This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | → | Archive 9 |
GoldenRing, FYI, Xenophrenic is edit warring on the same articles that he was blocked for edit warring over after being unblocked. He has wasted so much of everyone's time. Is it time to open another ANI thread for a topic ban? desmay ( talk) 16:06, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
Thank you for your close of this AN/I discussion. Without that action, I suspect the initiator and the 3 like-minded editors would be re-re-repeating their accusations and bumping that thread every 71 hours until they achieved a successful lynching. I cannot claim to know what exact considerations and evaluations led you to conclude, "No-one has suggested any action that has any hope of gaining consensus, so I am closing this", but needless to say I came to the same conclusion for several reasons.
What brings me to your Talk page, however, is this warning you added to your closing statement: User:Xenophrenic is warned, as his block log should already have made clear to him, that our policy on edit warring does not contain an exception for when you are right, and even less for when you think you are right. Exemptions from the edit warring policy are narrowly defined and editors are expected to be familiar with them. I am asking you to please consider striking that part of your statement. Why? Because such a warning implies that I edit warred "because I was right, or thought I was right", which never happened, and that AN/I discussion (and your closure of it) is going to be referenced in other proceedings. To be sure, several other editors and even Admins did argue on my behalf that my edits were "right", and "correct" and had "the moral high ground", so perhaps that is what prompted your warning? Please understand that I never spoke those words (even if I agree with them), nor did I ever claim that reasoning as a justification for edit warring. And I certainly didn't claim any "exemption from the edit warring policy" for my edits. Your remark strongly implies I took that position, which I never did. The message in your warning that "being right isn't justification" is 100% accurate, I don't dispute that at all, but the warning itself is inapplicable in this situation, and sends what I feel is the wrong message to readers of your closing statement. I hope you will consider my request.
Kind regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 18:30, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
I didn't catch this earlier, but your little editorial insertion: "and even less for when you think you are right (italics emphasis yours)", strikes me as unnecessarily provocative -- it goes beyond what our EW policy states, and instead appears intended to convey an unsubstantiated personal judgement of yours. You didn't think that might be just a little bit offensive? Anyway, I'll take your silence in this matter as your response to my request. I'll pursue this elsewhere and won't bother you further. Thank you for your time, Xenophrenic ( talk) 05:04, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
@ Xenophrenic: My apologies for not responding sooner. I'm happy to at least discuss this. Perhaps, without re-litigating the whole ANI thread, you could state why you were edit-warring? GoldenRing ( talk) 07:10, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
never happened, ... To be sure, several other editors and even Admins did argue on my behalf that my edits were "right", and "correct" and had "the moral high ground", so perhaps that is what prompted your warning? Please understand that I never spoke those words (even if I agree with them), nor did I ever claim that reasoning as a justification for edit warring. And I certainly didn't claim any "exemption from the edit warring policy" for my edits. Your remark strongly implies I took that position, which I never did. The message in your warning that "being right isn't justification" is 100% accurate ... At no time did I ever express the sentiment: "I'm right, so therefore I'm going to edit war".-- do you not see the disconnect in what you are saying, GoldenRing? You and I (and WP:EW policy) agree that "being right" is not a justification for edit warring. I've never used that justification, so I'm going to have to call bullshit on your accusation and insist that you provide diffs of evidence to where I've excused edit warring because "I think I am right". And while you are at it, please quote for me, exactly, that "large chunk of what I've written above" that you misinterpreted as an explanation of how I was "in the right". If you'll read the above with more care and comprehension, you'll discover that instead of "edit warring because I was right", I chose to pursue dispute resolution by initiating and engaging in discussion, seeking problem resolution and editing in line with consensus. If you want to argue, for example, that I misjudged consensus, or that I misunderstood a policy, I will listen attentively to your reasoning.
