Talk:Railpage Australia/Archive 4

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Talk archives for Railpage Australia (current talk page)
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Contents

Peer Review

I've nominated the entire article for peer review.Tezza1 20:09, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Learn how to do it properly before making a fool of yourself. 61.193.244.20 06:50, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I support an independent peer review. I hope the other regular editors here pledge their support.124.176.64.118 02:22, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

I support peer review but I don't see what reviewing the previous version would achieve. We know it needed cleanup and sources. The AfD discussion concluded this too, which was why the cleanup was started (and only just started) and citations added. A peer review could only conclude the same thing - that it needs cleanup and sources. The Null Device 02:40, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Recent Changes - need for third party review

There needs to be some formal or informal way of resolving content disputes in this article. Before editing the article I propose that users file for Editorial Assistance WP:ER.I have already submitted the article for Peer Review[1]. There really needs to be some independent review on the Railpage Article. Otherwise this will go on and on.Tezza1 20:55, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Before we do that, we need to achieve consensus among the editors of this page that the article is in 'best effort' state. The editors here don't believe that yet, so at this point Editorial Assistance is premature. WP:ER will come soon. 59.167.77.190 01:18, 26 July 2007 (UTC)


Request for comment

Comments on the article are welcome here. Editors, please summarize the disagreements at this article in one or two short paragraphs. Visitors, please leave comments below. DurovaCharge! 21:54, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Summaries from page editors

Evaluations from visiting editors

There seems to be a lot of contention between both sides of the ongoing dispute about:

  • Whether or not this article should exist at all (does it meet WP's notability criteria?)
  • What content should be included in the article.

I do not have enough knowledge about the subject to comment on the article content itself. However, from the nature of the Talk discussions and dispute, as well as an open WP:RFC/U against Tezza1, it appears that the majority of editors on this page have reached consensus on most portions of the article, and mainly one user (Tezza1) is consistently rejecting this consensus and calling into question the other editors' integrity, as well as making charges that a Conflict of Interest exists among the principal editors. The discussion has also become uncivil at times, with some editors on both sides occasionally engaging in WP:POINT and personal attacks. — KieferSkunk (talk) — 22:11, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Note that the Tezza1 RFC has recently been removed from the RFC/U page by The Null Device (talk · contribs).

Afd: Railpage Australia (2) was extremely messy due to gaming by people opposing railpage; note that in contrast people who were affiliated with Railpage even mentioned that in thier Afd comment. At that time I went looking through the aus.rail newsgroup, and was appalled at the way the detractors carried on. Consequently it does not surprise me that the administration of railpage is not an easy task, and that the dispute is being carried onto Wikipedia. My initial evaluation is that the ongoing dispute here should be considered vandalism. John Vandenberg 01:41, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

My first impression of this article is that it's a dog's breakfast, it seems to have attracted quite a large number of editor's over time, many disputes with no agreement. Some of article content seems to be little more than boasting and justifying those boasts through weak referencing (not to Academic standards). The creator's and supporters of the Railpage discussion forum may and are entitled to be passionate of their forum, but should they really be allowed to display their passion here into Wikipedia? Surfing bird 03:27, 19 September 2007 (UTC)


Digital River

I've updated ownership details which appear on the Railpage Discussion Forum website [2]. I cannot see why there would be any objection to this edit.Tezza1 22:30, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if the company that hosts the site also owns the site, but this is minutiae that someone else can debate with you. As for objections about the whole "commercially owned" debate, this was brought on by yourself. What possessed you to write something as inflammatory as "(Administrators please note. I've shown for what it is, a commercially owned site. I wonder if the Railpage kiddies will re-write their pages to hide the truth?)" [3] as a description for an edit? It gave the impression that not only was Railpage hiding "Something", but that you were going to be the one to expose it to the world. Any wonder why people went all defensive? Johnmc 01:09, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

