This is an archive of past discussions with User:Iridescent. 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.
That's the address of the ISP head office (Windstream in this case), not the geolocation. A whois search is meaningless on an IP address; all it means is that the user is switching the modem off and on again. – iridescent21:59, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Did hell freeze over? :O
Sorry for being rather frivolous in this section. I am in a rather good mood this evening which is making me a little less serious then usual. Hope you don't mind it.
Am i dreaming when i look at this diff? For some reason it it looks like you are actually using huggle! Last time we met you were quite against the usage of Huggle, what did suddenly cause this change of mind? :)
And now i am talking about Huggle anyway, you will probably be glad to know that the nudges you have me at my RFA concerning my Huggle usage seem to have taken effect. The previous anti vandalism tool i used could be compared to a bike while Huggle would resemble a race car, for which i didn't seem to have the appropriate driver license back then. But i have been taken lessons and by now i think my vandalism patrol is back up to its old accuracy, exactly as it should have been. Excirial (Talk,Contribs)21:29, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
I was never the anti-Huggle one - a few months ago when there was serious debate on ANI about disabling Huggle altogether, I was writing things like this on the matter. I have problems with some of the users (I wryly note that the user requesting Huggle back a couple of threads above this one, took 1 hour and 17 minutes between my re-enabling it and his first "stop abusing Huggle" warning), but nothing but respect for the tool. – iridescent21:37, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
(To Keeper) I did, but remember that i laid down vandalism patrol quite a while after that RFa. I was not exactly seeing a lot of diffs when i am busy with new page patrol, so for me, this is still an all new startling experience. ;)
(To Iridescent) Its rather interesting how people manage to misjudge others intents at times don't you think? But you are completely right. Some people either need to stay away from a tool as powerful as huggle, and some others (Like me) need some strong "encouragement" to make them see they are messing things up. I guess that all we need now is a small group of people checking the vandalism patrols (Vandalism patrol patrols i guess?) to prevent any misusage of huggle from slipping trough the maze. But in time, i guess that will happen. And when that happens i think Gurch deserves a truckload of medals for single-handedly tackling the entire vandalism issue we have around here. Excirial (Talk,Contribs)21:49, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
I think you overstate your case. Blatant vandalism is clearly being reduced by Huggle afficionados, but more subtle vandalism is still left to whoever has that article on their watchlist. So "tackling the entire vandalism we have around here" is simply ridiculous hyperbole. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 22:00, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Exactly; what Huggle does is keep the "poop!" and "eric is a fagit" vandalism down to a manageable level. Since it runs off rollback, it can't be used to revert something that isn't obvious vandalism, let alone the lying and POV-pushing. What it does is lift the pressure of dealing with the flood-of-crap, meaning we're not spending all our time cleaning up messes. However, until we have permanent semiprotection of BLPs, the vandalism problem is not going anywhere any time soon. </sermon> – iridescent22:04, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
I think I've probably read all of wikipedia's policy pages, but there is one that perhaps you can help me with. What the fuck is that wp:civil crap all about? Why are children allowed to be the ones who decide what's "civil" or not? --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 22:24, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Oh, i agree that the statement i made was overly optimistic and based upon a simplified projection of the issue (One that for a moment didn't take BLP into account. Isnt imagining that an issue doesn't excist a bliss every now and then?). However Huggle managed to reduce the amount of work involved with "Normal" vandalism to a level where vandalism patrols can turn their attention to BLP issues if they wish to. Its perhaps only a patchwork solution but i don't see any permanent protection on BLP's being moved into place any time soon (Unless i managed to miss something new about that topic as well). And as for the personal attack, i would suggest quoting the WP:TPG guideline along with the NPA one. That guideline at least contains a specific about insults. (Cough, Wikilawyer alert) Excirial (Talk,Contribs)22:23, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
As I suggested above, why should children be allowed to decide what's a "personal attack", or "uncivil behaviour", beyond the obviously blatant? --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 22:31, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
You're absolutely right, MF. There's a major effort underway even as we speak...er, type...to help bring the WP:CIVIL policy up to realistic standards, although it is still well off its target; I'll try to work on it this evening if I finish my "homework". As to the level of vandalism, I am going to perhaps make myself unpopular by saying that levels of vandalism had started dropping well before Huggle came onto the scene, and continues to drop as time goes on. Even as my watchlist has grown, and I have added more high-traffic articles (particularly BLPs), the frequency of their being edited by anyone has diminished significantly. It's a rare day when more than 2-3 of my 1000+ watched articles will be vandalised; many of them used to be vandalised several times a day. Huggle has nothing to do with this drop in activity - if the article was vandalised and then reverted, it would still pop to the top of my watchlist. Someone used to keep a relatively current graph of the total number of edits and total number of reversions over time; it would be interesting to see an update to it, but the one I remember seeing was created by a now-retired editor. I also wonder how many "good" edits (and good faith but not quite standard edits) are being reverted by Huggle or other tools (or just plain excitable RC patrollers). It strikes me that around 10% of the edits marked as vandalism that occur on my watchlisted articles are at minimum good faith, and in some cases are superior edits right down to the reference source. I may well have to create a template to use in warning patrollers that they are incorrectly reverting. I've been very tempted on a few occasions to yank the Rollback permission for a few of them. Risker (talk) 19:52, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
One of Gurch's little publicised but must useful features with Huggle was a mechanism to quietly remove it from problem users without having to tarnish their log for all time with a "permissions removed for misuse" – just go to User:username/huggle.css, change "enable:true" to "enable:false" and protect the page. Seeing their toy suddenly go dead often provides just the "short sharp shock" a good-faith problem user needs, but avoids the unpleasantness that stems from a block. – iridescent19:56, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
Ah, so I can come and bug you to do so? ;-) I have gone to great lengths never to discover the mysteries behind .css or even .js. Take a look, I don't have a single entry on my own. I'll be honest, much as I appreciate the work done by many editors using these various scripts and tools, I find that the deliberation required to do things the "old-fashioned" way keeps me from being bitey or rash in my actions. That doesn't mean I don't use tools, just not for editing. Risker (talk) 20:48, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
At the very least, I'd strongly recommend Twinkle; you don't need to use all the functions, but the "extra buttons" it adds are far more useful than the admin buttons, and without the grief. – iridescent20:53, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
As a demonstration of just how Huggle has changed things, this is about as graphic a demonstration as can be had. I'm not by any means a machine-gun user (or familiar enough with the shortcuts to be one should I want to), and check every edit (the self-reverts in there were down to a documented Huggle glitch where it sometimes reverts the wrong edit) – yet that particular run was done in less than two hours. To put that in perspective, the editcount of a new user making that number of edits every day (certainly theoretically possible) would overtake Risker in 6 days, Keeper and LaraJenna in 12 days; Malleus in 17 days; myself in 2 months and break the Wikipedia record in 4½ months. If nothing else, Gurch deserves an award for making the high score table meaningless. (And I note someone's just re-added me to that list. Apparently "Editors are free to remove their name from this list. When they do, do not revert." is too difficult an instruction to understand). – iridescent00:31, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
A talkpage history that looks like this, a 50-50 mix of abuse and thank-yous, a warning about incorrect reverts, and an edit count that has risen by 1000 in the time it's taken to watch The X Factor. Hello, and welcome to RecentChanges! My patriotic duty for the month is now done. – iridescent23:40, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
I generally don't like lying, even as a joke. The closest I'll come to doing that is an April Fool's joke. I've found the truth can be funny enough if you dig deep enough; why make stuff up? HalfShadow02:35, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
Should anyone feel the urge to do this themselves, there's a full list of RFAs by date here. Come 10 November, I'm sure LaLo will be delighted should as many people as possible add an appropriate image to her talkpage. Put it in your diary. – iridescent16:46, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
That's as surreal now as it was a year ago. Epbr, at least, had a reasoned argument, but the number of "oppose, no reason"s in there were remarkable. – iridescent17:27, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for removing the vandalism on my talk page, especially so quickly that I didn't have to see it. It is greatly appreciated. Alanraywiki (talk) 14:24, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, but there's others you should be sending this to ahead of me…
Incidentally, if anyone wants to rack up an enormous stack of stripy barnstars named after an indefblocked former user, Huggle is obviously the way to go. – iridescent20:59, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Fair enough and I've removed the warning - we're a bit jumpy about Baird at the moment as his article's being repeatedly vandalised. – iridescent22:18, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Regarding your revert at Braids of the Powhatan. The article is up for AfD, and the sole contributor wants to just call it off and have it deleted. he tried to blank the page and it was reverted, so I told him he could put up the db-author tag to have it speedied. I thought this was permitted, even though the article is up for AfD (and headed towards deletion anyway). Please advise, thanks! ArakunemTalk22:47, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Depends how you read policy. As the sole contributor to the article he's in his right to {{db-author}} it, but it can be viewed as gaming the system during an AfD (speedy-deleted articles can be reposted, AfD deleted articles can't). I'll delete it and close the AfD. – iridescent22:51, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Thanks! I don't think this user was planning any procedural shenanegans, I just think he wasn't clear on the policies for both creating and deleting articles. In any case, same result, so thanks again! ArakunemTalk22:53, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Clay Aiken
For the fifth time now I am reinstating the information I added to Clay Aiken; information that IS sourced, form a source that wiki-consensus on countless other occasions has determined is reliable. It is NOT vandalism nor is it a violation of LP biographies. It is sourced fact. If it is going to continually be removed then it needs to be brought up for input or a vote from the community. CouplandForever (talk) 22:48, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
As you've been repeatedly told, Perez Hilton is not a reliable source. Stop editwarring over this; you and the IPs are both already in breach of 3RR (which does not apply to removing BLP violations, before you accuse myself and Epbr of the same). – iridescent22:56, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
That's a great bit of weasel-wording, isn't it... Do you ever find yourself wanting to put {{cn}} on other people's websites? – iridescent23:02, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Hopefully soon so this can be settled one way or the other. (When Epbr123 and I are agreeing on something - and the other party starts a post "for the fifth time now I am reinstating the information I added" - I'm fairly confident which way the inevitable complaint will go). – iridescent23:10, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Agreed. Also this article is interesting. We aren't in the business of "breaking news", certainly, but if the sources say boo, we say "the sources said 'boo'"". Keeperǀ7623:15, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Agreed - but as I see it, the CST and MTV are being very careful not to say anything. People apparently is out on Wednesday - which by a funny coincidence is when the semiprotection expires. Fancy that! – iridescent23:19, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Oh, and I don't even know how this guy's wound up on my watchlist. At least I've heard of SP - I have no idea who this guy even is. – iridescent23:21, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
I just posted at Talk:Clay Aiken along those lines. Sigh. I'm going offline. Tomorrow, CA will either be gay, or he won't. Either way, I'll sleep well tonight, I'll have a chipper mood tomorrow :-). I'm only curious at this point as to how many "accounts" will be blocked for trying to make Wikipedia into Wikinews (or worse) a tabloid of rumor. See you tomorrow, I'm outta here...Keeperǀ7623:22, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
From the perspective of two hours later… Christ on a bike, talk about lighting the touchpaper and running for cover! This debacle is coming up fast on the heels of this substub's future history as an example of Wikipedia's ability to inflate trivia beyond the point of sanity. – iridescent02:05, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
I hope you don't mind that I unblocked, then re-blocked this user for a longer time period. It's a very determined returning vandal who targets Waylon Jennings, Shooter Jennings, and several other related articles. The user returns immediately upon the expiration of a block and continues until blocked again, so I've just started hitting them for a month at a time. Joyous! | Talk23:55, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
No, block as you see fit – but are you sure this isn't one of a group of /b/tards targeting the article? The IP's history shows this particular IP never editing the article before today. – iridescent00:02, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
WHOIS data traces this IP address back to Halifax, Nova Scotia, just like all the others. I have no idea if it's a single user with a rotating IP, or a small group. I just wonder why someone in Halifax has such a grudge against country-western music. Joyous! | Talk02:51, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
No, it has nothing in common with the deleted version other than the subject. If you can find a particularly harsh admin – or one in a particularly deletionist mood – you might just be able to squeeze an A1 out of them, otherwise it'll need a prod or a fresh AfD debate
Not sure I get your point. It appears to me (after rereading the article) that the out-of-context, orphaned text in the new article was intended to be a new section in the original article. (Specifically, it appears to be a replacement for the Limited reach section of the deleted article.) This explains why the section doesn't introduce Wokai, have an introductory paragraph, or include a {{reflist}}. Bongomatic (talk) 02:34, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
Instead of warning that latest IP, you should have thanked him for blanking your usertalk. I saw it as a good faith gesture to help you edit the encyclopedia sans distraction :-) (and in reality, I e/c with you trying to revert...:-) I pray everyday that someone will come along and blank my usertalk. Sigh.... Keeperǀ7620:24, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
If you check the datestamps, you'll notice that there's not a single post on this page more than 48h old, too. I appear to have become VPP with added porn. – iridescent20:37, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
That's reassuring... though not 100% convincing! I absolutely agree about that version of Wet Floor Sign; it's my favourite article :D EyeSerenetalk17:42, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
God that was funny. I've never seen that WFS diff, you've been holding out Irid. My favorite is the pipelink for "some people say" in the "regulation" subsection. Brilliant humor :-) Keeperǀ7617:59, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Agents of the Wikipedia Malfunctioning Semiautomation Patrol track Gurch down to his underground lair. The search continues for whichever bright spark at AWB/T set it to auto-replace Montana→Mountain.
Gurch! When people flame you, it's things like this that make them do it… (Any idea why it's doing this? Is it that VasilievVV isn't on the whitelist yet, in which case IMO it's "acceptable collateral damage", or is it reverting whitelisted users?) – iridescent20:56, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Part of me yearns for the good old days when people who wanted to get another user's attention posted a message on that user's talk page, rather than their own talk page... yes, he seems to be missing from the whitelist. Which is odd, since the only requirement is 500 edits, which he has made in an hour before now. And Huggle usually adds people who use it to the list automatically. Perhaps he skips that step (it does take rather a long time for it to edit that page these days) -- Gurch (talk) 10:18, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
If it had come up again rather than a one-off I'd have posted something on Huggle/Feedback, but it hardly seemed worth it if it's a one-off glitch rather than a systemic problem. It looks to me like what happened was that he made his 500th edit at about the time the server crashed and it probably got lost in the system – there might also be issues regarding his weird status (admin on ru-wikipedia, which I believe gives him global admin rights except here) – reading your feedback page, Huggle is clearly getting confused by SUL and it maybe picked up on his admin status from elsewhere? – iridescent15:36, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
Ada Lovelace
My dear Lovelace keeps coming under attack by IPs, but every time I request a protection, the viewing admin tends to say it is not enough, or inconsistent (as they are always different IPs). So, I wonder what will become of her? Since she isn't well known outside of those who know either computer science or Byron, I suspect that most of the vandalism is from bored Comp Sci majors. Thank you for cleaning up. My desire to discontinue my 0RR policy is tested quite often from that page. :) Ottava Rima (talk) 20:39, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
What about attack pages named after you? Iridescent? no (but Iridescentis a bluelink, so you've got something there on the rest of us...) Keeper76? no. J.delanoy? yes! And this, and this. I feel so loved! Be sure to read J. Delanoy. It is hilariously funny. You have no idea how tempted I was to make WP:NAZI a bluelink..... But I don't have any spoofs... yet..... J.delanoygabsadds01:38, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
That was a Huggle deletion, so it may be an artifact of how Huggle handles pages; it may automatically mark attack pages as patrolled pending deletion to reduce the number of newpage patrollers whose innocent young minds are corrupted by the page. Gurch would presumably be able to tell you, should you care. – iridescent18:37, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
When you tag a page for CSD with Huggle, it simultaneously applies the tag to the page and marks the page as patrolled. When a page is simply deleted, it is removed from the newpage queue without having a "patrolled" entry added to its log. I'm not sure what Keeper is saying. I don't think it is possible to mark a page as patrolled after it is deleted unless someone recreates it. J.delanoygabsadds19:24, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
How did I know that Huggle would somehow be involved in this? All I saw is "marked as patrolled" in the log for that attack page, assumed someone "marked it as patrolled". Make sense keeper doesn't. Keeperǀ7619:45, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
They did, and tagged it as an attack page, so an admin deleted it afterwards (I presume). Marking something as patrolled is just a convenience to stop people duplicating work. Tombomp (talk/contribs) 19:53, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
WP:CNR is a personal essay, not a policy; there's nothing actually against CNRs anywhere, or WP:AN/K would be out.
Incidentally, this isn't actually National Accuse-me-of-being-a-bot Week; it's national batshit-nuts conspiracy theory week. I feel like I won a competition to trade talkpages with SlimVirgin. – iridescent22:04, 16 September 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, Keep. But like I said, I'm !Kewl so the true re-direct is better. AN:K makes sense for how his talk page gets used by well, all of us. Funny thing is, when I post to ANI, it doesn't get answered whereas there, someone would have had ideas. I guess I need to create drama to get answered :) TravellingCari02:04, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
All the replies in one place as this thread is degenerating into chaos:
ANI is Wikipedia's equivalent of a timeshift channel. It's where you go to see the same half-dozen people reheat the same arguments they've been having for the past two years. It's also where you direct people you're getting bored with in the hope they'll get so distracted by an argument there, they'll completely forget about whatever they were pestering you about. If you want incoherent flamewars WT:RFA is always the place to go. You get better replies posting at highly watched talkpages (User talk:Jennavecia and User talk:SandyGeorgia are generally good ones for sensible questions, too) as most sane people aren't going to wade through the 200kb of crap dumped on AN and ANI each day, looking for the two or three serious issues.
J.delanoy, you'reatotaln00b when it comes to attack accounts. (If you want to see the lamest attack page ever, Persian Poet Gal's entry at ED is the way to go).
Keeper's talkpage isn't actually as bad as it looks, it's just that people there feel the urge to post at very…great…length.
Ironically, this page seems to have now taken on that role. Keeper's talkpage is sadly denuded of 30kb rants, links to pr0n, discussions about Sarah Palin so detailed Palin herself would have trouble working out what they were about, third parties accusing each other of "uncivility" and "tenditiousness" over issues that have nothing to do with Keeper, and deranged conspiracy theorists. My talkpage is in no such position, and at some point between July and now appears to have mutated into a cross between #wikipedia-en-admins and Wikipedia Watch. – iridescent16:55, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
Which version are you seeing? The "rip off of yours" is a fallback font for computers without the (awesomely annoying) Zapfino font. – iridescent19:41, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
So none of y'all can see how annoying the Zapfino font looks? You don't know what you're missing. (See, Keeper, I told you he was watching). – iridescent20:14, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
Zapfino, eh? In text it is an impostor, stealing the identity of another font; in the image it suffers from multiple-personality disorder.
