User talk:Struthious Bandersnatch

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[edit] CfD nomination of Category:Goffstown, New Hampshire, USA

Category:Goffstown, New Hampshire, USA, which you created, has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. – Zoporific 23:33, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] CfD nomination of Category:People of Goffstown, New Hampshire, USA

Category:People of Goffstown, New Hampshire, USA, which you created, has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. – Zoporific 23:33, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Orphaned non-free media (Image:Hoekjes lrg.png)

Thanks for uploading Image:Hoekjes lrg.png. The media description page currently specifies that it is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, it is currently orphaned, meaning that it is not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the media was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that media for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

If you have uploaded other unlicensed media, please check whether they're used in any articles or not. You can find a list of 'image' pages you have edited by clicking on the "my contributions" link (it is located at the very top of any Wikipedia page when you are logged in), and then selecting "Image" from the dropdown box. Note that all non-free media not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. BetacommandBot (talk) 01:37, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Welcome

Hello, Struthious Bandersnatch! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions to this free encyclopedia. If you decide that you need help, check out Getting Help below, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking Image:Signature icon.png or using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your username and the date. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field. Below are some useful links to facilitate your involvement. Happy editing! John Vandenberg (talk) 08:33, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
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[edit] Userpage

Just curious if you're ever going to create a userpage? =D -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 02:12, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

I was intentionally avoiding it, actually; I like the red link. Though I suppose I could create a userpage and put some HTML in my signature to make it red... nah.

BTW, good idea to put that quote on a t-shirt... next time I need to do a town fundraiser I'll have to do that. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 03:17, 1 April 2008 (UTC)


[edit] Notability of Tracy Price-Thompson

Hello, this is a message from an automated bot. A tag has been placed on Tracy Price-Thompson, by another Wikipedia user, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. The tag claims that it should be speedily deleted because Tracy Price-Thompson seems to be about a person, group of people, band, club, company, or web content, but it does not indicate how or why the subject is notable: that is, why an article about that subject should be included in an encyclopedia. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, articles that do not assert the subject's importance or significance may be deleted at any time. Please see the guidelines for what is generally accepted as notable.

To contest the tagging and request that administrators wait before possibly deleting Tracy Price-Thompson, please affix the template {{hangon}} to the page, and put a note on its talk page. If the article has already been deleted, see the advice and instructions at WP:WMD. Feel free to contact the bot operator if you have any questions about this or any problems with this bot, bearing in mind that this bot is only informing you of the nomination for speedy deletion; it does not perform any nominations or deletions itself. To see the user who deleted the page, click here CSDWarnBot (talk) 18:01, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

RE: This comment.
See WP:BIO and WP:CSD#A7. - CobaltBlueTony™ talk 18:27, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
I have restored the article to give you time to locate verifiable, reliable sources which substantiate the notability of the individual in question. Since the article was deleted within a minute of your placing the {{hangon}} tag, I feel that this restoration is legitimate. If you cannot find resources, however, the article cannot remain on Wikipedia. If the article does get deleted again, try waiting until you have sources which satisfy Wikipeda's requirements before recreating it. If you have any question, feel free to ask any experienced user, or palce the {{help}} tag here on your talk page. Cheers and happy editing! - CobaltBlueTony™ talk 19:08, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

A note from a writer and book reviewer: the mere presence of somebody's books in libraries does not in itself constitute evidence of notability. Many self-publicizers' enablers, like PR hacks and vanity publishers, advise budding authors to donate copies of their books to libraries in hopes of raising their profiles. We need substantial coverage in reliable sources to establish notability. --Orange Mike | Talk 19:28, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Reply to Struthious Bandersnatch: what Orange Mike said, sorry. The author's article must directly substantiate notability. - CobaltBlueTony™ talk 19:34, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Another user has offered links to resources which may be used to prove notability. Why not take a look at those? - CobaltBlueTony™ talk 19:39, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Just to cite the relevant policy... under the section "Creative Professionals":
  • The person's work either (a) has become a significant monument, (b) has been a substantial part of a significant exhibition, (c) has won significant critical attention, or (d) is represented within the permanent collections of several notable galleries, museums or significant libraries.=

So Tony, underneath the list of works in the article you want me to add a note like "And if you click on the links above you will see that these books are in the following libraries:..." I'll do that if you want but that will look silly and not encyclopedic.

And another thing... why are we having this discussion here and not in the article's talk page? --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 19:42, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
"...why are we having this discussion here...?" One word: continuity. - CobaltBlueTony™ talk 19:47, 3 April 2008 (UTC) P.S. I'm examining the other points you've made. - CobaltBlueTony™ talk
Comment: Wikipedia:BIO#Additional_criteria states, in part, "Failure to meet these criteria is not conclusive proof that a subject should not be included; conversely, meeting one or more does not guarantee that a subject should be included." (Italics mine.) - CobaltBlueTony™ talk 19:55, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
The point is, you can't rely on this one criterion in order to substantiate notability. It will be challenged, and if you insist that it is all you need, you'll likely lose to consensus. Are you reviewing those other links I brought to your attention above? - CobaltBlueTony™ talk 19:59, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
And of course, per that rule, no matter what I do I won't definitively be able to demonstrate noteability.

Lets pull back here: are you just engaging in policy legalism as an administrator bearing down on a normal user, or are you seriously saying that the way that I have, through standard Wikipedia mechanisms and in accordance with WP:BIO, demonstrated that this author's books appear in hundreds of libraries and on every major book retail web site actually does not demonstrate notability? I would point out that in addition to all of that WorldCat is also returning at least one book review for her.

In the Deletion Review thread Iain has already said that she's obviously a notable author. At this point I'm starting to feel badgered. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 20:08, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
And none of this nebulous "you will be challenged" talk. Tony - say straight up whether you are challenging it, and I might also say that it would be kind of appropriate for you to say so in the talk page of the article itself as well if that's your opinion. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 20:09, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Look... it's obvious that the original reason why Todd deleted the article is that he was suspicious that someone was advertising themselves. Isn't it clear by now that that is not the case? Can't I just get along with the other stuff I was doing, after spending a good part of my morning on that article? Don't you realize that you're badgering me as some kind of reflexive social maneuver, to prove that administrators are always right or something? --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 20:15, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
You know what, go ahead and delete it if you really think the article ought to be deleted even though it's got all that biographical information and photographs of her at a USAF event. I've said my peace and I simply will not be pushed into writing content for Wikipedia, even on an article I started. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 20:20, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm definitely not trying to badger you., and I'm not trying to pound my point into the ground. What I am stating is that notability is established and passes community consensus 99% of the time by meeting more than one criterion, and more than one editor has made it clear that this individual's notability is not clear in the way you have presented it -- it's not just me that remains mildly unconvinced. Notability must be clear to everyday readers, not just users familiar with the backroom of Wikipedia. The Google search Iain did contains information you can use! Why search through it carefully? Have you already? - CobaltBlueTony™ talk 20:22, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm uncertain as to why you are taking this so personally, but if you think I have a personal stake in "being right" or that I'm some sort of deletionist, consider my efforts to resurrect Albie Hecht and Worldwide Biggies. The articles were challenged as advertising and both deleted. I found clear evidence by a simple Google search that both the company and its CEO had independent verifiable and reliable sources proving their respective notabilities. MY goal here is for you to find statements within those refernces found by Google and references them in your article and prove Tracey's notability. I don't want the article deleted if she is in fact notable, but for someone who is so adamant about her, I find it disheartening that you seem unwilling to be bold and dig deep and find what you need. Unless of course, it doesn't exist. I don't have the time to scour; I'm hoping some other admin or other user will see the article as it stands now and take on the effort with you. So, go for it; stand for what you believe to be true. But understand the consensus policy by which the Wikipedia project operates is impartial and does not offer bias for any user, admin, or subject matter. - CobaltBlueTony™ talk 20:31, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

If you really believed what you say there, you would have been willing to "dig deep" and add a few lines of content to make that article into whatever you imagine a non-delete-worthy author stub to be like. You also might have clearly pointed out that Todd was completely and totally wrong to label that as some sort of advertising. If Todd had taken more time to look at the article he never would have claimed that a set of meticulously-crafted bibliographic notes and some painfully-hunted-down public domain images was an article written like an advertisement and we would not have had this conversation. An everyday reader would like this stub just fine - it has valid bibliographical links that are themselves references and verifiable photographs of the subject; no one except a Wikipedian like you would come across this information and question whether it should be here and as Wikipedians you and Todd ought to know well enough to do the backroom checks to confirm.

And give me a break with trying to strike a mentor pose. You "don't have the time to scour" but you've had the time to write all of this stuff and to legalistically hunt down counter-arguments against my point about her books being in hundreds of libraries? Please. If you think you're "being bold" rather than self-aggrandizing (as seems obvious to me) in this effort to contrive arguments that the article doesn't pass muster and why you weren't totally off base in your initial judgment, then be really bold and just go and delete it.

You have definitely completely disinterested me in spending any more effort on it so it is not going to be changing by my hand any time soon. I don't know anything about her and don't really care; I put this information here because it obviously belongs on Wikipedia.

You have no actual interest in determining whether I need tutelage in the policies you're linking to; go play your character of the sage objective Wikipedian schooling the uninitiated for someone else. I'm not enraged or anything, just monumentally underwhelmed by your doe-eyed sincerity. Everyone has mundane motivations and you need to get more in touch with your own, this kind of attitude is one of the chief criticisms of Wikipedia.

