User talk:Edivorce

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Welcome!

Hello, Edivorce, 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 have any questions, check out Wikipedia:Where to ask a question or ask me on my talk page. Again, welcome!  --Bachrach44 22:28, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Jeremy Hammond Article

I will need to get the statement put out by Chicago Anarchist Black Cross, and find some of the other articles put out by Chicagoland activists about Mr. Hammond. I tried to make it as neutral as I could without sounding bitter. Give me some time, it shouldn't take long. - dancet0k

[edit] Hi!

You show a great background in dispute resolution on your ArbCom statement; if your candidacy isn't successful this time around, please consider lending your help to the (currently leaderless) Wikipedia:Mediation Committee, and build up your wiki-experience for next election. Thanks! — Catherine\talk 05:48, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to second Catherine's suggestion. Even though I reluctantly voted against your ArbCom candidacy, I'm sure that your real-world experience would be immensely useful to Wikipedia's various dispute resolution processes. The only reason I voted against you is that with such a limited edit history it's not possible to judge how you would apply your real-world experience to the oddities of Wikipedia. I hope you stay and continue to contribute to the project! —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 19:14, 19 January 2006 (UTC)
As above, I hestiated before voting in your favor, and am not surprised at the outcome, but hope you will continue on here (glad to have you as a fellow member of the game theory project). -Cheers, Pete.Hurd 23:20, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Arbcom candidate userbox

Greetings. I've made a new userbox for arbcom candidates to show on their userpages so that visiters will know they're running.

{{User arbcom nom}}

If you'd like to place it on your userpage, feel free. Regards, – Quadell (talk) (bounties) 02:17, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome

Edivorce - Welcome to Wikipedia:WikiProject Game theory! We're glad you've joined us. Feel free to add or remove things from any of the lists on the project page. If you need any help, just let me or any of the other participants know. Again, welcome. --best, kevin [kzollman][talk] 20:18, 19 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Investigating

You say " A process that uses “experts” who “investigate” and render decisions from information not placed on the record by the parties (who may not even have access to the information) can be disempowering, it may even take on “star chamber” qualities." I am the one who usually does this. I do it because the parties are often not that good at gathering evidence or expressing the issues adequately. Often I find things that have not been expressed in the evidence, including the involvement of others. However, it is diffs that I go on, rarely anything that is not in the record of edits. You are certainly right that it causes dismay from time to time. I don't think failure to adequately present evidence on the part of users should prevent us from going out and investigating to find out what is going on. Fred Bauder 22:44, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

You take the common law position. I take the civil law position which I consider more likely to do justice, remembering that we do not do justice, per se, but attempt to craft whatever decision advances the progress of the project. Fred Bauder 01:58, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
A gracious concession speech, it does you credit. Please do find an outlet somewhere for your skills and enthusiasm. Perhaps mediator or member advocate might be a place to go for now. --Doc ask? 23:36, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

You had a fantastic showing, considering your newness to WP. Your skills and background are a valuable contribution to the community, and I'm sure we'll be seeing more of you using it all here soon. You can currently still have a great effect on things by getting involved on the arbcom workshop pages. Anyone is able to suggest solutions to any of the cases (in fact, I hear the salary is even the same :P ). --MPerel ( talk | contrib) 03:37, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

I can only agree with all that's been said above. It was a pretty bold move to run for ArbCom given your inexperience with the Wiki and yet you got more support than a few candidates that have been around for longer. Do use your skills elsewhere in the wiki, there are plenty of places (and conflicts!) to keep you busy for a while if so you wish. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 11:34, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vote Outcome

Sorry to hear you lost, I was really hoping you would win. Also sorry about the lighthearted jibe to your profession - really I think you are much more qualified than many people in positions of power on Wikipedia. I admit I'm curious to find out how you view Wikipedia - what do you think it is? I think it's a collaborative hobby project that is a very very useful tool, but should be used with great caution, like eBay. I find that the best thing in any wikipedia article are the references/external links, for two reasons - #1 they tend to make the article more accurate, but more importantly #2 you can find out information from people who are more likely to actually know what they are talking about in the links/references. I'm pretty suspicious of egalatarianism, most especially in the "infosphere" - some people actually know what they are talking about, others do not, and even those who do are prone to significant error. I believe that truth is not a democracy and that facts should not be determined by giving everyone an equal say, but rather a say proportionate to their trustworthiness.

