User talk:Wyss/a7

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[edit] Sundry stuff

Hi there. I read on some other user talk page that you were banned from writing on certain topics? But, I don't see any notice to that effect here, so I'd just I'd ask: Is this true? I did see that there seems to be some kind of arbcom action taken against you so maybe it is true. Just wondering. Also, who are the trolls, among the admins? I notice you said, "(trolls - that includes several admins by the bye)"--which admins are trolls? I think that you could move to remove their admin status if you had good evidence for that, and I'd help you. I don't like admins who abuse their status. Hope all is well. Giovanni33 23:06, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

User:Fred Bauder has already said that ruling needs to be fixed. Not a chance for now of removing admin status from any meaningful number of trolls, who may be about 10 or 20% of all admins (say, 70-150 users) but sadly, some are among the most active of them: Roleplaying wankers, fiddlers, fools and... trolls. Wyss 00:23, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I have to say that posting insults to people (including whomever changed the image of the troll you are using) is unseemly and reference to trolls etc. just strikes me as besserwisserei with something of a persecution complex setting in. Hopefully the sabbatical has done you good, I appreciated your comments during the Hitler discussions but think maybe a step back from contentious pages does everyone concerned a world of good. It has for me. :) I'd suggest salvaging your pride and removing the references to trolls and codswallop as it does nothing to promote "good faith". Michael Dorosh 23:14, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not insulting anyone, I'm being honest. So far as good faith goes, I always assume good faith. Meanwhile have a glom at some high traffic articles in the social sciences. Wyss 00:23, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Wyss is himself a perfect example of an abusive admin. He seems to feed on conflict--look at his history, one ridiculous "edit war" after another, with Wyss repeatedly resorting to calling people "trolls" and even worse, which is a flagrant violation of WP policy. The fact that he now seems to think someone is manipulating images on his page shows how paranoid he really is. You need to take a long break, Wyss, you're embarrassing yourself. 207.200.116.8 16:29, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Dear anon, I think you need to do some lengthy swotting up on your reading skills. Wyss 00:23, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Actually, people who automatically label someone as "himself" without having the good manners to read the User's page with the easily identifiable Section titled About me is the one embarrassing themself. - Ted Wilkes 16:47, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
Wyss's contributions are always sound - and it's good to see the trolls getting their keyboards rearranged with well-aimed kicks. But I have two worries: Wyss might be pronounced in German as Vice, and resigning from WP is like writing a snotty letter to the editor, withdrawing one's "subscription". WP will help you find the needle in the haystack, but the first question is, Which needle?--shtove 22:41, 14 March 2006 (UTC)
I didn't say I've "resigned" from WP, but I have run across lots of needling trolls in this haystack. Anyway so long as WP supports content trolling (which is to say, unscholarly sourcing methodologies, mostly in the social sciences), I'll call them trolls, thanks. Wyss 00:23, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
More power to your elbow.--shtove 01:03, 15 March 2006 (UTC)
Yep. Anyway thanks for your kind words about my contributions. Meanwhile (happily), I've got a life outside of this meta-blog which, through amazing inefficiency and gnashing of teeth (aside from the low labour costs) as a side effect happens to produce GFDL content sometimes resembling encyclopedia articles, sometimes not. Heh heh. My friends who know about it think I'm a bit crazy for having spent so much time on WP. I wouldn't say "crazy"... more like "boneheaded." I thought WP's leadership gave a luzz and that scholarship would out. Silly me :) Wyss 01:19, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I can believe you regarding Admin role players. Its seems to produce the same kind of quality we get from polititicans. Not to say this applies to the majoritiy of admins but I bet to those who want to be and try to be admins (to me this is not what Wikipeadia is about anyway). I found this pretty interesting and supports your idea about some admins, and but also means that those editors who never get into good conflicts with others are suspect of not really being genuine in all regards, for conflict is an essential locomotive of not only historical progress but the result of getting down to the work of forging out consensus here, which more often than not involves disputes of one sort or the other, although certainly a valid point is the need of always being civil and assuming good faith (where there is room to assume). Anyway, thought youd be interested in this read: From Wikipedia Review "Has anyone ever thought of the idea of admins selling their accounts on Ebay? I wonder what those would go for. I mean, there are also various online games where accounts or in-game "property" are sold for real money. Maybe some people could professionally build up accounts to adminship just to sell them... I have been doing this. I have an account, on an IP range other than my normal one, where I am working towards admin. For me the whole key is to do this in as little time and effort as possible. Once this account becomes an admin, I will switch to another IP range and start working for an adminship there. When I am halfway to all the way there with the second account, I will start using my first admin account to correct the right-leaning bias of Wikipedia.