But the world and the wiki will certainly go on, regardless of which one of us is more orthodox. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 22:11, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
P.S. let me say I do give you some credit for being the one to undelete the article, even though I think that was a foregone conclusion. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 22:27, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
Iain99's efforts look sufficient, and really didn't require that much effort -- time I did not have. FYI: the "counter-arguments" are easily found, and familiarity with them is a prerequisite for adminship -- no "hunting" was involved. I don't appreciate your personally offensive tone with me, but in the interests of civility I am going to let go of it. My goal for the article was realized in that a sufficiently notable and reliable source calling the author "best-selling" was sufficient to quell any counterclaims, and I thank Iain99 for that effort, which seems to have taken him about a half hour to locate. It remains on my watchlist, so I should see any future changes.
You know, you could have just said, ‘Look, I know she's a best-selling author, but I can't find a good reference for that. Could someone help?’ An attitude of “shouldn’t this be enough?” is usually counterproductive, and getting offended at other editors’ opinions distracts from the only reason anyone should be here. We work together here; disagreements should never turn personal. Disconnecting emotionally from this medium is important for continued improvement. Most people have enough going on in real life to not have the spare energy required to be pulled into some silly drama over an online encyclopedia (even though so many do so anyway).
Everyone here needs help at some point, understanding notability, the neutral point-of-view policy, basic formatting, interacting with other users, or why we can't accept original research. Asking for help is not a bad thing; it's how we learn and become more productive in making contributions. I am truly sorry that your experience here developed as it did, and I will take responsibility for being headstrong and getting baited by your frustrations. I should have ignored the discussion and spent the half hour Iain99 did to just locate the information from USA Today. You would still have been upset, but at the end you would have seen a good result -- which is what we have now anyway. I'm leaving you a message below to make peace, and I hope you make more contributions in the future. - CobaltBlueTony™ talk 13:18, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

- CobaltBlueTony™ talk has smiled at you! Smiles promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Spread the WikiLove by smiling at someone else, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. Cheers, and happy editing!
Smile at others by adding {{subst:Smile}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

Okay, enough of this; the response is going on your talk page for once. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 02:02, 5 April 2008 (UTC)
Well, it turns out you blank your own talk page regularly. Why am I not surprised? So for continuity, which evidently isn't so important on your talk page, here's what I wrote there:

It's you who is being personally offensive and patronizing to me while evading any sort of neutral appraisal of this situation. You still can't even admit that criticizing that article as an advertisement was a complete thoughtless oversight, so your show of taking responsibility for bad blood is so much chaff. The comment above does not in any way reflect taking responsibility for the situation, it's just more of the sage fake-impartial pose you've been striking the whole way along. You're still trying to imply that this situation is the result of some sort of inexperience or deficiency on my part. You are being completely disingenuous and guess what, the "I hope my smile made your day better" just makes it look sleazier and more two-faced.

It seriously surprises me that you thought you could pass such a shallow, fake, denigrating response as some kind of olive branch while continuing to ignore most of the points I made. I'm almost moved to think you actually believe your own schpiel lecturing me about pulling away emotionally from disagreements at the same time you're saying this stuff.

I have been a Wikipedia editor for more than a year and I do not need you to drop some knowledge on me about neutrality, proper citation, or other Wikipedia policies and basic principles of scholarship. Particularly not if it's going to be accompanied by arrogant refusal to admit any error in judgment and an attempt to shame or threaten me into writing Wikipedia content. Look at this article I wrote recently. The reason the article in question here was shorter than you evidently expected a stub to be is probably because I have higher standards of citation and reference than you do. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 02:10, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reply to your comment on my talk page

That article is excellently well documented and presented. This being the case, I expect much better from you. The difference in the level of quality between the two articles is staggering; I would not presume that the two were authored by the same person! Nonetheless, your eminence, you have demonstrated your capacity to present well researched, thoughtful material from square one, so you should know better than to present the Thompson article in the way you did. From now on, the community should expect nothing less from you than the quality of the Daly article.

Please don't respond to me any more. I don't like you, and you don't like me; we've established this. There is no need for this dialog to continue. - CobaltBlueTony™ talk 20:19, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

My, my! Aren't we touchy about it when other people make comments on your talk page! And you've actually selectively deleted just my comment from there. That really takes the cake.

And now you're demanding that I must not respond to you on my own talk page! At the same time you're still trying to maintain the preachy, patronizing, superior attitude, advocating principles of transparency, responsible writing, and traceability completely at odds with your own behavior, still without ever admitting a single misstep in judgment on your part. Thank you, this has been entertainingly hilarious. You are a fabulous caricature of Wikipedian principles. I'm glad that there are so many other people around here who genuinely and honestly (and humbly) follow these precepts.

I like you just fine, and I have given you the benefit of the doubt the entire way along - it's your denigrating, unjustifiedly superior, too-good-to-admit-I-was-wrong behavior that I take issue with. You couldn't even acknowledge that I obviously don't need your tutoring about references and citations without turning it into a preen about how you "expect much better from me." (And then you call me "your eminence" as if I'm the one being pretentious! Ha!) Would you listen to yourself, man? If you'd cut that out I'm sure we would get along fine. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 05:41, 6 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Notability of authors and the "represented in major libraries" language

I've tried to start a discussion of the language here. Thought you might like to have some input. --Orange Mike | Talk 13:19, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] CfD nomination of Category: Alumni of the Medical University of South Carolina

Category: Alumni of the Medical University of South Carolina, which you created, has been nominated for deletion, merging, or renaming. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the Categories for discussion page. Thank you. – Good Ol’factory (talk) 13:35, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Home for Incurables

I see no point in a DMB page consisting only of red links. There are numerous "Homes for Incurables" around the world. Do you intend to create articles on the two that you have highlighted in the very near future? TerriersFan (talk) 12:06, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

No, I do not. I created that page to try to ensure that if in the future anyone writes an article about the Fordham Home for Incurables it hopefully ends up with the name I specified, which I have linked to from other articles. The New Zealand hospital is one that existed as a redlink in an article someone else wrote.

But it doesn't really matter. If knowing that an all-redlink disambiguation page exists amongst the millions of pages on Wikipedia makes your eyes bleed or something go ahead and delete it. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 12:26, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] AfD nomination of Home for Incurables

An article that you have been involved in editing, Home for Incurables, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Home for Incurables. Thank you. Do you want to opt out of receiving this notice? TerriersFan (talk) 13:07, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New York Pathological Society

Did you have any particular reasoning why an organization that is the professional society for doctors and scientists of pathology, and has been for the past two centuries, in a current population of twenty million people, would not be notable? Or is this one of those games people play to try to manipulate stub authors into writing content? If you think it would be nice if an article had more content say so in the talk page for the article, don't splatter the article itself with messages spuriously threatening deletion. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 18:13, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
How am I supposed to know there are 20 million members? There is one reference that establishes that there were once 200 or so members. Big deal. I belong to larger professional societies that have no business with an article. If they do indeed have 20 million members, that sounds like a notable organization. It's not manipulating anyone to point out that this project has standards, the article in question is not up to those standards, and somebody may eventually decide deletion is best if nobody wants to write anything more about the society. Erechtheus (talk) 18:27, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
The society doesn't have 20 million members - New York State has twenty million people in it and this is the society for pathologists serving that entire population. As if there even needs to be any justification beyond the fact that it's a two hundred year old institution. Seriously, come on. This isn't an article about a high school glee club or something.

Give me a break about the standards schpiel already, either you are trying to pull the I-want-to-see-more-content game or you didn't think this through at all. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 18:36, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
A professional society's status as your favorite or the subject of your attention or whatever does not excuse it from Wikipedia's standards. Read WP:Notability. It applies generally. I'll also note that at the time of the application of the template, the article said nothing about the society being a going concern for 200 years. It said that at a certain time (which was long ago), the society had 200-something members. Erechtheus (talk) 18:41, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
The article's "status as my favorite"? By making assertions about some un-evidenced favoritism on my part you're simply demonstrating that you are trying to manipulate me here.

If you don't like short stubs you're perfectly welcome to expand the article. If you want to perpetuate this act that you're some sort of champion of standards, cut the song and dance and nominate the article for deletion on the basis of non-notability. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 18:53, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
I plead in the alternative for a reason. I don't know what motivated you to not only create the article, but have such trouble with the application of objective standards to the article. You may want to review WP:OWN. You won't bait me into nominating for deletion or doing anything I don't want to do. Noting that the text of an article, as it stands, does not clearly indicate why the subject is appropriate for inclusion is not tantamount to requesting deletion. If I wanted to expand the article, I'd do so. I don't, and I don't have to justify that to you or anyone else. We have the notability template for a reason, and it was completely proper for it to be applied in this case. I'm not demanding you start a RfC on me if you think otherwise, but know that it's an option you are welcome to. Erechtheus (talk) 18:58, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
I need to review WP:OWN, huh? After I just suggested that you edit the article? You're saying that there's some issue of possessiveness over articles going on, because I've demonstrated that you place deletability notices on articles under false pretenses?

Gee, you wouldn't be one of those guys who throws up whatever policy links he can grab hold of to screen his own misbehavior, would you?

The best reasoning you've come up with is "your citation only demonstrates that this state professional medical organization was a going concern for one century, not two."

You are attempting to utilize Wikipedia policies to promote your own personal tastes, enough said. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 19:18, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Review my edit history, sir. Your allegations are really quite false, unless you're speaking for my taste for articles to be policy and guideline compliant. An article about an organization needs to say more than it's old and that it once had a couple hundred members. That goes for the guys who get together at the corner pub for a beer every Tuesday, a professional organization, or a wrestling society. Common sense says that this organization is probably notable, but it hasn't been demonstrated. Pretend that the Wikipedia user is from Missouri and show them why it's important. Erechtheus (talk) 20:02, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
Reviewing your edit history is going to somehow demonstrate that you didn't just try to send me off on a different wild goose chase poring through WP:OWN? Or it'll somehow prove that this isn't a matter of your taste in stubs, or that you don't push other editors around at your whims? You're compounding a red herring with another red herring.

And "Pretend that the Wikipedia user is from Missouri and show them why it's important." Could you be any more patronizing? I understand how to write Wikipedia articles just fine - both full articles and stubs, your understanding of the distinction seems to be quite lacking and you seem to think it's your job to manipulate people into adding content to stubs - and even if I needed to be taught about it you clearly do not have the integrity or the impartiality to teach anyone about it.

