Archive 33: mid-July 2009 through December 2009. Please do not edit this page -- use my regular talk page instead, as I will not see your message here.

The redlink viola d'arco says it all: surely you must be the one to write something under this head: I've just enjoyed your Alfonso dalla Viola.-- Wetman ( talk) 18:48, 21 July 2009 (UTC) reply

Hi Antandrus. Thank you for your message of last week (we'll say--it probably wasn't!). I do intend to reply, though it's a shame I have to announce that in advance because the reply may not be commensurate with the amount of time waited. However, since I mentioned being annoyed by lack of reply in my little missive, it is only proper that I acknowledge your message. I'll stop being Woody Allen now. Have a good weekend (I liked your photo at the top). Outriggr ( talk) 01:37, 25 July 2009 (UTC) reply

Damn, that was a test. You get so many people asking if they can use your user page that I was going to ask too, and then... Short Brigade Harvester Boris ( talk) 02:58, 25 July 2009 (UTC) reply

LOL. Use it any time in any way you like! You may even find that the first letters of sentences, read backwards, spell the table of contents in the last of the works of Lenin.  :) Antandrus (talk) 03:01, 25 July 2009 (UTC) reply

Oh, and you misspelled sockpopers. HTH. Short Brigade Harvester Boris ( talk) 03:09, 25 July 2009 (UTC) reply

Now located here. Peter Damian ( talk) 09:07, 25 July 2009 (UTC) reply

Hi, I have thought about this problem of articles getting littered with distracting and often pointless editorial tags and banners. I think the simplest solution is to change the wikipedia so that the default view does not show editorial tags. To see them you must be logged in and have [show editorial tags/banners] on or something like that.

A similar idea is to create another tab. For example now we have a "user page" tab. We change this to the "reader" tab and create a new "editor" tab that would have the editorial markup. This tab would be an identical view except with editorial tags and banners enabled.

{{ Ref improve section|date=November 2010}}{{ Primary sources|date=November 2010}}{{ Lead too short|date=November 2010}}{{ Weasel|date=November 2010}}{{ cleanup|date=November 2010}}{{ POV-section|date=November 2010}}{{ Multiple issues|date=November 2010}}{{ Cite plot points|date=November 2010}}

Hi Antandrus. I had started to work on a Windows Notepad reply to you which would morph into a general essay on the subject of article templating—which came up on your talk page recently. It could make for a long essay, and I'm not going to finish it, but here's what was on the platter. If I retire thinking, thinking, I may as well end on a quasi-productive note. Outriggr ( talk) 02:49, 31 July 2009 (UTC) reply

---

You asked if I had any ideas on how to address the problem of the "templating of mainspace". I think we still need a problem definition, and then some determination of whether there are more than 4-6 people on Wikipedia who are concerned about it. I have not previously written much on the problem definition, probably for two reasons: one is that I have difficulty working up a treatise on something that seems so bloody obvious to me ("let's go write an essay on why vandalism is bad", this is to me); the other is that my own analyses have something about them that tends not to generate much comment. Call it idiosyncracy, nuance, being over people's heads in some sense, poor communication--I'll accept any of them.

So the six of us agree that the liberal use of templates that comment on the "deficiencies" of an article, placed at the top of the article page, is a problem because:

• Articles should present themselves to readers without having intrusive " meta" content that comments on the article's quality. Identifying issues with articles is what the talk page is for.
• Adding templates is a passive activity that does not engage with the article. The template adder is making a bold, essentially "ex machina" statement about the article without engaging the problem, or any prospective editor of the article. Templates are increasingly being added in a thoughtless way--as a mechanic, bot-like operation--based on intellectually inadequate notions about articles and knowledge (how people use Wikipedia, how people form knowledge with respect to an encyclopedia article). (Recent absurd examples that have come across my desk: [1] [2] [3]) This has repercussions for the "community spirit" behind content improvement. (See next point.)
• We are concerned that the passive, "drive-by" template-adding discourages the very people who are building Wikipedia most substantively. Content experts--editors who may have a nuanced sense of what is appropriate for the article they're working on--have the significant potential to become frustrated by having their product passively "tagged" as deficient, without comment, without engagement. We believe that article templating has some role in Wikipedia losing valuable editors. (It's unrelated but thematically familiar: did anyone notice that the fellow working on Aramaic language in the face of the " not-good-enough"ers appears to have given up?)
• Templates make articles ugly. Templates that are originally more important (i.e. those suggesting serious point-of-view debates) are being watered down because every third article now has some box at the top. We learn to ignore them as we ignore the screen space devoted to advertisements on our favorite news site. Templates are self-fulfilling, reinforcing the dirty-carpet, unprofessional appearance that they purport to be commenting on.

Other bullet points:

• Reductio ad absurdum re templates. Would this activity, carried to the extreme, make Wikipedia a better place? There are many templates that say "this article needs to be improved", but it is commonly understood that few of our articles don't need improvement. The templating hobby suggests that it must be fine to place an arbitrary number of tags at the top of an arbitrarily large set of articles that I determine to have a problem: too few references, bad layout, too listy, containes proseline, needs citations, needs more citations, needs more citations in this section, needs more sections, needs copyediting. Clearly, carrying the templating project to its logical conclusion would make "article space" a thing of the past; we'd have to scroll down a screen just to find the beginning of the article. By comparison, the activity of typo correcting, done no matter how manically or repetitiously, carried to its logical conclusion, does make Wikipedia a better place, so we view it favorably.
• What cognitive model allows someone to think that once a template is in place, it carries more weight than the content associated with it? Once a citation-needed tag, or any other template, exists, it seems to take on a mythic status with literal-minded editors. "Templates can be added without any comment, but you can't remove them unless you fix or remove 'the problem'." (Importantly, the editors saying this are almost never making case-specific arguments.)
• Tagging is a projection of insecurities with the Wikipedia model. Disclaimers about Wikipedia need to be global, and bold; but in leaving content disclaiming up to individual editors, some of whom increasingly view tagging as a game, we have very specific assertions being made about specific articles by the parties least able (relative to the topic) to make a specific assertion.
• Problem-solving 1: the pragmatic approach would be to have a third page where people can build semantic webs and article meta-data to their heart's content. It would be here that people would use some markup language to say that Bach's Air on a G String was used in the soundtrack of movie A and House episode B (the web of "this is connected to that" that clearly fascinates many people, but which an encyclopedia calls trivia).
• Problem-solving 2: encourage more prominent global disclaimers to deprecate article-specific ones. Prominent disclaimers about content have a number of other good reasons to exist, and they might mollify the critics a bit.

Regards, Outriggr ( talk) 02:49, 31 July 2009 (UTC) reply

I think that's a superb start.

I'm not feeling terribly hopeful. This is purely subjective, and based on the responses I've gotten the few times I've complained about tagging (and boxing). Adding to my pessimism is that the others I know who share our disdain for the tagging activity -- which you have wonderfully analyzed above -- have largely retired, left in frustration, or even worse, been hounded off the project for other reasons. I detect a very large-scale trend in Wikipedia away from content creation, and towards meta-content: tags, ratings, assessments, categories, and other automated and semi-automated offenses against the general reader (shall we say, "assault and bottery"?)

Thank you for those examples. The S&P 400 is a stock market index from Standard and Poor's? You don't say! That's a howler!

Did you see the post at the Village Pump? ^{self-published source?} Apparently those of us who remove tags are directly attacking verifiability. I had no patience, so I walked away. Maybe there is a silent multitude who would support the common sense evident (obviously, to me) in your list above, but it seems most of our current crop of editors want to play the meta-content game rather than do hard work of writing and citing. Looking strictly at the numbers, and the trend, tags are multiplying so much faster than cites (try random-paging) that they will shortly have metastasized through our entire encyclopedia, and I don't think any amount of expert therapy will be able to eradicate them. Since we are always a work in progress, not completely verified, not completely done, not completely reliable, our general disclaimers should be quite good enough: maybe they should be displayed more prominently, as you say. Not sure where to go from here. Antandrus (talk) 03:46, 31 July 2009 (UTC) reply

I'd agree with it too. I don't actually think it has got worse of late - I just think the level of serious content-addition has fallen, leaving the crap that was always there more prominent. Johnbod ( talk) 03:50, 31 July 2009 (UTC) reply

Drive-by comment: change the templates to add the articles into categories, instead of expanding into boxes. Having a hidden category of "Articles with POV problems" is at least theoretically a good thing, and much better than having "THIS ARTICLE IS WRITTEN TO CORRESPOND WITH A PERSPECTIVE THAT I THINK IS WRONG" plastered on top of the article. Since it would be done at the template expansion level, you wouldn't even have to visit the templated articles.— Kww( talk) 03:53, 31 July 2009 (UTC) reply

Hm. Maybe there are enough of us to try something. Thank you all for commenting! I've become so short of patience on this topic, though, since it seems so obvious to me. A Wikiproject Detaggify would be fun, but think of the drama it would engender.

What I would like is a bot-generated list (tens of thousands of pages, I know!) of articles with top-of-article-banners of the more odious sort, which have, at a minimum, no comment on the talk page by the same editor who added the banner -- i.e. it was a drive-by bannering. Still, we need some sort of discussion and community agreement (fat chance!) before organizing a search-and-destroy campaign. As it is, I delete them now and again, particularly in articles in my subject area. Antandrus (talk) 04:04, 31 July 2009 (UTC) reply

A friend had a habit of saying "Nike that," meaning "just do it (without a lot of fuss and discussion)." Just delete misused, outdated, undiscussed, or otherwise stupid templates without a WikiProject or official sanction. Short Brigade Harvester Boris ( talk) 04:29, 31 July 2009 (UTC) reply

Simple! I like it. ^{original research?} As a matter of fact that's how I solve bureaucratic hassles at work. ^{citation needed} Now why didn't I think of that? Come to think of it, I don't need to fill out a form to clean the bird poop off my windshield either. ^{improper synthesis?} (Yet, anyway.) Antandrus (talk) 04:31, 31 July 2009 (UTC) ^{chronology citation needed}—Preceding unsigned comment added by RobertG ( talk • contribs) ^who? reply

But then aren't we reduced to the "reversion game"? I could follow around a couple of CiteSquad members, who are adding reference-needed tags to articles about everything, including those describing the magnitude of exponents and measures, and year articles that say three things happened in 1023... and revert it all, but we're supposed to operate by consensus, no? Wasn't the onus on them to gain it? Somehow it's been implicitly gained because too many wield policy like a club (or hammer, choose your tool). Everyone ^{weasel words} should be shouting, and they aren't. I'd prefer to see a Miscellany for Deletion on the project, but that, I understand, is equally bad! ^{citation needed} Outriggr ( talk) 06:44, 31 July 2009 (UTC) reply

Hello, I'm very sympathetic to what has been said above -- very sensible and thoughtful.

I hope this isn't too far off track, but here goes. In Wikipedia, power seems to come from the ability to summon a (usually modest) number of editors to the scene of contention, creating a (usually spurious) "consensus". Might there be room on WP for a talk page dedicated to "content editors"? I don't mean an association; that was tried a few weeks ago and didn't work at all. I just mean a page anyone can edit, but whose heading states that the intended audience is editors who read books and use them to write whole paragraphs and articles. It's this kind of editor who ought to be running the whole show but sadly they are usually outvoted by the template/infobox/chatroom crowd. Just a thought. Opus33 ( talk) 15:31, 31 July 2009 (UTC) reply

Opus33, there is the Wikipedia:Content noticeboard. I had thought of posting something there. I think it would be a good idea. Outriggr ( talk) 23:43, 31 July 2009 (UTC) reply

Delisted 1023. I didn't think "Association of Established Editors" was mainly about finding content editors, but I could be wrong. Though it might be regarded as a violation of WP:POINT -- I do think that it could be instructive to run a script that took every page with "No references" and blanking it, every section with "missing references" and removing it, and every sentence with "fact" and deleted it. That way taggers could see what WP would look like as an information tool if they had their way. For me, if it's scary enough to tag with {{ fact}} then it's important to remove this information if a citation isn't found quickly. And if CiterSquad isn't willing to do this, then they shouldn't be tagging.

