User talk:Rspeer/Archive 3

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(November 2005 -- February 2006)

In which a conflict is narrowly averted,
much confusion arises from the letters "XD",
and I get an article featured, but Henry Ford wrecks the party

[edit] Help pages

As the instructions at the top of the page say, changes to the page are made at the master copy on Meta. That is also where discussion of the page occurs. If you want to discuss alterations to the way that the page is laid out, edit the master copy or discuss suggestions on its talk page there. Comments and changes made here will just be wiped the next time that the page is updated from the master copy. Uncle G 01:07, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I made the comment in both places, actually. rspeer 04:16, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] A blanking warning left in the archive section by Peyna

Please do not replace Wikipedia pages with blank content. Blank pages are harmful to Wikipedia because they have a tendency to confuse readers. If it is a duplicate article, please redirect it to an appropriate existing page. If the page has been vandalised, please revert it to the last legitimate version. If you feel that the content of a page is inappropriate, please edit the page and replace it with appropriate content. If you believe there is no hope for the page, please see the deletion policy for how to proceed. Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia! Peyna 00:39, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Note that I never literally blanked any pages. I assume you're leaving this message for me because I used Experimental Deletion and you don't like it. If you really object that much, discuss it with me in person -- don't talk to me through a template like I'm a vandal. rspeer 01:04, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

It's worth noting that what you accuse me of doing is exactly what you do with XD. Since XD is not policy or guideline or much of anything else, I see nothing wrong with treating it along the lines as other vandalism. Peyna 01:12, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Assume good faith is a far more important policy than your favorite deletion system. Experimenting with alternatives to AfD is not vandalism. rspeer 01:22, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I don't assume good faith when I see people unilateral blanking pages as opposed to following what is current deletion policy. There is no "your favorite deletion system," there is only currently official one. You are free to propose yours in the current discussion on deletion reform, but using it prior to it being more formally adopted is vandalism. Peyna 01:26, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

It is proposed in deletion reform. And people like you are rejecting it because it's scary and untested. And when we test it you call us vandals. By the way, Wikipedia policy is not an exhaustive list of things you are allowed to do. Don't play Nomic on Wikipedia. rspeer 01:34, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

You can always use the sandbox for testing. Peyna 01:36, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Very funny. Anyway, this conversation should have stopped approximately around where you said "I don't assume good faith". If you want to keep discussing this, I encourage you to do it through a mediator. Bye! rspeer 01:40, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Your edit summary

XD ^[1] // Pathoschild 00:44, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

• I'm confused by exactly what you're saying, particularly how XD is involved. But I'm sorry I swore in an edit summary, if that's what you're getting at. I'm sure I've seen others use "crap" in edit summaries, and figured that this was mild enough, especially since it was directed at myself. rspeer 16:04, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

You very much misinterpret my comment; see XD_(emoticon)#Basic_examples. Your summary was deeply funny. :p // Pathoschild 16:57, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Oh! Okay. If you look above, I've been taking some crap recently from AfDers because I use Experimental Deletion (abbreviated XD). Do you see how I read this as both a complaint against me and a mockery of XD? I feel much better now. rspeer 17:01, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

That does it, I'm going to go put in my two cents about the evils of XD - anything that can be mistaken for an emoticon is deeply twisted and flawed. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 17:10, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

I figured (after my last comment) that the ambiguity might have led to the confusion. Regarding Bunchofgrapes' comment, I must admit I was intrigued the first time I saw a link to WP:XD. ;) // Pathoschild 17:24, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Re RFA

I want to have a private talk with you in IRC if you can about my RFA. Thank you --Aranda ⁵⁶) 05:25, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

• Okay, I'm there. rspeer 05:27, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
• I'm not getting through to you. Am I doing personal messages wrong (/msg command)? rspeer 05:50, 3 December 2005 (UTC)
• That is a problem --Aranda ⁵⁶) 06:05, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks!