I did take a look at a few articles you created and it's pretty laughable considering the pose you're striking; if you do actually believe you're exhorting some sort of intelligible standard here you're applying considerably lower standards of notability to things you write yourself. A two hundred year old pathology organization that had 215 members in 1908, which would be a large percentage if not a majority of all the pathologists in the entire state - or any state - in 1908, and which was founded in 1844, which despite your claims to the contrary it said from the beginning, is just a little bit more notable than Bart Thomas. I am not a pathologist or a medical professional of any sort, by the way - you don't need to be to know that the information I put in that article demonstrates notability. (Not that establishing notability has anywhere near as much to do with the content of the article as you seem to think, if you were to actually read the policies you keep telling me to read.)

Nor does demonstrating notability have anything to do with what kind of audience a stub or article is written towards. Again, if you think a one-sentence stub would be better if it was written towards a Missouri audience, feel free to expand the article that way - don't toss around notability templates and tell the author to go off and read policies and read your edit history to try to persuade him to do it for you.

Next time you have an aesthetic opinion to voice do it on the talk page, or make the changes you want, don't hide your personal preferences behind policy templates and allusions and a patronizing I'm-gonna-drop-some-knowledge-on-ya-'cause-I'm-an-administrator attitude. Wikipedia is a bit heavy on people like that. And if you completely blunderingly misquote a policy in the future it would look a lot less sleazy to actually admit you've done so rather than try to distract attention from it. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 21:28, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

And to make the obligatory disclaimer, that "I am not a dog" user who I see went into the article earlier and deleted the notability tag is not me. I wouldn't be coming here to write all of this stuff if I was just going to try to get rid of the tag via an edit war. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 21:48, 20 April 2008 (UTC)
What I find truly amazing is that if you actually poured the efforts into writing the article that you pour into your tirades on my user talk page, you'd have easily established the notability you are bending over backwards not to establish in the article. Note that I'm not telling you that you HAVE to expand the article. I'm pointing out that it seems belittling my contribution to the project is what motivates you far more than your own contribution does based on my measure of what you have actually written on my user talk page versus the article about which you are so fired up. For example, it is on my user talk page that a user might find out that the NYPS is the organization of choice, not in the article itself. It's on my user talk page that a user might find out that the membership of the organization comprises most of if not all the pathologists in the state. Now, shall we talk about assuming good faith (which you didn't do when you assumed I'd accuse you of utilizing a second alias to remove a template)? Shall we talk about not making personal attacks (which you did when you accused me of manipulating you and of lacking integrity)? As to WP:OWN, I'm referring to your possessive attitude over the article. That does not have to mean that you refuse to let others edit it. It can also mean you behave in the manner you're behaving when somebody suggests that there is an issue with an article. That's what I see when I see the words, "one of those games people play to try to manipulate stub authors," and, "don't splatter the article itself with messages spuriously threatening deletion," in your first message to me about the article. Now, we really have two options here. If you'd like to constructively discuss this article or anything else, I welcome it. If you don't, I wash my hands of these conversations. Your choice. Erechtheus (talk) 00:54, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Complaints about me "belittling your contributions to the project", eh? This makes me laugh as well because to read all of the comments on your talk page and to look through your edit history, your contributions to the project consist almost entirely of "belittling" the contributions of others here! You're getting a little of your own medicine - an editor keeping an eye on the actions of an admin, instead of the other way around for once - and it's evidently too much for you to take! All the objectivity and supposedly impartial evaluation get thrown right out the window in the face of your own behavior.

Don't try to claim that I have done anything other than repeat exactly the original contents of that article here, which you took it upon yourself to belittle. There's nothing more to be found here than in the article, that assertion is more chaff from you. You either intentionally or in gross error tried to label that article as inadequate and policy-violating and now you're trying to excuse yourself. You're even trying to act as if administrative behavior isn't a permissible topic for discussion or something, calling my documentation of it "amazing" as if spending effort curtailing inappropriate behavior like this is irrational or ignoble next to your own incessant haranguing of editors.

This isn't about the article - I know nothing at all about the NYPS and care nothing about the article, they're a footnote in another article I'm writing - this is about you and your behavior. I think perhaps you mistook me for a casual editor because I had written a one-sentence stub and you decided I'd be good fodder for your machinations. Wikipedia has more than its share of people who come here to push editors around and get their rocks off on feeling authoritative and making trouble for editors. You're a member of that group as this incident and your record shows.

From your aghast, evasive, and clumsily policy-flailing reaction to what I've pointed out here I must infer that no one has seriously taken you to task over to this behavior before. I gave you the opportunity to admit you'd either misread the article and its citations or simply made an error in judgment and you vigorously thrust those options away, so my speculations about your motivations on this are no more bad faith than any of the various "belittling" of other's work that you do. At this point I feel that an acceptable paper trail has been established and I hope that other people whose work you have "belittled" come across the evidence of how you react to the same sort of treatment.

For continuity I have cross-copied the entire conversation to both talk pages, please feel free to revert that change to your talk page of course if you find it objectionable. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 01:11, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
I see no reason to continue our user talk exchange. It has long passed the point of productive discourse in my opinion. I do feel it is only fair to inform you that I have reviewed the article again and still have concerns. I have re-applied the notability template and have started discussion on it on the article talk page. Erechtheus (talk) 01:23, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
Actually, I do also need to make it clear to you that I am not an admin. I don't believe I have ever behaved in any manner that would mislead someone into believing that I am an admin, but I am sorry if you got that idea and I didn't disabuse you of it quickly enough. Erechtheus (talk) 01:27, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Copyright problems

Hello. Concerning your contribution, George Frederick Shrady, please note that Wikipedia cannot accept copyrighted text or images obtained from other web sites or printed material, without the permission of the author(s). This article or image appears to be a direct copy from http://twister.lib.siu.edu/projects/usgrant/hist/shrady.html. As a copyright violation, George Frederick Shrady appears to qualify for deletion under the speedy deletion criteria. George Frederick Shrady has been tagged for deletion, and may have been deleted by the time you see this message.

If you believe that the article or image is not a copyright violation, or if you have permission from the copyright holder to release the content freely under the GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) then you should do one of the following:

However, for textual content, you may simply consider rewriting the content in your own words. Thank you. Erechtheus (talk) 22:46, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Erechtheus appears to have eventually realized that since the individual in question died in 1908, he was trying to raise a copyright issue on a public domain work. Or perhaps he already realized that before he placed this notice here. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 04:45, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Once again, you fail to assume good faith, as demonstrated better by the remark you left on my user talk. The death of somebody in 1907 does not in and of itself mean that this was written prior to 1923 or that it was published somewhere where it would not be protected by copyright. The apparent source of the text included a very conspicuous copyright notice at the bottom. Violation of copyright is a serious matter that warrants speedy deletion. It's a good thing that a bit of detective work was done to determine that this was in the public domain, but it would have been a far better thing indeed if you had explicitly indicated that this came from a public domain work if you knew that to be the case from the beginning. Erechtheus (talk) 11:29, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
Yeah... that "detective work" thing? That's what you were supposed to do before you accused me of copyright violation. At least it's the sort of thing someone who was actually concerned about copyright violation would do, as opposed to what someone who figures they're going to be clever and try to get some dirt on the opponent in an argument would do.

If you had any grasp of objectivity or impartiality (or if you had some integrity, for that matter) you would have realized that once you've hunted down work done by someone you're in an argument with, you need to recuse yourself and bring a third party in before you start throwing around accusations of violating the law.

I think "good faith" is another one of the Wikipedia principles you don't understand. It doesn't mean that you get to do whatever you want and no one else can say anything about it or point it out. It's the kind of principle that might lead one to, say... verify that a work isn't public domain, before accusing another of breaking the law. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 14:07, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I've tagged it with {{copy to wikisource}}, as content like this really should be placed on Wikisource first in order to ensure it is preserved as such, and the there isnt the need to add warnings like "Feel free to alter the text but please maintain the proper citations to that work.". Once it is on Wikisource, you can add {{Wikisource|Wikisource pagename}} to the Wikipedia biog to prominently display that readers may want to read the Wikisource page for more information. John Vandenberg (chat) 06:30, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome to copy the University of Illinois Morris Library stuff [1] (much more than the bit I used in this article) to Wikisource if you like, and incorporate my wikified links from this article, but my objective here was to start the Wikipedia article on George Frederick Shrady. I may be adding text from several other sources I've found to the article, in which case I'll remove the move to Wikisource tag. (Since I assume that you wouldn't want the consequently non-original text moved to Wikisource.)

I'm afraid I'd have to disagree with you about the citations thing, simply the fact that a work is in the public domain isn't any reason to not properly cite it as the source of the information in an article. I actually think it's very un-encyclopedic that there is so much public domain content copied straight into Wikipedia with neither attribution or citation, or mixed with Wikipedia-user-authored content without attribution or citation. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 06:57, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I not a fan of wholesale use of material from other encyclopedia into Wikipedia at all, even when accompanied with basic attribution like you have done. In my opinion, it should be presented in its original form, attributed to the author, and then used as a source for the Wikipedia article.
Note that I did not suggest you remove the entire notice - only the part of the notice that I can tell you now will be disregarded, because it is against the Wikipedia MOS. Wikipedia is not a collection of attributed PD snippets.
What you have done is the initial good faith step in a chain of events that leads to the extensive use of public domain in Wikipedia without any attribution. Left to a swarm of editors, the notice you have put in place will eventually be lost when editors believe that they have sufficiently revised the text.
I would prefer to see a stub with a {{wikisource}} box, as opposed to Wikipedia ranking highly on a search term when a better attributed version of similar text is found on a different website. </rant> John Vandenberg (chat) 09:39, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I think we probably basically agree here. I didn't expect that notice to remain there in perpetuity, just for the first few authors who come in to do some actual work on the article. This guy happened to be the author of a source in a different article I'm writing; I noticed that there was a nice PD biography of him available, so I pasted it up just to have something to link to (though, I kinda got carried away wikifying the text, I actually ended up going and creating a bunch of additional stubs about the schools he went to and hospitals he worked at.)