Or one could create a bot to replace every {{ fact}} tag with a random title from LOC w/ a random page number. Then everything is cited and CiterSquad is happy. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 21:01, 31 July 2009 (UTC) reply

Myke Cuthbert, I fear that your POINTy suggestion would actually be welcomed by taggers. They seem to be awfully literal-minded (there is a better way of saying that, whatever it is) and I don't think they'd get the point. The only thing stopping them from blanking "all unreferenced content" now, I'd venture, is that there is still consensus that that activity is vandalism, when done without considering the specific circumstances (like libel in a BLP). I'd also like to point out (unrelated) that so much of what is tagged is the random and usually crappy long tail of Wikipedia articles, which are so obviously underdeveloped that adding templates to them gives them more legitimacy than they present to the reader in the first place. (I'm not being holier than thou: some of what I've created would fit the bill.) Outriggr ( talk) 00:00, 1 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Indeed, some of the stuff I added in 2004, before we were citing, avoiding original research, and carefully avoiding opinions of any kinds, needs to be fixed (some might even be tagged; not everything is even on my watchlist any more). Yeah, I'm hesitant to do anything remotely militant since that will get the tagging squads to entrench, determining that they will never change their minds, and then nothing is solved. Gentle, kind persuasion is the only way; when someone yells at me for being a heretic I'm trying to walk away (not always successfully) so as not to cause that entrenching response.

That "Association of Established Editors" is probably not going anywhere. At first I thought it had a germ of a good idea, but the hostility and politics surrounding it have made it about as popular as gonorrhea. And if you're associated with it, you are likely to attract the wrong kind of attention (in abundant supply on Wikipedia, since it's become so much harder to write articles than it was, say, four years ago).

Maybe it's best to work on interior lines of defense. Cite what we write; remove tags on articles in our subject areas, or peripheral to them, once there are at least a few cites, even from general reference books. Expand outward from there. While I'm tempted to use rollback on the mass tagging, the consequences would be bad, since content contributors are clearly outnumbered, and rolling back the disruptive tagging would itself be seen as disruptive by the non-writers, and the 'template/infobox/chatroom crowd' (thank you Opus for that accurate description). Antandrus (talk) 01:20, 1 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Three sorts of user: reader doing research, casual reader, contributor. Good articles serve the first two, and no-one else. This service is good if it includes the provision of useful information, resources to check up and find out more, and not being patronising. A banner saying "this may not be true" is archetypical patronising.

I see the citation banner posting squad as conceptually related to the article assessment processes - I think these processes are where the criterion of slavish conformance to useless standards has come from. It is one of these processes (a FAR that resulted in this being viewed as an improvement) that killed my zeal for contributing substantive content on Wikipedia (see no. 70). -- RobertG ♬ talk 09:27, 1 August 2009 (UTC) reply

• I think the only action, apart from individual pruning efforts, that could realisticly succeed is to move the banners to the take page by adjusting the templates. This certainly needs community approval, but I think could succeed. For one thing, I think any lingering belief from the early days that a banner on the main article is actually likely to attract editors capable of, and willing to, make improvements must surely have vanished by now. The few people who actually look for clean-up work can find them by the categories etc. I think we should start a discussion at one of the less common templates, with a notice at the pump, & see how that goes. Johnbod ( talk) 14:51, 1 August 2009 (UTC) reply

• • How long do you think [4] will last? I'm curious to know if the members of the "CiterSquad" project actually have any interest in "citing." Antandrus (talk) 05:19, 2 August 2009 (UTC) reply

I came to comment on the original discussions at Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Erik9bot_9. I did not read the whole discussion until now, but the compromise that some of you had achieved was an improvement... until the spirit of it was violated. The compromise was "The bot will not add visible templates to any pages. It will only add an invisible template (to add maintenance categories), and only to those pages that clearly have no references in any format." True, but the unmentioned next step was that people would do, in only a slightly slower fashion than a bot [5], exactly what the compromise had avoided. (Ironically, another bot comes along and fills out the template added by the person. [6] So what could have been one or two edits, with an ugly result, has turned into three edits for the same result.) This reminds me of what you see in dysfunctional (overly bureaucratic) workplaces, where it is decided that B is undesirable, so people work on A, and never notice that A leads logically and directly to B. That's why I went back to read that discussion: I had a funny feeling that I was witnessing another instance of this blindered thinking style (either that, or I've been tricked into considering it a cognitive thing when it's actually a political trick—but never attribute to malice...). Outriggr ( talk) 07:36, 2 August 2009 (UTC) reply

• I am glad to see that some editors are are using momentum of WP:CSQ to add references to articles [7]. As to the question of do volunteers of WP:CSQ actually have an interest in citing, some times I add one reference [8] and request more, other times I add {{ unreferenced}} [9], (though this was prior to WP:CSQ and the template was more in line with what {{ refimprove}} is now) and then come back and add 30 references [10]. After reading some of the comments above, I see that you are interested in actively adding references, I encourage you to become members of Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles and join us in adding references to articles. Jeepday ( talk) 12:36, 2 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Jeepday I know that you mean well, but do the changes to 1144 really indicate that CiterSquad is making a positive contribution to Wikipedia? The "uncited" mark there caused a experienced and respected article writer to stop writing articles and copy a reference from the Ljubljana article and past it next to a fact that has no importance separately from the 1144 article. And in the process annoy someone by seeming to assign work to someone else. If it is very important that articles about years have references, why not use CiterSquad to copy references from the relevant Wikipedia articles and then mark specific facts that you could not find on the Wikipedia article or on a Google Web/Scholar/Book search? -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 02:07, 3 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Apparently I am not in the category of "experienced and respected article writer"? I was not aware that we had two categories of editors, one who writes content and other who is goes around cleaning up other peoples messes. Last I checked I was both an experienced content adder and a cleaner up of other peoples messes. In response to "the process annoy someone by seeming to assign work to someone else", I don't disagree. It is unpleasant and unrewarding cleaning up all the content added prior to 2004 when the standards were different. There is a lot of work to do and we have been working on it for years at Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles, every tag added puts another article on the "to do" list for that project. And when 20 years from now we finally get caught up to Category:Articles lacking sources from August 2009, I will look for a reference if someone has not added one, if I don't find one... Jeepday ( talk) 18:51, 4 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Please, please, try not to personalize; try to step back a notch, assume good faith and all that. It is much more likely that Myke, who is my friend, is trying to prop up my sagging morale, which is close to despair over the state of Wikipedia and the departure of expert contributors, than he is trying to belittle you. Really. Trust me on this. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 00:41, 5 August 2009 (UTC) reply

FYI to any discussion followers: I've posted a message at the Content noticeboard on the template issue and the actions of the wikiproject. Outriggr ( talk) 02:10, 3 August 2009 (UTC) reply

I'd be happy to see most tags banished to the talk page. Either way, I think if a project called CiterSquad isn't first and last citing content, it might more helpfully be called TaggerSquad, as in graffiti. Gwen Gale ( talk) 02:13, 3 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Well, I'm done with my annual venture into the policy fora of Wikipedia. (The issue could be put up for discussion at another couple of venues and draw the same response, I reckon.) It's fairly clear that most of the people editing Wikipedia regularly don't care about excessive tagging. I am always struck that no one (and really, I mean no one, other than us) is willing to address the principles involved. I admit that I have little idea how to discuss "issues" with people who don't want to examine principles... so, from my perspective, they win because of their ignorance. Yeah! Let that be my over-the-top elitist-sounding exit!

Template away, and don't stop to question what it means. Outriggr ( talk) 00:57, 4 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Of course, the "bot culture" on Wikipedia is intimately connected to the templating problem. And we've reached that critical point (probably one or two years ago) where people actually think it correct reasoning to make decisions about our encyclopedia based on how if would affect programming, bots, etc. I couldn't even remove spurious reasoning in this regard on the "Perennial proposals" page about maintenance tags in article space: [11]. I'd been managing to stay fairly uninvested in this whole business until today. Now it's driving me nuts again. I tend to conclude from the cumulative (lack of) argument provided by all these editors that Wikipedia is basically run by teenagers now. (I mean, the narrow focus reminds me of that age. I'd probably be doing the same things if I were still that age; but that isn't an excuse for the slow degradation of the encyclopedia with all these junk edits.) This concerns me most because of the sense that we've only just begun: the bot culture, the template culture, the idea that prose is only a series of atomic "verified facts"... they'll ruin the encyclopedia qua encyclopedia if they go unchecked. I guarantee that. Wikipedia won't have articles, as we know them, in four years: it will have heavily marked-up "fact lists" that are so uneditable as to further reduce the potential base of contributors. Anyway, I don't mean to keep using your talk page for editorializing. Time to turn off and tune out (or become an edit warrior!). Outriggr ( talk) 08:34, 4 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Outriggr, I agree. So is the only answer to fork Wikipedia now? - Before the encyclopaedia becomes Wikipédia engloutie, rotting under the sludge, to be excavated in 200 years time by cyber-archaeologists studying the decline and fall of the great Web 2.0 civilization? -- RobertG ♬ talk 10:54, 4 August 2009 (UTC) reply

I've been saying for some time, there is no reason to think en.Wikipedia will still be the leading online encyclopedia (open or not) in 4 years. The further it strays from straight text, the less meaningful it will be to readers, there are reasons why folks are drawn to pithy text in narrative form and I've yet to see even a hint of anything that might one day pop up in its stead. If Apple, Google, MS or whoever does one day come to market with a Vulcan mind meld, think thrice before plugging in, it won't be anything like a Melrose Avenue soundstage. Gwen Gale ( talk) 13:55, 4 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Hello , to be honest this was one of the best essays that i have red in my wikilife , just wanted to say Well-done -- Mardetanha ^talk 23:57, 31 July 2009 (UTC) reply

Thank you! I appreciate that. I've put more thought into that page than probably anything I've ever done here, so it means a lot to hear that from you. All the best, Antandrus (talk) 01:07, 1 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Non-urgent music inquiry. -- Folantin ( talk) 19:52, 1 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Replied. I hope -- maybe foolishly -- that there's not too much more of that. Antandrus (talk) 03:13, 2 August 2009 (UTC) reply

I certainly hope so too. I've probably erred on the side of caution and practically butchered the article to remove anything suspect. I don't have the time to perform micro-surgery. Now to see where the damage might be elsewhere. -- Folantin ( talk) 09:12, 2 August 2009 (UTC) reply

The choice is completely yours, but I wonder if this edit might better meet your stated goal of encouraging article citation by directing potential volunteers to one of projects that you consider more constructive maybe something from Template:Active Wiki Fixup Projects? Jeepday ( talk) 13:31, 2 August 2009 (UTC) reply

I'm happy to contribute cites. I wish you, and others, would follow my lead.

I have also noticed that you and others on the project continue to add "unreferenced" tags as though there were no dissent to your project at all. You have a group of people, many of whom have been Wikipedians for many years, objecting to you; most of us -- indeed, all of us, as far as I can tell -- are the people who actually write the content for the project. Am I imagining this, or do you just consider our objections to be nonsensical and worthy of ignoring? Do you think we are crazy? Do you think there is no substance to our objections? Do you think we are just an annoying noise, and if you look the other way you can proceed with your tagging? I'm genuinely curious. Why are you blithely proceeding with your tagging as though we didn't exist? This is what is pissing me off. Antandrus (talk) 00:39, 3 August 2009 (UTC) reply

With no offense intended, I am hearing you tell us, "Don't waste energy telling other people what to do, by adding {{ unreferenced}} to articles, go out and find the references yourself and added them". You also repeatedly accuse me of not referencing.

