User talk:Ryan Utt

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glad to have you back! Dsol 11:52, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi. I've been busy with school so I made it a policy to just cross my fingers and hope that I could undo damage done by Ekman when I got back. Ekman seems to have 24 hours a day to spend on Wikipedia engaging in revert wars and hyping his false opinion that the eXile is a neo-nazi libel publication. You, sir, have been formidible in your patience and attempts to reach concensus despite Ekman's numerous lies, provocations, and violations of Wikipedia policy. I was exceedingly disappointed to see the conduct of SlimVirgin on your talk page.
In the upcoming weeks I will have a little more time on hands. Ryan Utt

Contents

[edit] Request for Image deletion

Slimvirgin is proposing that the table of Brecher images on his page violates fair use, at Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2005 November 18. He might be right about the image that the eXile stole from the ehem band, but he's certainly wrong about the other two. Check out the arguments there and on talk:Gary Brecher, and if you feel like it you can leave an opinion on the copyvio page. Dsol 01:32, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re your message

I had signed in the wrong place. I do not endorse that ip user. Thank you for calling my attention to it.--Dakota t e 21:07, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Exile Edit

Ryan thank you for helping out. You confirm everything I thought about Ekman and SlimVirgin. But here is the problem. SlimVirgin is an administrator that means she has a lot of power here and she is clearly abusing it in bad faith. It is easy to show it, but the question is how can you complain about her to get her to stop it? Can her activities not be reported to some higher-up person or board? Thank you! User:Tictoc 8:56, 10 Decmeber 2005

[edit] Seek Mediation/Advocate

Ryan, I looked at the process on how to resolve this. We should take the case of SlimVirgin's bad faith editing to mediation according to this process.[1] I suggest we first go to the advocates for help. But we should have the case written up very clearly which shows her clear bias, bad faith, and her collusion with this Peter Ekman guy. They seem to work together in tandem.

In order for that process to be fruitful, SlimVirgin's violations would need to be egregious. She would need to do something like maliciously ban people -- probably more than once. (once she did threaten to ban Dsol while engaging in a revert war with him , but she didn't actually go through with it). On the Exile talk page you can see the outcome of a request for mediation. Notice that a) nothing happened and b) The spurious accusation that a page editor, Dsol, was associated with the Exile was cited as a factor in maintaining the status quo. Aslo, make sure you check out (and consider endorsing) the Request for Comment on Ekman's pre-SlimVirgin conduct because it's a microcasm for the Exile page: Dsol writes a balanced and entirely legitimate criticism of Ekman's conduct and simply requests that Ekman cease. Ekman writes his "defense", an incoherant laundry list of accusations against the eXile. SlimVirgin writes an "outside view" criticizing the Exile article itself and ignoring Ekman's demonstratably bad conduct which, coincidentally, was the topic of the RfC. No concensus is formed.
So these sorts of actions are likely to be unproductive. And next week is finals week, so I'm not going to spend any time battling for the Exile page in the immediate future. I will probably return to the topic in January. brighterorange, who is also an admin, should have finished his thesis proposal by then and should have some time to participate in a discussion regarding the Exile. --Ryan Utt 18:49, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Albuquerque Academy mediation request

Ryan, I'd like to take this dispute to mediators. Please respond on my talk page. Please do not remove the citations until the mediation process is resolved. Another option is to ask for a third party opinion, or to ask informal moderators. -Vontafeijos 15:10, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

