The problem with drive-by linking such as you did here is that 2 out of 3 of the links are to disambiguation pages. I've fixed them. That said, the end result is that 2 out of 3 now point to an appropriate article, and t'other is a redlink. -- Tagishsimon (talk) 16:21, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
I've left a question or two for you here. Jehochman Talk 21:21, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
I did leave a message here, when I did the unblock. It was clear to me that the block was not justified based on the evidence and reasoning you provided. Now you say that the block was justified by off-line conversations and oversight evidence. This implies that the evidence you provided for the unblock was indeed inqdequate. Since you have written that you based the decision to block on off-line conversations and oversight decisions, you clearly see nothing wrong with making this fact public. I am not asking you to go into details that you feel should not be made public, but I wonder why you did not include this fact in your explanation for the block. If you are willing to go public with it now, why didn't you include it in your justification for the block? Slrubenstein | Talk 15:58, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi Charles, I am unblocking Matchsci. The Harrassment policy requires a pattern that demonstrates the intent to intimidate or threaten. I do not see any pattern - we would need a few different examples to indicate a pattern - and I definitely do not see the evidence you provided as indicating an intent to intimidate or threaten. My interprtation of the evidence is that matsci is trying to figure out how to help an editor contribute without violating copywrite (or academic standards of plagiarism). Based on th other editor's user page it wouldn't surprise me if he were the author, or a colleague or friend of the author, or just someone familiar with the book - who knows? In the worse case scenario, i.e. that the user is the author, boy would I HATE to think that anyone suggesting I had my research published in a book is a form of intimidation or a threat, I would be pretty proud. In fact, our NOR policy says that if you have original research and want to put it in Wikipedia you have to get it published by a reliable publisher first. It seems to me that many academics could be mislead by our NOR policy to think they can just copy and paste from their book to Wikipedia, clearly we cannot do this. And if the user in question is not the actual author, then the problem of violating copywrite is actually a bigger problem. This is an important concern, it gets to one of the five pillars. I think mathSci's concerns were reasonable and he was trying to be helpful. if you think he should have handled it differently I invite you to suggest to him other ways he could have acted. But I certainly see no evident of malice let alone a pattern of malice. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:55, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
By the way, since I know there has been too much heat around this already, I just want to underscore that while i don't agree with your specific judgement in this specific case, I did look into the facts to reach my own considered conclusions. i did not overturn your block lightly. Slrubenstein | Talk 01:12, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Well, I am not sure what background you have that I do not. I do agree that MS acted inappropriately concerning Arc. I suggest in the future that in such cases you make an explicit warning that similar behavior will lead to a block. be that as it may, in the case of Mervyn, the behavior and the case are not similar. You provided one piece of evidence to justify your block, and that evidence does not rise to a reasonable standard. Unlike the other case you refered to, MS was not introducing any personal knowledge, was not violating any confidence, and most important was not calling attention to any information not directly releant to Wikipedia. What MS did (which you do not link to) is this: after Yannismarrou entered into a conflict over including a citation in an article, at 11:08 Oct 16 MS said that Mervyn has mjostly been editing an article on coal mining, adding information from a book by book by a professor of political science at a large US university. I see nothing at all inappropriate with this edit. It was Hans Adler at 11:57 who suggested a conflict of interest - i.e. that the editor is the author of the book. If anyone did any outing, it was Adler. Then Jehochman says the edit summary said the information came from a government source. Now, the publisher given is not the US government so one of two things are possible: Mervyn's edit summary was inaccurate, or the citation was inaccurate. MS suggested - in the edit you consider evidence of outing - at 14:17 that he thought the edit summary was wrong. He writes, "The edit summary is probably inaccurate, but the intent is clearly to add very useful scholarly information to the encyclopedia. The material is from the introduction (Chapter I) of the book by MS Hamilton; the book is cited at the bottom of the diff you provided. It is original writing and not marked as material that has appeared elsewhere in the book; nor is it indicated that it is in the public domain" and then in effect says that people have to reach their own conclusions about Hans's charge of conflict of interest but if this is the problem, there are ways to work around it. It is very clear that MathSci was looking for a way out of the conflict, one that would enable Mervyn to add content. And it is also clear that matchSci did nothing to suggest outing, unless you meant to accuse Hans. It seems like it is Hans that you should have blocked, based on your evidence. Now, I would have opposed Hans's block too, or at least the severity, because outing is bad. But All Hans did was to suggst a congruence between information wikipedians need to know - the credentials of the source provided (which is public), and information Mervyn chose to disclose about himself on his talk page. If you have any other evidence, provide it. The only evidence that you cannot provide is evidence that would further out someone, and if that is the case, just say so, but it is hard for me to imagine what further evidence you could have against MathSci in this case. If he has posted something off-Wikipedia you should have said that there is additional evidence that the policy does not allow me to post, but I have seen no evidence of mathSci outing Mervyn on another website. Are you suggesting MS's 11:08 edit violated any Wikipedia policy? If so you should have used that as your evidence, although I think you would be just as wrong. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:47, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
I wonder how some people become admins. They seem to have no sense of responsibility, no sense of relativity, no sense of purpose. All that drives them is a mist of personal interest. This is a clear case of an admin deciding that outing wasn't a bad thing really and since Charles was asleep he'd let the guy off after pretending to follow procedure. I'm glad wikipedia has such people as admins, it reminds me why I can't be bothered conforming material to official policies anymore. -- ZincBelief ( talk) 11:30, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
I see that you are planning to go after SIrubenstein,
User:Charles Matthews/Drafting, as you went after me and some other editors at
Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Matthew Hoffman. I really hope you stop and think about that for a moment. In the earlier case, you were exceptionally uncivil to me, and you never properly apologized. I think for the good of all people involved, it would be best to chalk this up to a misunderstanding and let everyone get back to work, rather than creating another useless and destructive drama. The treatment of the desysopped admin at Hoffman was appalling. It was the worst of ArbCom. Please, please, please don't do that again.
Jehochman
Talk
12:01, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
If Jehochman is satisfied by the explanation, so am I (my e-mail is not auto-enabled because when it was, another editor used it to harass me off-wiki and no other administrator considered it a Wikipedia concern, so I deactivated the e-mail link - but I always provide my e-mail address upon request). Given Jehochman's assessment of the reasoning, I regret my rapid unblock and am sorry to have hurt Charles's feelings. I believed it was a clear error and I did so in good faith (I still do not see how the specific edit Charles provided is evidence of outing; I assume his correspondence with Jehochman speaks to the issue of a pattern, or provides adequate evidence). I think Jehochman's suggestion "As a very simple protocol for preventing this sort of dispute, could you possibly just say so when you block on private evidence?" is a very constructive one for all administrators. I would even support adding it to the policies involved. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:05, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
comment under dispute. As I said above, it would be helpful in future if you could say in the block summary when a block is based on non-public information, and for my part, I will e-mail the blocking admin, as appropriate, when unblocking in future; if the block states that it is based on private evidence, I will not act until discussing it with the blocking admin, and act only if after a thorough discussion it is clear that additional action is warranted. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:05, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Where is the point of talking further to Slrubenstein, when s/he simply denies the basic policies regulating the use of admin powers? He or she is angling for a qualification to one of the basics: don't reverse the actions of another admin before you have gone through the fundamental courtesy of consultation. I think we've come down to it: nearly three years of ArbCom efforts to drive the wheel-warriors out of business have simply passed Slrubenstein by. Not to admit that admin policy binds you is to be an unfit admin.