Thank you for your close of this AN/I discussion. ... needless to say I came to the same conclusion, so your suggestion that I request a review at AN or Arbitration seems nonsensical. As for your assertion that WP:NPA doesn't give me the right to edit your comments to say what I want them to say, that is rather obvious, and I'd never change someone's comments to say what I want them to say. WP:NPA does allow me to remove clear-cut personal attacks, which is all I've done. Here is the relevant policy wording for your edification: Do not make personal attacks anywhere on Wikipedia. ... Derogatory comments about other editors may be removed by any editor. ... especially where such text is directed against you, removal should typically be limited to clear-cut cases where it is obvious the text is a true personal attack. The RPA template can be used for this purpose. It shouldn't be necessary for me to be quoting policy to an Admin. Your commentary about a fellow editor's behavior was made without a single shred of accompanying evidence, which makes it an unacceptable personal attack, in addition to being insulting and, well, nasty. If you post unsubstantiated accusations about a fellow editor, and I bring that violation to your attention, you are expected to remedy it. You've already demonstrated you know what to do in your comment below: "it's traditional to provide diffs or retract the accusation." It's more than 'tradition', it's mandated policy. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 04:43, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
I have a question about what counts as one revert - would reverting several edits count as one revert if the edits included content changes to substantially different sections of the article (enough that I would say they were entirely separate reverts) as well as some citation needed tags (made in separate edits) - is what counts as an edit it's proximity in time it's been made to other edits? Seraphim System ( talk) 01:30, 14 October 2017 (UTC) Seraphim System ( talk) 01:30, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
In your last post, that diff, I do not think it leads where you think it leads😁! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:2000:28C1:7200:8495:9757:BE49:FE5D ( talk) 11:51, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
Morty's been causing me some concern at Talk:United_Daughters_of_the_Confederacy#So_I_cut_it_out_again, effectively accusing Carptrash, a productive editor of long-standing, of lying and implying that he was a fellow-traveler with hate groups there and at RSN. This has caused Carptrash some distress, and it appears to be a return to the battlefield behavior and tendency toward personal attacks that was the subject of a long ANI thread that you closed with a one-month topic ban (since expired). I'm not quite there yet, but Monty's determined not to drop that stick. For extra joy, the sockpuppet that was following Morty has returned. I'd appreciate your views on the matter. Acroterion (talk) 13:42, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
What about the issues with the other involved admin and editors with powers? As I said, my petition for appeal was not about the rejection, but the behavior of the involved people... I may only have a couple months old account but I've been collaborating for about three years now, in English, French and Spanish, and though it's the first time I see this much trolling, seeing that common trolls ganging up on a so called help desk, seeing how high a common troll can rise in the hierarchy without even hiding his ill intents, and seeing the double standards definitely encourages me to stop wasting my time in here... Lexers615 ( talk) 07:46, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
Lexers615 ( talk) 04:35, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for taking the initiative to close. Alex Shih ( talk) 17:48, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Closure_review_request_for_.22StuRat.27s_behaviour_on_the_Reference_Desks_.28again.29.22 StuRat ( talk) 17:57, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
I've decided I want to say something there, but first, I'm in search of clue. One way to get clue is to talk with people who disagree with me (particularly if they're making a statement at WP:RFAR, because people often truncate their statements drastically, and actually know a lot more than they're saying). I was 100% with you as I read your statement ... and then you arrived at the opposite conclusion to mine. I don't think it's fair to say that Arbcom shouldn't take the case because there are options they can't pursue. Arbcom is much more likely not to fix something that they could actually fix than the other way around; there is little chance that they will go all bull-in-a-china-shop. They may go the other direction, and do something minimal and limited to just the two principal parties. But even a minimal ruling can be one important step along the way, as people grapple with this very extensive and tough problem.
So, I'm leaving this note for both you and Hawkeye7, for two reasons: 1. you guys are the only two who disagree with me (although we do have a few noncommital statements from others), so you're the ones in the best position to explain to me why I'm wrong, and 2. Arbcom is hesitating, and I can understand that ... they're not masochists. But I think it would be good to apply peer pressure to get them to step up and do the right thing, the necessary thing, and a unanimous case request would be a suitable form of peer pressure. IMO, Arbcom is a kind of single point of failure for Wikipedia ... if they turn away from disputes that can legitimately be framed as ongoing policy violations and that can't be solved elsewhere, then the whole dispute-resolution system fails. - Dank ( push to talk) 18:59, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
"If our only option is to switch back and forth between wikidata and non-wikidata versions as the data at wikidata changes, that seems to me obviously untenable."That is clearly what also happens when somebody changes a value locally in an infobox: if it's wrong, we change it back. Why would we not simply do exactly the same thing with a change to Wikidata? If it's wrong, use a local value that is verifiably correct. There's no back-and-forth because the local value always overrides Wikidata: no amount of changes there will affect what our infobox displays. Of course, if somebody eventually fixes the Wikidata by updating it from the verifiable value here – and adds the reference! – then there's no reason why we shouldn't go back to using the Wikidata-imported value, but there's no rush to do that.