It is my sincere hope to see some kind of *ACTUAL* peer review mechanism put into Wikipedia at some point in the next five years so that individual facts/assertions can be tagged, organized, and reviewed by individuals according to their knowlege/reputation.

Just curious about your take on all of this - JustinWick 00:38, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I view WP in similar, though perhaps a little warmer way. It is, I think, a unique Open Source project in which the collaborators possess not technical skills but a general knowledge base and a high level of fluency and literacy. This opens the doors very wide. The end product of an encyclopedia is a worthy end. I hope it really is about the kid in the developing world accessing the sum of all human knowledge from her One Hundred Dollar Laptop. I am not yet completely convinced.
Mediawiki is wonderful tool for the development of the project. It only mildly burdens the collaborator with technical overhead.
I have read the press on the accuracy of WP articles that indicate that the information is found, upon review by credible experts, to be as reliable as Encyclopedia Britannica or other peer reviewed academic encyclopedias. This is bourn out by my experience when turning to WP articles for highly detailed information concerning programming. The fact that such information works the vast majority of times is the proof in the pudding. Still, a grain of salt is always a very good thing.
The issue of peer review is interesting. I would not want to close the door on the lay editors. Are you familiar with Larry Sanger’s early role in the WP and Nupedia? The peer reviewed encyclopedia was just not sufficiently productive in terms of article output. I think much could be accomplished, as you suggest, with the use of tags that evidence content vetting by experts. Readers of the articles could have the “meta information” about how much confidence experts would place in the content. Users could develop entire forks that would contain only such vetted articles. Lay development of WP need not be impeded by this process.--Edivorce 17:13, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
I've seen the articles comparing to Brittanica... I think part of that is that Brittanica just isn't that great - most non-field resources get deep details of a field wrong... Popular Science, New Scientist, Discover Magazine, etc are great examples of this, as they are usually well written but often contain scientific errors of such utter atrocity that I have wanted to vomit - everything from a microwave oven's "rays" stopping wireless internet carrier waves dead in empty space (?!?!), to explainations of quantum theory that completely contradict cause and effect (thus creating a time paradox). That article didn't really convince me because I do not believe that "average number of errors" is really the best measurement, I think that more detailed statistical information, like standard deviation, etc, and the precise methodology they used for their analysis should have been published.
I agree with you that shutting out lay editors is probably not the best idea. Honestly I think just tagging "this statement has been reviewed by someone who knows" is a great start - imperfect information is often quite useful as long as its degree of imperfection can be assessed. I do think, however, that some subjects really lend themselves better to lay editors than others... a lot of scientific articles deal with issues involving mathematics at or above the graduate level, and I've seen the damage a single person could do when they took some freshman introductory class and decided to "correct" things that they obviously didn't understand.
Most importantly, I think there should be some way to discourage large amounts of change on things that are already "good" and encourage change on things that are not yet of high quality... Plenty of wikipedia articles are as good or better than those on other encyclopedias, but they are the vast minority.
I've been leading a "crusade" to mark scientific (at this point, mostly physics) articles that are not referenced with the "unsourced" template, hoping that this will get people's attention and get decent references into the articles. Lay editors are usually reasonably good when they are getting their information from a good source (unless it is way out of their league).
I doubt Wikipedia will ever encompass the "sum of human knowlege," however I believe it will serve to hilight many of the most important parts, and be a valuable start on the long road of education. I really do hope some of what I've written on here helps someone who is too poor or geographically isolated (or busy) to attend a university to learn something that enriches their life. It will be interesting to see where the project is at in 10 years. - JustinWick 22:42, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editing Question - Be Bold

The answer to your question is (somewhat simplistically) to be bold! In general, I *ONLY* put things up for discussion before I make an edit if:

  • I making a major structural change to an article that will involve a lot of work - in this case it is good to propose a new structure on the talk page for a subject. I think you will find that many articles have "caretakers" that have become attached to the page and are usually very happy to see someone working to make the page better, but rather upset when someone makes massive changes with no apparent reason.
  • I'm making a large, nonstructural change but am unsure if it is the best idea - occasionally I work on wikipedia pages that are outside my areas of expertise, and therefore I am a little more cautious about my editing.
  • I see something that needs done, but am sure that I cannot do it own my own - a comment works wonders to organize people for some articles, others seem orphined and no one cares.

If you don't hit one of those conditions, I'd say just perform your edits on the page, and expect them to be reviewed and corrected if necessary by others. Feel free to be somewhat insistant if you believe you are really in the right - sometimes explaining your actions will cause a revert to be revoked...