And, Jehochman, I'd be more impressed if you didn't undermine WP:WHEEL in this way. You should be asking here for unqualified acceptance of WP:BLOCK, WP:UNBLOCK, and WP:WHEEL. You are out of line here: offering to "tweak" is nonsense. Please strike those words thusly: when there is any hint or implication of private evidence, because otherwise you are not showing me you understand the problem here. I mean, that Slrubenstein admits no fault, when the fault is utterly apparent.
Charles Matthews (
talk)
19:16, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Could both of you possibly agree to the following:
Feel free to suggest alternatives. In any dispute, it is best if the parties can come to a voluntary agreement. Jehochman Talk 17:57, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
See above (I do think your point 4 should be made policy) Slrubenstein | Talk 18:03, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
On J's new point #7, then, too many scenarios.
This would be the normal story, I feel. It is though ruled out by S having disabled site mail.
OK, maybe. But then I'd like to know more about the supposed arms-length relationship.
OK, fine, can happen. Who, why?
Yes, why not? It is kind of quick, but could happen. Most likely, though, a curious admin would wonder why the subpage deletions (next on that page) were going on, and think to ask. S may have known that the subpages were an issue. S had some background on the business. (Comments above.) Maybe this is how it went, but I'd have further questions.
Not this, anyway. Just nothing.
And, well, this can go on for a while. Charles Matthews ( talk) 14:03, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
Okay, this needs to be said. Charles, it could be a healthy exercise to do a search on this page for the terms "dog", "moral pygmies", "meddling hypocrite", and "busybody". Then pause, reflect a few moments, and recall who it is you are attempting to lecture about "fundamental courtesy". One of the effects most Wikipedians would surely wish to avoid is a site culture in which fundamental courtesy is an unequal obligation in which those who have fewer ops are obliged to be unerringly courteous in the face of rudeness from those who have greater ops, power, and access--or else face retribution. There is a very real chance that, intentional or not, such an impression may be created. You are uniquely poised to correct that impression with a few edits, and the merit of the argument you assert would be considerably clearer as a result. Durova Charge! 03:14, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
It is unfortunate you fail to see the relevance of these comments. I'll connect the dots: in the previous case it raised observers' eyebrows that a proposed decision got posted a mere twelve hours after the case opened--before the principal party had even posted evidence. Now it raises eyebrows that several arbitrators posted opinions before formal dispute resolution was even undertaken. The conventional expectation in most organizations would be that someone in a position such as yours recuse himself not merely from formal participation as arbitrator of a case, but also from actions that would appear to take advantage of his access and position of authority--such as privileged discussions that may prejudice the outcome.
Case in point: although you claim I failed to give you sufficient opportunity to respond in the previous case, I did in fact leave a polite note to you at this very user talk page. It was only after you failed to respond that I reluctantly became among the last observers to sign a workshop resolution reminding you to be more measured. And during that time, at the proposal which supposed you assumed insufficient good faith, you responded to the quotes (which I merely repeated here) not by explaining you had a different intention for the epithet 'dog', but by proposing a metric to determine hypocrisy on a prima facie basis--an argument which rather compounded the doubts about how much good faith you assume. Now to see the summary you assert directly to me, when I know full well what the actual history is, hardly inspires confidence in the accuracy of your private summaries.
The net result--which no arbitrator has done more to create than yourself--is the significant risk of a chilling effect in which editors and administrators become fearful of doing anything other than submitting to the wills of individual arbitrators. I will not go so far as to suppose that effect is intentional, but it is my hope that as a reasonable and educated man you would see--and endeavor to undo--the unintentional impression that this reasonably creates. Durova Charge! 22:51, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
So, restarting this in a new thread:
Charles Matthews ( talk) 09:18, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
(Trying hard to ignore the threads above - I am aware of the Hoffman history there, though, so if you or Durova or Jehochman think it may help, I'd be happy to comment or even mediate if needed. Hopefully it will all work out, though.)
I was doing more work on awards recently (see Lister Medal for a prestigious award that we didn't have an article about, and which it is surprisingly hard to find information about on the internet), and I came across Rede Lecture. One thing I have noticed is the difficulty of what I call "link maintenance". When an article is created, it often contains redlinks. One of the problems is that creation of new articles can turn those redlinks blue, and unless someone checks the links regularly, this can end up being very misleading.
Rede Lecture is a case in point. The initial version was created by you in December 2006. It is actually rather complicated to try and work out, nearly two years later, what the page looked like in terms of links back then. Take the five people in the "initial series" bit:
Ah. Found one!
Anyway, I've failed to find examples I wanted to find of redlinks turning blue later, but I hope you can see how that can be a problem. There is a more general problem of the destination of a link changing (if it is a redirect, the redirect can be edited without people watching a page using that link being aware of it - unless they know how to use 'related changes', and even then there is a problem of 'editing noise' for some pages with hundreds of links). If a link destination is changed into a disambiguation page, for instance, the links all over the encyclopedia stay blue, but the destination has changed. An example is this edit where I created a redirect from one of the redlinks. This turned it blue, but without editing Rede Lecture itself. It would be nice if that sort of change was flagged up for pages where the redlinks had turned blue. If you could double-check things there, that would be great as well - I'm confident it is the same person, but the umlaut over the 'u' in 'Rucker' is a discrepancy that might need clearing up.
If you are interested, I've done a set of 'type' cases at the Village Pump. See here (version as earlier today is here). Carcharoth ( talk) 15:35, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi. Just a reminder of the thread at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Consistency issue. I think all the editors there are willing-to-be-convinced; we just need some specific and representative examples to keep the discussion focused. I suggested the long blue (disambiguation), but anything long should be suitable.