No worries having this discussion here.
I had written a long comment on this, then my phone ate it. Probably the only thing really worth saving out of it is an example of where I see real problems caused by the incompatibility of sourcing policies. Right now, something that causes some fairly protracted disputes on enwiki is the display of ethnicity and religion in infoboxes of living (and sometimes long-dead) people. This seems to be a particular problem for Jews, for whom complicated issues of ancestry, culture and religious belief intersect in the question of whether someone "is Jewish." It is reasonably common to find someone who the world generally regards as "Jewish" - even who reliable secondary sources routinely describe as Jewish - but for whom we will leave that field of the infobox blank because our standard for including it is a positive, reliably-sourced self-identification of Jewishness. Given the difference in policies, it would be very easy to have a statement in wikidata that someone is Jewish, sourced to what would normally be considered a reliable source here but where we would still want no value in the infobox. It is absolutely trivial right now to find people who wikidata describes as "religion: Judaism" where making the same statement here would be, roughly speaking, the end of civilsation as we know it; consider wikidata:Q302.
These types of situation are not resolved by strict application of rules, they are resolved by discussion and consensus. For all the potential I see in wikidata (and I am a fan of the concept) I can't see how this information can be stored at wikidata and questions like this can be resolved without essentially saying that enwiki will defer to consensus at wikidata on questions of sourcing and verifiability and I can't see that happening unless the policies on sourcing, verifiability and living persons are roughly compatible, both in their text and their practice. People here need to trust that problems at wikidata will be sorted out in a way that is broadly acceptable to the community here before there is mass adoption of wikidata here.
I hear what you're saying about local overrides, but it seems very likely to me that the result of such as scheme will be that every value in every infobox will be overridden with local data and then what's the point? Even if someone doesn't immediately write a bot to mass-import all the wikidata values into local overrides here or override them with null values (and there are certainly a few editors who would attempt exactly that), there are numerous situations where editors will have an incentive to override wikidata values with local values and never any situations where editors will have an incentive to change them back (except perhaps that they are wikidata fans - but try building a consensus on that basis!)
I think that trust between the projects needs to be built first, before we start with mass adoption of wikidata-based templates. Various things going on at present are not serving to build that trust but to build scepticism. Resolving that is going to take real humility and willing spirit from both sides, and perhaps some big sacrifices (eg perhaps deleting swathes of bot-imported data from wikidata because the sourcing is awful) and I sort of doubt that either community collectively possesses those qualities in sufficient quantity. GoldenRing ( talk) 12:55, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
|suppressfields=genre
then the genre is never displayed (even if a drive-by editor adds something locally). The Wikidata-aware infobox can actually make dealing with the exclusion of fields easier, not harder.You see this really is the problem. You choose to disparage my efforts without showing any sign of understanding the problem and any possible solution. The reason why having the ability to have a blacklist – note that doesn't make it a compulsory element – is "somehow better than just not filling in those fields" is that these sort of occurrences are plagued by drive-by editors who come along and add a local value to the Genre field, if you "just don't fill in the field". As you'd understand if you'd bothered to read any of the discussions. You don't have to have blacklists on 99.9% of articles, but they are useful when you need them. What's easier for an editor who curates a music article: to continually revert editors who regularly add |genre=thrash metal
despite consensus on the talk page that no genre should be in the infobox; or add |suppressfields=genre
to the infobox once?