Hi Rob,

Thanks for voting to support my RfA. I wasn't expecting an unopposed promotion (I thought I'd hit some die-hard edit-counters at least) and I'm touched by the trust shown in me. I'll try my best to continue to earn that trust. But first, I'll have to work on not sounding like a politician; that last sentence was awful. Oh well. Let me know when I screw something up with the shiny new buttons. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 06:04, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Xanadu House

At its current FAC page at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Xanadu House you highlighted copyright issues on one of the images, this has now been fixed. Please consider striking your old comments out, I don't think I'm in the right to do that. Thanks for the support! — Wackymacs 08:57, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] You just made me cry

Thanks for the vote of support. I am getting rid of my essay now lol.

Anyway, here is a list of places where I believe that correct process was not followed:

• Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Tzmerth_shmarya - this was a "sheep vote", in that the original nominator made assertions as to why they thought that it should be deleted, but provided no evidence for it. The other 3 people who voted deleted provided no reasons whatsoever. To make matters worse, this was in fact the 2nd vote for the article: Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Tzmerth_shmarya, and it had passed unanimously the first time. Therefore, there was no question in my mind that correct process had not been followed - that the arguments put forward (0 arguments) failed to provide evidence that it warranted deletion.

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sholom Keller - this was a "steamrolling", primarily by Zoe, who is a self-confessed hater of activism and a self confessed Deletionist who has had a wide range of problems over her deletion habits. Her method of steamrolling was to make false accusations of sock puppetry, and then engaged in acts of vandalism on the page etc, or encouraged others to do so. There were a variety of methods used. Nonetheless, the final vote was 6/6, which is a "no consensus" yet the closing admin also weighed in with incorrect process. There were so many problems with that process that it warrants its own page just because of how wrong it was. And that is not even starting with the whole undeletion thing, and the steamrolling of that.

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Absolute Boyfriend - another "sheep vote", in this case not a single person bothered to check if the term was real, or if the text was accurate. In this case they didn't just vote for delete - they all voted for speedy delete. Speedy delete of a popular anime manga graphical comic book with 6 series published, 20 fan sites and 30 different forums dedicated to it (at least). Oh, it is likely going to be kept now, but that is irrelevant really.

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Joey Hawkins - "steamrolling" in one of its most obvious forms. The nominator, as well as another user to whom there is evidence that he is wikistalking the author, falsely accused the author of being a sock puppet and stated that their votes would not count. They even went to the effort of making a separate sub section to list "sock puppet votes". The reality was that the person simply hadn't made an account yet. Whilst this is essentially the same thing as what Zoe did in the Sholom Keller article (and what happened in my 2 articles), this time it was done a lot more obviously. However, unlike the Sholom Keller article (and others) this was the only method used to steamroll the vote. For the record, he might not be notable anyway, since he is only a high school football coach, albeit one of the most successful in USA. But that doesn't stop it from being steamrolling. What really concerns me though is that, rather than try to deal with the obvious steamrolling and probably wikistalking, admins instead tried to hide it, and insisted that making false accusations of sock puppetry in order to try to influence the vote is AOK. Perfectly acceptable, they said, and did absolutely nothing about it. And yet in that case as far as I could tell the perpetrators weren't even admins.

Thanks again for your vote of confidence. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 22:21, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

• You're welcome. I'm unfortunately not going to come back you up on the AfD pages you linked, just because of principles: it seems to me that to contest individual decisions made by AfD is to implicitly say that the rest of the process works okay. That's why I abstain from AfD unless it comes to me on my watchlist. rspeer 20:23, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

• • That's fine. That wasn't the point there. Its irrelevant whether you vote or not when processes aren't followed. If processes were followed, then your vote would count, because that's what's supposed to happen. All of those cases were long lost before I posted here. I just thought you might want to have a look at some glaring examples of bad process. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 18:11, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Lactose + lactase

The anon added that bogus entry. :)

• RNA polymerase is entirely seperate from lactose/lactase. Their paths don't cross, biochemically
• Enzymes and substrates don't actually "react" chemically (well, they often do momentarily , but the enzymes act as a catalyst, so there is a zero sum regarding the enzyme/substrate reaction)
• When lactase acts on lactose, the result is not RNA polymerase (a whole new enzyme), but is galactose and glucose.