"One thing we can discuss is how to become an admin as soon as possible. I tried doing this a year ago and it was hard, but find it is easier nowadays. A lot of the tools are there now that didn't used to be, from reverting vandalism, to things tagged with cleanup tags, to whatever. The key to me is, how many edits can I make in an hour where people say what I'm doing is a useful edit? Of course, if you're adding a few paragraphs to an article, make sure to do it in more than one edit, that's common sense. I just work to get to that 1000 edit threshold.

"Obviously, I don't get into the kind of fights I do with my real account which I use from my normal IP range. I do everything I can to avoid fights, at all costs.

"Also remember people like to see people in different spaces. So aside from article space I do AFDs, leave notes in user talk and talk, and other places as well.

"While I'm getting good at doing a lot of quick edits fast, I also feel I should have some gravitas as well. So right now I am focusing on an area or two I want filled out on Wikipedia, which are pretty sparse anyhow, so I won't be raising too much conflict. A lot of the data is just facts, names etc. I just want to seem like I do more than just wiki-fairy stuff. When people ask what I edit, I'll talk about what I'm interested in, but it's the other stuff that will get me up to over 1000 edits.

"Just read what people say in RFA, that's a good guide. You know - working in different areas of Wikipedia so it's obvious you're familiar with the rules, leaving edit summaries, that type of thing. Some people want to see a conflict mediated. Luckily, that's not always necessary. If it is, tread lightly, it is important not to get into fights.

"Any advice from others on becoming an admin, quickly, with minimal effort? I'm gunning not for one, but several admin accounts. Perhaps we can collaborate, meaning maybe we can have two or three people working on an account 24/7 on the road to adminship. Once we have a few, we can go to work on what we want to do. If we have a lot of these admin-road accounts, we can even hold off on one or two of them, letting them go deep undercover - maybe they can even get on ArbCom or something. We'd have to have some kind of IRC ass-kissing bot for that though." Giovanni33 12:06, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

WP's admin system, I'm sure, is sometimes abused along those lines. While there are a few dozen truly "unhelpful" WP admins who wontedly break WP policy, which causes no end of problems especially in the social sciences (or any high traffic article), most WP admins seem sincere and helpful. Wyss 17:34, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
By Giovanni: "I will start using my first admin account to correct the right-leaning bias of Wikipedia." This is why WP is often seen as a joke; one person's perception of "right-leaning bias" is another persons pique at not being permitted to brand every public figure of the last 200 years a homosexual, or some other agenda-driven bias. Openly admitting to sock-puppetry seems ill-advised on the face of it, but of course if the rest of wikipedia's admins are doing the same thing, what difference does it make. Still can't figure out the connection between striving for intellectualism - such as sourced articles - and the use of idiotic screen names. Michael Dorosh 19:30, 17 March 2006 (UTC)
...and screen signatures. Anyway, WP's written policies aren't being followed. WP is driven too much by the personal agendas of trolls, many of whom are admins. There is hope this could change but sadly, those who are most active in the administrative community are often the least interested in scholarly sourcing and encyclopedic content. Instead, they like roleplaying and shifting content towards what they think personally the world "should" look like, not what scholarly methodologies tend to show us. Again, an aggressive and often remorseless minority (which does include sockpuppets) spoils the pitch for everyone else. Until this is fixed, I don't plan on editing articles, since it would be a waste of time and give trolls (admin and otherwise) renewed openings for harassment. Wyss 17:44, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
I've reported Giovanni's comments via email to an administrator and gotten a response. In all honesty Wyss, do what I did, and use mediawiki's software to start your own website on a subject you're passionate about, if you feel the urge to edit in a satisfying way. After your first couple of "fan mails" you'll feel like a new woman. :) Michael Dorosh 17:50, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
Thanks Michael :) Truth be told (and thankfully), I've already got lots of other meed stuff to do in my life and yeah, that includes a website I've had for years. I'm only watching my WP user page to talk about why I'm not editing here these days. Wyss 18:23, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sourcing

Wyss, on your userpage: "I'm here to write articles." About three paragraphs above, however: "[Until WP is fixed], I don't plan on editing articles." Face it, WP will not be fixed in the forseeable future. Thus people with a mental age of 13 and below will continue to debase articles -- or rather, will continue to debase those articles that are of interest to people with a mental age of 13 and below. However sad this may be for the world in general, it's lucky for us as editors that a huge percentage of human knowledge goes unremarked on the boob tube and in the lowbrow press and thus is of no interest to such people. It's within this huge percentage that I'm editing now, and for which I'd like your advice.