One other thing - after the work I've done wikifying and making minor corrections, I would say this version is actually much better information-wise than the unlinked text on the library site. So rest assured that the Google rank will not be taken in vain. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 09:50, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
P.S. I also realized that you probably haven't seen the latest edits; when I do something like this I create the citation and reference in at least at the end of every paragraph. For the attribution to be lost a future editor would have to intentionally rip out all twelve citations from the text. There basically isn't any defense against that kind of bad faith anyways. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 10:02, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Inappropriate comment left on New York Pathological Society talk page

The below is the comment you left on the Talk:New York Pathological Society page that actually has nothing to do with that article. I'd cite to you talk page guidelines, but it's apparent at this point that you claim to have perfect knowledge of all policies and chafe at any suggestion you check them out. Of course, that makes it all the more puzzling why you'd put this in an inappropriate place. At any rate... Erechtheus (talk) 11:42, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

It may interest future readers on this issue to know that Erechtheus proceeded from this to go and place a copyright violation notice on my user talk page about a public domain work I had copied to Wikipedia. Despite the distate he avows below for allegations that are "heinous and against the spirit of this project".

Erechtheus, if you behave in a manner completely unbefitting a doctor of laws you definitely should expect people to question your choice of profession. Like with putting a fake copyright violation notice on my talk page - condemning an act in strong terms and then unblinkingly performing the same act yourself (or not having the guts to go and retract that accusation of copyright violation, if indeed you put it up in error) is a good example of something a person who has been awarded a doctorate of law should not be capable of doing. It's your own actions and statements that condemn you as lacking integrity and acting with a false pretense of superiority and authority.

Seriously, you need to stop telling people they need to go read policies. It's ludicrous that after all this demonstration that you don't understand the notability policy yourself you'll still claim you aren't being pretentious in doing that. I suppose at this point you've come to a better understanding of it but covering your mistakes with sophistry in an attempt to save face is exactly the opposite of what a person of integrity would do.

There's one exception I'll make to this: if you're some kind of Dougie Houser whiz kid and you have a J.D. at the age of 15 or 16 or something this is an understandable learning mistake. Otherwise, you're an adult and you should know better than this. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 05:26, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

I should mention here that I make no claim of perfection, just of good faith. I think that in spite of our disputes, we'd both like to improve this project. I think the Shrady article adds something very interesting to the project and regretted that it appeared to be copyrighted material. In fact, you'll notice I have left the bulk of your work alone. That's because I know it's not necessarily the best idea to follow behind somebody you have a dispute with, making edits for minor issues. It's my hope that the above sort of ad hominems will cease and we can limit ourselves to disputing the actual topic at hand. I admit I haven't been the best at that on all occasions in our discussion, but I'm making an effort to keep it to the topic at hand. Erechtheus (talk) 11:53, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Future readers, refer to Talk:New_York_Pathological_Society to see some quotations of the actual policy regarding talk pages, particularly about censoring the comments of other Wikipedia users. I'm sure it's pretty obvious that for all the pompous air let off above about policy Erechtheus did not check into WP:TALK at all before doing this.

Editing other people's comments in an article talk page... what the heck was he thinking?

Huh... come to think of it, this is my talk page, so I'll tell you what he was thinking. On the article talk page linked above I've built up a list of completely outrageous things Erechtheus has been doing. He's obviously worried about how long that list is getting, so he thought he'd be clever and snip out the mention of putting a fake copyright violation notice here on my talk page... but now of course not only is there mention of the copyright notice on the list, but I have evidence of him censoring article talk pages... who knows how often he has done things like this... --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 13:27, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I think this is the straw that absolutely breaks the camel's back. You know that WP:TALK editing guideline you just referenced? It supports my actions. Quote: "Editing others' comments is sometimes allowed, but you should exercise caution in doing so. Some examples of appropriately editing others' comments: Deleting material not relevant to improving the article". Nothing you said in the section I excised had the first thing to do with anything about that society. I have felt badly about how upset the outrageous things you do make me and have been trying to talk myself into ignoring your outrageous conduct for days now. You have made it patently clear that it's not just a matter of taking shots at me, though. I'm not the first editor you have assailed, nor is it likely that I will be the last. That's disruptive to the project. If I can't trust that you will at least take the point that the talk page isn't for voluminous personal attack, I think it's time for intervention. Erechtheus (talk) 21:50, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
As I've pointed out several times, you have a Doctorate in Laws. You understand the principles of impartiality and fairness just fine. You don't need me or anyone else to tell you - you don't even need Wikipedia policy to tell you - that editing my part of a public dispute you're having with me would be a task for a third party, not you.

To respond to your initial derogatory comment that I think I have perfect knowledge of policy: I certainly do not but I know a smokescreen when I see one. If you want to be more convincing try citing policies when you tell someone off rather than just linking to them. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 18:41, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
I think it would be best for a third party to handle anything controversial. I see absolutely nothing controversial about giving you clear notice that I'm taking an action and taking it. When I flagged a copyright violation, I notified you immediately. I try to do that as much as possible, but I'd notify you given our dispute even if I didn't otherwise notify. When I determined that your comment had absolutely nothing to do with NYPS, I didn't just delete your comment -- I both notified you of it and moved it to a place where you'd have access to it if you wanted to put it somewhere appropriate (like perhaps the talk of the article I put the db-copyvio on in the first place). Erechtheus (talk) 00:10, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] CobaltBlueTony at the Erechtheus Club to-nite!

My old friend CobaltBlueTony showed up at Erechtheus's talk page to say how horrible and arrogant and hostile I am, and then to explain how it's not in good faith to criticize another user's character. ;^) Here was my response, which I include here mostly because I think the points about what good faith actually is are important. Plus, to let the world know how horrible and arrogant and hostile I am.

Heh heh, nice try Tony, whatever you meant to accomplish by this. As if we ever had any discussions about interpreting Wikipedia policy - as I recall you tried to twist my arm into writing content too, flinging link after link and threats involving deletion just like Erechtheus here.

I did learn from that experience - on that occasion I let you force the discussion onto my talk page despite me openly questioning why you insisted on that. This time I've made sure that it's all nice and open and on neutral ground.

If I'm arrogant and hostile we're a pair. And Erechtheus makes three. But at least between us I can admit I'm arrogant and hostile, and my arrogance doesn't involve telling people they need to go read something, as both of you are so fond of. Nor do I try to conceal arrogance and manipulation with smilies and a hail of policy links.

Like Erechtheus you also don't seem to do your homework - I doubt that if you'd seen the list of things he's done, now including censoring an article talk page without following any of the policies on doing so (despite claiming he had, of course), that you'd be recommending it's in his interest to pursue any third party attention here.

A little advice fellas - the "good faith" you both like to mention isn't a matter of putting up smiley face templates and making pleasantries. It's not a license for you to be a jerk so that others have to ignore it. It has a great deal to do with treating others with respect. If you try to push someone around and then can't even show enough respect to admit you've done so, and say "here's a bunch of links to policy documents you obviously couldn't find on your own", no amount of blithe wording and smiley faces turns that into "good faith". Exactly how short on good faith Erechtheus is and how much he tries to use Wikipedia policy in pushing others around is now nicely documented, fortunately.

I hope I also have the good fortune to continue being ignored by you, Tony, particularly if that means you aren't going to be trying to cajole me into writing content any time soon. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 14:54, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
But amazingly enough, despite his conviction that I'm hostile and arrogant and unreasonable et cetera, Tony decided it was worth trying to be a peacemaker between me and Erechtheus! And his proposition to drop the insistence that the article under concern is deletable might win the day if Erechtheus agrees. As I said on the article's talk page, kudos to Tony. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 20:06, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WP:WQA

As indicated, I have sought counsel of others involving the civility of our dispute. Please consult the above link if interested. Erechtheus (talk) 22:28, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sixth International Congress on Tuberculosis

SB, almost no individual meeting of a scientific congress has ever been found notable in wikipedia. On the other hand, a series of conferences can often make for a sustainable article. Why don't you rewrite the page in that manner? If you need help, ask. DGG (talk) 15:24, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for mentioning that articles on individual meetings of scientific congresses usually get deleted. I found this one interesting because the National Tuberculosis Association identified it as a pivotal event in the founding history of that Association and I've added a note to that effect to the article.

Deleting this article and writing something on the recurring congress event sounds just fine to me. I wouldn't be able to put any time in on that sort of project any time soon, but I have saved off a copy of the Sixth Congress article for safe keeping. So if you are interested in nominating the Sixth Congress article for deletion feel free to, you have my blessing. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 08:39, 26 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Demonstrate good faith

Erechtheus and his self-serving assumption that any content critcizing his behavior or evaluating his integrity should be deleted, by him, has provided the inspiration for a new section of the assume good faith guideline I've authored, WP:DGF, which I have called for evaluation and commentary on in several places across the wiki. I look forward to finding out whether I have correctly articulated community opinion on this topic. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 12:22, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
Since I have essentially been encouraged by somebody else to work this out with you, I'm going to begin by doing so in asking you to do precisely what you seem to think I should be doing. Exactly what was your motivation in saying to me, "is this one of those games people play to try to manipulate stub authors into writing content?" Before you answer that question, recall that you also wrote, "either you are trying to pull the I-want-to-see-more-content game or you didn't think this through at all." Exactly what was your motivation in disclaiming that you weren't "I am not a dog"? There is plenty where this came from, so settle in for a lot of explaining. Erechtheus (talk) 22:00, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
In disclaiming that I wasn't "I am not a dog" I literally meant that I was not the user "I am not a dog" who went and did the first reversion of your edit. I was attempting to demonstrate good faith by acknowledging that someone had reverted your edit; I thought that if I did not do so it might appear as though I'd slipped in with a sockpuppet and reverted your edit while distracting you on your talk page, hoping you wouldn't notice. I apologize if that came across as an accusation against you and I genuinely would welcome any suggestions from you on how it might have been worded differently. (Maybe part of the problem is that the user has a weird name?)

