User talk:OwenX/Archive 4

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Contents 1 150.204.233.246 and Help with Lacrosse 2 It wasn't me! :( 3 Thanks For Unblocking my IP 4 WaW 5 New user box 6 courier 7 Alan Dershowitz 8 Deletion 9 Toilets 10 Excuse me sir... 11 Thanks 12 Rachel Owen 13 Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Shanna_Compton 14 Sock puppetry 15 What is this all about 16 Sorry! 17 DW et al. 18 User:80.217.152.161 19 Your opinion please 20 69.117.6.28 21 Re:Boxes 22 Personal attacks/legal threats etc 22.1 My reply 23 RFA Poll 24 User:Pokemon 25 BD2412's RFA 26 (no title) 27 Early RFA thanks 28 Block 29 Response 30 (untitled 2) 31 (Sorry about vandalism) 32 eggy 33 User:Porn-o 34 Block notice 35 Thank You 36 {{unblock}} 37 Semi-protection 38 Thank you 39 Thanks Owen 40 Can we get a page protection 41 Hey 42 Hello there 43 AOL User Blocks 44 User:216.175.115.53 45 Sojambi Pinola 46 The Buffalo Skull of Diligence 47 Biff Rose 48 Removing comments 49 Alhutch's RfA 50 WoW 51 User:72.49.52.246 52 Theblacklarl / DickClarkMises 53 Space 54 Thanks 55 Possible Socks? 56 Sockpuppets? 57 Once Moore 58 Block on 129.97.58.55 59 My RFA 60 Block on 24.71.223.140 61 When should a page be protected? 62 untitled 3 63 untitled 4 64 WP:POINT 65 please 66 Help urgently required 67 Help Please 68 Design Methods 69 Copyrights 70 Not helpful 71 100 72 Gematria Translation Table 73 So that no duplication of effort occurs... 74 101 75 User:68.171.249.212 76 That's Stupid 77 link on Jesus page 78 Blocking 79 Why the test4? 80 The Movement 81 The problem is Owen 82 Thanks! 83 Jesus, a historical reconstruction 84 Wikiholic's Dictionary 85 Korean pride 86 User:Poetlister block, Jewish lists et al 87 Thanks 88 Simple English problem 89 Taking you up on your offer. 90 Barnstar for the help 91 is it ok... 92 TRUTH 93 Hebrew Alphabet 94 Thanks 95 Adminship 96 Merry Christmas!! 97 Wiki for Engineering 98 Izehar's RfA 99 Request for comments 100 202.152.162.215 and 202.15.162.216 101 User:DwightFerris 102 Question 103 Canada 104 Interiot / Feature request 105 Semi-protection 106 3RR 107 Gematria of final values 108 Kwanzaa 109 Re: Larvatus 110 my phone number as user name 111 Quebec 112 Vandalism 113 24.71.223.140 114 I did not vandalize! 115 What do I have to do 116 Wikiholic's Dictionary 117 Admin action of yours 118 Once Moore 119 Victoria Rowell 120 Chooserr's block 121 Sprotecting user talk 122 Thanks 123 :-D

[edit] 150.204.233.246 and Help with Lacrosse

I went to http://www.ripe.net/whois and the IP for this user is Liverpool John Moores University. Thanks for blocking them. So inane. What a drag for the school. Can you help with petty vandalism on the artical Lacrosse. Perhaps a temporary protect on the article.. Various users User:24.218.158.186, User:158.165.5.86, User:24.147.105.133, User:70.52.141.161. Thanks, Cafe Nervosa | talk 17:32, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] It wasn't me! :(

I need your help clearing my name! My IP is shared by my school's computers/internet as well, and some kids (I think one of them, Paul Cleverly, is in my grade) went on wikipedia and vandalized a page, I think it was Renaissance. He trolled it by adding remarks and all sorts of things about his friends and whatever, and when I went on the page (The renaissance is our current project in Music and Language Arts so we were reading the page) and so I get on the page and I see "New Messages", and I click, and there are WARNINGS! I was confused! I couldn't even edit pages on my Log-in account to fix spelling errors and whatnot.

I just want to let you know as one of the moderators who had cleared the vandalism caused by those jerks that I would never do something like that and I hope you understand that this IP is shared unfortunately, so please don't ban it!

Thank you so, so much for understanding! --24.128.43.180 00:51, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks For Unblocking my IP

Well, thanks! (-;
Lazylizards8 01:04, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] WaW

Hi OwenX! How are you? It seems that you are familiar with vandalism associated with this account...I wonder if you could go check out User:A pair of shoes? I've already permanently blocked this user, following the pattern that you had with other related sockpuppets. --HappyCamper 03:23, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Nevermind, looks like you're right on top of things :-) See you around! --HappyCamper 03:24, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi Owen: thanks for catching this. Any edit from a 63.19.xxx.xxx is the North Carolina Vandal; it appears he made a few more sockpuppets since his last block expired (see my post on AN/I under [1]).

Characteristic of his vandalism is bizarre redirects, misleading use of templates, obsession with cartoon TV show characters, liberal vs. conservative and elite vs. redneck "issues"; he also likes too make sockpuppets to argue with each other and pretend separate identities. It might be time to write up a long-term-alerts page on this guy, since I'd guess he has 3,000 vandalisms to his credit, since about June of this year. Antandrus (talk) 03:40, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Owen, I think this is also the "King of the Hill" vandal that you identified earlier in the year...Ah! Now it all makes sense. --HappyCamper 03:48, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

HC is correct: he is the "King of the Hill" and also the "North Carolina" vandal (the second name because of his habit, this summer, of inventing fictitious places there, and making changes to statistics; look at the history of Stokes County, North Carolina for a sampling). Antandrus (talk) 03:50, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] New user box

Hello OwenX, It's SWD316. Im giving you the user box for your user page called Template:User Member. It's a user box that says your a member of the AWWDMBJ.... Hope you like it! SWD316 04:08, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] courier

I don't have a clue how to do a screenshot! :-( I use firefox, camino (right now) and occasionally opera. All are showing the word unblock in massive big, widely spaced brown letters letters. One of the reasons why I originally changed it was in reviewing the templates I found that this was little used. I got two emails about it thanking me for changing it from users who said that they never used it simply because they thought with the courier it was too hideous to use they thought they couldn't change the font. I thought the original so hideous I didn't use it and very nearly proposed it for deletion. I don't know what IE shows. (I gave up on IE about a year ago. I only ever use it for uploading stuff. It seems to that better than the rest.) All I know is that to me on the three browsers, and to others, it did look like something you wouldn't want to look at after eating a meal!!! FearÉIREANN\^(caint) 21:00, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Alan Dershowitz

Attention owen x!

Correcting blatant inaccuracies on a Wiki page is NOT vandalism. Why are you so intent on seeing that Alan Dershowitz is not exposed as a fraud? If you are related to him in some way, I believe you should recuse yourself from attending to his page. That would be the honest thing to do. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.171.99.59 (talk • contribs).

[edit] Deletion

Thanks for bring that to my attention. I will be more careful next time. Thanks again. -- Psy guy ^Talk 01:03, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Toilets

Since this concerns toilets, naturally I thought of you. I have a suspicion that User:Dkcdan might be someone we want to keep an eye on. He may be a newbie making odd edits, but he's tried a couple of times to add a (really unpleasant) picture to poop. In fact, most of his edits are along that line. I've given him the standard welcome for new users, and I'm going to assume good faith at the moment. Joyous | Talk 01:46, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Excuse me sir...

May I inquire as to why you blocked me? I don't know what I've done wrong.

Dlayiga 06:30, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I haven't blocked you. You may have been accidentally blocked as a result of a block I applied to a vandal using the same IP address as you are. Since your ISP provides you with a dynamic IP, this may happen occasionally, and has nothing to do with your actions. As described in the blocked error message, in order to help you, I need the IP address reported to you in that message. I'm sorry for the inconvenience! Owen× ☎ 13:35, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thanks. Alf ^melmac 23:04, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Rachel Owen

I just thought I'd point out that Rachel Owen was voted to be deleted: Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Rachel_Owen 4/1 (I was the 1 that voted to keep) and yet the article still remains. I checked the history and nobody recreated the page. You wrote that the AFD was closed, but I think you might have forgotten to delete it. I noticed it when I was doing my stats. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 02:01, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you very much for bringing this to my attention! Yes, in the heat of closing AfDs, I closed it as a Delete but then went on to remove the AfD notice on the article as if it were a Keep... I appreciate your integrity! Making sure the process is followed even when the vote is against you is truly admirable. Owen× ☎ 02:30, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi Owen. I am happy to follow process, which I think is the important thing. Personally, I was happy to consider the points of the other people, which was that, even though she was the wife of a famous singer, she herself wasn't famous. They were probably right. I think that either the vote closed before I could change my vote, or else I thought that the odds were so far against my view that it didn't matter. :). But its the process which is important. The community spoke, and there is no dispute that it was a fair vote, so it should be deleted. I would have nominated it for speedy delete if it had been recreated as well. Turns out it was just an error.

By the way, I am doing a big analysis of my own voting patterns as part of an internalised philosophical issue. Might sound silly to you, but to me it was important. I am also trying to analyse the process of AFDs as a part of that. So far I've seen 4 out of I think its now 400 AFDs that I've participated in where the process was not followed. So its pretty good odds. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 02:35, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I'd be fascinated to see the results of your analysis! A few months ago someone did a large scale analysis of AfD ("VfD" at the time), to figure out what were the actual consensus thresholds of various closing admins. The results were quite interesting, although it is sometimes difficult to figure out which votes were discarded as sockpuppets in some cases, possibly biasing the numbers. One of the impressions I get is that a "highly-wikified" article on non-notable or unverified subject is more likely to be kept than an ugly, unwikified article about a notable subject. If you could give a subjective score to this quality and calculate its correlation with the AfD outcome, we may get a confirmation of this theory.

I've noticed that you tend to be on the "Keep" side more often than most. When closing AfDs, I look for every possible way to escape an actual deletion, within the limits of consensus, of course. If, when you vote Keep, you could also provide an alternate "Redirect to" option, it would often give me an easy way to avoid deleting, especially if someone seconds your idea. If you vote early enough, others are likely to follow your lead. Redirects are cheap, and allow non-admins to retrieve text from the history.

You may also be interested in scanning CAT:CSD on a regular basis. I find that many articles are incorrectly nominated for Speedy deletion. CSD:G1 and CSD:G4 are two major offenders, although in many cases no reason is provided at all. Regrettably, some admins do not apply much scrutiny to those nominations, and I often see articles speedied improperly. When I check CAT:CSD, I usually end up removing speedy notices and changing deficient articles to a redirect as often as I do deleting them. You too are authorized to do that; it is perfectly legitimate to remove an incorrect speedy notice if you provide a valid reason. When in doubt, replace it with an AfD. I don't want to load our AfD pages with every speedy in sight, but many good stubs get lost daily to an often indiscriminant CSD process. Owen× ☎ 03:09, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Shanna_Compton

Hi. Sorry to bother you again. You might think that this is a very minor thing, but I counted 8 keeps and 4 deletes on the article, which is enough for a consensus. I didn't notice any sock puppets and I believe that 2:1 is enough for a consensus. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the rules, but I thought that an 8/4 vote meant keep? P.S. Sorry if that sounds like I'm having a go at you, I just thought that I'd point that out to you. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 02:46, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Oops sorry, I forgot the nom. So its 8/5, which is a no consensus. My bad. I suppose it was very petty of me anyway, since no consensus means it is kept. :) Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 02:47, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi, I hope you (OwenX) don't mind if I respond to Zordrac here on your talk page. There is no strict numerical definition of what constitutes consensus. I think most people would argue that 55% is not enough and 95% is more than enough, but there's a big grey area in between and trying to apply a strict numerical threshold isn't what it's all about. --RoySmith 03:14, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

I was wrong as it turned out. Sorry about that. And yes, I read the "consensus" definition per an earlier discussion. It is established that for votes for deletion, consensus is set at 2:1, however this is discretionary. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 03:19, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Where is this established? --RoySmith 03:23, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I was referring to Wikipedia:Consensus, and that was my interpretation of this line: "two-thirds or larger majority support for Wikipedia:Articles for deletion (WP:AFD)" I am sorry if I misinterpreted that. That was how I read it. 2/3 or larger majority is the same thing as saying 2:1 or greater. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 04:30, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sock puppetry

I guess that you are probably right that the user was a sock puppet. By the way, what would be typical process for dealing with a user who came to Wikipedia so as to completely change a page, delete external links and basically make black in to white, and then when their edits were reverted nominate the page for deletion, and have 10 other friends who they also got to vote on the nomination, 4 of whom had blanked the article? Would their votes typically be ignored in an AFD? An article that I created 2 weeks ago, and which was nominated for AFD the instant it was created, and passed 7/3, was renominated a week after the first AFD was passed by anon users. Because of 3RR I've been prevented from editing the page, although I am more than a little concerned about it. I guess it depends on how I look at it though. The Eventualist in me says that it's okay because they'll sort it out and it'll be okay in the end. But it disagrees with every other belief. I'm also not sure why an obvious bad faith nomination hasn't been speedy kept yet. I was pretty sure that you weren't allowed to disrupt Wikipedia to prove a point. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 18:44, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

LOL thanks for the offer Owen. But I don't agree with everyone, and I can't see myself getting made admin. Besides which, I'm really only here for the Falconio trial. After that's over, I am planning to not be here anymore for a while (at least not until there's something else that is interesting to write about). Oh, I might stick around to add transcripts and such when they are released, but that's about it. This thing takes up too much of my time as it is, and I really shouldn't use it as much as I have been. Thanks tho. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 20:44, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What is this all about

Who is Rachel Owen, what is she about? El Jigüe 12/05/05

OwenX I went to the file you cited this edit and found that at least half was my stuff, on organic farming in Cuba which was carefully documented and properly cited by the way. Think why would I want to deliberately remove my own material? El Jigüe 12/05/05

BTW What source of nitrogen were you using, nitrogen fixing trees are probable better than bush legumes in Cuba. The marabu (Dichrostachys) already there probably does a good job, nasty stuff though. I suggest you check in Allen and Allen Leguminosae ISBN 033322215 for something "native", although you should be able to find some stuff in the old "Maderas Cubanas" by Fors, or the comprehensive "Phytogeography" of Borhidi. El Jigüe 12/05/05

Go ahead restore your stuff, but I still do not think it is me the one who deleted it. Especially since I keep getting my stuff interrupted. Why don't you make a link and develop a new section something like: Organic Agriculture in the tropics. I would be most interested to see what you have. I am especially interested in Jigüe the tree form of that mythical dark water spirit, Lysiloma latisiliqua, it has abundant small seed and grows fast. El Jigüe 12/05/05

Owen remember it is relatively simple to fake a computer address. Apparently all that doing this requires is to set up spurious proxies...Oh BTW go to Vittorio Vidale you may enjoy it. El Jigüe 12/05/05

[edit] Sorry!

