Pump. (Or wherever the appropriate place to bring it up is.) Here's the link. crazyeddie 21:05, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Redirects to User: space

I did a few more. I'm waiting to do the ones that have history until a feature request I put in, to avoid leaving a redirect behind (when they are moved to User:Foo/Archive), which then has to be deleted, gets added. Noel (talk) 14:38, 11 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No, actually my request was "admins have a check box on the move confirmation page which allows them to not leave behind a redir on any move". I would find that useful in all sorts of places, e.g. swapping a page and a redir when the redir has significant history. No, I don't want to get into a debate about why only admins would have it! (In part, it would make vandalism easier to untangle - now when a vandal moves Microsoft to Gang of scum-sucking losers, you know where it went - without the redir, people would have to search through logs, etc.)

Anway, yes, deleting the redir isn't that much work, so I shouldn't actually need to wait.

Actually, I have a proposal. Since I don't mind fixing the links, but hate moving the pages with history, do you want to divide the labour? I'll do all the link fixing, if you do the moves of any with history. Sound good?

I've done a good chunk of the "/" ones now - I gather from your comments that you've been getting others ready to delete? If you let me know where in the list I should look for the ones you have gotten ready to go, I can nuke them. Noel (talk) 01:45, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

No, as far as I know it's just "move the page and leave a pointer to the new location somewhere in the user's pages". (Of course, you've also been fixing the links to the old location, but under my proposal above you'd skip that step - I'd do those fixes when I came along to do the delete.) There is an 'optional' step you could do (which is what I usually do) which is restore the page to the last version with real (i.e. non-redirect) content, but that's purely a cosmetic step which you can skip.

The ones that are "already gone", you're speaking there of the history-less redirects that were left behind, right?

The reason there's no need to co-ordinate is that even if you move the pages which do have lingering links to them, those linke will point to the redirect which is left behind, and I will find (and fix) the links when I come by to do the redirect. See, for example, Lir/Chess(1). It has already been moved (and so the redirect at "Lir/Chess(1)" has no real history), but it does still have a link; I have to fix the link, and then can delete that redirect. If you can leave them all in that state, I will do the rest (fix the links, and delete the redirect).

(Sorry to be long-winded, but I wanted to make sure there was no confusion!) Noel (talk) 12:04, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thanks.

Thanks for the [[User_talk:Jeandr%E9/2004Archive#Old_list_of_wikipedians.|thanks]] for the merge. — Jeandré, 2004-12-12t23:30z

Deletion

Regarding the deletion proposal - I don't know, honestly. :-) I'm not sure there's anything that will make a whole lot of difference... Evercat 00:52, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Template:d

Considering that Template:d is unused, I'm going to TFD it, saying that it should be remade into a Template:delete shortcut. It actually used to produce a certain form of the letter d (see the history). Any objection? --[[User:Whosyourjudas|Whosyourjudas\^talk]] 00:52, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

5' UTR

Thanks for the note. I actually found it on the speedy delete cat, and when I checked the history I noticed it had been created and deleted twice before--with that odd a name I figured people must be clicking a redlink, checked 'what links here', and found SECIS element, which also linked to 3' UTR, so I just stole the first line of that article and changed 5 to 3 twice. I see an anon has already expanded it a bit. I prefer to avoid deleting if possible, tho' most often the alternative is a redirect. Niteowlneils 01:37, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Regretting my vote

I keep seeing you. We must be patrolling the same lists. You are doing so much tracking / reverting / warning of vandalism that I wish you had admin status. 'Tell you what... I see you leaving the final warning on several anon's talk pages. If you notice that someone has continued vandalizing and think they need to be blocked, you can either list them on ViP or you can just drop a link to their contributions on my talk page. You don't even have to explain what the link is for. I'll know, and I'll act on it. Work sometimes takes me away from the computer for a while, but I'll likely get to it faster than if you listed them on ViP. Just link -- I'll follow up for you. And next time, I'm voting Support, damnit! :-) SWAdair | Talk 05:21, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You're too kind, I'll take you up on that offer. And you know you spend too much time on VfD when every time you see a boldface keep you think Hmm, I'd rather merge and redirect. --fvw * 05:24, 2004 Dec 13 (UTC)

LOL! SWAdair | Talk 05:28, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Foreign script on the Moon

Thanks for pointing it out, I had seen it was a bad link when I tested it.

Still trying to find a practical method to do these links.