• In response to what I am hearing you say, I see you spending considerable effort to tell me what to do, and no effort actually going out and adding references. It makes it pretty hard to take your position as anything serious, when you are not motivated to follow your own demands.

• In response to your, attacking my for not referencing. I think you would be hard pressed to find a dozen editors on Wikipedia that have added more references to unreferenced content written by others, then myself. Yes I tag a lot of articles, and yes I reference I lot of articles, but it has probably been 2 years since I added one sentence to Wikipedia with adding reference.

• In response to your happiness to add citations, I hear you talking but I don't see you acting. You are not signed up at Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles nor do I see Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles; [[Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles|you can help!]] in your edits.

Still with no offense intended, it's like your demanding that we confirm to some standard to always add references to other peoples work. There is two problems with that, one WP:PROVEIT, and two you are not going out and doing what you are demanding others do. Clearly we disagree on approach to Wikipedia referencing and I don't have a problem with that, different perceptions can lead to wonderful solutions. If you truly beleive something you should make your best argument and try to change consensus. But when you repeatedly attack, me personally and other editors while placing your self in a separate category of the people who actually write the content for the project, you devalue your position. Every person brings different strengths to the project, try looking for that strength and encourage it. Jeepday ( talk) 18:35, 4 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Um, yeah. Disagree with much, agree with some, think you're misinterpreting other. Could answer at length but doing so at this moment would be counterproductive, as I'd rather improve Wikipedia than argue, and what I need to say would extend this thread by ten thousand words and many hours of stress for all of us. By the way thanks for this; I'm always looking for those, and now I can bookmark it. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 00:38, 5 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Understood, been there. Question - can you make a valid argument that will gain community consensus that year articles like 1144 don't need references? Maybe something that expands on this User_talk:Jeepday#Edit_to_Xander. I know I can't write it and if it was proposed I would probably argue in opposition, but I would welcome a solid consensus to not reference them, similar to Wikipedia:Disambiguation#References. It would probably need to be proposed at Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability. Jeepday ( talk) 23:32, 6 August 2009 (UTC) reply

I'm drawing a blank at the moment. Myke, do you have an idea? It seems if all the content in an essentially list-type article, not a narrative, is referenced elsewhere, it may not be necessary to go through the exercise of carrying the references across, but I think the common objection be -- why not just copy them from other articles where the subject is covered in greater depth? As a practical matter, most of those articles could probably be referenced to a handful of comprehensive paper encyclopedias (but once you get into modern times, and popular culture entries appear, it's a different game). Antandrus (talk) 00:47, 7 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Just an idea. Consensus says (or it did last time I looked) that the lead paragraph of an article, being a summary of the articles' content, does not require citations because the facts will be referenced in the article's main body. Can we not say that similarly, for summary articles, citations are not required provided the reason that they are in the summary article is referenced in the main article(s) linked to? That could apply to disambigs, year articles (x happened in 1144 - documented in article x), summary lists (foo x won prize y, it says so on article x), and perhaps many other classes of article. This would apply equally to modern times and popular culture. Actually it's how we used to deal with categories, although things may have changed since I bothered with them. -- RobertG ♬ talk 06:32, 7 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Glad to see the second edit to the user page. After the first one I tried to commit the faux pas of editing your user page by reverting. But alas it's only editable by admins. more soon. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 07:22, 6 August 2009 (UTC) reply

I feel the same. Opus33 ( talk) 15:15, 6 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Thanks. Was just having a momentary lapse of ... enjoyment. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 22:55, 6 August 2009 (UTC) reply

I would like to invite you to agree to disagree Wikipedia_talk:CiterSquad#Summary_of_objections. I would also appreciate it if you would participate in the the discussion on Priority of goals. Jeepday ( talk) 22:25, 14 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Yes, thank you. In an attempt at stress reduction I have not been watching that page, or the issue in general, for the past week or so. I'll try to state my ideas concisely there. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 17:53, 15 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Thank you, good comment. Jeepday ( talk) 11:19, 16 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Not trying to raise your stress level, but your comment needs clarification on one point, bringing the question here so you can think about it quietly before addressing on the project page. Your comment "If it relies on specialist material out of the range of a Google search or what you have available, you may place an {{ unreferenced}} template" [12] would seem to be counter to policy " If no reliable, third-party sources can be found for an article topic, Wikipedia should not have an article on it." Existing policy is pretty strong that if you look for references and can't find any, the article or content should be deleted. Most of the articles (not including years) in the category Category:Articles lacking sources (Erik9bot) were written pre-2004, many of the editors are no longer with the project, and many of the sources were only available to the original editor. Even those editors who are still here don't have access to the references any longer [13]. Many/most of the articles fail WP:OR, WP:N, and/or WP:V, though most seem to pass WP:NPOV. When an article is tagged {{ unreferenced}}, it gives the whole community the opportunity (and motivation?) to check for and references, not just those few looking at a hidden category. The {{ unreferenced}} puts the article in Category:Articles lacking sources, where if it does not get referenced (and over the years many do), it will be in scope of the project Wikipedia:Unreferenced articles (and other prohects), where they (myself included) actively look for references. Then given years for the community to try and find references, and a focused search by one of more editors they are referenced [14] or not.

I was just passing by and noticed your example, the 100 Classrooms page. As I expected, it took me around 30 seconds to run an appropriate Google search and come up with the references needed, and then maybe a minute or two to format them using the cite web template. This is what is wrong with your project. The effort to help with unreferenced articles is appreciated, but the mechanical way you're doing it (the bot stamping disambiguation and year pages with the template, this endless talking in a case when just 30 seconds were enough to find references, etc.) is not. Unfortunately, I don't have time to argue about this, here or on the project page. So I really hope other people will eventually be able to convince you to change your ways at least a little bit. -- Jashiin ( talk) 13:09, 16 August 2009 (UTC) reply

I am glad you had time to find references for one article, I would encourage you to spend 10 minutes a day on Category:Articles lacking sources (Erik9bot), you should easily be able to reference 10 or 15 articles. Jeepday ( talk) 14:03, 16 August 2009 (UTC) reply

There are a lot of reliable sources that are not on Google: copyrighted books, for example. I use them for the majority of work I do in music. And the Grove encyclopedia I use is not available to most people either, since I buy a subscription to get online access. Thought I was clear. Google doesn't find everything. Antandrus (talk) 13:45, 16 August 2009 (UTC) reply

I agree 100%, part of the problem is that there is no category unreferenced music articles, so an editor with the desire and the references could go find and reference those type of articles. What if we asked Erik9bot, to put articles in categories like Category: Music Articles lacking sources, maybe he can read categories the articles are in, then add them to these (I am imagining maybe 25 to 100 special unreferenced categories) We could then divide the work up to groups that people would be more willing to work. Not sure if he could do it, but off the top of my head it seems doable. Jeepday ( talk) 14:03, 16 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Jeepday -- I agree that such a category would be great. (I just wish the Wikipedia would let you do an AND search, so that I could just do a search on Category:Music AND Category:Articles Lacking Sources). What I find enjoyable is finding references in articles that can't easily be found online; it lets me use my library and my skills and it means that Wikipedia is truly adding to the knowledge available online rather than collecting it all in one place.

I looked at 20 random pages and found that 9 had no references; if these percentages are representative, then your project has a goal of placing a banner at the top of 40-50% of all English Wikipedia pages. I don't think that that should be done without larger community and board approval. What I think would be great would be to have a separate no-web-citation template that CiterSquad puts up that says, "This article contains no references, and a web search on SEARCH-DATE found no reliable on-line references (References may be available in print-only sources). The lack of sources will hamper your ability to verify the accuracy of statements on the page." Or something like that. That would be useful to me as a reader and as an editor who wants to improve Wikipedia. After doing this, if it were possible (maybe a bot could do this?) to put on Wikiproject:Classical Music a list of music articles with no-web-citations found, I think you'd get huge writer response. (And similarly with other topics). It'd be a big help in finding possibly erroneous, out-of-date, or hoax articles. It'd take more time than adding a template but not so much, and it'd be fun. If the direction of the group went that way and away from templating without searching, I would commit to joining and doing 100 articles in the first month.

(btw -- Jeepday, though I think that aspects of the project has proceeded without consensus, I do appreciate the civil tone you have in writing with those who disagree with you. I think that you may have misinterpreted one of my statements on above. by calling Antandrus "experienced and respected" I didn't mean to imply that you weren't. I just meant that there are few (and I'm glad if you are; I don't know your article-writing contributions directly) and can't afford to lose any for trivial reasons. All the best -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 17:36, 16 August 2009 (UTC)) reply

Myke, there is a template {{ prod-nn}}, unfortunately it is counter to your goal. You can't make a template that says I looked for references, and did not find any but the article should not be deleted. It would be counter to all the core content policies WP:V and WP:OR, in addition to WP:N. If you can think of way to make it work I am all ears, but I don't see how. You might ask User:DGG if any one could think of a way to make it work he could. Jeepday ( talk) 20:48, 16 August 2009 (UTC) reply

I wasn't thinking that the search for references needed to be exhaustive (as prod-nn requires); on the other hand, I'd be fine with using prod-nn to get rid of articles that really have no references anywhere, so I wouldn't mind if CiterSquad, after doing a web search, Google books search, and Google scholar search added prod-nn to an article that had no references to it--it'd mean that only articles that can't have references located for them online would have templates added to them, and those templates would only remain for a maximum of seven days. (I don't think that NN is exactly the same as no references. but it's not that different...). but it's a good direction for thinking. Trust me, I'm not counter to WP:V,OR,N,RS; but I am a realist about the danger to WP in being too dogmatic in their enforcement in one particular way or another. I think that you are too, Jeepday, hence the room for discussion. -- Myke Cuthbert (talk) 07:07, 17 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Agreed, are we having all the relevant talks at Wikipedia talk:CiterSquad? I think this chain is about talked out but am not sure if I missed something. Post to my talk page if I missed something. Jeepday ( talk) 22:43, 18 August 2009 (UTC) reply

This idea of subcategories is intriguing. I like it a lot. Seems like simple SQL to me -- (select distinct 'page' from 'Erikbot's big category' where 'page' in (select distinct page from 'Wikiproject blah')) more or less, for each project, run as a process, but I don't know the SQL dialect for Wikipedia, nor do I have access. I presume this is basic stuff for the people writing bots. Anyway, I too would join and commit to referencing articles in my area of expertise (since I have a large library of hard-to-find books) in this case. I might anyway, if I can figure a workaround. Antandrus (talk) 18:05, 16 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Antandrus - Lets bring this to the project page User talk:Erik9bot and see if we can make it work. If editors are looking in areas of their specialty they would have the best chance of working on articles they cared about, and finding references. I think the SQL to do it is able the biggest problem is getting 25 to 100 categories, then writing the rules for Erik9. Ok posted at User_talk:Erik9bot#Unreferenced_by_Category, and I forgot a tilde in my previous sign Jeepday ( talk) 21:08, 16 August 2009 (UTC) reply

I would think that as a programming exercise it's not extremely difficult. The method would be: bot goes to article in unreferenced category, then bot goes to talk page, bot collects Wikiprojects, bot adds entry to new category/list of Unreferenced-by-that-Wikiproject, bot goes to next article. I tried randompaging ten times and every article was in at least one Wikiproject, so I'd think it would be doable and produce something at least partially useful (the worst problem is that Wikiproject Biography is sometimes the only owner, and it's probably too large to be useful). I left a message on the Erik9bot talk page. Antandrus (talk) 21:25, 16 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Antandrus - the project on the talk page as group definer is a great idea, I was trying to figure out how to do it with categories on the main page and there are so many it was going to be painful. Jeepday ( talk) 21:54, 16 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Thanks for your participation in my recent RfA. I will do my very best not to betray the confidence you have shown me. If you ever have any questions or suggestions about my conduct as an administrator or as an editor please don't hesitate to contact me. Once again, thanks. ·Maunus·ƛ· 12:35, 19 August 2009 (UTC) reply

On August 21, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Spraberry Trend, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page ( here's how) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Orlady ( talk) 11:00, 21 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Thanks for the welcome back--it's good to see you're continuing to make an impact here. I only hope I can find my way back to making some kind of small contribution here: I look forward to working with you again. Best regards, Jwrosenzweig ( talk) 05:54, 22 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Hi Antandrus,

I made an edit to your Vincenzo Galilei page, leaving a short explanation on the discussion page. I am sure that you somehow get warned of this anyway, but just thought I would introduce myself. It is neat to see that you have degrees in music and geology -- a rare combination! My father played French horn with the Syracuse Symphony for almost 30 years, and I still play jazz piano with a trio on a regular basis. I also have a PhD in geology, and I teach this among other things as an elective course at a private high school in NY. Anyway, nice to know that we have similar interests . . .