In any case, it suffices to explain the recent change in your signature. Although it hasn't solved my question about said signature's amazing language-shifting abilities a few days ago, Ιριδίζων. Waltham, The Duke of23:54, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
I only use the shifting-language signature when speaking with those whom I'm certain will recognise the#E45E05#C1118C "brand identity". With new users or users who may not be familiar with me, I avoid it as the "is yanardöner the same person as ιριδίζων?" issues can be confusing; plus, I'm now aware that some of the languages (notably Chinese and Korean) weren't displaying correctly on some browsers. Also, the "branding" is less strong than I thought, as unless your monitor (and eyesight) are both good enough to distinguish pastel shades from saturated primary/secondary color, CrohnieGal's new signature appears very similar (this was one of the drivers behind my switching to a script font). – переливающийся15:52, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
Judging from Crohnie's signature, you have failed to patent your "brand identity". Miserably. I have created an entire mythology around my person; look at my Meta user page for a pretty little sample of good marketing, and my Wikipedia article for a full-blown version. (Pre-emptive statement: I am fully aware of my megalomania, and have embraced it as part of myself. No need for psychological counsel.)
My signature, unlike a great majority of signatures, is customised but still uses only the normal font and colour. This adaptability (it changes font in talk pages like yours) is a subtle hint to real-life signatures, which can be produced with any pen and any ink colour (within reason). Another hint is the prominence of Waltham, which is how I'd sign as a peer.
By the way, you could try splitting ιριδίζων not before the third iota but after it; even though the letters would not be evenly distributed, they would appear so, for the first part would have three iotas, which are pretty small. It would also make the latter part a separate word (ζων, "alive"), much like scent—the lavender-like hue of which I find quite appropriate—and have the iride- correspond with its Greek counterpart (and origin), ιριδί-. Just a suggestion. Waltham, The Duke of11:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Discriminating against children? Why, I can quite honestly say I have never heard such an awful thing in all my life and I'm reporting you to the Wikipedia Complaints Department. Oh, wait, you're already here. Well, I lie awake at night wishing [censored because kiddies read my talk page] nothing but your Wikipedia tshirt. – iridescent13:18, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
J.delanoy lies awake at night wondering how the hell he always manages to come across threads like this when he is supposed to be doing his assembly language homework. J.delanoygabsadds15:43, 22 September 2008 (UTC)
You forgot your bathrobe, bitch!I was thinking something like this, only with Wikipedia t-shirts. Who says Commons isn't useful? – iridescent19:53, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
My corporate computer says "access restricted" when I clicked on your link. Which I should've probably predicted, considering the source :-) I'll check it when I get home... Keeperǀ7620:17, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
Oh, so this is the image we'll want to get out of our head? Because, surely, everyone's life is made better by an image of me in a bathrobe and Wikipedia tee-shirt. >_> Jennavecia (Talk)18:02, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
Hey there. I see you reverted four edits by an I.P. on the aforementioned article. However, this was not actually vandalism. I'm part of the fashion wikiproject and while it doesn't make me an authority on the subject, I'm a follower of fashion for years and there is no serious record of that alleged model anywhere. I will probably take a look at the article soon (it's 2:20am here now so I won't be editing it today -- too tired) but just so you know I don't come with bad intentions if I revert your revert on this article. Thanks! Thiste (talk) 00:28, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
Yes and no. This wasn't a legitimate edit as it was treating the article as a talkpage, but it's clear that X17 magazine did print a grovelling retraction about Parker, at least; while I'm unable to find any similar retraction from The Sun regarding the Ronaldinho story (and the fact that it's still live on their website makes me think it hasn't been retracted and they're standing by it, given Britain's notoriously strict libel laws), there's a can of worms here.
Well of course I see your point on the edit you mentioned, my point was simply that it also added some valid information as well. I completely agree with you on the "can of worms" thing and I have a few french language sources that seriously doubt the claims of this alleged model. Maybe the veracity of her various stories should be decided in a courtroom instead of on a vfd on wikipedia but that's all we have for now. Now I'm anticipating it's gonna be very difficult to decide what to do with this article... Thiste (talk) 22:44, 19 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm hoping the AFD discussion flushes out some more people qualified to comment. At the moment, we're in a very peculiar situation where we have an article which is almost certainly a hoax, but hav eno reliable source to say it's a hoax and do have reliable sources to say it's true. Ideally, someone will dig up uncontrovertable proof (court transcripts, or reliable press coverage). I'll confess that my opinion is edging towards "delete, causes too much trouble to keep it up". – iridescent19:14, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
Two things
(note: two threads on the same topic merged – no content change)
Hey there again. I'm coming to you with stuff related with the Alexandra Paressant case. I've been looking at the what links here on this article and saw that several of the links were contributions from user Tarheelz123 (talk · contribs) who added her name here and there (1, 2, 3) probably not to leave her page a orphan.
I then discovered that he also created a page mentioning her (that I just filed for deletion) after trying to include it in another article. He then proceeded to add the mention "fashion model" on several of the people's pages that this list consists of. Anyways, I'm not sure this kind of behavior is really constructive, and I thought you should know about all of this since you're part of the thing already. Thanks in advance. Thiste (talk) 15:31, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
Assuming good faith, it's a fan adding links. It's not particularly unusual for someone writing or expanding an article on something to go round adding links to it, and none of the links seem wildly inappropriate. – iridescent19:14, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
I knew you'd say that. My only concern is that a lot of these additions are false and thus need someone to come after the guy and fix the errors he caused, even in good faith. For instance, Paressant has never been a glamour model and ten of the women in his list have never been fashion models. He still added it to their articles and that's more useless stuff that needs to be fixed. He's capable of doing it again too (adding random unverified stuff to articles just because it suits his needs). That's what I was calling "nonconstructive behavior".
I'd suggest waiting to see how the AfD goes; hopefully that will dig up something decisive that he can be pointed towards. (If the article's deleted, of course, than people adding links to it cease to be an issue). – iridescent18:56, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
Update
This looks like it's (probably rightly) headed for a keep. If anyone wants to have a go at cleaning it up, it desperately needs it. I am not volunteering to do this myself as the majority of the sources are in French and Portuguese, and I don't speak either. – iridescent01:35, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
I saw that indeed. Well, as I wrote earlier I'll probably look into it a little bit, just not this week as I'm pretty busy. Other people might jump in and help as well, who knows. Thanks for your help in clarifying things anyways. Thiste (talk) 14:49, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
Lapsed admin looking for an update
Hello! I've been an admin for... jeez, close to 3 years now, but because of a combination of home issues and embitterment with some things, I disappeared. For two years. In the past couple of months I've found myself getting drawn back to helping out here, and I wanted to ask you, is there anything majorly significant in terms of warning, deletion, blocking policy that I should be aware of? I've been reading the admin pages, but I wanted to ask someone who's been "in the field", so to speak, just to make sure. Thanks for your help in advance, Mo0[talk] 18:02, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
OK, here goes... The major recent changes I can think of in the last year or so are:
A huge increase in automation and semi-automation of routine tasks (most notably the ultra-high-speed revert/warn/report/block cycle made possible by Huggle);
An obsessive (and to my mind unhealthy) obsession with "civility" in the sense of "don't ever suggest anyone else might be wrong" as opposed to the older sense of "don't be rude without good reason";
A huge escalation in the use of jargon to deliberately make new and occasional users feel excluded create a convenient shorthand for frequently cited policies – there's a cynical but fairly accurate guide to them at WP:WikiSpeak which I'd strongly recommend reading;
An increased "block first and ask questions later" mentality;
An exponential increase in the number of conspiracy theories regarding Wikipedia, and a greatly increased willingness to air said conspiracies online – head on over to WP:ANI, hit ctrl-f and count the occurrences of the word "cabal" on any given day to see what I mean; I'd also recommend at least skimming the principal attack sites (Wikipedia Review, Encyclopedia Dramatica and Wikipedia Watch) to get a taste for what the outside perceptions of Wikipedia have become;
A tolerance for allowing talkpages to degenerate into long, rambling arguments that would never have been tolerated a year ago;
An increased obsession with process over quality; the "article writers" are steadily losing the battle with the "process wonks". At the FA level that's not necessarily a bad thing, but there's more of a tendency to slap {{cleanup}} templates on two-line stubs than there ever used to be;
A huge increase in the ratio of children to adults, or at least a hugely increased visibility of children, which is both having an effect on article subjects and quality, and leading to a permanent low-level flamewar about whether age, maturity etc are important in an editor and how one determines either on an anonymised website.
I'm sure I'll think of more as I go on – everyone else, feel free to chip in on this one. (Keep it reasonably polite, though; Malleus, Lara, that includes you). – iridescent19:35, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
Actually, Malleus is a perfect case in point – blocked for absolutely ridiculous reasons (describing the administrator of WikiLaw as "a wikilawyer" got him blocked because "wikilawyer" is A Bad Word). My points 2 & 4 above both stem from point 8; a huge increase in people who understand "the letter of the law" but are unable to understand "common sense". I cannot recommend enough reading User:Giano/On civility & Wikipedia in general as a "basic primer" to this new (and IMO very unpleasant) mentality. – iridescent19:45, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
Read this thread and answer your own question. Among other things it discussed in very great length the "going downhill" and "went downhill but has now turned the corner" views (I don't think anyone would seriously contend that we haven't had serious problems over the last year); make your own mind up. – iridescent20:41, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
Adding to my list:
9. The ratio of admin mainspace activity has dropped dramatically. While admins make up about 10% of active users, a few years ago 50% of mainspace edits were made by admins; in 2007 that figure was down to 10% and I'd be very surprised if it's above 5% now. This has (right or wrong) led some – both admins and non-admins – to see admins as an elite, which is skewing the "all users are equal" mentality and knocking huge holes in "adminship is no big deal"; the trouble is, most of our policies were drawn up by Jimbo and pals in the days when we had a couple of hundred admins and a few thousand editors, and are not relevant for a site with 851 admins and 48,334,506 editors; however the critical mass of those high numbers (and an unwillingness on the part of many to admit there's a problem) makes consensus for change virtually impossible to get. – iridescent21:17, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
10. That The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity at the top of this page isn't plucked out of nowhere. The combination of the current poisonous atmosphere, lynchmob mentality, and overzealous application of our arbitrary "civility rules" is creating an environment where trolls and drama queens flourish, while a lot of people who have come to help are being driven off in disgust (or blocked because they "just don't get it"). Sure, twas ever thus, but I don't think it was ever as bad as it is now. Head on over to ANI, RFA, WQA or most especially WT:RFA and see the permanent catfights that are sapping everyone's time and energy. – iridescent22:15, 20 September 2008 (UTC)
Point one reminds me of the Industrial Revolution: less work to do, more leisure time—which in this case is used to engage in politics. And what a curious mixture, too: feudalism with modern political correctness. If administrators spent more time writing articles and blocking were a slower process, there would be less time for drama. Waltham, The Duke of10:07, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
"Feudalism mixed with political correctness"? There's one very obvious analogy that throws up. May I point you towards my contributions to an related discussion back in the dim-and-distant days when people were polite on WT:RFA?
Ramblings from WT:RFA a year ago
Yes, I'm aware that someone will soon tell me I write too many essays, and waste too much time and space advertising them on talk pages. (Honestly, I do write articles too - check my contribs.) But I've written another essay in my userspace, User:Walton One/Constitution of Wikipedia. It's not intended to change anything, I'd just be interested to get people's feedback (on the talk page of the essay). WaltonOne20:02, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
I hadn't thought of that - I think it's really more similar to a constitutional monarchy, as I said in the essay. The only obvious similarity with the DPRK is that Jimbo is recognised as Wikipedia's "leader" despite not holding any de jure official position. But I wouldn't compare Jimbo to Kim Jong-Il; for a start, Jimbo hasn't yet commissioned any large statues of himself (AFAIK). :-) WaltonOne20:22, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, I've updated the essay to reflect this. It's interesting to me that the section about Jimbo's political role, which I put in as an afterthought, is the section that's attracted the most attention. WaltonOne08:08, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I think it just happens to have made people think about Jimbo's unusual monarchical role. :) And Eliminator, I agree, just wanted Walton to change that, if it wasn't clear. :) Pinball2214:38, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I still think General Secretary of the Wikipedia Party sums up Jimbo's role better, though - the difference between "Ignore All Rules" and "Permanent Revolution" is just a matter of phrasing. (We even have our own Leon Trotsky in the form of Larry Sanger.) That comparison between the theory (as opposed to the practice) of Juche & Wikimedia is serious, btw - substitute "WikiProjects" for "delegates selected from each public organisation" and you've pretty much described the Congress of Soviets — iridescent(talk to me!)14:49, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Possibly true. That would also fit with Wikipedia's widespread cultural resistance to the ideas of voting and democracy. Communist dictatorships generally claim to exercise power on behalf of their citizens (as with democratic centralism); likewise, "consensus" around here too often tends to mean what the people in power want it to mean. WaltonOne10:29, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Comparing that discussion with the current trainwreck of WT:RFA is a pretty good illustration of how far we've fallen. Nowadays, every post on that thread would probably have led someone to go bleating off to ANI about "incivility" and "disrespect", and a me-too pile-on arguing to block. – iridescent19:13, 21 September 2008 (UTC)
I hate mob mentality as much as I hate those hypocritical calls for punishment of incivility by people who often are uncivil themselves (if not with their words, then much more with their actions). If we aren't to devolve into Ancient Rome, we need to give more weight to rational discussion than to the obsessive-compulsive voting which has taken the path to ubiquitousness. Unfortunately, the community has grown so much that it's hard to prevent polls from mushrooming, since discussions are so difficult to control, and more so to actually yield something useful. (On the other hand, if only a few people participate in a discussion and manage to reach a decision, they are "trying to impose their minority views upon the community".) It's funny (or tragic) how even efforts to reform the system fall prey to the very same problem.
←The huge amount of traffic on this page has made me think of another change from one year ago, let alone three – there seems to be an awful lot more "what did you mean by that, how dare you" than there ever used to be – possibly because the ever-growing WP:CIV scares people off from changing things they don't like, but that's just pure speculation on my part. – iridescent14:59, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
Advice, please?
Hey Iri,
I'm attempting to get more active at Wikipedia (again) and just wanted some advice.
Firstly, i'm going to try and rekindle my WikiProjects, UKTrams and Derbyshire (not mine but you get what i'm at!!!).
Secondly, i'm going to do tram related article writing. This will be on systems etc. But, would individual trams be notable enough? Some, such as Southampton 45, which started the tramway preservation movement, are obviously notable, and presumably as they were preserved and saved that would make them notable? I don't know...
There's no hard-and-fast rule regarding things like this. The general result of train-related AfDs has been that individual locomotives notable enough to have independent coverage get their own article; however, there's permanent warring in the grey area once you get below the Mallard and Rocket level, with some of the more hardcore deletionists (especially those in the US and Europe, where it's traditionally been the line rather than the rolling stock that's been considered notable) arguing for deletion of whole lists, let alone the individual engines and carriages. You can see the deletionist and inclusionist arguments – and the cultural gap between Britain & Australia vs North America & Europe when it comes to these things – on this spectacularly foul-tempered AfD.
My gut instincts would be;
Anything with a name is more likely to be considered notable than something known only by a number, just because it "feels right" (LNER Class A3 4472 would fare worse in a hypothetical AfD discussion than Flying Scotsman, despite being the same article);
While it's a pure example of systemic bias in action, articles on trams associated with cities with active WikiProjects are more likely to survive (and more likely to be improved by others) – articles about aspects of the Manchester, Glasgow or London networks have an existing pool of people able to explain why said tram is (or isn't) notable should the New Page Patrol decide to grace you with their "I've never heard of it, therefore it must be non-notable" witterings;
Anything that still exists is inherently more likely to be kept, especially if it's been preserved;
If you don't mind losing control of your article, then on anything at all borderline try to get others involved from an early stage (advertise the article at WikiProject UK Railways, WikiProject Trains, WikiProject UK Roads and the relevant town/county project, as well as at the tram project itself). The more people you have reading and working on the article, the more people you have who will argue against deletion;
Routes (as opposed to individual trams), you can argue are always notable, since – even if you don't actually have the sources – there's a reasonable presumption that the sources will exist, as any route will have been the subject of significant coverage upon its opening and its closing.
At the end of the day, as long as an article is interesting and informative to a reader with no specialist knowledge of the subject, it's vanishingly unlikely to be deleted altogether. The worst that will happen is that it will be merged to become a subsection of a larger article – and as someone who's always championed doing exactly that (and indeed, carried out the granddaddy of all transport merges), I can't really argue with that as I do believe "one big article" is almost always better than "five short ones".
Good luck! Incidentally, there's another account active which is either you, or stalking your contributions very assiduously; while it's not breaching policy to operate two accounts, if you do plan to keep both accounts active make sure you don't get into any situation where it looks like you're trying to conceal your history, votestack etc. – iridescent16:52, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Hey,
Thanks for that. Well I will begin with some that I think are worthy of an article, e.g. So'ton 45. In the event they aren't notable, they can be merged with Tramcars of the National Tramway Museum, which indeed already has a short section on 45 that I wrote with little info - I know have a lot more.
Would you mind reading through it (or another) if I get a draft up in my sandbox, and telling me what you think?
Hmmm... I *honestley* don't know what you are talking about - I personally haven't been editing with any accounts other than this one, but I *do* have two others, Bluegoblin, my legit alt account, and TramMan (or something like that, i haven't yet used it!), which is my single-purpose account for things to do with WikiProject UK Trams, which I don't want on my main account. From what I understand both of those uses are perfectly allowed?
Could you possibly share this stalker with me, either on or off wiki?
On second thoughts, disregard the part about the alt account, as of the two questionable accounts, one actually predates you & has multiple edits on topics you've shown no interest in, and the other geolocates outside the UK (and in any even is blocked on an unrelated matter).
I'm happy to read over the article(s), but bear in mind I know virtually nothing about trams. One of my talkpage stalkers may also read this and look over the articles for you. – iridescent18:31, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Ok, no worries ;).
Tbh I just wanted you to read over them so I could get an idea of if they were notable ;). It's probably better that you *do* know nothing about them ;).
On a quick skim down Tramcars of the National Tramway Museum, what jumps out at me is the tone – it's very chatty in places ("it lives happily amongst the operating fleet"), and – while I appreciate someone not interested in the subject would be unlikely to reach this subpage – doesn't really explain what is/isn't significant about these trams in particular.
I'd be inclined to keep them as sections in this article, rather than a bunch of independent stubs; anyone looking them up will almost certainly be looking for them in the context of the museum, and keeping them together allows them to be compared (as well as serving an "it's useful" purpose in telling prospective visitors to the museum what they're going to see; and don't listen to anyone who says "it's useful" isn't a valid argument – being useful is our only purpose here.