Thanks. -- Quiddity ( talk) 01:58, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Many thanks. Apart from 140 election questions, a mediation, another offline conversation, and an ArbCom FAQ I've been drafting ... not much to do, really. But fixing the archive is one off the list ... Charles Matthews ( talk) 13:45, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Hi Charles, one of my hobbies is archiving talkpages and setting up archivebots... May I set up a bot for your page, and an automated archive box? Or would you rather handle it manually? I could set up a bot that would automatically archive any threads that had gone inactive for a period of time (14 days?), and then you wouldn't have to worry about it anymore. You could still archive threads more quickly on a manual basis at any time of course. Let me know? :) -- El on ka 14:36, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
You should move
/Archive27 to
/Archive 27 in order to follow the previous/standard naming convention, and so that the {archivebox|auto=yes} can find and list it. --
Quiddity (
talk)
01:39, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm happy to help with the flow charts. Do you have a idea of what you want or a rough sketch? -- Kevin Murray ( talk) 00:42, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Hello Charles. I'm wondering about the Najidah (Australia) article, which you had edited a while ago tidying it up a bit. It ever so feels like a bit of an advert, and if one analyses what links to it, it seems thin. There are so many organisations like this, maybe in Australia, does it make sense to have this one stand out so ? I applaud its work, but I think it was inserted with clever visibility desires and motives, or not, as the case may be. If you had an impression, I would be grateful. Oh --- also --- nice work on your co-authored new book on "How Wikipedia Works" via No Starch Press. Well done to you and your co-authors. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc ( talk) 01:31, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi, I would like to appeal to your help to forstall further unpleasant edit warring. Gandalf and I had a bit of a spat at the talk page of graph. He found it to be good wiki etiquette immediately to go on an offensive against my new page Ghosts of departed quantities as well as my edits at uniform continuity. Please comment. Katzmik ( talk) 09:47, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
Can I interest you in taking a break from your religious editing? Go strategy needs some well written and concise paragraphs on yose and middlegame for the FA push. Love, -- ZincBelief ( talk) 17:17, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
Re: { http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdetermined_system : Inhomogeneous case }
Dear Charles
I would like to ask for a clarification regarding the inhomogeneous case entry in the overdetermined system wiki I preemptively apologize for your time in case the issue is trivial - however is not that clear to me, maybe due to lack of linear algebra expertize :)
In the page under consideration, there is the following statement:
"M equations* and N unknowns*, such that M>N and all M are linearly independent. This case yields no solution."
My question: The number of the linearly independent rows of an MxN matrix (M equations, N unknowns) equals the rank of the matrix. However, from page 105 in Strang [1] the row rank = column rank. How it is possible to have M linearly independent rows leading to a rank = M, but then M > N? Shouldn't the rank be always ≤ min(M,N) ?
Thank you very much
chris
Cpanagio ( talk) 01:33, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
Hello. I'd appreciate comment at Talk:Rules of Go#"Original research" template. 128.32.238.145 ( talk) 05:03, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi, Concerning your remark on Ghosts of departed quantities, I think it would be great if material could be added on other philosophical challenges to infinitesimal calculus. Does the current title describe the current content of the page accurately? Katzmik ( talk) 11:28, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
I understand your concern for the long version, but the long version is more precise. I don't mind creating redirects for such pages, but the vast majority have been created by either myself or npeters22 as the long version first, without redirects to the short version. Apologies for making more work for you, but that was not the intent, the intent was simply to fill out the pages on all the Catholic dioceses worldwide. Thank you.
Benkenobi18 ( talk) 06:06, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi Charles,
I'm an editor (Contrivance) of the William Rodriguez page. William witnessed 9/11 in the twin towers and has made a career of traveling around lecturing about his heroism. He's gotten a lot more press coverage in the UK than in the USA. The most serious article, in the Herald of Glasgow, points out weaknesses in his story.
I considered identity speculations about me a dumb joke for some time, but recently two 9/11 witnesses (Barry Jennings and Kenny Johanneman) have turned up dead and Willie seems to be hanging around with the allegedly ex-MI5 agent Annie Machon, and I no longer consider it appropriate to tolerate attempted outing and intimidation. I don't want any responsibility for any associated mischief that might follow.
Contrivance ( talk) 21:41, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
I did not start at the top of the page, it was user Contrivance constant misusing of my page who did that. You are welcome to check that out on the history of the page as well. Thanks again. Celeronel ( talk) 03:00, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Hello, this is a message from
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Category:Archbishops of Lille, by another Wikipedia user, requesting that it be
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To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting
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CSDWarnBot (
talk)
19:10, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Hi, you recently signalled your intent to accept a case on Kuban kazak. It is not my position to direct you to change your intent, however, I would like to ensure that you have read all the statements which were submitted to the case in question after you signalled your intent to take this case on board. In the event that you haven't kept up with developments on the case, could you please review the case again, and consider if it does in fact require arbcom intervention. Thanks. -- Russavia Dialogue Stalk me 03:02, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm curious where you stand on the permissibility of user subpages that are designed to track articles with a problematic history, for the purposes of maintaining high quality articles. I'm not saying any particular current situation matches that description, but it is certainly possible. In this type of case, a page might have a list of articles and users, and some descriptions of editing style for users which may be interpreted as negative or detrimental to article quality. Would this be considered prohibited because it is not related to active dispute resolution? Avruch T 20:25, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
He just did this to your message - http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User_talk:Defender_Of_Justice&diff=prev&oldid=250684070
- I think some action - probably blocking - is in order. Paul Austin ( talk) 00:07, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Wikivoices (formally NotTheWikipediaWeekly) would be interested in making several podcasts with candidates running in the 2008 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee election. Given the high number of candidates likely to be signing up during the nomination stage (likely to be around 45) it will be a very busy 2 weeks. These shows typically last about one and a half hours to record, taking into account setup time, and are recorded using the free, downloadable programme, Skype. The programme can be used on Windows, Mac OS and Linux operating systems and is also available on some mobile platforms. If any candidates have problems with installing or running the program please contact me at my talk page or by email
There will be 2 formats being run over the next 2 weeks. The first will be general discussion with a small number candidates at a time with several experienced hosts from Wikivoices. Each candidate will be given 2-3 minutes to introduce themselves then the main body of the cast will begin. The topics discussed will vary in each recording to ensure fairness however the atmosphere will be generally free flowing. These will be running throughout the two weeks starting tomorrow. Specific signup times can be found here at our meta page. PLease sign up for all the times you are available for. You will be notified which one we would like to attend.
The second format will be based on a similar style to election debates. Questions will be suggested here by the community. A selection of these will then be put to a panel of larger panel candidates with short and concise 1-2 minute responses. Other than an introduction and hello from each candidate, there will be no opportunity for a lengthier introductions. Specific signup times can be found here at our meta page.
