User:TonyTheTiger/DR bot

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This page is being produced to confirm understanding of the topic at issue. WP:DR says we are suppose to consider things for a few days before pursuing resolution. I should have this finished by the weekend.

After building up a good track record, including reasonable success at resuscitating WP:CHICOTW, User:TonyTheTiger has attempted to expand his efforts to building up the assessment division of the WP:WPChi project. In this effort he sought assistance from WP:BOTREQ to design a bot to tag articles within Category:Chicago, Illinois and related categories. A clear picture of the categories involved can be seen at Wikipedia:WikiProject Chicago/Categories Of the first 7000 or so articles identified by the bot two have been contentious. After some discussion one of them was convinced to allow a bot to add a {{ChicagoWikiProject}} tag. This leaves only Jon Corzine as problematic. The debate surrounding use of the project banner tag at Talk:Jon Corzine has led to some dispute including discussions at Help_desk initiated by User:TonyTheTiger @ 21:30, 8 May 2007 (UTC), Village_pump_(policy) initiated by User:TonyTheTiger @ 21:33, 8 May 2007 (UTC), & Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents Septentrionalis PMAnderson @ 21:50, 8 May 2007 (UTC). These debates led us to dispute resolution.

Argument: TonyTheTiger:
A talk page project banner template is a project management tool for the purpose of assisting a project categorize relevant articles. For example, the aforementioned tag would place articles in appropriate subcategories of Category:WikiProject_Chicago (most importantly in subcategories of Category:Chicago articles by quality & Category:Chicago articles by importance). It is not proper for persons who are not members of a project to set policy for a project by altering banner parameters or by determining which pages are eligible for the banner. consensus among members of the project should determine banner usage policy.

Argument: Pmanderson:
To quote some of the editors who disagree with Tony in the two discussions, one at the Pump, the other at ANI, this has produced (no-one has yet supported him):

  • Consensus on what goes on any individual page, in terms of project banners, is or should be set on that page. No wikiproject is a walled garden excluding the rest of the project from participation. DES on Village pump
  • I would urge Tony, if he must continue with such bot-tagging (and it might be better to stop, given the Bot approvals comment above), to politely remove the WP:WPChi tag if people keep saying that such-and-such articles are not really within the scope of the project, and to reassess his inclusion critera. Carcharoth on ANI

WikiProjects do not have rights; certainly they do not give their members any right to ignore the opinions of other editors.

On the substantive issue, as one of the three editors who have deprecated this tag on Talk:Jon Corzine, against Tony's persistent and solitary reversions, I don't see any of the clauses on the Priority Scale as justifying this inclusion; and, if I did, I suspect the problem would be with the Scale, not with Corzine. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:22, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

  • Post-scriptum: This edit and this one are unacceptable; I shall make my own arguments - or withdraw from mediation. The first one displays Tony's view that Wikipedia:Projects are something more than a forum to assist editor collaboration; and that "membership" gives special rights. I dispute both. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:08, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
  • PS alterum: Tony has stated that consensus does not apply to article talk pages. WP:CONSENSUS says, as it must: "Wikipedia works by building consensus. Consensus is an inherent part of the wiki process. The basic process works like this: someone makes an edit to a page, and then everyone who reads the page makes a decision to either leave the page as it is or change it." There is a general custom not to remove comments on talk pages, but even this does not always apply - to cruft or vandalism, for instance. Tags are removed routinely. This is a wiki; consensus applies to every page. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:34, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Third party resolutions and dispute resolution both encourage parties to step back from the emotions of their heated arguments and THINK. In this case, we need to understand each other's arguments before proceeding. Above is my understanding of our dispute. Pmanderson has mentioned "putting words in his mouth" in his edit summary removing my summary. I have asked him/her to kindly edit the argument above until it states his belief. If he does so and I understand his revision we can proceed as long as he understands my side. He has also stated a lack of understanding of why Corzine falls within the project. I have previously pointed to Wikipedia:WikiProject Chicago/Priority Scale and the aforementioned Wikipedia:WikiProject Chicago/Categories to which WP:WPChi intends to apply this scale to. Although he has not expressed interest in participating in the project to contribute to setting policy on what articles are of interest to project members it should be noted that among the categories included in the domain of categories are Category:University of Chicago alumni are Category:Northwestern University alumni, which have caused the likes of Jon Corzine, Sander M. Levin, and Katherine Shindle to fall under the {{ChicagoWikiProject}}. Before we engage in a debate about whether such articles are of any concern to people interested in Chicago related articles, we need to address the underlying arguments above.