You only blocked User:Mahir M for 31 hours; I was about to grumble about how it should be longer for that kind of bigoted attack, when I saw that you said at ANI you'd indef'd them. So now I'm thinking this was just a misclick? -- Floquenbeam ( talk) 17:06, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
I don't see how the case here relates to The Troubles as it is an issue of international borders rather than a historical or political point. You can have an opinion either way about Northern Ireland, but the article in this case relates to the current status of the territory of the Island of Ireland, as is recognised internationally, as this is a encyclopedia, not a political debating forum. The Troubles article is obviously a very different case to the one here, as that is an issue which is disputed by historians to this day. While Irish Republicans personally may dispute the status of Northern Ireland, there is no dispute internationally regarding recognition, nor is there a dispute regarding the reality of the physical presence of the United Kingdom there. Moreover, other lists such as the article listing islands by population worldwide on wiki, and the article for Ireland itself (the island not the Republic) both use the Republic of Ireland, United Kingdom (Northern Ireland) format to describe the governance of the territory. I mean there is a case that other options, such as Northern Ireland (United Kingdom) could be considered, but then we'd have a political flag dispute which would not exist if the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland) was used, but claiming that the entire island of Ireland is currently recognised as the territory of the Republic of Ireland is simply false. I respect the fact that many Irish Republican editors may feel that it should be as such, but similarly, the article references the current recognition of the territories listed, and its a geographic article, rather than a historical or political one, so the standard is obviously different to that used in The Troubles arbitration. As you can see on the Ireland article, they have mentioned both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, and as such any other articles on Wikipedia should be consistent with that. PompeyTheGreat ( talk) 02:50, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
In addition, I would add that I have made attempts at dialogue, but the other editor made changes despite my prior notice on the talk page of the article. PompeyTheGreat ( talk) 02:50, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
Hello GoldenRing. It's not clear to me why you'd hat the subsequent exchange and not the gratuitous personal disparagement that prompted it. It's possible we'd all be no worse off without my observation, but I do believe we'd all be better off without that editor's disparagement of the several editors who commented there. FYI this view that there's some sort editorial bias or biased editors at American Politics relates directly to the narrative of Thucydides411 whose behavior is being discussed there. And this is not the first time that user Cjhard has injected that kind of partisan talk into a noticeboard thread. I don't think it's helpful. SPECIFICO talk 23:10, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
I thought the information shared there was mainly bullets points, which as far as I am aware avoids copyright violation due to the fact that it is mere facts, like a recipe, without further elucidation. That blog got the info from here: https://library.syr.edu/digital/guides_sua/html/sua_steele_d_prt.htm. I'd be happy to rewrite it so that it avoids any possibility of copyright infringement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CrossReach ( talk • contribs) 18:30, 14 November 2017 (UTC)
Thank you for the highly considerate approach you've shown in connection with the unblock request for BS. If the user still persistently resorts to sockpuppetry and CU reveals the same, no one can help! -- Muzammil ( talk) 18:55, 14 November 2017 (UTC)
Here you go. Volunteer Marek 16:36, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Hello,
The Interaction Timeline alpha version is ready for testing. The Anti-Harassment Tools team appreciates you spending a few minutes to try out the tool and let us know if there is value in displaying the interactions in a vertical timeline instead of the approach used with the existing interaction analysis tools.
Also we interested in learning about which additional functionality or information we should prioritize developing.
Comments can be left on the discussion page here or on meta. Or you can share your ideas by email.
Thank you,
For the Anti-Harassment Tools Team, SPoore (WMF), Community Advocate, Community health initiative ( talk) 21:48, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
I am appealing the three-month IBAN you imposed on me at AE. TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 21:29, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
Dear GoldenRing,
As I posted above, I am thankful for intervention in connection with BS sockpuppetry discussion/ standard offer discussion.
An unrelated aspect mentioned there (BS offer discussion) had reference to the last section on my talk page.
Some of the comments by one of the users in the BS discussion had disparaging comments on I and I suggest they be taken down even though the discussion is closed.
As an "crat on UrWiki" I would have either removed such unrelated stuff or simultaneously posted a note that this is unrelated personal attack. But I am no admin or EnWiki and hence I leave this to your discretion. Hope you will act positively. Thank you -- Muzammil ( talk) 09:01, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
I have two requests:
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
Archive 1 | Archive 2 | Archive 3 | Archive 4 | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | → | Archive 9 |
GoldenRing, FYI, Xenophrenic is edit warring on the same articles that he was blocked for edit warring over after being unblocked. He has wasted so much of everyone's time. Is it time to open another ANI thread for a topic ban? desmay ( talk) 16:06, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
Thank you for your close of this AN/I discussion. Without that action, I suspect the initiator and the 3 like-minded editors would be re-re-repeating their accusations and bumping that thread every 71 hours until they achieved a successful lynching. I cannot claim to know what exact considerations and evaluations led you to conclude, "No-one has suggested any action that has any hope of gaining consensus, so I am closing this", but needless to say I came to the same conclusion for several reasons.