Cheers! – ClockworkSoul 00:10, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

• Yeah, our edits crossed paths in trying to revert that stuff. I made the same revert you did (so it got dropped silently), then I thought I had accidentally reverted too much, then I found that the anon had added that "fact" anyway. Thanks for getting that all sorted out. rspeer 00:14, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
  • It all works out in the end. Happy vandal hunting! – ClockworkSoul 01:19, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Congrats

Congrats on getting Voting systems up to a FA. Nice work on a great page. Staecker 14:23, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Voting system

Wow! Thank you so much for letting me know! I am proud, silly-ly so. A point of history. Back in the olden, olden days, Voting system was actually a featured article (then called "Brilliant Prose"). I removed it myself as the quality of the other articles got better and better and it was apparent it no longer fit in. Thank you for improving the article. DanKeshet 20:34, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Congrats!

Congrats on shepherding the voting systems article through. You did a lot of hard work getting something that was both NPOV and informative...it's fun to look back and see how it evolved. Thanks for letting me know about the FA bump. -- RobLa 04:06, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Candidate statements

Your recent edit concerns me. The page header says statements "should be around 250 words". This does not set a maximum upper limit, only a guideline. Please revert your change, and instead produce a list of word counts so that the big offenders can be identified. Its much better to allow candidates to shorten their statements themselves. -- Netoholic @ 18:20, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

• Sorry. It's reverted now anyway. And that's okay - the flip side of "be bold" is "get reverted sometimes". rspeer 19:57, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] RFA

Just so you know, the RFA that you opposed failed. Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship/Aranda56_3. Mind you, it was 56/22 in favour, so I don't know what the qualification is to succeed. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 18:12, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

• Good to know. I'm told the cutoff for adminship is around 75%-ish, but it can vary depending on circumstances. But admins are almost never promoted with 71% support, which is what Aranda got. rspeer 22:25, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

• • Woah. Must be hard to be made admin then. Unless everyone auto votes support. Zordrac (talk) Wishy Washy Darwikinian Eventualist 22:41, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] My RFA

Hi there Rspeer. I came here because of your vote on my RFA. I wanted to clear the air with everyone who voted oppose because of the link provided by Howcheng and freestylefrappe. I am sorry for ever posting that version of my user page. I really cant control my temper or actions at all, I'm Bipolar. I never meant to use "gay" as an insult, call anyone "gay", or hurt anyone's feelings. I am not trying to pursuade your or anyone elses vote but I would like for every one to think of me better than worse. SWD316 15:02, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Tenn_voting_example

Hi Rob! Glad to see you're working on the Template:Tenn_voting_example, at least I noticed the nicer image.

I assume you noticed I tried a recent combined article on the template at: Tennessee_voting_example, and maybe you've seen recent discussion over it on Talk:Instant-runoff_voting. My thought was to move the example into a page where comparisons can be made, since harder to compare across pages, EVEN if people knew where other articles were that reference it! I am leaning to the idea that the example is interesting, but a bit too complicated to be a useful example within already long articles like for IRV. I tend to the idea of a simpler example, suggesting something like my four season example image:Image:Irvseasoncounting.png perhaps. Anyway, I'm not sure what to do with [{User:Scott_Ritchie]]'s claims again the example (or follow-up analysis) for each article. Your input is welcome! Tom Ruen 04:16, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] The article you requested was deleted

The article, User:Rspeer/Voting system, was deleted as you had requested. If you have any concerns, please feel free to reply here. Thank you! -- Joe Beaudoin Jr. ^{Think out loud} 05:07, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Awards

Your Lack of Moopness in the ConLang Poll earned you the Obey The Fist Award

I don't get it. What the heck is moopness? rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 21:11, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

lets see a moop is someone who does low grade stupid things, like locking ones keys in the car, or saying 99% of all white people are white. thank you for not being a moop

Okay. I still don't get why "Obediance / Compliance / Submission" is there, but now that I believe that this is a good thing to get: thanks for the award. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 22:20, 1 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image:Plurality_ballot.svg