Best regards, Jeff Jdlawlis ( talk) 04:52, 24 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Answered on your talk page. Welcome to Wikipedia! Antandrus (talk) 18:03, 24 August 2009 (UTC) reply

I created that sub-page in mainspace by mistake. Now moved to userspace (I hope). Cheers. -- Folantin ( talk) 18:37, 28 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Oops from me too -- when I saw the note on your talk page I thought it was already a user space page -- only discovering it was not when I went there and saw the background was the wrong color. Oh well, I guess we're members of that small band of humanity (and Wikipedians) capable of making mistakes. All the best, Antandrus (talk) 18:39, 28 August 2009 (UTC) reply

E-mail. -- Folantin ( talk) 21:33, 28 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Thanks Antandrus; nice to have a compliment from an editor whoes work I have long admired. Anyway, I know waht you mean about Goya, not exactly the sort of fellow you bring up in the pub on a saturday night. My friends have already barred me from mentioning Bacon, who is perhalps the more depressing of the two;). Ceoil ( talk) 15:47, 29 August 2009 (UTC) reply

...perhaps you could take care of 68.245.134.106 ( talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) also. :) Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 03:19, 31 August 2009 (UTC) reply

• Looks like that one's already done ... I'll check to see if there's another IP open. Antandrus (talk) 03:21, 31 August 2009 (UTC) reply
  • They seem to be coming out of the woodwork tonight. Must be the end of summer, and they're restless about going back to junior high school. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 03:24, 31 August 2009 (UTC) reply
    • Indeed; school may start tomorrow for many (when I was a kid, it was always after Labor Day) Antandrus (talk) 03:27, 31 August 2009 (UTC) reply
      • Likewise, we started after Labor Day and continued into June, which was fun, what with buildings that were not air-conditioned. Now it's in ahead of Labor Day and out in May. Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 03:31, 31 August 2009 (UTC) reply
• I suggest lobbing More Precisely ( talk · contribs), More correctly ( talk · contribs), et al. in the direction of a passing CheckUser. Uncle G ( talk) 03:36, 31 August 2009 (UTC) reply

We could do that -- "poor man's checkuser" already tells me it's the same user, in the Baltimore -- Chesapeake Bay area, possibly on the other side in Delaware. Slightly too large of a range to flatten with a range block. I don't do that much anti-trolling work any more ... burned out on that in 2005-6 ... so I don't recall offhand which particular kid that is. Antandrus (talk) 03:40, 31 August 2009 (UTC) reply

That might explain his attitude: It's tough being an Orioles fan these days. :( Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots 03:43, 31 August 2009 (UTC) reply

Yeah -- and if you're a University of Maryland basketball fan, it's even worse. Antandrus (talk)

Hey, PFHLai, thanks for the nom! (I don't like nominating my own stuff.) I fixed the problem -- evidently I forgot to add the cite for the 2008 numbers when I was writing the article. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 01:55, 6 September 2009 (UTC) reply

You're welcome, Antandrus. (I like nominating your good stuff.) Thank you for fixing things so quickly. Looking fwd to seeing this article of yours featured on MainPage soon. Cheers! -- PFHLai ( talk) 06:00, 6 September 2009 (UTC) reply

On September 7, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Beverly Hills Oil Field, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page ( here's how) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Mifter ( talk) 11:22, 7 September 2009 (UTC) reply

Hi Antandrus. Thanks for the kind words about my talk in SB. Looks like I'll be heading up there again at the end of the month to do a presentation in Montecito. After the Station Fire in LA this past week, people are back in panic mode. Hopefully I can bring back some rational perspectives. After taking a look at your involvement here, I am very impressed with all you have done to make Wikipedia an excellent source of information. Rick ( talk) 03:01, 8 September 2009 (UTC) reply

Nice word, Wikipedihol. But nice is not as meaningful as, well, wikihol.

Wikipedia is the big sister of all wiki's. Long live Wikipedia. But wiki in general is a sort of global, new-democratic, nerve-center brain.

There are other sister wiki's to come, and I propose that although the Encyclopedia one is your forte, and that wikipedihol is your word, that you make wikihol instead, widespread wikihol. CpiralCpiral 16:06, 12 September 2009 (UTC) reply

I drink less of it than I did in times past, but you have a point. A good one. It's quite a change in the way we use information, and participate in its creation, diffusion, and interpretation. Ten years ago there was none of this. I'm enjoying your essay, by the way; perceptive.

Lots of people have studied Wikipedia and wikis. I'd like to see someone study the reactionaries who fight against them. Curiously, they're often "progressives" (c.f. "Wikipedia Review"), in the same paradoxical way that Schoenberg, the famous "progressive" composer, actually tried to stop progress forever by devising a system within which nothing would ever change. Antandrus (talk) 17:06, 12 September 2009 (UTC) reply

You are amazing. ;) —  $PЯINGεrαgђ  04:32 15 September, 2009 (UTC)

The user page aesthetic is unique and strikes to the cores. Hundreds of articles from scratch. Wikipedia's finest island so far as I've seen. CpiralCpiral 17:31, 4 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Your compliment about Cpiral's styles essay was a surprise, and meant much to me. Thank you.

Progressives against change? That's a new one on me. I will think on this... OK, it sounds like something out out of "The Force of Falsity" (your quote of it's concluding sentence, my only cue.)

An Arnold Schoenberg, composer, has a Wikipedia page, Arnold_Schoenberg#Extramusical_interests but it doesn't mention his "system to stop progress forever". If you mean his 12-tone "system" with the rule no repetition of a note until all 12 notes had been played, then this deserves another discussion. His "revolutionary 12-tone musical system" seems to be a force for change, and it caused him to suffer from cruel detractors. You say Schoenberg made efforts for no-change, but what better recipe for change could there be than his personal life experiences and his 12-tone system? A sustainable wavicle cycle perhaps. CpiralCpiral 17:31, 4 October 2009 (UTC) reply

To me it's an example of an interesting idea that was worth trying but got done to death. For more recent examples see Philip Glass et al. Short Brigade Harvester Boris ( talk) 17:46, 4 October 2009 (UTC) reply

I'm never going to write about this on Wikipedia since it's all prohibited original research (but thank you for the round of wikihol; it loosens one's inhibitions), so here goes: anyway, hey, it's my user page! Around the turn of the century, Vienna was one of the most fertile cultural environments on the planet. In music, tonality was dissolving, dying an exquisitely gorgeous death in the works of people like Mahler and early Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Zemlinsky; the rate of change in style was fast. In the years immediately prior to the First World War, in parallel with the work of the expressionist painters, composers were working in a rarefied, hyper-intense, impossibly concentrated kind of "free atonality"; Schoenberg's idea of making all the notes free, and imposing a set of "rules" on this method, essentially made it possible to keep writing this same music over and over again. (I'm grossly oversimplifying, I know, trying to keep this to a paragraph.) In the arts, particularly music, things were moving fast, and Schoenberg found a way to nail 'em to the floor: stop moving! this is great as it is! I want to capture this kind of hyper-tension forever! Of course as he matured as a composer, he began to want to do things in different ways, -- and one of those was to re-incorporate tonality and tonal structures, the things originally he seemed to be rebelling against (for example, the Ode to Napoleon ends in E-flat, and the first movement of the Violin Concerto is arguably in sonata form). Paradoxically he is called a progressive for having invented this new thing: but in my opinion he is one of the most conservative composers who ever lived. In previous times of great experimentation (end of the 14th century ars subtilior, 16th century musica reservata and mannerism) no one actually tried to freeze-dry the tasty stuff dripping all over the place. Ah, thanks for the libation! Antandrus (talk) 18:18, 4 October 2009 (UTC) reply

And Cpiral just bought everyone at the noticeboard, in some cubby hole, a round of bootleg wikihol. Dramas tend to drain one until the next opportunity arises. And staying at home is not an escape from them. Nor online. Especially on Wikipedia. Most dramatic is WT:consensus. If the reader can't Ignore all dramas then its time for a glassy wikihol. CpiralCpiral 17:31, 4 October 2009 (UTC) reply

168.215.215.52 —  $PЯINGεrαgђ  04:49 15 September, 2009 (UTC)

You are involved in a recently-filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#RS and Fringe Noticeboard and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. Additionally, the following resources may be of use—

• Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Requesting Arbitration;
• Wikipedia:Arbitration guide.

Thanks, —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ottava Rima ( talk • contribs)

All right I responded. I strongly suggest you learn to try to get along with other people, beginning with how to handle a simple content disagreement. Please attempt to disagree respectfully, rather than by threatening; you are more likely to persuade your opponent of the possible reasonableness of your position if you speak kindly and civilly, than if you label the other person as "disruptive" or "destructive" and call for their banning or desysopping. If you want to continue editing Wikipedia unsanctioned, and if you are interested in minimizing drama, not creating and prolonging it, you also need to learn to recognize when you are wrong and not to dig in every time someone contradicts you. No one is right all the time, Ottava. Antandrus (talk) 20:15, 25 September 2009 (UTC) reply

Thank you! I actually used to live in the mountains; that's where I moved from (Downieville, to be precise; I'm sure I'm going to be feeling a lot of nostalgia for that place for the next God knows how long). I remember when my family moved out here to California from Tennessee when I was younger—I always thought that was the move from hell, but I didn't have to be in charge of that one. I think when (if) I move again it will take me until I do just to recover mentally from this one. It's over now, though, and I'm glad. I have a beautiful house and a good job, and I'm financially stable for the forseeable future. Life is good. :) —  $PЯINGεrαgђ  03:56 28 September, 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for blocking :). Could you do a nuke of the pages please. Thanks - Kingpin ¹³ ( talk) 05:13, 3 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Pretty sure it's done ... going back and checking now ... Antandrus (talk) 05:14, 3 October 2009 (UTC) reply

User:A cute kitten - Kingpin ¹³ ( talk) 05:17, 3 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Ah, Mentifisto seems to have taken care of them. Many thanks - Kingpin ¹³ ( talk) 05:19, 3 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Yes, he must have a script that works faster than my old-fashioned method. Pretty sure they're all blowtorched now. Antandrus (talk) 05:20, 3 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Hmm... I always thought Special:Nuke worked, but I'm not an admin so I can't guarantee that it's what I think - Kingpin ¹³ ( talk) 06:55, 3 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Cool! Didn't know about that -- it must be relatively new (it's been a couple years since I did a lot of anti-vandalism work). I'll use that next time. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 14:01, 3 October 2009 (UTC) reply

 Thanks for the snack! - 
4twenty42o (
talk) 06:09, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
reply

You're welcome -- oops -- I'm sure I have some cookies left in the archives (they're stale though ... sigh.) Antandrus (talk) 23:20, 3 October 2009 (UTC) reply