I only wrote that out of frustration. It's pretty obvious that it's commercially owned - read the last paragraph in the article "(as the site is self-hosted)". I believe that the "reason" for opposition by certain users it's that it affect's the "donations" write up in the article. It's a good thing this article has been semi protected - :), should have be done 12mths ago, I welcome a debate based on FACT anytime. Rgds Tezza1 01:28, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Railpage was co-owned by Brian Evans and David Bromage before Bromage left, so now I would assume it's all in Evan's control. To my knowledge Michael Greenhill is either employed by or is the owner of Digital River. Greenhill merely runs the site, fixing outages, banning users with opinions, etc. Yellow Thirteen 05:38, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't believe that David Bromage ever "owned" it. I know he started it when he was still at Monash University but AFAIK it has always been owned by Brian Evans (or his company Interactive Omnimedia) since it got its own domain and has always been in his control. James Morgan and Michael Greenhill both work for Digital River, which is just a hosting/web design company and does not own the site. The domain railpage.com.au is registered to Interactive Omnimedia Pty Ltd. Thin Arthur 04:09, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
James and I do not work for Digital River anymore, and haven't for several months. Digital River is an ISP - they provide internet connections, web hosting, email, DNS hosting, amongst other things. Bromage owned the intellectual property of the original Railpage. Doctorjbeam 02:43, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Railpage "Kiddie"

What exactly is a "Railpage Kiddie"? Yellow Thirteen 05:42, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

It's a term of derision, certainly, and has been around for a little while, maybe 2 or 3 years? As I understand it, it's a suggestion that as most of the administrators and moderators of Railpage are teenagers (which is incorrect), then Railpage as a whole is immature, hence "kiddies". Occasionally, you will see "Fundamentalist" or "Fundy" in front of the "Railpage Kiddies" part, but I have no real idea where *that* came from. (However, look at this[4] bizzare accusation on aus.rail, concerning David Bromage.) This is why you will occasionally see vandalism and spurious AFD's by editors with names like "Fundie Busters" [5], and "Anti Fundie" [6]. As meme's go, it's fairly well restricted to the online Australian railfan community. and to my mind, it seems to be falling into general disuse. And yes, I'm a Railpage moderator. One reason why I'm participating in the debate, but not doing wholesale editing.
And to be fair to Tezza, his above comment was one of the few - if not the only - time I've ever seen him use the term. Johnmc 07:36, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
My understanding of the term is it comes from the (incorrect) claim from some Railpage detractors that it's run by and for "children". Web forums in general tend to have a younger audience because it's the gen Yers that grew up with the Internet. But even cursory research shows that it has a very broad user base from teenagers to 65+. The survey showed the largest age group was around 25.
I've seen the claims that David Bromage was the anonymous vandal on aus.rail but it seems like a convenient accusation to make against somebody who is no longer around to defend himself.
I also find it extremely amusing that the detractors simultaneously claim that Railpage is run by radical fundamentalist Christians but at the same time is overtly gay friendly. Aren't the two mutually exclusive? Seems like flinging any mud that happens to be handy in the hope that some will stick. Thin Arthur 04:17, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

References

About six months ago I came across this A-Guide-to-Deceiving-Wikipedia (please read the paragraph about referencing before commenting). I've already made a small edit to one citation. I propose a healthy purge of non hyperlinked references and a serious look at the need for references that are hyperlinked to the Railpage Discussion forum.Tezza1 12:37, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

The edit was incorrect, Railpage is indeed cited 5 times on Google scholar [7]. As for the reason as to why these citations are necessary? These citations are necessary because the article has been subject to 7 AfD's in the past 9 months, mostly on the basis that it is a non-notable article. As a natural result, the article has quite a number of external citations, because this article is subject is to scrutiny that is UNREASONABLE for a wiki article.
From the "A Guide to Deceiving Wikipedia" site that you link to: Often, referencing relatively unknown (and sometimes even fake) sources and publications can help add credibility to your claims. . Virtually all the non-railpage sources cited are from .gov.au or .edu.au sites, so where does "relatively unknown (or fake)" apply in this case?
The references linking to Railpage Discussions are - again - as a result of the scrutiny that this article comes under. Virtually every jott and tittle of this article has - at one point or another - had frivolous "unreferenced" or "request citation" tags placed on them. In hindsight, what should have been done was to deny those editors their power, and simply remove the tags without comment. But, the "right thing" was done, and references given for stuff that really didn't need references, hence the number of them for what is such a small article.Johnmc 14:24, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Additional:There are thirteen outstanding "citation needed" tags in the article. Remove them, and then we can move towards cutting back on the number of internal references.Johnmc 14:28, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
I agree. This is misuse of those tags. Is anybody serious disputing the date the domain name was obtained? The domain railpage.org.au is known to exist and you can do a whois to find the date it was registered. See what The Null Device wrote in August. Thin Arthur 04:27, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
If you look back through the page history, you'll find that I had provided citations for all the "citation required" tags, however following an edit they were removed, and replaced with "citation required" tags. Funny, eh? Doctorjbeam 02:47, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Okay, point taken. But I really do think many of the references are frivolous. Tezza1 14:54, 3 November 2007 (UTC) I've removed some of the references as I've discussed before, but I like to really chop into the Railpage references, it's not really good practice when the article references the subject.RgdsTezza1 01:28, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