I've asked Travellingcari, who's our resident museum-article geek expert, to have a look at this one, as she'll be more familiar than me with the current standards and policies for museum-exhibit articles. – iridescent18:57, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Ok. I admit there may be some issues with it - it is pretty much a solo attempt by me ;). I've also asked on IRC and they say they probably are notable, and I should be bold. I'm going to draft them anyway, but i'll wait for advice from Travellingcari and also from anyone who reads and it and drops a note ;).
Finally, a few things:
Congrats on the one year adminship! :D
Thanks for all your help i've ever had from you :D
It's not normally done this way i know, but I am considering going into adoption again, mainly due to recent incidents and I also want to regain the community's trust - I still have that goal of adminship :D Anyway, I was wondering if you would adopt me? Don't worry if the answer is no ;). BTW, it wouldn't be "active" adoption, probably more just guidance if/when I need it - so I suppose it's more mentoring?
Although I'm happy to answer questions, I won't do "formal" adoption of anyone - my work means I'm away for long periods, often with no notice, so can't take on the "watching out for you" side of things. Someone on this page may well read this and make you an offer. – iridescent20:01, 23 September 2008 (UTC)
Ok, thanks anyway ;) It's good to know you're there for questions! :D.
(outdent for clarity, numbers and bullets confuse me) Thanks for the heads up, Iri, I"m a bit behind on my TPSing after three days off line. General consensus (meaning as a Wiki-whole and project) seems to be that while museums are semi-inherently notable (I can only think of one that failed AfD for an issue other than spam/copyvio and that issue was really close) exhibits are less so. I think the issue with the current article is that of tone and also unnecessary detail for an encyclopedia article. It seems that the tram cars are a significant part of the museum but I don't know that a) it requires such detail and b) that it couldn't be trimmed and merged into the main article. There are issues where the collections need their own child article or a hybrid of the two. Victoria and Albert Museum for example is a mix of the two, with the bulk of information on the main article but a child article was also warranted: Cast Courts (Victoria and Albert Museum). I don't think the tramway museum requires this level of detail and I think there is some reundant content between the two that would allow the tramways article for a trim. It's a solid article with some good research but it would benefit also from some secondary sources rather than the museum itself. Thoughts? TravellingCari00:56, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
I've been doing some digging around comparable museums, and this split (museum article/list of items in the collection) doesn't seem wildly inappropriate – what would appear to be the nearest comparable museum, National Railway Museum (on which I suspect you've modelled this article), has a similar List of locomotives in the UK National Collection subpage, and in both cases importing the "collection" page into the main page would make it wildly long. That said, some of the true mega-museums, such as the Prado, the National Air and Space Museum and the Hermitage Museum, don't have a similar split. National Gallery of Canada has what may be the most sensible solution (although when did anything here have to be sensible?), of a single article on the museum including a brief list of the collection, and a category for the individual items within the collection. My instinct would be to merge the list into the main article, and create separate articles for those individual trams that warrant it (again, as with the National Railway Museum). Aside from those trams that have something exceptional in their history, I suspect you will struggle to defend yourself against the "what makes this particular tram notable" arguments. If it comes up, you may want to ask User:DGG for advice, since (as anyone attempting to close an AFD discussion finds to their cost) he's very good at thinking of reasons to keep articles, and stubbornly standing by his arguments.
Tate Modern is in need of TLC as well but the museum article in the worst shape is probably Art museum. Ugh. I wish I had more time, although some of these it would be faster to start from scratch. Transporation elements seem divided at AfD and in some cases come out like bldgs. Churches may be notable if the bldg is in someway notable (i.e. NRHP, etc) but rarely the orgs within are. I think that might be the issue with the trams as well. I think it does have some potential for a good article with some child articles. TravellingCari03:55, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm actually going to be at MALBA in a couple of weeks so will try to get some photos and guidebooks to at least build a respectable stub. That one is frankly embarrassing. – iridescent15:39, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
I'll reply in detail later, but here's the first i've got online. Personally, it's probably about as least notable as you can currently get, but if it's notable then i expect the rest will be as well. General consensus on IRC is that it is. Many thanks, BG7even19:35, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
At the moment, there are serious neutrality & tone issues. If you open the collapse box below, I've highlighted in yellow what I see as the "problem" parts of the current version.
City and Royal Burgh of Edinburgh 35 (or often just Ediburgh 35) is one of the last of the domed roof Edinburgh standard cars to be outshopped from Shrubhill Works in 1948. Another tram that on all accounts should no longer be in existence, it replaced similar tramcar 225 which was involved in a serious accident just two months before the abandonment of the system in Edinburgh in 1956.
This meant that it had a short working life in the Scottish Capital of only eight years, but it was of course set aside for preservation. Initially it was displayed in a small museum within the old Shrubhill Works, but unfortunately that had to close, meaning that the tramcar languished for several years. In 1983 however, it was sent to Blackpool where it remained until 1988. During 1985 the tramcar participated in Blackpool's Centenary Celebrations along with many other preserved tramcars, some from Blackpool, but many from other systems in the UK. After leaving Blackpool the tram returned to Scotland to participate in the 1988 Glasgow Garden Festival. It was sponsored by British Gas who originally wanted the car to be in an all over advertising livery, but after much discussion it retained it's Edinburgh livery and gained small adverts on the side of the tram, which it still carries to this day.
Once the event was over, the tram came to Crich where it has been ever since. It has never operated at the museum, with the exception of a short test period, and can now normally be found at the back of the main tram depot where it awaits a major restoration.
In recent years the tram has been a subject of much discussion as to the future of it being at Crich. For a long time many wanted it to return to Edinburgh for a proposed new transport museum. The tram was indeed still owned by Lothian District Council, and had the museum materialised it may well have departed the National Tramway Museum by now. But, after 10 years of discussions, the tramcar was transferred to the ownership of the TMS in April 2008[1], and it's future at Crich now seems a lot more certain. Popular with many enthusiasts, the tram has been "out of the depot and into the light" on several special occasions, and many hope that one day it will be returned to service in the operational fleet.
As well as these, there's also a "why is this particular tram notable" issue; yes, it's been preserved, but is there anything significant about this particular tram as opposed to the model? As a comparison, our article on Imperial War Museum Duxford contains links to our articles on Concorde, SR-71 Blackbird, Cierva C.30 etc but not to articles on the individual airplanes – it might make far more sense to have an article on the model of tram, with the information about the individual trams as sections within the article on the model of tram. (I hope that makes sense!) – iridescent21:43, 24 September 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, i'll have a work on it :D. I do agree with the notability issue. Certainly with this one anyway, as it probably is one of the least notable of all the trams at the museum (the only notable point that it has operated in Edinburgh, Blackpool, Glasgow and Crich. And going to Glasgow and Blackpool for celebrations).
MALBA, I'm jealous. No exotic museum trips in my future. Well that's not true, I am going to Chichen Itza in December but I'm in dire need of vacation so won't be even wiki-working then. TravellingCari22:42, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
Came here to ask about a use of huggle, and since I see above you recently (?) started using huggle, I'm hoping you're still dubious enough to be dissatified with it as is. Let me ask, is there a feature to avoid leaving some infection behind when debriding the
wound? I go too slow I'm sure, but the thought of leaving the nasties untouched bothers me as yet. Shenme (talk) 03:45, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
Have you ever tried using Huggle before? Even very experienced users make errors with it. That is common knowledge. What exactly are you trying to ask? J.delanoygabsadds04:46, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
More or less "have you done the research for me?" I worry that these tools have rapidity, yes, but might not make it any easier to judge the recent history of edits. Thus they can miss that the preceding series of edits might be bad, as they focus on just the latest edit or the latest editor. I've seen a number of times where simply reverting the latest most obvious bad edit actually restores another vandal's bad edits. Thus I slog along my watchlist checking recent histories manually. Do any of the tools allow an adjustable 'window' of recent history, with the view to making it easier to find the better point to revert back to? I'm wasting time, yet finding things missed using the simplistic tools.
I'm wishing not to have to sample each of the tools to find what is dissatisfying regarding this aspect. I was hoping for some revelation like "Oh, I use this because it is a good fit to the high rate of vandalism, but for a broader review use "WhaleTail" to slap em down." (sigh) Can you point out any 'reviews' of the tools? Shenme (talk) 06:49, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
You can use Huggle (or Twinkle, or VandalProof, or rollback, or popups, or old-fashioned MediaWiki) to look through the revision history of an article and revert to a clean revision if necessary – or just edit out the vandalism.
I think you may be misunderstanding what Huggle is; it's not an article-editing tool, but purely a tool for immediate rollback of recent, blatant vandalism as it happens, and only shows you the paragraph currently being vandalised. Thus, if IP#1 adds "is teh gay lol" to the Marriage & family section of George W. Bush and nobody notices it, then when IP#2 adds "sux monster cox" to Domestic policy, Huggle will only show the "Domestic policy" section of the article. There's nothing to stop you looking back over previous diffs if you suspect there might be further vandalism (generally, if the version you're reverting to was itself an IP or new-account edit).
When all is said and done, Huggle is a tool for making one particular task quicker; it's not intended for dealing with bulk-vandalism or /b/ attacks – and because it runs on rollback, cannot be used for non-blatant vandalism (inserting incorrect information, non-blatant POV pushing, possibly legitimate section blanking etc). Blaming Gurch because it doesn't do another task for which it was never designed is like blaming the spellchecker for not detecting invalid fair-use rationales.
Hard though it can be at times, one has to assume a certain degree of intelligence among our readers; our primary line of defence against vandalism was, is, and always will be people reading the articles and spotting problems. Huggle, Twinkle, and semi-protection just reduce the inflow of vandalism to a manageable level. Think of them as the MediaWiki equivalent of Tamiflu; it doesn't stop the infection entering the body, but it slows its spread enough for the body's immune system to deal with it.
I tried Huggle, but I find that just using my Watchlist and Rollback or Twinkle, but also checking the article's history, is the best way to keep an article vandal proof. Too often I find that if I just rever the latest edit I've left vandalism. I usually do a compare if that seems appropriate after I've used Rollback. Doug Weller (talk) 17:44, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
I think you're missing the point of what Huggle does; it's to prevent vandalism to those articles that aren't on peoples' watchlists as it takes the feed direct from RecentChanges, sorted by the editor's vandalism history. As a tool for monitoring your own watchlist, while it can be used for that purpose, it's a square-peg/round-hole situation and not particularly useful for it. – iridescent17:48, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
I could make it pop up a dialog box saying "Warning: You are reverting to a revision by an anonymous user, please check that this revision is free of vandalism first" but I imagine it would soon get annoying -- Gurch (talk) 18:03, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
Sorry if I was unclear. I know what Huggle's for. It was just a general comment. I just fixed a month old bit of vandalism - 'two hundred buildings excavated' had been replaced by 'tree hundred thousand buildings excavated', some kind editor changed 'tree' to 'three' without noticing it was ridiculous. You just have to know the limits of your tools, I guess. As you say, Huggle works great for the situations it is designed to handle. Doug Weller (talk) 18:48, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
Thank you. The above comments have helped me (be lazy). :-) And indeed I was not blaming Huggle for anything (much less someone who did the work to create it (Gurch?)), but asking if I should expect it to do as I was describing. Thank you again for the comments. Shenme (talk) 00:52, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
Reverted edit
Hey. I don't get that. What is wrong with redirecting the page? It obviously isn't important enough for its own article, but surely a redirect is useful. 86.147.219.114 (talk) 18:07, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
Apologies for warning you regarding blanking it - I can see you were trying to help by keeping something, even if only a redirect, at the name. On a closer look, I'm declining the {{db-bio}} request as it clearly asserts her notability. (Note to TPSs - the page in question is Madeleine d'Houet). – iridescent18:11, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
re Vancouver WA
I did include a rather lengthy explanation in my edit summary, if you bothered to look. I thought the list of private schools was far too rambling. 75.148.54.233 (talk) 19:18, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
Actually, on second thoughts I agree and sorry for reverting you. This is a level of detail that isn't appropriate for a "main" article on a town. – iridescent19:30, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
Dougweller, you wouldn't happen to be referring to this school would you? If so, I'm rather wowed right now seeing as I'm currently 2 minutes away from it. Small world eh?...—— RyanLupin • (talk)15:28, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
Haha, I'll do my utmost best to track down this 'Blahbjjiobjbvkjiv' (wow...what a pleasant name!). On finding him, I will grab him by the scruff and give him a huggle from Gurch! I also found out recently that I live in the same village as Epbr123. Small world :) —— RyanLupin • (talk)21:25, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
and his/her IP are removing material on the Youtube article, info that has been used as a reason to delete. Time to block at least on of the accounts? — Realist221:42, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
Hell, leave them to it. He can vandalise his own article as much as he likes. It keeps him out of mischief, and it's going to be deleted come what may. – iridescent21:45, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
A sock case has been set up. Oh well. In other news, crazy fake images on the new Britney single. I would never want to get on the wrong side of a crazed Britney fan, they might be more obsessed than us Jacko fans. Chilling. — Realist222:23, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
Some people accused the organizers of the all-Alaska "spot the odd one out" contest of making it too easy this year.
Lol, your so funny. Unrelated, what happened to your talk page, there are rude pictures everywhere. I'm not sure what's more scary, those pictures or images of a politician pointing a rifle at you. — Realist222:37, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
All those pictures are for a reason if you read the threads they're attached to... (There's only one that could conceivably be considered rude - it's just that it's used twice). This talkpage rarely drops below 100kb (and that despite the archive period currently being reduced to 72 hours - and once AN/K is no longer with us there's a reasonable chance this will take over as the "new Village Pump"); I deliberately occasionally use images and font changes to break up the huge mass of text. – iridescent22:47, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
Lord help us. (In a purely practical sense he's being stupid, as leaving them all out to fade is knocking cash off the value every day). – iridescent23:39, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
If you're running Twinkle, just click the "di" tab at the top of the screen when you're in an image and it'll automagically make its way to WP:PUI. – iridescent17:30, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
Dear Iridescent, thanks for reverting that vandalism in my user page, you were so quick I didn't even relise it had happened. I guess he won't be bothering anymore now. :) Rsazevedomsg17:18, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
YOU are violating neutral point of view by deleting a disscussion point that is always brought up when the issue is discussed in the media. You should include both sides of the argument fairly rather than deleting a main argument of one side. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.153.182.241 (talk) 18:37, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
Legitimately speaking, the structure of the Church of Scientology, requiring participants to pay large sums of money to progress through the ranks (at which point theoretically they may be paid in turn), is in fact akin to a Pyramid Scheme. I fail to see any difference between the two. 128.227.127.149 (talk) 18:50, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
Actually, if you have a closer look, you'll note I removed unsourced POV which was added by a user (User:Goldenhawk 0) who received an indefinite ban for adding POV of exactly the sort I removed to other articles.
Compare, also, if you will, the text of the passage I removed (not a single footnote to be seen, full of vague opinion, fluff, weasel words, and what-have-you) with the rest of the article (well-sourced, nicely worded and footnoted) and you'll see that your reinsertion of that passage is definitely not an improvement. For pete's sake, surely the fact that the section is titled "Unlikely story" should raise a red flag???
It looked (and still looks) to me like you removed a section with what appears to be a perfectly valid reference, and (re) created a section with a bluelink in the title in explicit violation of the MOS. Yes, edits by a banned user in contravention of their block may be reverted, but that does not equate to must be reverted, and these particular edits were almost a year old (and made long, long before his ban). – iridescent00:26, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
One footnote to Hindunet (yeah, obviously an unbiased and reliable source that is world-renowned for fact-checking and accuracy) for a fact that has nothing to do with the argument being advanced in the paragraph. And that trumps the fact that the section is called "Unlikely story", is a morass of synthesis, and cites nothing to support the main point it makes? I give up. -- 144.32.126.14 (talk) 00:33, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
And the point re Goldenhawk's ban was not to say "Eek, banned editor writing, must remove", but to point out that he was banned for being a single-purpose account adding POV to articles. That's the POV you're stopping me from removing. Oh well, there's only so much I can try to do. -- 144.32.126.14 (talk) 00:35, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
If you want to re-remove it (or merge it with the "criticism" section) I'm certainly not going to editwar over it. I care about this particular content dispute slightly less than I care about the Britney Spears editwar in the thread above. – iridescent00:40, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
It looks like original research from here. He says "the story of Shambuka seems false" because it, in his opinion, doesn't show the legendary king in the same way as in other stories. Pretty silly. Tombomp (talk/contribs) 07:33, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
↑This post put me into the Army of Immortals. I can now complete my evil plan to run rogue and there's nothing any of you can to to stop me mwaah ha ha. – iridescent
I for one, really like the idea of vandalizing /b/. It's not like we don't already have a long list of new open proxies at our disposal. Also, I would assume that it would not be that difficult for Cobi to write a vandal-bot to attack /b/. That would be like the ultimate payback. J.delanoygabsadds00:39, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
Wow, and they're running MediaWiki too, so it would be much easier to program for it. Hmmm. I'm starting to be really happy I chose a CS major..... J.delanoygabsadds00:46, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
If you do, then be prepared for 4chan to target you for the rest of your life and for whatever personal details Brandt can dig up to be plastered across Hivemind for ever. – iridescent00:50, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
"I propose we all get together and mass-vandalise /b/; why does it always have to go one-way?" Hilarious. That quote deserves to be turned into its own essay. Ottava Rima (talk) 02:05, 25 September 2008 (UTC)
Split off thread about editcounts as this was getting hopelessly messy
Nice tool; I've been using wannabe Kate so far. (I'll probably continue to, considering that I've used it for all my statistics so far.) Please explain to me this thing, though: why does my count say that my deleted edits are −123? Waltham, The Duke of02:52, 26 September 2008 (UTC)(minus a minute or two)
I have no idea – you'd need to ask SQL, who wrote it. Did you make a lot of edits to an article/talkpage that's since been oversighted? That's all I can think of. Does your actual editcount (displayed under "preferences") match the figure the script is giving?
WannabeKate is a lot harder on the servers, and the stats it generates are totally screwed up for anyone with an editcount of over 45000 – try it on me and you'll see that I've been on Wikipedia for just four months, have never made more than 12 edits to any article, and my main interests include Zhang Heng, Borat Sagdiyev, John D. Rockefeller and, er, Satan. – iridescent14:45, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
Mystery solved: The toolserver count can be higher than either of the others, though, because not all deleted edits are counted in the server count for users who have had an account for a long time (because the server counts have not existed forever and don't include some old deleted edits, although they should include all edits that have never been deleted, as well as edits that were deleted since the server counts came into existence). – iridescent15:11, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
At 6610 edits (6611 with this one), I think it will be a while before having a problem with Wannabe Kate. :-) (But it is hellishly slow.) Mind you, I can't see myself using any sort of automation in the near future; I never have. I hardly use Twinkle, as a matter of fact. If I do start mass editing at some point, I have an account waiting for that use.