I saw you were editing the article on Mediation, and as you have expertise in real life, this should be an instance where you are likely to have no problem making good edits that everyone will like. If you have made changes that make the article pretty unrecognizable, it might be better to do it in a temp page, as was suggested on the Mediation article, rewrites can be done in "temp" pages before being phased in... I personally believe that some pages really can't be done piecemeal (this may be one of them) so that looks like a viable option.

Anyways let me know if you're encountering resistance on making great, sweeping changes to crappy wikipedia articles. So many WP articles feel like they were written by individuals that could not write, and didn't know much about the subject... What we really need is Wikipedia:Brilliant_prose. In fact, I encourage you to adopt a few articles that you particularly like and see if you can get them to featured article status... That's one of the most rewarding activities on wikipedia (I have yet to do this, I'm still looking for the perfect article).

All in all, it's better to ruffle a few feathers and make too many changes to too many things than to get nothing done, so do be bold. - JustinWick 15:42, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

After writing this giant speech, I realized I didn't actually answer your actual question about how long to wait for comments... a few days is fine. Honestly I think you should just start working on a temp version, and explain what kinds of changes you are making in the discussion page, that way people know what to expect and can raise objections before you put too much work into it. Waiting more than a week would be ridiculous... do expect a few people to disagree, but as long as you have enough people "on your side" that should not be a problem - most articles of wide interest are governed by a consensus of interested individuals minus a few outliers. - JustinWick 15:55, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Revert

Easy there buddy...that was not meant to be sarcasm. The message was a standard message as part of a procedure we follow with regards to dealing with vandalism. You edited your user page from an anonymous IP address - that usually means 99% of the time that a vandal has hit because the only one that should be editing a user page is the user themselves. When an anon IP removes something from a user page, that is easy to mistake as vandalism. Jamyskis Whisper, Contribs Germany 22:10, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

See follow-up comments. --Edivorce 00:50, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad we got this sorted. The template itself is in wider use by just about anyone who deals with vandalism on here. The templates available to inform potential vandals are test2, test3 and test4, as well as bv for a first edit from a user that is quite clearly vandalism. The test1 template is used at first when it looks like the user is genuinely "testing the waters" or if the nature of the vandalism is unclear, but we move on to test2 etc. if they continue.
I'm involved with the Counter-Vandalism Unit (see WP:CVU) - we generally scan through the recent changes to see if any articles have been vandalised, which, I'm afraid to say, is far more common than you may realise. The article on Wikipedia itself is vandalised around at least once a minute at peak times, then you have articles on controversial topics such as Abortion, George W. Bush etc. which frequently get vandalised. Unfortunately, some vandals are just plain mean-spirited, and user pages do get vandalised a lot - mine's been vandalised 11 times in a month.
Some of the tools for this are available to everyone. If you click on the [[diff]] under Special:RecentChanges in an article's history you can see the changes made by a specific user, and opening a specific version, opening that for editing and then saving it will revert it back to that version - see WP:RV for more details. Of course, there are a number of tools and tricks that you can apply to speed this process up. For example, there's a Java program available by CryptoDerk that lets you scan a list of recent changes that are constantly updated, and lets you highlight suspicious changes - for example, changes to user pages not carried out by the user. There's also a popups tool which allows for quick reversions.
Admins have more powers - they have a link which reverts even more quickly, and they also have the power the block user names and IP addresses. They can also delete pages, although there is a standard procedure to follow before they can do this.
I hope this clears things up. If you have any more questions, just let me know. Jamyskis Whisper, Contribs Germany 08:42, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] my rfa

thanks for your support vot on my rfa :)Benon 16:03, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] My RfA

Thanks for voting!
Although this is a bit late in coming, I want to thank you for voting (no matter what your vote was) in my recent request for adminship. You might be aware that it did not pass due to a lack of consensus. The final tally was 21/9/10. I think I will try again this spring or summer after I have gained a bit more experience and met a few more fellow editors. Thanks again!

--MatthewUND(talk) 05:34, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vandal tags

Thank you for reverting vandalism on Wikipedia!