It is recommended that candidates attend both formats of casts and we will try to be as flexible as possible. We are looking for the greatest participation but also for shows with enough members to keep it interesting but not too many that it causes bandwidth and general running issues. I look forward to working with all candidates in the coming weeks. Seddσn talk Editor Review 12:52, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Hello, fellow candidate! Just so you know, in an effort to announce our candidacies and raise further awareness of the election, I have created the template {{ ACE2008Candidate}}, which I would invite you to place on your user and user talk pages. The template is designed to direct users to your Questions and Discussion pages, as well as to further information about the election. Best of luck in the election! Hersfold ( t/ a/ c) 16:36, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Your query - she is User:Bishonen, so your assumption is correct. Charles Matthews ( talk) 17:02, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your (very) full and frank answer to my question at the election page. I do appreciate it and I hope that others will too. Best regards, Angus McLellan (Talk) 01:48, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Though James F. hasn't responded yet, I just thought I'd mention that (at least at the moment), your comments, coupled with some other things I've been reading lately, may have caused me to change my perspective on 2 year term lengths. (More ironic, since, I believe I was the first to suggest 2 year lengths quite awhile back.)
So at the moment, I'm looking for a rather sharp stick. When I find one I'll be back (smiles). - jc37 03:56, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
this Slrubenstein | Talk 18:56, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
As you have chosen to mention me in your vulgar scramble to be re-elected please be aware I have posted a question in reply here: [8]
Frankly, I find it incredible that such as you and James Forrester feel you have something further to offer Wikipedia, but we shall not go there. That you choose to mention Arbcom's secret (very wise) deliberations demeans you. That I cause you to become "into loops arguing" is probably because I am of more value to the project than you and your present colleagues. Please do not mention me, or involve me in you campaign for power again. Thank you. Giano ( talk) 22:13, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Is it possible to speedy close the RFC if issues are now resolved? [9] Jehochman Talk 14:49, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Would like to request that you change your vote so this may be archived sooner, before the RFArb page gets too much longer. I make this request given that the active current case (Kuban) has similar proposals - I expect they can be tweaked in such a way that it will eliminate the need for amending the Tobias case, while providing any necessary clarification. Ncmvocalist ( talk) 18:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
You are welcome. Yes, I understand. Tried a couple times to steer discussion back to original Statement of Dispute. No problema. Onward. Mervyn Emrys ( talk) 14:53, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
This seems to be a sockpuppet account of User:Mervyn Emrys. Look at this diff [10]. The edits to the article on Lynton K. Caldwell seem to be a copyvio from an obituary reproduced here [11] from the Bloomington Herald Times. Much of the obituary was copied-and-pasted into the article. Isn't there a rule about sockpuppet accounts? This diff [12] seems to be unknowingly admitting the sockpuppetry, since the biographical material was added by User:Mervyn Emrys. Could someone possibly be playing the system? Mathsci ( talk) 22:17, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Good morning. You already had most of the General Questions answered, so I did not transclude the master list. However, we had three late entries, so I posted them to your General Questions section, and moved two questions posted to you specifically. Those two questions went to the top section, right above the General Questions. I think I matched the formatting you already had, but please feel free to undo and redo as you see fit. Again, good luck with your candidacy. Best, UltraExactZZ Claims ~ Evidence 14:28, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
Per the above three (which were created last year through discussion with those under discussion), I'd like to select a few candidates to do the same with this year, and you're one of the those.
So if you don't strongly oppose the idea, would you help by suggesting/selecting a few appropriate images? - jc37 15:11, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
And of course, you and others are welcome to use it. The phrase is customisable (as is the "float"). Enjpy. - jc37 23:52, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
Not sure I love the answer, but fyi you have my vote (as do several others...). While I don't personally agree with some positions you've taken or explanations you have given, I value your experience and dedication, and think Arbcom will be better for having a variety of thoughtful viewpoints on it, even where I'm not sure I agree with them. Martinp ( talk) 06:28, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
I have nominated Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain, an article that you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time. βcommand 09:06, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
Hi. I'm Ral315, editor of the Wikipedia Signpost. We're interviewing all ArbCom candidates for an article this week, and your response is requested.
Please respond on my talk page. We'll probably go to press on Tuesday, but late responses will be added as they're submitted. Thanks, Ral315 ( talk) 10:25, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
Hi Charles. I was wondering if you knew what percentage of the public domain Catholic encyclopedia we have on wikipedia. Wasn't there a list of missing articles somewhere? Count Blofeld 19:43, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
There is no motion posted yet regarding SV. The natives are getting restless because they don't know what you are supporting, though I think it is both implicit and obvious. Maybe you want to make it explicit too. Jehochman Talk 22:07, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
Dumb question -- when the article says the left action L_g is defined by L_g(f)(h) = f(g^-1*h), should this be f(g*h)? As defined, this is actually a right action, correct? Kier07 ( talk) 23:14, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
You said something about a "swollen head", which I didn't entirely understand, but I'd just like to say that I think there are probably more diplomatic ways to express what you wanted to say. ☺ Coppertwig( talk) 01:52, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
I think you are probably correct. Diplomacy has its place.
In commenting on cases and related matters, however, it is somewhat traditional for arbitrators to speak frankly about how they feel on matters, not to come across as guarded lawyer-like individuals. This can be helpful, in getting past the layers of abstract policy discussions, and conveying the essence of an onsite situation. Here, since the unblocking admin spoke her mind freely, and continues to do so, I was replying in kind. Charles Matthews ( talk) 09:06, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
I am too afraid to make this question from my main account for fear of retaliation from harrasment sites. Since I am not using my main account, I will write this question on your talk page instead of your nomination questions page. On WikBack, why did you proxy edit for the banned user and longtime admin harraser armedblowfish? Solidarity for us ( talk) 19:25, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
Wouldn't some form of restriction/parole be enough? Greg did not have any history of blocks, bans or warnings before his interactions with Boodlesthecat, and even now his block record is clean. I'd think that a stern warning should be at least tried before a permban, and I also don't think he has been doing anything wrong in the past weeks - further, this post indicates he is now taking BLP into consideration and he has recently posted a pledge in the workshop (see discussion here). Perhaps an alternative, more merciful remedy could be proposed? -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 20:17, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
One of the worst people in the case, I think. And I have just seen a bad diff where you restored one of his edits, threatening someone. So he gets you into trouble, also. Probably greg should just come back in 2010 and edit in a different area. Charles Matthews ( talk) 22:22, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
I guess I suppose to be one the opposite side of the conflict but I would be against banning of Greg or Boodles or indeed anybody involved in the case (maybe except Alan Jones). In the Eastern European topics we have very few content producers and a lot of topics. Many content producers are encouraged by the idea to glorify their nations and demonize their enemies. It might be a bad motive but if we ban all such editors we would not have resources to do anything. Thus, any chance to remove the disruption but keep the editors should be IMHO used. Combination of the topic bans and 1RR paroles should be sufficient, IMHO. Obviously, there should be some balance in the punishment. It would be wrong e.g. to ban Boody and vindicate Greg Alex Bakharev ( talk) 02:06, 27 November 2008 (UTC)
The problem with drive-by linking such as you did here is that 2 out of 3 of the links are to disambiguation pages. I've fixed them. That said, the end result is that 2 out of 3 now point to an appropriate article, and t'other is a redlink. -- Tagishsimon (talk) 16:21, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