Anyway, about the problem. I don't know why any of my edits would have been oversighted, but 123 is just too high. Wannabe Kate, as I've said, gives 6610 edits. SQL's Tool gives the same number, and also gives 6487 edits "including deleted edits", which is the number shown in my preferences. There is some consistency here. Your explanation (where have you found that?) confuses me; how many counts are there? And my account was created in December 2006—is that old? Please enlighten me. Waltham, The Duke of13:18, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
That quote is from Wikipedia:Edit count#What is an edit count?. The one showed under "preferences" is your "correct" edit count; I have no idea at all where the "extra" edits have come from. Short of going through your contributions and seeing if there's anything in there you don't recognise, I can't think of where the "phantom" edits have come from. (You only have 67 deleted edits, so it's not even a case of the figures being "switched"). If you did a lot of work on an article that's been oversighted altogether for legal reasons that could possibly explain it – eg, a run of edits to an article, all of which were to a version that included something seriously libellous – but it doesn't seem very likely. – iridescent14:25, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
Nope; I'm just a humble copy-editor. And I'm also rather economical with my edits; a reason why my percentage of mainspace edits has fallen so rapidly is that I generally make one or two (often large) edits per page, while I naturally make lots of edits when participating in discussions. Furthermore, I record my editing data every ten days for statistical purposes (not so much editcountitis as maintaining the tables and graphs in Excel :-D), and I've never spotted a suspicious spike or drop.
This is strange. And I'm also concerned that I've been keeping my books for the past year counting negative deleted edits or who knows what. This could be disastrous. Waltham, The Duke of23:43, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
← You nearly had me there. Truth be told, this is a magnificent tool, and I am glad to have discovered it (all by my own); had I known about it when I started my statistics, I might have stopped there and then. However, as far as editing breakdown is concerned, they are more detailed and offer me some data the tool doesn't. And, in any case, the practice (and fun) I've had with Excel is still useful.
The tool does offers me some new information, of course (and cool graphics). It reveals me as the shameless Wikipediholic that I am, for one; my edits do not follow the peak-and-low pattern I see in most editors, but are spread almost randomly throughout the day (I have strange sleeping patterns). And it's excellent for spying on my fellow editors, whose statistics I do not compile with the diligence I afford to my own. (evil grin)
A note: the gap has increased to 127 unaccounted edits. (And whose idea was to call the "Talk" namespace "Article's note"? It can be confusing.) Waltham, The Duke of08:50, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
I think the tool originated on ja.wikipedia, some of the translations are a bit funny. Their English is certainly better than my Japanese. – iridescent17:10, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm tired
This thread serves no meaningful purpose. It's just that I did not get but a few short hours of sleep, as per usual, and I am sleepy. I share with you because 1/ I can, 2/ with your new 72 hour archive, we can't risk you having a talk page of manageable size, and 3/ I still can. I have new messages... the dread. Please be a new thread. >_> Jennavecia (Talk)11:41, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
New threads are good; the bot always leaves the four most recent threads on the page regardless of age, and any four of the monstrosities above would still be four too any. (I've broken my unwritten rule and manually archived every "stale" thread, and it's still at 100k). Besides, without WP:AN/K around to act as a honeytrap for everyone with a weird question, I have a nasty feeling this page is going to be seeing a lot more threads. – iridescent14:48, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
Or this (make sure your volume is up high before you hit Play). Gotta love Commons, the Kid In Africa couldn't cope without that. – iridescent17:35, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm like the black cat lately. I sit and soak up the abuse for a few minutes, then turn round and try to rip the other cat's face off. – iridescent15:52, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
Yikes, no way, purge it the minute it arrives, they soon learn. I've never been one for "oh I heard it somewhere so I'll add it, it must be true". — Realist223:59, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
Bypass your cache (Open the article, then hit ctrl-shift-R if you're using Firefox or ctrl-f5 in IE). The browser keeps your most frequently viewed items in memory to save having to reload them each time, and I'm guessing this applies to you. I can see them both in the article. – iridescent23:32, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
Try opening it in another browser, if you have one, and see if it displays correctly there. Alternately, try clearing your cache completely (the instructions are on the "bypass" page linked above). – iridescent23:43, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
September 2008
Restoring this section – I didn't realise you were asking a genuine question in addition to vandalising my talkpage when I rollbacked your edits – iridescent
Unconstructive??? My edit to Mr. Newmans racing section was accurate and gave further detain into his racing history... He raced for Datsun... then Nissan. In the US Datsun was a separate name. Look at the name plates on the cars and look ath Bob Sharp history.—Preceding unsigned comment added by Jag7720 (talk • contribs)
Your edit to Paul Newman was to replace "Butch Cassidy" with "**** Cassidy" and "Dick Barbour" with "**** Barbour". As I've already told you on your own talkpage, then quite aside from the fact that Wikipedia is not censored, if you seriously think the site is improved by blanking out the words "Butch" and "Dick" even when they're people's names, then Wikipedia is not the site for you. – iridescent18:37, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
This has been bugging me all afternoon. I just think that the idea behind whatever ChildSafeTM browser caused this user's problems could be extended. For vandals and trolls, an AdminSafeTM browser could be handy—all instances of "edits", "reverted", "blocked", "please", any piped links to policy pages, etc. could be replaced with asterisks, or perhaps smiley faces. Darkspots (talk) 01:20, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
I am truly fascinated by who would ever think "Butch" is a word that would need blanking. And I'd love to know what it would make of a news release regarding Dick Cheney's taking direct control of Fannie Mae. I am especially amused that he (or the script) carefully blanked out every instance of the word "crap", but left the animation of two cats going at it – not to mention the S&M photo. – iridescent11:07, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
Leaving the photo was my favorite touch. I hadn't watched your kitty porn until now; developing a severe cat allergy has unfortunately left me fairly indifferent to cats, especially to cat photos without amusing captions. I found the video both boring and titillating, which seemed to be the exact same reaction as the black cat. In terms of the specific words the browser blanked, I think that parents/employers who set these things up are allowed to add/select their own blocked terms. Darkspots (talk) 12:01, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
I have nothing but sympathy for the black cat. Patiently putting up with it for a few minutes, then trying to scratch the other cat's face off and running away seems the most sensible thing to do in most situations. – iridescent14:26, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
Hi there. I see you've been on top of vandalism for Seaford-related articles. That's an area I probably should spend more time on myself, actually. Thanks for that!
I would like to know your views on rollback, and what criteria you would expect an editor to fulfill before you would consider granting it. I'm not yet asking for rollback, but I'm pondering it, since I do work on a few vandalism-prone pages.
If you would be kind enough to let me know on my talk it would be appreciated! --otherlleft (talk) 18:57, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
I'll grant it to anyone who asks who's not got any recent problems in their history - but I'll also take it away as necessary (or more often, leave it in place but disable Huggle/Twinkle) if I see it misused. My view on rollback is that it's only useful if you're planning to use Huggle; otherwise, Twinkle provides the same function but far better than MediaWiki rollback (the ability to customise edit summaries, auto-opening the talkpage of editors being reverted etc). Twinkle rollback can also be used to rollback edits other than blatant vandalism, whereas admin rollback can only be used for blatant vandalism. – iridescent19:01, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
Rollback can be used to revert any edit, provided a sufficiently informative edit summary is given (for blatant vandalism, the default summary is considered sufficiently informative). Huggle is not the only tool that allows customization of the edit summary used with rollback; indeed, a summary can be added without needing to use any tool or script by typing it directly into the URL, though this is somewhat inefficient for repeated use -- Gurch (talk) 19:11, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
I have reviewed that, and it's pretty clear about when it's appropriate to use rollback. Your comments leave me with more questions, however; I have no experience with Huggle/Twinkle. I will do some digging to find out what they are, but if they're some kind of client I likely will not download them. Thanks for your input!--otherlleft (talk) 19:21, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
Huggle is a Windows application which is downloaded; Twinkle is a set of Javascript files that run in your browser on Wikipedia pages. Both are intended to make tasks such as dealing with vandalism more efficient, and both will work faster with rollback; Huggle currently requires rollback in order to reduce the potential for abuse -- Gurch (talk) 19:34, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
The assorted reversion & monitoring scripts are listed here. Huggle's fastest and best, but (because it's so fast) easiest to screw up very spectacularly with if you've not totally sure what you're doing; Twinkle (and its close cousin Friendly) are best if you want control of the process (and both worth installing even if you never plan to revert anything). The others IMO all do the same thing as Huggle but more slowly and are harder to use. – iridescent20:01, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
Is there a script for counting colons so I indent properly, as well?;) In all seriousness, I probably wouldn't ask for rollback at this time if it can't be used most efficiently without one of these scripts. The learning curve would offset the amount of time saved, at least in my case; and I certainly wouldn't want to cause problems when my intention is to solve them! Thank you both for your insightful input - maybe once I retire or win the lottery I will seek additional rights!--otherlleft (talk) 20:07, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
Twinkle, at least, there's nothing to learn – you just see a couple of "revert" buttons appear next to the most recent change in the history, and assorted delete/warn buttons at the top of the page when you're in an an article/talkpage, as appropriate. Huggle is deceptively easy to use (e.g., the basic revert function is so easy, it's very tempting to misuse it rather than take the time to find the correct button). Gurch[1] will no doubt let me know if I'm mischaracterising Huggle here, but I think that's a reasonably accurate summary. – iridescent20:12, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
[1] If you're not aware, Gurch is the author of Huggle
I did determine Gurch's role by reviewing his user page, but thank you for making sure. And thank you also for being clear about how easy these tools are to use. I consider myself more tech-savvy than 85% of people I know, which is enough to make me realize how dangerous my ignorance can be! However, I may just be acting a bit gun-shy. If you're willing to grant me rollback I will accept it, provided you quickly take it away again if it scare me too much. ;)--otherlleft (talk) 20:22, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
Hello. Did you ever check how your user and user talk pages look like in the modern skin? It is very popular due to its simplicity and usability, however your design (which is, literally, floating around Wikipedia) kills the usability entirely by obscuring all page action buttons as well as personal links. Page content should generally be confined to the space it's been given by the skin's designer and any floating ideas should be carefully considered so they do not obstruct the interface. Regards, Миша1320:49, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
I've removed the absolute positioning if it's causing a nuisance – but to be honest (and I mean no disrespect to those who do use it) if it still isn't working on the modern skin, I'm not going to lose too much sleep over it. As the default setting, I'd (conservatively) estimate that 99% of Wikipedia's editors at a minimum – and as near to 100% of users as makes no difference – are using Monobook, and that those who have the technical savvy to change their skin settings in preferences also have the savvy to use the "back" button on their browser. As you say, the absolute-positioning is hardly unusual (I can't even remember who's userpage I took it from originally), and I've never seen a complaint about it on any talkpage. This isn't meant to sound snotty, and you have my sincere apologies if it was causing you problems. – iridescent21:12, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
Thank you, it looks well now. I don't really know how people use modern, but you can suspect it's mostly the long-time and experienced users (not that actually changing the skin is some rocket science). As of hitting the "back" button - that's not exactly a solution - as you could see, if I wanted/needed, I couldn't perform any of the standard actions on your userpages without manually messing with the URL. Thanks again and cheers, Миша1323:38, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
True, but I have checked how it looks under different skins and the only problem I could find was the "logout" button obscured under "cologneblue". This is quite different from covering both c-actions and p-personal entirely. Миша1323:38, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
re my change to "Electra" (aka Elektra) by Euripides
Dear iridescent,
I've got the following distressing message, which I cannot understand. I've merely changed my old URL to bring it up to date with my new one. I haven't had this trouble with any of the other changes. Why with this one? I've absolutely no intentions of ever vandalising anything, let alone wikipedia which I use very frequently and which I admire. Many thanks,
Could you please reply here:
George Theodoridis: jacker00@y7mail.com
User talk:58.175.81.202 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (Difference between revisions) Revision as of 23:33, 26 September 2008 (edit) RyanLupin (Talk | contribs) (Message re. Electra (Euripides) (HG)) ← Previous edit Revision as of 23:44, 26 September 2008 (edit) (undo) Iridescent (Talk | contribs) (Level 2 warning re. Electra (Euripides) (HG)) Next edit → Line 3: Line 3: Welcome to Wikipedia. The recent edit you made to Electra (Euripides) has been reverted, as it appears to be unconstructive. Use the sandbox for testing; if you believe the edit was constructive, ensure that you provide an informative edit summary. You may also wish to read the introduction to editing. Thank you. —— RyanLupin • (talk) 23:33, 26 September 2008 (UTC) Welcome to Wikipedia. The recent edit you made to Electra (Euripides) has been reverted, as it appears to be unconstructive. Use the sandbox for testing; if you believe the edit was constructive, ensure that you provide an informative edit summary. You may also wish to read the introduction to editing. Thank you. —— RyanLupin • (talk) 23:33, 26 September 2008 (UTC)
The recent edit you made to Electra (Euripides) constitutes vandalism, and has been reverted. Please do not continue to vandalize pages; use the sandbox for testing. Thank you. – iridescent 23:44, 26 September 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.175.81.202 (talk)
In the case of my "warning", it was that this change looked to me like it was making it incoherent – I agree on reflection that it was harsh. The other two both look like "spam" warnings regarding adding external links to Wikipedia. We get a very high level of people trying to use Wikipedia to promote their businesses; someone has seen you adding large numbers of external links without explanation and jumped to an unfair conclusion. Feel free to remove the warnings from your talkpage; you can avoid this problem in future by always using an edit summary for whatever changes you make. – iridescent11:15, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
Fine, Iridescent.
I had to make all these changes at pretty much the same time because I have just now moved to a new URL and have not yet placed a redirection on the old one. I doubt it will happen again in too short a space of time.
I understand about the "spamming" problem that can occur if the page is not watched very carefully. I have only just now come across the "summary" box so I'll be making use of it, if I'll need to make any further changes.
Incidentally, you will note that my site has no advertising at all. There is only a link to another website that has even more translations available for people to download free of any charge. I have no financial interest in the website and I only provide these translations on the net for the sake of students of the Ancient Greek Language or of the Classics, or of the Literature of 5th century BCE, who live in remote areas where other, hard copy translations are not available and for the sake of students who are simply too poor to purchase them. Actors and Directors whose group cannot afford the copyrights imposed by other translators will also obtain my permission to stage my translations free of charge.
There is a great interest shown in these translations also by teachers, lecturers and tutors who wish to discuss the various interpretations of those plays with me and with their students and are very thankful for their existence. My own experience as a teacher, lecturer and tutor has indicated to me that there is always a need for newer, fresher translations that might add to the understanding of this Literature and so, I have tried to provide just that. The more translations a student or a thespian can access, the better that student and thespian feels!
I am hoping to eventually translate all of the extant works of those four playwrights and to have them all freely available to the folk I've listed above.