What brings me to your Talk page, however, is this warning you added to your closing statement: User:Xenophrenic is warned, as his block log should already have made clear to him, that our policy on edit warring does not contain an exception for when you are right, and even less for when you think you are right. Exemptions from the edit warring policy are narrowly defined and editors are expected to be familiar with them. I am asking you to please consider striking that part of your statement. Why? Because such a warning implies that I edit warred "because I was right, or thought I was right", which never happened, and that AN/I discussion (and your closure of it) is going to be referenced in other proceedings. To be sure, several other editors and even Admins did argue on my behalf that my edits were "right", and "correct" and had "the moral high ground", so perhaps that is what prompted your warning? Please understand that I never spoke those words (even if I agree with them), nor did I ever claim that reasoning as a justification for edit warring. And I certainly didn't claim any "exemption from the edit warring policy" for my edits. Your remark strongly implies I took that position, which I never did. The message in your warning that "being right isn't justification" is 100% accurate, I don't dispute that at all, but the warning itself is inapplicable in this situation, and sends what I feel is the wrong message to readers of your closing statement. I hope you will consider my request.
Kind regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 18:30, 6 September 2017 (UTC)
I didn't catch this earlier, but your little editorial insertion: "and even less for when you think you are right (italics emphasis yours)", strikes me as unnecessarily provocative -- it goes beyond what our EW policy states, and instead appears intended to convey an unsubstantiated personal judgement of yours. You didn't think that might be just a little bit offensive? Anyway, I'll take your silence in this matter as your response to my request. I'll pursue this elsewhere and won't bother you further. Thank you for your time, Xenophrenic ( talk) 05:04, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
@ Xenophrenic: My apologies for not responding sooner. I'm happy to at least discuss this. Perhaps, without re-litigating the whole ANI thread, you could state why you were edit-warring? GoldenRing ( talk) 07:10, 10 September 2017 (UTC)
never happened, ... To be sure, several other editors and even Admins did argue on my behalf that my edits were "right", and "correct" and had "the moral high ground", so perhaps that is what prompted your warning? Please understand that I never spoke those words (even if I agree with them), nor did I ever claim that reasoning as a justification for edit warring. And I certainly didn't claim any "exemption from the edit warring policy" for my edits. Your remark strongly implies I took that position, which I never did. The message in your warning that "being right isn't justification" is 100% accurate ... At no time did I ever express the sentiment: "I'm right, so therefore I'm going to edit war".-- do you not see the disconnect in what you are saying, GoldenRing? You and I (and WP:EW policy) agree that "being right" is not a justification for edit warring. I've never used that justification, so I'm going to have to call bullshit on your accusation and insist that you provide diffs of evidence to where I've excused edit warring because "I think I am right". And while you are at it, please quote for me, exactly, that "large chunk of what I've written above" that you misinterpreted as an explanation of how I was "in the right". If you'll read the above with more care and comprehension, you'll discover that instead of "edit warring because I was right", I chose to pursue dispute resolution by initiating and engaging in discussion, seeking problem resolution and editing in line with consensus. If you want to argue, for example, that I misjudged consensus, or that I misunderstood a policy, I will listen attentively to your reasoning.