I've left a question or two for you here. Jehochman Talk 21:21, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
I did leave a message here, when I did the unblock. It was clear to me that the block was not justified based on the evidence and reasoning you provided. Now you say that the block was justified by off-line conversations and oversight evidence. This implies that the evidence you provided for the unblock was indeed inqdequate. Since you have written that you based the decision to block on off-line conversations and oversight decisions, you clearly see nothing wrong with making this fact public. I am not asking you to go into details that you feel should not be made public, but I wonder why you did not include this fact in your explanation for the block. If you are willing to go public with it now, why didn't you include it in your justification for the block? Slrubenstein | Talk 15:58, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi Charles, I am unblocking Matchsci. The Harrassment policy requires a pattern that demonstrates the intent to intimidate or threaten. I do not see any pattern - we would need a few different examples to indicate a pattern - and I definitely do not see the evidence you provided as indicating an intent to intimidate or threaten. My interprtation of the evidence is that matsci is trying to figure out how to help an editor contribute without violating copywrite (or academic standards of plagiarism). Based on th other editor's user page it wouldn't surprise me if he were the author, or a colleague or friend of the author, or just someone familiar with the book - who knows? In the worse case scenario, i.e. that the user is the author, boy would I HATE to think that anyone suggesting I had my research published in a book is a form of intimidation or a threat, I would be pretty proud. In fact, our NOR policy says that if you have original research and want to put it in Wikipedia you have to get it published by a reliable publisher first. It seems to me that many academics could be mislead by our NOR policy to think they can just copy and paste from their book to Wikipedia, clearly we cannot do this. And if the user in question is not the actual author, then the problem of violating copywrite is actually a bigger problem. This is an important concern, it gets to one of the five pillars. I think mathSci's concerns were reasonable and he was trying to be helpful. if you think he should have handled it differently I invite you to suggest to him other ways he could have acted. But I certainly see no evident of malice let alone a pattern of malice. Slrubenstein | Talk 23:55, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
By the way, since I know there has been too much heat around this already, I just want to underscore that while i don't agree with your specific judgement in this specific case, I did look into the facts to reach my own considered conclusions. i did not overturn your block lightly. Slrubenstein | Talk 01:12, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
Well, I am not sure what background you have that I do not. I do agree that MS acted inappropriately concerning Arc. I suggest in the future that in such cases you make an explicit warning that similar behavior will lead to a block. be that as it may, in the case of Mervyn, the behavior and the case are not similar. You provided one piece of evidence to justify your block, and that evidence does not rise to a reasonable standard. Unlike the other case you refered to, MS was not introducing any personal knowledge, was not violating any confidence, and most important was not calling attention to any information not directly releant to Wikipedia. What MS did (which you do not link to) is this: after Yannismarrou entered into a conflict over including a citation in an article, at 11:08 Oct 16 MS said that Mervyn has mjostly been editing an article on coal mining, adding information from a book by book by a professor of political science at a large US university. I see nothing at all inappropriate with this edit. It was Hans Adler at 11:57 who suggested a conflict of interest - i.e. that the editor is the author of the book. If anyone did any outing, it was Adler. Then Jehochman says the edit summary said the information came from a government source. Now, the publisher given is not the US government so one of two things are possible: Mervyn's edit summary was inaccurate, or the citation was inaccurate. MS suggested - in the edit you consider evidence of outing - at 14:17 that he thought the edit summary was wrong. He writes, "The edit summary is probably inaccurate, but the intent is clearly to add very useful scholarly information to the encyclopedia. The material is from the introduction (Chapter I) of the book by MS Hamilton; the book is cited at the bottom of the diff you provided. It is original writing and not marked as material that has appeared elsewhere in the book; nor is it indicated that it is in the public domain" and then in effect says that people have to reach their own conclusions about Hans's charge of conflict of interest but if this is the problem, there are ways to work around it. It is very clear that MathSci was looking for a way out of the conflict, one that would enable Mervyn to add content. And it is also clear that matchSci did nothing to suggest outing, unless you meant to accuse Hans. It seems like it is Hans that you should have blocked, based on your evidence. Now, I would have opposed Hans's block too, or at least the severity, because outing is bad. But All Hans did was to suggst a congruence between information wikipedians need to know - the credentials of the source provided (which is public), and information Mervyn chose to disclose about himself on his talk page. If you have any other evidence, provide it. The only evidence that you cannot provide is evidence that would further out someone, and if that is the case, just say so, but it is hard for me to imagine what further evidence you could have against MathSci in this case. If he has posted something off-Wikipedia you should have said that there is additional evidence that the policy does not allow me to post, but I have seen no evidence of mathSci outing Mervyn on another website. Are you suggesting MS's 11:08 edit violated any Wikipedia policy? If so you should have used that as your evidence, although I think you would be just as wrong. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:47, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
I wonder how some people become admins. They seem to have no sense of responsibility, no sense of relativity, no sense of purpose. All that drives them is a mist of personal interest. This is a clear case of an admin deciding that outing wasn't a bad thing really and since Charles was asleep he'd let the guy off after pretending to follow procedure. I'm glad wikipedia has such people as admins, it reminds me why I can't be bothered conforming material to official policies anymore. -- ZincBelief ( talk) 11:30, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
I see that you are planning to go after SIrubenstein,
User:Charles Matthews/Drafting, as you went after me and some other editors at
Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Matthew Hoffman. I really hope you stop and think about that for a moment. In the earlier case, you were exceptionally uncivil to me, and you never properly apologized. I think for the good of all people involved, it would be best to chalk this up to a misunderstanding and let everyone get back to work, rather than creating another useless and destructive drama. The treatment of the desysopped admin at Hoffman was appalling. It was the worst of ArbCom. Please, please, please don't do that again.
Jehochman
Talk
12:01, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
If Jehochman is satisfied by the explanation, so am I (my e-mail is not auto-enabled because when it was, another editor used it to harass me off-wiki and no other administrator considered it a Wikipedia concern, so I deactivated the e-mail link - but I always provide my e-mail address upon request). Given Jehochman's assessment of the reasoning, I regret my rapid unblock and am sorry to have hurt Charles's feelings. I believed it was a clear error and I did so in good faith (I still do not see how the specific edit Charles provided is evidence of outing; I assume his correspondence with Jehochman speaks to the issue of a pattern, or provides adequate evidence). I think Jehochman's suggestion "As a very simple protocol for preventing this sort of dispute, could you possibly just say so when you block on private evidence?" is a very constructive one for all administrators. I would even support adding it to the policies involved. Slrubenstein | Talk 16:05, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
comment under dispute. As I said above, it would be helpful in future if you could say in the block summary when a block is based on non-public information, and for my part, I will e-mail the blocking admin, as appropriate, when unblocking in future; if the block states that it is based on private evidence, I will not act until discussing it with the blocking admin, and act only if after a thorough discussion it is clear that additional action is warranted. Slrubenstein | Talk 18:05, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Where is the point of talking further to Slrubenstein, when s/he simply denies the basic policies regulating the use of admin powers? He or she is angling for a qualification to one of the basics: don't reverse the actions of another admin before you have gone through the fundamental courtesy of consultation. I think we've come down to it: nearly three years of ArbCom efforts to drive the wheel-warriors out of business have simply passed Slrubenstein by. Not to admit that admin policy binds you is to be an unfit admin.