From the very beginning, and still right now, if I look back and forth between the information in the current NYPS article and WP:N, I do not see how anyone could conclude that the article doesn't indicate that the NYPS has "received significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject." I won't rehash exactly why, all of that is in the talk page.

So that's why I've been unable to believe that you're making a straight, impartial evaluation of this and it's why I asked if this was about the article content - and I asked it in an accusative tone with allusions to WP:GAME-type-stuff, yes, because I really think that plunking a "this article may be worthy of deletion" template on something like that is clearly an act of bad faith. If I had been aware of the WP:GAME guideline at the time I would have mentioned it.

Your response to me included "Big deal" and "this project has standards" without mentioning any of the actual criteria of notability - rather you said something about professional societies that you are a member of, a rather personal and anecdotal response. This seemed to indicate to me that you weren't taking me seriously about the notability of the article, much less about the fact I felt manipulated by you. You subsequently told me to go read the policy - again, not having quoted anything out of the policy, not even the "secondary sources" nutshell definition. Along with talking about the article's "status as my favorite".

Further on in that initial exchange was when you told me "Pretend that the Wikipedia user is from Missouri and show them why it's important." This seems like a request about the writing style of the article, again not a matter of notability - and again at this point you still have not made references to the policy you told me to go read. Additionally, you have since then stated that you don't write much content on Wikipedia. From browsing through your contributions - noting few article creations and lots of policy names mentioned in the edit comments - I had pretty much picked up on that. So I took a rather dim view on someone who didn't write much content here telling me how I should write.

You started off the discussion on the article talk page with another mention of writing style - the "like a yellow page ad". Through all of that initial discussion on the article talk page it looked to me as if you were making all sorts of different criticisms of the article but nothing that directly addressed whether it established notability; you did not appear to me to be citing or discussing what it says in the policy, except when you claimed that WP:NNC is just an exception (which, as I said, I can't even see what language would make you think that in the first place - it was like you were reading a different text from me) and when you talked about the section "Articles not satisfying the notability guidelines" (which begs the question, appearing to me as another manipulative tactic.)

On the copyright violation accusation issue - on the NYPS article talk page at 22:30 server time that day you made a comment that involved saying you weren't interested in blackmail (your word, not mine), that in fact you "[found] such allegations heinous". Literally fifteen minutes later (exactly, per the timestamps) you had hunted down another article I was working on and nominated it for speedy deletion, then placed a notice of copyright violation here on this page. You knew that I felt like you were trying to manipulate me - even if the accusation had been true, out of the whole fifteen minutes you took to think about it (unless you had been preparing to do that at the same time or before you were writing the note saying you weren't interested in blackmail) - even if it had been true, it still would have looked like manipulation - not just to me but to anyone looking at this. And it wasn't even true!

I would say that "obviously" there are major issues of conflict of interest, fairness, and whether or not you could be impartial in enforcing Wikipedia policy against me at that point, but it does not seem obvious to you. I'll talk about that more later on.

Another aspect of this, which relates to whether or not I would be thinking you're doing all this in good faith, which you seem to think I am compelled to do because there's a guideline recommending it: if I accused someone of breaking the law and then I found out that was false I would sure as heck retract the accusation. Or you might at least have put in big, bold, maybe 20-point letters "This accusation was made in error" underneath the copyright notice. Especially since you went and called for the Wikiquette review which would probably result in people coming to look at this page.

But you didn't even apologize and you still haven't; you basically said I was lucky that someone other than you took the time to investigate the copyright status of a 100-year-old work. How could you possibly have been acting in good faith, in any universe, if you pick out the work of someone you're in a dispute with, don't do the actual homework to figure out the copyright status, submit it for speedy deletion instead of normal deletion, never retract the accusation of copyright violation even though you've called for other people to come examine me and my actions, and never apologize? It seriously blows my mind that you at all tried to defend that series of actions.

I do not understand what concepts of justice, fairness, or impartiality you could possibly be working with - and, I'm sorry to mention this, but you are a Doctor of Law! In contrast, I have a bachelor's degree in a technical field from a little rural college - it seems completely insane and topsy-turvy to me that it's me explaining some of these things to you. (I will not mention the Doctor of Law thing again, I just couldn't keep that in.)

And that whole episode was followed by you then deleting any mention of it from the discussion built up at the NYPS talk page. That's another thing that I find it completely perplexing for you to consider defensible, or for you to suggest I should assume was motivated by good faith. I noticed that you made a post about this back in the NYPS talk page earlier today and I've responded on this topic over there.

So that's an attempt on my part to describe this dispute from my perspective. It looks to me that at worst you have reaped what you have sown; as I see it you have done nothing to disprove my initial conclusion that you acted in bad faith, you were in fact quite willing to take further actions in bad faith and I think that's objectively demonstrable. If you still want me to render an opinion on what you should do and shouldn't do here at Wikipedia, just ask, but be warned I won't pull any punches (so maybe it's not a good idea.) --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 03:39, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm going to start my remarks by saying that I hardly think I have handled this perfectly. I think handling it perfectly would have involved stopping at your very first comment to me and getting to the bottom of how things were starting off wrong right then and there in a much more constructive manner. I probably should have asked you why at that point instead of today. I don't think I'm going to be making any apologies, but I'm going to stop expecting any from you. I think we've both probably acted in a manner that makes it best to just move on, and I'd hope we can agree there.
I gave the initial draft of the article a very literal reading and checked out the one source referenced. I took away from that these facts:
  • Professional society
  • Started 1844
  • Only confirmed to have existed until 1908
  • 200-something members
Based on that data, I considered whether such a professional organization would necessarily be notable. I used my own experience with my local bar organization that has around the same number of members and has been around for 60-something years, concluded that the idea that it would be notable is absurd, and acted on that evaluation (I also considered a few other cases, but let's not bog down there). Mind you, if there had been significant coverage from reliable secondary sources, I would have let it alone. There was not -- there was a relatively short directory listing. I'll note here that I didn't consider the New York part because it isn't clear to me that an organization that uses a state name is really representative of the whole state's professionals. The Virginia State Bar is a compulsory organization and in my opinion is much more notable than the Virginia Bar Association, a non-compulsory organization.
I have to say that another thing I'd do differently is that I'd probably not go with suggestions to read policies and guidelines without more. I think those encouragements are very useful for new users, and I have to tell you that your edit history makes it look a lot like you're a new user from my perspective. I know we're very different editors now, but that didn't really occur to me when I looked and saw that you have something like 10% of the edits I do. At any rate, it is clear looking back through it that I wasn't connecting well with my "go read foo" speak.
Believe it or not, my Missouri statement was meant as an attempt to connect on a non-citing-policy level in what I felt would be a positive way. I was trying to distill what I believe an article with the notability concern needs in hopes it would connect with you. Clearly, it did not.
Next, as to NNC, my point there is that the construction of NNC has to be narrow (as an exception, if you will), or else it would swallow the whole notability concept. If we just took at face value the statement that notability has nothing to do with content, that would mean essentially that anything verifiable could have an article here. That flies right in the face of what notability is all about. That's what I would suggest is misleading about the sentence that links to the NNC section, but the NNC section explains things pretty well. If, after we're done here, you still really think we're reading totally different WP:N policies, I'd like to get to the bottom of that.
When I cited blackmail, I was just attempting to paraphrase your comment about coercing stub authors to write more. What I did from there was check out your contributions to make sure I hadn't missed anything you had recently written. By that point, you had made mention that you wrote the NYPS article as part of another article you were writing, and I noticed down the list just a bit the article on the man in question. As it was not written in your voice, I put a section of the text into Google for a search and located the university library site that had a copyright notice at the bottom. If you review WP:CSD, you will see that the standard for speedy deletion for copyright violation concern under G12. The article fit. The two things I take more seriously than anything around here are copyright violations and violations of WP:BLP. I dealt with that in an absolutely by the book manner per that policy, and I hope you'll agree with that once you refer to G12. If you don't, I'd like to know what you don't agree with.
Now that I have read your recent response on Talk:NYPS, I'm shocked that you feel the way you clearly do about that. I don't at all see how you can accuse me of changing your meaning when I cut out the entirety of what you wrote and pasted it verbatim to your user talk page. That comment was hardly the only comment you made that I found objectionable, but it's the only one that I excised. I excised it because I found it to be wholly irrelevant to the subject of NYPS. That's likely because you don't mention NYPS once in the comment. You mention the article I attempted to speedily delete, me, my JD, and Doogie Howser. At that point, I felt bad that we were saddling this article with a page full of argument without you taking a non sequitur. I will suggest to you that what WP:AGF is all about is taking my very specific citation to policy that supports what I have done and taking me at my word. I frankly think that if you feel you can't do that, we'd may as well end all of this and it's really your moral duty to go with a RfC about me. I say that because I'd have to be an incredibly bad influence on the project to actually be doing the things you seem convinced I'm doing.
I have an additional question for you. Read this:

Seriously, did you learn anything at all about honesty or impartiality in school? As a rule I find advanced degrees pretty unimpressive and you are resoundingly confirming that perception. I seriously hope you do not hold a position of any authority IRL, but the way the world works you probably do.

Can you still stand behind that? I think I have to get a bit personal right now. I spend my life defending the indigent accused. As jobs for lawyers go, it's certainly not one with a high degree of prestige. Do you know how many attorneys spend large segments of their days in holding cells and interview rooms at the jail? I love what I do, though. I wouldn't trade it for a fancy corner office. My degree is a tool to be able to help people. I take it pretty seriously when people who don't know much about me decide to paint me as some elitist drunk on power who knows nothing about honesty or impartiality. At some other point, you also threw in integrity.
Now, with all of that said, I hope we're getting somewhere. How do you feel about it now? Erechtheus (talk) 04:34, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
I will begin by saying that your work as you describe it is entirely commendable and I am glad you enjoy it, I wish you success and prosperity. However virtuous it is, though, does not excuse you from behaving with honesty and impartiality here on Wikipedia or anywhere else.