Thank you for your close of this AN/I discussion. ... needless to say I came to the same conclusion, so your suggestion that I request a review at AN or Arbitration seems nonsensical. As for your assertion that WP:NPA doesn't give me the right to edit your comments to say what I want them to say, that is rather obvious, and I'd never change someone's comments to say what I want them to say. WP:NPA does allow me to remove clear-cut personal attacks, which is all I've done. Here is the relevant policy wording for your edification: Do not make personal attacks anywhere on Wikipedia. ... Derogatory comments about other editors may be removed by any editor. ... especially where such text is directed against you, removal should typically be limited to clear-cut cases where it is obvious the text is a true personal attack. The RPA template can be used for this purpose. It shouldn't be necessary for me to be quoting policy to an Admin. Your commentary about a fellow editor's behavior was made without a single shred of accompanying evidence, which makes it an unacceptable personal attack, in addition to being insulting and, well, nasty. If you post unsubstantiated accusations about a fellow editor, and I bring that violation to your attention, you are expected to remedy it. You've already demonstrated you know what to do in your comment below: "it's traditional to provide diffs or retract the accusation." It's more than 'tradition', it's mandated policy. Regards, Xenophrenic ( talk) 04:43, 10 October 2017 (UTC)
I have a question about what counts as one revert - would reverting several edits count as one revert if the edits included content changes to substantially different sections of the article (enough that I would say they were entirely separate reverts) as well as some citation needed tags (made in separate edits) - is what counts as an edit it's proximity in time it's been made to other edits? Seraphim System ( talk) 01:30, 14 October 2017 (UTC) Seraphim System ( talk) 01:30, 14 October 2017 (UTC)
In your last post, that diff, I do not think it leads where you think it leads😁! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2604:2000:28C1:7200:8495:9757:BE49:FE5D ( talk) 11:51, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
Morty's been causing me some concern at Talk:United_Daughters_of_the_Confederacy#So_I_cut_it_out_again, effectively accusing Carptrash, a productive editor of long-standing, of lying and implying that he was a fellow-traveler with hate groups there and at RSN. This has caused Carptrash some distress, and it appears to be a return to the battlefield behavior and tendency toward personal attacks that was the subject of a long ANI thread that you closed with a one-month topic ban (since expired). I'm not quite there yet, but Monty's determined not to drop that stick. For extra joy, the sockpuppet that was following Morty has returned. I'd appreciate your views on the matter. Acroterion (talk) 13:42, 15 October 2017 (UTC)
What about the issues with the other involved admin and editors with powers? As I said, my petition for appeal was not about the rejection, but the behavior of the involved people... I may only have a couple months old account but I've been collaborating for about three years now, in English, French and Spanish, and though it's the first time I see this much trolling, seeing that common trolls ganging up on a so called help desk, seeing how high a common troll can rise in the hierarchy without even hiding his ill intents, and seeing the double standards definitely encourages me to stop wasting my time in here... Lexers615 ( talk) 07:46, 17 October 2017 (UTC)
Lexers615 ( talk) 04:35, 18 October 2017 (UTC)
Thanks for taking the initiative to close. Alex Shih ( talk) 17:48, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard#Closure_review_request_for_.22StuRat.27s_behaviour_on_the_Reference_Desks_.28again.29.22 StuRat ( talk) 17:57, 31 October 2017 (UTC)
I've decided I want to say something there, but first, I'm in search of clue. One way to get clue is to talk with people who disagree with me (particularly if they're making a statement at WP:RFAR, because people often truncate their statements drastically, and actually know a lot more than they're saying). I was 100% with you as I read your statement ... and then you arrived at the opposite conclusion to mine. I don't think it's fair to say that Arbcom shouldn't take the case because there are options they can't pursue. Arbcom is much more likely not to fix something that they could actually fix than the other way around; there is little chance that they will go all bull-in-a-china-shop. They may go the other direction, and do something minimal and limited to just the two principal parties. But even a minimal ruling can be one important step along the way, as people grapple with this very extensive and tough problem.
So, I'm leaving this note for both you and Hawkeye7, for two reasons: 1. you guys are the only two who disagree with me (although we do have a few noncommital statements from others), so you're the ones in the best position to explain to me why I'm wrong, and 2. Arbcom is hesitating, and I can understand that ... they're not masochists. But I think it would be good to apply peer pressure to get them to step up and do the right thing, the necessary thing, and a unanimous case request would be a suitable form of peer pressure. IMO, Arbcom is a kind of single point of failure for Wikipedia ... if they turn away from disputes that can legitimately be framed as ongoing policy violations and that can't be solved elsewhere, then the whole dispute-resolution system fails. - Dank ( push to talk) 18:59, 3 November 2017 (UTC)
"If our only option is to switch back and forth between wikidata and non-wikidata versions as the data at wikidata changes, that seems to me obviously untenable."That is clearly what also happens when somebody changes a value locally in an infobox: if it's wrong, we change it back. Why would we not simply do exactly the same thing with a change to Wikidata? If it's wrong, use a local value that is verifiably correct. There's no back-and-forth because the local value always overrides Wikidata: no amount of changes there will affect what our infobox displays. Of course, if somebody eventually fixes the Wikidata by updating it from the verifiable value here – and adds the reference! – then there's no reason why we shouldn't go back to using the Wikidata-imported value, but there's no rush to do that.