You value scholarly sourcing. I do as well. I'm confident that I can do it proficiently when writing something for more or less academic purposes. One advantage I have there is that I can fairly easily separate the fairly non-controversial from the more controversial, and it's only the latter that will require buttressing by notes or author/date. Here, by contrast, almost anything might be questioned by our readers, who can't be assumed to know much. Now, if I were able to write and then lock or otherwise retain editorial control over an article here, it would be easy for me to "source" it both meticulously and elegantly, e.g. via paragraph-ending notes along the lines of "For the {A} incident, see {X}, p. {P}. All other details of {B} derive from {Y}, pp. {Q–R}." However, as long as there's a possibility that these paragraphs will be edited by others who won't pay scrupulous attention to the way I've aggregated my citations, I don't feel able to do this: there's too high a risk that even well-intentioned people will add content or even refactor the paragraphs, thereby rendering the notes untrue or nonsensical. Thus I tend to end up with tiresome series of <ref>s, one per sentence.

So my question. Can you give me one or two examples of what you think is excellent sourcing on WP? These needn't be entire articles; you could instead nominate mere sections or even paragraphs. And of course you could reference earlier versions (before trolls, wallopers of cods, etc., screwed them up). Thank you! -- Hoary 00:24, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

As for mental ages of 13 or whatever, read the next item for a glaring example of why I cannot edit this encyclopedia until WP's leadership has given me and other editors like me more support in fending off the codswallop of trolls. Wyss 22:30, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
Andrea Palladio suggests that you lift your attention to matters beyond the comprehension of much smaller minds than your own.
Andrea Palladio suggests that you lift your attention to matters beyond the comprehension of much smaller minds than your own.

Thanks for the nomination (on my own talk page). But look, no, you can easily edit this encyclopedia unmolested by the codswanking of wallops. It's very, very simple: surely your interests and knowledge aren't limited to subjects of interest to the anglophone mass media, so edit elsewhere. Yes of course you've done good work defending articles from the obsessions of other smutty little minds, but all that effort could have been spent on aardvarks, abacuses, abbeys, abdications, . . . -- Hoary 06:07, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

True enough, however there are two snags. First, the notion of "6 degrees of separation." By branching along these articles, one will inevitably reach one that's of interest to trolls. Two, I think arbcomm will have to revisit their RfAr on 141 and resolve the mistakes of process and fact they made before I can feel ok about editing. Wyss 14:31, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah yeah yeah. By traveling around the countryside of the compact Czech Republic, I will inevitably reach one place of touristic interest (Slavonice, Telč, wherever) which on that particular day happens to be the day-tripping destination of some group of foreign oafs whose main purpose is booze-'n'-sex in Prague. With this risk in mind, should I forswear any trip anywhere in that attractive nation? Returning to WP, it's been weeks since I've edited any article that shows any grubby sign of the credulous readers of tabloids. Luckily, the popularity of "reality" [hah!] shows (on whose effects see this) appears to be on the wane, as simple souls are content with the pap of (genre-constrained) "fantasy" (often of Japanese manufacture: all big eyes, little noses, and mussed hair). By contrast, here is possible (and of course tabloid-transcending) inspiration for ya. Though there can be no arguing about what may or may not "feel OK". -- Hoary 06:18, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

I do agree with you Hoary, only I can't comfortably edit until arbcomm fixes its flawed RfAr on 141. Wyss 23:53, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Karl Schalike

You may be interested to know that User:Karl Schalike, who contributed to several pages related to Adolf Hitler's alleged homosexuality, is a sockpuppet of Ted Wilkes. See [1]. Onefortyone 16:46, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

More admin shopping? With more than 600 of them it's not much of a trick to find one who can be duped or misled at any given time, even members of arbcomm and especially when it has to do with "controversial" issues in the social sciences, where fuzzy thinking and strong emotion abound. Over the past 10 months you have often made accusations of sockpuppetry which were mostly (if not always) shown by sundry editors and admins to be wrong. You may also recall that you have in the past accused me of being a sockpuppet of User:Ted Wilkes. Meanwhile, User:Karl Schalike, like you, is a single topic editor (the very same topic and writing style, by the bye). Given your contribution history, for all I know User:Karl Schalike is a sockpuppet invented by you to for the purpose of making your wonted accusations of sockpuppetry while at the same time furthering your own narrow agenda of violating WP's writen sourcing policies and for the xth time, merely having been published or the presence of a PhD after an author's name do not of themselves automatically qualify sources for citation in articles under WP policy. Sources and their content must be verifiable, for starters.
Moreover, multiple editors and admins have shown many of your article edits to be either fabricated from whole cloth or taken from sources which were similarly fabricated, never mind the vast quantities of repetitive and disruptive material you have posted to article talk pages. Please review WP:TROLL and WP:Sockpuppet, which I think apply to your edits on Wikipedia and I say that it in good faith. Lastly, you've wasted a lot of my time. I find this unhelpful. Wyss 22:21, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