RE: Hi. Wikipedia has precedent for removing disputed material...
OK, it's fine to move them to the talk page for now. I actually hadn't seen that you'd moved them; I thought you just deleted them. (I know it says that on your edit summary. Apparently I wasn't paying attention.) We can take that off the list of topics now.
Please allow me to try and address your concerns straight-out in a last-ditch effort to avoid mediation. Please keep in mind that I am actively trying to find citations for the disputed materials; nobody is "responsible" for finding them (not even me, since I didn't write those parts), but I would appreciate it if you would try to find them as well.
  • First, I believe that citing the school newspaper is valid. The Harvard University page cites its own student newspaper, so it seems to me that making collegiate newspapers valid and high school newspapers invalid is arbitrary and unfair. I have seen many high school newspapers that exceed many college newspapers in quality, so I think that it is never safe to assume that college newspapers are better, and therefore more reputable, than high school newspapers. They can even be a valuable source about a school, because no one can get the same inside information about a school as the school newspaper. An anonymous user claimed that any newspaper except a tabloid is an acceptable source on the Albuquerque Academy talk page; unfortunately they weren't signed in, so we can't ask where he/she got that piece of information.
The Harvard Crimson is a nationally syndicated newspaper. Peter Ekman is not its Editor. Rather, he is a creepy douche bag. Furthermore, Harvard University is one of the most distinguished institutes of higher learning on the planet. I encourage you to take a look at the "past editors" section of the Harvard Crimson and try and count how many names of Elite Journalists and World Leaders you don't recognize. Collectively, I think these details demonstrate absolutely that distinction between the Harvard Crimson and the Academy Advocate is neither arbitrary nor unfair, but is actually quite justified and quite fair. I have no doubt that Advocate is more reputable than some college newspapers. It's probably superior to the Daily Lobo. But that doesn't mean that it's the equivalent of an established newspaper.
I agree that student newspapers can offer an inside perspective into the school and information that cannot be obtained elsewhere. I want to talk now about the development of the "Guidelines for Schools". Initially there was a large number of people who wanted to get rid of high schools entirely on the basis of "Notability". Attempts to develop standards of notablity were proven too contentious. Ultimately the compromise was that any information would meet the threshold for notable as long as it could be verified in a newspaper . Consequently, when somebody pushes the envelope for verifiability, they also push the envelope for notability. Inserting material from a student newspaper forces the question that people were trying to avoid: Does this information belong in Wikipedia?
To specifically address the citations in the article, I believe the established dictum is that "sources should be appropriate to the claims being made." Citing a school newspapers for a few innocuous claims or as a second source of facts established elsewhere is fine-by-me. But the Advocate is referenced to make some serious allegations of criminal conduct about the school's rivals including acts of vandalism and violence. Those statements are inflammatory and they need real citations. I'm not saying Pius kids didn't commit acts of vandalism. I'm saying that those are serious allegations and they need serious citations, not an inherently biased article written in an Academy news-zine that has negligable distribution outside of the Academy campus.
(My comments are in italics now just to make things easier to follow.) In the citation for "Academy coaches generally regard this as the work of an individual rather than a plot by the St. Pius student body," the Advocate citation is appropriate because I'm citing interviews with coaches who say that it was the work of one "misguided" individual. The fact that the event happened is established by the Associated Press citation; in this case, The Advocate supports the previous claim only. No serious allegations are made in that statement, only the fact that coaches don't blame Pius as a whole for the incident. Is propose restoring that citation.
I agree to that. Citation [5] is also innocuous enough and can go back in. My concern is with the citations previously denoted as [6] and [7].
I still maintain that The Advocate is a valid source for claims of vandalism that happened to both schools. I think we're going to need a third party opinion on this. -Vontafeijos 05:39, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
I saw somebody make the claim that all non-tabloids could be used as references. That person was mistaken and offered no links to policy pages to support his/her viewpoint.
  • I also believe that a citation for calling The Advocate an "award-winning" publication is unnecessary. Do you dispute the veracity of the claim, or do you only want the information cited? I think we should be lenient in this case. As stated on Wikipedia:Citing Sources, "This (the "citation needed" tag) should be used sparingly; Wikipedia has a lot of undercited articles, and inserting many of instances of {{fact}} is unlikely to be beneficial." So let's just not make a big deal out of it. It's just a tiny piece of the article!
I don't dispute the veracity of the claim. However, people should be able to determine what is meant by "Award Winning". A sound reference will provide that information.
Notice that the New York Times page does not cite the fact that they recieved 90 Pulitzer Prizes. Award citations are also absent on the Los Angeles Times page, the Wall Street Journal page, The University of Alabama's The Crimson White's page, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign's Daily Illini page, and Cornell University's The Cornell Review page. In fact, I have found no newspaper pages on which award claims are cited. The Advocate is a newspaper as well, and it would appear that community consensus has made it so that award citations for publications are not necessary. I propose that the request for a citation on claims of "award-winning" be withdrawn; there is no justification for requesting a citation here. -Vontafeijos 05:39, 8 January 2006 (UTC)
Like I've said before, the dispute isn't with the fact that the Advocate recieved the award, the dispute is with the fact that the award is contextually meaningless. As a compromise, I would accept a parenthetical sentence that explains what the award is. --Ryan Utt 04:15, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I am also claiming that the "X Marks the Spot" and "Vandalism events create furor" citations are complete. Every piece of information that exists about the reference is there; the publication date (day is not included because it's a monthly publication, so the issues are labelled by month only), the author, the title, and the publication name. Online sources are preferable but not required; Wikipedia:Verifiability has contingencies for if a source is not online. "Football player who sharpened buckle banned" is missing the exact publication date and the author, but that information is also unavailable. At any rate, there is a direct link to that article, so that satisfies the requirement that a reader must be able to find the source.
I am not contesting the completeness of the Advocate citations. In general, I have no problem with citations that are offline and I have never said that I did. I am o-k with the linked article and, in fact, I did not remove that citation to the talk page. The incomplete citation is the one regarding the "Award Winning" Advocate. Until a complete citation can be provided I think it should be moved to the talk page and left as [citation needed] so people know that a complete citation is still needed.
  • You also disagreed with my citing the school itself in some cases. While the project on schools says that this shouldn't be done, those guidelines are suggestions only; it says so on the project page. I actually disagree with that guideline, by the way. How else are you going to find things like number of teachers, number of students of color, etc.? Even an outside source like a newspaper would have gotten that data straight from the school because the school is the only source that actually knows (unless a reporter actually went and counted the teachers one by one. I don't think that happens.) But that's neither here nor there.
I did point out those guidelines. However, my edits to the AA article did not concern those guidelines and were not enforcing those guidelines. I don't believe this is currently a point of contention.
I think that's everything. If I missed something, let me know on my talk page. I really would like to resolve this outside of mediation, because that takes forever.
I'm optimistic that mediation can be avoided.
I'm also sorry that the user Dyntyne made such an inappropriate comment on the Albuquerque Academy talk page. It was very rude. -Vontafeijos 04:57, 6 January 2006 (UTC)
Dude, Don't worry about it. --Ryan Utt 07:38, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] LAHS photos

Public schools in the U.S. are run by local governments (I believe the exact arrangement can vary, but I think they are usually county- or city-run), not the federal government. Only "works of the federal government" are de-facto exempt from copyright (and even then, if there is a contractor involved it can complicate things). Unless it is known ahead of time for sure that a local or state government has explicitly enacted a statute saying that works created under its aegis are not copyrighted, it must be assumed that they retain copyright rights. That's my understanding of it, anyway. In any event, the photographs in question are surely not works of the federal government and cannot be tagged in that form. --Fastfission 17:09, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I see what happened. I didn't intend claim it was a work of the federal government, I meant to only say that it was the work of a "US Government Agency" (which actually tbe option listed in the drop down menu on the upload file dialogue). Anyway, I don't really care about the copyright as long as it doesn't open the door for somebody to delete the images. --Ryan Utt 20:52, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Freedom House

Hi, I found a citation for the information in the intro. Best, Kaisershatner 17:09, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Brecher Photo

The origin website clearly states that page is copyrighted, there is no statement that the image is for press use or publicity, it is a byline photo used by that site. To grab it off that site and use it here is a blatant copyright violation. If a valid press photo of the subject is produced then I'll be happy to see that it is posted. This image is no good and has been deleted. --Wgfinley 06:44, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I think there's a reasonable fair use case but would be basically content with links out to internet archive. I emailed the ehem guys a while back to ask if they knew about the whole thing, where in on the act etc. and they seemed surprised but nice, I bet you could get permission....In other news I have just got back from London and should be hopefully contributing a bit more rapidly. Dsol 11:12, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NSA lead rewrite

"Our position is, is that the authorization to use force, which was passed by the Congress in the days following September 11th, constitutes that other authorization, that other statute by Congress, to engage in this kind of signals intelligence," seems better than Hayden's inarticulate statement, but you furnished no source for your edit. Who said it - Gonzalez? The article uses a system that makes footnotes automagical. Most of them use templates:

<ref>{{news reference |firstname= |lastname= |pages= |title= |date= |org= |url=}}</ref>
<ref>{{Press release reference |Organization= |Date= |Title= |URL=}}</ref>
<ref>{{Web reference |title= |work= |url= |date= |year=}}</ref>

Metarhyme 01:08, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

  • Thanks for adding the verification. I added that Gonzales said it December 19 and templated your references. I'm copying this to the article's Talk page. Metarhyme 17:37, 8 February 2006 (UTC)

This is a controversial topic, which may be disputed. Please read the talk page and discuss substantial changes there before making them. Metarhyme 02:16, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Are there any particular changes that you are concerned about? --Ryan Utt 02:21, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
The article has an easy, fairly clean Talk page. Be bold and don't discuss isn't policy, though it may be better than Be Bold and bloat discussion. Since you're already there, and policy on controversial articles calls for discussing large changes on the talk page, I suggest you be bold…but don't be reckless! Please discuss your changes. Metarhyme 03:23, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Ok, Are there any particular changes that you are concerned about? --Ryan Utt 14:58, 9 February 2006 (UTC)
Changing the lead. Adding a new section. If you'd like to follow the recommended procedure, say what you intend to do on the article's talk page. If you'd prefer to follow a less polite practice, say what you did to the article on the article's talk page. At least put something in the edit summary. Metarhyme 03:49, 10 February 2006 (UTC)

When editing an article on Wikipedia there is a small field labelled "Edit summary" under the main edit-box. It looks like this:

Edit summary text box

The text written here will appear on the Recent changes page, in the page revision history, on the diff page, and in the watchlists of users who are watching that article. See m:Help:Edit summary for full information on this feature.

When you leave the edit summary blank, some of your edits could be mistaken for vandalism and may be reverted, so please always briefly summarize your edits, especially when you are making subtle but important changes, like changing dates or numbers. Thank you.

[edit] Want to see a train wreck?

[edit] the eXile may require your attention again

New user with 0 edit history making large edits with lots of small POV changes, as well as outright blanking. Dsol 16:08, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

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