I am sorry for replacing it with a blank. This was because I didn't know how to redirect at the time, and was saving it blank until I could figure out how to. Blah2 02:09, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] DW et al.

I checked the IP block list, and so far, the only blocked DW-related account I have found is Joe Canuck - I wonder why. I'm not sure whether Curps is the right person to ask - this case probably goes back well before Curps joined Wikipedia and/or became an administrator - I believe these accounts were ordered blocked by Jimbo Wales, so I think asking him is better. --69.117.6.28 03:45, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Indeed, I just checked out Curps' edit history, and found that his earliest edit was 2004 April 3, which is well after DW et al. (they were blocked in 2003). So I think asking Jimbo Wales is much better than asking Curps. --69.117.6.28 03:53, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Curps just responded with the following: Sorry, these usernames don't really ring a bell. Was there an ArbCom case? -- Curps 04:35, 6 December 2005 (UTC) I think this just goes to show that Jimbo Wales, not Curps, is the correct person to ask about this case. --69.117.6.28 05:57, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:80.217.152.161

FYI, there is currently an RfC regarding 80.217.152.161, whose edits you reverted earlier. Thanks, -- Gyrofrog (talk) 04:39, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Your opinion please

Okay, I am in a tricky situation at the moment with regards to some people that were offended at some pages that I created and have been threatening me, etc, and generally causing a lot of problems here. So first I'd like to explain how this all happened, and then I'd like your opinion about what to do.

As I said, I was using Wikipedia primarily to cover the Peter Falconio disappearance trial, but I guess at various times I went to research different things that were of interest to me. At one point I was amazed that there was no Wizardry 8 article, probably my favourite game of all time, so I made one, and then was even more amazed that there was no article for Crusaders of the Dark Savant. I then checked all of the computer games that I had in my drawer, and also ended up creating Crusaders of Might and Magic, Heroes of Might and Magic III Complete, Heroes of Might and Magic II: The Price of Loyalty and Metal knights. I also made a variety of other pages while following redlinks and looking up info in relation to the Peter Falconio trial (the whole set of Premiers of New South Wales happened because William Forster, who is the famous first Chief Justice of the Northern Territory was incorrectly listed as the New South Wales premier from 100 years earlier! LOL. I found so many errors with the Premiers of NSW sections, and they were so easy to research that I filled a lot of them out.

Then at one point I thought to write about the 2 talkers that were most influential to my life, Planes of Existence (talker) and lintilla (talker). In my mind, they were very important, and my understanding was that they had enormous influence to the talker community in general, as well as influencing large sections of other cultures. However, someone challenged this, and slapped an AFD notice on both the instant that they were created. I honestly couldn't see the difference between things like that and things like Metal knights, so asked them what the criteria was.

The early stages of the pages were just factual descriptions of what they were, but then they insisted that I had to make claims of notoriety above and beyond that, so I made some assertions about them. My insistence that PoE led to the development of ICQ was challenged, and I just found it too difficult to research that, so I ended up just putting in the links between the two, and said "probably", and then wrote up the things about the messages from Yahoo! Messenger which referenced it (Planes of Existence had initially contacted Yahoo! asking to be hosted on Yahoo! and developed a strong relationship with Yahoo! in its early days). But the big problem was that I had only just created the page, and researching things like that is very difficult to do. So I ended up just explaining the links and putting in "probably". I had to conclude that I was unable to find any definite evidence.

I felt under pressure to try to find anything of note to justify their existence, since, essentially, lintilla didn't have a web page while PoE did used to have quite detailed ones but they had been closed for 2 1/2 years so are no longer referential. So it was a difficult one. I tried looking at Neil Robertson's pages, but it seems that he had deleted the links to PoE after it changed ownership in 1999 (when I, and a lot of other people, refused to go anymore). So in the end I very reluctantly had to talk about the big controversy that happened there, with the spying that had led to talker levels dropping by 10 times in the space of 12 months, worldwide, and changed the entire face of talker use and indeed instant messengers and others.

Now, I never wanted to include that stuff, because I didn't want to have to, but it was the most easily referential thing, and there was definite evidence that it happened, as it was pretty well documented. Whilst I personally don't think of that talker as purely being notable because it destroyed everything else, it had to be highlighted because it was really its only real provable claim to notoriety.

That was what got it over the line in the AFD, and it ended up with a 7/3 vote to keep. A few people challenged it, saying that "being notable for a scandal isn't encyclopaedic" but the majority of people disagreed. It was also notable for other things too, but I just couldn't prove it.

I hadn't really worried so much with the lintilla article, since it wasn't such a big deal to me - if one stays then so would the other. That one survived with a no consensus vote of 6/7 against. However, a lot of people who weren't regular users, or who didn't usually vote came out in support of both articles. (Well, when I say "a lot", I mean 3 or 4).

After that, I tried to add to both articles, and I thought to make it not so much just about things which I personally thought were important, but to make it a fair and balanced factual approach, including all notable talkers. So I went through a fair bit of research, and concluded that in relation to PoE and lintilla, I had to also include a page on Crystal Palace (chat site) and Sleepy's multiple worlds, and then I also included Fantasia's multiple worlds, which is notable in relation to all of the others both for their controversy and their enormous lack of users. A place being notable for being unbelievably unpopular? Well, considering that it also had 30 talkers on its network, which was more than any other system ever, yes, it was notable for being unpopular!

And then of course I thought to expand the project to be about the history of talkers. I decided to start on talker and online chat and research them, and I was absolutely appalled at the size of the articles - less than a page for each. Like a tiny blip. The pages were also heavily biased in favour of certain talkers and were thoroughly inaccurate. So I did some research and expanded the talker article basically in to the size that it is now.

As part of that research, I uncovered the need to create an article for UNaXcess, the first ever talker, Cat Chat (talker), the first ever internet talker, Cheesehouse (talker), the 2nd talker, and the 3 most popular and influential talkers in history, Resort (talker), Surfers (talker), and Foothills (talker). And then I thought that I would stop. But when I was fiddling around with things, I noticed that in fact Crossroads (talker) was the most popular NUTS-based talker in history, so I thought that I had to include that, as well as Lighthouse (talker), which was the first ever adult talker with an 18+ age description. Whilst neither of them were particularly influential on anything, they nonetheless seemed to warrant their own articles. And then I uncovered a few others, and I wasn't sure whether to make articles for them or not. There was Snowplains, the most popular ew-too talker since NUTS came out, Ncohafmuta the equal most popular ever NUTS talker and also influential in code development, Crypt which was very influential in terms of its code, and then of course talker.com which was the first ever talker host. I was tempted to create pages for al of them, but by this stage I thought that I already had too many articles. I reluctantly created one for Ncohafmuta and then ended it and vowed that that would be the last one. I then looked through the lists, and questioned whether Amnuts, RamTITS and Mamnuts, 3 obscure and rarely used code bases, really warranted their own pages (someone else had created them). I questioned all 3 of them, since in my opinion there are only really 2 code bases for talkers - ew-too and Nuts (Talker) and everything else is based on that. Lots of names for codes (1 per talker, basically) but really only 2 types of codes. After a bit of analysis, I nominated Mamnuts for deletion about a week ago. Feel free to vote on its deletion. In my opinion its just blatant advertising. The other two were 50/50 so I decided not to nominate them.

And then we got back to the whole project. For one thing, other than knowing that it existed, I couldn't find any reliable sources for what Lighthouse (chat site) really was. I similarly couldn't find any reliable sources for what Crystal Palace (chat site) was, other than about its controversies, and a bare basics of what it did.

I kept expanding on all of the articles, but I ended up adding more detail about the controversies on CP and PoE, as well as the big one on lintilla and the big one on Foothills (which I hadn't known about before - I honestly never realised that Surfers had stolen their code), and of course the 5th big controversy, which was on Cheesehouse. Finding details of the 5 controversies wasn't too difficult, but they were all one-sided arguments. Not one of the 5 controversies had a view from both sides. Indeed, for all 5, one side said that it did happen while the other side didn't even put up a web page and denied that anything had happened. I found it a bit amusing that, in spite of evidence to the contrary, lintilla insisted that Sleepy had never been involved with their talker, and in spite of her code being identical to lintlla's, they insisted that she hadn't stolen their code. She herself admitted to doing it though.

Because I knew so much about the PoE controversy, and IMO that was the most important one, I wrote a lot about it, and I kept worrying about neutrality. Whilst there is only available one side of the story, I had to assume that there was another side that would either say the opposite or else deny that it had happened. So I kept adjusting it to try to make it sound more neutral. I ended up making a pretty detailed account of what had been said to have happened, why it was said to have happened, what evidence there is that it had happened, and what impact it had (such as reducing the numbers by 90% - i.e. 10 times - in a period of 12 months - across all talkers, and totally destroying the zoophile talkers worldwide, all of which shut down as a direct result). I then went ahead and put in alternate views, to try to make it more balanced. I thought to myself that there were probably people who didn't believe it, or also the person or people that were meant to be responsible, so I tried to make sure that they would not be offended, and kept adjusting it to make it as neutral as humanly possible.

I kept finding new links to add, and added a lot more that talked about it, but I found myself writing more about the controversy, making it really long, just to make sure that it conformed to the neutral point of view. So I was trying to think of some ways to shorten it, and to also consider merging some of the articles.

A few people had suggested perhaps not having a CP article, since basically it was only notable for its controversies, and so I was considering wiping that one, with perhaps just a short mention in the PoE article about the controversies there. And I was also considering merging sleepy's and fantasia's in to lintilla. Indeed, I could even merge surfers and resort in to foothills. And I could just keep going.

I tried to get some advice about this, as to how many articles is an appropriate number. Some people suggested that there shouldn't be any, since the community was too small. There are 46 articles about individual MUDs, and the most popular MUD gets about 500 users on at a time, while the 20th most popular gets about 30 or 40, so, while the overall MUD community is a lot larger than the talker community, there is an argument that there is justification to keep all of the articles.

I think that at minimum, during their peak of operations MUDs were twice as popular as talkers, and that nowadays MUDs are probably 20 times as popular, and that MUDs had also been about for twice as long. So henceforth I couldn't justify any talkers besides the top 3 per user levels - I could only justify them from a historical perspective.

There is a school of thought that all of the NUTS talkers can be put in to the Nuts page, and all of the ew-too talkers in to the ew-too page, or, alternatively, putting all of the NUTS talkers in to the lintilla page and all of the ew-too talkers in to the foothills page, as those two seem to have led to the creation of all of the others. I was more keen on this idea than putting in huge sections about them in the code pages, because I think it messes it up. As for talking about them on talker, I think it just ends up being advertising then.

Then I was very happy when someone came along and started editing the Crystal Palace page, saying that they were a user there. I was glad to see that the talker was still in operation, as I couldn't see anywhere online that said for sure whether it was or not, and I welcomed his edits. But they ended up saying that I was totally wrong with what I'd said about Virus being responsible for the blackmail. I explained that it wasn't certain that he was - it was just that most people believed that he was, and that it had been presented as such, and I asked him to present some more information.

So he provided some more detail about the incidents, and I told him thank you, and said that I didn't actually know all of that. So he then challenged my sources, so I explained to him what they all meant, and asked them if they had any evidence that could say differently, and offered him to contribute to it.

He then started vandalising the page, and wrote many nasty messages in the talk page directed at me. Then it seems that they had got all of the users from their talker to come to Wikipedia to attack me. I wasn't too happy at that at all, and tried to explain that I was just trying to document events of historical significance, and that what I was doing was trying to present it from a neutral point of view. I then got legal threats accusing me of slander. It isn't slander of course for a lot of reasons, not the least because the rumour already existed, is being presented as something which is disputed, and not the least because the person's really name isn't used anywhere.

Then a bunch of people came in and just decided to wipe the article. I suppose you can call it WP:XD. As a result, an admin on the "anti-vandalism squad" came along to help to fix it up. But someone else came on, acting as if they were an admin, but they had only 4 prior edits. I am still not sure how to think of this other person, but I suspect that he is involved in the whole thing, and is just a vandal in disguise.

So in the end, they just wiped history, and deleted everything of significance, and then, in spite of no admin contacting any of them to suggest it, they somehow knew about a thing called Page Protection, and put in a request for it. Either they are very clever to work it out for themselves, or else this fake admin that came from out of nowhere is actually with them. The Page Protection specifically asked for me to be blocked from editing the article for which I was the primary contributor, which I think falls in to the category of disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point. I suggested that perhaps a peaceful resolution would be to merge the articles, or else perhaps just to delete it.

They then started wiping things on PoE and talker, and I was becoming increasingly frustrated. Not once did they reference any evidence. Whilst I suppose that I didn't have any unbiased sources to reference, I did still have official sources, and they should carry some merit, and unless they have sources that can say otherwise, their actions count as WP:no original research.

