User:Silence/Archive0002

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Contents 1 Injoined User 2 Atheism and logic 3 Jesus 4 User page images 5 Your name 6 Atheism 7 Do not remove tags 8 Your Opinon On Three Paragraph Intros 9 Jesus again 10 Six Feet Under 11 I owe you an apology 12 User:UBX/du 13 More Jesus stuff 14 List of Eccentrics 15 Template: Main 16 Re: important message

[edit] Injoined User

Thanks for reverting the anonymous user on Theism today. The user has been injoined by the Wiki Arbitration Committee from editing any pages except his own and his Arb Comm proceedings page. See here [1] and here [2]. Please revert anything he does to any other page immediately with the edit summary "rv injoined user". Don't argue with him. It only gives him attention which is what he wants. Thanks. --Nate Ladd 19:22, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

Alright. Thanks for the notification. -Silence 22:23, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Atheism and logic

Archived at User:Silence/PassionInfinity due to length concerns. -Silence 01:02, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Jesus

I noticed your in the process of trying to revise the article, as am I. My goal is to get this to reach FAC. I was wondering if you could comment on my proposed restructuring(I have one opinion and am waiting for a response as of now) and if you could provide suggestions on how to reduce the intro to 3-4 paragraphs per wikipedia lead policy. Hopefully we will be able to work together and maybe it could FAC. Thanks. Newbie222 01:46, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Nice work on the Islam section paragraph, but I still think the list was better because it provided comprehensive summary of beliefs, and yet did not disrupt the flow of the article. I think a list summary is good for the Jesus page, wheras I have already created a paragraph version on the main religious perspectives article. Why exactly do you want a paragraph summary? I don't think it is really necessary. --a.n.o.n.y.m ^t 19:47, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

It's not a matter of necessity, in my view. Normal, non-listed text should be the default way we give information on any topic, and it's lists that we should only use when it's "really necessary" for the sake of clarity. I want a paragraph summary for the following three reasons

1. Consistency. There are no lists anywhere else in the article; using a list here will surprise, trouble, and confuse most readers, making the overall article seem more like a patchwork hodgepodge of different articles and less like a cohesive whole. If you had any interest in making all the other sections on religious views of jesus list-formatted, I'd be more inclined to consider having the Islamic one be a list, but that would be a bit silly anyway.
2. The text was already getting quite dense even as a list. Your list, while convenient, is almost in paragraph format already, as each list item is quite long indeed. As such, putting it in true paragraph format is easy, and almost just a formality. If the list items were a lot shorter and more obviously stuck to only a single topic for each list item, I'd have much fewer problems with it.
3. Fluidity of topic and ease of reading. Putting things in paragraph format rather than list format has the advantage of forcing us to be linear in our explanation, rather than being able to abruptly jump from fact to fact without any overall cohesion. It requires a few more "However"s and "Also"s, sure, but other than that, it's worth the trouble.

I also explained this briefly on Talk:Jesus a minute ago, sorry for the delay. -Silence 19:59, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User page images

Hello again, thanks for your changes to Category:Queer Supportive Wikipedians, I really appreciate it. But I think you should be aware that fair use images are not allowed on user pages due to copyright and all that jazz. Sadly, it seems one must remove the images in order to comply with fair use doctrine, or perhaps if you can find replacement images, that would be fine too. Sorry to rain on your parade, [[User:Mysekurity|Mysekurity]] ^{[[additions | e-mail]]} _{23:05, 10 October 2005 (UTC)}

Thanks for the information! Very nice of you to take the time to check my user page and help me out with policy info. I'd seen lots of images on other people's user pages, so I assumed that it wasn't a problem. I'll go remove the three fair use images (Hamburglar, Is God Dead?, Mr. Feel) now. Thank god the silly goose image isn't fair use, anyway. -Silence 00:10, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, thank God for that (though I am told you can link to fair use images, just not display them, but the copyright law's a little hazy). If you see any other user displaying fair use images on his or her (predominately his) user or talk pages, please drop them a line. It's too bad too. I had the SNL cowbell on my to do page, and was told to remove it. For shame :(. Thanks again for help with the category, and have a great day. -[[User:Mysekurity|Mysekurity]] ^{[[additions | e-mail]]} _{00:23, 11 October 2005 (UTC)}