'nuff said, let's get this party started right. Casliber ( talk · contribs) 20:38, 4 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Spot on. We have to address this. I'm concerned at the decline in article contributions with the corresponding rise in nastiness and political crud. I think we need a binding Code of Ethics sooner rather than later, and wish we had strong leadership to put it in place (I am a little pessimistic about the community being able to write such a thing without death-by-a-thousand-bickers). I think the decline in article writing and rise in conflict is predictable and may be inevitable (see number 20) but somehow we have to find a way to keep people interested and avoid burning them out. I think we need to take a harder line on serial troublemakers, the WikiSkunks who, on being confronted in even minor matters, show their rear end and emit a noxious cloud: they keep people from wanting to work with them, and probably drive away uncountable otherwise good editors. Antandrus (talk) 21:39, 4 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Who dosen't like pie? Best regards, Hamster Sandwich ( talk) 19:22, 6 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Have to admit, that made me laugh suddenly and loudly. As vandalism goes, it may have been truer than he even knew! (I think I know what I'll have for dessert tonight...) Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 20:16, 6 October 2009 (UTC) reply

File:Solarmine1.jpg is now available on Wikimedia Commons as Commons:File:Solarmine1.jpg. This is a repository of free media that can be used on all Wikimedia wikis. The image will be deleted from Wikipedia, but this doesn't mean it can't be used anymore. You can embed an image uploaded to Commons like you would an image uploaded to Wikipedia, in this case: [[File:Solarmine1.jpg]]. Note that this is an automated message to inform you about the move. This bot did not copy the image itself. -- Erwin85Bot ( talk) 05:57, 7 October 2009 (UTC) reply

I was looking up a company called Prosegur, they make armored cars overseas. There isn't an article about them on Wikipedia, but I found some read links.. Who would I talk to about translating the company profile? They serve a large part of the world and the company is pretty diverse in its products.. Just nothing I can find in English or Greek.. Does Wikipedia have a translation crew to go with all the other groups? - 4twenty42o ( talk) 06:32, 8 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Digging around I find a little in English, for example [15]. I'm not aware of a translation Wikiproject, but you can ask at the language desk. Most of their pages appear to be in Spanish (found some in Portuguese); there's lots of people here who can translate Spanish. I completely agree they need an article, as they seem to be a huge and important manufacturer of armored cars in Europe and Latin America. (Wikipedia's coverage of companies isn't as good as some other things.) Good luck! Antandrus (talk)

Thanks bro!! - 4twenty42o ( talk) 18:07, 8 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Hi Antandrus. Sorry to bother you, but I could use a little support over on Talk:20th-century_classical_music#References, where an editor is obdurately claiming that footnote style is mandatory on Wikipedia, despite having been pointed at the relevant guidelines. Thanks.— Jerome Kohl ( talk) 21:29, 14 October 2009 (UTC) reply

No problem -- bother me any time you want. Kleinzach is a good editor; best to solve the problem with minimal conflict, emphasizing within-article consistency rather than insistence on one style over the other project-wide. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 00:51, 15 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Thanks for your help. I know Kleinzach is a good editor, if sometimes a bit over-zealous. I've certainly encountered much less reasonable folk during my travels in Wikipedia.— Jerome Kohl ( talk) 01:28, 15 October 2009 (UTC) reply

This was an unintentional edit. Sometimes, if I am looking at Wikipedia on my laptop, on recent changes I mouse-over the screen and inadvertently tap the touchpad; once in a great while I'll hit the "rollback" link that way. This is the first time I have done so on actual vandalism. Amusing. Antandrus (talk) 23:54, 15 October 2009 (UTC) reply

That vandalism was only there for two minutes. Bravo! The mean time is around 15 minutes. A study has vandalism at around 5% of edits. I wonder what unintentional edits are. I'd guess around 0.0001%. CpiralCpiral 02:52, 16 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Interesting: I did a "study" myself about three years ago, when I did a lot of vandal-fighting, and found that one in eleven edits by anonymous users was vandalism. (I took blocks of 100 edits at different times of day.) It got difficult when I had to decide whether something was vandalism or just gross POV; I might have been more lenient than the author of the above study.

In general when looking at "recent changes" I try to keep the pointer on the left-hand side of the screen, away from the "rollback" links.  :) Antandrus (talk) 02:57, 16 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Heres an exception, http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=Ruthven,_Ontario&diff=316376358&oldid=316373466 I found tonight, almost a month on there, "G". Har! Best regards, Hamster Sandwich ( talk) 03:02, 16 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Now that month-of-minutes is what I call a real "outlier", just like Ruthven, Ontario. CpiralCpiral 01:40, 17 October 2009 (UTC) reply

I was looking for Ruthven Park http://www.ruthvenpark.ca/virtual.html . Too bad I can't find the article for that. It's pretty there in the autumn. Hamster Sandwich ( talk) 02:03, 17 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Outlier! LOL ... love that part of the world in October. Where I am in California it's 90 degrees F (32 C) and the wind is still ... (Love it less in June. Blackflies.) Antandrus (talk) 02:42, 17 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Nice job on Texas oil boom; I've been enjoying watching the article grow. I've written some articles on Texas oil fields (Yates Oil Field, Spraberry Trend, East Texas Oil Field) -- let me know if you ever need any help, another pair of eyes, or especially if you ever find a source that gives good information on more specific fields. Cheers! Antandrus (talk) 00:44, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks. Please feel free to contribute to the oil boom article if you feel like it.

-- Mcorazao ( talk) 01:44, 20 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Hey, I am in no way questioning the block you just made, I did wonder why you didn't make it for longer as it appears to be a personal attack against user:Risker? As I said, not questioning it, but curious to know why the relatively short term block...trying to see how other people think so I have a better understanding of process and polity when I do my RfA. Thanks! Frmatt ( talk) 04:20, 20 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Never mind, I see that whoever that is is IP hopping and probably going to cause headaches for a few hours now! So, the short block makes sense now! Frmatt ( talk) 04:22, 20 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Those type usually come from 4chan or something like it; I've found over the years that the best tactic is to swat each of them with a short block, and if three or more hit the same article or talk page, to protect the page, and never, ever to engage them with talk-back (DNFTT). Cheers! Antandrus (talk) 04:26, 20 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Thanks, understand it now! Frmatt ( talk) 04:30, 20 October 2009 (UTC) reply

See the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Contemporary_music#Proposed_changes_to_lead_section. Thank you. -- Jubilee♫ clipman 15:44, 22 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Hey man I know this topic probably isn't your thing, but I still do not know any admins on here really. Could you take a look at this article? I know it has the potential to be a good article but there is a lot of edit warring between several editors and Mr. Merkey himself. I was hoping your calm nature could prevail here. If you are too busy perhaps you could point me in the direction of a level headed admin?!? Regards - 4twenty42o ( talk) 03:13, 25 October 2009 (UTC) reply

I think you're right in that it has the potential to be a good article, but they rarely come more sticky than that one, with its litigious subject, and the ill-will generated by the several years of general nasty behavior by all sides. (Before judging Mr. Merkey too harshly, it would be a good exercise for any Wikipedia editor to consider just how they would react if someone wrote a biography of them, and they found themselves unable to edit it.)

By the way, although I haven't studied the issue closely, he probably has a point about posting his units and decorations, if other equivalent veterans have them posted (assuming there's a reliable source? I don't think it's that big of a deal; if they're on his website, you can say, "according to Merkey's website, his military service history is as follows...") If you work on the article, my advice is to source everything carefully and just make bald factual statements.

Personally I avoid BLPs like the Black Death, unless I'm pruning or deleting. I just don't find them fun, and the rewards are greatly outweighed by the dangers. But that's my opinion. You could always recruit other help at Wikiprojects or even the Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard.

Minor caveat -- I haven't followed the whole history of this brouhaha -- I see that Jimbo Wales started the article, and do not see any deleted revisions preceding his start, so I don't know if the article had another title, or was oversighted. Anyway, hope this helps; good luck! Antandrus (talk) 03:43, 25 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Thank you sir!! - 4twenty42o ( talk) 03:49, 25 October 2009 (UTC) reply

I've mentioned your name as a possible closing admin for the debate here. Hope that's OK! Please decline if don't want to be involved! Best. -- Klein zach 02:05, 26 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Wish I could, but I just can't in good conscience since I've taken a hard line against infoboxes elsewhere. I wonder if there is someone genuinely uninvolved and agnostic on the issues. Antandrus (talk) 02:12, 26 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Hi there: FYI I've sent you a performance-practice-related email question, which seemed unnecessary to ask here. Thanks! -- Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 15:15, 26 October 2009 (UTC) reply

FYI: I have completed a draft of Texas Oil Boom if you are still interested in it. Feel free to review and critique if you like.

-- Mcorazao ( talk) 06:40, 27 October 2009 (UTC) reply

It looks good! I'll look at it in more detail later. It's interesting that the development of the Permian Basin was mostly after the principal boom-years as you define them in the article. Oil was so abundant and cheap by around 1930 that perhaps the fortunes were already made. Anyway -- nice work. Antandrus (talk) 13:56, 27 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Thanks for the proof-read.

Yes, West Texas had to contend with the fact that it was very far from the major commercial centers other than El Paso and there was just so much oil in the eastern half. So the gushers in the east kept depressing prices so much that it took a while for there to be solid justification for pumping out that way.

-- Mcorazao ( talk) 15:05, 28 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Hello, Antandrus -- I sent a follow-up email query to Joshua Veltman a couple of weeks ago; he did not reply.

If in the coming months his students do dreadful things to the music articles I think it might be useful to collect specific specific atrocities. We could then send messages like Amnesty International on behalf of the poor abused facts.

Yours very truly, Opus33 ( talk) 23:32, 30 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Indeed. Would that I could free a tortured prisoner in Burma with a touchpad-twitch on "rollback." I confess I am tempted, come approximately December 8, to do exactly that on whatever they do. Last year I spent a lot of time repairing damage and I'm not even sure we located all the articles they targeted.

Here is a paragraph from the article on Luca Marenzio, as it was last December 8:

One of the characteristics of Marenzio's madrigals is his varied use of rhythm. Many times his melodic line is mostly instrumental. This allows the musician to see how the use of rhythm changes the piece from having poetic form into a musical composition. ^[1] His madrigals were all written to order. Some were used in ceremonies and even the most advanced ones such as "Solo e pensoso" were written for private academies. ^[2] Marenzio's later madrigals show unique chromatic chords, often going through the entire circle of fifths. While using these chromatic chords, his use of root positions is impressive to many. ^[3] This creative composer added a new taste of harmonic detail in his madrigals; he used all of the resources of the art during that time period. ^[4]

Oy! Where to begin! This person had not the slightest understanding of the subject matter! This is worth an entire campaign through Amnesty International. And the good Dr. Veltman had the gall to complain about us in his presentation? Steam comes from my ears. Antandrus (talk) 00:57, 31 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Wow, this is indeed just dreadful. Perhaps this is clue for why Veltman gravitates toward assignments that don't require him to correct papers.

Rolling back would be fine with me. Normally one makes a suitable comment on good-faith edits, but on grounds of sheer volume this seems like a special case.

Cheers, Opus33 ( talk) 19:59, 31 October 2009 (UTC) reply

Butting in here...;-) Opus33, if you're in contact with Prof. Veltman, perhaps you could point him to the red-links in Wikipedia:Music encyclopedia topics. It might be a better learning experience for his students (and less disruptive) if they created new short articles on missing topics, rather than adding random bits to long established ones. Voceditenore ( talk) 18:08, 1 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Butting in is always welcome on my talk page!  :) That's a good idea. Another possibility would be for him to instruct his students to put their creations in a subpage in their userspace, and let us incorporate them after his "grading". Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 18:15, 1 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Well, they ought to be drafting in userspace, regardless. Sigh! But I've had experience with several of these sorts of college projects (most of them not music-related) and with one exception, they seemed to go for throwing their students in at the deep end (aka 'innovative teaching'). Best, Voceditenore ( talk) 18:31, 1 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Wow. Just wow. He got an honorable mention for that ... thing.

