Talk:Pope Stephen

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Contents

[edit] Archiving

[Two archives are for discussion conducted at Talk:Pope Stephen III but broader in scope than that suggests:]

[The previously stated ranges were correct, but reflected a badly lopsided division. The division was improved soon after, rendering the stated ranges inaccurate. The above are the newly stated ranges, matching the new and improved division. --Jerzy•t 05:21, 17 March 2006 (UTC)]

[edit] Naming of the Consecrated and Unconsecrated Popes named Stephen

[edit] Subpages by Topic

[edit] Unrefactored Portion of Discussion

Prior to archiving (see that section, directly above), Jerzy closed a msg by saying:

_ _ This page has now passed the nominal 32kB limit. I had already begun planning an archiving and refactoring of it, after the experience of getting back up to speed on it. Please forgive my impending lack of response, until i can carry that out.
--Jerzy•t 22:45, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

And Švitrigaila responded:

  • Sir,
    I must confess I have often some difficulties to understand all you write, and must rely on a bilingual dictionnary and make huge efforts of concentration. Don't forget I'm a foreigner. I learn every day, but this time is too much for me. In brief: I haven't understood anything of your last intervention.
    About Google's occurencies, when I look for "pope stephen", I have 39800. When I capitalize "Pope Stephen", I get 70800 answers. I didn't know Google was case sensitive, and that the results are not the same depending of the language version used. I've not understood the joke about Old Nick. Sorry.
    About "challenging your decision", I have read it thrice and still don't understand what your decision is and what I must do to challenge it. May you, please, explain it by simple phrases? If there are other questions you think I have not answerd, can you ask them again clearly?
    Švitrigaila 23:36, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

_ _ I said before, that i hoped to do some refactoring before our continuing. Perhaps you missed that, or misunderstood. Or, if i exhausted your patience, i understand and sympathize. If you need to continue again before i can refactor, i understand and sympathize.
_ _IMO Wikipedia:refactoring would help us be clear, partly by keeping topics together. For instance, you mentioned popes with 3 other names, and you keep referring to Leningrad. I have thots about those, but it would be better for me to respond at Talk:Pope Stephen/Naming (Other Cases of Irregular Naming) than at this point on this page.
_ _ When i continue, i will find whatever the place was, where i said either "challenging your decision" or "challenging my decision". Then i will try to clarify.
_ _ What i fail to understand is your mentioning my "last intervention". These definitions may help you with that word in the future. Does my "last intervention" consist of one paragraph, and end "...until i can carry that out"? Does it begin with "Thank you, i think..."?
_ _ But i have to go now.
--Jerzy•t 16:03 & 20:55, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

All right, do it as you want. You can change "my last intervention" by "my last edit", if it sounds better. Warn me when you have finished.
Švitrigaila 16:59, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

I've proposed a solution on Areas of Consensus. (Maybe I should have posted it here insteed?) Do you agree with it?
Švitrigaila 13:34, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

_ _ On Potential Solutions, actually. No, nothing has changed my mind about what i think is your same original idea.
_ _ I'm not done trying to make the previous discussion accessible, but i get it that your patience is again exhausted. We'll work that out too.
--Jerzy•t 02:09, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

I've added a two points myself on the "... Consensus" sub-page. I think you agree with me on this both of these. If you disagree, the simplest thing is for you to move it one or both to the "Potential Solutions" sub-page.
--Jerzy•t 03:00 & 03:46, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Offer of 3rd party help

I offer to address this contentious issue. I'm glad to see two editors trying hard to work things out with each other but I can also see the effort stalling. I don't think anyone is at fault.

Here are my qualifications as a neutral party:

  • I am not Catholic.
  • I have never edited any article related to Catholicism.
  • I have no particular feeling for either point of view at this time.
  • I am not likely to develop any bias toward either side, as the topic does not move me personally.
  • I have no prior knowledge of the subject.