Be sure to put warning tags on the vandal's user talk page (such as {{subst:test}}, {{subst:test2}}, {{subst:test3}}, {{subst:test4}}). Add each of these tags on the vandal's talk page, in sequential order, after each instance of vandalism. Adding warnings to the talk page assists administrators in determining whether or not the user should be blocked. If the user continues to vandalize pages after you add the {{subst:test4}} tag, request administrator assistance at Request for Intervention. Again, thank you for helping to make Wikipedia better. AuburnPilottalk 17:35, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks

Thanks for informing me about that. Have a nice week and god bless you and everyone you know. --Sir James Paul, La gloria è a dio 15:50, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Sir James Paul, La gloria è a dio has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling to someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Happy editing!
Smile at others by adding {{subst:smile}}, {{subst:smile2}} or {{subst:smile3}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

[edit] 123 Pleasant Street deletion review

From what I just read in the AfD, the first deletion review was closed much faster than policy dictates. I renominated a page about an Atlantic City councilperson the same week it made it through one AfD and got slaughtered for it. The acceptable delay for renomination was definitely not followed here. DarkAudit 05:28, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe that as long as you inform everyone, and not just those who agreed with your opinion, that it is acceptable. -- Avi 17:30, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
I meant everyone who participated in the AfD, and that is still accessible here: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/123 Pleasant Street (2nd nomination) -- Avi 17:52, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
However, it is the only thing I agreed to. The broader discussion you suggest is tantamount to canvassing, which is not allowed. -- Avi 18:32, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
What you are suggesting to me, contacting everyone who has ever edited the page, sounds to me like what is referred to on WP:CANVASS as "aggressive cross-posting" which I can neither condone, nor take part in, under the WP:CANVASS guideline. I'm sorry. -- Avi 18:48, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
I would suggest bringing it up at WP:ANI. Perhaps other admins have more experience and/or precedent with this particular issue. Good Luck. -- Avi 20:11, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks!

For letting me know about those AfD's. Aelffin 06:06, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you

Just want to drop by and say thank you for erasing the vandalism to the Langston Hughes page. :-)TonyCrew 09:05, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks...

... for your unqualified support in my (unsuccesful) RfA. Drmaik 11:49, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

and more so for sharing your prespectives on admins, and vandal fighting. An interesting one. Someone could do some research on the effectiveness of your strategy vs. the 'official' one. But I'm thinking I might not leave a warning if I get an edit just after it's been made. And life is busy: a family with 3 children, a full-time job (which is when I'm mainly online), so I just don't have time to get involved in masses. I sometimes think I do too much already here. Gotta go, a bunch of papers are waiting to be marked... Drmaik 08:26, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re: This is wonderful

Hi Edivorce, thank you for your supportive comment. The bot has never been accused of canvassing because it sends out notifications for every AfD that is listed (except when the article is older than 4 months). It has been approved by the bot approvals group so I don't expect any complaints about the task of this bot. I hope this answers your question. Cheers, Jayden54 15:26, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Re: Just Word

I looked at the Sourgc Forge cite on Just Word. Do I understand correctly that it is authored in Basic? I think that make it notable in that it seems a pretty advanced application for Basic. Maybe I'm wrong. But perhaps the article should "lead" with that. Do you have any other sources, articles, etc. I will try to edit the article and will participate in the AfD. I'm sure I can't do as well as you but as the developer you are viewed "original research" or possibly do the article for "vanity". You should also not just throw your hands up in AfD. Clearly say "Keep" and give a brief account your reasons. I hope this article survives AfD. User:Edivorce 16:47, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Relpy: Yeah its written in Basic. Just BASIC actually. I thought I should see if i could make a whole office suite in BASIC. And as of now, its going fairly well. And as of now I do not have any sources except for the news on my site. Wikinerd2000 19:41, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] AfD notification

Hey, I know your heart's in the right place, but please don't send out mass notifications to all the authors of an AfD'd article in the future, okay?