Well ... I suspect we haven't seen the last of Wikipedia as a sandbox for class projects. I wonder if this needs wider attention, such as on the Village Pump. Then again, I greatly fear the "wrong kind of attention" which is in such abundance on Wikipedia these days. We seem to have a fairly decent group of sensible editors around the classical music areas. Antandrus (talk) 18:39, 1 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Oh you definitely haven't seen the last of it. There's even a book about it from Vanderbilt University Press. Anyhow, when this stuff is brought to a wider audience on Wikipedia, it usually ends up creating the proverbial heat rather than light. I'd start maybe with the talk page of Wikipedia:School and university projects and perhaps ask User:jbmurray for advice. Voceditenore ( talk) 19:57, 1 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Thanks to both of you for the further input. The suggestions you both made about editing made above sound sensible to me. Of course, since he hasn't replied to my email, we can't really be sure if messages to his posted email address even get to him. Please do keep me posted if extensive damage occurs in the future. Cheers, Opus33 ( talk) 22:44, 1 November 2009 (UTC) reply

A request for comment that may interest you is currently in progress at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee 2. If you have already participated, then please disregard this notice and my apologies. Manning ( talk) 08:18, 1 November 2009 (UTC) reply
You received this message because you participated in the earlier ArbCom secret ballot RFC.

Greetings Antandrus! Please check out the recent edits to Johann Pachelbel. Am also posting this message to User talk:Jashiin and User talk:Melodia. Cheers! -- Technopat ( talk) 13:26, 1 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Yeow! Pachelbel was Bach's father? It was right to remove that. Looks like Jashiin and RobertG are on it. Thanks for the heads-up! Antandrus (talk) 15:38, 1 November 2009 (UTC) reply

"(anon. only, account creation blocked, cannot edit own talk page) - well, that's new. Gotta get used to it! Thanks :) ~ Riana ⁂ 05:49, 5 November 2009 (UTC) reply

You're welcome! Yes, I remember when they added that; surprised me too. It was an elegant solution.  :) Cheers! Antandrus (talk) 05:50, 5 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Hey Antardus, i'm new here, what will i do to edit a page. I know everything i can edit the page and put sources that i edite so please what will i do to edit a page>

Remarks User:SunTzu Yeah!

If you're still interested in Texas Oil Boom ...

I completed some significant revisions based on the peer review. The peer review editor says he is going to do some copyediting for me. I'm thinking I'd like to go ahead push this to GA or FA soon (I'm not sure my copyediting is good enough for FA yet but maybe with some help ...). Anyway, if you have anything you want to contribute, copyediting or otherwise, please feel free.

BTW, the reviewer did raise some questions about usability of the Spindletop image and I have not been able to get any clarification on how it was obtained. If you know of another image, either of Spindletop or something else that is particularly symbolic of the boom, please feel free to share.

-- Mcorazao ( talk) 15:58, 10 November 2009 (UTC) reply

P.S. I had to remove some other images that had difficulties. The number of images is ok but I'd like to find more (particularly for the Culture and popular culture sections). -- Mcorazao ( talk) 16:19, 10 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Definitely still interested! I'll have another look when I get a chance. Regarding the Spindletop image, it strikes me as a little ridiculous that anyone would question its copyright status, as the blowout was in 1901, and the picture was obviously taken then. The probability of someone hanging on to it, only to publish it after 1923, is vanishingly remote. Maybe the original source can be found though; I think all you'd have to do is find it in a pre-1923 publication of any kind. Antandrus (talk) 17:58, 10 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Check this out [16] (shot in 1901 by Frank Trost). The source of the electronic image is from The Texas Energy Museum. And the policy on the photo is here which is stated Photographs are in public domain and are not copyrighted. However, use and reproduction of digital images from this CD are limited to personal, non-commercial, academic, or educational use. No problem here at Wiki with the photo. JungleCat Shiny!/ Oohhh! 03:00, 11 November 2009 (UTC) reply

As you participated in the recent Audit Subcommittee election, or in one of two requests for comment that relate to the use of SecurePoll for elections on this project, you are invited to participate in the SecurePoll feedback and workshop. Your comments, suggestions and observations are welcome.

For the Arbitration Committee,
Risker ( talk) 08:01, 12 November 2009 (UTC) reply

I noticed you played violin, and I was wondering what piece you're currently working on. cheers, ṜedMarkViolinist ^{Drop me a line} 19:49, 23 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Hey, greetings! Actually nothing at the moment. If I'm playing quartets with friends I'll be working on whatever parts ... if I'm gigging with some orchestra I'll be doing the same ... but right now the fiddle calendar is not full. Not too long ago I was learning the first violin part for a couple Shostakovich quartets. How about you? Antandrus (talk) 22:15, 23 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Hi, I am a student at TCD. You blocked our IPs last year for one year. However that time is now up but we have not yet been unblocked. If you could unblock us it would be great (many of my peers cannot edit wikipedia due to not having accounts). If not, an explaination would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time, Dantastic ( talk) 20:49, 26 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Hi Dantastic -- I'd be happy to -- can you please tell me what the IP is? I've blocked thousands of them over the last several years. You can give me the contents of the "you are blocked" message box, or the date, or the IP if you know it. Thanks! Antandrus (talk) 22:08, 26 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Hi. It appears we have now been unblocked. Thanks anyway Dantastic ( talk) 12:27, 27 November 2009 (UTC). reply

From Andrew Dalby's book comes "the wise Antandrus" on page 190 and the saviour of Sophocles on pages 187-188. If you haven't seen the book, let me know if there is anything else you would like to know. I have only looked at the index so far. Bielle ( talk) 21:33, 27 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Oh for heaven's sakes. No, I don't know anything about this. Is this something recently published?  ::commences googling:: Antandrus (talk) 22:23, 27 November 2009 (UTC) reply

I'll probably run out and get a copy, out of morbid curiosity, but wild horses shan't drag me near a shopping mall today (if you live in the U.S. you know what I mean). Thanks for letting me know about this! Antandrus (talk) 22:35, 27 November 2009 (UTC) reply

I'm a Canadian, so the madness is on our news, but not in our stores. Use Amazon.ca (or .com, in your case). My copy was delivered today. It is an English book, not published in either the US or Canada. Bielle ( talk) 23:00, 27 November 2009 (UTC) reply

And on page 187, you are compared to Philoctetes' Heracles! And to think, here I am, chatting with you. Wow! (And laughing as I type.) Bielle ( talk) 23:11, 27 November 2009 (UTC) reply

"The wise Antandrus" indeed. I always knew you were a wise guy. Short Brigade Harvester Boris ( talk) 23:19, 27 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Oy! Nothing heroic about this hobby editor. I assure the readers I slay no monsters or clean no Augean stables. I did sweep my patio recently, without resorting to a leaf-blower, which wins approval in these parts. Now I'm more curious than ever though! (Probably was some smart-ass comment I made somewhere; I'm worrying it was in one of my userspace things.) Antandrus (talk) 23:25, 27 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Don't panic, and I apologize if the teasing is out of hand. All the quotes (I think) are related to your rescue of Sophocles' GA status from a cite-happy reviewer. Bielle ( talk) 23:28, 27 November 2009 (UTC) reply

No worries! I do remember that Sophocles issue now. And thanks for letting me know about the book -- I'm going to order it just out of curiosity. It currently has two "reviews" at Amazon.com (there aren't any at Amazon.ca -- I'm surprised they don't combine reviews from all the English-speaking flavours of Amazon into one database). Antandrus (talk) 23:41, 27 November 2009 (UTC) reply

I expected it to be much more controversial than my skimming leads me to believe it is. Dalby speaks in the first person plural, which works well to take the sting out of what he says, though I have found but a few wasps about. It is generally thoughtful (so far) and an undemanding read when you know, or know of, most of the drama and the players. I don't know how it would strike someone outside the WP world. Your avatar's reputation is in no way harmed. My copy has been on backorder for about two weeks, so the book has only just gone out in Canada. The reviews will come, but not from me; I prefer macadamias. Bielle ( talk) 23:52, 27 November 2009 (UTC) (That last sentence would make more sense if you had left in your "peanut gallery" reference. :-) Bielle ( talk) 23:54, 27 November 2009 (UTC)) reply

('s ok -- I got it -- decided against a gratuitous swipe versus a prominent WikipediaReviewian.) Which reminds me, really must replenish the macadamia supply.  :) Antandrus (talk) 23:57, 27 November 2009 (UTC) reply

(The new crop arrived in Toronto last week. It is a good time to buy.) I should have been clearer: Dalby uses the first person singular when speaking of his own views, but "we" when speaking of WP. What's someone in the US doing spelling "flavour" with a "u"? Was this in my honour? Bielle ( talk) 00:01, 28 November 2009 (UTC) reply

I just looked at the reviews. Sour peanuts, perhaps? Bielle ( talk) 00:09, 28 November 2009 (UTC) reply

(ec) Funny, since coming to Wikipedia I've always tried to use UK spellings when I write articles on things like English composers, and when I'm talking to someone who uses the "ou" variant I do it myself almost without thinking. (I don't know all the differences between Canadian and UK though.) Yeah, one can't expect a five-star review from a banned user, unless the book expresses its utter disdain, can we? lol... Antandrus (talk) 00:15, 28 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Hey! Hope you are well! I have a question for you... Do you ever close AfD debates? I posted this one a few days ago Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SEIU Local 1 Canada. It was a marginal call to do so on my part, and I think that the commentary there has given me some new direction to take. Or at least confirmed my belief that the article just needs to be ummm...violently copy edited to remove the unverifiable material that is in it. The difficulty, as explained there, are the lack of verifiable sources. I have a weird feeling that to close it myself, would be some kind of COI. I saw you were editing, and thought to ask your opinion. Ideas, questions or comments are of course appreciated! Thanks -- Hamster Sandwich ( talk) 01:19, 28 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Greetings! I rarely close debates any more myself (part of a conscious self-imposed program of Wiki-stress-reduction) but looking at it, a couple things strike me. It's a keepable article. If you initiated the debate, well, I don't see a problem with a self-close of keep/withdraw. I completely agree with the "violently copy-edit" need; unverifiable stuff needs to come out (unless it's uncontroversial). So the question is ... does the topic interest you enough for you to take the pruning shears to it? If not, do we have a maintenance tag to the effect "this article needs to have unverifiable information removed"? (I've felt for a long time that companies, organizations, living entities other than single individuals, need to be covered under an expanded "Biographies of Living Stuff" policy.) Hope this helps -- cheers! Antandrus (talk) 01:26, 28 November 2009 (UTC) reply

I can't seem to find that tag. I guess all of the articles I watch are good ones! It won't be a problem parsing that article down, the sources for the "nuts and bolts" of the union are on the website; however, they don't seem to promote their own history at all. I'll withdraw as keep/withdraw. That seems to be a clear consensus. If you find that template for me, I'd appreciate it! Best regards, Hamster Sandwich ( talk) 01:39, 28 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Nice observations. It helps me to review them periodically. -- Uncle Ed ( talk) 04:31, 29 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Ed, thank you; I appreciate that -- especially considering that I'm a rank newcomer compared to you! Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 06:08, 29 November 2009 (UTC) reply

OK, according to Wikipedia and the World, you're wise. And from our earlier discussion about the Oresteia, you know a lot more about the ancient Greeks than I me (tsk tsk MC). So here's my question. I was reading the Iliad recently, and was struck by how completely across-the-board unsympathetic the Argives are. They're nominally the heroes/good guys, but they're a bunch of douchebags. Achilles is a childish, vain, thin-skinned, utterly selfish megalomaniac with an inferiority complex - sort of like the Alex Rodriguez of antiquity. Agamemnon, who supposedly leads the Danaans by virtue of his wisdom and judgment, makes one bad decision after another and, like Achilles, is happy to cut off his nose to spite his face. Ajax is a dumb brute, and Diomedes is marginally better. Menelaus is lacking in a sense of proportion, to say the least. I guess Odysseus is the most sympathetic - certainly you can root for him to get home in the Odyssey - but even he comes across as more conniving and slick than resourceful and crafty. And Nestor is pretty clearly intended to be a satirical character.