Many thanks,
George
Solowords (talk) 21:39, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
No problem at all. Don't be totally surprised – or take it personally – if you get reverted again; feel free to unrevert and to remove any warnings from your talkpage. A newly registered account adding a lot of external links does, unfortunately, set off warning lights in the mind of anyone seeing it, as so many people do try to use us as a host for advertising. – iridescent21:42, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
No problem – but be aware that it (deliberately) displays differently on Macs and PCs; on Macs it displays in Zapfino (see right) and on PCs it displays in the "childlike scrawl" Segoe Script font. – iridescent15:07, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
Boring… the <span style="font-family: Mac font, Wintel font"> is IMO quite A Useful Thing, as Macs & PCs have different font sets – if you just set a single font, then users of the other format to the font you've used just get it in the default character set. (So in OSX fancy sigs like Jennavecia's just appear as plain-text). – iridescent15:41, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
You will once Uncle Bill gets his paws on you – it's part of the default Vista set now. There's a balance between "being distinctive" and "that asshole with the long sig coding". – iridescent20:30, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
A Question
Do you have to be an admin to give warnings about edit wars. I couldn't find the tool on twinkle because i noticed this. I see the user has been blocked by User:Bidgee but i'm curious about the edit war warnings. Ogioh (talk) 15:04, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
They're all listed here (bookmark it), or the "Warn" button on Twinkle will bring up the list; the relevant Twinkle warning is "Potentially violating the three-revert-rule" under "Single issue warnings", or {{subst:uw-3rr}} if you want to add it manually. Don't use Twinkle warnings unless you're sure you know what you're doing – "use of an automated tool" isn't an excuse if you do something wrong with it, and you won't be treated any differently if you mess up with Twinkle/Huggle/Friendly etc than if you manually typed in the warning yourself – and 3RRdoesn't simply mean "don't revert someone three times", as there are plenty of times when it is legitimate to revert someone repeatedly. – iridescent15:16, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
The lack of an actual "edit warring" warning template confused me at first. Thought Twinkle didn't have it and then I realised the potentially violating 3rr was the only one. Last night was the first time I ever looked for it, c.f. Virgin AmericaTravellingCari15:51, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
I don't think I've ever used it - I cut & paste the text of {{uw-3rr}} and amend it to fit. It's rare that you come across a 3rr dispute where a boilerplate warning's appropriate – in my experience, either one party's clearly being disruptive, or the situation needs a customised explanation. – iridescent15:56, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
Very true. This one did simply because they'd all been warned against reverting and another article had been fully protected around the same issue. Now it was more a question of, "I mean it, knock it off." Didn't warrant a full protection, just a thwapping. TravellingCari17:32, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
I have very few impersonators. There was the one on Wikibooks that created an account in my name (before SUL) and used a subpage to practice my sig. Apparently so inexperienced they were that they didn't know to just cut the code from the edit window. XD So they just kept practicing. HAhahaah. It's really funny now that I think about it. That's really about it for impersonators for me, I think. Jennavecia (Talk)18:24, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
As does Grawp, as does Slim… Does everyone on this thread realise that they're recreating an identical conversation still on this page from a couple of days ago? – iridescent19:17, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
I'm not SUL, precisely because this account exists on de.;
These edits go back to early 2007, when SUL was just a glint in Brion's eye;
That can't possibly be the case – I've edited probably 50,000 pages (at least) that also exist on other language wikis, and my contribs don't show up there. – iridescent19:47, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
They were transwikied. Most regular contributors will have transwikied edits there (and often on more than one wiki). Thanks to the oddities of MediaWiki, until SUL came along anyone could create an account on the target wiki and 'claim' those transwikied edits (so much for the GFDL) -- Gurch (talk) 19:49, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
Well, the English Wikipedia doesn't import pages from elsewhere, so it doesn't have a policy on it. As far as I'm aware the German Wikipedia is the only one to import articles from here, but I think a few other projects have imported a handful of common maintenance templates (some of which I happened to have edited), presumably because importing them with their history is better than copy-and-pasting them -- Gurch (talk) 19:55, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
Actually, scratch that – on reflection, this makes no sense. So I'm unable to usurp this account and set up SUL because of my own contribs? – iridescent22:08, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
It would appear so. Does that actually prevent you setting up a unified login, though? If I remember its workings correctly (which I may not), since the account named "Iridescent" on this wiki is the oldest and most active one by that name, it should assign the unified login name of "Iridescent" to you, which then gives you unified login on this project and all other projects that don't have an "Iridescent". I guess something is preventing that. There does seem to be something odd about Iridescent@de.wikipedia; all the edits are transwikied, and there's no entry for that user in the creation log, yet despite this the account seems to exist locally. I created an account on de.wikipedia long before unified login, and also before any of the transwiki-ing; while this means the transwikied edits are attributed to an account that is mine, it also means that that account now has edits that were made before its creation date. (And if you thought that was weird, some of my edits transwikied to Deletionpedia have timestamps in the future). My transwikied edits on other wikis that I never created accounts on now seem to belong to my unified account, since there was never a local "Gurch" account; I was under the impression that transwikied edits to wikis where there was no local user with that name were assigned a user id of 0, which sounds a little odd but is consistent with things like the user "MediaWiki default" which has contributions in every MediaWiki installation but no entry in the users table. Evidently, though, that is not the case for Iridescent@de.wikipedia. (Isn't MediaWiki fun? :/) -- 86.150.54.223 (talk) 22:52, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
Hm, while on the subject of MediaWiki user account weirdness, I just typed that into a page that indicated I was logged in (username at the top, no "you are not logged in" banner) and yet it decided I was logged out and saved it under my IP address. (Did I ever tell you about the time I found a user account that existed but could not be blocked? Good thing it wasn't being used for vandalism) -- Gurch (talk) 22:57, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
<---(unindent) Iridescent, the de.wiki account *is* you, I had similar accounts on several other WMF wikis before SUL, and they were all unified to mine when I went through the process. I only had to fix my namesake account on jp.wiki, because it was a separately registered account, though it never had any edits. On a side note, I am reassured that, because I have not yet had any impersonators (Grawp moving my userpages notwithstanding), I must still be a low-profile admin. YAY!! :-) Risker (talk) 23:13, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
This is appalling... :-D Look at all those numbers... I dislike usernames comprising of nothing but a usual, simple name and a strange number at the end. (Unusual names are fine; the numbers just make them stranger.) In any case, I did mention that I checked the version with the definite article; it's the one normally used as a title. I've seen cases of Duke as a first name (probably many of the number versions), though there are titles here as well. Ah, well. For all it's worth, I seem to have by far the most edits amongst Wikipedia's dukes. Waltham, The Duke of00:19, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
(To Risker) Why would the de.wiki account be me? I speak perhaps four words of German and AKAIK have never read a de.wiki page, let alone edited one (and the same goes for Wikiquote*, the other wiki at which I have an impersonator account); my password doesn't work on the de.wiki account; I'm unable to merge these accounts when attempting to set up SUL (while places like Commons and meta where I did have an existing account merged no-problem). The edits are obviously mine, but that seems to be the only connection. – iridescent20:23, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
*I have my own theory as to who has "squatted" my Wikiquote account and why
Unlike the de.wikipedia account, though, it doesn't have any edits. So you should be able to usurp it if you ask -- Gurch (talk) 20:34, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
I believe I'll survive. My IP address may be no secret (and shift every couple of days anyway), but it doesn't mean I want Runtaxyehucatolister working his/her/its charms on me with whatever other security holes there are in MediaWiki. Besides, with all due respect to whichever editors there aren't socks, I think WQ is about as useful as a stapler in a condom warehouse. – iridescent20:43, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
thoughts
I've decided that you have this wrong. but, as you know, I'm raher biased because I'm rather easy on RFA candidates. WSC isn't a vandal, seems to want to help out with admin stuff, and yet doesn't start/finish articles towards Wiki-invented "artificial standards". (ie, fa and ga). In other words, looks good to me. We've disagreed on other stuff, but at the same time, I was surprised to see you in the oppose section on this particular rfa. Just saying. I don't expect you to change your oppsition, just was surprised to see you land where you did.Keeperǀ7620:35, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
By an odd coincidence, I was posting on exactly this topic to your talk as you posted this. While I'm not at the Realist/Giano "must have foo FAs and bar GAs" level, I do think mainspace edits are important – not necessarily great prose, but just something to show they understand how hard article-writing is. At the end of the day, were every bot, ANI policy-wonk, arb, admin, Huggler and wikilawyer to vanish in the Wiki-rapture tomorrow, Wikipedia would survive (albeit get very messy very quickly); were the article-writers to vanish, we'd just be a fourth-rate chatroom with some very expensive servers. This is why the Gianos, Vintagekitses, Malleuses et al are respected despite not always treating the Great God Policy with due respect – and why I'll openly admit to occasionally proxying for banned editors when they have a constructive suggestion to make, despite it breaking every policy in the book; at the end of the day, the mainspace is all that we're about and policy arguments are just froth on the coffee. – iridescent20:55, 27 September 2008 (UTC)
Obviously I can't speak for Giano or anyone else, but I believe that I treat the Great God Policy with all the respect that it deserves. Too many forget why the policies were put in place, and instead see enforcing them as an end in itself. And too many forget that wikipedia's most important policy is ignore all rules. "Rules are for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools." --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 00:02, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
That's "legitimate socking"; a bug in the current software is preventing blocked users from editing their own talkpages, so the only way to post any kind of {{unblock}} request is to create a sock. Anyone who took any action against him based on that would be very harsh. – iridescent21:21, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the smarmy comments. I had already modified my AWB settings before your helpful remarks. — MapsMan [ talk | cont ] — 22:16, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
No, that wasn't aimed at you. Your kind of remark, however, has been the final straw. — MapsMan [ talk | cont ] — 22:27, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
For the benefit of any passing TPSs, the supreme irony here is that MM was probably the single editor on Wikipedia whose history was closest to mine. (A roads? ✓ River crossings? ✓ Stubs on streets? ✓ Abandoned railways? ✓ Obscure indie bands? ✓ Strings of minor edits? ✓) At the risk of prompting my own thread at Wikipedia Review, I think there may be some kind of signal here, if I'm really becoming part of the bureaucracy. It's no secret that the combination combination of kids and policy-wonks are taking control here, and I have no intention of becoming part of that. – iridescent22:38, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
That could be because Newman died recently. I run a Greasemonkey filter found here. I think WOT, ProCon, and Glubble all do this as well. I'll just fix my userscript.
Probably why it's never affected me before is that I rarely add links. I think the captcha is throwing off the filter and making it run in textareas. Either way, I'll fix my copy. 24.18.240.159 (talk) 01:29, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
al franken and serena williams
i keep getting flagged for information that i have edited on these two people...first for putting that serena williams weighs 185 lbs...i know her official biography states 150, but i met her a few weeks ago at a party here in new york and she personally told me she typically weighs anywhere between 185 to 190 lbs depending on her training and whatnot...also, i have had sex with al franken and i am a man..i think that makes him a homosexual...i just want people to know...thanks for your consideration —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.175.49.59 (talk) 21:25, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
That's golden :-). Do with him as you please, although he's likely correct about serena (not the meeting her part, just the weight part...) Keeperǀ7621:33, 29 September 2008 (UTC)
You have removed edits I have made from Aliens and UFO articles. I had put that they both exist, and I know this is true because I have been abducted, and I've had sex with Aliens. You also removed the information about Aliens weighing 185 pounds that I added. I know this is true because the Alien told me, when I was having sex with it, that they all weigh between 185 and 190, depending on when they last ate. So is it can be tiem for you to be putting this information back nao, plz?
Although having looked more closely at this IP's history, it's making these edits using Huggle. You can only do that if your main account has rollback – c'mon, who was it? (San Francisco, to save you looking…) – iridescent21:06, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
I was randomly logged out while huggling. But I was intentionally logged out to harrass you. Iz borked wiki and ip harrass admin. I can haz ban nao? Jennavecia (Talk)01:26, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
Jennavecia has been blocked indefinitely from editing in accordance with Wikipedia's blocking policy for abusive sockpuppetry and misusing automated tools. If you believe this block is unjustified you may contest this block by adding the text {{unblock|your reason here}} to her talk page. But don't bother because nobody will ever forgive her evil ways. – iridescent01:31, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
This is unacceptable, and has to change. And I've just found the opportunity: "List of Governors of Alaska" has been recently featured. I know we should do something about it, but I don't know what. (Perhaps I should repeat that thing I did to the servers last week and shut the site down.)
Take this one to Keeper's talk. I could not care less about Sarah Palin, think Intelligent Design sounds like something someone thought up in the bath one day whilst drunk, have no strong opinions for or against paid editing, and still have no idea who Lyndon LaRouche is and have no desire to find out. I'm not the one to talk to on the "hot button" topics. – iridescent13:15, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I couldn't agree more about Intelligent Design. I just remembered as I was reading the late, as usual, Signpost yesterday that someone on this page had a fixation with Palin, so I thought I'd post. (For those who care, here's a quote's quotation of a quote about the subject which I find amusing; it also alludes to the problem of the unrecognisability of irony in modern America.) Waltham, The Duke of14:23, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
Gwen Ifil
Hi, since admins are the only ones who can protect articles, i was wondering if you could protect the Gwen Ifil article, i noticed you had reverted recent vandalism of the page, such vandalism is becoming a problem as right wing editors continue to try to create controversy where there isnt any. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.241.45.26 (talk) 15:49, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
✓ Done – I've put a 24hour semiprotection on it as it seems to be being targeted by a lot of IPs today. Remember, this will also prevent you from editing it. – iridescent15:51, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for your help on the Robert Sungenis page and the Himmler page. I just noticed that 130.13.216.248 tried to insert an entire article written by a friend of Sungenis and also a load of other strong POV, original research and misinformation. If you look at the history, you'll see that the edits this person tried to put in are almost exactly the same as 130.13.217.229 tried to put in back in August on this entry. And then Antique Rose reverted the changes. You'll also notice that both times, the person targeted Sungenis' and Heinrich Himmler's entries. So it would seem that the same person is at work, but from a different computer. Both IPs trace back to Denver, CO. Thank you again for helping to protect both of these entries (Sungenis and Himmler) from mischief.
No - because it was deleted following discussion you will need to go to deletion review and follow the instructions there. This looks to me to be an out-of-process deletion - you can't see the deleted version but I can, and it clearly didn't meet the criteria for speedy deletion - so the deletion will almost certainly be overturned. – iridescent02:31, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately the review got opened and closed in the few hours I'm not behind the computer (it does happen) so I missed the chance to add my 2 cents. I had already contacted TPH about the very fast closure of the AfD. If you could post the deleted article in my sandbox I'd like to have a go at rebuilding it. Thanks, SIS11:10, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
I've added both versions of the article (the version STBB wrote last week, and an earlier version by User:Cinder Block written in 2005 and speedied in April 2008) to your sandbox. If you recreate the article using these as a basis, let me know and I'll perform a history-merge for the benefit of GFDL. – iridescent13:11, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
The article looks good to me, although the image almost certainly doesn't pass Fair Use (images of living people almost never do, unless it's to make a particular point about how they looked at a particular point in the past so aren't replaceable), so don't be surprised if it vanishes at some point. Cinder Block herself is a former Wikipedian (hasn't edited since 2006), but the links on her userpage will probably give you a way to get hold of her to pester her into releasing a free-use image of the band. – iridescent16:34, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
I've had polite, friendly and helpful conversations on Wikipedia with Thekohser, multiple heads of the PoetTaxCorn hydra, The_undertow, Can't sleep and many more Enemies Of The People, and had some fantastically foul-tempered abuse from some of the Pillars Of The Community. One thing I do agree with the WP:BADSITES about is the arbitrary nature of who's "good" and "bad" at any given time. (Just read the sorry story of MyWikiBiz for a demonstration of how policy's made up as we go along). Beta's problem wasn't so much the clique of ZOMGevil dramamongers, but his unwillingness to ever admit that anything he did was wrong – just compare the streams of "fuck off and don't argue with me"s in his talkpage history with all the "thanks for bringing this problem to my attention, I'll fix it now"s on Gurch's or Misza's. – iridescent19:51, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
Hydra, I like. I love staying fairly under the radar. I think the only person I've come to debate with was a debate of A7, really low key. I don 't care enough to argue, truly. It's just not worth it. I agree, communication is key. When I first started to launch the museums project, there was a tagging related fall out which I brought up at the RfA to show I wasn't hiding it -- and no one voted on it. What came up? Kurt, Le Grand Roi, and Majorly trolling; plus a handful of very valid neutrals (including one from the hydra, whose screen name I didn't recognise). TravellingCari20:25, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
"Kurt, Le Grand Roi, and Majorly trolling"? Oh, surely not! (In some defense; Kurt makes some very good mainspace contributions, and Majorly's vision of how things ought to work is genuinely internally consistent, it's just totally different to everyone else's, and I honestly believe he sees his posts as "helpful". LGR was, well, LGR). – iridescent20:32, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
Actually how I meant that was only Majorly trolling. And in that one he blatantly was - he was in his "User is an editor" mode. LGR and I never saw eye-to-eye, but like other editors he was young and meant well. At least he tried to contribute. Kurt amuses me. I've never had much interaction with him outside is "it exists" and "prima facie" !votes but I think I did thank him for being the first to call me a vandal. I live. If that was the worst that people could find to say about me during that week, I think I've done OK. there are others now more active in RfA who would oppose me -- Realist for one - but that's OK. I think RfA is broken but not because of the people involved. I'd support anyone who's rationale explained why they said what they did. Everyone has their right to an opinion -- it's trolling and drama that drives me nuts. TravellingCari20:37, 30 September 2008 (UTC)
And you really shouldn't look back. Red and yellow? Really?
Anyway, I shouldn't be so ungrateful in your place for having such an interesting talk page; you'll only find discussions about dashes and succession boxes in mine. Cartwright spends most of his day solving Sudokus. Waltham, The Duke of03:03, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
Seeing what was in my e-mail when I came back online. I'd prefer the batshit to stay on my user page. People go seriously over the line. Really, do you check your common sense while editing. Seriously people! TravellingCari03:13, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
(tDoW) My original sig was stolen from someone else. I'm far more embarrassed by the Comic Sans than by the colors.
(Tcari) I have a firm "If there wasn't a good reason to keep this offwiki I won't reply to your email" policy and stick to it. The loons give up very quickly. Albeit come here to be loons instead. (Look up, look down). – iridescent03:17, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
In honor of Keeper, unindenting the colon farm. That's why I've taken to responding on their talk, c.f. User_talk:Callpr. I don't want them to know my e-mail and I can respond without disclosing the e-mail. I don't get people's allergy to the unblock template. Why make it complicated. OK, it's 23:55, I could theoretically be in bed before midnight :o TravellingCari03:55, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
I hate Comic Sans. My impression is that people use it whenever they want something to "feel friendly", even if it shouldn't (or won't anyway). Waltham, The Duke of14:35, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
I stole my font from someone, I don't like the standard wiki sig one. There's a whole thread in Keeper's archives when I tried to change the colour. It's "Bug zapper blue" TravellingCari15:37, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
That's why I can see it, I suppose. I have a short script, courtesy of Tony1, that darkens the colour of links. I just can't tolerate that sea of bright blue in every second page, with the abundance of over-linking that characterises today's Wikipedia. Waltham, The Duke of17:16, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
So what colour does it appear to you? I wanted to change it but the colour names don't look like what they're supposed to c.f. lavender, purple, silver so I stay boring TravellingCari17:33, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
Oh, it's still the bug-zapper blue. The script doesn't make all links appear darker than normally, but changes the colour of the proper links to a certain, darker hue. It's here, in case you're interested.
They really need to rename that thing, it gets more ironic each time I see it. I wonder if "The Poetlister Barnstar" is available? – iridescent15:33, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
Considering how much anti-vandal work Rick did, it seems appropriate to me even though his account is blocked, since it was blocked only because it was compromised, not because he did anything wrong. J.delanoygabsadds17:34, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm curious too. All I see is: 15:36, 16 July 2008 WBOSITG (Talk | contribs | block) blocked "RickK (Talk | contribs)" (account creation blocked) with an expiry time of indefinite (Compromised) (Unblock) which reflects what JD said. I think I'm one of a small handful who doesn't know the RickK story. My e-mail is open if this is a case of beans to discuss on wiki. TravellingCari20:18, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
Hi Iridescent. I couldn't help but notice that your last 35+ blocks prevent the user from editing their talk page to appeal their block. There's currently a thread denouncing this practice at WP:AN. If you are using a blocking script please update it, and please revisit your recent blocks, especially the longer ones. Thanks. -- zzuuzz(talk)15:34, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
✓ Done – I haven't re-done some 24h blocks from yesterday evening which are going to expire in a couple of hours, but everything else has been re-done with talkpage editing permitted. – iridescent15:57, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
Just so you know why this is happening: if you block someone with Huggle, for some reason, it automatically unchecks that box in the API. So for now, we're stuck using Special:BlockIP. Which sucks. I didn't realize before now how much I like Huggle's block feature. J.delanoygabsadds17:37, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
It doesn't uncheck that box in the API, there is no option in the API to enable/disable it, and for some insane reason it defaults to blocking talk page edits. This is bug 15787. It is rather annoying when poorly thought out changes to MediaWiki render previously working external tools unusable :/ -- Gurch (talk) 22:02, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
Especially, a change to MediaWiki that nobody wanted and there seems no particular use for. Yes, zOMG Grawp uploaded goatse to his talk page. That's why why we have an "undo" feature. – iridescent16:26, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Pevensey
I have reverted a few non-constructive edits recently on the Pevensey article, and a few minutes ago I had to do revert once more. There have been two IPs involved, but its the same bit of vandalism each time. I do not know how I should proceed, so I thought I would bring it to an Admins attention. I chose you because you reverted the same article last week, and issued a final warning. ++ MortimerCat (talk) 23:35, 1 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm having trouble with Soapfan06 who never uses edit summaries when removing content from Britney Spears. As seen here, here, and here, the user continually removes content without an edit summary or discussion on the talk page. I may have broken the 3revert rule myself, I didn't keep count, but this is becoming disruptive. The Bookkeeper(of the Occult)06:00, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Take it to AN/3RR or the appropriate talkpage(s). I sorted out the previous problem regarding images on this article as a favor to R2, but I have no interest in or knowledge of Britney Spears so am not going to get involved in deciding what edits are or aren't valid. – iridescent16:32, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the shouting, but no. If you want to request an unblock, follow the instructions on the "blocked" notice. It might help your case if you stopped vandalising, given that your last piece of vandalism was three minutes before this request. – iridescent16:28, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Not a race, especially not with MediaWiki and Huggle not cooperating with each other and every edit needing checking. The logs of Wikipedia in recent weeks are littered with blanked huggle.css pages... – iridescent18:00, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Sorry
My apologies regarding the Medditeranean Games, I was attempting to remove "Who Farted?" by undoing but I did not notice that before that their was another vandalism comment.(Hi I'm Cole)
Please reply on my talk page.