And, Jehochman, I'd be more impressed if you didn't undermine WP:WHEEL in this way. You should be asking here for unqualified acceptance of WP:BLOCK, WP:UNBLOCK, and WP:WHEEL. You are out of line here: offering to "tweak" is nonsense. Please strike those words thusly: when there is any hint or implication of private evidence, because otherwise you are not showing me you understand the problem here. I mean, that Slrubenstein admits no fault, when the fault is utterly apparent.
Charles Matthews (
talk)
19:16, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
Could both of you possibly agree to the following:
Feel free to suggest alternatives. In any dispute, it is best if the parties can come to a voluntary agreement. Jehochman Talk 17:57, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
See above (I do think your point 4 should be made policy) Slrubenstein | Talk 18:03, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
On J's new point #7, then, too many scenarios.
This would be the normal story, I feel. It is though ruled out by S having disabled site mail.
OK, maybe. But then I'd like to know more about the supposed arms-length relationship.
OK, fine, can happen. Who, why?
Yes, why not? It is kind of quick, but could happen. Most likely, though, a curious admin would wonder why the subpage deletions (next on that page) were going on, and think to ask. S may have known that the subpages were an issue. S had some background on the business. (Comments above.) Maybe this is how it went, but I'd have further questions.
Not this, anyway. Just nothing.
And, well, this can go on for a while. Charles Matthews ( talk) 14:03, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
Okay, this needs to be said. Charles, it could be a healthy exercise to do a search on this page for the terms "dog", "moral pygmies", "meddling hypocrite", and "busybody". Then pause, reflect a few moments, and recall who it is you are attempting to lecture about "fundamental courtesy". One of the effects most Wikipedians would surely wish to avoid is a site culture in which fundamental courtesy is an unequal obligation in which those who have fewer ops are obliged to be unerringly courteous in the face of rudeness from those who have greater ops, power, and access--or else face retribution. There is a very real chance that, intentional or not, such an impression may be created. You are uniquely poised to correct that impression with a few edits, and the merit of the argument you assert would be considerably clearer as a result. Durova Charge! 03:14, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
It is unfortunate you fail to see the relevance of these comments. I'll connect the dots: in the previous case it raised observers' eyebrows that a proposed decision got posted a mere twelve hours after the case opened--before the principal party had even posted evidence. Now it raises eyebrows that several arbitrators posted opinions before formal dispute resolution was even undertaken. The conventional expectation in most organizations would be that someone in a position such as yours recuse himself not merely from formal participation as arbitrator of a case, but also from actions that would appear to take advantage of his access and position of authority--such as privileged discussions that may prejudice the outcome.
Case in point: although you claim I failed to give you sufficient opportunity to respond in the previous case, I did in fact leave a polite note to you at this very user talk page. It was only after you failed to respond that I reluctantly became among the last observers to sign a workshop resolution reminding you to be more measured. And during that time, at the proposal which supposed you assumed insufficient good faith, you responded to the quotes (which I merely repeated here) not by explaining you had a different intention for the epithet 'dog', but by proposing a metric to determine hypocrisy on a prima facie basis--an argument which rather compounded the doubts about how much good faith you assume. Now to see the summary you assert directly to me, when I know full well what the actual history is, hardly inspires confidence in the accuracy of your private summaries.
The net result--which no arbitrator has done more to create than yourself--is the significant risk of a chilling effect in which editors and administrators become fearful of doing anything other than submitting to the wills of individual arbitrators. I will not go so far as to suppose that effect is intentional, but it is my hope that as a reasonable and educated man you would see--and endeavor to undo--the unintentional impression that this reasonably creates. Durova Charge! 22:51, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
So, restarting this in a new thread:
Charles Matthews ( talk) 09:18, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
(Trying hard to ignore the threads above - I am aware of the Hoffman history there, though, so if you or Durova or Jehochman think it may help, I'd be happy to comment or even mediate if needed. Hopefully it will all work out, though.)
I was doing more work on awards recently (see Lister Medal for a prestigious award that we didn't have an article about, and which it is surprisingly hard to find information about on the internet), and I came across Rede Lecture. One thing I have noticed is the difficulty of what I call "link maintenance". When an article is created, it often contains redlinks. One of the problems is that creation of new articles can turn those redlinks blue, and unless someone checks the links regularly, this can end up being very misleading.
Rede Lecture is a case in point. The initial version was created by you in December 2006. It is actually rather complicated to try and work out, nearly two years later, what the page looked like in terms of links back then. Take the five people in the "initial series" bit:
Ah. Found one!
Anyway, I've failed to find examples I wanted to find of redlinks turning blue later, but I hope you can see how that can be a problem. There is a more general problem of the destination of a link changing (if it is a redirect, the redirect can be edited without people watching a page using that link being aware of it - unless they know how to use 'related changes', and even then there is a problem of 'editing noise' for some pages with hundreds of links). If a link destination is changed into a disambiguation page, for instance, the links all over the encyclopedia stay blue, but the destination has changed. An example is this edit where I created a redirect from one of the redlinks. This turned it blue, but without editing Rede Lecture itself. It would be nice if that sort of change was flagged up for pages where the redlinks had turned blue. If you could double-check things there, that would be great as well - I'm confident it is the same person, but the umlaut over the 'u' in 'Rucker' is a discrepancy that might need clearing up.
If you are interested, I've done a set of 'type' cases at the Village Pump. See here (version as earlier today is here). Carcharoth ( talk) 15:35, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi. Just a reminder of the thread at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style (disambiguation pages)#Consistency issue. I think all the editors there are willing-to-be-convinced; we just need some specific and representative examples to keep the discussion focused. I suggested the long blue (disambiguation), but anything long should be suitable.