They then put in an AFD on the PoE article, which again I think classifies under "disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point", and tried to start edit wars with me over it. They deleted a lot of the references that I had, claiming that they didn't agree with them and they were biased, yet had none of their own. But the article wasn't speedy kept for some reason. I don't really understand why not, as it passed 7/3 just a week ago, and there's nothing else has happened since to make it suddenly worthy of deletion.

So anyway, I have thought about it, and there is really no reason to mention the guy's name. I can merely say that it happened and not mention names, or even the talker, or any specific details, and perhaps that can be a reasonable compromise. I don't think it is really a good idea not to include it at all since it was such an important incident, and is a very well known incident.

I was thinking of just merging the lot of them in to lintilla and foothills, and just have 2 talker articles, and that would do me, with each having their own sections for the important talkers of each type. That's what I was moving towards, but then these AFDs disrupt that process.

The thing is that the only person who has supported them is someone who has no edit history, has wiped his talk history and not replied to anyone who writes to him, has refused to say who he really is, and otherwise seems very dubious to me. I was tempted to go in to the AFDs and put all of those little notes about how they are all meat puppets, but I thought that I am probably too central to it all to be able to do that. I mean, put in about their edit history only involving these places over the past few days, and mostly being personal attacks and acts of vandalism, with the rest being original research.

So I would like some advice for what to do? What I am thinking right now is to wait out to see what happens with the AFDs, and not really worry about them either way, since I would be merging both articles anyway - although I'd be more concerned if the CP one for some bizarre reason was kept (I doubt that it will be kept, especially since the vandals themselves want it deleted), and then putting up AFDs for Crossroads, Ncohafmuta and Lighthouse, since I am no longer convinced that they are suitably notable for their own articles and since they have no content worthy of merging that has not already been merged. That was what I was thinking of doing. What do you suggest? Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 04:40, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 69.117.6.28

I see that this user is marking people as sock puppets do you have any idea if it is valid? Or should I go ahead remove the claims? KnowledgeOfSelf | talk. 06:11, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

OwenX has already cleared the way for me to do this on DW-related users. When I mark others, it is based on edit patterns and/or the IP block list. If you want to question me, you might as well also question 68.39.174.238. --69.117.6.28 06:21, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re:Boxes

I have shamelessly appropriated Template:Toomanyboxes, found on BJAODN. - Ding dong ding dong ding dong 15:07, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Personal attacks/legal threats etc

Here are some:

• Personal attacks here [2], plus a lot of edit summaries that I am sure I could find, and other places.
• Legal threats here [3], here [4], here [5],
• Related vandalism here [6], here [7], here [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], reverted here [14], vandalised here [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], reverted here [20], vandalised here [21], [22], [23], [24], [25], reverted here [26]. Oh and an interesting bit. The guy who did the 3 above reversions did vandalism here [27], [28], [29] which is very odd considering that he was at least pretending to be someone stopping vandalism.... Also note absence of edit history and statement here: [30] where he as good as admits to being a banned user. More vandalism here [31], reverted here [32], vandalised here [33], [34], rverted here [35], vandalised here [36], [37], [38], reverted here [39], vandalised here [40], [41], reverted here [42], vandalised here [43], [44], reverted here [45], vandalised here [46], [47], reverted here [48], admission that the facts were accurate [49], [50].
• Disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point: In spite of the constant vandalism (also in edit summaries etc), they disrupted Wikipedia to prove a point twice: here [51] (request for page protection) and with nominating an AFD on an article that had already passed 7/3 just a week ago.
• Note that all of these users have next to no edit history outside of this issue, and have admitted to coming to Wikipedia so as to cause problems (none of them have yet contributed to anything else). See here: [52], [53] (lots of contributions, but mostly vandalism and personal attacks), [54], [55], [56], [57], [58] (all vandalism), [59] (other than something 6 months ago), [60]. Also note Shinmawa [61] who for all intents and purposes only started because of this, and seems to have encouraged it all (in a strange way, whilst claiming he is trying to restore peace). Whilst these technically aren't sock puppets, I dare say that they are meat puppets. Oh, there's probably more examples, but that will do me. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 21:26, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

---

Okay, I have to respond to this. The three instances of "vandalism" that I've supposedly done (see 27-29) was to remove read and old messages off of MY OWN TALK PAGE. I can't vandalize my own page! I am not, nor have I ever been, banned for anything, nor did I say such -- or even imply it. I've also acted solely alone and for this article and always under my logged in username.

I really, honestly don't know what this user has against me, or why Zordrac is so insistent to attempt to make me look guilty of everything from vandalism to sock puppetting to meat puppetting. I have no idea who any of those users are and I certainly don't agree with their tactics as my rv's of their vandalism shows. I respectfully disagree with Zordrac on editorial issues to be sure, but that's a FAR FAR cry from the massive amounts of damage and hostility I'm being accused of by him. There has been absolutely no assumption of good faith on his part. Quite the contrary.

To date, I've done the following:

• Made constructive comments in the article's discussion pane.
• Reverted vandalism as I saw it happening.
• When several users disputed two sections of the article, I added npov-section tags to them. When those sections were later reduced to "just the facts ma'am", I removed those tags.
• I moved an editorial dispute out of the Request for Page Protection page back to the article's discussion forum (without changing any of its content)
• I voted against the AfD that Zordrac supported and stated my reasons for such in accordance with the deletion policy and WP:POINT.
• I had a disagreement with User:Tomlillis, which we've respectfully resolved. Tom and I are now working together for the common goal of making a good merge of the remaining articles.

I honestly do not know why Zordrac has got it in his head that I would do everything in my power to stop vandalism and give everyone a chance to add their input under my logged in name while at the same time subverting my own efforts through a meat puppet. That makes absolutely no sense to me at all.

I wish to apologize to you in advance for this. I'm sure you have better things to do than to deal with this kind of nonsense. However, I felt I had to defend myself against these baseless (and frankly, illogical) accusations.

I encourage you to look over the diffs of my contributions and ask yourself if those are the actions of someone working to hurt Wikipedia or help it. I would hope that that alone will speak for itself. Thank you for your time. -- Shinmawa 03:03, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

---

For the sake of completeness, I want to verify Shinmawa's account of our individual dispute. I shared (perhaps originated, to be honest) a lot of the allegations Zordrac made to the end of gaming the system. However, I (perhaps clumsily) attempted to investigate the matter on my own before making any public allegations, which was really at the root of the aforementioned dispute.

Again, I apologize to Shinmawa for the perceived antagonism, but the evidence for a "gaming" case was pretty strong. I had, I thought, good reason to believe that he was involved, partly rooting from an erroneous assumption I made about the vintage of his membership and an accurate assumption about his ties to the talker community. (I made a mistake when I was checking his edit history--I didn't actually check his edit history. In my distraction, I checked his USER PAGE history and jumped to an incorrect conclusion. Slightly biased by the nature of the situation at hand (the protection, the sudden anonymous IP votes from new users), I made an error.

I maintain that there was impropriety and "gaming" on the AfD discussion. Further exploration of the topic reinforced that belief. However, and here's the big point, I can find no evidence that Shinmawa had a whit to do with it and would be irresponsible to suggest as much in a public setting.

That'll be all. Tom Lillis

---

Okay, I revert the allegations against Shinmawa, which, as stated, were only a suspicion. He did look very guilty at one point there, although I did initially assume good faith there. My first tip was when he didn't respond to my message in his talk page, and instead deleted it. Then when he did the same thing to Tom Lillis, I thought that there was something up. The third bit, of the strange comment in the Protection page made me really think twice. Then when the other anons who didn't seem to have ever used Wikipedia before suddenly knew what they were doing, yet Shinmawa hadn't told them in any edits on Wikipedia, I thought that it was almost certain that he knew them elsewhere, likely on CP talker. Whether he went there after they came here, or else was a user beforehand, I don't know. Of course, they might just be really clever people, who knows. Took me over a year to figure out Wikipedia though, so if they learned that quickly then I am astounded. I still can't figure out how to nominate for deletion properly. And I didn't even know that a page for protection existed until the other day. However, it looks like there is something constructive going on now, and I appreciate the edits on the talker article. Nonetheless, the links above for the other users certainly suggest some wrongdoing. Getting edit summaries saying that I don't know what I am talking about and calling me names and stuff isn't pleasant, and it was quite upsetting to me to read such things. Finding that after I'd tried my hardest to reach a compromise, and was editing towards a neutral point of view only to have someone else revert them with comments such as "REMOVING NPOV" when my actual version was totally neutral was really insulting, especially when they then followed it up with nastiness in the talk page. I also didn't think that it was appropriate to slap NPOV stickers on the articles when they were quite neutral to begin with. Whilst earlier revisions were a bit biased, that was from 2 weeks ago, and I had worked hard to clean it up to make it more neutral. The fact that I presented both sides means by logic that it is neutral. Them denying the other side makes it non-neutral. And them denying the other side and then saying that my 2-sided approach, stating both sides of the argument was biased is just plain ridiculous. I don't think that that should have been supported. If they dispute the sources they should give other sources that they consider to be more reliable. The sources that I used were of official site owners who should know what they are talking about. Its about as reliable as you are going to get on this topic. I think that it is biased to say that the site owner doesn't know what's going on on their own talker. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 12:03, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

---

I don't mean to rub salt on a healing wound, but you didn't say anything about mere suspicion. You openly accused me of vandalism (see above), admitting to being a banned user (see above again), pretending to be an admin (see previous section), and implied strongly that I was meat puppetting people against an AFD, using the fact that I simply wiped my own talk page as "proof". You and I might have different philosophies of the purpose of the talk page, but using that as a basis to start a campaign against me with several users, including OwenX and Tomlillis was truly uncalled for and NOT assuming good faith, no matter what you say. You made a lot of assumptions and jumped to a lot of conclusions, simply because we disagreed on an article's content. You twisted "evidence" (such as my talk page) to make me look guilty. You assumed I was orchestrating people simply because we voted the same way on an AfD.

I did slap NPOV tags on the disputed sections to try to keep the peace and foster debate rather than an edit war. (See User_talk:MissK -- I put that up there after reverting 2 vandalisms.) NPOV-section really says nothing but "Okay, we agree that its POV is disputed. Let's discuss it more." It does NOT mean that I personally felt that it violated NPOV, only that it was disputed by several people (which it was). It was nothing at all personal against you; it was all part of the process. In fact, nothing I've done has been personally directed toward you or toward ANYONE. (I wish I could say the reverse was true.) I don't know who you are. I have no issues with you. However, you should know by now that disputes about content should never be taken personally.

OwenX has suggested nominating you for a adminship. If you were to have had such power, I'm positive you would have blocked or banned me days ago, even though I've done absolutely nothing wrong. Because of this, I feel that I must ask OwenX to reconsider that nomination for the time being. -- Shinmawa 17:10, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

---

Ouch. Sorry Shinmawa. I was more concerned with the whole group. The one who has been doing most of the damage is the same one who has contributed the most. The big issue is the harassment that I have received. As for adminship thing, I have already said that I don't think its a good idea, since I am not planning on using Wikipedia for long, and besides which I think that I am a bad choice. However, I am 100% against banning people ever. If I was admin in this situation (assuming that I saw this from outside, and it didn't personally involve me), I wouldn't have banned anyone, especially not you. I would probably have authorised the speedy delete of CP and the speedy keep of PoE and written to all parties on their talk page about it and worked towards a positive solution. But I really don't know enough about Wikipedia to really be able to say. As I have said before, I am only here for the Peter Falconio trial, and once that's over, I dare say I won't use this for a while. Not unless something else comes in. I am sorry if you saw that as a personal attack on you. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 06:45, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

---

[edit] My reply

For the sake of continuity, I'll post my reply here.

OK, let my try to address the major issues:

• I see the legal threats as borderline. An expression such as "could be considered slanderous" or even "It is advised that you remove slanderous allegations" isn't a clear, obvious threat. For an utterance to be considered a legal threat, there has to be a clear implication of an intention to pursue legal action by the person making the threat. Other admins may be more harsh on this, so I suggest everyone watch their step when making such statements.
• Repeated section blanking by user:68.77.252.56 and then by the same user registered as user:MissK is clear vandalism. I am glad to see the text was restored, but if I see this again I will block the offender. I should point out that user:MissK did stop vandalizing after the warning from Shinmawa.
• While removing other people's comments (without archiving) from your own Talk page isn't vandalism, it is considered very poor form. You will never see respectable Wikipedians doing that. Calling other people's comments "trash" is extremely rude, and may seen as a violation of Wikipedia:Civility.
• The request for page protection based on the assumption that we need permission from the article's subject matter before writing an article about him or his product is laughable, and that's how it was treated on Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. I think it was done out of ignorance, rather than an attempt to disrupt or to prove a point. Repeated nominations for AfD may be seen as disruption in some cases; if this becomes a recurring phenomenon, we'll deal with the offender.
• It is clear that many of the editors involved in this dispute have been "drafted" into WP specifically for this purpose. That by itself is not an offence, but if they start voting in tandem on AfDs or engaging in tag-team-2RR, I will get involved and block the meat-puppets.
• All of Tom Lillis' actions seem to be in good faith. Zordrac, I think you have a lot to benefit from collaboration with him. I am sure you would find him to be a true gentleman.

My recommendations on this matter are as follows:

• Zordrac, it is my opinion that Shinmawa and you share the same goal: identifying and documenting the truth. The two of you may be going at it in different ways, but I believe both of you would benefit from working with each other, rather than against each other. Both you and Shinmawa are men of your word, and Shinmawa is smart enough that if he really wanted to vandalize, he would do so in much subtler ways.
• I suggest that Shinmawa, as an act of goodwill, restore all the comments he removed from his talk page, at least to an archive page linked to his main Talk page.