It struck me that pretty much every modern reader's sympathies are with the Trojans. Priam and Hektor are so dignified and impressive by comparison. Why is that? Do you think Homer intended for the reader to come away rooting for the Trojans? Or is it just a cultural thing - did ancient readers really cheer every time the gods rendered some poor bastard senseless so that Diomedes could bash his head in with a rock, the way people root for the Yankees? I'm sure there's a body of scholarly literature on the subject, but it seemed faster to ask you than to, like, find and read it. :P MastCell  ^Talk 06:48, 29 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Not a bad point really...the Greeks always struck me as more fleshed out I guess....do the trojans have any personality though? The house of Atreus was just plain rotten. I have not read the originals..only Graves...(butting in) Casliber ( talk · contribs) 07:19, 29 November 2009 (UTC) reply

He whom the gods would destroy they first declare "wise" ... oy. I dread reading that book, but will inevitably order it now, out of morbid curiosity.

The Iliad! You know your characterization of the "heroes" is very much like Shakespeare's in Troilus and Cressida? I think he had the same thought. But what strikes me about the Iliad is that they're kids. The heroes are teenagers, for the most part, and their leaders can't be out of their mid-twenties, except for maybe Odysseus (leaving aside Nestor and some of the others who are obviously older). They behave like kids, with their petty grievances, thefts, competitive silliness, needs to prove themselves, all with a layer of the post-traumatic disorders of continual war thrown in. I think it's amazing how wise Homer is, depicting them as they really probably were, although with superhuman feats of strength and arms grafted on to their adolescent minds. Have either of you read the interesting book by Jonathan Shay, Achilles in Vietnam? He's a psychiatrist with an interest in the classics, and he takes examples from his clinical practice with post-traumatic stress in war veterans and combines those with a close reading of Homer, and finds some interesting stuff. I think that Homer took a pre-existing poem/epic/something from oral tradition, added on a layer of historical memory of the Trojan War, and then built a deeply human story of flawed people and equally (or more) flawed gods, people his listeners could understand or identify with -- as they were like their own kids. And the futility of it! Think of how many of Homer's audience had suffered the death of a son in that violent, undocumented time. Have we even scratched the riches in the Iliad? Coincidentally I was just starting a re-read myself.

I always wondered if there was an Ur-Iliad that is as old as the Indo-European people, because of interesting similarities to the Ramayana (wife of hero kidnapped, bad king, army gathers, crosses the water, beseiges city, great heroes fight, gods involved on all levels). Antandrus (talk) 17:20, 29 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Well..yeah, alot of stories and entities seem to bounce around the region from times of pre-Greek yore (eg. Adonis), so anything is possible...I'll keep an eye out for the book. Casliber ( talk · contribs) 20:26, 29 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Do either of you notice how much the heroes in the Iliad cry? It's striking, for a modern reader. Achilles even teases Patroclus, arguably the most compassionate of the Greeks, for his excess of tears, but there's no strong criticism in his teasing, it's gentle. (Book 16) It's that quality of caring in this soldier who has just killed numerous Trojans that makes his death doubly painful, and explains what happens later. The "great" heroes come across as childish and foolish, but not all the supporting characters. Another striking thing is Homer's short "obituaries" where in each death he mentions those who will mourn the loss (e.g. 4:449 -- "His mother had borne him along the Simois' banks / ... but never would he repay his loving parents now / for the gift of rearing -- his life cut short so soon ...") These kids act so foolishly but Homer does not hide the suffering of those who mourn for them. -- Still my vote for the greatest book on war ever written. Antandrus (talk) 01:51, 30 November 2009 (UTC) reply

• I can't agree with MastCell's views on Achilles. This is a young man, doomed, he knows, to die soon: plus, this is a king, handed inordinate quantities of power at a tender age. Keep that in mind. Yes, he reacts strongly to Agamemnon's abduction of Briseis, but then in those days they had very, very strong conceptions of property rights, which is what started the whole war in the first place (and which provide the ethical argument for the slaughter of the Suitors at the end of the Odyssey). No Ancient Greek, I think, would have argued with Odysseus's revenge, nor with Achilles's right to be affronted - just perhaps the scale of the reactions. Achilles is hardly self-centred, either: his love for Patroclus runs deep, and his reaction to Priam's plea for Hector's body shows his ability to display compassion and empathy. At various times he displays much deeper wisdom than the gods, who are a pretty poor lot. Hector, admittedly, is the closest the Iliad gets to having a true hero, but this does not set Achilles up as the villain. He is more deeply flawed but his capacity for true heroism is perhaps greater: and though many I know find themselves in tears at the end of Hector's funeral games, it is, in fact, the delicate little scena where Achilles lies in the arms of Briseis, at the very end, that always turn on my waterworks - perhaps his last moment of happiness? In fact, there are few real villains or heroes in Homer - he's much like Herodotus in that regard.

• At any rate, this whole discussion makes the views of those who hold that the two Homeric poems are the work of many men look very silly. How anyone could read these - not as historical texts but as literature - and think that for a nanosecond is beyond me - the authorial presence, the overwhelming sense of dignity and compassion, is so strong and pervasive. Moreschi ( talk) 02:15, 30 November 2009 (UTC) reply
  • Well, that was sort of my hypothesis - that cultural differences in the concept of "heroism" are behind the perception. After all, Achilles is so self-centered and prideful that when Agamemnon offends him, he withdraws to his boats and spends all his time praying to the gods that the Achaians will lose the fight, so that they'll see how much they need him. I don't know how an ancient reader viewed that response, but by modern standards it's decidedly unheroic. And the difference between Achilles and Hektor is encapsulated in their final confrontation - first of all, as always, one of the gods does Achilles' dirty work by tricking Hektor. Hektor accepts his fate with courageous dignity, and asks only that Achilles show his corpse basic respect, but Achilles can't even show that minimal amount of class. I can't really be persuaded that Achilles' response to Priam is evidence of anything other than the fact that he eventually felt ashamed of his own excess. If he were capable of compassion and empathy, he would have treated Hektor's corpse respectfully in the first place.

    And he wasn't exactly "doomed to die soon" - after all, he had a choice between kleos and nostos, and made his choice - that's way more control over his own destiny than basically any other character in Homer. And the saddest moment, by far, is early in the story when Hektor returns home from battle and scoops up his son, hugging him and imagining his future, dreaming that one day people would call him a far better man than his father. Given his son's eventual fate, pretty poignant. MastCell  ^Talk 05:07, 30 November 2009 (UTC) reply

There's a detail in that scene I particularly like -- the child is frightened by the sight of his own father in flashing armor, a terrifying monster, until Hektor takes off his helmet -- and then they laugh ... but the cries of the child foreshadow the horrors to come. I probably try to read more into the metaphors here than Homer put there, but then I can only read with my 20th-21st century point of view! Antandrus (talk) 05:21, 30 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Given H'wood's renewed interest in story arcs of series (eg Sopranos, The Wire), one wonders when they will do a full no holds-barred Iliad...question is, where does one start for the background...Peleus and Thetis' wedding or with the children of Pelops..or both really I guess :) Casliber ( talk · contribs) 05:43, 30 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Come on - you have to start in media res. The wrath of Peliades Akhilleus. The rest is flashbacks. It could definitely use the Robert Graves treatment; if not an HBO series, at least a low-budget PBS adaptation with British actors. Actually, Rome wasn't half-bad (meaning it also was half-bad) as an example of where you could go. Of course, given Hollywood's prevailing aesthetics, they'd probably narrate the whole Trojan War through a contrived, invented Forrest Gump type who happened to be present at every major event... MastCell  ^Talk 07:43, 30 November 2009 (UTC) reply

...like Claudius? :) Casliber ( talk · contribs) 09:10, 30 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Touché. But Claudius really was there. No, Hollywood would invent a narrator whose mom was Trojan and dad was Achaian. Or, like, he was born in Troy an illegitimate son of Priam, but ended up in the hands of the Argives as a child and was raised in Phthia... you know the drill: torn between two worlds, not really part of either one. MastCell  ^Talk 04:49, 1 December 2009 (UTC) reply

Did you see that they made a sequel to I, Claudius? (the NetFlix recommendation algorithm is a dangerous tool) - 2/0 ( cont.) 06:10, 1 December 2009 (UTC) reply

And that does cause a divide by zero error! LOL -- while I haven't seen the film myself, I'm sure it's nowhere near as bad as the reality. ( Suetonius is great reading, by the way). Antandrus (talk) 06:13, 1 December 2009 (UTC) reply

Caligula was so bad that Gore Vidal actually gave up his percentage of the profits in exchange for having his name removed from the title. He was willing to pay to not be associated with it. Leonard Maltin (accurately) described the film as 170 minutes of crap surrounding "six minutes of not-bad hardcore footage." So it's basically a must-see.

Speaking of Suetonius, De vita Caesarum is the only ancient history that ever made me laugh. In his chapter on Vespasian, by far the most sympathetic of the lot, Suetonius relates that the emperor always had a tense, strained expression on his face. Coming across a famous comedian, Vespasian challenged the man to make a joke about him. The comedian responded: "I will, as soon as you're done taking a dump." MastCell  ^Talk 18:17, 1 December 2009 (UTC) reply

In many regions of English usage, using that word is considered cursing, cussing, or swearing. These offensive words can often be toned down to polite levels by replacing one or more letters with one or more symbols. One common way of doing this is replacing one or more vowels with one or more asterisks. A less common but more legible way is to replace one or more letters with one or more similarly-shaped symbols. This file can be linked to from fully legitimate Wikipedia policy pages so rather than bowdlerizing it, I followed the most legible system. S~$

Warmest Regards, :)-- thecurran let it off your chest 19:57, 29 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Hi thecurran. I would suggest changing the word to "excrement" if it offends you; I find that the dollar sign "bull$hit" needlessly calls attention to itself, and makes the whole thing look cheesy, and that's the last effect I wanted to achieve, as I meant the essay very seriously. Frankly, though, I prefer the pointed and dramatic effect of a solitary appearance of the word "bullshit" right before the end of the essay. By the way, originally it was a userspace essay, but someone moved it to Wikipedia space. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 20:07, 29 November 2009 (UTC) reply

On re-reading, I decided to change it myself, as it was perhaps a bit too jarring in context. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 21:33, 29 November 2009 (UTC) reply

I have personally have always appreciated the ability, and intestinal fortitude it sometimes takes to cry: "BULLSHIT," when something is bullshit. WP: Is Not Censorship. I would think that this particularly applies to precisely such - uhhh - elucididactic phraseology.

BTW I keep finding random references to "pie" in a variety of disparate articles. Antandrus, I submit to you, that there is a "pie" bandit at large. If I find the difs, I'll post you. Best regards, Hamster Sandwich ( talk) 21:44, 29 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Ah, yes. If you think the essay was better before, feel free to change it back. I'm OK either way; I just didn't want to offend. Does it need a picture? (Now I'm worried someone may make a "barn" star out of this ... LOL) Antandrus (talk) 22:11, 29 November 2009 (UTC) reply

Thank you both very much for addressing my concerns. On digesting WP:CENSOR and trying to retain the clever double entendre without using unnecessarily offensive words, I think bullbutter may be a readily-recognizable compromise suitable because this is neither a quote any longer nor an intestinal exclamation. Thoughts, anyone?