If you'd like, feel free to notify an article's creator if it has been nominated for deletion. More recent major contributors will have the article already watchlisted if they're interested in its welfare. Cheers, TenOfAllTrades(talk) 01:45, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I suppose you could say I was wearing my 'admin hat', as I was coming to you to discuss your conduct rather than an editing issue. I was hoping to sort things out with you before the matter escalated. In any case, I'm concerned that – neutral and polite though your messages may be – you may be engaged in aggressive and excessive cross-posting.
To look at the most recent case, on the Blogging Tories AfD it seems that you've notified every single editor who has ever touched the article that there is an AfD taking place. While I offer grudging respect for your thoroughness, frankly, a lot of those editors probably aren't interested. (At least 8 are anonymous IPs, and many of the edits were trivial. Friday's only contribution, for example, was to unlink a couple of redlinked names.)
In the last few hours, you have sent out at least sixty copy-pasted (or templated) notifications about a couple of AfDs. You have sent out duplicate notifications to a number of editors, where they have edited more than one of the articles that you're campaigning for. This much crossposting is very likely to annoy some people, and it won't accomplish what you're hoping to achieve. (I know I've edited nearly 4000 unique pages on Wikpedia; that doesn't include pages that have been deleted. In many cases, those edits have been rolling back vandalism or something similarly minor—I don't have any particular special interest in those articles, and I'd be really irked if dozens of notices started showing up on my talk page every time one got AfDed.)
Please restrict yourself in the future to notifying a page's original author, and authors who have made substantial contributions. (If you're sending a notice to more than two or three people on any given AfD, then you're probably casting too broad a net for 'substantial'.) Remember that most people who really are interested in the future of an article will have it watchlisted anyway. Note that AfD is a very well-attended part of Wikipedia, and that you don't need to drive extra eyeballs there—it'd really just be a drop in the bucket. The best way to 'save' an article from deletion is to expand it, improve it, and source it, to establish beyond a shadow of doubt that it belongs here. In the forty minutes that you spent posting notices for each AfD, you could have dramatically improved each article. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 02:32, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I fear that the most likely outcome of continued, massive crossposting is that i.) you will end up with lots of annoyed people showing up on this talk page asking you to stop it; and ii.) you will end up getting blocked. I base those predictions on my own experience with Wikipedia policy and practice. I'd rather not see you go down that rather bumpy road, and my advice really represents the edge of what you might be able to 'get away with' (for lack of a better description) in terms of canvassing for AfDs.
Note that Jayden54Bot only notifies one author of each article – the editor who first created the article – and does not notify all of the editors as you have been doing. If you would like to notify the first author for articles where Jayden54bot doesn't act (articles older than four months) then by all means go ahead.
If you are concerned that I'm overstepping or misinterpreting Wikipedia policies and practices, or that an action or warning I've given represents an abuse of my status as an admin, then WP:AN/I would be the appropriate forum. If you'd like to open a more general discussion about WP:CANVASS and how it might apply to the present situation, the Village Pump or even the Help Desk might be good places. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 04:03, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Frankly, I think that my interpretation is correct, so we're at an impasse; if you think that a third opinion would help, by all means seek advice at any of the places I've suggested. I strongly recommend seeking advice before you resume the massive crossposting, however.
In any case, I will note that Jayden54Bot does function as I've described—you can verify this by checking out the description at User:Jayden54Bot/AFDNotify, its contributions, or its request for approval. (Note that the bot likely would not have been approved had it been designed to notify every editor of the article.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 05:48, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit]

[edit] North America as in the single continent model

Hello. Can you read the article and the Afd please? North America (Americas) AlexCovarrubias ( Let's talk! ) 20:57, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for offering your help, I appreciate it a lot. I read your comment at the Delete Review and all I can say is you're right, unfortunately there is a kind of "cultural bias" about this whole situation. What angers me the most is how some persons continue to call the article a "POV fork" without even taking a look at the WP:POVFORK definition. I hope some good, no-partial admins read the DRV and restore the article. Perhaps, you can help me by telling me if there is another way of restoring the article. AlexCovarrubias ( Let's talk! ) 05:13, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] North America (Americas) delete review

Thanks for voting and expressing your opinion about the article North America (Americas). As you know the debate was closed, and the result was "to delete it". Since I, as the creator of the article, thought the decision was hasty and wrong, I opened a to review the deletion.

This mean that administrators and regular editors can vote again and, most importantly, argument why the decision was wrong or right. Please, take a look at this and express your opinion:

Thanks for your time reading this message. AlexCovarrubias ( Let's talk! ) 22:57, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Thank you for your support im my RFA

I really appreaciate it, thanks,--Darkest Hour 14:59, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Lama Foundation

I've gone ahead and done some work on this article. If you have a chance, would you take a moment to look, and see whether it'd affect your opinion for the AFD? -Hit bull, win steak(Moo!) 22:01, 20 March 2007 (UTC)


[edit] My RfA

Thank you for support in my unsuccessful RfA. I appreciate the support, and am disappointed on being judged by what in most opinions seem to be the wrong things. Until next time, edit on! :) — RevRagnarok Talk Contrib 03:31, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

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