I was just wondering what, if any, reasoning you had for choosing the names you did on that ballot. If you read the Main Page discussion, someone seems to think this is blatant anti-Semitism. I pity the fool, but I thought I would ask anyway. Eightball 02:53, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm the fool. Do you really think these pictures [2] [3] don't imply that Henry Ford is "number 1"??? And don't you think he's odd that that's the ONLY name on the lists that people recognize???? MrVoluntarist 03:05, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry for bringing this hell upon you. I thought natural selection was working well. Guess it still has some time to go. Eightball 03:08, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

No personal attacks MrVoluntarist 03:11, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I based the examples on existing example ballot images - I just made them look nicer. Certainly I didn't intend the names to signify anything. I also appreciate that someone went ahead and changed them. That's why I made them SVGs in the first place, so they'd be easy to edit. And both of you chill out - it's been fixed and it's not that important. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 03:15, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Why don't you change the other one too, as a "reparation". You know, the one that says Henry Ford is "Number 1". MrVoluntarist 03:17, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh, and it's, uh, kind of odd that you didn't give any of the other candidates the name of a historic figure. (Please do not precede "historic" with an if you choose to use an indefinite article before it.) MrVoluntarist 03:18, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

It's still somewhere else? Well, I don't have access to a good image editor right now, but please feel free to make the change yourself, or find someone else to do it. And I told you, I didn't make the list of names. You may want to fix the original images that are used on articles like Approval voting too. And, uh, what the hell? I never say "an historic". rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 03:20, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

I never say "an historic". Well, you have at least one redeeming quality then. And I do intend to replace them if no one else does, but we need a quick solution first. And if you didn't pick the names, who did? Let's get to the bottom of this. (That's no diffence for picking the ONLY racist and the ONLY assistant to the Holocaust on the list btw.) MrVoluntarist 03:22, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

No, please do not "get to the bottom of it", because whoever started that example list of names didn't mean anything more by it than I did. Now stop making unfounded accusations. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 03:39, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

But what about Fred Rubble, are you suggesting a descendant of Fred and Barney is destined to only be an also-ran for high office? Or are you deliberately suggesting a far longer history to voting systems then is generally acknowledged? Oh. BTW good article. MeltBanana 13:23, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Plurality ballot

Hi :) I've changed the image to a png because my (old) edition of Paint Shop Pro can only open SVG files, and not save them. Whilst I'm convinced there was no bad faith on your part in choosing that name, I thought it was better to alter the image than to argue about it. It's only for example, anyway. If you think the image would be better as an SVG than as a PNG, please update it as an SVG when you get time. - Mark 03:23, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

That's fine, and thanks again. Making the change happen is the first priority. The SVG files can be edited as text files, incidentally. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 03:25, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your question

I didn't notice your question. There is a lot of stuff on that page. Answered now. Fred Bauder 04:17, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. I still find your decisions that I'm referring to rather objectionable, as you probably know, so I will continue to oppose. I have removed the statement that you didn't answer the question. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 08:46, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Your signature

OK, I usually dislike all ornamentation in signatures — why confuse the newbies, right — but your upside-down bit is da bomb. :-) Whatever that means. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 02:49, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Thanks from Lulu

Storm clouds ...	and silver linings	Thank you for your support on my RfA.
		Unfortunately, it failed to reach consensus. Nonetheless, it proved an opportunity to establish contacts and cooperation with many supportive editors, which will be beneficial to editing Wikipedia in the future. Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters (t @)

[edit] Unicode on Help:Wiki markup examples

My apologies, you're quite correct, my script did make some unwanted changes. I hadn't thought about the semantic difference between bold and emphasised. I thought that all I was doing was converting between HTML and wiki markup for bold. I've now turned off that conversion in my script.

Similarly, I hadn't considered the difference between ² and ² inside pre tags, again I've disabled the substitution for the moment. Apart from inside pre tags, I think it should be a fairly safe thing to do though.

Did you notice any other unwanted manglings that I might have missed?

Thanks, Cmdrjameson 21:02, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

No, in most cases, the changes you made were basically equivalent. The main problem was that changing everything to Unicode missed the point of some of the examples. For instance, the Unicode superscript-2 is a perfectly good thing to use in articles, but it's not an example of how to use the HTML <sup> tag.