Thanks. -- Quiddity ( talk) 01:58, 17 October 2008 (UTC)
Many thanks. Apart from 140 election questions, a mediation, another offline conversation, and an ArbCom FAQ I've been drafting ... not much to do, really. But fixing the archive is one off the list ... Charles Matthews ( talk) 13:45, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
Hi Charles, one of my hobbies is archiving talkpages and setting up archivebots... May I set up a bot for your page, and an automated archive box? Or would you rather handle it manually? I could set up a bot that would automatically archive any threads that had gone inactive for a period of time (14 days?), and then you wouldn't have to worry about it anymore. You could still archive threads more quickly on a manual basis at any time of course. Let me know? :) -- El on ka 14:36, 21 October 2008 (UTC)
You should move
/Archive27 to
/Archive 27 in order to follow the previous/standard naming convention, and so that the {archivebox|auto=yes} can find and list it. --
Quiddity (
talk)
01:39, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm happy to help with the flow charts. Do you have a idea of what you want or a rough sketch? -- Kevin Murray ( talk) 00:42, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Hello Charles. I'm wondering about the Najidah (Australia) article, which you had edited a while ago tidying it up a bit. It ever so feels like a bit of an advert, and if one analyses what links to it, it seems thin. There are so many organisations like this, maybe in Australia, does it make sense to have this one stand out so ? I applaud its work, but I think it was inserted with clever visibility desires and motives, or not, as the case may be. If you had an impression, I would be grateful. Oh --- also --- nice work on your co-authored new book on "How Wikipedia Works" via No Starch Press. Well done to you and your co-authors. Bests. --- (Bob) Wikiklrsc ( talk) 01:31, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi, I would like to appeal to your help to forstall further unpleasant edit warring. Gandalf and I had a bit of a spat at the talk page of graph. He found it to be good wiki etiquette immediately to go on an offensive against my new page Ghosts of departed quantities as well as my edits at uniform continuity. Please comment. Katzmik ( talk) 09:47, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
Can I interest you in taking a break from your religious editing? Go strategy needs some well written and concise paragraphs on yose and middlegame for the FA push. Love, -- ZincBelief ( talk) 17:17, 27 October 2008 (UTC)
Re: { http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overdetermined_system : Inhomogeneous case }
Dear Charles
I would like to ask for a clarification regarding the inhomogeneous case entry in the overdetermined system wiki I preemptively apologize for your time in case the issue is trivial - however is not that clear to me, maybe due to lack of linear algebra expertize :)
In the page under consideration, there is the following statement:
"M equations* and N unknowns*, such that M>N and all M are linearly independent. This case yields no solution."
My question: The number of the linearly independent rows of an MxN matrix (M equations, N unknowns) equals the rank of the matrix. However, from page 105 in Strang [1] the row rank = column rank. How it is possible to have M linearly independent rows leading to a rank = M, but then M > N? Shouldn't the rank be always ≤ min(M,N) ?
Thank you very much
chris
Cpanagio ( talk) 01:33, 28 October 2008 (UTC)
Hello. I'd appreciate comment at Talk:Rules of Go#"Original research" template. 128.32.238.145 ( talk) 05:03, 29 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi, Concerning your remark on Ghosts of departed quantities, I think it would be great if material could be added on other philosophical challenges to infinitesimal calculus. Does the current title describe the current content of the page accurately? Katzmik ( talk) 11:28, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
I understand your concern for the long version, but the long version is more precise. I don't mind creating redirects for such pages, but the vast majority have been created by either myself or npeters22 as the long version first, without redirects to the short version. Apologies for making more work for you, but that was not the intent, the intent was simply to fill out the pages on all the Catholic dioceses worldwide. Thank you.
Benkenobi18 ( talk) 06:06, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi Charles,
I'm an editor (Contrivance) of the William Rodriguez page. William witnessed 9/11 in the twin towers and has made a career of traveling around lecturing about his heroism. He's gotten a lot more press coverage in the UK than in the USA. The most serious article, in the Herald of Glasgow, points out weaknesses in his story.
I considered identity speculations about me a dumb joke for some time, but recently two 9/11 witnesses (Barry Jennings and Kenny Johanneman) have turned up dead and Willie seems to be hanging around with the allegedly ex-MI5 agent Annie Machon, and I no longer consider it appropriate to tolerate attempted outing and intimidation. I don't want any responsibility for any associated mischief that might follow.
Contrivance ( talk) 21:41, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
I did not start at the top of the page, it was user Contrivance constant misusing of my page who did that. You are welcome to check that out on the history of the page as well. Thanks again. Celeronel ( talk) 03:00, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
Hello, this is a message from
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CSDWarnBot (
talk)
19:10, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Hi, you recently signalled your intent to accept a case on Kuban kazak. It is not my position to direct you to change your intent, however, I would like to ensure that you have read all the statements which were submitted to the case in question after you signalled your intent to take this case on board. In the event that you haven't kept up with developments on the case, could you please review the case again, and consider if it does in fact require arbcom intervention. Thanks. -- Russavia Dialogue Stalk me 03:02, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm curious where you stand on the permissibility of user subpages that are designed to track articles with a problematic history, for the purposes of maintaining high quality articles. I'm not saying any particular current situation matches that description, but it is certainly possible. In this type of case, a page might have a list of articles and users, and some descriptions of editing style for users which may be interpreted as negative or detrimental to article quality. Would this be considered prohibited because it is not related to active dispute resolution? Avruch T 20:25, 7 November 2008 (UTC)
He just did this to your message - http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User_talk:Defender_Of_Justice&diff=prev&oldid=250684070
- I think some action - probably blocking - is in order. Paul Austin ( talk) 00:07, 10 November 2008 (UTC)
Wikivoices (formally NotTheWikipediaWeekly) would be interested in making several podcasts with candidates running in the 2008 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee election. Given the high number of candidates likely to be signing up during the nomination stage (likely to be around 45) it will be a very busy 2 weeks. These shows typically last about one and a half hours to record, taking into account setup time, and are recorded using the free, downloadable programme, Skype. The programme can be used on Windows, Mac OS and Linux operating systems and is also available on some mobile platforms. If any candidates have problems with installing or running the program please contact me at my talk page or by email
There will be 2 formats being run over the next 2 weeks. The first will be general discussion with a small number candidates at a time with several experienced hosts from Wikivoices. Each candidate will be given 2-3 minutes to introduce themselves then the main body of the cast will begin. The topics discussed will vary in each recording to ensure fairness however the atmosphere will be generally free flowing. These will be running throughout the two weeks starting tomorrow. Specific signup times can be found here at our meta page. PLease sign up for all the times you are available for. You will be notified which one we would like to attend.
The second format will be based on a similar style to election debates. Questions will be suggested here by the community. A selection of these will then be put to a panel of larger panel candidates with short and concise 1-2 minute responses. Other than an introduction and hello from each candidate, there will be no opportunity for a lengthier introductions. Specific signup times can be found here at our meta page.