My interests, insofar as they apply here, are limited to these goals:

  • Retain all factual information.
  • Ensure all users access that information quickly and easily.
  • Ensure that users who approach the project with any preconceived model of Stephen-numbering are equally accommodated.
  • Ensure that users ignorant of the controversy have a pathway to this information.
  • Standardize presentation across all related articles.
  • Provide a model solution for reuse in similar name-conflict situations.

Here is my offer:

  • I will devote as much time as is needed to fully inform myself of the facts of the matter. This may include considerable research, including a trip to the local university library.
  • I will develop a skeleton solution in workspace.
  • Not less than 7 days after I declare the skeleton complete, I will implement it in all actual related articles.
  • During the period of exposure of the skeleton I will entertain comment.

To engage my services, the contesting parties must agree to abide by my final implementation. They must promise not to revert it, move affected pages, tamper with templates I have created to support the solution, or take the matter to another forum. They must promise not to lobby other editors during the period of exposure, nor after. Each agrees that any breach of these terms forfeits all merit in his cause.

Nothing in these terms will be taken to limit the freedom of other editors to act as they see fit within project policy.

Why do I require these conditions? For the same reasons that I offer myself to the task. I am quite serious about a definitive solution; yet I am completely neutral on the issue, because I am quite uninvolved. I will need to invest considerable time and energy to be sure I understand the issues fully; and to develop a satisfactory solution. I'm well aware that a minute later another editor may undo all my work. Will you two gentlemen agree not to throw stones at it? John Reid 10:31, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

_ _I was already at the point of being resigned to a different direction. Šv's involvement is crippled by
  1. their admitted English difficulties and
  2. their dogged focus on the idea a decision in Rome has succeeding in wiping centuries of undisputed scholarly and popular practice from the minds and documents of the world.
(My own involvement is not that excellent either; i am far too thorough, and often say far too much in avoiding saying something i don't mean; a lot of people won't put up with it.) I think it would be more to the point for someone adequately bilingual to explain in French to Šv the many points that they have never responded to, and translate into real English the various statements by Šv that have impeded discussion bcz they had no assignable meaning. And/or, to whatever extent my bizarre use of English is also at fault, there might be value in someone paraphrasing the most relevant parts of what i have said.
_ _ More research may have some marginal value in finishing the details, but that is a minor aspect of the dispute. What i regard as primary, and would have stated if i thought Šv would absorb it, is that even if 99% of readers interested in the Stephen who's either VI or VII think of him P.S. VI and go to Pope Stephen VI, finding there a ToP Dab is in itself fine. But it would not be fine in this case, since the ToP Dab would have to say in effect "are you sure you don't want P.S. V?", and Pope Stephen V, would have one saying "are you sure you don't want P.S. IV?", and so on. That would be a morass that would enfulf most of the 1% or 40% and many of the 99% or 60%. A Dab at Pope Stephen VI with entries for Pope Stephen (VI/VII) and Pope Stephen (V/VI) does a definitive Dab'n in one shot, and takes the reader to (most of the time, i suppose), Pope Stephen (VI/VII), which would begin (with no ToP Dab)
Pope Stephen (<dates>), usually called either Pope Stephen VI or (primarily from the 15th century until 1961) Pope Stephen VII, ....
_ _ I have not said that here previously, just as i've not for instance said "Get real. The Pope changes the names of a bunch of guys that have been dead for centuries, whom not even most scholars care about. And you think that act is as effective as renaming the second-city of Russia, where hundreds of thousands of people use the new name daily, thousands generate daily references in the domestic press, and dozens generate daily refs in the international press?"
_ _ Finally, i'm afraid that, surely despite all your good intentions, your first bullet point lent credibility to what i was denying credibility by not mentioning church affiliations. Šv wrote
I confess I strongly suspected you to be hostile against my move (that you call "your plan" and even "horrible and premature plan") because of your disregard of the Vatican Council in general. Doesn't the Tridentine Mass date back from the 16th century before having been replaced in the 1960s? Doesn't your encyclopedia assert the mass is said in latin? But maybe I was wrong and you're not a traditionnalist...
This was addressed to someone who had earlier written ("they" is Šv)
In any case, their assumption seems to be that a presumptuous transvestite can stand on a balcony and click on "rollback", wiping out millions of documents by, uh, fiat.
(That illustrates the so far hopeless communications problems; i guess i shouldn't have worried that i might give offense.) I mention that to avoid confusion, not to endorse resolution by non-Catholics; IMO Roman Catholics are, things like NPoV being equal, somewhat more valuable in this discussion than others, bcz they are less likely to waste time in a library on research likely to be used only once.
_ _ Bottom line: More voices would be valuable here, either to improve the communication or to be sure i don't prematurely reach the point where i say "no one capable of participating in an English language discussion of the problem is objecting to my model", do the required moves of PS II thru PS X, and leave it to other admins or WP:RM to adjust that fait accompli. I took an interest in this bcz, IIRC, a bizarre and disruptive edit on List of people by name: Step led me to where my mop and bucket were needed if Šv's plan were not to be a month-long rolling mess. As it turns out, it's a fundamentally bad plan. WP's wheels grind slowly, but they grind decently fine, and i'll rejoice in walking away from this when the job is done. But right now, i've given this plenty of thought and see no sign that anyone grasps it as well as i, so, no, binding arbitration is not appropriate at this time. But please consider participating in what's still (tho stalled) in progress.
--Jerzy•t 20:08, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