First off I have to repeat what I said on the article talk page, that I simply cannot believe your apparent claim that in honest consideration you believed you were acting impartially in trying to get the Shrady article deleted and in deleting my comment from the talk page, that there was no conflict of interest there. I'm sorry, I just am not required to believe you on that count and I don't, I consider that statement further evidence of disingenuousness and bad faith on your part.

I believe that you knew very well you could not be impartial in taking those actions and you intentionally and willfully decided to be a biased judge and enforcer of Wikipedia policy and copyright law, with full knowledge and cognizance that there were potentially benefits for yourself (PR benefits, if nothing else) that might stem from those actions. That's bad faith, period, and it simply went to confirm all of the preceding evidence I'd presented that your concern was not article notability but getting your way.

Take an example - imagine that two people get into a fistfight in a bar. Neither "wins". One of the parties in the fist fight carries out a citizen's arrest of the other party, in front of the town community and as a matter of public record. Now does it matter whether the citizen's arrest was carried out in strict accordance with the letter of the law governing such things, or can it be said even with no knowledge of the law or detailed description of the arrest, and whether or not one party is a sympathetic "good guy" and the other the "bad guy", that this was not a fair and impartial act? The person carrying out the arrest would have clearly prejudiced future evaluations of the fistfight and likely did so with full realization he or she was doing so. Especially if he or she knew exactly how to perform a citizen's arrest by the book. (By the way I really do not know anything about citizen's arrest, I'm not even sure if it's a modern practice.)

So yes, I absolutely stand by what I said about your integrity, especially because you still have not disavowed these actions. The way you talk it sounds as though you would have still done the same thing in this situation even if you were a Wikipedia admin or bureaucrat having a dispute with a normal user - perhaps you would have personally, immediately deleted the Shrady article, I don't hear anything to indicate otherwise. Willingness to do these sorts of things is a definite lack of integrity and just about everything you are saying and doing is indicating to me that you would be willing to abuse authority you were given and in similar real life circumstances would intentionally become a biased decider and enforcer.

On notability policy, let's start with WP:NNC. As I observed during the discussion on the talk page, the first sentence of WP:NNC is virtually identical, minus a couple of particles, to the first sentence of the second paragraph at the top of the entire policy, which appears even above the table of contents. This isn't accidental. It's an integral part of the policy that it is not dictating particular kinds of content or the presence of citation content. Those citations must exist and they must be potentially verifiable, it says, but the policy does not require that article content contain a claim, argument, or step-by-step proof that the subject is notable. All an article needs to establish the notability of its subject is to mention facts about or characteristics of its subject that connote the subject is mentioned in a variety of "reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject."

And in fact, even a large volume of citation content referring to reliable secondary sources isn't necessarily enough; note the line that begins with "Wikipedia is not a news source" - you could have all kinds of links to different news organizations about something and that wouldn't demonstrate notability. Establishing notability is exclusively about the qualities of the subject of the article, not at all about the qualities of the content of the article.

Many of your statements on notability sound like very personal impressions of the meaning of the English word "notability". But the WP:N guideline for whether a subject should be included in Wikipedia is not meant to be a personal standard at all; and as it tries to quantify an extremely subjective topic, it little resembles even a dictionary definition of the word. If your 60-year-old local bar organization is mentioned in articles of incorporation held by the state government, gets mentioned in local newspapers or professional magazines for meetings, et cetera, appears on resumes and "staff bio" pages on the internet and in similar paper documents during the last six decades - all things that you would expect simply from the mention of the fact that it's a 60-year-old local bar association - then I disagree with your application of WP:N to it, by no means is it absurd that someone coming across mention of it in one of those many secondary sources should be able to find out about it on Wikipedia.

Wikipedia is simply an encyclopedia - there's nothing I know of that says it isn't a local encyclopedia or a specialized technical encyclopedia, for example. (There is the WP:LOCAL essay if you want to talk more about this.) The notability criteria are not intended to make it into a general encyclopedia. Hence my admonitions that you need to stop going around telling people to read WP:N and critically altering articles based on your formulation of it. I haven't looked through your record on this count and I don't have the intention to do so but I have to think that by using a personal definition of notability, rather than examining simply whether a subject indicates it's going to be mentioned in a large number of secondary reliable independent sources, I am inclined to think you may have participated in pruning away articles that actually belonged on Wikipedia by WP:N (but again, I haven't specifically looked in to your past activities related to WP:N, I was talking about what you should do in the future.)

A final note in this comment - the fact I think you might not make such a hot choice for a position of authority does not mean that I think you must be a bad lawyer IRL. In fact, being the sort of person who pushes others around and gets their way may be exactly what's needed in a zealous defender of justice. I am quite certain that many of the great figures in history, who have done great good for all of humankind, (I'm thinking maybe Martin Luther King or Clarence Darrow, half the American founding fathers, I haven't thought about it deeply) were probably the sort of person who pushed others around until they got their way. It just doesn't necessarily work very well in a community and compromise-oriented encyclopedia editing process like Wikipedia (though we still need all kinds of people because there are all kinds of roles in this project). --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 17:00, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
You understand I'm not an administrator by now. You must also therefore understand that even if I wanted to delete Shrady, I couldn't. I went through a very black and white analysis as laid forth in G12 and followed what that criteria would have me do. What you seem to think I should have done was get somebody else to pass judgment. That's actually what I did. If I had the mop, I absolutely would not have deleted the article -- I would have left deletion to another admin. That's pure speculation on your part, which makes it a pretty damned weak basis on which to attack my integrity. Administrators have responsibilities that I haven't sought out that I most certainly would take very seriously if I ever do seek that role out.
It is by now quite apparent that you have a serious problem with assuming good faith that you acknowledge by the number of times you have assumed bad faith on my part. You assume that I have evil intent by following my understanding of the notability guideline when I used the notability template, and that's just not appropriate even if my understanding of the guideline is wrong. You assume that I have evil intent in following the CSD process for apparent copyright violations, and that's just not appropriate. You assume that I have evil intent in moving a comment that I don't in any way alter or try to hide from you, and that's just not appropriate. Worse yet, you gloss over this issue and believe you are the authority to change the consensus-built WP:AGF guideline. I hope you have noticed that when I conclude I have done something wrong, I think about it for a bit and admit my fault. I'd strongly suggest some introspection on your part. Your fist fight analogy just underscores to me that you are concluding that my actions are far different than they actually were. I didn't block your access to the site. I didn't contact Jimbo Wales and tell him he had to ban you or else I'd leave the project. I followed the speedy deletion process and boldly changed the location of a comment you made.
In the spirit of what I just said, I'll note if it isn't obvious by now that I would not have moved your comment if I had it to do over. Clearly, you aren't the sort of person who will assume good faith and see my actions for what they actually are. Maybe I need to be better about detecting editors who won't follow guidelines like WP:AGF and tread very cautiously around them. I also shouldn't have been nearly as tolerant as I have been about personal attacks, which you began hours before I ever did anything about Shrady. I don't think it's an issue of COI because we are expected to collaborate even if there is a dispute. I also think that boldness allows for slightly controversial edits, particularly when clear notice of those edits is given.
As to notability, I think we're starting to speak the same language. I just don't think you understand what I'm looking for. When I talk about my personal impressions, we're getting to whether I think the article is probably notable or probably not notable when an article clearly does not contain significant coverage in reliable secondary sources as the guideline requires. I don't think it's just a matter of connotation, though. I think it's a matter of facts that indicate there is actually notability. I don't think you get to say "foo has 200 members" and then say that the article has to be notable because it clearly would appear on the resume of 200 individuals. I think that's absurd. I think that's why we have a notability template (or an importance template, if the seat of the pants analysis comes out differently).
Finally, let's talk about why I got into my personal life in my last response to you. It's not so you can laud me on what I do. Frankly, you're among a group of people I care least about getting accolades from. It was so you could understand the gravity of just what you said and why it's not a good idea to make that sort of personal attack about somebody you don't know the first thing about. I hope that makes a bit more sense to you now. Erechtheus (talk) 18:09, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
As I pointed out in the talk page there's no need to bring up WP:COI, I clearly stated that what I was referring to was "not the Wikipedia policy, the real world kind".

As far as me using speculations about what you would do with an administrator account as the "basis on which to attack [your] integrity", that is of course not the basis and I'm quite sure you knew that when you wrote those words. The basis of my indictment of your integrity is, as I clearly stated in response to your direct questions on the matter, that you "intentionally and willfully decided to be a biased judge and enforcer of Wikipedia policy and copyright law, with full knowledge and cognizance that there were potentially benefits for yourself that might stem from those actions." - bolded that just to be sure you don't miss it on the second time around. On the contrary, that lack of integrity is of course the basis of concluding that you are unfit at the current time for an administrative position that would allow you to do the same sort of thing with administrative power behind you - a statement I made about the real world but sure, I'll extend it to Wikipedia as well. The explicit claim you made that the comment-deleting episode involved no conflict of interest is further evidence that you are not fit to be an administrator who needs to impartially wield power over subordinates, whether you honestly made that statement out of some lack of understanding of what a conflict of interest is or if you made that completely absurd statement as a rhetorical trick.

As to all your talk about me being the kind of editor who can't or doesn't apply WP:AGF - give me a break. That's a really clumsy attempt to impute a character flaw which, if anything, you're entirely prone to yourself. My actions and statements are no more indicative of not assuming good faith than are yours. I did not assume that another was a new user and that his contributions and statements can't be in line with WP:N so that he needs to be told "this project has standards" and to go "read WP:N", I did not assume that another user's notability assertions are all about his "favorite" article, I did not assume that another user needs to be lectured on or is engaging in a policy violation (which is something you imply every time you toss a policy link out with a snide little remark accompanying it and that happens quite alot), I did not assume that another user needed his contributions searched through and policed for policy violations, I did not assume that another user had violated copyright law, I did not assume that another user was trying to engage in subversion of WP:AGF and use a guideline document to place requirements on Wikipedia users... and I could go on, of course. As I said above, at worst in this situation you have reaped what you have sown.