[edit] Your name

I love your user name. Good idea. SlimVirgin ^(talk) 11:51, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Thank you! Yours is quite neat as well. I was delighted to learn that "Silence" wasn't already taken on Wikipedia, because it's a name I've used for over four years elsewhere. Hopefully some people will be able to see past the surface level of the irony of an overtalkative person named "Silence" and come up with some deeper (or more bizarre, at least) interpretations. -Silence 13:10, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Atheism

It was the "Atheism is incoherent" section that caught my eye (it struck me as being largely original research, too, and not very convincing at that, but I didn't want to get involved in a long debate, so I thought I'd just draw attention to the English). --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 22:08, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I'm pretty sure that section's going to be deleted soon anyway (I recommended it in the section's text, as it has little to do with atheism). So I'll remove the notice; thanks for adding it, though, as it seems to have provoked some nice little fix-ups throughout the article. Just be a bit more specific next time, if possible. :) -Silence 22:32, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Do not remove tags

Since it is such a bad article, let it just get off Wikipedia. I am not a vandal so do not accuse me of being one. I HATE wikipedia. Molotov (talk)
04:10, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

It is not a bad article. It's actually quite an amazing article, considering you've created it from scratch in just a day. If I thought it was a bad article, why would I have spent hours of my life copyediting it to try and improve it a little? I don't bother to do that with hopeless articles; this one's the opposite of that. Please keep in mind that:

1. none of my comments on the page were directed at you; they were directed at anyone who in the near future will check out the page and be interested in working on it a little. There is no reason to take anything I said at all personally.
2. if you do not feel like having a discussion about the topics I brought up on the Talk page, then you don't have to reply. I understand completely if you don't appreciate that aspect of working on Wikipedia; many of my friends also dislike Wikipedia for the political or debate aspects of the site. Luckily, until a major dispute arises, no discussion is necessary (helpful, perhaps, but not necessary); just keep up the great work! Or don't, if that's what you prefer. If you really dislike it here that much, you can always leave, though I'd prefer to see even more great stuff from your quarter. Shrug.
3. putting an "afd" tag on an article is not an appropriate way to respond to its merely having low quality, in any situation. Though I understand that you just did it out of frustration and annoyance with my nitpicking (for which I apologize), if you really want to put an article up for deletion please make sure it meets one of the requirements at Wikipedia:Deletion policy.

This argument is silly. If you don't want to talk about a topic, don't; deleting the article won't solve anything (and could never happen anyway, it wouldn't get enough votes because it's too useful of an article). Let's just start over, shall we? -Silence 04:25, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I am sorry, I should have never added the tag - although I think the Caucasian Jesus image should stay on the article. I am also a little pissed because a damn storm is is headed straight for me - and I have to get the hell out of here. But thanks. Molotov (talk)
04:37, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I still don't see why the White Jesus can't stay on the article, though. Molotov (talk)
04:42, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

'tis perfectly fine. Adding a little tag doesn't do any harm; I'm just telling you about it so you know for future reference, there are better ways to deal with articles that you think need a lot of improvement; see Wikipedia:Cleanup. I don't think the Caucasian image jesus is vital, because it's already listed in pretty much every other article on Jesus on the entire Wikipedia. :) I'd be fine with having it when the article's longer, though; we shouldn't weigh down the article with images at this point, or we risk overwhelming the text. However, there's certainly no rush with any article; we'll have an infinite amount of time to work on the article more and slowly improve and expand on it, so there will surely be a day when the article needs more images to be better. If you really think the article's unsustainable without another image or two, then I welcome you to try some other method of listing them, like the method employed by Images of Jesus of listing them all at the bottom of the page. That should probably only be used if you can find a lot of different racial depictions of Jesus, though. Anyway, I'm glad we've straightened things out, and I hope you make it through the hurricane OK! What a rotten year of disasters... -Silence 04:45, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

You can say that again...but I definitely won't be on Wikipedia if I have to evacuate. I guess that is why I've been in such a bad mood. Please forgive me.