No doubt, but wholesale slashing will only cause strife. Proceed slowly, we have all the time in the world. What is your opinion on all the outstanding "citation required" tags? The less we have of these, the less references we will need at the bottom of the page. Johnmc 07:42, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
I do not see any consensus to remove non-hyperlinked citations and unilaterally removing verifiable, third party sources is bordering on vandalism. Just because it isn't online doesn't mean it doesn't exist. If you have evidence that the citation doesn't back up the claim, then post it here first. Thin Arthur 04:03, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

I always considered many of article references to be nothing more than a vanity write up. This was issue (vanity) I had with the article. To me much of the editing looked liked it was done by a sixteen year old trying to impress his parents, school teacher, or girlfriend. I propose we rewrite much of the article content to discuss what the forum ACTUALLY does. For example, discussion about rail modeling or rail preservation, and then provide relevant references to these.Tezza1 09:21, 4 November 2007 (UTC)

Well, the talk page is the place to discuss these things. If you have any idea of how it should read, put it in here. Probably the best way to start would be at the beginning, with the opening paragraph. How do you think it should read? Johnmc 10:57, 4 November 2007 (UTC)
This has already been discussed to death. You asked for sources. You personally tagged many parts as "citation required". The regular editors played by Wikipedia's rules and provided exactly what you asked for. You cannot now claim it's vanity because you yourself asked for these references to be provided. What do you expect to achieve from this lone jihad against what is a relatively minor article in the Wikiverse? Thin Arthur 04:36, 5 November 2007 (UTC)
Tezza has been a very busy lad over the last couple of days: (Naturally - as one of the accused -you are aware of this, TA, but i only noticed it just now..)
Wikipedia:Requests_for_checkuser/Case/Dbromage
Wikipedia:Suspected_sock_puppets/Dbromage
User_talk:Tezza1
All these accusation appear to have their t's crossed and their i's dotted, so it will be up to wikipedia to determine whether they are valid or not. The connection to this article is that Dbromage has a very strong connection to Railpage (I will not state full names, but it should be fairly obvious who he is), and Tezza's accusation is that he - using his alleged sock/meat puppets - has interfered with this article, and rigged the result of the various AfD's. All in all there is an *incredible* - to my mind - amount of work gone into referencing these allegations. Out of tezza's 200-something wiki edits, there are only about a dozen which are not connected to Railpage in one way or another. I'm wondering what's driving him.

Tezza, in view of the fact that you have accused Thin Arthur and The Null Device of being Dbromage sockpuppets, how are you going to react to any attempt by them to edit this article? Johnmc 05:09, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I am quite frankly dumbfounded that Tezza is so obsessed with Railpage that he's gone to these lengths. I used to work with David (who has revealed his real identity on here) and Null (who has not). The IP he mentions is a proxy used by a large number of people. If you really want to, you can do a traceroute and work out where. Sure Null and I have participated in debates and AfDs. Is Tezza trying to say we're not capable of thinking for ourselves or we're not entitled to our own views? His obsession is now bordering on harassment. Thin Arthur 07:45, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
Well, he's appealed to Caesar, and to Caesar he will go. Let Wikipedia decide if the accusations have any basis or not.Johnmc 08:25, 6 November 2007 (UTC)
So did I. See Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration#Disruptive editing of Railpage Australia and personal harassment by Tezza1. I think anybody else who has been on the receiving end of disruptive editing or harassment by Tezza is entitled to make a statement. Thin Arthur 09:04, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Johnmc, I was hoping we could keep this matter out of the Railpage talk page. I have an interest in the subject, but NOT a conflict of interest. I'm pretty stubborn, when I see something which is not right I dig my heels in. It may be just a small case of COI, but if you ignore that then you might as well let everybody else with a COI to edit their articles. I'm awaiting the outcome of these proceedings. Hopefully then we can move on. Tezza1 10:22, 6 November 2007 (UTC)