• I will do this. However, please understand that it was not intended as an uncivil act, nor an act of rudeness. Wikipedia refers to entries on a user's talk page as "messages" ("You have new messages."), which is akin to email. I've removed messages from there after I've read them in email fashion. I did not feel that replies to Zordrac was warranted or required and I removed Tomlillis's message only after I responded to him. If such an act is misinterpretted, I apologize. BTW, email has LONG had the notion that old messages are "trash" and removing old email messages is "emptying the trash". See Microsoft Outlook for an example of this. Since I equate "wiki-messages" and "email", it is easy to see that this was not intended as rudeness, but more indicating that I simply am removing old messages that serve no useful purpose other than to clutter up my talk page.
• I'm sure that I'm not the only person with that understanding. Afterall, the wording that Wikipedia uses makes it sound very much like the messages there should be treated like email. I had to seriously dig all over Wikipedia to even find a mention that deleting messages can be viewed as hostile (even though I really don't understand why), even when its not intended to be. As an admin, perhaps you can do something to help make that a little more clear to newer users. -- Shinmawa 09:17, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

• Shinmawa: I don't think Zordrac would have banned you even if he had the power to do so. A few days ago Zordrac reminded me to delete an article for which I closed the AfD as "Delete" against his own vote. Zordrac's integrity and commitment to our policy is above any petty quarrels we may have around here. In any case, there is no plan for adminship at this point, so this issue is moot.
• Zordrac, I believe your articles are under attack by a coordinated group of POV pushers. However, you would find that with the help of such powerful allies as Shinmawa and Tom Lillis, you can defend the truthfulness and neutrality of these articles. I would still intervene in cases of clear vandalism and policy violation, but I think you'll discover that having these two allies on your side is far more useful than my admin "shotgun" on call.

While this case took far more time than I planned to spend on it, I'm glad I did take the time. Please don't jump in with counter-examples or additional accusations; my analysis may not be perfect, but I'm sure you'll find my recommendations to be fair, equitable, and for the benefit of all involved. I strongly urge you all to follow them.

Owen× ☎ 02:08, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

---

Thanks. I've been trying to respond here for a while. So I'll try to write this in a short space.

1) Seeing Shinmawa's edits on talker, I am convinced that he is acting in good faith. I apologise unreservably for the accusations, and hope that he can forgive me. I do not need for him to restore the talk page, although, out of interest, I would like to know why he thought that my writing to him to say "thank you" was something that he didn't want on his talk page - ditto for Tom's message o thanks.

• Hi Zordrac, if you look above, I think you'll see my mode of thinking and understand that it was not intended to be hostile. I was, rightly or wrongly, equating wiki "messages" with "email". However, since after doing some research based on OwenX's response, I see that I my actions, no matter how innocently intended, could be misinterpretted. Therefore, I'm going to restore your messages to an archive page (once I figure out how *grin*). -- Shinmawa 09:17, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

2) I think that the best option is for me to just stay away from this for a while, to just edit Peter Falconio disappearance, which is the reason why I am here, maybe work on Aardwolf MUD which I just created for the most popular MUD in the past 10 years (average 700 users online, with a peak of 5,000 - just to put CP's little 50 user max in to perspective). I just thought it was odd that we had articles on numbers 2, 3, 4, 5, and most of the top 20, but no article on number 1. Really odd. I am not sure if they are notable for anything other than popularity though. I also need to work on my deletion policy. I have been getting a bit behind. Plus I might be going away for Christmas for 6 weeks and won't have computer access. So I think I'd rather if other people take over talker. Perhaps also see if you can extract a bit more from what I wrote on planes of existence (talker) in to the article too, and CP if relevant before putting in a REDIRECT. Also maybe put in some refs.

3) Oh, one other thing I noticed the other night. "Cat Chat", the first internet talker from 1990 (I have not heard anyone dispute this) was run by "cat", a guy called Chris Thompson. Planes of Existence was also run by "cat", a guy, but his name isn't written anywhere. They were both terribly paranoid, and had the same kinds of problems on their talkers. There is a big suspicion that they were the same person. I can remember Foothills staff writing about that, and that was a big part of the reason why PoE "Bridged the gap" between ew-too and nuts. Not sure if any other talkers did tha though. Also, is PoE the only talker to have had their original creator banned? Certainly seems unusual, but I didn't put "only" because it might have happened elsewhere. Something like that likely would have affected and impacted other talkers too. Especially if he was banned by the very person who he banned, who then became owner. Seems to be confirmation that he was banned.

4) You'll note that I wrote a bit about the conflict between Resort and Surfers. This was one of the biggest "feuds" in all talkers. But yet all official correspondence ignores it. As in, all of the newspaper reports about Resort, Surfers and Foothills and the talker phenomenon don't mention it. However, reading between the lines, they sort of did. Newspaper articles about talkers would either mention "Foothills and Resort" or "Surfers" or else all 3. A lot of them said quite clearly "the 2 big talkers are Foothills and Resort" and totally ignore Surfers. By the way, there should be quite a lot of newspaper reports and magazine articles about those 3 talkers. PC Gamer Magazine wrote quite a few articles about them. Foothills itself seemed to get the most articles as an individual talker, but all 3 were. Other than the odd one where they included other talkers (Snowplains for example got mentioned in a few articles) I don't think that any beyond the "big 3" were ever written about anywhere. We should really try to find these articles. Should be around 1992-2000 or so. I can't recall reading any since 2000. Would they be available on the internet? Might be. We should also probably go in to a bit about the culture of talkers. It really is notable that people were loyal to one talker or one type of talkers or to an alliance of talkers. For example, if people from Resort went to Surfers (or vice versa) they were regarded as traitors and often got banned for it - and Resort admins were normally banned from Surfers (and vice versa) automatically. This kind of culture existed in a lot of other talkers too. Lintilla and Sleepy's hated each other - yet "officially" they allowed their users to go from one to the other. There were other examples of this kind of thing. Fantasia's hated Crystal Palace, and vice versa. There were also alliances between certain talkers. And then there were the types. Ew-too people hated nuts people, all ages hated adult, and so forth. There were some users who crossed the divide, but it was rare. And even going in to the sub culture, BDSM people often didn't go to non-BDSM places, and zoo people often didn't go to non-zoo places. Whilst some did, a lot never did. So they were sub cultures, and it even gets more sub culture than that. This whole culture was far more detailed than anything that exists in MUDs or anywhere else, and it was a big part of understanding what a talker was all about. It was a home for people. It was their virtual world. People became their family. A lot of people got net married, they had net fathers, net sisters, net brothers, and so forth, and there was a huge amount of loyalty. People were loyal to the core, and would do such things as hack another talker who was an enemy of theirs out of loyalty to their own. Rumours were a big part of this as well. Enemies of one talker would spread rumours about it. People were always divided on each rumour, because the big ones always had merit but never had absolute proof. The ones that were the most easily believed were the ones that were possible. Hence the big 5 there. They were a big part of the culture of the whole thing. CP was probably affected by more controversy than any other talker in history - other than perhaps Surfers. They were accused of more things and had more talkers that hated them than anywhere else. Except perhaps for Surfers. Yet if anything that increased their popularity. People became fiercely loyal. You try to go up to a Surfers person and ask them about them stealing the code from Foothills and they'd virtually punch you. Ask them about them changing their name to Surfers so as to copy Resort, and they'd kill you. This kind of thing is a huge part of the culture. Yet if you talk to someone from Resort about Surfers, they will happily reel off tons of information. Talk to a Surfers loyal about Resort, and its the same kind of thing. All of these things were a huge part of the culture. But then, do we need to list individual examples? I am not sure. We could conceivably just write about the incidents and not mention names. That might make it easier. I am not sure. Can we not mention them at all? Oh, I think that we'd be missing the whole point if we don't mention them. People don't go to these talkers "just to talk". They might start out that way, but they eventually get caught up in the entire world. And if you asked a loyalist to any talker which is the most popular talker of all time, and they would almost certainly say "mine is". Or at minimum they would try to put an argument forward for their importance. The loyalty of people to their talker of choice was just incredible. You saw how the CP people reacted here. Go get people from any talker and they'll do the same. And they can write tons about the culture. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 08:24, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

---

Shinmawa, my apologies for assuming bad faith regarding your Talk page deletions and the associated edit summaries. You are right—keeping messages is a common practice, but is not a documented policy or guideline. I was misguided by the fact that you removed them only a few hours after they were posted, but now I understand the reason behind that action, and appreciate the fact that you restored them.

Currently, Wikipedia:Talk pages is the only relevant page I could find about this issue, but as you point out, if you don't know about it, you probably won't go looking for it... I'd welcome your suggestion as to how we can make this better known. Suggesting policy and guideline changes isn't limited to admins!

I'm happy to see things are moving in a positive direction. It is a pleasure dealing with intelligent, articulate, and civilized people like the three of you. Glad I could help! Owen× ☎ 16:37, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] RFA Poll

Just wanted to make you aware that I added two sub polls to clarify the issue on bureaucrats vs. everyone else, in case you hadn't already noticed. Jtkiefer^{T | C | @} ---- 23:59, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:Pokemon

User:Pokemon has been vandalizing pages today, and continues to vandalize, despite repeated warnings. would you mind blocking this user? thanks,--Alhutch 00:01, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

yeah he did stop after all. thanks anyways.--Alhutch 02:15, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I actually found his edits amusing. I know its vandalism, but I couldn't help laughing. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 08:35, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Is there a reason why this user should not be blocked as with inappropriate user name? --Nlu (talk) 08:45, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] BD2412's RFA

Thank you, OwenX, for your support in my RfA, and your kind comments - I'll do my best as an admin to make the reality of Wikipedia rise to the level of the dream. BD2412 T 02:02, 8 December 2005 (UTC) ^{<--note new "admin gold" sig :-D}

[edit] (no title)

Hey Owen. I am "the Hall Monitor" Spammer. Just saying goodbye. I was testing you. :) it is me, Ryan. Just saying GOOD JOB! Talk to you later! —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 152.163.101.10 (talk • contribs).

[edit] Early RFA thanks

[edit] Block

71.109.5.168 (talk • contribs • logs • block user • block log) is having a ball. Lets close the doors. --Master Jay 03:32, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Already blocked. Owen× ☎ 14:12, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Response

The article in question should not be redirected to the same article it's linked on. It should be a 'red' requested article, not a redirect. It was my intention to "make it red" but I guess it has to be deleted for that. By having it blue, it's less likely someone will create the appropriate article with the lyrics, etc. of the song. 70.171.46.118 16:23, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] (untitled 2)

Hello OwenX,

Buddy, you have some problems with Pakistan? Why do you have so biast information against Pakistani army? Who told you that Indian army didn't loose in 1965 war and who told you that 1971 war was won by India? If Canada was to send in troops into Alaska and then annex it from USA, would Canada win?

Also, why don't you mention the 1956 defeat of Indian army? Why do you call Nawaz Sharif a coward? And how do you know the results of Kargil war? Actually Pakistan was winning but it was Clinton who came in and stopped Pakistan and forced Pakistan to retreat....now tell me, who was the winner?

You, my friend, have some issues, deal with them. This is an encyclopedia, be neutral, alright? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by A khan (talk • contribs).

[edit] (Sorry about vandalism)

Listen, sorry I vandalised the pages...didn't mean to vandalise though, it's just that I wanted people to get both sides of the story..but if you read the pakistani army article, you will notice how biast it is. And I don't care about what the heck you think about my state of my mind, if you don't think that Pakistani army information is biast written by some Pakistan hating person, you DO have some problems, and yeah, go ahead, block my IP, I could care less about his dumb website anyway, one more reason for me to be less angr.

[edit] eggy

The eggy go poop on you!

[edit] User:Porn-o

Hi Owen, I'm not sure about what constitutes as a inappropriate user name, but this looks like one to me. could you have a look? Porn-o. P.S. has also performed vandalism. Thanks KnowledgeOfSelf | talk 19:26, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for taking a look. Sorry to waste your time :-D KnowledgeOfSelf | talk 19:35, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Block notice

Just wondering, what's the template for the "you have been blocked" text? Dan100 (Talk) 19:48, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thank You

I was just reading Wikipedia:Username when I got your message. Thank you I appreciate the sentiment :-D. Happy editing. KnowledgeOfSelf | talk 19:52, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] {{unblock}}

I particulary like the {{unblock}} system. Do you think that should be added to all "you have been blocked" templates? Dan100 (Talk) 19:58, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

It's worth noting that the ability to edit one's user talk page while blocked was added to take the pressure off the mailing list (which had been the previous "appeals court"). However it wasn't always very fair, as it was easy for admins to ignore these pages. The {{unblocked}} seems to be a more co-ordinated approach, although I guess many vandals must just put it on their user page for the hell of it... Perhaps a better use for it would be for 3RR block templates/their like? Dan100 (Talk) 20:30, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Well, I'm not on WP much so I won't be looking at that category much. But once "word gets around", advertised on WP:AN etc, I'm sure people will use it - it's a good idea. Dan100 (Talk) 21:03, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Semi-protection

I saw you just reverted vandalism on George W. Bush, and wondered what you thought about the proposals to curb what's going on there. If you have time, check out Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy, and weigh in (there's something of a large discussion page, so be prepared. For a quick run-through of what's been said and done, see #rehashing) Hope to see you there. -Mysekurity^{(have you seen this?)} 22:09, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry! I knew I'd seen you there, but in a search of your user talk page (using firefox's handy ctrl-f), turned up nothing containing "semi", and thus I added it. I'm spreading the word by plastering {{subst:User:Mysekurity/Semi}} all over peoples' pages (but only GWB vandal reverters, I'll get to the other ones soon). Sorry for the foncusion, and feel free to use my template, or create your own, or blast me for spamming pages, Mysekurity^{(have you seen this?)} 22:18, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Thankya, I'm glad you agree. (I'm trying not to make it too massive in terms of spamming, and no more flashy/ugly boilerplates.) Do you mind if I steal some of your monobook.js code? And do you mind helping me with it? I'm having a few issues with mine. Thanks again, and happy editing, Mysekurity^{(have you seen this?)} 22:23, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

Thank's for reverting the vandalism on my user page. I've been keeping an eye on that user due to his/her vandalism on the Scott Keith page. - Akamad 00:29, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks Owen

I appreciate your explanation regarding AOL and blocked IP's. The problem is corrected if I simply log off AOL and relogin, as the assigned IP's are constantly changing. Perhaps if it affects anyone else in the future, you could offer that advice. By the way, please check out my newly submitted photograph of a geisha friend of mine, which I've nominated in the featured pictures section. Thanks again. December 9, 2005 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by ToddLara (talk • contribs).