Take care, Molotov (talk)
04:49, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

It's completely alright. I have absolutely no hard feelings, and I'm impressed that you were able to create such a useful and well-written article in one day while under so much pressure! I guess sometimes working hard on something is a useful way to alleviate stress; I know it works for me. :) Hopefully next time we see each other it'll be under less strained circumstances. Thanks for my first barnstar, too; very sweet of you, even though it's clearly undeserved. -Silence 04:55, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

It was deserved, how did you come up with "Silence" as your user name? Molotov (talk)
05:06, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I've had it for several years on mIRC now, so I decided to use it here too. I use it for a variety of reasons: spiritual, ironic, poetic, mythological, it just plain sounds cool, etc. It's not supposed to make sense at first glance, though; I want people to try to find their own meanings for it (and hopefully not the old pun one about a guy named Silence being so talkative :)). There are too many things in this world that are easy to understand and explain; I welcome any opportunity to add more mystery and madness to the mundane. -Silence 05:40, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for moving it to the left, I was going to try to add more to the paragraph to have them in the same side, but oh well...anyway, thanks. Molotov (talk)
05:31, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Adding filler is unnecessary. If you find good images to add to the page, just put them on the talk page so we'll remember to add them later, when the page has evolved into a larger article naturally. Don't try to force an article into becoming perfect all at once; this page is practically a newborn, it could even be a candidate for Wikipedia:Did you know if you wanted (which I think is a much more realistic short-term goal than aspiring for "Featured Article"...). All I'm saying is, don't rush things; contribute as much to the article as you want, but don't be frustrated when people inevitably want to make big changes or don't agree that the article's ready as soon as you do. Also, remember that featured article status actually isn't such a big deal. Many of the best articles on Wikipedia aren't featured, and I've seen too many rather flawed featured articles to count; the entire featured article system is nothing but a means to an end, a tactic to try to encourage people to raise articles to a higher level of quality for a petty honor. In reality, Wikipedia's purpose is not to accumulate such honors, but to create a resource of high-quality, informative, accessible articles for the masses. Of course, the two are also intertwined, but it still pays to keep in mind that featured article status is not the be-all end-all of Wikipedia. It's certainly a fine, worthy goal to aspire to, but not one to rush to. Many articles take years of editing to reach featured article status; it's not even been a day and a half yet! -Silence 05:40, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

It is looking good, I think the tag can go soon. I guess the icon is fine, but it looks gloomy : ). Molotov (talk)
06:35, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Your Opinon On Three Paragraph Intros

Hey there. Since you like living on the bleeding edge outside of the guidelines, I'll use some of my refactoring philosophy on you and migrate this bit from Talk:Jesus here:

I disagree with the guidelines for introduction paragraphs set at Wikipedia:Lead section, and certainly do not believe that they apply to any article that exceeds the 30,000-character limit they set on articles; that page is based on the assumption that any large article will be divided until it's 30,000 characters or less, which is not a practical, useful possibility for many articles. Longer articles merit longer introductions than the rough guidelines were created for.

Wikipedia rules should not be enforced to the point that article quality suffers; rules are tools and very rough guidelines (even more so when they explicitly are called "general guidelines"), not cages. It's simply the truth that the Jesus article is more useful with the previous, multi-paragraph introduction than with the three-paragraph one. However, I'm willing to discuss a compromise between the two versions, if you truly think that this specific article would be greatly improved by shortening the intro, and aren't just trying to universally standardize every article to a single specific, regulated formula, which is definitely contrary to the way Wikipedia works. -Silence 18:23, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Shortening isn't my issue with this one, it really didn't get much shorter, my rewrites were intended to try and help provide the most relevant facts in the best clustering. That said, please see my own defense of the 3 para guideline. I'll promote the idea of having your own stock philosophies on these things in your userpage so you don't end up arguing them over and over with people, and can just link to them like I have here. You're also welcome to help me make my argument stronger through editing the page, even if you don't agree with it.  :) Metaeducation 20:03, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

I disagree with your refactoring policy. Keeping intact archives is important, as original authors may not have wished you to alter what they said months after the fact; I see no reason why one can't summarize important lengthy discussions for easy perusal rather than deleting or removing portions that are inconvenient. I do agree that keeping organized talk pages is important for maintaining intelligible discussions, and am fine with moving new comments to appropriate parts of the talk page where issues are being discussed (sometimes), but when it's truly vital or when the person who originally made the comments wants them moved himself (and sometimes not even in the latter case, if the comments are important for the discussion) should talk pages be dramatically altered. .. But all that's beside the point being discussed, sorry.

I disagree that it "didn't get much shorter". The current version has 2612 characters; yours had 1779 characters, 68% of the size it had been. But, yes, like you, size isn't my main concern—we're both apparently exclusively worried about what best serves the article, be it large or small. We just disagree, apparently, as to what does that; I think that while the current paragraphs could probably use a little revising (particularly the last intro paragraph, which is overlong and uses too many weasel words), they at least provide all the necessary information in a clear and accurate way, which I didn't feel your version managed in many areas.