A Cool Editor (talk) 17:56, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
(diff) (hist) . . N User talk:79.70.26.36; 18:15 . . (+784) . . Iridescent (Talk | contribs) (Message re. Paper chromatography (HG))
(diff) (hist) . . m José Carreras; 18:15 . . (+30,533) . . Iridescent (Talk | contribs) (Reverted edits by 12.218.118.56 to last version by 92.40.157.57 (HG))
(diff) (hist) . . m Homer Simpson; 18:15 . . (+1) . . Iridescent (Talk | contribs) (Reverted edits by Crazyturd to last version by Iridescent (HG))
Well, I'm not saying that it is a race...it was just more a way of saying "good work" without actually saying "good work"... =D Cheers! —the_ed17— 18:26, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Oh, wasn't biting, and thanks - more just a general warning that the "use it at your own risk" warning currently at the top of all the Huggle pages means what it says! MediaWiki changes have made it very unstable, and everyone using it who doesn't check their edits is leaving a trail of destruction at the moment (witness the 35 incorrect blocks I made yesterday, for a rather glaring example). – iridescent18:30, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Eh, instead of biting the user maybe you could read his edit summary about why he blanked it? The user wrote the article and then realized he wasn't in the sandbox and apparently wanted to write a bit before putting it in mainspace. JoshuaZ (talk) 18:20, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Because I'm patrolling recent changes using Huggle which doesn't currently have a block function. It's a far more efficient use of time to report x number of vandals to AIV, then flip browsers and block x number of vandals from AIV (to "cancel out" any additional burden on the AIV patrollers), then to flip between programs and manually block the editor each time a problem user is identified. – iridescent19:05, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Huggle has a block function for me, which automatically pops up if a final warning has already been issued. In cases where I don't see the need for a final warning, I just go into the browser tab, click to open page in external browser, then click the block button from there, leaving a warning with TW. It's super speedy. Jennavecia (Talk)19:09, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
It should be disabled - Gurch has removed the option from the configuration. If it's still giving you the option, don't use it, and go to system/options and manually disable it from within Huggle. See this thread, and then have the joyful experience of manually fixing the last 40 blocks in your log. – iridescent19:13, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
That particular one had a subtext to it, regarding two (ahem) high profile formerusers objecting to talkpages discussing their alleged misdemeanours being the first Google hits on their names – it didn't just come out of nowhere. Jimbo would probably have unilaterally enforced it once the suggestion was raised. – iridescent20:07, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
OK, the 'allowusertalk' block option was added to the API in this revision. So now I have to wait until that revision goes live, and then release a new version of Huggle, and then you can have blocking back... -- Gurch (talk) 21:50, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to make constructive contributions to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to Second Coming, did not appear to be constructive and has been removed. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and read the welcome page to learn more about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. Thank you. This edit was unconstructive.Jennavecia (Talk)00:31, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Uhm... c.c ... hi, Iridescent... uhm... so, *twists toe of shoe on floor* u.u ... I just wanted to say that, uh, I'm... I'm sorry for templating you. .___. Jennavecia (Talk)01:05, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Thankyou. I hope you've learnt your lesson and will go on to become a valued editor here, rather than a vandal who ignores policy and consensus. ChaoticReality01:11, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for your contribution to User talk:Jennavecia, but we are trying to write an encyclopedia here, so please keep your edits factual and neutral. Our readers are looking for serious articles and will not find joke edits amusing. Remember, millions of people read Wikipedia, so we have to take what we do here seriously. If you'd like to experiment with editing, use the sandbox to get started. Thank you. This could be considered harassment in some circles... not saying in my circle... just sayin'.Jennavecia (Talk)01:14, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Iri: I've warned Jenna against templating you again. Some people here just don't understand how to co-operate with others to build an encyclopedia. Take it easy, ChaoticReality01:25, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
I feel dumb after having read this. Like, I think I lost English knowledge in reading this tragic insult to our language. I'm not even sure what is being said here... it's like... stupid in text form. Jennavecia (Talk)23:25, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
You know they don't get a quota, right? What do you think the odds are that this one has something useful to say? – iridescent23:34, 2 October 2008 (UTC)
What, what, what? Leave him blocked thus ensuring no more epic jewels of wisdom like the above are bestowed upon us? Psh. Please, wo/man. Get wit it. Jennavecia (Talk)00:52, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Assuming this is Wiki brah/JeanLatore (he's the only long-term vandal I'm aware of who stalks my talkpage, and if it's not him it's a reasonable facsimile) it's a moot point, since his odds of being unbanned are zero – iridescent13:24, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
No problem... It looks like you actually only removed one, which I've restored. The English Parliament with its hereditary positions is confusing if you're not familiar with it. – iridescent01:37, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Saw your note, this week has been batshit, with tomorrow likely to be more of the same and then I'm going to be offline for some of the weekend. Hope to look at this by Sunday. TravellingCari03:53, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
WILMOT, (JOHN EARDLEY,) son of the chief-justice, was born at Derby, in 1748, and received his education at Westminster and Oxford, where he obtained a fellowship of All Souls' College. He, at first, studied under Doctor (afterwards Bishop) Warburton, for the church; but afterwards, imbibing a partiality for the law, he came to the bar; a step, which his father called, " quitting a bed of roses for a crown ot' thorns." In 1776, about five years after his call, he was returned to parliament for Tiverton, in Devonshire; and, taking part with the opposition, attacked the ministerial party in a pamphlet, denouncing the continuance of war. In 1781, he was appointed a master in Chancery; and, in 1782, was commissioned, in conjunction with others, to inquire into the distribution of the sums destined for the relief ot the American loyalists. In the following year, he spoke on the subject in parliament; and, in reply to Mr. Fox s condemnation of the large sums expended on the American sufferers, declared " he would share with them his last shilling and his last loaf." In 1784, and the parliament which followed in 1790, he sat as member for Coventry, and supported the views of Mr. Pitt during every session. He was particularly hostile to the French revolution ; and, by his exertions, obtained the distribution of a fund, under the sanction of parliament, in behalf of the emigrants from that country. In 1804, he retired altogether from public life; and, devoting himself to literary pursuits, published, shortly afterwards, a life of his father, and also of Bishop Hough. Previously to this, he had written A Treatise on the Laws and Customs of England; and, in the year of his death, which occurred in June, 1815, printed An Historical Review of the Commission relative to the American Loyalists. He was a man of the most upright and unimpeachable character, both public and private; and, in the former, was equally distinguished for his learning and eloquence. He was twice married : first, to the only daughter of S. Sainthell, Esq., by whom he had one son and four daughters, who survived him ; and, secondly, in 1793, to Miss Hastam, by whom he had two children, who died in their infancy.
NB – be careful as there were four John Eardley Wilmots, all of whom held similar positions; see this conversation.
Not really a response or a follow-up to my own response to your post on my talk page, but I noticed the changes to the protection and block interfaces...and I've only been gone a month. Perhaps if I go away more often, more improvements will happen. :D (Rollback-like adminship? No further use of dispute resolution, as disputes become a thing of the past? Meh). Thanks again. :) Acalamari17:44, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
The change you'd better be aware of is, if you're using any kind of blocking script (including Huggle etc) they'll auto-ban any blocked editor from editing their talkpage, as for some insane reason the devs have made that the default setting with no way to change it – see this thread. Welcome back… – iridescent17:53, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Huggle. If you're planning on using it, be aware that it's very easy to make mistakes with it if you don't know what you're doing, and that you will be held responsible for any edits you make with it, as if you'd manually typed them in, and that no admin will bat an eyelid at blocking you if you appear to be misusing it. – iridescent19:14, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
I have looked at this before but it says the following : MEDIAWIKI CHANGES/BUGS HAVE BROKEN HUGGLE USE SOMETHING ELSE THANKS
It's semi-stable - the block function is totally disabled; the deletion functions work about 50% of the time; the revert-and-warn mechanisms work, but sometimes don't allow you to self-revert, and occasionally revert the wrong page. As long as you (literally) watch what you're doing it's usable.
That said, you currently have 108 mainspace edits and I would very strongly suggest not using it until you've got a lot more experience as it's very easy to screw up very badly with it. – iridescent19:23, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
It's only happened to me a couple of times, which is why I haven't bothered reporting it; it seems to be that when the server's frozen and then unfreezes, when it comes back it reverts the next item in the queue as well as the one you intended to revert. It's not really an issue as long as you watch the log at the bottom to make sure the correct pages are being reverted. (Someone somewhere mentioned it doing the same thing with AfD tagging, too). – iridescent21:05, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Not even if they're unusually hoggish? You must be one of those philistine and simple average mens in the centre of scabby, peevish world I've heard about. EyeSerenetalk20:01, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Scratching head, have no idea what to do about this IP
IP keeps inserting an external link to an article that goes against me and seemingly everyone else's understanding of Wikipedia:External links. It's only just dawned on my that it's the same IP every time (seriously every editor should create a user name for this reason alone). Obviously hasn't taken the hint that no-one agrees with him. Is it just a standard warning, edit warring against consensus or should I take this to a certain notice board. Never seen this over external links. Opinion welcome as always. — Realist222:15, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Level 3 spam warning given... that gives them a couple of extra chances before the cluestick-whacking starts. – iridescent22:18, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Cheers, I can't believe that same IP was doing it for days under my nose. Oh well, some will slip through the net, but not for long. — Realist222:20, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
I keep bumping (smashing, more like) into you when I'm doing RC, lol. You are so speedy! You beat me almost all the time, hee hee. But I'm confuzzled... Are you not an admin? lol. Why report to AIV when you could take care of it quickly yourself? :) Ariel♥Gold23:07, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
I can hardly blame you for that. Looking at this talkpage you would not believe that it's auto-archived after 3 days... – iridescent23:12, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
"Stupid enough to reply" would probably be more accurate, looking at the quality of some of the posts on this page. – iridescent23:18, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
(butting in) I think it is all the aesthetic colours which are relaxing, like those experiments where they paint all the prison walls pink and the prisoners are less violent...Cheers, Casliber (talk·contribs) 23:22, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Hey wow, that's a cool effect, maybe everyone at one of those long arbcom debates could choose a different flashing colour and you could follow the threads of particular editors better..Cheers, Casliber (talk·contribs) 23:33, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Your sig doesn't clash, it matches very nicely :) I've always liked it, anyway. But I think if you use that flashing color on ArbCom debates, I'd get an even bigger headache than I already get on reading some of them, lol! Ariel♥Gold23:41, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Forbidden in signatures, yes. Doesn't mean one couldn't emphasize certain words or phrases that way... ~*Giggle*~ Ariel♥Gold23:46, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
You really think so? Probably the same people who hate when people put 10k graphical smileys on talk pages. ~*Giggle*~ Ariel♥Gold23:51, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
Y'know, I'm not entirely sure how your talk page got onto my watchlist, but it must be one of the busiest! And it's certainly the most colorful! Mine is pretty plain and bland sadly, (no color or pictures) though my userpage is better... anyway, just thought I'd tell you that. Best wishes, -- how do you turn this on01:33, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
The edit might have appeared to be nonconstructive, but I don't think it was. All topics on that talk page are old and I thought it'd be nice to clean things up a bit. Are talk pages never cleaned up? - Rderijcke (talk) 23:59, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
No. You can move posts to an archive if the page is unusably long (look at the talkpages of high-traffic articles), but it's never acceptable to blank other users posts from any talkpage except your own, except in the case of blatant vandalism. – iridescent00:01, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
When you revert with huggle, it is important to make sure that your revert catches all of the vandalism. For example, Piracy, where you reverted only one of two instances of vandalism. A lot of editors would see your edit summary and assume that all of the vandalism was reverted. PlasticupT/C02:49, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
Hmm... perhaps I should make Huggle prompt for confirmation if asked to revert to a revision by an anonymous user in the same /16 range as the user being reverted -- Gurch (talk) 18:24, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
No point taking feature creep to that extreme IMO. Huggle is for the reversion of immediate problems and identifying active vandal accounts and it does that fine. I don't think it's wildly violating WP:BEANS to say that the vandal edit/legit edit combination will fool any automated system. Besides, far more vandal edits are hidden in the "most recent edit is valid" problem by the date-delink and recategorization bots than will ever be hidden by Huggle.
How come everyone with a grudge against Huggle seems to wind up on this page, while your talkpage contains four threads? I'm hardly the most active user - or the most vocal critic/enthusiast - but for some reason no-one goes to the real 2000-edits-a-day hardcore users to vent. – iridescent18:35, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
What I mean is that these two edits were almost certainly made by the same person, from an IP address dynamically assigned in the 138.162.x.x range, or from two machines on the same school/library/academic network – the sort of thing a human, even a careful one such as yourself, often fails to spot, or does not even know about, but is easy to detect and throw up an extra confirmation prompt. You're right about the problem with bots hiding problem edits; perhaps we should ask for bots that operate on articles to edit only when the last editor is an autoconfirmed user, and build up a list of pages it can't edit that the operator can check are free of vandalism before having the bot go over them. But that would be too much work for bot operators, I imagine -- Gurch (talk) 19:16, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
TfL becomes the first transport organisation to be given the top award for best equality
A "Safer Travel at Night" scheme has been introduced to reduce illegal cabs and touting
All TX4 taxis with the 56 registration are suspended due to an ongoing investigation into an unknown fault causing the cabs to catch fire
A set of poems from recent wars are displayed on the London Underground to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice in 1918
In Bounds Green, the A406 is to be improved to ease congestion
Bridges in Hanger Lane are to be upgraded to improve safety.
Bus strikes possibly occurred in mid-September on Metrobus and First.
New Dial-a-Ride minibuses are to be introduced to help old and disabled people.
The London Underground roundel celebrates its 100th birthday, with a series of artwork
Residents feel that the London City Airport extension of the Docklands Light Railway has played a major role in the regeneration of North Woolwich and Silvertown
A special cycling centre in West London has been set up to help people with special needs
August - second half
A strke occurs on bus services operated by First.
A young singer has won a TfL talent competition.
Major engineering works begin on part of the London Overground
New gates improve access at Sudbury Town tube station.
TfL's cycling website goes live with a photo competition
An RMT strike occurs on the London Underground
All London Overground stations have been cleaned and had some improvements
Please note that events are arranged from newest at the top to oldest at the bottom.
Member News
Welcome to the new members that joined during the month of September:
East london line
Michaelkeefe
Lxxxi
Bringing us up to a total of 70 members!
This WikiProject would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all!
General
On the assessment side, there are still a lot of articles that need to be assessed for their importance to this project and their general quality. Over the past couple of weeks, interest in assessment of articles has also generally fallen. Of the current 1714 articles, 415 have not ben assessed for quality, also of which 404 have not had their importance to the project assessed either. Please can there be an effort to do this, just like an effort was done to one the articles in UK Railways.
However, congratulations to all the people involved in getting Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway to featured status. Well done for this achievement.
Please can people become more involved with other areas of the portal. The portal still seems to be only gaining contributions on the selected article and picture areas. It seems there is still a general lack of interest in the portal other than these areas. The statues issue has also been sorted as last month's image.
As usual, this issue is in the current format and is still awaiting suggestions for other improvements. No new Did You Knows were available for this so have not been included.
Please provide any suggestions for any improvements to this newsletter and any comments or anything else to include in the next issue. Please can ideas be given for a better layout on this newsletter. Feedback is much appreciated.
This edition has a large TfL news section as the previous edition was launched mid-month and so it seemed inappropriate to launch this issue immediately at the start of the next month. That is why it is being launched today. I also apologise for not releasing this 3 days ago.
This is a revived edition, partly as this still has had support from many people and the paper's subscribers and would not be here without you all.
Charing Cross, Euston and Hampstead Railway promoted to FA-Class in September
London Underground demoted to B-Class in mid-August
Other announcements
Naming of the St Pancras railway station article has essentially ground to a halt, with at formal Requested Move gaining no consensus
Many bus routes in London are deleted due to incompleteness.
Many articles have been selected to be part of Wikipedia 0.7.
If you want to stop receiving this newsletter or, if you are visiting this userpage, want to sign up for this newsletter then please visit this page. You may also like to provide your opinions on this newsletter by visiting The Metropolitan's feedback page or the project's discussion page. Any other issues with this, don't be afraid to drop a line at Simply south's talkpage.
Please provide any suggestions for any improvements to this newsletter and any comments or anything else to include in the next issue at the place mentioned above.
I know I'm replying to a bot again, but I assume posting here will get seen by, well, everyone; I think part of the reason the portal gets so little traffic is that it's so low-profile. We really need to make the links in the infoboxes more garish – if you look at Hammerton's Ferry for example (the same problem exists on every other LT page), the link to the portal is buried at the bottom of a TL;DR infobox, with a graphic that has nothing to do with said portal. I don't see why we can't at least use a red-and-blue link and an LT roundel, given that's it's possibly the most famous corporate identity in the world. – iridescent16:39, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
Eek, you deliver all those by hand? (If you want to bottify it, Misza and Gurch (and probably Beta) are currently watching this page and could probably automate it for you should you want).
I'd be inclined to keep the portal link in the infobox, but make it far more garish. It might be worth making WP:LT point to the portal instead of the project page (as WP:TRAINS does currently), but that would lead to Howls Of Protest. – iridescent21:46, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
I'm fine delivering it as i am.