On notability - no, I do not think we are speaking the same language. And I'm using the same language I've used all along, anyways. It appears to me that you intentionally mention "resumes" to imply that I have been suggesting that the reliable secondary sources for the NYPS are resumes, rather than as I've actually said the biographies of long-dead men, state incorporation documents, and things like the Transactions and Proceedings journals (documents? didn't look at the 1894 Proceedings much, it could be meeting minutes for all I know) and their presence in medical libraries. And your statement about "when an article clearly does not contain significant coverage in reliable secondary sources as the guideline requires" makes this whole thing look like a rhetorical trick, to start off implying we agree with each other then repeat something that totally contradicts my central point. Again, WP:N does not require that an article contain anything in particular, per WP:NNC - it requires that the subject of an article be covered in reliable secondary sources, that is all - WP:NNC is specifically saying that this does not mean that the article contain direct mention of those secondary sources, much less links or citations or anything like that.

As far as your personal life - no, it does not make more sense to me now. It seems to me as if you believe that demonstrating you do something virtuous and good IRL will change my evaluation of what you have done here, like it excuses these acts or makes them acts of integrity; it does not.

I would also note that I was never critical of your profession or the job you do; in fact, the way you've brought that up in the course of this has appeared to me as a rhetorical tactic, though I didn't mention it because there was so much else to talk about. I never called you a "lawyer" because I didn't know what you do - I called you a "Doctor of Law" very intentionally. I criticized you for acting this way when you openly advertise that your education includes a doctorate-level study of law, a topic with an intimate relationship to principles of impartiality and fairness at many levels. I have judged you exclusively by what you have said and done on Wikipedia.

Also, "lauding you", as you put it, is an attempt on my part to demonstrate that I don't think you're the irredeemable soul of evil or something. I simply believe you're a person, quite possibly a very good person, who has acted with a clear lack of integrity and should have known better.

Look... you just said, right there, that you don't care about my accolades - that I am a member of some entire class of people whose accolades you care the least for, out of all classes of people - so it's difficult to imagine that you care what my opinion of you is. If you really, actually believe that nothing you've done serves to besmirch your integrity in the least, why are you grinding on me so hard and fishing around for some concession, any concession at all that I've made an erroneous or unsupported statement about you? To hear you talk I'm just about speaking nonsense in my reasoning about your failures of integrity, which I consider to be major. It's not like I've made some baseless accusation with hidden or misrepresented evidence and reasoning behind it - back in the talk page you appear to have now even agreed with me that you didn't act with impartiality and that there was at least some small conflict of interest going on in the case of the copyright violation accusation and the talk page comment deletion.

So if, as you say, doing something like that is just not in any way valid evidence for an accusation that you lack integrity, what does it matter what I think? If anyone comes across this, or if I were to mention it to anyone (not that I'm particularly interested in doing that or have any reason to do so now, but it could happen) they'll come here, see that I'm using completely invalid evidence and reasoning for my claim, and like you conclude that my statements are utterly outrageous. I would be happy to create a concise summary incorporating only the reasoning and evidence I've already presented to you and place it here on my talk page under its own heading, so that other people can easily and rapidly reach the conclusion that my indictment of your integrity is the product of flawed reasoning and evidence.

Other than that, I don't mind you grinding on me hard. I'm entirely willing to keep rehashing the thoroughly-thought-out reasoning and evidence behind everything I have said to you and everything I have said about you, if you wish. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 04:40, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
I bring up COI because if Wikipedia concludes that it needs a policy on conflicts of interest in disputes, it should really be included in that policy. As far as I'm aware, there isn't really a conflict of interest policy that governs editors. I believe administrators and up are held to different standards in their use of the mop, though. It seems to me that Wikipedia's stance on boldness suggests we don't really need to be concerning ourselves that much with conflict of interest between users, though. In fact, our dispute shows me that it's even less of a concern than I would have thought. I am secure enough in the good faith of my acts that I'm going to assume for a second that I acted in bad faith. Even assuming that, what did I get done? I asked that an article be deleted. It was not deleted. I moved a comment. It was put right back into place. So what was the damage? To be sure, somebody who is acting in bad faith and who is persistent can be a problem. There are mechanisms in place to deal with that. In fact, the easiest way to tell if something is likely bad faith is persistence. If I persisted in trying to delete every article you touched or if I moved every comment you made, I wouldn't be writing right now. In a project such at this, why shouldn't good faith boldness rule the day?
I don't care if you make your allegation ten stories tall regarding my so called bias. The facts are that I can't delete articles under CSD. I followed policy in nominating. Further, I have sought no advantage in any argument by pointing to your actions in unrelated matters. That's actually what you keep trying to do. If you ever do make a mistake and post something that is copyrighted, it doesn't then suddenly mean you are wrong about other things. I hold no illusion that you or anybody else here is perfect. I have said that I believe you have an imperfect understanding of AGF, but that's really one you got yourself into by editing a consensus project guideline so dramatically.
I say resumes because you haven't shown me or anybody else these biographies you claim exist. The Shrady biography is the only one that links to this organization. This is another "show me" issue. What is really at issue here with WP:N is my use of the notability template. You invited me to put the article through deletion process, but I turned you down. As I have shown you before in black and white, my use of that template is absolutely proper. Again, the issue is a "show me" one. Show me that there is coverage in these sources. That's what the notability template is asking for. I don't think you can use WP:NNC to override that, particularly as its gist, even if it's as sweeping as you suggest, is that WP:V is the bad guy policy that demands content that isn't effectively enough supported must be removed.
I continue because I believe that it's quite unfortunate that it appears you have not learned nearly as much from this as I have. I fear for the next editor unfortunate enough to add a maintenance template to something you have edited if you behave in the same manner you did. My interest is creating a record for them and for the future in the event anyone more interested in your conduct than I am determines something serious needs be done. Erechtheus (talk) 22:18, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
Let me see if I can get your story straight here: the reason why you, ah, paraphrased the list of secondary sources for the NYPS from biographies, medical journals, and state incorporation documents down to a bunch of resumes wasn't because you were engaging in a deceptive rhetorical tactic to try to minimize the volume and reliability of the secondary sources indicated by the NYPS article; no, your claim that I'm saying "that the article has to be notable because it clearly would appear on the resume of 200 individuals" and calling that "absurd" was, I guess, just a nice, polite way of telling me "show me more biographies resumes besides Shrady!"

And you seriously seem to think that WP:AGF intends that you get to say things like that and everyone has to pretend you're being completely sincere.

And you're still referring to "so-called bias" as if anyone would regard hunting down the work of someone you're having a dispute with and trying to get it deleted as an unbiased act. I never took an ethics course in college but somehow I don't think this is the kind of thing that would be taught as ethical behavior.

You're now even convincing yourself there that if acting unethically doesn't really hurt anyone, or if someone else stops you, there's nothing wrong with it.

Obviously, for all you have "learned" from this, it hasn't involved much about WP:N, so I guess we're doomed to be making contradictory statements about it. Demonstrating the notability of a topic has nothing to do with content showing hyperlinks to sources or citations or content making claims or demonstrations of notability: that's what WP:NNC is about and it's why the language of WP:NNC is throughout the rest of the policy. Notability is established to the unfamiliar by the information about the subject, not by any particular kind of content or by citations or references. If you want to encourage people to use more references, site more sources, or put a bulleted list of hyperlinks at the bottom of an article that's fine but that's content you're asking for, not notability. There are other templates to use for that - as we found there's a template specifically asking for content discussing notability - and you would not have insisted on putting in the one template talking about deleting the article if that had all been a lily-white good faith endeavor.

I welcome the fact that this exchange has extensively documented behavior on both of our parts for the future. Particularly the fact that you're willing to continuously and unapologetically engage in deceptive rhetorical tactics to try to excuse yourself from unethical behavior - not to mention that your immediate reaction to specific points about the NYPS notability was "big deal", "this project has standards", and "go read this policy" - and the fact that I'm not letting you get away with any of that. Now since I'm the one who spends time on Wikipedia creating content rather than pushing my preferences on others and picking fights with them, I think your statements and actions may receive more attention from posterity. But at this point it does seem like you've realized that you leave behind evidence that will be persuasive to third parties when you pull this kind of stuff, so I hope that alone changes your behavior in the future. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 19:25, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WP:THANKS

By now, I have gotten the message that you're a bit touchy about me editing anything you have. I happened to notice in your edit history this essay, and I'd like to suggest that it may be appropriate to make clear that it is an essay by including the essay template. I also have to say that I like the sentiment you're expressing there. Erechtheus (talk) 17:01, 27 April 2008 (UTC)

Well, since every article of mine you've touched so far you have either personally tried to get deleted, labeled for deletion, or deleted every last bit of content I authored from it (of the ones that I know about, at least), I somehow think there might be rational motivation behind any such touchiness.

The thanks article is not an essay, it's an informational article. I think there's a difference, right? The essays I have seen usually seem to be generally targeted at expressing an opinion; as that article says, it's intended to just be a list of the ways available to thank people. Note that a sentence in the first paragraph says, "This page lists common methods for communicating thanks to other users. In its entirety it does not represent a policy or even a guideline..." If you think the page doesn't identify its level of authority and purpose well enough, you could add something along the lines of "and it's not an essay, either" and bold "not...guideline", maybe? Or if you have a reason to label it as an essay for reasons other than specifying its level of authority and purpose, I would appreciate hearing about them - but I wouldn't really object to the presence of an essay template if you really want to see it there.

And of course if you're aware of any other methods of expressing thanks, or if you could improve on my descriptions (I haven't used most of the methods listed, I usually simply drop a custom-written unadorned note) please do that too. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 06:10, 29 April 2008 (UTC)
I think you'll find that Wikipedia namespace pages such as WP:THANKS are essays, policies, or guidelines. The latter two require consensus. That's why I suggest this is at essay level. Erechtheus (talk) 02:50, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
Are you saying that you don't think there is consensus that expressing thanks is a good idea, even if I was trying to claim that page was a guideline or policy?