[edit] Can we get a page protection

For George W. Bush, and can part of the revisions that can be seen in the history be removed? Thanks KnowledgeOfSelf | talk 00:49, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree, page protection is vital - no one must see the vandalised versions, we'd be a laughing stock. Izehar (talk) 00:51, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

This has been discussed many times before; check the Talk archives of that article for hours of arguments about that very topic. A better alternative for limiting vandalism to popular targets is now being debated on Wikipedia:Semi-protection policy. If you haven't done so yet, go voice your opinion there! Owen× ☎ 01:06, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

I'll have a look at the Semi protection discussion. I think most wikipedians are aware of the hours of discussion that goes on with the protection of the George bush article (at least the ones that go on RC patrol). I was requesting it as just a short term protection until the vandalism could get sorted out and the WoW socks could be tagged and blocked! Thanks again KnowledgeOfSelf | talk 01:18, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

This is just a trivial question. But the George Bush history is being deleted. There are 2500+ entries, how does one decide which entries to undelete? KnowledgeOfSelf | talk 01:41, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

This is a damn shame. I've been checking the talk page and it looks like this is a job for the developers thats just a shame. Those edit summarys are disgusting, makes me want to support radical ideals like a full protection that only admins can edit lol :-D J/K. The thing thats really bothering me about this string of vandalisms is that my internet connection is very slow, so long articles like that take a while to load. I rarely get to the Bush article in time to revert it, the fact that I was able to 3 or 4 times says a lot to me about how much it was vandalised this time. I did check out the Semi protection and put my input in to support. I think that if something like this came in effect a lot of users could go back to regular RC patrol. KnowledgeOfSelf | talk 02:00, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

LOL wouldn't that be nice. On the downside whacking vandals is kinda fun :-D KnowledgeOfSelf | talk 02:15, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hey

Just been *very* busy lately. I'll talk to you when I get the chance to sit down in front of a computer amongst some peace and quiet. :-) --HappyCamper 04:35, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hello there

I finished reading your page. good stuff. You are obviously truly attempting to make wikipedia a better place. I applaud that. Don't misunderstand this situation. Try not to make mistakes. Good Luck.216.175.115.53 06:50, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] AOL User Blocks

You have blocked me from editing. Please be aware that AOL users do not have a static IP number -- it rotates through so that the selection is relatively random or based on region. I have a long history of being impacted by blocks directed at others. Please see: User:WBardwin/AOL Block Collection. I would appreciate a prompt release of the block. Information below. Thank you. WBardwin 07:24, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Your IP address is 207.200.116.72. Please include this address, along with your username, in any queries you make.

Your user name or IP address has been blocked by OwenX.

The reason given is: userpage vandalism

I just unblocked the IP. Also, please be sure to check the AOL IP range box next time before blocking. This IP is from AOL, and so 24 hours is way too much. The blocks should stay at 15 minutes for AOL, as that vandal is likely long gone. Thanks. Dmcdevit·t 07:34, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:216.175.115.53

The person using this IP has been disrupting the Biff Rose page and not working with the other editors. He is probably the same person(s) as User:Jonah Ayers, who has been causing a lot of problems for months under a ridiculous number of usernames, easily proveable by the similarity of "their" actions. By going along with his unilateral archiving of the page, you are abetting a pattern of disruption and vandalism. Please talk to me offline if you need evidence, and I can supply several editors who can corroborate. Thank you. -Sojambi Pinola 09:01, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sojambi Pinola

this user is a friend of biff rose's and has none of the ability to write in the NPOV format. because of this he has used the Rose page to endlessly revert it back to a form only he can appreciate, at times being upbraided by the very editors he calls you to contact, for misrepresetning himself and Rose's work. This is a clearly a case of sock puppetry, in that he writes exactly what biff rose want's to hear. Sojambi pinola identifies himself on his user page, and if you got rose's website -biffrose.com- and head for the message board, you will find a message where rose himself congratulates Sojambi by his real name for getting info back onto the wikipedia entry for him. This is a flagrant abuse of sock puppetry in that sojambi pinola is posting to the wiki entry exactly what the article's subject has asked him to do. as follows is a quoted entry from the biffrose.com website message board

in a message dated, december 3 2005 on biffrose.com messageboard --- SPEspinola@XXX.XXX wrote:

> that was me! But it was actually a sentence that > Marcuse came up with a > while back. Marcuse confused me. I really thought > it was Loran for a while, but > now I think it's really just some guy....could be > wrong. > > If you don't find that to be a compromise, all the > better!!

that part written by Sojambi Jonah Ayers 19:42, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Those 2 terms...1-racial and 2- anti semitic are automatic mechanisms people use on "others"...to make themselves appear superior...I'll kill dem *****in'

• • • • • • mothuh*****uz....keep writing keep posting what

we talked about... Loran "The Evil Sprout" Frazier and Walter L. Newton are NOT exonerated..they are "named" and will always be PINNED with what they are....Loran "The Evil Sprout" Frazier a devoted follower of Aleister Crowley's "Do what thou wilt" satanic cult drinks his Minstrel Blood;;;the "wilt" part is the key word...Loran "wilted" when I confronted him at 3p.m. on Sunday June 15th (?) 2003...he had lied (about my leaving New Orleans)...and said he read it on some "link" on the Internet..when I challenged him he backed down...being a total bullschitter who gets menial jobs in bookstores, robs them blind then moves to another city and gets menial jobs in bookstores and robs them blind...you should see the great collection of Criterion DVDs he has////sneaks them into dumpsters behind the store then picks them up after work....espinola keep up the good work, write the wordz of my life....as for loran... don't hire him if you ever have an eye to keep product on the shelves for sale.........did you ever hear the song Peter Wilde wrote about Loran "The Evil Sprout" Frazier? It's on Pete's Cheap'n'Easy album...called "Sourmouth Sprout"...when I met him in Eugene,Or. in 2000 he had just printed an Aleister Crowley inspired newsletter entitled Conquering Child with REAL small print nobody could...or did...read....thousands of copies lay bundled in the corner...I tried...to read it...it totally sucked of Baphomet, Yazroel, upside down pentangles ..and all the dead Egyptians...the usual worship of darkside priesthood BOO !!!....Loran fancies himself a High Priest of the devil cults..I fancy him an ass hole and kick his butt and relish the idea that I have the greatest web sites headed by the one he and Walter put up called Biffroseracist.com..that went nowehre but made me a hero in New Orleans..the very idea that I'm a drunk who lives out of dumpsters now that everybody in New Orleans is a drunk forever living out of the dumpster New Orleans IS thanks to Katrina.....then there's Walter..whose real name is Walter HESS..his family changed it to NEWTON to sound more English...after their Nazi Uncle Rudolf Hess escaped from Hitler's Germany the chicken schitt.....see Sarah Silverma's movie "Jesus is Magic".....that's the ONE thing NO one in wikipedia can describe..the humour in and of it all...I deal with so-called anti-semitic and racial themes and laugh...the most controversial is being put together this month if Tay...my black engineer ever gets that LOOPED record back to me..he should have it done this week.....Jake age 3 singing twinkle twinkle while...i...entering the enemy's camp....hip hop...take them apart in their own rhythms....let's see...what's the am. culture doing....day be doin' nigguhz mo' dan *****.....let's see.... and that last tirade wit hall the ... is biff rose himself, the article's subject Jonah Ayers 19:42, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The Buffalo Skull of Diligence

Thanks for your work reverting the vandals on Mandan while it was on the mainpage yesterday! *Exeunt* Ganymead | Dialogue? 19:46, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Biff Rose

Thanks for helping out with this morass. user:Jonah Ayers has used dozens of sock puppets over time, and I think that User:Mice are my friends and User:Mickey muos were his, long with user:Brown Pigeon. User:BrownPigeon was apparently a sock of user:Marcuse. I don't think that user:Sojambi Pinola has used any socks. As far as I can tell, the only "anti-Rose" voice in the article dispute is Jonah Ayers. -Willmcw 23:47, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Removing comments

1) The two comments were personal attacks. They were criticisms of me, neither had any validity, and they were very nasty. I don't like such things to be on my user page.

2) What the other guy had removed were praises. There is a big difference.

3) I never said that he should restore them. I just thought it was odd that he'd deleted them since they were praises. I actually said that I understood the reasoning since I had removed attacks from my talk page as well. I for one don't like to get people writing nasty things on my user page, and especially untrue nasty things. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 23:50, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Alhutch's RfA

Dear OwenX,

I'm an administrator, and I've got you to thank for it! Thanks to your support, my RfA passed 25/0. Please don't hesitate to contact me if I can help you with anything. See you around the wiki, :-) Alhutch 06:00, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

P.S. thanks for being there in the past when I needed admin help

[edit] WoW

Look! You've been impersonated by Willy: OwenX on Wheels! - Mazal Tov! You've reached the top of your wiki-career ;-) Izehar (talk) 15:22, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:72.49.52.246

User:72.49.52.246 has repeatedly engaged in vandalism on the Latin wikipedia. As I am an admin there I have blocked his IP. I see that he's been behaving no better over here, and continues to vandalize despite repeated warnings. I note especially that you have threatened to block him if he keeps clearing his talk page. Well, he's done it again. Given the amount of vandalism he has perpetrated both here and there, I think it's time for a well deserved lowering of the boom. Thank you, --Iustinus 01:06, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

He's done it again. I humbly request that you make good on your threat. --Iustinus 22:25, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Theblacklarl / DickClarkMises

Own I promise you, you have the facts wrong. I am putting truthful information which is being removed by DickClarkMises. He has constantly antagonized me by criticizing me constantly on my own talk page. Please make sure he stops! Thanks in advance —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Theblacklarl (talk • contribs).

OwenX: Thank you for the assistance in dealing with the situation involving the above user (Theblackarl). He is quite persistant! Dick Clark 17:30, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Owen my chaver I promise that that is not the case. I did not make any comments about latin america! Please take another look at the situation —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Theblacklarl (talk • contribs).

Owen, can I remove the hateful information put on my own talk page? - TheBlackLarl (didn't mean to do something unsigned, just not sure how to sign)

But it is my page? All of the claims made there are baseless and unfair. Don't I get jurisdiction over my own page 17:57, 16 December 2005 (UTC)TheBlackLarl

Here is an example of the problem Owen:

Block now holds the Harold E. Wirth Endowed Chair in Economics at Loyola University in New Orleans. He is a Senior Faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute for Austrian Economics. His most famous work is Defending the Undefendable. Block, along with his longtime friend (there have been some critics who claim that Rothbard was Block's mentor..If one reads their letters (which are availible on file at the NY Libertarian Society) one will see that it Rothbard learned as much from Block as Block from Rothbard...Their students included individuals such as Hans Hoppe)) Murray Rothbard, is considered to be one of the principal economists and thinkers of the Austrian School and anarcho-capitalism in general. + Block now holds the Harold E. Wirth Endowed Chair in Economics at Loyola University in New Orleans. He is a Senior Faculty member of the Ludwig von Mises Institute for Austrian Economics. His most famous work is Defending the Undefendable. Block, along with his longtime friend and mentor Murray Rothbard, is considered to be one of the principal economists and thinkers of the Austrian School and anarcho-capitalism in general.

I put in this:

there have been some critics who claim that Rothbard was Block's mentor..If one reads their letters (which are availible on file at the NY Libertarian Society) one will see that it Rothbard learned as much from Block as Block from Rothbard...Their students included individuals such as Hans Hoppe

--

DickClarkMises deleted it without any reason. It is simply fact correcting the incorrect stuff he put in the article. He has been stalking me around Wikipedia and deleting everything I post for no reason. Wouldn't you be upset if someone did that to you? 18:09, 16 December 2005 (UTC)TheBlackLarl

Just to give you some context:

As you can all see, the user DickClarkMises has made numerous comments regarding me. I will not insult him here because I do not want to be kicked off of Wikipedia. Please just know that I see things very differently from him. Again, my name is Sean Christopher Marinara and I am a college student at Holy Cross. Dr. Block used to teach here, and I learned about him through that. My friends and I are all libertarians. We have personal information about Dr. Block that we learned from his former colleagues here at Holy Cross. When I tried to post this information, some users, including DickClark, deleted it. The information is 100% true. I ask that you please carefully consider the situation before making any decisions which might be considered rash.

Theblacklarl 18:15, 16 December 2005 (UTC)TheBlackLarl

OwenX: Although I am confident that you can figure this out on your own, please allow me to respond to the allegations made by User:Theblacklarl above. I have Walter Block, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Lew Rockwell, and many other pages watchlisted, which must be a fairly common practice. I saw Theblacklarl's contributions as uncited, sloppy additions. I have no bone to pick with Walter Block, or Lew Rockwell, since I am presently employed by the latter and worked with the former all semester (this Fall). I consider both of them to be friends and eminent figures in the libertarian movement, and as such I take an interest in monitoring their articles so as to correct fallacious info posted to them. Theblacklarl does not seem to be willing to work towards consensus on the appropriate talk pages. I would be thrilled if he would cite some sources to back-up his edits. Thanks again for your oversight in this matter. Dick Clark 18:21, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Space

What's the difference between a space and that thing you insert there?

