User talk:Jerzy/Dispute Assistance

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(This approach to Wiki-talk is an experiment; i've so far imposed upon a number of colleagues with it, who have responded thru it (even without this 'graph) well enough that i can describe it as "working" (though an otherwise angry one nevertheless described it as "ridiculous"). My hope is that it will slow the growth of my talk page, make my archiving simpler and more timely, and thus make leaving talk for me less burdensome (especially for slow-pipe colleagues) than it has been for too many months. I cordially invite discussion of it (or one-shot comments, from those who prefer) at User talk:Jerzy/J's Talk-subpage Experiment.)

If you add to this discussion, most other participant(s) won't be nearly as quickly aware of that as they would if you had also edited their respective talk page(s). (A link to the corresponding section of each is at their corresponding "*" below, and your updating the edit count and editing-time-stamp range there also gives that participant further information. But no one other than i has done so yet.) For my own notification, i've started a list that i can check via "Related changes" more often than i am willing to check my Watchlist or "My contributions", tho of course that is still less often than "You have a new message".

• 1 msg(s), 05:26 thru 18:39, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
  1. 05:26-Jerzy~t 18:39, 13 May 2005 (UTC) J
• 2 participants: Jerzy~t~*; User:Isomorphic~t~*.
• general topic(s): obligation to defend community; what's an acceptable sig format.

I'm sure you're aware that no good deed goes unpunished. In your case, you shared (i assume) a laugh with me back in the dark ages, with a kind tone. I'm not sure to whom i am visible enough, to make them a good choice to help me in a dispute with User:RickK, but your kind humor strikes me as making you a likely choice. (As to the punishment now under way, sorry about that! [wink] Hmm, you could think of it as my speech on the occasion of accepting your help, i 'spose.)

I moved his msg to User talk:Jerzy/My signature and placed a lk to there at User talk:RickK (and he removed the lk, in something under 20 hours, along with something like 12 days accumulation; not sure whether to take offense at that or not); the discussion that ensued there is mostly self-explanatory. But

• that "My" in the title means "RickK's", and
• "kosher sig" is intended to convey the result of 3 or 4 tildes as contrasted with his hybrid concoction for claiming his registered identity while editing as an IP.

I now understand more or less why he does that; but i still would maintain that

• a manual notation of a user name next to a tilde-sig is at best so unfamiliar as to create no reasonable expectation of it being treated as part of a valid sig;
• it is such a newbie-like construction as to invite the impression that it is a newcomer's forgery or misleading error;
• modifying one as i did (removing the unwikified ref to the registered name, with the note & summary i gave), upon the first instance of encountering the phenomenon, is a proper collegial act;
• his practice is so problematic as to require seeking an explicit policy permitting it, and citation of that in defending it;
• it's at best a badly implemented idea; and (or "but")
• now, as in my first words to him after the note accompanying the strikeout, "I see no point in my further involvement" [in getting the practice to stop]. (Well, lemme hedge that; in writing this i've come up with a better solution that i may offer him in due time.)

As you'll see, almost none of that is implicit in what i said to him, and i would be guessing about either how much of it he grasps, how much he would contest, or how such disagreement has influenced the course of the dispute.

My personal need could be further pursued straightforwardly w/o immediate assistance, since it would be satisfied with either

• his forthright retraction admitting that neither did i make two deletions, nor was there a factual basis for so claiming, or
• a third-party testimonial that the facts unequivocally support my demand for that,

in a suitably exposed forum (e.g., if the VfD has not completed and slid off its earlier readers' likely radar, prominently in the places where the false charge was stated and in corresponding edit summaries that stay at the Top for a decent interval).

However:
IMO i am not at liberty to do so bcz communal interests are also at stake: his false accusation that i twice changed what he had done resulted from careless research or none by Rick about who put back the strikeout (i presume, rather than from intent ). As a responsible editor here, i am not prepared to unilaterally decide on abandoning defense of the community's standards, by settling for just the personal redress that i care about, and ignoring and condoning the incivility and other forms of irresponsibility that were central in bringing about the personal wrong, and substantially compounded the offense.

(In fact, the reason i never confronted him with the evidence that he was wrong is that he

• should have done that needed research before his first accusation, and
• incurred renewed obligation to do so (or recheck, if he tried and screwed it up the first time), with each
  • denial by me,
  • repeated accusation by him,
  • failure by him to respond civilly, and
  • failure by him to make the substantive responses to me that assuming good intent required.

To do it for him, or tell him more than i did by asserting he has been negligent, would be unfair to WP.)

IMO three possible catgories of outcomes are worth foreseeing, listed here with the better ones earlier:

1. Rick provides redress and gets some benefit out of hearing his colleagues hope for better behavior in future;
2. Rick provides redress and insists the incident is a bizarre happenstance that offers no insights of future value;
3. Rick refuses any acceptable level of cooperation, but record is left of colleagues' judgement of his setting a bad example.

I am contacting you in hopes that you will either assist me in pursuing #1 and avoiding #3 (perhaps by entering the discussion between him and me), or advise me on another course.

--Jerzy~t 18:39, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm flattered that's you consider me a source assistance. I'll do my best, but it will take the form of advice more than action. Should you need assistance or wise counsel in the future (and I'm either not around or insufficiently wise,) some Wikipedians I consider wise are Meelar, Jwrosenzweig, Silsor, and Cecropia.

Anyway, my hopefully wise advice is to separate the personal issues from the policy issues. Then forget about the personal issues. It's just not that important who owes who an apology, and Wikipedia is a nicer place when people don't spend their time on arguing instead of editing. Also, while RickK screwed up by getting mad over something you didn't do, you shouldn't have sat back and watched him make an ass of himself. You should have told him immediately that the edit wasn't you and shown him the diff. Letting him go on about it was like not telling someone their pants are unzipped.

I also note that he wasn't the only one who could've checked their facts a little more carefully before acting; User talk:66.60.159.190 does have an authenticating edit by RickK's main account. If you'd noticed that you would have known that IP was legit from the beginning. Anyway, like I said, none of this is worth staying upset about. Don't worry, be happy. Or something like that. :-)

As to the core policy issue at hand, I will remind RickK that he is one of Wikipedia's biggest troll magnets, and that that makes it easy for people to think the IP is an imposter. I'll also suggest that he use his real account to sign the IP's user page the way its talk page is already signed. That'll make it a little easier for other users to realize it's not a troll acount. Not a perfect solution, but I don't see what would be better. Isomorphic 21:53, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Also, on an unrelated note, you might want to change the format of your discussion requests. I found it confusing. A simple note like

Please join me in a discussion at User talk:Jerzy/Dispute Assistance

would have done the same job in a much easier-to-understand way. Isomorphic 21:57, 13 May 2005 (UTC)