Anyways, like I said, I wouldn't object to the presence of an essay template if you really want to see it there. Or if there's actually a policy or something somewhere that indicates that everything in the Wikipedia namespace has to be labeled as an essay, guideline, or policy. (Though I'm pretty sure that the Wikipedia namespace is for any non-encyclopedia content that is specific to Wikipedia rather than one of the sister projects. I think you'll find that every sister project has an eponymous namespace.) --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 19:36, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WP:AGF

If you ask me, it's still not a good idea to edit AGF with so little demonstrated consensus. With that said, I don't have a problem with what is there. Good day. Erechtheus (talk) 03:38, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

As I pointed out in the AGF talk page there's consensus for the things I described when I wrote WP:DGF, consensus in that talk page going back years into the archives and there's also WP:AAGF and Carbonite's Law as mentioned by it - deleting all mention of WP:DGF was certainly no more respectful of consensus than me adding it and inviting everyone to change it. As I have observed repeatedly I really, honestly think you need to examine your motivations much more closely when you find yourself justifying your own actions with Wikipedia policies or principles - your application of them appears to me to be very far from impartial. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 15:38, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] User:Cobaltbluetony/Sandbox/Evidence against Struthious Bandersnatch

Oh, isn't this cute, it turns out that CobaltBlueTony is working on his own very special page about me, in which he claims I'm a slanderer. I made my own comment on it but that's liable to disappear - it is a sandbox page, after all - so I thought I'd preserve it here.
Except, when you want to write up an entire page addressing a user's personal attitude and actions (and asserting that I engage in slander), that's perfectly all right, eh? Pot, meet kettle. (I also love that you call me pretentious below, Mr. "UFO sighting" - that belongs on the Comedy Channel.) But I don't mind. Slander is making false statements, by the way - don't you think you ought to work on some evidence that any of these statements I made are false? Have fun. And don't forget to add the one from the NYPS talk page where I pointed out that you were a complete buffoon. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 06:49, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] format

By all means use whatever you like to distinguish your comments here from those of others on your own talk page. (In fact, I like what you are doing so much that I think I may adopt it myself). But it is not right to use it on an article talk page,because it gives what you say a greater prominence. Please remove the color from the WP:N page and anywhere else. . (please note that I tend to agree with many of your arguments--that's why I'm no being shy about asking you--this is a friendly request.) Let it be your arguments that are distinctive. DGG (talk) 20:59, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Observation, observer

I split the special relativity observer into "Observer (special relativity)": in wikipedia different concepts are placed into different pages. Since you expressed interest in the topic, please use Category:Special relativity to find all articles on the topic and make wikilinks to "Observer (special relativity)" from those which use the term.

Also, please read about the most basic wikipedia policies about content, summarized in wikipedia:Attribution; in particular, about "no original research" policy. The comarison of "observer: with "camera" looks like original research to me. It must be either deleted or referenced from published sources. `'Míkka>t 15:47, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for splitting off that article! And yeah, you're right, the camera angle analogy may qualify as original research, I was just reading that policy the other day. (Though I personally think it serves the same role as a simile, but someone else already deleted it anyways. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 16:33, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Protection

Hi SB. The reason I declined the protection was because there has been no recent edit war in which several editors on either side have been reverting each other. Please see WP:Edit warring and WP:Protection policy. If users break the 3RR rule, then blocking may be a more appropriate step (see WP:3RR). Protection should only be used in response to, if you like, a "full-scale" edit war, and never as a pre-emptive action in case there is a full-scale one later on. Hope this clears that up. Best, PeterSymonds | talk 22:58, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Other languages

Please do not make redirects from one language's edition of Wikipedia to another. DS (talk) 03:13, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Does that cause technical problems? If so, I apologize. It appeared to me that the redirects didn't even work, they simply provided the link to the other article. (In any case I would appreciate knowing why you are asking me not to do this; unless it causes technical problems I see no reason not to, although if it really bothers you or if it's against convention I won't do it.) --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 03:23, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, it's against convention. Don't do it. DS (talk) 03:28, 16 May 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for explaining your concerns. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 03:31, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Question on Charles Daly Article

I went to the three separate articles on Charles Daly a few months back and put in requests on two of them (one already had one) that they all be merged together. Two weeks later I found that they had not only been combined, but it had been given a very amazing overhaul. Further research on Wikipedia on Daly (such as his listing and picture on the Notable West Point Alums) revealed that you have gone through the trouble of really boosting Charles Daly's presence wherever it is applicable.

So my questions is...are you simply an avid Army fan? Or is there other motivation to this dedicated effort? I ask because I started my research on Daly to help my girlfriend do her family tree. She is Daly's great-granddaughter, and I was wondering if you two might be distantly related. Any help you can give on our project (in addition to your work already done here) would be really helpful.--Crazytonyi (talk) 09:30, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Heh heh, believe it or not I don't have any personal connection to him. Thanks for your kind words about my contributions.
All that happened is that I came across his book American Football in Google Books and I started copying the photographs of old-tyme football players into WP. (Although another believe-it-or-not is that I am not a sports fan and I don't even really understand how football is played or how the various tournaments work. I'm glad someone else had put together that stuff on his coaching record.) Then I found out that he was the coach at West Point for Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, Patton fer chrissakes, and all the others and so it seems to me that he's actually much more notable than any of the history books let on. Did you read that quote from the book I put in the article? I found it pretty crazy to read that and then find out that he was Patton's college football coach.
So, sorry to disappoint in that I'm not a long-lost relative of your girlfriend's, and I don't know any more about Daly than what I found for the article (though I made sure there's good bibliographic info on all of the sources and there are lots of direct links to Google Books - check it out.) But I'm certainly willing to help as much as I can - did you have anything in particular in mind? --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 17:30, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Redirects and red links

You've recently created a great many redirects to a non-existent article, as well as added several hatnotes to established articles leading to red links. I'm not sure what you're up to, but please stop. You're just creating work that others have to clean up. Cheers, faithless (speak) 10:33, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Patience. Or as the essay goes, don't demolish the house while it's still being built. I'm writing articles. But besides that, why would you need to "clean up" redirects to non-existent articles? How do you know they're incorrect redirects if the article doesn't exist and you haven't done your own research on the subject? If you go around undoing the work of others simply because you can't imagine why that work has been done you'll probably be creating a whole lot of wasted effort - both on your part and on the part of other editors. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 10:46, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
That's all well and good, but isn't it better to lay the foundation before you start painting the walls? I have no doubt you're acting in good faith, but don't you think it's better to create the article first? There's just no point in a hatnote if it doesn't lead you anywhere. Cheers, faithless (speak) 10:50, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
I think it's simply a matter of preference and habits. To continue the craft analogies, like a jeweler I like to build the web up first, like the gold setting of a wedding ring, then set the article in it like a sparkling diamond. (Okay, that was so ridiculous I almost threw up while writing it. But you get what I mean.) Particularly when creating a stub, I think the intertwingling with the rest of Wikipedia is more important than the stub content itself. The links from other articles, stub templates, categories, etc. are what will lead other people to the article, and so they're more important than the content in ensuring that the article is someday improved, so I try to spend the most time on that stuff.
I'll disagree with you on one point though: the utility of the redirects existing when the article does not is that it serves to ensure, to some degree, that if someone else creates an article in the future it will have the correct name so that my existing redlinks will not be broken. That's the reason I do it.
Anyways, thanks for being patient and not deleting my stuff! --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 11:19, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm afraid you're giving me some undeserved thanks, as I actually did remove quite a few of them. Had I known you actually intended on creating the articles, I wouldn't have removed the entries on the disambiguation pages (and won't take offense if you restore them), though I'd still argue that hatnotes ought not be created until the article itself is created. And, of course, plain ol'd redirects ought not be created for non-existent articles, and will be deleted straight away. Hope none of this was taken personally, it certainly wasn't mean to be. Happy editing! faithless (speak) 11:51, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Arrgh. Dude... for someone complaining about not creating unnecessary work, you just blew away the fruits of a large chunk of my time. I don't remember exactly what I created and the entries seem to be gone from my contributions page. Do you have some special administrator way to revert your deletions or do I have to go figure out how the deletion log works and put in requests somewhere for those pages to be undeleted?
I also have to say that given how substantial a screw-up this was on your part in terms of the prime directive of improving Wikipedia, your persistence that you're justified in deleting redirects you find unpalatable is a bit out of place.
I am not taking this personally but it's pretty disappointing to have lost all of that and I'm kind of unimpressed that you didn't even offer to help me put it back together. I've spent a good ten hours or more working on this cluster of articles during the last few days. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 12:32, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Well first of all, I didn't "screw up." Everything I've one is completely justifiable, most of all deleting the redirects to an uncreated page, which can be deleted on sight by any administrator. There is even a specific criterion for the speedy deletion of redirects to non-existent pages (commonly referred to as R1).
Since you've since created the article, I've restored the redirects (as you noticed, deleted contributions are only viewable by administrators). As for the others, I won't be offended if you go back and revert my removals, but I'm not going to do it myself, since I still believe that the articles ought to be created first. I do want to impress one thing upon you, though: adding a non-existent article to a disambiguation page with the intention of creating the article is one thing, and you can even make a case for adding hatnotes to articles as long as you plan on immediately creating the article (though I imagine that most would agree with me that the article ought to be created first), but a redirect to a non-existent article is always going to be deleted. Like I said, you can make your case for how the other two things can be beneficial, but a redirect to nowhere doesn't do anyone any good (and as I mentioned, there is even a specific criterion for speedily deleting such redirects).
Anyway, I think we can agree that we were both acting in good faith, and this is just an unfortunate mix-up. Feel free to let me know if there is anything I can do for you. faithless (speak) 20:30, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for doing that, I can see my words were sharper than they needed to be and I apologize for that. Thank you also for linking me to that criteria for deletion, no one else has bothered to do that. --❨Ṩtruthious ℬandersnatch❩ 09:54, 2 June 2008 (UTC)