I'll consider making my own pages for my beliefs on this matter, yes; I've already done that to a small extent on my main page with a few things I support, but haven't updated it with a few new conclusions I've come to after arguing with people who truly think that no page can have over three paragraphs in its intro (even though countless featured articles already do). I'm glad to hear that you're not one of those people, and as such will be perfectly willing to discuss ways to ensure that the intro sticks to only the most relevant details and is a high-quality summary and overview of the whole page.

And yes, my first instinct was to edit your version of the page rather than to just revert and criticize it; I completely understand how frustrating it can be to do an important, large-scale edit and then have it be removed almost immediately. It happened to me the very first time I edited the Jesus page, and on a very minor point, though the issue was eventually resolved. However, considering that the section we're talking about is the opening paragraphs of one of the most widely-visited pages on all of Wikipedia, I think that the best place to make the paragraphs as good as possible is the Talk page, where we have plenty of room to discuss revisions and there's no risk of scaring away new visitors to the page with unfinished changes. I hope you don't mind. -Silence 20:28, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Jesus again

I'm sending this message to both Paul and Silence: could you please cite which Christians believe in the whole argument "that Jesus, as the son of God, would have had the ideal body type and physical characteristics, including the "ideal" race." I feel that this implies that there are many Christians who believe this, and I know that this is most likely not the case (there are millions and millions of Christians who don't believe this). Please cite who is prominent in believing this! - Ta bu shi da yu 00:59, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't believe that many Christians believe it. I tried to have the section deleted and moved to Race of Jesus (where there's much more room to discuss it in depth and thus avoid any of the problems of generalizations), and asked for citations confirming it, but Paul refused, so I tried to establish a compromise, though the one currently on the page is the version of the compromise he agreed to, not the one I did (see Talk:Jesus for mine). I welcome you to try where I failed and extract some confirmation of that claim from Paul. -Silence 01:05, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Six Feet Under

Hello. I just wanted to thank you for the discussion we had in the 6FU character talk area, and I hope that there were no disagreements there. I had wanted to tell you that I had thought more about some of your suggestions regarding the character page, and you did have some good points. Maybe you should implement some of your ideas and we can see how they look. If not, then I just wanted to drop by and give a greeting, since it's always nice to meet other 6FU fans. --JamesB3 04:26, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Oh, thanks! Always nice to get a comment just to say hi. :) I've just been rather busy lately, with work and editing other, more frequented articles (like the infamous Jesus), but I certainly plan to come back soon and start with some revisions. I've already got plenty of stuff planned for the "list of SFU deaths" and "list of SFU episodes" (by the way, I asked the #wikipedia channel and got a lot of support for the idea of season-by-season pages for the episodes) and "SFU characters". Lots of potential for this corner of Wikipedia. -Silence 04:29, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] I owe you an apology

I have been really selfish with the RofJ article, and I want you to know that I am sorry. IN the end I know that you are only doing what you feel is right - and you are doing one hell of a job.

Take care,

I just hope you were playing about the cocaine. V/M
19:10, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

It's perfectly alright. You're doing a great job, too, and I like some of your recent suggestions. Disagreements are inherent to any collaborative or cooperative process; just try not to get them down, figure out a way to have some fun with the editing process even when things aren't going the way you'd hoped. When one can manage that, the rest's easy. -Silence 19:17, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] User:UBX/du

Done! — Davenbelle 03:16, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] More Jesus stuff

Do you consider the title of an article "Jesus in the Bible" to be neutral point of view? I do not since there is a difference between the Christiand and Jewish Bible. Your opinion? Slrubenstein | Talk 19:07, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I plead the fifth, the ninth, the first, and the third. Now stop quartering your god damn troops in my crib. -Silence 00:57, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] List of Eccentrics