  • Tony's position is contrary to the nature, policies, and practice of Wikipedia. Every third party who has commented on either of the discussions linked to above has, with more or less force, told him so. If this is submitted to mediation, I do not expect that he will listen to the mediator either. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:24, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
    • Your statement is untrue (some have supported my side) and does not convey an argument. You are reverting to he says she says again. I have queried your talk page to attempt to understand your argument. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 23:54, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

At this point TonyTheTiger understands Pmanderson's argument to be: "Any group of individuals should be able by consensus be able to eliminate banners selectively from talk pages if in their collective opinion it does not belong regardless of their participation in the project. Unsure whether he believe a consensus could change the parameters of a banner template used by a project. (requesting clarification)" However, it his understanding that Pmanderson does not feel this to be his argument. However, above he post a lengthy list of he says she says without summarizing his argument. Pmanderson, has broached the topic of withdrawing from mediation, which TonyTheTiger would accept if it means Pmanderson will agree not to tamper with the placement or parameterization of {{ChicagoWikiProject}} templates any further unless he becomes an active member of the project. TonyTheTiger (talk/ cont/bio) 18:36, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

  • Neither condition is acceptable. Being a member of a WikiProject does not give any privileges Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:24, 10 May 2007 (UTC)
    • User:Nick does not see a problem with us adding the tag. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 18:02, 11 May 2007 (UTC)
      • What Nick said was that he sees no problem if the members of the project will put in time and effort expanding and improving the article. Anybody is welcome to improve the article; but what does Tony propose to add to the Governor of New Jersey? His undergraduate GPA?
      • If there were room to improve the passing mention of Chicago in the article, the link to the project would be clear. I doubt anyone would have objected to it, and certainly there would be no consensus against it.
      • But this program of tagging myriads of articles, tenuously related to Chicago, means that the tag is on more articles than the project members can possibly devote time and effort to expanding and improving. That's the fundamental problem with it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:23, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

I have twice put this on your user talk page. I await a response to the following:

THIRD AND FINAL RESTATEMENT OF DISPUTE PROGRESS AWAITING CONFIRMATION We are making progress on isolating our issues so far. Summary so far of discourse (Please confirm):