No worries having this discussion here.
I had written a long comment on this, then my phone ate it. Probably the only thing really worth saving out of it is an example of where I see real problems caused by the incompatibility of sourcing policies. Right now, something that causes some fairly protracted disputes on enwiki is the display of ethnicity and religion in infoboxes of living (and sometimes long-dead) people. This seems to be a particular problem for Jews, for whom complicated issues of ancestry, culture and religious belief intersect in the question of whether someone "is Jewish." It is reasonably common to find someone who the world generally regards as "Jewish" - even who reliable secondary sources routinely describe as Jewish - but for whom we will leave that field of the infobox blank because our standard for including it is a positive, reliably-sourced self-identification of Jewishness. Given the difference in policies, it would be very easy to have a statement in wikidata that someone is Jewish, sourced to what would normally be considered a reliable source here but where we would still want no value in the infobox. It is absolutely trivial right now to find people who wikidata describes as "religion: Judaism" where making the same statement here would be, roughly speaking, the end of civilsation as we know it; consider wikidata:Q302.
These types of situation are not resolved by strict application of rules, they are resolved by discussion and consensus. For all the potential I see in wikidata (and I am a fan of the concept) I can't see how this information can be stored at wikidata and questions like this can be resolved without essentially saying that enwiki will defer to consensus at wikidata on questions of sourcing and verifiability and I can't see that happening unless the policies on sourcing, verifiability and living persons are roughly compatible, both in their text and their practice. People here need to trust that problems at wikidata will be sorted out in a way that is broadly acceptable to the community here before there is mass adoption of wikidata here.
I hear what you're saying about local overrides, but it seems very likely to me that the result of such as scheme will be that every value in every infobox will be overridden with local data and then what's the point? Even if someone doesn't immediately write a bot to mass-import all the wikidata values into local overrides here or override them with null values (and there are certainly a few editors who would attempt exactly that), there are numerous situations where editors will have an incentive to override wikidata values with local values and never any situations where editors will have an incentive to change them back (except perhaps that they are wikidata fans - but try building a consensus on that basis!)
I think that trust between the projects needs to be built first, before we start with mass adoption of wikidata-based templates. Various things going on at present are not serving to build that trust but to build scepticism. Resolving that is going to take real humility and willing spirit from both sides, and perhaps some big sacrifices (eg perhaps deleting swathes of bot-imported data from wikidata because the sourcing is awful) and I sort of doubt that either community collectively possesses those qualities in sufficient quantity. GoldenRing ( talk) 12:55, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
|suppressfields=genre
then the genre is never displayed (even if a drive-by editor adds something locally). The Wikidata-aware infobox can actually make dealing with the exclusion of fields easier, not harder.You see this really is the problem. You choose to disparage my efforts without showing any sign of understanding the problem and any possible solution. The reason why having the ability to have a blacklist – note that doesn't make it a compulsory element – is "somehow better than just not filling in those fields" is that these sort of occurrences are plagued by drive-by editors who come along and add a local value to the Genre field, if you "just don't fill in the field". As you'd understand if you'd bothered to read any of the discussions. You don't have to have blacklists on 99.9% of articles, but they are useful when you need them. What's easier for an editor who curates a music article: to continually revert editors who regularly add |genre=thrash metal
despite consensus on the talk page that no genre should be in the infobox; or add |suppressfields=genre
to the infobox once?