Just so you know, it's not a personal lack of interest that motivates me. I actually find this list considerably more interesting than many. Rather, it's a belief that the number of "List of ______" articles that should be on Wikipedia is approximately 0. I have been criticized before for trying to bring that about through the VFD/AFD mechanism, but my attempts to introduce a policy banning lists have been unsuccessful. I have no objection to a short list of examples in eccentricity_(behavior), as that's a real article. Any list on its own, though, I oppose. The Literate Engineer 19:25, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I see. Thanks for the explanation, I understand your view vastly better, though. Do consider, however, this: considering that you have not yet succeeded in instituting any policy coming anywhere near to deleting all lists from Wikipedia, is the best tactic really to attack individual lists that just happen to go up for VfD for completely unrelated reasons? Especially since that will mean removing some of the better lists that happen to have been VfDed for other reasons, while many of the ones which even you admit are much less interesting remain. I can understand if this is part of some long-term, slow campaign of yours to destroy all lists, but isn't the worst of all situations inconsistency? I know that even though I think lists definitely have an important place on Wikipedia, if the choice was between deleting all lists and deleting 50% of them completely at random, I'd go for deleting all of them to keep things consistent. Likewise, if the policy is to keep all the ones that fit Wikipedia's current standards, even if I believed that all lists should be removed, I wouldn't attack every individual list that came up for VfD as long as my overall agenda of total-list-removal didn't have wide support. But, at any rate, thanks for clarifying the history behind your vote! -Silence 19:47, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Template: Main

You claim my change distracts from the article. No it doesn't. I've employed it effectively on the hurricane pages for months with nothing resembling a complaint about it.

Example: Main Article: Hurricane Dennis.

I've grown to despise the main and seemain templates with a red hot passion. I went on a crusade about two months ago to purge them from all the hurricane articles. It blends with the rest of the article. It needs to STAND OUT. It creates spacing issues with both text and images and the indentation looks beyond stupid. I brought it up on the talk page and only one person said anything and that person agreed with me. It is too difficult to alter. You can't bold the link without changing the template. Anyone who tries to change the template is reverted. That's tyranny. Wikipedia is not a dictatorship. Everyone shouldn't have to put it through Congress five times and get 100 percent approval from everyone each time just to change it! This is just a little template and you guys are treating it like the Constitution. It's not my fault that when I brought it up on the talk page, few listened. You also claim that I screwed everything up by not changing Main2. I would if you'd give me half a chance! Until it's changed I will continue to remove it from the hurricane pages and support any deletion proposals that are put forth. And the monarchy you guys are running here won't ever allow that unless one of you came up with the idea yourselves. This is not a vendetta, this is a declaration of grievances and a plee for change. This template cannot stay the way it is...period. It has no place in Wikipedia otherwise. I have encountered many other people severely irked by this template.

Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 01:02, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

The fact that a certain style works well on one article does not imply that it will work well on every article. Template:main is used heavily in thousands of articles, and there is no possible way you can predict how some of them will be affected even by a change as minor as bolding the text of the line. You should be incredibly, enormously cautious in changes such as those, making sure to establish a very firm consensus before going ahead with such plans, lest you cause a lot of problems throughout all of Wikipedia. If you want to change the default template based on the fact that a few of the articles you work on would certainly benefit from it, why not just make an entirely new template, like "Template:bmain", that would let you use the bold version on as many pages as you want while also allowing anyone who doesn't want to use it to stick to the long-established version of the main?

"It blends with the rest of the article. It needs to STAND OUT." - Many would argue that the fact that it's distinct from the rest of the paragraph text, always appears at the beginning of sections (and thus is always right below some very large, bold, obvious text), is italicized and idented, and has very obvious blue text is sufficient to make it distinct from the rest of the article. Furthermore, many would argue that to additionally make the article link bold would look unprofessional and crude, adding unnecessary weight to various points in the article and distracting the eye away from the most important part of the article: the article itself; after all, if someone's reading an article, they're doing it because they want to read the article's text, not because they want to gaze in awe at a bunch of links to other pages that they may or may not have any interest in visiting. "Main article" links are provided to make it easy to read more in-depth information on a topic if the person is interested, not to yell at everyone who casually glances through the page "READ ME READ ME READ ME!" That's all. I won't say decidedly whether one version is better or not, but I do know that Wikipedia policy allows for plenty of different article styles, and discourages trying to make every article adhere to a single form. Therefore I'm sure few would stand in your way if you wanted to use your own version for the articles you think need it, but there will undoubtedly be strong resistance to your trying to force everyone on the entire project of Wikipedia to either adhere to your specific, non-mainstream style preferences, or to abandon template usage altogether. Just keep that in mind.

"brought it up on the talk page and only one person said anything and that person agreed with me." - Gee, you brought up a major template change on an remote article talk page completely unrelated to the template in question and only got one response, and that you took as decisive evidence enough that the entire Wikipedia community would be fine with abruptly altering the template without even a discussion on the Template page over it? Oy vey. Do I even have to say it?

