Talk:2011–12 Los Angeles arson attacks/Archive 1

Merge
This page should be merged into 2011 Los Angeles arson spree as it appears to cover the same incidents, but the other page is much better developed. - 220  of  Borg 18:20, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The information on that page should be moved to this article because the article was older and had a more accurate title. It was not just one arson spree.--YummyDonutsmmm (talk) 21:26, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree it should be a redirect… so I'm going to be bold and do so. Dori ☾Talk ⁘ Contribs☽ 23:44, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Bring the 2011 article contents to the 2011-12 article. Activity continues in 2012. -- Yellowdesk (talk) 00:44, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Exactly, oh I know this article is better, but I do not know which was made first.--YummyDonutsmmm (talk) 01:58, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * What do you mean this article is better? This article when I first saw it had more maintenence tags than sentences. Then you copy-pasted my article into this title and added stuff about the Arab spring and two arsonists. And then you pronounce your article better. BCS  (Talk) 03:19, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

One cleanup possibility
Right now, things are a mess. Can we agree on that, at least?

Here's how I suggest making things better:


 * 1) Delete 2011–12 Los Angeles arson attacks Sorry, but it has to happen for the rest of this to work.
 * 2) Revert 2011 Los Angeles arson spree back to
 * 3) Rename 2011 Los Angeles arson spree to 2011–12 Los Angeles arson attacks
 * 4) Normal editing can then proceed with the goal of updating and improving the article

The end goal of all this:
 * Everything that's good is kept
 * Everything that's bad is gone
 * All the relevant edit history is saved