I saw your message. I know you are about to call it a day, but just in case I am getting you on your good side, can you try and help out a new Wikipedian? Check my contributions. You should see a .com article that I'm trying to wikify. It's vfd/speedyable I think, but I don't want to hurt the new person' feelings. --129.97.58.55 19:36, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

What can i post on a article, and what can i not

[edit] Thanks

Thanks for reverting vandalism on my page, again. --Nlu (talk) 22:07, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Possible Socks?

Hey Owen, could you have a look at this history for Mr. Roboto? Looks like those might be socks. Thanks KnowledgeOfSelf | talk 02:15, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sockpuppets?

This is too much of a coincidence... :) Titoxd^{(?!? - did you read this?)} 02:18, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

LOL Does that mean Owen got to the block first? :-P Thanks guys KnowledgeOfSelf | talk 02:21, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

I had the same thing happen with FreplySpang last week. This is getting spooky... :) Owen× ☎ 03:28, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Once Moore

Thanks for deleting, and i am sorry for creating it. I was duped by a fake mandy site. And am i a sockpuppet? Parys 07:27, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Block on 129.97.58.55

I unblocked 129.97.58.55, so you should be safe to log in again. Owen× ☎ 19:01, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

• Thanks for that. Revived 19:05, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] My RFA

Sorry you feel that way about me. The reason I dont control my temper good is because I am bipolar. I never meant anything put on my page that day. SWD316 22:43, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Block on 24.71.223.140

Thanks for the fast turnaround on this. I didn't realize I could unblock myself -- I'll remember that for next time. Cheers! 23skidoo 23:06, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] When should a page be protected?

Hi Owen, when should an article merit a request for protection? An article is being hit with vandalism (Neopets) I've reverted about 5 times in the last 5 to 10 min. Different anon IP's, editing the same nonsense vandalism over and over again. Just curious thanks. KnowledgeOfSelf | talk 23:36, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks! so page requests should be a last resort only. I got it. It's a good thing your going to help watch the page, cause I need a little wikibreak. :-D Again thanks. KnowledgeOfSelf | talk 23:42, 17 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] untitled 3

Hebrew?? How come you're canadian, but speak hebrew natively while speaking english only at a near native level? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 85.250.22.167 (talk • contribs).

[edit] untitled 4

Why did you block my page

Why did you block the changes to my page? It was the history of the saxophone. It's my freaking homepage, why are you blocking my page?

McBain 9:45 p.m. 12/17/05 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.82.133.231 (talk • contribs).

[edit] WP:POINT

Hi there! In the Linuxbeak RfB, you asked me why I thought Everyking's vote might be an example of WP:POINT, and I thought I'd bring the conversation here to avoid cluttering the other, especially seeing as how Everyking has changed his mind. To answer a question with another question, would you agree that Booothy was using WP:POINT when he voted against each and every RfA? I believe that community consensus is yes, and for the same reasons I suggested that Everyking's vote may have been the same. Namely, Everyking stated that he was making his vote for symbolic value. I don't believe that whether this specific RfB passes or fails will have any lasting effect on Wikipedia, but using your vote to "make a point" (which Everyking said he did) seems to meet the spirit of WP:POINT in spades. Of course, I strive to learn, and if my analysis is incomplete or has made a wrong turn somewhere near Albequrque, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. - CHAIRBOY (?) 05:07, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Your analysis is incorrect. There is no WP rule against "making a point". WP:POINT is a rule against disrupting Wikipedia to make a point; indeed, the full name is Wikipedia:Don't disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. Boothy's votes were silly, perhaps, but were not a disruption, and Everyking's vote certainly wasn't disruptive. If you had just called it a tit-for-tat, I would have said nothing, as I can see it being interpreted as such. But accusing a distinguished member of our community of breaking an official guideline is a serious thing, which is why I ask you again: Where was the disruption?

Also, Everyking never said his vote was symbolic. Read his comments again, carefully. He said that the position of a bureaucrat has more symbolic value than that of an admin. So, before you jump and throw wild accusations, you should read people's comments carefully, familiarize yourself with the policies and guidelines you're quoting, and apologize when you find yourself in error. Owen× ☎ 05:26, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Hi there. With respect to Boothy, if you'll review his RfC, you may notice that there are repeated statements that he was violating WP:POINT. You may feel that's not a correct viewpoint, but I did say that community consensus seemed to suggest that he was executing WP:POINT. Based on that discussion, I believe that biting my head off isn't terribly appropriate. I learn every day, and I hope that in the future, you'll be a bit more forgiving for those of us who are continually trying to learn.

In regards to Everyking's specific wording, I hope you follow up with JTkiefer about the same thing, as he posted "So let me get this right, your opposing him based solely on symbolic value, how does that make sense?".

Best regards, - CHAIRBOY (☎) 06:16, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for retracting the WP:POINT part of your comment to Everyking. I'm sorry if I came across as being too harsh, and apologize if I offended you in any way. The RfA/RfB page is one of the most hostile areas on WP, and voting against a massive consensus can be a harrowing experience. This is why it's important to defend minority opinions, even—or especially—when their vote is opposite our own. I'm glad to see this has all been settled amicably, and appreciate you having taken this seriously. Owen× ☎ 17:36, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] please

you said: Please be careful not to remove content from Wikipedia without a valid reason. If you want to experiment, please use the sandbox. Thank you. OwenÅ~ Ü¥ 19:38, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Robeykr"

I DID state my reason -- I discussed it on his talk page! -- Jason Palpatine 21:38, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but the second time you tried it, you removed much more than you intended to: you accidentally lopped-off half the article, as well as all the categories and the links to other languages. I have no problem with the "exploding" part, but as I said, be careful not to remove more than you intend. Owen× ☎ 21:48, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

????? -- I did not intend to remove anything. This is news to me. -- Jason Palpatine 21:51, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

PS: Weird. Definetly weird. -- Jason Palpatine 21:57, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Help urgently required

User:Jordanhatch recently placed the name of his friend on his user page. On his friend's user page User:XenoNeon, I found his full address. I've warned User:XenoNeon and the address has been removed. I then dived in myself and removed his name from Jordanhatch's user page as XenoNeon was in agreement that it shouldn't be there. Both of these users are under 18s and these details need to be removed from the edit histories. Can you do it? Archer7 19:44, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

OK, I deleted all prior versions of this user page which had his friend's full name. The older versions may still be accessible by admins, but that's probably a very low risk. Let me know if you need additional help. Owen× ☎ 19:55, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Help Please

I tired to do use the WP:MOVE that you mentioned but it will not let me: "The page could not be moved: a page of that name already exists, or the name you have chosen is not valid. Please choose another name, or use Requested moves to ask an administrator to help you with the move."

Can you help me do this or do it for me? Thanks. Camp

[edit] Design Methods

I read your comments about the Wiki page about Design Methods. I would like to understand more your concerns so that your flag to delete the page can be worked out. I would appreciate your assistance to correct anything that is inappropriate. Thanks. User:design_methods

[edit] Copyrights

Take a look at this page; it might be a good example to use, you think? --HappyCamper 01:51, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Not helpful

It's pretty clear that you spend the majority of your time on this website. That said, you don't have the right to constantly string insults at people who don't know how the website works as well as you do. It's rude and unkind. I can say italian ITALIAN Italian or however I want to and you have no business saying anything about it. Really, you're ridiculous. I ask that you stay away from my posts and my discussion page. 20:32, 19 December 2005 (UTC)~TheBlackLarl

Proudly signed by TheBlackLarl —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Theblacklarl (talk • contribs).

Theblacklarl,

1. User talk:DickClarkMises is not your discussion page, as you claim.
2. I will not stay away from any discussion page, yours or otherwise. When you rudely accuse someone of being ignorant and prejudiced, you will hear from me, and from other admins.
3. Please sign your posts using ~~~~. Your username is Theblacklarl; there is currently no registered user called TheBlackLarl, as you can clearly see. If you wish your username to be changed to the latter, please place a request on Wikipedia:Changing username.
4. I don't see how it is any of your business what I spend my time on. I suggest you concern yourself with your own life, rather than mine.

Thank you, Owen× ☎ 21:18, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 100

Why is User: McBain blocked? Is it because he or she put it on their own homepage, or is it because they just have such a perfect name? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.82.133.231 (talk • contribs).

User:Mcbain was banned because during the two hours his account was active, he did nothing but vandalism. He kept creating nonsense articles like "George McBeth", "Dan Hartranft", and "KFC Script". He was told to stop doing that, but he just kept on going and recreating those nonsense articles over and over again, until there was no other way to deal with him except to block him permanently. I think he did that because he got angry when his essay "History of the Saxophone" was deleted, which is too bad because I think he could have become a good editor here if he wanted to. Owen× ☎ 00:17, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Gematria Translation Table

I know you probably put a bit of work into the table on Gematria so I thought I talk to you first. I'd like add the values for the finals. To be consistent the Hebrew characters that have finals should also be reversed so that there is no confusion by having something like |50,700|Nun|נ,ן| which could mistakenly interpreted to give the final a value of 50 rather than 700. I might also add a bit of text to explain that the finals have a different value and perhaps even mention that a when they are larger than the adjacent letter it is expressing thousands. Basically I'd just like to jazz the thing up a bit. I am currently unemployed so I have nothing but time to do things like this. What say you? < Puck 08:53, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Final Hebrew letters having a different Gematria value is a relatively late, and not a universally accepted system. Therefore, you should only add it as a separate table, and mention the fact that this use is limited to specific sources. Traditional Talmudic Gematria does not distinguish between כ, ך; מ, ם; etc. Owen× ☎ 13:03, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I think it would be better to have a single table and an explanation. If the caveats you mentioned are covered I think it could clear enough how it is applied. I'm trying to deal with similar issues on the Tree of life (Kabbalah) page. I think it is important to distinguish the different usages, but they all need to be covered. I'll try and sandbox something on my user page and let you take a look at it before I start changing things willy-nilly. < Puck 14:04, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Sounds fair, I'll take a look at it as soon as you're ready. As long as we can clearly distinguish between the Kabbalistic gematria and the original Talmudic one, we should be fine. By the way, you may also want to take a look at Tikkun olam, which has been rewritten from scratch in the last few days; some of the older material was lost in the rewrite, and perhaps should be restored. It's a pleasure working with editors like you! Owen× ☎ 15:41, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I took a quick look at the draft on your user page; looks very good!  !חזק ואמץ Owen× ☎ 02:10, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Which one did you see? The single table or as it exists now? I wasn't really satisfied with the single table because it was too wide at high resolutions. As it stands now I'm thinking of changing the term non-Talmudic to Kabbalistic or possibly non-Talmudic Kabbalistic. Do you have a preference? Also, I'm glad you pointed out the difference. I was aware that some Talmudists dismiss Kabbalah as syncretism if not outright Gnosticism, but I didn't know this facit of gematria was one of the distinctions. Do you have a source for more information on this? I like to squash my own ignorance as soon as it rears its head. My own studies of Kabbalah are from a decidedly non-Jewish perspective, but I feel understanding the traditional form is requisit for understanding how it has developed since it escaped from it's original jelously guarded obscurity. I'm posting this on you page and mine since I don't know if you have a watch set on mine. I'm a newbie and I'm wondering what the convention for talk pages are. It seems to me if we only posted our responses to each others page some else could be totally baffled by only seeing half the conversation. On the other hand posting the entire thread in both places seems a rediculous waste of resources. How is this normally done? Only on the talk page of the article in question perhaps? If I was mistaken to take this conversation to our pages rather keeping on Gematria I think it might be a good idea to move it back there because this conversation might be of interest to others who read that page. < Puck 02:43, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

The latest one looks best. And I think Kabbalistic is more accurate than non-Talmudic in this case. I don't have any good reference material I can recommend. I left all of what I had behind when I moved to Canada, and it was all in Hebrew anyway, which may be a stretch for you, I guess... There is no WP standard as to where to keep these conversation threads. Many people just post their reply on the listener's talk page, and not worry about continuity. I usually copy and repost it back to my own talk page, especially if it's something worth keeping. I wouldn't worry about wasting space; these conversations don't add up to that much, as far as database storage is concerned. Owen× ☎ 03:00, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

"I don't have any good reference material I can recommend. I left all of what I had behind when I moved to Canada, and it was all in Hebrew anyway, which may be a stretch for you, I guess..."

Yes it could be. I recently tried for a literal translation of Leviticus 16:8. I came up with this "Give Aaron of two hairies lots, lot one for YHVH, lot one for Azazel." It only took me about 6 hours. :) Except for a copy of Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, all my translation resources are on line. Most of them are mentioned in the External Links section on the Gematria page, though I had already discovered them myself. I don't know if you're aware of this one or not, but it has been very helpful for me. Westminster Leningrad Codex It has the entire Tanach in Unicode Hebrew, pointed or unpointed, and can show which of the J,E, P and R texts apply to a given passage. In conjunction with some of the other translation tools on line it is a very good resource. If I weren't so impious and didn't love bacon it would be very tempting to convert to Judaism and spend the rest of my life studying the Torah and Kabbalah. Well, it's at least nice to think about it and I think I'd look really good in one of those big flat brimmed cowboy hats. I've really enjoyed working with you and I appreciate the feedback. BTW, if you hadn't already noticed, I updated the page. < Puck 05:00, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Good job! The best Bible translation I found is http://www.bible.org/netbible/index.htm; I checked some of the trickier passages for translation, such as Song of Solomon, and this group of scholars has done an amazing job. Their translation of Leviticus 16:8 is, and Aaron is to cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the Lord and one lot for Azazel., so you weren't too far off... Let me know if you need any other Hebrew or Judaism related help. Owen× ☎ 15:00, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] So that no duplication of effort occurs...

...check out my posts on User talk:Design methods --HappyCamper 14:18, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 101

But after he was banned for the 24 hours he didn't recreate them, all he did was put them on his own home page. I know McBain personally. Are people not allowed to put that stuff even on their home page? Because i don't know if he knows that. Please answer back. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.82.133.231 (talk • contribs).