"Anyone who tries to change the template is reverted." - And what does that tell you about Wikipedia' consensus regarding the template? That, combined with how often the template is used, tells you that the vast majority of people are perfectly happy with the template the way it is.

"That's tyranny." - No, it's asking you to discuss changes before unilaterally making them. Tyranny is more like trying to force your specific views on the entire rest of the world without first talking them over. Which of the two of us is doing that?

"Wikipedia is not a dictatorship. Everyone shouldn't have to put it through Congress five times and get 100 percent approval from everyone each time just to change it!" - No one said you had to. But you didn't even mention it on any page where anyone was likely to see it, from your own claims. Not even once. I also find it pretty hilarious that you think that requiring the approval of Congress for major changes to be made is a common feature of dictatorships. Maybe you should read up on those pages before accusing someone of being a dictator... Just a thought, take it or leave it.

"This is just a little template and you guys are treating it like the Constitution." - This is just a little template and you're treating it like a war. Why are you so opposed to discussing this matter civilly and putting it to a consensus decision? This template is used in countless Wikipedia articles, and countless more articles use the exact same format as the template without the actual template text: next to none use your bolded version. No one is saying you can't use a bolded version if you want, but why do you demand that everyone use the exact same template you use? You aren't God.

"It's not my fault that when I brought it up on the talk page, few listened." - Ah good, so you did bring it up. And when you didn't get an agreement to go ahead with the change, you made the change anyway, because you're so much more important than everyone else. You're right, it's not your fault that noone listened—it's your fault that you took that as a sign to alter the template for your own sake. But I don't hold grudges, so why don't you try again if you feel so strongly about this? Plenty of revolutions have taken an effort to get some attention built up. :P

"I would if you'd give me half a chance!" - That's nice, but that wasn't my main objection, it was just one of the short-term reasons I reverted the change.

"Until it's changed I will continue to remove it from the hurricane pages and support any deletion proposals that are put forth." - I'm glad. That's a much healthier and fairer way for you to deal with this than to try to enforce your POV on all of Wikipedia against consensus. Though I expect that if the community of editors working on hurricanes ever do decide that they don't like the bolded version, you'll be willing to listen. As long as that doesn't happen, though, of course you can do what you want with the style of individual articles.

"And the monarchy you guys are running here" - I thought monarchies were run by individuals, not groups? I think you're trying to accuse us of "tyranny of the majority", not of running a "dictatorship" or a "monarchy". Though I like your specific accusations more, because they're adorable.

"won't ever allow that unless one of you came up with the idea yourselves." - No, I wouldn't have made the change to the template even if I'd come up with it myself, because I'd have realized that the current template is the version the vast majority prefers. :) Who has an idea has nothing to do with how good an idea is. I've had plenty of terrible ideas, for example. Hell, one could make a decent argument for my spending so much time on this discussion being a terrible idea! But oh well.

"This template cannot stay the way it is...period." - Why not? People like it, it works well, and it's got a well-established following based on how many people use it, yet it doesn't force any editors who don't like it to use it on the articles they work on (as long as most of the other editors on the same article agree with their style choices) because they can easily simply use alternative ways to implement "main page" links that don't use templates or use alternative templates. Are you that opposed to allowing people to disagree with you?

"It has no place in Wikipedia otherwise. I have encountered many other people severely irked by this template." - Then start up a petition to get it changed to the way you like it. That's a much more productive way to get things changed than unilateral edits, and will also raise awareness of the issue and thus get a real debate going on this matter. Good luck to you in your venture! If your arguments are compelling enough, I may even end up signing your petition myself. We'll see. (Of course, I see the tricky move you're making with your last line there—you're trying to make it seem like everyone who doesn't like the template agrees with you, when in fact most people with problems with the template have different problems with it. :) Hee. Fun.) -Silence 01:38, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

All right, the first two paragraphs made a lot of sense. As for the others, I was never trying to force my will on anyone. I would never do that. It's just not me. I was merely saying that I felt the template was being monopolized, to which I strongly objected. I did go a little overboard with the monarchy stuff (insert sarcasm here), but the initial referance was true to my original opinion.

Gee, you brought up a major template change on an remote article talk page completely unrelated to the template in question. What? I posted it on the Template's talk page. I didn't post it on an article talk page, I don't know where you got that impression.