I read quite a bit of incivility in this discussion on all sides. I think you need help. You understand that the flip side of my entirely neutral position now is that I will have to put in a great deal of work in order to properly appreciate the situation. My solution will be binding upon no editor other than you two and only if you so accept. If you'd rather wrangle together, that's okay too. Let me know on my talk if you change your mind; I'm unwatching this page. John Reid 23:36, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Termination of the doomed discussion

I'm quite glad that you've brought to our attention the fact that our Pope Stephen suite showed complete ignorance of the existence of a second numbering scheme. As i've said, that requires corrective action.

I've devoted considerable effort to this area in which i have no particular interest. As i noted in the previous section, i was drawn into it in response to the very bad idea that using e.g. Pope Stephen II as a pipe to an article titled Pope Stephen III is an acceptable way to treat users even as an interim measure. I've found that your weak facility with the English language (which may explain your tin ear for en: WP practices) makes you the wrong messenger for your ideas about how to correct the articles, entirely independent of whatever merits those ideas have.

I doubt those ideas have any merit, but that is irrelevant. What i am saying is that if you want to have your arguments' influence go further, you need to find some kind of help in stating yourself more clearly in English, or understanding the English counteraguments well enough to respond to them, or perhaps both. Otherwise we must wait for someone else to independently discover the same ideas and formulate their own arguments for them. The good news in that is that WP flourishes on giving tens of thousands of editors the opportunity to come up with something: all the good ideas are out there waiting to be discovered, and it really doesn't matter if the first discoverer of one gets distracted before reducing it to an edit, or can't put it across.

I'm going to proceed with a plan different for yours, in view of the fact that have listened to your arguments, found them wanting, and see that you have nothing of further significance to add to them -- other than continuing to assert them again, in response to each objection, without otherwise addressing the objections. It is possible that this reflects nothing more or less than stubbornness on your part, but i see no reason to think that: i assume that you don't adequately understand the objections.

(User:John Reid said that we had both lacked in civility, and seemed to see that as a problem in the discussion. I have not found your civility lacking; as to myself, it may be (as i implicitly noted to John) that i offended you when i spoke of "a presumptuous transvestite ... stand[ing] on a balcony". I would consider it offensive if i had been referring to the sort of things popes in fact literally do from the balcony over St. Peter's Square, but i was not: the context was the presumptuous act of whoever, acting in the Vatican's name, tried to erase centuries of scholarly practice, and the fact that "...in the world WP's users live in" the authority the Vatican's action per se confers on the change is the same authority a randomly chosen cross-dresser with a balcony would have. Perhaps it did nothing to lighten for your the dreary discussion; if you were offended, i hope this explanation soothes you.)