You only blocked User:Mahir M for 31 hours; I was about to grumble about how it should be longer for that kind of bigoted attack, when I saw that you said at ANI you'd indef'd them. So now I'm thinking this was just a misclick? -- Floquenbeam ( talk) 17:06, 9 November 2017 (UTC)
I don't see how the case here relates to The Troubles as it is an issue of international borders rather than a historical or political point. You can have an opinion either way about Northern Ireland, but the article in this case relates to the current status of the territory of the Island of Ireland, as is recognised internationally, as this is a encyclopedia, not a political debating forum. The Troubles article is obviously a very different case to the one here, as that is an issue which is disputed by historians to this day. While Irish Republicans personally may dispute the status of Northern Ireland, there is no dispute internationally regarding recognition, nor is there a dispute regarding the reality of the physical presence of the United Kingdom there. Moreover, other lists such as the article listing islands by population worldwide on wiki, and the article for Ireland itself (the island not the Republic) both use the Republic of Ireland, United Kingdom (Northern Ireland) format to describe the governance of the territory. I mean there is a case that other options, such as Northern Ireland (United Kingdom) could be considered, but then we'd have a political flag dispute which would not exist if the United Kingdom (Northern Ireland) was used, but claiming that the entire island of Ireland is currently recognised as the territory of the Republic of Ireland is simply false. I respect the fact that many Irish Republican editors may feel that it should be as such, but similarly, the article references the current recognition of the territories listed, and its a geographic article, rather than a historical or political one, so the standard is obviously different to that used in The Troubles arbitration. As you can see on the Ireland article, they have mentioned both the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, and as such any other articles on Wikipedia should be consistent with that. PompeyTheGreat ( talk) 02:50, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
In addition, I would add that I have made attempts at dialogue, but the other editor made changes despite my prior notice on the talk page of the article. PompeyTheGreat ( talk) 02:50, 10 November 2017 (UTC)
Hello GoldenRing. It's not clear to me why you'd hat the subsequent exchange and not the gratuitous personal disparagement that prompted it. It's possible we'd all be no worse off without my observation, but I do believe we'd all be better off without that editor's disparagement of the several editors who commented there. FYI this view that there's some sort editorial bias or biased editors at American Politics relates directly to the narrative of Thucydides411 whose behavior is being discussed there. And this is not the first time that user Cjhard has injected that kind of partisan talk into a noticeboard thread. I don't think it's helpful. SPECIFICO talk 23:10, 12 November 2017 (UTC)
I thought the information shared there was mainly bullets points, which as far as I am aware avoids copyright violation due to the fact that it is mere facts, like a recipe, without further elucidation. That blog got the info from here: https://library.syr.edu/digital/guides_sua/html/sua_steele_d_prt.htm. I'd be happy to rewrite it so that it avoids any possibility of copyright infringement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by CrossReach ( talk • contribs) 18:30, 14 November 2017 (UTC)
Thank you for the highly considerate approach you've shown in connection with the unblock request for BS. If the user still persistently resorts to sockpuppetry and CU reveals the same, no one can help! -- Muzammil ( talk) 18:55, 14 November 2017 (UTC)
Here you go. Volunteer Marek 16:36, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
Hello,
The Interaction Timeline alpha version is ready for testing. The Anti-Harassment Tools team appreciates you spending a few minutes to try out the tool and let us know if there is value in displaying the interactions in a vertical timeline instead of the approach used with the existing interaction analysis tools.
Also we interested in learning about which additional functionality or information we should prioritize developing.
Comments can be left on the discussion page here or on meta. Or you can share your ideas by email.
Thank you,
For the Anti-Harassment Tools Team, SPoore (WMF), Community Advocate, Community health initiative ( talk) 21:48, 15 November 2017 (UTC)
I am appealing the three-month IBAN you imposed on me at AE. TheTimesAreAChanging ( talk) 21:29, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
Dear GoldenRing,
As I posted above, I am thankful for intervention in connection with BS sockpuppetry discussion/ standard offer discussion.
An unrelated aspect mentioned there (BS offer discussion) had reference to the last section on my talk page.
Some of the comments by one of the users in the BS discussion had disparaging comments on I and I suggest they be taken down even though the discussion is closed.
As an "crat on UrWiki" I would have either removed such unrelated stuff or simultaneously posted a note that this is unrelated personal attack. But I am no admin or EnWiki and hence I leave this to your discretion. Hope you will act positively. Thank you -- Muzammil ( talk) 09:01, 17 November 2017 (UTC)
I have two requests: