User talk:DaveThomas

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[edit] Welcome

Welcome!

Hello, DaveThomas, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  --JAranda | watz sup 02:37, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] greetings

welcome. i see there is some disagreement over your edits at Bill Clinton. i encourage you to discuss major changes on the Talk:Bill Clinton. you might also find it helpful to review these pages WP:NPOV & WP:3RR Derex 17:07, 20 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Mary O. McCarthy

Leave out your bias. The article is about her life, not the leaking!!!

Macwiki 06:32, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Good wook on the Mary McCarthy page. As for the plea to keep out the leaking, her life is now pretty much nothing but the leaking. Evensong 15:42, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

---

Obviously, the truth that she is a left wing activist meets acceptable Wikipedia standards for bias and accuracy. The same adjective is found in the Jack Abramhoff article and has been found there for months. As it happens Abramhoff is less of an activist than McCarthy. McCarthy gave contributions to only leftists while Abramhoff gae contributions to politicians on the left and right. --DaveThomas 16:34, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

---

I don't mean the story of the leaking, I mean adding bias to other parts of the article. And as for 'left wing activist', she made a couple of contributions, she was NOT a lobbyist. Jack Abramoff was. (and just because one article is bias does not mean all articles can be bias. UnBias Jack Abramoff if it bothers you so much) I guess that Wikipedias standards would allow you to be called a right wing nut job because you called a someone a 'left wing activist' --Macwiki 17:12, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Please see Wikipedia's no personal attacks policy. Comment on content, not on the contributor; personal attacks damage the community and deter users. Note that continued personal attacks may lead to blocks for disruption. Please stay cool and keep this in mind while editing. Thank you.

I do not believe it violated the wikipedia standard any more than what you did on the talk page of Mary O. McCarthy; nonetheless, I apologize. Thank You for letting me know I was out of line.
Sincerely,
Macwiki 23:07, 22 April 2006 (UTC)


Lobbyist is not necessarily activist and vice versa. Abramoff was a lobbyist for both Democrats and Republicans. Your personal attack has been noted and reported. --DaveThomas 17:22, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

The reason the word activism doesn't work is because it is such a loaded term. If you wanted to broadly look at the term, both her and Che Guevarra could be considered activists. It doesn't say much when you use such a term and just categorizes the person instead of actually breaking down the contents of a person and their actions. Macwiki was trying to make that point but you took more as a personal attack (which I don't think it was.) Personally, I think what she did was totally irresponsible, but our responsibility as editors is to fully document and research everything about her, put it in context of the article and let the reader make that decision. You could for example put in the article that she has been noted belonging to the democratic party and has made several donations (listing the organizations.) --Unreal128


Standards throughout Wikipedia need to be uniform if Wikipedia is to be taken seriously. Accepted use of the term at the Jack Abramoff article provides an example of where the term should be accepted throughout Wikipedia. Like McCarthy, Abramoff gave money to influence politics. Like McCarthy Abramoff committed crimes in furtherance of his objectives. Unlike McCathy, Abramoff gave to both Democrats and Republicans. McCarthy gave only to leftists. Also unlike McCarthy Abramoff's crimes were not intended to significantly harm US wartime efforts. --DaveThomas 18:13, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
Yes I agree, standards must be applied. Abramoff's job was to specifically lobby in politics, which is defined as Activism. McCarthy's role was as an intelligence analyst. --Unreal128

[edit] User notice: temporary 3RR block

====Regarding reversions[1] made on April 22, 2006 to Mary O. McCarthy====

You have been temporarily blocked for violation of the three-revert rule. Please feel free to return after the block expires, but also please make an effort to discuss your changes further in the future. The duration of the block is 12 hours. William M. Connolley 20:11, 22 April 2006 (UTC)


Had you actually looked at my edits you would have determined there was only 1 revert. Please explain your rash suspension and then unblock my account. I am prepared to take this matter to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR as reccommended in Wikipedia guidance if we cannot settle this matter between ourseles. --DaveThomas 20:50, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I've been blocked under 3RR! What do I do? First, check if you actually did make a fourth revert in 24 hours or very close to it.

If you didn't, you should email the admin who blocked you (or another admin), politely point this out and ask to be unblocked. If you did, you should either wait the 24 hours or email the admin who blocked you (or another admin), acknowledge your error, and ask to be unblocked. (They may, of course, choose not to.) Some admins look at the quality of the edits in question; others do not.

Note that historically, public denunciation of the blocking admin has tended not to gain sympathy. You can, however, report cases of egregious misapplication of this rule to Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/3RR; for more serious cases, to the "use of administrator privileges" section in Wikipedia:Requests for comment.

You have 4 reverts. If you doubt this, read the definition carefully William M. Connolley 21:06, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Here is the definition:

"To revert is to undo all changes made after a certain time in the past. The result will be that the page becomes identical to how it used to be at some previous time. A partial revert undoes only some of those changes."

I did this exactly once. That was AFTER trialsanderrors had committed his 4th revert. Please remove the suspension or prove your contention. --DaveThomas 21:13, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Please read WP:3RR. In particular Do not revert any single page in whole or in part more than three times in 24 hours. William M. Connolley 21:18, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

That provision was not only read but complied with. Please remove the suspension or we will need to moe our disagreement up the line. Do you wnat to agree to disagree? --DaveThomas 22:14, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Edit summary

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

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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.

Please use descriptive edit summaries so that your edits are better understood. --waffle iron talk 04:49, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Template:Civility

[edit] Katherine Harris

Please take it slow there. I support much of your work and would generally say your edits are good. However, I am trying to build dialog and we need to allow time. Please dialog more on talk there. Merecat 05:16, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

You got it. --DaveThomas 05:22, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image Tagging for Image:Culkin.jpg

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[edit] Reminder...

When using template tags on talk pages, don't forget to substitute with text by adding subst: to the template tag. For example, use {{subst:test}} instead of {{test}}. This reduces server load and prevents accidental blanking of the template. — Ian Manka Talk to me! 15:23, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Category names

If you wish to rename a category, you must submit a request at WP:CFD. Gamaliel 03:36, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Who said I wanted to rename any category? I started a new category. The Clinton Administration had both controversies and scandals. I intend to label the Clinton events properly. Why would you rather mislabel them? --DaveThomas 03:46, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Then to avoid confusion, I suggest you explain at the category page what the criteria is for assigning an article to the "controversy" category as opposed to the "scandal" category. However, such a vague distinction probably would not be acceptable to other editors and they may vote to delete your new category. Gamaliel 03:55, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I suggest you explain why the 1996 Campaign Finance Scandal isn't a scandal at all. --DaveThomas 03:56, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

That does not address the question of how you would choose which articles would go in which categories. Not all articles have either word in their title. Gamaliel 04:00, 30 May 2006 (UTC)


Do you really need the link to the wikipedia scandal article? OK. Here you are.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandal

--DaveThomas 04:02, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

If you can't identify a simple set of criteria for which articles go in which categories, then these categories will be confusing to other editors and be impossible to use. Splitting one clear category into two vaguely defined or entirely undefined categories is not helpful to users of the encyclopedia. Gamaliel 04:06, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Than should I understand you don't comprehend Wikipedia's definition of scandal? Wikipedia also has a definition of controversy. Maybe you'd like to compare and contrast if you don't agree with my taxonomy. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversy --DaveThomas 04:10, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Take a hypothetical article. I say it's about a controversy, you say it's about a scandal, both of us basing our decisions on the definitions you linked to. Which of us is correct? How would we decide which category to place the article into? And the primary point, which you haven't addressed, is how is your splitting of this category helpful to readers of the encyclopedia? Gamaliel 04:14, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Good thinking. That debate about whether a specific article is a controverssy or scandal does belong confined to the discussion page for individual articles, doesn't it? Give me the specifics and I'll tell you where I'd group it. But if you'd like a single grouping for both Clinton Administration scandals and controversies you should make a name change/merge request through the appropriate WP channels until then I'll follow Wikipedia's editing advice and be bold in my editing. Let me know if you succeed in your namechange request. Good luck. Cheers! --DaveThomas 04:21, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I really don't think you've thought this matter through and I suggest you read the relevant pages in the Manual of Style regarding categories. You can't or won't explain how splitting one clear category into two related and undefined categories is helpful to the reader of the encyclopedia and since you can't or won't provide clear criteria for these categories, I don't see how these can be managable in any way. I don't see any choice but to revert your changes and, if you make these changes a third time, put the new category up for deletion. Gamaliel 04:34, 30 May 2006 (UTC)


Please stop. The category name has previously been voted on in CFD. "Controversies" was selected as more comprehensive and neutral. In short, this has been considered and length, and consensus achieved. Derex 04:35, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia need to be consistent in it's style then. Many Clinton scandals are also listed in the American Political Scandal category. How can an American Political Scandal that occurred under the Clinton Administration be merely a Clinton administration controversy?

Yes, you are correct. The APS category needs to be worked on. This is a separate issue however. The issue is that the word "scandal" strongly implies actual wrongdoing. In most of the Clinton cases, that is not established fact. While for some it is, rather than split hairs over which are controversial and which are scandalous, the sensible thing to do is use the "controversy" tag. Fundamentally, the category is there to help guide readers to similar topics, not to label the incidents with a name. So, a generic name that covers all cases is the sensible solution here. Thanks for discussing this. Derex 04:48, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
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