Would an imagelink do you think be good for this? I would disagree on redirecting the shortcut as that is the main one for the London Transport project, just like WP:TWP is the main one for Trains. Maybe altering your idea, it would be better if more linked for P:LT. Either of those.Simply south (talk) 21:52, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
I think it needs more promoting, anyway - there's a lot of interest (potentially) in it, but at the moment it gets bypassed. – iridescent21:54, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
ClueBot reverts
Hi, Iridi (mind if I call you that?). By noticing the super fast lightning speed of your huggling, I guess that you may start to get lots of vandalism here soon. So is it alright if I add your talk page to User:ClueBot/Optin? If you feel satisfied enough, I guess you may add it yourself. SchfiftyThree18:06, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
Provisional yes, with one proviso (based on the fact that I don't know what it searches for); if it reverts blanking, that's fine, but I don't want it removing "fuck you you bastard" posts which don't mess up any other threads; I don't know about ClueBot but I've already doled out a number of WP:TROUTs to overzealous RC patrollers "removing uncivil comments" in the mistaken belief that they're being helpful. – iridescent18:11, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
ClueBot has been reverting deleted character amounts (page blanks, page replacements) for a while now, so if it would catch page blanks or page replacements on your userpage, it may go ahead in reverting, but the bad news is it hasn't reverted since 30 September... but it could return, though. SchfiftyThree18:34, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
Wikipedia: The encyclopedia kids from around the world can vandalise. Eventually, the world will be united in a single global village, and The Kid in Africa will be equally able to write "poop" on randomly chosen articles. – iridescent19:26, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
Just to put things in a little perspective: this talkpage has had 92k of posts in the last 3 days. I joined Wikipedia in January 2006 and reached 92k of posts on my talkpage in June 2007. Just saying. – iridescent21:17, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
Just wanted to point out that after i undid a vandalism i got a weird message that the page was reverted to the vandalized version... When i checked the page i saw that the vandalism was undone again... lol. or was that a bot? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.40.240.184 (talk) 21:25, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
(ec) Oh, I get it - no, that was me thinking you were blanking a page and then realising that what you were blanking shouldn't have been there in the first place and restoring your version... – iridescent21:28, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
Yes - I would have referred him to WP:AIAV, but felt I couldn't because you had issued a level 4 warning omitting the earlier levels. Why would you do that? --Geronimo20 (talk) 12:42, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
It had the full 1-2-3-4 warnings – I'm not sure what the issue is here, exactly. An account is perfectly within their rights to blank warnings from their talkpage, but that's just taken as proof of having read them, and doesn't in any way "cancel them out". In any event, the 1-2-3-4-block escalation scale is purely for convenience and not any kind of policy; vandals don't get a "quota" of four vandalisms, and an obvious vandal-only account can be blocked without making any edits, let alone waiting for it to make five. – iridescent14:50, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks, I was rushing out the door, and I'm not an admin, but I wanted the account shut down quickly to stop the vandalism spree. Cheers, Walkerma (talk) 15:49, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
I wonder if it's really the case that ones sexuality determines how many friends one has? :-) J.delanoy, they have failed to use a capital letter at the start of a sentence, and have misused punctuation. There's always one mistake... -- how do you turn this on18:43, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
Iridescent, you really must stop posting pictures of the two of us without my expressed consent... I mean, it's not like I don't express my consent for everything else. >_>
First, I don't know how to proceed. I do know it's frowned upon to edit a page in which one has a personal stake. So instead I will ask for help:
An editor named "Darius1973" has recently been attacking my short Wikipedia bio. Based on his information it seems "Darius1973" has an interest in clinical psychology and has decided to personally retaliate for my position that clinical psychology isn't a science.
On 12 September this year "Darius1973" deleted from my bio a list of academic awards. This particular edit was not later reverted.
On 21 September "Darius1973", seeing victory in sight, deleted the entire article. This edit was reverted but the list of academic awards was not restored.
I ask for one of the following:
1. Please revert the article to its state prior to the first edit by "Darius1973".
2. Delete the article.
As it stands the article has been pared down to a ridiculous degree, such that a reasonable person might wonder what purpose it serves. I think you may be familiar with the expression "damnation through faint praise" -- this might apply to the article's present state.
If this sort of appeal is inappropriate, please say so. Again, I am not familiar with how things are done at Wikipedia.
I've reverted to what appears to be the last valid version before the IPs and SPAs got hold of it. It still needs sourcing, though; at the moment there's no way to verify that what you're telling us it the truth. It's not against Wikipedia policy to write articles about yourself, although we do strongly discourage it, as it's almost impossible to maintain a neutral point of view.
I agree. This is a rather delicate matter -- I know how to produce the evidence, but everyone will be justified in questioning my objectivity. --Lutusp (talk) 19:54, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
Hope that helps! Be aware that as long as it remains unreferenced, there's nothing to stop people re-removing any statements they take a dislike to. – iridescent18:44, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
Thank you. Without touching the article itself, I have added a list of references for its claims. This is as close as I want to get to actually editing my own bio. --Lutusp (talk) 19:54, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
It's a pi pie
Jumping on the latest trend, and thinking it may be time to start the article List of Wikipedians who have been pi pied, Jennavecia has given you a pie! Pies promote the kind of hearty eating that puts a smile on your face and a sustaining meal in your stomach. Hopefully this pie has made your day better. Spread the goodness by giving someone else a pie, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Happy eating!
Spread the goodness of pie by adding {{subst:Wikipie}} to their talk page with a friendly message.
Still alive, just not in a position to be reading long conversations. Will reply to everything once I can do it more easily than squinting at the screen of a phone. Iridescent 2 (talk) 00:26, 18 October 2008 (UTC)
It was suspicious that this page disappeared from my watchlist like that; it was like someone had pulled the plug.
Nice signature, Jennavecia; quite artistic. Which reminds me, Iridescent... Crohnie has changed her signature colours to dark blue and pink. Rejoice! Waltham, The Duke of02:46, 20 October 2008 (UTC)
Um,hi—I'm looking for AN/K—somebody said it moved over here someplace??
Hey Iri....by the way, that link to the "mastercool hoggish plaza" was amazing (even though I had to head into the page history to see it). That whole talk page is a hive of wonderful English-mangling and bad bot-translation. Simply awesome!
On to my main question, though. I don't want it to seem like I'm canvassing or anything; however, you're one of the more-common names to see at an RfA, and it seemed unusual to me that you were silent on mine. Would I be correct if I said that you're acting under the time-honored principle of "if you don't have anything nice to say..."? I drew that conclusion after reading some of the RfA-related exchanges between you and Keeper; and if that IS the case, though I'm sorry I don't meet your criteria, I'm also grateful for your kindness in not piling on.
(However, on the off chance that you just "missed" that I was running--c'mon down! :)) Seriously, though-- if you're sparing me an oppose, I appreciate it. And if I've totally misjudged the situation...well, then I shall go stand off in a corner and look like That Weird Girl Who Asks Inappropriate Questions. Either way, I'm good. :) Thanks...Gladys J Cortez05:05, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
I haven't been deliberately avoiding you; contrary to what Majorly may think, I don't stalk RFA Kurt-style looking for reasons to oppose. Unless it's someone I've worked with in the past where my non-participation would be taken as a "passive oppose", I generally don't comment (either way) on RFAs if it's clear which way they're going to go, so I only comment either on newly-opened RFAs, or on ones that really are "in the balance". That's why I have such a high oppose rate (although not that high – it's about 45%), as I never do drive-by comments without checking (unless the RFA itself provides a clear reason to oppose, as in the case of Asenine for example), and I don't see the point in spending time reviewing your history just to be support #61 on an RFA leading 60-13. If the opposes start going up and yours looks more in the balance, I'll go and check it over. – iridescent15:59, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
(adding) – have gone to have a look and the level of fuckwittery in the "oppose" section has prompted me to support that one. Most RFA miscarriages have failed for reasons that are at least potentially valid. Most of the opposes on yours are just plain nuts. – iridescent16:32, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
Thanks! (I really just figured I didn't have enough article experience for you, and that was why you hadn't said anything.) Yeah, there's a couple of opposes in there which kinda knocked my socks off too. At least they'll give me a peg to hang my argument on, over at the Talk:RfA thread. But again--thanks for the support. It really is much appreciated...Gladys J Cortez17:08, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
Hypocrisy at RFA
I'm a bit confused by 'While we all have different standards in an RFA, it would be ridiculous for an RFA to fail on grounds like "swore on a blog", "2500 edits is not enough", "hasn't written any GA/FA" or "participates heavily in user talk pages"'. Your opposes at RFAs have, to me, always seemed to fall into vaguely the last two categories. Tombomp (talk/contribs) 18:44, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
Would you care to provide any examples of my ever opposing on either grounds? Nope, can't find them? Funny that. I will oppose on grounds of no article work (the boilerplate text is "I don't think editors who haven't had the experience of putting work into an article, and/or defending their work against well-intentioned but wrong "improvements" or especially AFD, are in a position to empathise with quite why editors get so angry when their work's deleted and/or The Wrong Version gets protected, and I don't support users who don't add content to the mainspace being given powers to overrule those who do") but that does not apply here. For the record, I swear on Wikipedia (let alone on blogs) all the time, have never once opposed on editcount grounds except for obvious 50-edit WP:NOTNOW RFAs, have never once worked on an FA and never will, think DYK is a total waste of electrons, and currently have 22,750 edits to user talk pages. – iridescent18:47, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
Since this isn't the first time I've been (implicitly) accused of being That Evil One Who Always Opposes RFAs, I've had a look over my RFA stats; of the 72 RFAs I've opposed, three have actually been successful (Philosopher, Penwhale and Elonka), and all three of those scraped through with 20, 20, and 61 opposes respectively. It's not like I'm some lone trolling voice-in-the-wilderness launching random attacks on hapless wannabees. – iridescent21:05, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
DYK
I completely agree with you (iridescent) about DYK, it's always been a bit of a puzzle to me. To take one example from today's main page: "Did you know that that the Niue Star, founded in 1993, is Niue's only printed newspaper?" Strangely enough I didn't, as I've got idea wtf Nuie is. A village? A town? A country? A planet? Why would anyone suppose that I, or anyone else, cared about its newspaper? --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 22:19, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
Further to my last (yes, I know I'm replying to myself…), part of the problem is that the "hooks" are often worded in a really dull way. "Did you know that that the Niue Star, founded in 1993, is Niue's only printed newspaper?" could more accurately be retitled DYGAF, but "Did you know that until the founding of the Niue Star in 1993, there was not a single newspaper published in the entire nation of Niue?" has a "fancy that!" factor. (There is a particularly wretched one today, incidentally: "Did you know that the Bangladesh Police inherits much of its structure from the police of British India and contributes to U.N. peace-keeping missions?". Er, that would be along with almost every other country in the world then?) – iridescent15:27, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
I placed the Niue hook on the main page, never heard of the place either, but the cool thing is one clicky on a blue linky is all it takes to learn something new. I was musing on some of the criticisms and believe that maybe if folks looked more at the 5x expansion of some existing stubby articles, more notable things would crop up. I placed a competition here - note you don't have to expand them, I was hoping folks would just list a whole bunch first to see what was out there. Cheers, Casliber (talk·contribs) 21:29, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
Oh, I do my share of new articles and 5x expansions – there was a 12x expansion here a couple of days ago – but because there's generally no "killer fact", I never submit them to DYK. My problem (and I suspect Malleus's as well, although I can't speak for him) isn't with the concept of a DYK section, but with some of the facts which are chosen for it and the fact that many of the hooks are presented as duller than they should be. (My proposed rewriting of the Niue one above, for example, would have avoided the "why is that on the main page?" factor). I do think DYK is treated as an article-expansion contest regardless of quality – it always makes me cringe when I see someone proudly boasting that they "have 5 DYKs", or when people equate DYK with GA/FA. I understand that part of the reason is to reward new editors for contributing instead of myspaceing, Huggling or RFA-gaming, and that DYK has become our de facto "official barnstar" and the reasoning behind that, but it doesn't mean I like seeing "Did you know that San Marino debuted at the Eurovision Song Contest 2008 with "Complice", a song performed by Miodio?" on the main page of the Eighth Most Powerful Website In The World™. – iridescent22:01, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
(outdent) Hmm...that article had a ghost, and some cool postboxes,and the stuff about the moat is interesting, I would have read any as a hook. The problem with any of this is the quality of the contributions. DYK is a good entry-level 'notch' in one's wikibedpost as it requires some degree of collaboration, which is what the whole project is about. Everyone has different levels of 'interesting', but I do take your point. I love trivia in all its bizarre shapes and forms and the day when Manatees in popular culture was a sad one for me. Cheers, Casliber (talk·contribs) 23:11, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
Aah, an article with potential but in pretty woeful shape when axed..as many are. Well, at least you do other stuff 'round the place. :) Cheers, Casliber (talk·contribs) 11:05, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
A bit ironic that the "Well, at least you do other stuff 'round the place" was immediately followed by my disappearing for a month. Looking at the mess this talkpage has degenerated into in my absence, I don't think I've missed much. – iridescent12:11, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Impassable
In Great Fire of London you recently "corrected" impassable to impassible. According to the OED:
Impassable: That cannot be passed along, through, or across; impossible to traverse or travel through.
Impassible: Incapable of suffering or pain; not subject to suffering. (Chiefly Theol.)
WTF? Seriously, WTF? If you want to post this kind of crap on talkpages, go post it somewhere else or the next "actual female quote" you'll get will be a block notice. – iridescent12:13, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Wondering about Company Wikis
What chance is there that someone could put up a developing wiki on a company, without it being an advert, so that people can be informed about new developments in the buisness world?
Don't bite the newbies and all that (although your name looks very familiar), but if the "instructions" on your talkpage stay up, expect to be flamed mercilessly. Why exactly are you asking someone with no interest at all in videogames about this? 200.45.226.51 (talk) 00:14, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
Iridescent, on your home page, your user page, you quote Zach Parsons: "The Internet could be great. It could be a place for ideas to flourish without the fickle constraints of the flesh. It could be a place to commune and collaborate on projects that help all of humanity. It could be the best résumé ever, limited only by the imagination," do you not? Yet you more or less contradict this quote with one of your own: "I also periodically go on long stub sorting sprees, loiter on Articles for Deletion arguing the case for patently hopeless causes, do the thankless-but-necessary jobs of spellchecking, copy-editing & standardising headers and watch new pages for vandalism and nonsense."
I believe you hopelessly slaughtered my article, System of Imagination. Perhaps I could've kept it to two realities instead of inducing my own belief on the matter. No, I did not make this up at school. I graduated from Southern Illinois University two years ago. I believe the problem is you might've not understood it. I am slightly technologically impaired, and was hoping administrators and SYSOPS would help constructing my thoughts. Apparently not.
Now I'm sure you don't believe it is utter nonsense. Millions of occasions have occurred where someone is dreaming and they have a vividly accurate experience as to achieving euphoria in their sleep (*not a wet dream reference, mind you). The brain is miraculously powerful and can stimulate nerves to your so desire. More than twenty people in person I've shared these thoughts with agree. It is not an impossibility to be partially in an alternate reality where things are not occurred physically, but instead mentally. Maybe how I explained it to you might have made you reconsider, and try to recreate the article professionally. Thank you. Alex Bieser (talk) 23:06, 7 October 2008 (UTC)
I already understood that, Darkspots, and I read most of these pages. You'll find conclusive evidence of many humanitarians noting something very similar. I believe if Wikipedia believed the information was unverifiable, they should have contributed, offering references. I noted Iridescent personally because of the fact he came as the appearance as the over killer. More or less original research is a term a bit too well thrown around. This is very much verifiable research. Besides, show me evidence it's not. Google search key terms in this matter, and see if you don't find other people whom agree. Thank you. Alex Bieser (talk) 01:26, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
Any article you bring to wikipedia should come at least partially formed, with supporting references to prove that it's not just your wild imaginings. It is not reasonable to expect "Wikipedia" to do your research for you. Do it yourself. --Malleus Fatuorum (talk) 19:20, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
Shucks! You know, I thought that Wikipedia was going to do everything! My, I must have been under horribly wild assumptions that are not the least bit correct. Alex Bieser (talk) 22:31, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
('Scuse the TPS intrusion) Shucks indeed. Wikipedia is not going to do everything that occurs in the painfully imaginative thing called the brain. Wikipedia is going to do what's verifiable. IceUnshattered[ t ]00:11, 9 October 2008 (UTC)T
I believe you caught the sarcasm but altogether it is not what I was refering to. What I mean by "brutally slaughtered" is that I did not have sufficient time to complete or even start research. I now attend Oxford University and was actually in fact studying on the matter there while keeping up with other work on human biology. Too many people roughly turned down the subject as child's play where it still needed more work and people failed horribly to recognize this. I will try recreating the page with sufficient research to do so, and Iridescent, I am not asking you to take sides, but I would like to hear your opinion on the matter. You've been so quiet, please express your thoughts. Alex Bieser (talk) 04:07, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
Two things. First, Iridescent's last contribution was before you started this thread; you can check a user's contributions by hitting the "User contributions" button in the left column, when you are on their user or user talk page. So Iridescent isn't ignoring you. Second, if you want to work on the article, you may do so in user space. Just click here: User:Alex Bieser/System of Imagination and create the article, with references, taking as much time as you like. When you think it's ready for the main space, you can ask any established user for an opinion as to its merits. If you need a copy of the article as it was before it was deleted, the deleting admin, ffm, would be happy to help you out, just go to his talk page and explain what you need. Darkspots (talk) 09:11, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
I fail to see the point you are trying to make, yes, I did create this thread after it was deleted. Are you suggesting he might not have computer access at this time? Thank you for reveiwing the deleted article and discovering it was ffm who deleted it. I can also simply go to page history and find the page before it was deleted. Finally I have progressed. TTYL, Alex Bieser (talk) 22:37, 9 October 2008 (UTC)
←The first point that I was making was that Iridescent's last contribution to Wikipedia was a few hours before you started the thread. It can therefore be assumed that Iridescent has not seen the thread yet. Regarding the second point, no, you can't go to the page history, because the page history has been deleted. So I was attempting to give you tools to deal with the fact that your page, along with its history, was deleted. Darkspots (talk) 07:23, 10 October 2008 (UTC)
Man, I forgot how much I missed reading this talkpage </sarcasm>. In belated answer to your question, Wikipedia is not for things you made up; if you can find some external references to suggest this isn't the case, the article can stay. Otherwise, deletion is the way to go. We are all willing to help; we are not here to do your research for you. 200.45.226.51 (talk) 21:46, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
OK: takes a deep breath and replies to this idiocy
I was one of seven people proposing that this article be deleted, against not a single person arguing to keep it. Wikipedia is a tertiary-source encyclopedia – meaning, we only include material that is sourced from elsewhere – and not a forum, chat-board, or place to share your pet theory unless you can show it's been covered elsewhere. For those following this, here's the full text of your "article":
System of Imagination
System of Imagination [sis-tuhm uhv i-maj-uh-ney-shuhn] is a theory of life after death by Alex J. Bieser. The theory is based on one prime thought, that everything is either physical, or meta-physical, and some things which are considered to be abnormal are different frequencies based off of either. Life as we know it according to Bieser is based on a physical world, and the thoughts we make ought to be deemed meta-physical. Another prime extremity the belief revolves around includes that all physical creates what is meta-physical, and the same for the latter.
Life
Life is based on a world commonly known as 'reality.' A common phrase teachers might use to bother young students in sleep is to embarrass them by pointing out how they are 'drifting away from reality.' In fact, as you dream, you are entering the latter world, the meta-physical world, or 'imagination.' This world is entirely unalike reality, as it is your own imagination. It is yet unexplainable as to why we are able to slide in and out of glimpses of this alternate world. Because we are unconscious while we enter this state, we are unable to control it, thus we experience nightmares.
The stunning sensation that we call good dreams can hold almost anything, from flying to sexual intercourse.
Death
Death is chosen by immortal beings recently brought into the world. The customary death for most humans to while being conscious, being completely separated from reality, giving the person in question to do whatever they please. Depending on how important the individual is, the person could receive a special death, becoming an alter ego of a free willed being, or sitting at the throne and conducting orders to souls, entities, etc. The choice is passed from figures of authority to even higher levels of authority. If someone were to achieve global domination, the decision would then be brought to Recon 111 (one-eleven), who would then bring about the fate of the individual for all eternity.
