User talk:24.202.238.172

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Hi. Thanks for your note.

I am surprised that you are impressed by my recent lists, which are poorly referenced things that I threw together to help me populate their corresponding categories. If you wanted to judge of my work, I would much prefer you do so on the basis of lists like List of vascular plants of Norfolk Island, or featured articles like Banksia brownii. But thankyou for the compliment all the same.

Wikipedia is a many-headed monster. In a parallel universe, you've come to Wikipedia, proposed an article for deletion, encountered a friendly and intelligent head, achieved your goal of correcting the record, and gone away happy, or perhaps stayed around to offer us your expertise. Unfortunately in this universe you've encountered a very nasty head, and I can't blame you for coming to the view that the whole project is irretrievably crap.

There are areas of Wikipedia that are rife with conflict, but these generally coincide with real world topics that are rife with conflict: abortion, evolution, Islam, George W. Bush, etc. In those real world fields where disputes are uncommon and usually settled with decorum, such as our respective fields of physics and botany, the same decorum generally reigns on Wikipedia. Similarly, there are areas of Wikipedia that are rife with bias and misinformation, but these generally coincide with real world fields that don't much care for accuracy; in fields that place the highest regard on accuracy, you'll usually find the same on Wikipedia. I guess what I am trying to say is that your experience is an anomaly, or at least an outlier. If you put this issue behind you and started again with a new username, I think you'd find things quite different the second time around.

As for the archiving and collapse box, both can be reverted, as they are merely text and code injected into the section. No technical measures have been taken to prevent that section from being further edited.

To remove the archive message, edit the section in the usual way, remove

{{archive top}}

from the top, and remove

{{archive bottom}}

from the bottom.

To remove the collapse box, edit the section in the usual way, remove

{| <!--Collapse top--> class="navbox collapsible collapsed" style="text-align: left; border: 0px; margin-top: 0.2em;"
 |-
 ! style="background-color: #ffd8a0;" |  Extended Discussion   
 |-
 | style="text-align:center;" | ''The following is a discussion that has been placed in a collapse box for improved usability.'''</span>''
 |-
 | style="border: solid 1px silver; padding: 8px; background-color: white;" |

from the top, and remove

<!--collapse bottom-->
 |-
 | style="text-align:center;" | ''The above is an extended discussion that has been collapsed for improved usability.'''</span>''
 |}

Now you know how to do it; the question is whether you should or not. It is inadvisable (and also pointless) to edit against community consensus. I'll leave it to you to assess the situation. I'd say you should be able to get away with undoing it once. If someone re-instates it, you would want to think long and hard before getting into an edit war over it.

Hesperian 14:07, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

P.S. In general we don't archive active discussions. If you want to add to the discussion, you are theoretically entitled to "unarchive" it. An edit summary along the lines of "unarchiving to continue discussion" will make it clear that you are not just doing this to be contrary. Hesperian 14:11, 18 April 2008 (UTC)