The seperate template sounds like a good idea. I still think that all the articles that use it would benefit from the bold link version. Otherwise I wouldn't have made the change. The way it is now, people could easily overlook it. A template of this nature is clearly warrented, I just feel that this one is flawed.

next to none use your bolded version. How could you possibly know that? Have you been to every page that exists in Wikipedia? I doubt it.

but why do you demand that everyone use the exact same template you use?. I'm not. I just thought that it would benefit all Wikipedia articles that use it, not just the hurricane pages. I requested change on the template talk page and was ignored. Do you know how agrivating that can be? Asking a question and then being ignored? Very.

Hey, you know what; I'm kinda tired right now. So I'll make the new template and the other Wikipedia articles can do whatever the heck they want. I'm not trying to be a stick in the mud, I just don't like taking pointless arguments in circles. I've learn how stupid that is. I should go to sleep soon. I start saying stupid stuff when I'm tired (insert sarcasm here).

Yours was probably the longest talk page post I have ever seen. :)

Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 03:56, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I probably should have stopped talking after the first two paragraphs, while I was still ahead. That's possibly the most important lesson I have yet to learn in this life: when to shut up. :) Even when my mouth (or my fingers, really; I'm quite concise in real life) doesn't get me into trouble—and it usually does—no one likes reading an essay as a reply. Oh well. Something to work on. (proceeds to write another long post)

The confusion about which talk page you'd talked on was my fault, I didn't see your coment when I first glanced through the Talk page to see where you'd asked about anything, and I saw "I brought it up on the talk page and only one person said anything and that person agreed with me." in your above comment right after you talked about the hurricane articles and forgot to assume good faith. My bad. You have legitimate reason to be upset that your request got little attention, and there are worse ways than editing the template to get that attention—but you should make it clear, then, that you are changing the template to get people to go to the Talk page to really consider your alternative. The way you worded it, and your above post, made it seem to me like you weren't even interested in starting a real dialogue on the matter, when now it turns out the opposite is the case and you're frustrated because of the lack of dialogue. I understand much better now; perhaps if you tried going to some related Wikipedia project pages, or to the Wikipedia:Village pump, you'd have more luck finding feedback.

"How could you possibly know that? Have you been to every page that exists in Wikipedia? I doubt it." - I meant percentage-wise more than raw quantity-wise. If that wasn't the case, wouldn't I have seen at least a few random pages that use your preferred style, out of the thousands of Wikipedia articles I've visited? I've certainly seen some variances in the "main article" link style, like not indenting the line (a bad idea) and having a "main article" link at the top of the article (also probably a bad idea), but no bolded ones that I can remember. This is not to say that your idea is bad because it's unpopular; but it's lack of use does show that you shouldn't be so quick to assume people will prefer yours to the one they currently have. I'm sure some people will, at least, so your campaign could help spread your idea to those people and thus influence more articles to use the bold-style, but I'd be surprised if most would. But the only way to find out for sure is to raise public awareness of your option and see who likes and doesn't like it!

"So I'll make the new template and the other Wikipedia articles can do whatever the heck they want." - Now you're talking! :D Out of gratitude, if I see any Wikipedia articles that look like they'd work better with your style, or if I meet anyone who seems interested in something like your suggestion, I'll tell them about the bolded template. -Silence 04:57, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Yeah, I have more problems shutting up in real life than in the digital world. I probably will post the idea of the new template on the Village Pump, but I also probably will create the template first. Is there already a template called "Main2"? Hope not. Thanks for the offer to spread the word to anyone interested. "So all's well, now back to brandy, eh?" :) (If you got that reference I'll be very impressed :D). The Hurricane will now leave you in Silence. -- Hurricane Eric - my dropsonde - archive 00:50, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Whoops, I thought I replied to this already. There's already a main2 template, and a main3, and a main4, and so on: they're the templates for more than one "main article" that I complained about your not changing when you chained the one-term one. That's why I suggested "bmain" or similar to your article; avoid a number. Anyway, good luck! Glad we could resolve this despite a rocky start. And, if that's meant to be a Titanic reference, I'm confused; most people would think less of a person for understanding such a reference, no? -Silence 00:25, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re: important message

Hehe..thanks! My old user page was getting too cluttered, and Star Trek's all that matters, anyway. It's fine if you don't like Star Trek, just as long as you don't insult my ship. And who knows, maybe you'll come to appreciate it in the future ;) — Knowledge Seeker দ 06:44, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, you know what they say: anything's impossible. Keep up the battle. -Silence 06:56, 31 October 2005 (UTC)