Also, it's probably right in most cases to change HTML bold and italic tags to wiki-markup -- they're usually the result of someone who is familiar with HTML and not Wikicode -- but you happened to hit one of the cases where it's not the same, so I was pointing out that it shouldn't be automatic. And also in that case, it made the code not match the example. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 23:48, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] A Question from Mrprasad

I am about to add a section to approval voting. One of its leading proponents is Steven Brams and I once heard him give a lecture on it about three years ago. In it he argued that the approval winner is superior to the Condorcet winner. This is an important argument, because approval voting does not always choose the Condorcet winner and the Condorcet criterion is commonly believed to be the most democratic criterion of voting systems. I'm going to paraphrase Bram's argument with an original example. Is that considered original research?

I don't think so; things like this have been done in other voting articles. It would be original research if you were using an example you constructed to support your own claim, but constructing an example to express a claim by a well-known voting theorist should be fine. rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 17:10, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

I read your comments on greatest possible consensus being pov. i will delete the edits in accord with wikipedia policies.

Thanks! rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 02:57, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Notation program help

ref. But what about mass copy and paste in Sibelius? --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 16:50, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Post on my user page, please.

[edit] Re:Re: Sibelius

I ment 'how do I copy more than one measure?'. Sorry for the inconvenience. --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 03:34, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! --hello, i'm a member | talk to me! 18:01, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Semi-automated link sorting

• This page was semi-automatically modified to sort links to Pathoschild in a meaningful way. // Pathoschild (_admin / ^talk) 05:39, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup of Vijay (actor)

Dropped by to thank you for your cleanup of Vijay 9actor). -- Sundar ^{\talk \contribs} 06:44, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for doing the clean up at Vijay and i request you to lend a hand for cleaning up Ajith. --M.arunprasad 07:20, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Use of shortcuts on WP:AFC

Thank you for your message. I certainly understand your concerns, and to some point agree. However, I made a conscious choice to use the shortcuts for a number of reasons:

1. Those acronyms are often used in request responses. (e.g. "Decline. WP:BIO") This provides the user with a point of reference to what those mean.
2. It teaches the user how to return to the page easily for easy reference. This is much easier than finding a link buried in a paragraph.
3. They stand out. Users weren't clicking on sentence-embedded links that were already there, but they DO appear to be clicking on shortcut links. Therefore, in order to promote the user actually reading the pages linked to, the shortcuts have been used.
4. Users will NOT read long text. They just don't. The longer the text, the less likely they will read any of it. The shortcuts were terse and didn't bombard the user with extraneous words that they don't really want to read to begin with.

There is a discussion on this on the AFC talk page. I, personally, would have preferred that you discussed it there before changing it. However, I do appreciate you sending me a note on it. I'm going to, for now, revert back to the shortcuts given that a lot of thought went into the decision and I would like more discussion on it before changing it.-- ShinmaWa^(talk) 21:58, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Okay. One of my goals is making policy more accessible to newbies, and this seemed like a natural extension of it. But I can see your point, too. The mnemonic value from the newbies' point of view was something I hadn't considered. Do you have evidence that people do follow the shortcut links? rspeer / ɹəədsɹ 22:55, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Nothing concrete. It was more of noticing an uptick in the quality of the submissions. Granted, I'm committing the fallacy of assuming cause-and-effect relationships.. and it was only there for a couple days. However, all logic aside, I'm pretty certain those were related. -- ShinmaWa^(talk) 00:45, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] my new RfA

Hi Rspeer!

First and foremost, I must express my thanks for your support during my first RfA. Due to a highly disturbing surge in opposing votes after the submission closed, it has been resubmitted. Unfortunately, it looks as though are large number of opposing voters have appeared and I would be extremely surprised if my new RfA passed... which is fairly disheartening considering that I was around 1 hour from succeeding last time!

In any case - it has been an interesting experience - one thing I can take from it is that someone with a clear thought process should learn to control the focus of their views. As I am wholly unable to pretend I do not have a clear POV, I doubt I will apply for adminship again. It seems fairly clear from this second submission that I am better off sticking to what I do best!

Anyway, many warm thanks for your support, and don't hesitate to give me a shout if you ever need my assistance for anything in particular.

Regards, DJR (Talk) 19:35, 23 February 2006 (UTC)