Transaction
One stated fact in this worldly belief is that all physical creates meta-physical, or thoughts and eventually manifestation, and that all meta-physical creates physical. There are no exceptions to the rule. Humans can bend the will of scientific laws with their mind, because they are manifesting meta-physical thoughts. To move a suspended bead, a person can imagine the bead moving back and forth. The meta-physical thoughts they make will then change the physical object before them, or the bead.
References
Nightmare on Elm St. 1984 American Horror Film directed by Wes Craven. Craven had the idea of the insane killer with the ability to transcend the bridge between the dream world and the real world and kill children in their sleep.
So, what's wrong with that?
This breaks pretty much every policy we have. The sole "reference" is to a film which doesn't mention the topic once. You admit in the very first line that this is original research. By writing about yourself, you have a clear conflict of interest.
It is not the job of "administrators and sysops" – or the 8,173,285 who aren't admins, for that matter – to "assist in constructing your thoughts". We will always try to help articles that are "halfway there" but need extra work; we are not going to research your pet theory for you, especially when it's patently something you just made up and there are no sources to research. This article was rightly deleted (not by me, incidentally, despite the fact that you seem to think I'm to blame; if you'd bothered to actually look at the log you'd see it was deleted by Firefoxman). If you really feel the need to fight this, click here and follow the instructions to start a deletion review or here to complain about Firefoxman's deletion, or here if you think I'm being unduly rude to you (although given your "fave actual female quotes" offering, I'd advise not going down that route). I'd strongly advise not bothering.
For those familiar with the chequered history between myself and User:Abd it may seem surprising, but I'd strongly recommend you read his comments on a similar issue as they sum up quite well what you're doing wrong, and why Wikipedia isn't what a lot of people (including, it appears, you) think it is. – iridescent12:33, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
I made it through the above "conversation" without having seen the text of the deleted article so thanks for the laugh—that one's a gem. Darkspots (talk) 14:17, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
This was deleted as a proposed deletion and per WP:PROD I am requesting that it be undeleted considering that I think it is a valid topic for an article. If it is restored then whoever put the proposed deletion tag up can start an AFD, obviously, but I don't think its deletion had merit. Maratanos (talk) 20:14, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
Only on Wikipedia would this conversation make sense. Iridescent has been away for a month and doesn't know when she'll be back, but I'm sure one of this page's readers will oblige if the page in question wasn't libellous etc. 200.45.226.51 (talk) 23:38, 24 October 2008 (UTC)
Sorry for not noticing the gap in the time frame for recent contributions, but I imagine it would have been easier to notice if there were some kind of notice somewhere (like the user or the talk page). But that's not terribly important. What is important is that I am staring at the text of the article as it was archived by a third-party website before it was deleted, and I have to say, you'd have to be pretty bendy with the truth in order to think it was libellous. It was just a stub that needed some work done on it. I suspect that what is going on is that you noticed the version that was deleted on October 19 as a result of clear and obvious vandalism, as opposed to the actual version of the article that existed before it was deleted on August 12th. Sorry if that was sufficiently unclear. Maratanos (talk) 15:55, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
If this is the article you mean, go ahead and repost it. Unless it's improved don't be surprised if someone redeletes it though, this consisted of an unreferenced and inappropriate dictionary definition and an unrelated paragraph about movie classification in the UK. Despite what some people think, Wikipedia does have a minimum standard, and this article clearly didn't meet it. 200.45.226.51 (talk) 21:41, 25 October 2008 (UTC)
What controversy for a proposed article. 'Pornography'? Come on, you can't even consider that 'pornography,' because you might as well call evolutionism 'pornography' or Christianity 'pornography.' I wonder who decided to delete a talk post when it wasn't in their place to do so. Thank you for the original page before it was deleted. Maratanos, you should have undone the previous changes instead of starting a new topic. That is all. Alex Bieser (talk) 21:48, 26 October 2008 (UTC)
I've done a procedural restoration and AfD listing of this article to establish a consensus (although I'd be very surprised if it's kept, unless it's drastically improved). Any further discussion about the viability of the article (as opposed to my role in the deletion) should be made at the deletion debate. – iridescent12:31, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
Wooooo! \o/ This is good news. My talk page took off in your absence. I'm on archive 3 for the month. Srsly. It must be related! :p لennavecia15:54, 30 October 2008 (UTC)
Probably not going to be such an active page; I'm sick to death of the politics side of things, and hopefully I've been away long enough that everyone with a grudge against Huggle will go annoy someone else. – iridescent00:08, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
When they come to you with questions about Huggle, you can see why they think you might know the answer. When they come to me, it just baffles me. – iridescent12:22, 31 October 2008 (UTC)
I may have met that last month. I'll check. If not, surely between the last three weeks of October and the first week of November, I will. So, are we talking "calendar months" or "rolling months"? XD لennavecia03:53, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
For anyone wanting to see Wikipedia at it's most foul-tempered, that June archive is a real museum piece – a nice round 100 threads exactly, in a single calendar month. It starts off with the usual adminny trivia, questions about policies and discussions of content… and then – all at more or less the same time:
the WP:AWC (that had better still be a redlink when I save this!) crew get somewhat unhappy at certain suggestions of mine and Sandy's that their efforts may be being misdirected;
Greg Kohs decides to run in the WMF election, with entirely foreseen consequences;
GENIUS(4th power) and his army of performing socks decide my talkpage is just the place to have their conversations;
I make an observation at WT:RFA that while an arbitrary age limit is A Bad Thing, I nonetheless won't support RFAs from anyone below the age of legal responsibility in Florida (currently 13), reigniting a debate which AFAIK hasn't stopped since;
I make the "Without content, Wikipedia is just Facebook for ugly people" comment which has haunted me ever since;
Gurch releases into the public domain some program he's been working on whose name escapes me; said program starts malfunctioning at exactly the same moment as Gurch vanishes for two weeks leaving no-one to fix it, and I set enable=false on the config page while it's discussed, with hilarious consequences.
It always makes me laugh when the perennial "why does nobody want to run at RFA any more" debate resurfaces, when the "reward" is talkpages like this and the dubious privilege of being abused of all and sundry at assorted attack sites (I am apparently "incapable of ever telling the truth"). – iridescent16:51, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Heh. Your June "Pales" in comparison to my August/September. Hope you're well, I'm off again. Just logged in to figure out someone's rename (needed my watchlist). Just for laughs, BTW, I got a DYK as an IP a few weeks ago. Started the article thru the WP:AFC process, got it expanded, reffed, nommed, hooked, accepted, and mainpaged. I figured an IP would have a better reputation for article building than my admin account. :-). Later - Keeperǀ7617:00, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
"I wrote an article"? This account has clearly been compromised. (That rename confused the hell out of me as well, especially since she's not even from the state in question.) Just think, in 48 hours either you'll never hear the Dreaded Name again – or she'll be the highest profile woman in the world and everyone will want to hear your specialized opinions. – iridescent17:04, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Heh. You'd never believe how many "warnings" I got from Hugglers for "vandalizing" pages by expanding them, adding references, removing fart jokes, etc. Account isn't compromised, just dormant. I have thoroughly enjoyed seeing Wikipedia through IP eyes. Very different place. Very cold, actually. Of elections, this is by far one of the more interesting ones. If McPalicain wins....hmmm. McPalicain. Sounds like a really fun little drug that you pick up with your Happy Meal in the drivethru...Keeperǀ7617:07, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
What's interesting to me, through the unusual filter of an American living abroad so reading the foreign press, are a) how loathed McCain is by everyone in the rest of the world, even the right wing, and b) what a sorry pair both candidates appear to be. McCain comes across as the grumpy uncle every family tries to find an excuse to avoid inviting to thanksgiving, whilst Obama (in a wonderful English phrase with no equivalent I'm aware of in the US) seems to be all fur coat and no knickers. Incidentally, scroll up to the current first thread on this page for my thoughts on DYK. (You aren't the IP who's currently rewriting my baby, are you?) – iridescent17:14, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
I'm not a huge fan of DYK, I actually just did it as a mini-challenge to see if the Wiki-elite would let a silly IP get on the mainpage. I even got the barnstar on my IP-talk, along with a well-intentioned "You should get an account so you can keep track of your barnstars!" message. The irony. It was someone who's RFA I had supported. I am a fan of writing as an IP. It's a different level of anonymity. I am a jabberjaw (duh), and I've developed a wiki-reputation as a jabberjaw. All well and good, and I am not ashamed of running a noticeboard for the benefit of other Wikipedians that really do write articles. Malleus, and the literally hundreds of (now waning) watchlisters know that I am serious about this place and I am here to help the writers. I would like to think that my talkpage serve(d) as a useful outlet to blow off steam - you certainly had your share of the fun over there :-). Every time I would try to work on an article, however, or do "non-adminny" stuff, I was getting yellow message bars. I needed to log off. RL events thankfully forced the issue. But I still love this place, and I thoroughly enjoy writing articles again. No, your "baby" is not the DYK I wrote. I wrote a new article (a bio) from scratch after getting it created for me at AFC. Cheers mate - Keeperǀ7617:30, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Well, I decided to try to find out who you are as an IP, because I wondered if I had reverted/warned you. I am roughly 90% sure that User talk:75.72.179.139 is you, but that IP doesn't have any DYKs. So I did a WHOIS. Yay! I've narrowed it down to 75.64.0.0/13 75.72.0.0/15 75.74.0.0/16 75.75.0.0/17 and/or 75.75.128.0/18. That's a total of 770,048 IP addresses. So if that is you, you're safe. J.delanoygabsadds18:45, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
Heh, J.d, yer funny. I went back to pages I'd created/contrib'd to as an IP (there's one obscure page in particular that I go do a gnome edit on whenever I notice my IP change - clever little way to keep track of my contribs using the page history of that page). I've never edited the page logged in, so, pfffft. And no, those ranges you gave above are not correct. And no, you've never "warned" me for anything using huggle. :-) Keeperǀ7615:30, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
(holy unindent colon farm for Keeper's sake). Not being from the state in question is part of it, being one of my favorite songs is another. I needed a fast rename because on an awkward e-mail I got. Not cool. I like that talk-page volume wise, I fly below the admin radar. I don't need an encyclopedia on my talk, TYVM. Iri, the only think I'm bummed I forgot to save before I renamed was my ninja star and god knows which of Keeper's archives that was in. StarM20:17, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
I believe you sent an accusation of an edit war to the wrong user. Had you paid attention to my talk page, you would have noticed that it was not I who started the editing war. The user who continues to revert my edits can be seen on the Edelbrock page and my talk page. You're forgiven and thank you.
Was expanding on this on your own talk as you posted this. I agree you're clearly in the right here - and have warned the other editor that if he continues to abuse Huggle to bulk-revert anyone who disagrees with him he will have his automated tools removed and if necessary be blocked - but it doesn't change the fact that you're still editwarring with him; a day of The Wrong Version won't end the world, and it's not worth getting in trouble over. – iridescent23:22, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
Well okay. Thanks Irs. Never actually knew what a 3RR was, till i got wanred. So Yikes :S. Anyways its pretty much my fault for getting him involved. My appologies. And sorry Jarbrake too. Really dont know if Huggle is my thing, i just keep messing up with it u_u :/ II MusLiM HyBRiD II Ja Ja Ja Ja Ja23:27, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
Not to worry... If you have this page watchlisted, you may be aware that a recurring theme is that the deliberate relaxed stability of Huggle, while it's what makes it such a powerful and useful tool, is also what makes it a very easy tool to misuse/abuse/misunderstand. I used to liken it to a machine-gun compared to the sniper-rifle of Twinkle and I think the analogy stands; both have the same effect, but one, in making things quicker, also makes things that much harder to control. My general advice with Huggle is always; unless you really need to, steer clear of using it for anything other than its original purpose of reverting obvious vandalism. Using it for more general editing not only circumvents the safeguards of Mediawiki, but makes it easy to accidentally send inappropriate warnings. Gurch will no doubt be along at some point if you want any further discussion... – iridescent23:42, 6 November 2008 (UTC)
(post moved here from the user subpage of mine on which it was left)
Hi Irid, can you please do me a favor? Since you are particularly well versed in Wiki HTML format can you please edit my talk header page? I based mine off of yours and I'm sure if you help me you can do fine with it. I'm not sure what I want, just change it so it looks neat and not totally like yours. Do not change the tables about rules or the quote of FDR I made, that's all. Alex Bieser (talk) 23:01, 19 October 2008 (UTC)
No. First of all, I am not "particularly well versed in Wiki HTML format" and I have no idea where you got that impression. More to the point, whilst under GFDL you're more than welcome to use content from my (or anyone else's) user pages, I have no intention of expending any effort helping a user whose entire contribution history consists of posting incoherent original research, repeated trolling on religious articles, and a series of personal attacks on me. I have no idea – nor do I particularly care – if you're another JeanLatore sock or someone who's doing this independently, but I've no intention of encouraging you. – iridescent16:28, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
--heh
Never would I have thought that someone would come to my talkpage, of all places, and summarily accuse someone else (namely, you) of being a useless myspacer. :-). Heh. Enjoy. Keeperǀ7604:15, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
Every day that passes, I am more and more tempted to create an undeclared sock just so people will stop giving me the double-treatment. One minute people take my opinion as absolute truth, the next, they (no, not the same people) are screaming at me for incivility when I call it like is. Brother, if I was uncivil, believe me, I would not go half way. You are smart, Malleus, to not run for RFA. If I didn't fight vandalism so much, I would probably resign. J.delanoygabsadds04:55, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
I have an undeclared sock, with which every so often I'll make a legitimate edit to something controversial, just to gauge the levels of foul-temperedness. (My IP hops about all the time, so IP editing is almost impossible to keep track of.) One of the criticisms of Wikipedia that WR and co are 100% right about is that (especially since the decision a few months ago to give admins the new role of Civility Police) there is an us-and-them mentality between the new users and the established users (whether or not they're admins), and between the admins and non-admins. Although there's something quite endearing to be accused of Myspacing, given that at the time of writing this talkpage consists almost entirely of people I've never spoken to before complaining about me.
I think it's fair to say that, while all editors are of equal value etc etc etc, there are some from whom I'll take criticism more seriously than others, and a sockpuppet of someone recently desysopped for trolling* is not high on that list. Ah well, "Myspacing and being too keen on Huggle" makes a refreshing change from the usual complaints about me. (For the benefit of new TPSs not familiar with my history, I'm the one who shut down Huggle, and Keeper and I are probably the most high-profile "close #wikipedia-en-admins" voices aside from Giano.) – iridescent14:26, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
*Yes, I know you resigned rather than be involuntarily desysopped, but you know as well as I that you jumped before you were pushed.
I'm only using this account because I'm wikibreaking the other one :-) (See its monobook.js). In any case, while you are probably right about me being desysopped, at least get the reason right. Trolling wasn't the reason. And just like you, I'll take criticism in different ways from different people. Al Tallytalk19:29, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
↑Line under the matter, and that goes for all of you. Keeper, Majorly and I have different views on what's necessary at RFA. I do not need to waste my time with this to find that out and I'm sure none of you do either. If any of you really feel the urge to carry on this discussion, there's a perfectly good thread here. – iridescent20:12, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
A favour please
Hi Iridescent,
Could you please do me a favour, and not discuss me for no real reason around your various friends' talk pages? It's constantly in a negative light, and while I'm not perfect, it's kind of pointless really; I hardly get a chance to log in nowadays, and it's pretty irritating to see my watchlist with yet another attack from Iridescent on someone's talk. Please try to talk about something that doesn't involve mentioning me or attacking me, unless it's on my talk page directly confronting something I did. Otherwise, it's just bitching about me, and it seems you simply can't leave me alone, even though I'm hardly even here. If you must discuss me, do it where I can't see it (as no doubt you do).
Unsurprisingly, you miss the point completely. All that's happening here is empty repetitive attacks on myself (and Iridescent is trying to bait me into discussion by directly addressing me and linking to my RFC). I could just ignore your childish bitching, but instead I thought I'd bring it up to see if Iridescent will quit it, because it is becoming tiresome. Additionally, it doesn't help much when you act as her shadow all the time, I'm sure she's perfectly capable of making her own decisions here. Al Tallytalk20:06, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
(ec, re to Majorly) More than happy to – do you have any examples of this? On a ctrl-f through my talk archives, the only times I've ever mentioned you on my talkpage anywhere are the thread above this, a one-line mention here in direct response to your and Kurt's squabbling on Cari's RFA (and I assume looking back you'd agree that you and Kurt were both being disruptive on that one), my replying to a particularly ridiculous accusation from Shalom that I was somehow colluding with you to block his RFA here, a notification regarding your RFC here and a brief mention in passing here – and while I won't say for certain I havent mentioned you elsewhere, as far as I know the only time I've ever mentioned you on any other page was the single mention on Keeper's talk yesterday which has set this whole thing off. As I (almost) said on Keeper's talk, I think you might be somehow mixing me up with Lara, as you're accusing me of most of the things you usually accuse her of, even when they clearly don't fit me (Huggling, Myspacing etc). – iridescent20:11, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
As you say, it's not just your talk page, and I have been watching it happen often. I don't accuse Lara of myspacing or Huggling, because she doesn't do it to nearly the extent you do. And a final comment, when the vast majority of your edits are Huggling/AWB/semi-automated ones, along with chatting on friends' talk pages, it amuses me to think you don't think you Myspace, when you very clearly do - though it's not to the extent of some editors who spend their entire wiki-lives building up a fancy userpage, out of every administrator, there's only a few who spend as much time as you do using User talk pages to talk to their friends.
Anyway, thanks for being helpful regarding this. I hope we can communicate again sometime, in a more positive light? I don't think you're a bad person at all, just it's very hard to get on with someone who one agrees with on almost everything :-) Al Tallytalk20:22, 11 November 2008 (UTC)
ROFL. Iridescent more MySpace than me? XD Hahahaah. I host a fuckin' social cabal. Hahahaaha... ah. Dude, that totally gave me giggles. Good times. Iridescent, let me say that I am thoroughly disappointed that your repeated (one) comments (comment, actually) among all those talk pages (Keeper's) did not include my talk page. For shame. لennavecia05:59, 12 November 2008 (UTC)
^Geoffrey Claydon, The Journal of the National Tramway Musuem Society, No. 203, July 2008, Page 110, 111
Welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to make constructive contributions to Wikipedia, at least one of your recent edits, such as the one you made to Second Coming, did not appear to be constructive and has been removed. Please use the sandbox for any test edits you would like to make, and read the welcome page to learn more about contributing constructively to this encyclopedia. Thank you. This edit was unconstructive. Jennavecia (Talk) 00:31, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
rainbow socks? Really?
Probably the same people who hate when people put 10k graphical smileys on talk pages. ~*Giggle*~ Ariel♥Gold 23:51, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