I don't know what you're talking about. User:Mcbain was not "banned for 24 hours"; he was permanently banned. I have never seen this user's home page, nor do I care what he does on his private home page. Are you talking about his Wikipedia user page? It wasn't Mcbain who put stuff there, it was you (user:68.82.133.231) who did it. So, first of all, please do not post such material on other people's user page, especially banned users. Secondly, this is a Wikipedia user page, not a private "home page"; you cannot put anything you want here. Thirdly, please sign your Talk page posts with four tildes (~~~~). I'm tired of running after you and signing on your behlaf. Thank you. Owen× ☎ 23:02, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:68.171.249.212

Could you block 68.171.249.212 (talk • contribs • page moves • block • block log)? He/she's more than earned it... Thanks. -- Revived 00:10, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

He stopped vandalizing after you warned him. If he continues, issue a final ({{test3}} or {{test4}}) warning and alert me. Thanks! Owen× ☎ 00:20, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] That's Stupid

Why aren't you allowed to put your own stuff on your own user page? You're just kidding me right? And McBain wanted me to put that on his page because he saved it on my computer and lost it on his. You put your own stuff on your page, why can't he? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.82.133.231 (talk • contribs).

[edit] link on Jesus page

Hello, I cannot believe my website "Jesus, a historical reconstruction" is turned down. It is certainly more researched, more objective than most of the links of the Jesus page. I have two opponents (see talk:Jesus for details), one saying somebody else other than me should implement the post (that's OK, that can be done, but the rule is rather naive). The other, who is truly anonymous, does not want to have a "link farm" and always takes me out, whenever he/she has the chance. But recently two new posts appeared and no deletion. I feel unjustifiably picked on and my opinion of wikipedia is very low at this time. What do you recommend? Thanks, Bernard —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Mullerb (talk • contribs).

Bernard, your website "Jesus, a historical reconstruction" is very impressive, I have to admit. But keep in mind that Jesus is a very general, top-level article. We have other, more specific articles for specific aspects of Him and His life. One such article is Historicity of Jesus, where the exact aspects with which you deal in your website are addressed. I was about to move the link to your site to that article when I discovered that KHM03 already beat me to it. That page only has 8 other links, so yours will certainly stand out more. Anyway, I'm glad to see KHM03 already took care of this; say what you will about Wikipedia, but at least we are consistent. I hope you do stay and continue to contribute here! Owen× ☎ 13:16, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Blocking

You had absolutely no right to block me. My edit was not vandalism in any way shape or form. You should be ashamed of yourself, instead of giving me feed back, people kept reverting me, so I kept trying to make it better. You better have a good explanation for your actions. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 128.42.7.170 (talk • contribs).

Yeah right. This edit was not vandalism at all ;-) Izehar (talk) 15:39, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I don't debate that point at all. I was testing out Wikipedia, it was my first edit. I was told not to do so again, so I didn't. I wasn't blocked for that edit either. I was blocked for legitimate edits which attempted to clairfy the Slashdot template because, oh my gosh, it isn't clear.

Referring to Wikipedia newcomers as n00bs on a template which is visible from dozens of pages was reason enough for the 3 hour block, especially considering this was your fifth attempt to deface this template with "Leet" style nonsense. Under most conditions this would have earned you a 24-hour block, but since I saw some of your other edits were done in good faith, I chose a shorter block. Please keep in mind that this is not an online gaming chat board; terms like "n00b" and "0wn3d" are not welcome here, and trying to add them to official templates is clear vandalism. Owen× ☎ 16:44, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Seriously, wtf m8? This is the freaking internet. 1337 is the language of our people. Get with the picture and evolve. I'd note I'm one of the n00bs I'm talking about. I don't think there is any clearer way to say it, and goodness, if you thought it was inappropriate for your Victorian values and constitution to see such advanced speech, why didn't someone tell me what was wrong instead of blocking me? It isn't defacing, it's clarification.

hello owen, do you like cock?

[edit] Why the test4?

I pulled one prank to amause some of my friends here, and you pulled the test4 on me? What about test1, test2, and test3? Do they not exist in your mind?--216.164.147.35 02:44, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

For a stunt like this you should have been blocked right away. You're lucky you even got a warning. This place is not for amusing your friends with tasteless pranks. Owen× ☎ 02:48, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The Movement

What do you think of the movement? Reply here. Thanks. --Kin Khan 03:04, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The problem is Owen

Owen is the problem. He stalks people' business —the preceding unsigned comment is by Theblacklarl (talk • contribs)

Naaah, he's just zees guy, you know? - CHAIRBOY (☎) 05:09, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks!

Thanks for reverting the vandalism on my user page! - CHAIRBOY (☎) 05:09, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Jesus, a historical reconstruction

Dear OwenX,

First, I want to thank you, KHM03 and Johann Wolfgang for your and their help and appreciation for my work. However, my anonymous opponent, 64.12.116.70, twice within 24 hours, again took off the posting without explanation. I looked into his files and learned:

a) His main interest on wikipedia is SpongeBob.

b) He has been accused many times of vandalism, including into the Jesus page (through outrageous insertions: see the evidence for yourself).

c) He has been threatened repeatedly to be blocked.

I sent him a message: "To anonymous, Stop taking off the link to my website. Your position cannot be defended, because you allow the posting of new websites and you do not delete the existing ones, except mine. Why mine, and mine only? Explain yourself and be specific."

See a more complete message of mine on talk:Jesus.

Best regards, (Mullerb 05:52, 22 December 2005 (UTC))

[edit] Wikiholic's Dictionary

Heya, Owen. I love the Wikiholic's Dictionary. It truly gave me a real chuckle. I'm going to take you up on your "improvement" offer and make one little itty-bitty change. Currently, it says that Bush Guardians revert vandalism to George Bush. I'm going to be bold and add the words "the article" in there lest people get a vision of the president covered in spraypaint. :) -- Shinmawa 09:14, 22 December 2005 (UTC) (Feel free to dump this, I'm just feeling sociable today.)

[edit] Korean pride

No problem, thanks for letting me know. Proto t c 14:04, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:Poetlister block, Jewish lists et al

Hi. I see that you got yourself involved in this whole mess, per this comment here User_talk:RachelBrown#.22Jewish_Americans.22. I don't know the extent of your involvement, but yeah, its one big time sticky mess. Lots of RfCs, RfArs and RfMs in relation to the whole sticky scenario, and it got worse today when one admin decided to indefinitely ban a bunch of users due to being "suspected sock puppets" of User:RachelBrown, which included User:Poetlister just as she had been asking for support for an RfAr against Lulu of the Lotus Eaters and SlimVirgin in relation to the whole mess. Very messy. Anyway, I don't know the level of your involvement, and I didn't even look beyond the articles that Poetlister was involved in, but it is one heck of a sticky mess which could take a very long time to sort out. The block today made it worse by about 10 times, and I think if there's going to be any positive resolution, that block needs to be lifted very, very quickly. If needs be, an RfAr can be filed in relation to the suspected sock puppetry, but oh boy. I'm sure there's worse ones, and for your sake I hope you're not too mixed up in all of this. So very, very messy. Are Jews still being persecuted or do they just think that they are? That seems to be the source of the problems, from what I can tell. POV galore and it goes well and truly beyond that. Anyway, thought I'd let you know this, in case you are involved. I am trying to find a way to get out of it. I was just asked for an opinion as a neutral person who wasn't involved in it and didn't know any of the people involved. But now I am finding myself being caught up in the severe injustice of the decision to do an indefinite ban not just on this user but in these circumstances, and I am caught between thinking that I should act to stop this kind of wrongfulness but on the other hand I personally don't care one way or the other. At least my results with Fortune Lounge Group earlier in the day ended up a bit more positive, finally resolving a long-running dispute. But this stuff isn't easy. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 14:32, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Well done.Gator (talk) 20:24, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Simple English problem

I've just had a user (User:DaGizza) contact me on my Simple English talk page telling me he is unable to log in to his English account and that he needs me to blank his monobook.js. I have no idea what it is, but I checked around and couldn't find any evidence of blocking etc. However, it is protected and I am unable to blank it. Could you sort it out? Here is the link User:DaGizza/monobook.js and here is the link to may talk page with the message: [[62]]. Thanks, Archer7 22:24, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Taking you up on your offer.

Let me know if you need any other Hebrew or Judaism related help.

Perhaps you could help me translate a couple of sentences. How would one say:

1) I will enter and leave.

2) Love is the law. (I'm looking for a word that would be the equivalent of the Greek Agape.)

BTW, I just picked up a copy of Kabbalah, by Gershom Scholem. It looks to be a good general overview of the history and development of Kabbalah. I have glanced at portions of some of his other books, but they were sort of overwhelming in their scope. This one is only 450 pages so it looks to be more digestible for a single volume survey.

Not sure what Agape means, but here is what I got:

1) אכנס ואצא

2) אהבה היא החוק

I'll need more context for a proper translation. Hope this helps. Owen× ☎ 01:33, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Not sure what Agape means...

Agape. I'm using it in the sense of the self-sacrificing love... all should have for each other.

I'll need more context for a proper translation.

I'll do my best without making myself seem like too much of a crazy man.

Love is the Law is a phrase from The Book of the Law. It is part of a formal greeting Thelemites use when they meet each other and also functions as the principle credo of Thelema. In its entirety it is in the form of a call and response:

Call: Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law

Response: Love is the law, love under will.

In Greek gematria the words will and love--θέλημα and Αγάπη--both have the value of 93. Hence the userbox on my user page here. Thelemites often just greet each other by saying "93." It takes a lot less time and makes us seem mysterious to outsiders. I mean what's the point of being part of a <sarcasm>secret</sarcasm> occult religious order if you can't be a little mysterious?

At any rate, I have a tattoo that looks something like this:

θέλημα

----------

Αγάπη

It expresses the idea of Love under Will. I am considering getting another that says Love is the Law, but I want to get it in Hebrew because while many Thelemites profess to be Qabalists few actually bother to learn even the rudiments of the Hebrew alphabet, a concept stressed in one of the key expositions on Thelemic Hermetic Qabalah, QBL or The Bride's Reception, especially in Chapter II, where the author stresses the value of memorization in internalizing the Tree of Life. I want to do a bit of good natured rubbing-it-in-the-face of my fellow Thelemites when they have to ask what the tattoo means. I mean I spent several weeks learning the Hebrew alphabet to the extent that I can draw from memory a Kircher style tree with the names of the Sephiroth and the paths in Hebrew and I am but a novice. Many supposed advanced degree Thelemites will make a show of expounding on the deep Qabalistic meaning of the Thoth Tarot, but if they see the expression אין סוף אור a look comes over their face as if they were trying to read Arabic transliterated in Chinese. It is perhaps small-minded of me, but I am only human and I enjoy puncturing smugness, even in people whom I otherwise respect.

Wow! You asked for context and got a rant instead.

As to the phrase I will enter and leave, In the first chapter of Kabbalah, Gershom Scholem says one of the terms used for Kabbalists was "inon de-allu u-nefaku ('those who have entered and left, i.e., unharmed') after Hagigah 14b." It is typical for Thelemites to take on a magickal motto when they are intitiated into groups like the O.T.O.--this link is a bit more entertaining--or the A∴A∴ When Aleister Crowley was intiated into The Golden Dawn he took on the name Perdurabo, which means I will endure (to the end). I am pursuing a Minerval degree with a local O.T.O. body and I have been pondering what motto I would choose for myself. At this point I am thinking I will enter and leave, in the sense Scholem was describing, is an accurate representation of my aspirations.

Now that I have bent your ear and probably demonstrated the fragility of my grasp on reality, I hope I have conveyed the context of my request. < Puck 06:27, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

First I want to thank you for your help. Also I've been glancing at some of the posts here and randomly trying to follow so of the disputes across various talk pages. Geeze, how do you put up with it? You have the patience of a saint and I'm pretty sure I would never want to be an admin here. I probably either get an ulcer or start contemplating suicide or mass murder. Hats off to you. Now, my new question: does there exist a gematria of the Tanach or the Torah? By this I mean has anyone ever compiled a numerical index of either? Something where you could look up the value of a given word and see all the other words in the text that equal that value? I have seen a few partial ones online and there are books like Liber 777, Israel Regardie's 777 and Other Qabalistic Writings of Aleister Crowely, but they are limited and obviously go beyond the scope of a strictly scriptural reference. I am working on one of my own, but I just recently turned 50. Somehow I doubt I'll ever get it finished. :) So, is there such a thing? (I'm trying organize my talk page a bit so please respond here) <Puck 14:13, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

Funny coincidence... 15 years ago I actually wrote a Pascal program to do exactly that. You'd give it a gematria value, and it would scan the Tanach and display all the words, verses, or verse fragments that add up to that value. It probably sits somewhere in my 5.25" floppy archive... I doubt it would work on a Windows machine. It was designed purely for DOS. Shouldn't be too difficult to write a new one, though. For the verse fragments you have to be careful to use an O(N) algorithm rather than an O(N^2), so the search takes seconds rather than days. One tricky part I had to watch was to avoid summing up gematria for text containing God's name, since the spelling of His name is essentially an alias for His real name. At the time, running on a 16MHz 286, a search would take a second or two. It shouldn't be too hard to find a book or online source for Tanach gematria. Bar-Ilan University has a whole department dedicated to studies of this sort, I'm sure they've published some tools. Let me know what you find. Owen× ☎ 15:06, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

15 years ago I actually wrote a Pascal program to do exactly that... Shouldn't be too difficult to write a new one, though.