Before beginning implementation, i am going to state fairly thoroughly what i intend, at Talk:Pope Stephen/Naming (Potential Solutions)#Jerzy's Detailed Solution. I also contemplate a template-driven implementation that will minimize the effort needed to alter at least the fine structure of the parameters of this "sub-stystem design". (Reworking the coarse structure -- the choice of multiple Dab pages in my approach, rather than ToP Dabs in each article as i understand you contemplate -- must, AFAI can see, continue to require admin permissions and either hand editing or bot-work.) I have not notion that my approach to the fine structure is the best possible, and research on the actual prevalence of the two numbering schemes may fuel discussions justifying reworking the bios' titles; that seems likely enuf to justify the investment of a template structure that can minimize the long-term effort.

If you should find the means of bypassing the language barrier, please carry on here, and i will try to be at least as persistent as i was from the start. But pending that, i'll move forward on the basis of understanding your approach of "there was one right set of numbers and now there's a different single right set", and having heard no other objections.
--Jerzy•t 03:23, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Sir,
I've finally read all what you wrote.
I thank John Reid for his mediation offer. I don't think it's exactly what we need, I'll say why later.
I've thought about all this for a long time and I think you're right when you say I'm a stupid stubborn. I am. And I've surely made an initial mistake when I decided to move the pages myself. I thought then this move was as simple as a simple edit. I had something to say about the subject, and, in conformity with the spirit of Wikipedia, I wanted to say it myself and I decided innocently to act. I moved Pope Stephen II into Stephen (ephemeral pope), knowing it might not be a very good title, but i thought, about an article about a pope, someone would find a better title and would rename it very quickly. In fact, when I translated from french the longer text of the article, I even asked for someone to correct my bad english. I was surprised nobody did react.
Then I wanted to rename Pope Stephen III into Pope Stephen II, but it was impossible. So I simply posted my request in Wikipedia:Requested_moves. I thought either everybody would accept and it would be a formality, or some would protest because they wouldn't know the subject. Then I would have to teach them, and all would be well. I renamed with a pipe every Pope Stephen n articles into Pope Stephen n-1 as a provisional solution, particularly in List of popes because the most official list, the Annuario pontificio's one, doesn't count "the ephemeral" as a pope. And Wikipedia's list is clearly based on the Annuario pontificio because it has adopted all its other controversial choices. But I admit I was surely wrong in repiping every occurrence of Pope Stephen n links.
Then nothing went right. Firstly, you were the only one interested in the matter. And secondly, you spoke at the beginning only about my "horrible plan", without explaning what it was. And I had (and have always) great difficulties with your style. It's not only my lack of english. I perfectly understand when some others speak or write, but not when it's you. You have a certain way to say things that seems to me extremely unpleasant. I feel it like a kind of "pédantisme" as we say in french (it doesn't mean at all the same thing as in english): that is you purposly try always to say things with a certain level of speach which can show where your place is and where is mine. I'll just take only one example. A very small example, but I think it's symptomatic... On Talk:Pope_Stephen/Naming_(Potential_Solutions), you drew a table, and in some cells you wrote textually "Yatta-Yadda". I have no time to make researches for "yatta-yadda". This "yatta-yadda" is perhaps nothing. But there are a lot of such examples in your sentences, and a lot of cryptic abbreviations too. For me, it's just a way (maybe unconscious) to mock the reader by establishing the conversation on your territory and not on his.
As for myself, my english may be poor, but I make constant efforts to make it as comprehensible as possible. I waste terrible amounts of time to read you — and to read myself.
All this to say why we are here. Coming back to our controversy, I think we agree about the essential: the historical facts. All the rest is a matter of formulation. So we don't really need a mediation. What we need now is a clear application of the Naming conventions of Wikipedia. And for that I need the advice of all Wikipedians, and not only yours. Then I'll continue with my arguments on the subpages you've created. But I'm afraid I lack time now, and I'll post the controversy on pages made for discussions about Naming convensions.
I wanted to tell you all that in order to make my decisions clearer. I sincerly hope you'll understand what I meant and you'll find I may be right — at least I may be partially right. I'm surely full of defects myself, and I don't see them.
Švitrigaila 23:05, 7 April 2006 (UTC)
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