An inquiry has taken place into the accusation that Ted Wilkes has been breaching his probation by using sockpuppets to circumvent the ban on his editing of articles on the topic of a person's alleged homosexuality and bisexuality. Using the software the arbcom and those who do the checks have established that DannyB and karl Schalike are Wilkes's sockpuppets. Both have now been blocked indefinitely from editing Wikipedia. Given the fact that through using them and his own 3 past blocks Wilkes has now far exceeded the maximum limit of blocks required by the arbcom, in accordance with the arbcom ruling Wilkes has now been banned from Wikipedia for one year and will not be allowed to edit Wikipedia until 19 March 2007. User:Jtdirl 23:03, 19 March 2006 (UTC) [user's signature de-aliased to conform with my posted user page policies Wyss 23:47, 19 March 2006 (UTC)]

User:Karl Schalike has been more or less a troll and I'm happy to see that account banned. Not having seen the actual checkuser data, I'll defer further comment for now other than to say that at long last, perhaps certain members of arbcomm might stop conflating me with User:Ted Wilkes and start helping me to constructively apply existing written WP policy and widely accepted sourcing methodologies to these social sciences articles which have been so severely disrupted over the past year? Wyss 23:08, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
[improperly signed and rather cryptic post (though I think I understood it) by anon 71.112.115.175 removed according to my posting policy for this page, please sign by typing ~~~~, thanks.] Wyss 02:54, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

em my signature is produced using ~~~~ It is the standard name I always use and have done for years. FearÉIREANN\(caint) 21:12, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

[graphical, potentially misleading signature left intact as an illustration] Wyss 23:15, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
And it looks ridiculous; its distracting, silly and frankly, subtracts from any serious message you may try to make. In short, represents all that is wrong with WP. In my own humble opinion, of course. ;-) Michael Dorosh 21:41, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it is distracting and silly looking (and please don't interpret this as a statement that I think your edits are silly, I'm only talking about your sig). You are User:Jtdirl. Your signature does not express this and I think it's unhelpful. If it is produced by ~~~~ then I humbly request that you disable whatever software or script does that to your username. Meanwhile, if you are unwilling to use your true username as a signature on my talk page, let's drop it, I'll change it to User:Jtdirl whenever you post here without comment or fuss.
Next topic: Please consider this a request from me to you for assistance in amicably resolving, while following WP's existing written policies, arbcomm's errors in fact and process (which I assume were made in good faith) in User:Onefortyone's RfAr. Thanks in advance for any help you can give :) Wyss 23:15, 20 March 2006 (UTC)
Not yet. Get out of it, Wyss. the signature is grand and says more about the user than the original collection of consonants that used to be the user name. If it's the appearance that annoys you (rather than the user's views), then blame Irish republican style co-ordinators (most of them from the Bogside). I stick with Shtove, as it was the nearest to my name available when I was choosing a tag - it doesn't annoy, but nor does it inform. And Michael Dorosh can post his full name, but what's in a name without address and CV, or even photo? And would MD then expect others to open themselves up to the kind of abuse that Musical Linguist has received because of her willingness to identify herself? Apart from that, there is a user who goes by Can't Sleep Clown Will Eat Me, and another uses the witty WeniWidiWiki - any objections to them? Adolf Hitler is resting very quietly without you - so disappointing. The article might need some care and attention.--shtove
User:Jtdirl's graphical signature does not depict his account username in any helpful sense, and the graphic is disruptive. The only one I "blame" is User:Jtdirl, who IMHO should use his account username when signing. I don't think criticising User: Michael Dorosh is helpful either, he signs with his user name (same alpha-numeric characters and everything! :) The other usernames you mentioned aren't the pith of it, it's how they would sign them on my talk page (and elsewhere, I would only hope), four tildes please, that I'm talking about.
The form [[User:Shtove|shtove]] is also slightly misleading, because I can't memorize it correctly from the alias. Why some editors don't think about stuff like this is rather beyond me, but there it is.
As for AH, I can't edit the encyclopedia until arbcomm has fixed its mistake. Wyss 00:31, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

[Personal attack by User:Jtdirl removed] Wyss 01:52, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

And now you're criticising the use of my tag! Goodnight and good luck, Wyss.--shtove 01:23, 21 March 2006 (UTC)
No, I'm asking folks to sign here with four tildes (~~~~) Wyss 01:52, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

[Personal attack by User:Jtdirl removed] Amazing. Wyss 04:22, 22 March 2006 (UTC)