Easy for you to say. I'd love to get ahold of the data set. I've tried to find a Tanach or Torah in the form of a flat file or other raw format so I could do just what you describe. I think the Westminster Leningrad Codex I downloaded might work, but my XML skill are limited at best. Despite what I say here, I think my best choice would be Bar-Ilan's Responsa, but at $599.00 it's a might pricey, at least in my current unemployed state. Maybe to celebrate getting a new job, but till then I think I might get Torah Gematrias, it's only $19.00 and may do just what I want at this point. It is limited to the Torah, but it's not like that's not enough to keep a fellow busy for several lifetimes. In the mean time it's back to my spreadsheet. Thanks for the tip on Bar-Ilan. <Puck 17:54, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Barnstar for the help

[edit] is it ok...

to add this line:

Remember to mark an "X" on January 23th, 2006

to any canadian political party article?

The purpose is to encourage canadian voters to vote on election day and improve voter turnout.

thanks :) 209.145.100.145 08:23, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] TRUTH

Hey Owen? Have you ever heard of TRUTH? Perhaps you should start using it. I myself would argue that the comments that you have made about me all over Wikipedia are UNTRUTHS. And that it is WRONG that you put them up.

Theblacklarl 18:18, 23 December 2005 (UTC)Theblacklarl

[edit] Hebrew Alphabet

I have rewritten the articles on all the Hebrew letters here and before I replace the pages, your input would be appreciated. Feel free to comment on the talk page or edit the page directly. Thanks! Sputnikcccp 16:26, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Hey Owen! Thanks for reverting my userpage. I think that 201.29.54.151 and this registered user CoreSystem are one and the same based upon my {{npa}} warning on his talk page, and then this anon IP vandalising my user page. I base this on the fact that, CoreSystem, was the only editor I've warned all day to this point. CoreSystem attacks one editor and then one min later an anon attacks me, for no apparant reason. Should 201.29.54.151 be marked as a sock of CoreSystem, or do you think there is not enough evidence to support my case? Thanks KnowledgeOfSelf | talk 00:54, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Adminship

I would be honored if you nominated me for adminship, if the wikipedia community doesn't think I'm ready, I'll at least find out what I should work on. :-D I'll be counting on you to assist me on the basis of the statements at Wikipedia:Guide to requests for adminship. :-D And I thank you very much! KnowledgeOfSelf | talk 02:53, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

I have accepted and answered the questions, if you would kindly review and add it to the main RfA page I will be most grateful. KnowledgeOfSelf | talk 03:54, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Merry Christmas!!

[edit] Wiki for Engineering

Engineering Wiki is a wiki entirely dedicated to collecting information about Engineering. The Engineering Wiki is in early development stages at the moment. We invite you to help devlope this wiki. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 219.65.123.231 (talk • contribs).

[edit] Izehar's RfA

[edit] Request for comments

If you get a chance I'd appreciate your comments and critique of this draft of my modest first attempt at writing an article from scratch. I'd be happy to hear whatever you might have to say about the content and format. Please respond here or on the talk page of the article. Thanks. <Puck 12:44, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the sharp eyes. I originally had Alpeh in every row as well as other cut and pastes to fill cells while working on the format of the table. By the time I was done I couldn't actually read what as there, just what I was expecting to see. There are still some funny wrapping issues in when I look at it with Opera or at lower screen resolutions with Firefox and IE. Once I tweak it for that it should be ready to go. I'm hoping to do a Kabbalah timeline article, but that will take some time. I'm collecting references as I work my way through Scholem's book. I think seperate non-Judiac Kabbalah articles will help prevent some of the confusion and rancor that seems to accompany the topic in several places on Wkipedia. Hope you don't mind if I use your proofing services in the future. <Puck 19:29, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

No I did not change shin to the pointed version on purpose, it was probably from copying text from and earlier version while trying to fix the wrap problems for low resolutions. Thanks. I noticed on your edit you also changed the font size in a couple of places, changed the text alignment attribute on a couple of cells and removed the Category:Kabbalah tag. Was that intentional or just a byproduct of trying to edit the monstrosity that this table is? I'm not complaining about anything, I'm just trying to understand, I appreciate your input and assistance. I have to apologize for code again, but I think the ugliness is necessary to simulate the format that Mathers used. <Puck 01:23, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 202.152.162.215 and 202.15.162.216

Thanks for blocking this user, but I think a longer block is needed, as I've requested on Wikipedia:Administrator_intervention_against_vandalism and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents. I suggest a week due to the persistent nature of the edits that span days, despite severe warnings. Hu 16:39, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

This seems to be a misguided user who simply doesn't understand how categories work. However, as he is noncommunicative, there's no point in trying to reason or educate him, regrettably. Hopefully, this short block will get his attention. As this is a first block of a user with some valid edits, I'm reluctant to apply a longer block. Let me know if he continues in the same pattern when the block expires. Owen× ☎ 16:53, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:DwightFerris

Dueling blocks and unblocks. Looks like the correct result now. Log --GraemeL ^(talk) 17:05, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Question

This has probably been answered elsewere but I have not been able to find the answer. Can we include counters in articles?

Thank you! Dr. Gabriel Gojon 17:40, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you for the answer.

Dr. Gabriel Gojon 17:50, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Canada

Please forgive me for adding that to the politics page. Oh and by the way, where are you from in Canada? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 24.98.246.171 (talk • contribs).

[edit] Interiot / Feature request

I'm thinking of putting overlib tooltips on each of the monthly bars, would that work? Also, regarding the comment about "Alternately (or maybe additioanlly), can you please add a lifetime edit-summary percentage column for each of the namespaces displayed?", could you explain that a bit more in detail, I'm having trouble understanding that part. --Interiot 20:17, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

replied at User talk:Interiot#Feature request, since it may be relevant to other users as well. --Interiot 21:02, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Semi-protection

Hi OwenX, saw you semi-protected your user page. Can you make sure you add it (or any semi-protected pages) to this list WP:PP#Semi-protection? Thanks! -- Fuzheado | Talk 23:39, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

That's fine, as long as it's noted on that page. Most folks would simply use full protection, so kudos for still leaving it somewhat open. Fuzheado | Talk 00:09, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] 3RR

I'm well aware of the policy, thank you.

On that note, please archive your talk page. It's so huge that it's near-impossible to load on a slow connection. Ambi 03:45, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for archiving your talk page. However, an edit doesn't have to be bad-faith to warrant reverting. The edit was simply wrong, not to mention biased, and I'm under no obligationt to let those sort of edits stay simply because an editor is well-meaning. Trust me, I've seen many well-meaning contributors who would have caused some serious damage if not kept in line. Ambi 06:35, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Gematria of final values

Hey! You moved it. :)

Anyway, I found a bit of information about the question I had about sources for the distinction between the Talmudic uses (or lack of them) for the different values of the final forms. I stumbled across a web site called askmoses.com (that's gotta be at least a little blasphemous) and posed the question to them. It took a couple of e-mails before they finally understood what I was asking, but here is what I got:

This additional kind of values of the final letters can be found in Rashi's explanation of the Talmud in tractate Sukah 52b. Therefore it would seem to date back to at least Rashi's time, if not the period of the Talmud. See the Aruch on the Hebrew letters ATBaCh.

On the other hand there is an opinion that interprets Rashi differently than the printed Rashi in our Talmud. See the Maharshal on this Rashi, and see also the emendation of the BaCh on this Rashi.

It's about as clear as mud to me, but I though you might be interested in it. I'm going to be adding this to my notes for a possible History of Kabbalah article and I'm off to see what I can find out about Rashi. <Puck 05:37, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Kwanzaa

I think you might be a bit too quick on the trigger-finger there. This person doesn't strike me as a vandal but someone with a strong POV who doesn't understand Wikipedia's discusssion process yet (in case you don't know, Karenga is in fact a convicted felon).--Pharos 05:49, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

• You know, I probably shouldn't have used the admin-revert the second time, which it seems misled you. Maybe you could take away your blocking warning from his talk page? Thanks.--Pharos 05:58, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Larvatus

Thank you for fielding inquiries at my talk page whilst I was asleep, and for helping to keep my name off WP:DRV — makes life a little bit easier. — FREAK OF NUR_xTURE (TALK) 05:49, Dec. 27, 2005

[edit] my phone number as user name

On 00:48, 27 December 2005, someone posted an innucuous revision on the Biff Rose page...using a new username consisting of my home phone number beginning with 718. This is serious. This is blatant stalker behavior and an invasion of my privacy. It is probably illegal as well. I would like it hidden from public view, yet kept or at least witnessed for the sake of future prosecution of the parties involved. Is that possible? thank you. --Sojambi Pinola 07:55, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Quebec

I am from the US, and I am very interested about the movement to make Quebec a seperate country. What do you feel about this? Wikizach 14:54, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism

Sorry for deleting the page -- was interested to see how quickly it would be dectected. How do you detect vandalism? and how did you revert it so easialy? Thanks in advance.

[edit] 24.71.223.140

Thanks for the heads up re:blocking 24.71.223.140. I'm actually away on holiday till Jan 1 so except for checking my PMs I'm not Wikipedia-ing this week. If you need to block the IP again in the meantime, please don't hesitate. Cheers! 23skidoo 21:45, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] I did not vandalize!

Please do not block me! I am doing a research report and I am not vandalizing anything. I don't even use Wikipedia much. I just use it for reserch. Please, I didn't do anything!

Who are you? You didn'y sign you message. -- Jason Palpatine 23:41, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What do I have to do

Hello there, and I was wondering what I would have to do to be a great administor like yourself. Can you explain what you do, I could not get the sign-up sheet onrequests for adminshipso I reletively got mad and tried to become an administor by putting my username on the Current admins sheet. I will do anything to become an administor for wikipedia, so that must be the error that I made after hoping to become an administor for 1y. 6m. but I now notice that I have no hape now. so if you actually cared to read this thank you --Cao An Min 21:38, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Wikiholic's Dictionary

Very good. How about:

• Wikibreak - A trip to the bathroom.

--GraemeL ^(talk) 02:47, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Admin action of yours

You blocked User: 17187585595 forever. I was a bit confused. On his user page, you say he's blocked for vandalism but I see only one edit to a talkpage. Even for persistent vandals, permanent blocks are quite rare. They usually get a day or so block to think it over. On the log, you say he was blocked for having an inappropriate user name. How is 17187585595 inappropriate? Does it spell something in code? James James 03:59, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I've checked out the blocking policy. It seems to say that a block for vandalism should be for 24 hours and should be preceded by a warning. I'm finding this mystifying. Did you make a mistake or do you know something I don't? James James 04:01, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Once Moore

Hi. Just wanted to let you know that Once Moore has been recreated, although it was AFD'd, and deleted december 17th (AFD closed by you). It still has a delete tag though, but points to the preserved debate... Don't mind relisting it, but wanted your opinion first. Bjelleklang - talk 22:46, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Ah, thanks. Wasn't sure about the differences, so didn't want to be bold... Thanks again! Bjelleklang - talk 23:00, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Victoria Rowell

Can you please block 64.230.46.229 (talk • contribs • logs • block user • block log) the anon vandal has returned and is in violation of the 21RR by now. Can't sleep, clown will eat me 01:08, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Chooserr's block

Thanks for your friendly note. I'm not sure that my "capable hands" are all that capable! I realize I'm treading on very thin ice in defending him, as he did say something that was offensive. However, I think (and GTBacchus and Tznkai agree) that there are some mitigating circumstances, as he has been treated very badly here. I have in mind one particular editor who seems to follow him round, puts speedy delete tags on articles he has created (which subsequently are changed by others to vote for deletion and survive that!), leaves harassing messages on his talk page, reverts his good faith edits with edit summaries like "revert mindless troll" or "revert vandalism". (And I'm not talking about reverting POV pushing, though even then, such edit summaries should not be used. I'm talking about edits like one where Chooserr removed unnecessary, though harmless, brackets in a non-controversial article.) Anyway, GTBacchus and I agree that we're sending the wrong message in that Chooserr has been blocked so many times while this other editor has only been asked to leave Chooserr alone. I know that Chooserr isn't as repentant as we might wish, but I don't think he's completely unrepentant. He has said, "I guess I deserved this block", and "Maybe it was a personal attack, it probably wasn't nice any way, but I didn't mean it in that grave evil fashion you seem to think I did. If someone said I am not a good Catholic I might even agree with them to some extent."[63] Now, if that's not enough, it's still something. It's more than he acknowledged immediately after the block, and I doubt if he will become more contrite by being blocked for an extra three days. As I understand it, Wikipedia blocks are not meant to be punitive — your offence was so serious that you must be punished by serving a full week — they're intended more as a cooling-off period. I have explained to him that it will be very embarrassing for me if he gets into trouble again straightaway after I unblock him or persuade someone else to do so, and he has promised to do his best not to embarrass me.

Thanks for weighing in on this. I find it does help him when people explain things courteously on his talk page, rather than joining the general pattern of sneers and abuse. I appreciate that you weren't prepared to unblock him, but hope you won't disagree too much if I do! He has served his four days of his seven-day sentence. Cheers. AnnH ^(talk) 23:03, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Sprotecting user talk

Hi OwenX. I noticed you recently sprotected a large number of user talk: pages. Some of these have been protected for extended periods and should really be unprotected. I was wondering if there was a particular reason for the sprotection? Also, when you apply sprotect, there's no need to susbt: the template. It's handy to be able to scour whatlinkshere and make sure that it is the same as the category. Thanks. -Splash^talk 23:07, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Nah, I don't mind. I will sprotect in the future.--Shanel 02:10, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

[edit]  :-D

That vandal got quadrupled teamed :-D. I noticed that too in an IRC channel it was one block after the other. Again thanks for the nom. KnowledgeOfSelf | talk 23:46, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Hey Owen, User:-) 2006 and User:Snowboarding Addict are one and the same I'm sure of it! I'm should both names be blocked and a sockpuppet template be put on :-) 2006? KnowledgeOfSelf | talk 23:59, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Ha nevermind you beat me to it this time lol KnowledgeOfSelf | talk 23:59, 31 December 2005 (UTC)