Warmest Regards, :)-- thecurran let it off your chest 02:43, 30 November 2009 (UTC) reply

You're welcome, Antandrus. Thank you for the nice article. It should be on DYK soon. Nice work on the photo. I'm impressed that you actually went there to take the photo from the same site. I've placed your photo in the Summerland, California article, too. Happy editing! Cheers! -- PFHLai ( talk) 01:50, 30 November 2009 (UTC) reply

On November 30, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Ventura Oil Field, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page ( here's how) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Materialscientist ( talk) 21:21, 30 November 2009 (UTC) reply

I notice that you condemned editors for designing their user pages, but your is just as ornate as any I have ever seen. Why is that? -- Cc'scoffee ( talk) 19:07, 2 December 2009 (UTC) reply

Too busy beating my wife to answer your question. I have not condemned anyone, O "new" user, I have but made an observation or two. I also did not design mine, although I am pleased with what the designer did. Antandrus (talk) 19:15, 2 December 2009 (UTC) reply

for reverting and blocking, I was just wondering whether I should start doing research on how to report a vandal here. -- Tinz ( talk) 23:02, 2 December 2009 (UTC) reply

Answer is: Yes. - Hamster Sandwich ( talk) 23:09, 2 December 2009 (UTC) reply

You're welcome ... I was thinking of blocking him in German, but decided it'd just be feeding the troll. Turns out it's some banned user making sockpuppets ( obvious from this). Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 00:05, 3 December 2009 (UTC) reply

You reverted vandalism there and I am grateful. :) Crafty ( talk) 04:10, 3 December 2009 (UTC) reply

Quite welcome. I like keeping this a friendly place, and picking up the litter on a neighbor's lawn is one of the ways. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 04:13, 3 December 2009 (UTC) reply

A fairly routine day of dealing with more egregious nationalist excesses, and then you just lighten it up. I was shaking with laughter, and the carpet got soaked from my tears. Exposed to the organ at a young age....hehehe...

....HAHAHA...

...HOHOHOHO...

<rushes off to find something to dry his eyes with>. These dirty-minded students, if they're going to introduce filth like that to the 'pedia... Moreschi ( talk) 15:05, 3 December 2009 (UTC) reply

I laughed pretty hard too. Gives me a stomachache though, thinking of how much work it is going to be to clean up the mess left by this "assignment." And it's the third year we've let them get away with this. Oh well, "anyone can edit" does have certain implications, such as "they'll do it whether we like it or not". Antandrus (talk) 02:34, 4 December 2009 (UTC) reply

My family was apparently unsuitable by modern standards: I was exposed to an organ at an early age by my mother, a church organist. The instrument in question was a 24-rank M.P. Moller that was becoming increasingly decrepit. It had a knack for ciphering for big weddings and in desperation my mother stationed me (aged seven or eight) in the organ loft, with orders to find and detach any blatting pipe (assuming the offenders were relatively small). This probably gave more credit to my speed, agility and directional hearing than I deserved - this thing was on two or three levels with ladders between. In the event I never had to do anything - she played around the known offenders and no new thing arose, but it was astounding to be inside a musical instrument. I did evacuate to just outside for the big processionals and recessionals: the Mendelssohn wedding march wasn't bearable in the loft.

The organ was eventually renovated and I graduated to page-turning. Acroterion _(talk) 04:12, 4 December 2009 (UTC) reply

I've made a request to Z man for a 'popular pages' output, however this is for the Composers Project rather than CM, because all the articles we are talking about have the Composers banner not the CM one. Maybe it's better to keep the UU Project topic as relevant as possible (for future use)? Anyway I'm not posting a complicated explanation there. Do you know anything about Jackson, Tennessee? -- Klein zach 10:23, 4 December 2009 (UTC) reply

I've been there. Medium-sized town not far from Memphis. Union University is one of several schools in town. While it's a hard-core, fire-breathing Baptist school, and if I remember correctly they don't either hire or admit infidels and other suchlike sinners, I think they do take music history seriously there. (They probably don't teach evolution, but then ironically the concept of "evolution" has been abolished in music history teaching for reasons having nothing to do with a certain Mr. Darwin.) Some of the student edits are keepable, having picked through a few of the articles they worked on, but the problem is the time it will take to pick through them all. What I'm thinking of doing is reverting to stable version, and then restoring some of the edits that appear to be helpful, adjusting the prose style accordingly. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 14:43, 4 December 2009 (UTC) reply

On December 5, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Summerland Oil Field, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page ( here's how) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Materialscientist ( talk) 17:58, 5 December 2009 (UTC) reply

Thanks for blocking one IP. I have listed Ross Kemp for temporary protection; it was really getting out of hand--your attention is appreciated. Take it easy, and thanks again, Drmies ( talk) 22:04, 6 December 2009 (UTC) reply

• Thanks for the protection. Drmies ( talk) 22:09, 6 December 2009 (UTC) reply

You're welcome for both -- looks like that article could use a bit of a BLP-cleanup. Cheers, Antandrus (talk) 22:10, 6 December 2009 (UTC) reply

Sure does. You know what, I just worked on David Bercot, maybe you can take this one. I know you're a big Eastenders buff! Drmies ( talk) 00:59, 7 December 2009 (UTC) reply

On December 7, 2009, Did you know? was updated with a fact from the article Salt Lake Oil Field, which you created or substantially expanded. You are welcome to check how many hits your article got while on the front page ( here's how) and add it to DYKSTATS if it got over 5,000. If you know of another interesting fact from a recently created article, then please suggest it on the Did you know? talk page.

Materialscientist ( talk) 12:26, 7 December 2009 (UTC) reply

Thank you! Appreciate that. Antandrus (talk) 14:56, 7 December 2009 (UTC) reply

Hi again,

I noticed that you have edited before on History of Minnesota so I thought you might possibly have an interest in this one I just created: Territorial era of Minnesota. Still a bit on the rough side but comments are welcome if you are so inclined ...

-- Mcorazao ( talk) 20:07, 7 December 2009 (UTC) reply

Good stuff! I had a very quick read only, so far. Antandrus (talk) 04:21, 8 December 2009 (UTC) reply

I just wrote a GA review of this article. I raised a couple of issues which I consider pretty serious, including plagiarism and BLP violations. I think the cases are borderline, but perhaps you might want to take a look at the article.

Regards, -- Ravpapa ( talk) 09:06, 14 December 2009 (UTC) reply

Greetings -- I just read it through quickly -- while I know little about the topic, and don't have any of the books referenced, I have to agree about a couple of things. It reads well, and I can't comment on the plagiarism issue since I don't have the sources, but I think it's a bad idea to rely heavily on a book by a dumped ex- for biographical details regarding a celebrity. I don't write articles on living people for exactly this reason -- it's too damn hard and I'd probably lean towards not putting in anything of a controversial nature that isn't backed up by multiple sources. If I were reading that article and I were from Mars and didn't know who John Lennon was, I'd come away with the idea: "hm. He's some celebrity, I don't quite know what he did or why he's famous, but what a jerk!" Antandrus (talk) 15:08, 14 December 2009 (UTC) reply

I happened upon it, and I enjoy it quite a bit, and I agree with most of the things you said. That having been said, I quibble with one thing: the most common solution I keep hearing is "edit more articles" (an experience more difficult today than it ever was before). I think the best solution is sometimes found outside the wiki entirely. Not all of us can be great writers, especially in the high pressure environment Wikipedia has become in many of its content zones, and pushing these editors towards such a difficult task may exacerbate the problem.

Just my thoughts.-- Tznkai ( talk) 04:32, 15 December 2009 (UTC) reply

Yes -- that may be. Remember that I wrote most of those in 2006. I think most of them have held up pretty well, and the several that haven't I don't really feel like removing (as it is fun to look back at how it was three years ago). Still, I personally find writing to be low-stress, but then the things I write about, for the most part, interest few other people; if someone's chosen area is, say, current controversies about living celebrities, or nationalist conflicts, then editing articles can be stressful indeed. Or if one hangs out at "Good" or "Featured" articles -- what a lot of gnat-bites and irritation that can be! Also, if one is disinclined to be a writer, there are other things to do -- I used to revert a lot of vandalism, until one day it was too boring to go on doing that, and I used to flyswat trolls, until one day I asked myself why I was putting myself through that needless nastiness.

The community has changed over the time I have been here, which is approaching six years -- in short, it has changed from a village to a large city, with all the things that entails -- more to do, more diversions, more choices, but dangerous, anonymous, unfriendly, and riddled with politics.

To anyone overly stressed about Wikipedia, I suggest turning off the computer, and interacting with real people in real time. It's a nice change. I wish more people would learn to balance Wikipedia and non-Wikipedia -- they might stay around longer! All the best, Antandrus (talk) 04:44, 15 December 2009 (UTC) reply

ps -- nice stuff on your user page, by the way! Perceptive. Antandrus (talk) 04:48, 15 December 2009 (UTC) reply

Thanks - and I think most content areas are saturated with particular unpleasantness. More obscure topics tend to be occupied by fans or self imagined specialists - controversial areas occupied by topic warriors. I've had an easier time writing about Bible than Messiah (Handel), and its sometimes been easier to deal with the perpetual bottomless pit of despair that is WP:AE. That probably reflects on me more than anything else, but still strikes me as odd.

Wikipedia, it seems to me, was a lot more fun when we took it less seriously. I'm not sure I have a point, just thoughts.-- Tznkai ( talk) 04:59, 15 December 2009 (UTC) reply

Nah, there are plenty of underserved content areas. Vasily Grossman still has a shabby article, not really worthy of one of the great literary talents and moral voices of the 20th century. And no one really cares about the article, so it would be easy to improve - just the occasional desultory Holocaust denialist passing through. For the more technically inclined, polymorphism in object-oriented programming is a simple topic which we do a horrible job of explaining. And influenza A subtype H1N1 is a timely and highly-viewed topic which goes practically ignored for long periods of time. Plenty of work to be done, and none of those areas seem to be host to any particular unpleasantness. MastCell  ^Talk 06:24, 15 December 2009 (UTC) reply

I keep wandering into you, don't I? You remind me of a different problem ,and again, maybe this is a flaw of mine, but I don't want to be editing in a complete vacuum either. I enjoy Wikipedia because it is collaborative. Ideally, I'd like to find an article where there are a few other editors who are interested in improving the article, have good natured arguments, and otherwise a fun experience. I find it strange that I find the idea strange! I managed to do it on Abortion for crying out loud, (in 2005) and I probably could've managed it on Hallelujah (Leonard Cohen song) if I hadn't gotten distracted by something or another. Maybe I'll try it again. I guess I'm just saying that plugging away at an article in silence doesn't appeal to me either, and I don't think it will appeal to others.-- Tznkai ( talk) 06:42, 15 December 2009 (UTC) reply

Composers project

Your input would be most appreciated at this debate: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Composers#Changes_affecting_the_classical_music_projects Thanks! -- Jubilee♫ clipman 01:50, 19 December 2009 (UTC) reply

I wish you Merry and Blessed Christmas. Have a great, happy and peaceful time, my friend, and a productive 2010. Hope to see more of your oil field articles in upcoming year. :) - Darwinek ( talk) 15:20, 23 December 2009 (UTC) reply

Why'd you undo my great contribution to the Clarinet article? I find it rude that you have the right to say what you want but then i want to inform the public on a real cause and they wont let me its not nice. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MKZ94 ( talk • contribs)

This is vandalism. Please don't do that -- it wastes our time and yours. Thank you, Antandrus (talk) 06:30, 24 December 2009 (UTC) reply

To those who make Good Arguments, who are appreciative, or supportive. Sincerely, -- A Nobody ^{My talk} 22:47, 24 December 2009 (UTC) reply

Hope you have a great new year too! -- Jubilee♫ clipman 00:58, 25 December 2009 (UTC) reply

Hey, thank you! Well, I was going to give you a gift basket of oranges too but I see you've already seen them ... have a merry Christmas on the snowy side of the Pacific Rim! Antandrus (talk) 04:26, 25 December 2009 (UTC) reply

..for reverting my user page. I've been so oblivious that I only just noticed. Enter CambridgeBayWeather, waits for audience applause, not a sausage 15:50, 26 December 2009 (UTC) reply

You're welcome, and happy holidays from more southerly latitudes! Antandrus (talk) 17:08, 26 December 2009 (UTC) reply