It is recommended that candidates attend both formats of casts and we will try to be as flexible as possible. We are looking for the greatest participation but also for shows with enough members to keep it interesting but not too many that it causes bandwidth and general running issues. I look forward to working with all candidates in the coming weeks. Seddσn talk Editor Review 12:52, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Hello, fellow candidate! Just so you know, in an effort to announce our candidacies and raise further awareness of the election, I have created the template {{ ACE2008Candidate}}, which I would invite you to place on your user and user talk pages. The template is designed to direct users to your Questions and Discussion pages, as well as to further information about the election. Best of luck in the election! Hersfold ( t/ a/ c) 16:36, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
Your query - she is User:Bishonen, so your assumption is correct. Charles Matthews ( talk) 17:02, 13 November 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for your (very) full and frank answer to my question at the election page. I do appreciate it and I hope that others will too. Best regards, Angus McLellan (Talk) 01:48, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Though James F. hasn't responded yet, I just thought I'd mention that (at least at the moment), your comments, coupled with some other things I've been reading lately, may have caused me to change my perspective on 2 year term lengths. (More ironic, since, I believe I was the first to suggest 2 year lengths quite awhile back.)
So at the moment, I'm looking for a rather sharp stick. When I find one I'll be back (smiles). - jc37 03:56, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
this Slrubenstein | Talk 18:56, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
As you have chosen to mention me in your vulgar scramble to be re-elected please be aware I have posted a question in reply here: [8]
Frankly, I find it incredible that such as you and James Forrester feel you have something further to offer Wikipedia, but we shall not go there. That you choose to mention Arbcom's secret (very wise) deliberations demeans you. That I cause you to become "into loops arguing" is probably because I am of more value to the project than you and your present colleagues. Please do not mention me, or involve me in you campaign for power again. Thank you. Giano ( talk) 22:13, 14 November 2008 (UTC)
Is it possible to speedy close the RFC if issues are now resolved? [9] Jehochman Talk 14:49, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
Would like to request that you change your vote so this may be archived sooner, before the RFArb page gets too much longer. I make this request given that the active current case (Kuban) has similar proposals - I expect they can be tweaked in such a way that it will eliminate the need for amending the Tobias case, while providing any necessary clarification. Ncmvocalist ( talk) 18:04, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
You are welcome. Yes, I understand. Tried a couple times to steer discussion back to original Statement of Dispute. No problema. Onward. Mervyn Emrys ( talk) 14:53, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
This seems to be a sockpuppet account of User:Mervyn Emrys. Look at this diff [10]. The edits to the article on Lynton K. Caldwell seem to be a copyvio from an obituary reproduced here [11] from the Bloomington Herald Times. Much of the obituary was copied-and-pasted into the article. Isn't there a rule about sockpuppet accounts? This diff [12] seems to be unknowingly admitting the sockpuppetry, since the biographical material was added by User:Mervyn Emrys. Could someone possibly be playing the system? Mathsci ( talk) 22:17, 16 November 2008 (UTC)
Good morning. You already had most of the General Questions answered, so I did not transclude the master list. However, we had three late entries, so I posted them to your General Questions section, and moved two questions posted to you specifically. Those two questions went to the top section, right above the General Questions. I think I matched the formatting you already had, but please feel free to undo and redo as you see fit. Again, good luck with your candidacy. Best, UltraExactZZ Claims ~ Evidence 14:28, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
Per the above three (which were created last year through discussion with those under discussion), I'd like to select a few candidates to do the same with this year, and you're one of the those.
So if you don't strongly oppose the idea, would you help by suggesting/selecting a few appropriate images? - jc37 15:11, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
And of course, you and others are welcome to use it. The phrase is customisable (as is the "float"). Enjpy. - jc37 23:52, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
Not sure I love the answer, but fyi you have my vote (as do several others...). While I don't personally agree with some positions you've taken or explanations you have given, I value your experience and dedication, and think Arbcom will be better for having a variety of thoughtful viewpoints on it, even where I'm not sure I agree with them. Martinp ( talk) 06:28, 19 November 2008 (UTC)
I have nominated Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain, an article that you created, for deletion. I do not think that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Children of Albion: Poetry of the Underground in Britain. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time. βcommand 09:06, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
Hi. I'm Ral315, editor of the Wikipedia Signpost. We're interviewing all ArbCom candidates for an article this week, and your response is requested.
Please respond on my talk page. We'll probably go to press on Tuesday, but late responses will be added as they're submitted. Thanks, Ral315 ( talk) 10:25, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
Hi Charles. I was wondering if you knew what percentage of the public domain Catholic encyclopedia we have on wikipedia. Wasn't there a list of missing articles somewhere? Count Blofeld 19:43, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
There is no motion posted yet regarding SV. The natives are getting restless because they don't know what you are supporting, though I think it is both implicit and obvious. Maybe you want to make it explicit too. Jehochman Talk 22:07, 23 November 2008 (UTC)
Dumb question -- when the article says the left action L_g is defined by L_g(f)(h) = f(g^-1*h), should this be f(g*h)? As defined, this is actually a right action, correct? Kier07 ( talk) 23:14, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
You said something about a "swollen head", which I didn't entirely understand, but I'd just like to say that I think there are probably more diplomatic ways to express what you wanted to say. ☺ Coppertwig( talk) 01:52, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
I think you are probably correct. Diplomacy has its place.
In commenting on cases and related matters, however, it is somewhat traditional for arbitrators to speak frankly about how they feel on matters, not to come across as guarded lawyer-like individuals. This can be helpful, in getting past the layers of abstract policy discussions, and conveying the essence of an onsite situation. Here, since the unblocking admin spoke her mind freely, and continues to do so, I was replying in kind. Charles Matthews ( talk) 09:06, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
I am too afraid to make this question from my main account for fear of retaliation from harrasment sites. Since I am not using my main account, I will write this question on your talk page instead of your nomination questions page. On WikBack, why did you proxy edit for the banned user and longtime admin harraser armedblowfish? Solidarity for us ( talk) 19:25, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
Wouldn't some form of restriction/parole be enough? Greg did not have any history of blocks, bans or warnings before his interactions with Boodlesthecat, and even now his block record is clean. I'd think that a stern warning should be at least tried before a permban, and I also don't think he has been doing anything wrong in the past weeks - further, this post indicates he is now taking BLP into consideration and he has recently posted a pledge in the workshop (see discussion here). Perhaps an alternative, more merciful remedy could be proposed? -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 20:17, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
One of the worst people in the case, I think. And I have just seen a bad diff where you restored one of his edits, threatening someone. So he gets you into trouble, also. Probably greg should just come back in 2010 and edit in a different area. Charles Matthews ( talk) 22:22, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
I guess I suppose to be one the opposite side of the conflict but I would be against banning of Greg or Boodles or indeed anybody involved in the case (maybe except Alan Jones). In the Eastern European topics we have very few content producers and a lot of topics. Many content producers are encouraged by the idea to glorify their nations and demonize their enemies. It might be a bad motive but if we ban all such editors we would not have resources to do anything. Thus, any chance to remove the disruption but keep the editors should be IMHO used. Combination of the topic bans and 1RR paroles should be sufficient, IMHO. Obviously, there should be some balance in the punishment. It would be wrong e.g. to ban Boody and vindicate Greg Alex Bakharev ( talk) 02:06, 27 November 2008 (UTC)