Agreed
  1. POV issues not considered relevant to the matter at hand as POV not relevant for talk pages.
  2. Use of the term Director not relevant
  3. Banner template excess is contrary to conservation of wikipedia resources.
  4. Banner template usage is desirable if the project members also intended to improve the article.
  5. The {{ChicagoWikiProject}} is not a harmful addition to talk pages.
Contentious
  1. Consensus applies to talk pages (including banner templates)(PMAnderson). Consensus does not apply to talk pages (TonyTheTiger).
  • Here is my attempt to get across the fundamental problem I see here. You (Tony) say above: "included in the domain of categories are Category:University of Chicago alumni [and] Category:Northwestern University alumni, which have caused the likes of Jon Corzine, Sander M. Levin, and Katherine Shindle to fall under the {{ChicagoWikiProject}}." - this displays a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between article categories and WikiProject worklists (which is effectively what the categories associated with the WP tags are). Categories are a browsing tool for readers, not a categorising tool for editors. Categories are not a tool to be blindly used to generate WikiProject worklists. Instead of bot-tagging thousands of articles based on categories (and getting false hits or near misses, like the ones that started all this off), it is better to keep the focus narrowed on specific areas where the WikiProject in question can help the most. It is a laudable goal to try and get this WikiProject involved in everything to do with Chicago, but it is ultimately unfeasible. As a rule of thumb, if someone objects to the WP:WPChi tag, they will have good reasons for it. If you cannot honestly state that a member of WP:WPChi is willing to come and work hard on the article as a whole (not just a small part of the article), then leave that article to the editor or WikiProject that is already assessing, editing and improving it, and move on. Anything else is just wasted effort. You will be disrupting an editor already working on an article, and you will be wasting time that you could spend on article directly related to Chicago. So if there are objections, just quietly back off. If there are no objections, then eventually someone will either remove the tag or assess the article, or carry out some work on the article. Does this sound like a suitable compromise? Carcharoth 22:26, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
    • I have no misunderstanding of the purpose of a category and my perturbation of this purpose. I make no claim a category was designed for bot tagging. Your statement "it is better to keep the focus narrowed on specific areas where the WikiProject in question" begs the question of whether anything tagged importance=low should retain the WP banner tag (or any other project that assesses an article as low). Your statement that adding a WP Chi tag "You will be disrupting an editor already working on an article" is false. Adding a tag is not harmful or disruptive. Your statement "If there are no objections, then eventually someone will either remove the tag or assess the article, or carry out some work on the article." is the precise purpose of leaving an importance=low tag on an article. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 18:41, 17 May 2007 (UTC)
      • The same bot has just tagged Juan Cole. Do tell me - what is his connection to Chicago? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:21, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
        • You can continue to point out articles that will receive importance=low tags. However, the question then becomes do you think any project should keep a tag on an article that it would attach the importance=low parameter value to. Do you believe all projects should remove their tags from articles where an importance=low parameter value would be used. If not then you are making the point that this is less than importance=low and we need to understand what you believe importance=low should be used for. How would you suggest revising our priority scale. If you neither believe that all low importance articles should be removed or that our scale is incorrect on our low importance articles you are just looking for an efight, which wastes my time. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 19:35, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
          • This is importance = zero. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:37, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
            • What do you consider importance=low and importance=mid to a Jon Corzine and how would you change priority scale to reflect your opinion. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 19:42, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
              • Well, for starters, that priority scale is one created by the WikiProject. I think the lower bounds for WikiProject priority scales should be set by independent, external reviewers, as participants in a WikiProject can be biased to be over-inclusive. And picking up on an example, why is Smith Museum of Stained Glass Windows low priority? To me, as a museum actually in Chicago, it probably deserves at least mid-importance. The people that have spent short times in Chicago are of peripheral importance to WikiProject Chicago, in my opinion. The equivalent for a building of peripheral importance would be a building in New York built by a Chicago architect. The topic of the Chicago architect's involvement in the building can be told both at the architect page and the building page, but WikiProject Chicago only needs to be involved on one of those pages. Returning to the people examples, the basketball player who spent a season in Chicago might be mentioned in the article about that Chicago team's season. WikiProject Chicago could genuinely contribute to the team article (as all areas of an article about a team based in Chicago would benefit from input from WP:WPChi members), but WP:WPChi would have far less to contribute to the player's article. Do you see what I am saying? If faced between a choice between an article with lots of Chicago connections, and one with only a very few, which do you chose. That, ultimately, is what the "priority" scale is about. Carcharoth 00:33, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
  • The point is that using Tony's rather wide criteria, "importance=low" could be used to put tags for hundreds of WikiProjects on some article talk pages. The line has to be drawn somewhere, and people do tend to have differing interpretations of the low end of "importance=low". What people need to realise is that as the perceived importance decreases, the number of people disagreeing about the exact importance level increases (I would say "in proportion" if I wanted a law named after me...). To illustrate what I mean, there tends to often be widespread agreement that an "importance=high" article is indeed important, but "importance=low" is sometimes much less clear. Some people think low equals almost any connection, while others think low still requires a major connection, but less importance than the "importance=mid" ones. In other words, one set of people are mentally measuring "low" as a small but measurable increase from zero, while others are measuring it as a drop in importance from mid. Does that make sense to either of you two? Carcharoth 00:21, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
    • My problems at this point are two-fold. We have tagged over 8600 articles and still have only one complainant, which makes me wonder about the complainant and not our decisionmaking. Two the complainant refuses to help me understand our debate progress. I continue to await some response on where we stand. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 16:52, 21 May 2007 (UTC)