Your thoughts? Anyone have a better idea? Dori ☾Talk ⁘ Contribs☽ 04:52, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I've requested an admin do a history merge and admonished the user who did the cut and paste move which caused this mess. A history merge is required per internal attribution requirements, specifically the CC-BY-SA and GDFL licensing. If a histmerge is too entangled, the only other real option is linking back to the page histories prominently on the talk pages. --64.85.221.131 (talk) 18:12, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Both are good ideas, DoriSmith's and the IP's. I think YummyDonutsmmm should agree before we delete, though. BCS  (Talk) 20:17, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay, well, it does not make sence to delete anything, because that would cause more confusion with deleted edit history. The pages involved are 2011–12 Los Angeles arson attacks, 2011 Los Angeles arson spree, and 2011 Southern California fires. I am okay with some of these pages being moved, if that means all of the page historys are combined into one larger page history. I think they should be moved to 2011–12 Los Angeles arson attacks because that has the most coverage, is set up the best, is not a redirect, has the most edits in its history, and was the first of these to be created. Making a move should be easy enough, and although I would rather have the article set moved to 2011–12 Los Angeles arson attacks. I am okay if it is moved to one of the other 2 articles. It really should not be too difficult to move all of the articles/pages into 1 article instead of deleting all but one. I refer to what another editor mentioned earlier about attribution. All of the edits shall remain attributed to who contributed them, even if those edits are not currently repesented in the article. Just consult me again before you do anything. So in summary, do page moves or switch around redirects, but preferably towards 2011–12 Los Angeles arson attacks and DO NOT do any deletions.--YummyDonutsmmm (talk) 22:03, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I suppose I agree that both are good ideas, but I agree more with the IP's because the other idea has a major flaw in that it wants to delete.--YummyDonutsmmm (talk) 22:10, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Step 1 would actually not have to happen because you coould just copy-and-paste the revision of the article mentioned in step 2 to 2011–12 Los Angeles arson attacks. You could replace the current text or could try to somehow merge the edits of the copy-and-pasted version with the good and important updated edits on this article. Maybe add a horizontal bar at the bottom then add the copy-and-paste text below that and even add a tag informing of the paradigm shift.--YummyDonutsmmm (talk) 22:18, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Oh, and also you mention relevant edit history while all of it is relevant at least to the extent that it is important enough to stay in the edit history.--YummyDonutsmmm (talk) 22:19, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
 * You obviously don't know much about page histories, so I will inform you. Firstly, I don't see why you want to keep them because they aren't extremely important. Secondly, deleted pages' histories can not be seen by anyone except admins or higher. Pages can't be moved to a title that already exists, so a page has to be deleted. Your article being better is your opinion. Two articles can't be moved into one. Also, copying and pasting is frowned upon on Wikipedia. Having two of the same article separated by a horizontal bar wouldn't work. Deleting isn't really bad, but it could be avoided. Further reading:
 * WP:MOVE
 * WP:PAGEHISTORY
 * BCS  (Talk) 00:08, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Wow, I did not know pages could not be moved to titles that already exist. Maybe the best thing to do is to just continue editing this article. Anyting else that would be needed to be copy and pasted would be minor.--YummyDonutsmmm (talk) 00:29, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * In addition to what I just said, maybe there could be a major edit tag like I have seen before. This article already has a perfect or near perfect title.--YummyDonutsmmm (talk) 00:32, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * As of when you posted this section and message I agree this was a mess, but I think it is already much less of a mess and may not be a mess anymore. There is still room for improvement, however.--YummyDonutsmmm (talk) 00:37, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Is the Twitter section really necessary? Also, it seems that the article repeats itself in certain places. Paris1127 (talk) 23:45, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * The history merge was made impossible due to technical limitations because the original article was edited several times after the cut-and-paste-move. Therefore, as per the instructions at Copying within Wikipedia, I have added the proper attribution template on both talk pages. 2011 Southern California fires was moved using the move tab, so no attribution was lost there, so there is no need to acknowledge it further. Please, YummyDonutsmmm, do not make anymore cut-and-paste-moves; these violate the terms of use (specifically the CC-BY-SA and GDFL licensing) you agreed to when you hit the save button and further violation will result in your editing privileges being revoked.  2011 Los Angeles arson spree cannot be deleted now, for aforementioned attribution reasons, and its talk page has been tagged as such.  Bar Code Symmetry's contributions to the bulk of the copied text are preserved in the talk page templates, but have been made unnecessarily murky by the cut-and-paste-move.  I don't know of anything else that can be done in this situation, so I think this can be marked as resolved.  (Sorry, I have a stupid dynamic IP so it keeps changing -- I'm the same person as the above IP.) --64.85.220.69 (talk) 08:31, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Copy Edit and linkrot
I like that edit with the recent tags added. They are very relevant and may spark some constructive change.--YummyDonutsmmm (talk) 00:41, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * But didn't you then remove the tags "(removed tags for DYK nomination)"? This was after, less than an hour before, also removing  a multiple issues template saying"(I removed the multiple issues template because the issues have since been fixed.) ", when in fact all those issues still exist?


 * What is your train of thought here 'YummyDonuts'? This page looks like crap! is substandard . It still lacks citations for many statements, and has bare URLs in the text(!) and references!  I have never said this before on WP but you are exhibiting severe wp:ownership issues over this article. You currently have ≈104 edits. It is about time you started taking the advice of the much more experienced editors  (Dori has ≈7,810 edits and 'Bar Code'(BCS) has ≈1,200) who are trying to give you good advice.  If you had accepted the re-direct of this page to the other better article, whatever the title, this situation would not exist. - 220  of  Borg 09:19, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * YummyDonuts, don't be discouraged by the resistance you are seeing on Wikipedia, but please be sure to brush up on the basics before going any further. Rgrds. --64.85.220.69 (talk) 10:12, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Alright, I was just trying to help, but yeah sometimes I think I am the most right and I get frustrated. I like mostly what the others are planning. Has it been resolved yet? I am quite alright with how it is right now as long as this page continues to be improved. Any problems could be fixed on that page right? The redirects could be kept because people would search for them.--YummyDonutsmmm (talk) 18:49, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Notability discussion
Hello, this is a message to a) explicitly inform this page's other editors of what I've done and b) prevent a cleanup tag edit war, which we seem to be on the brink of. After reviewing the references section, I have re-added the link-rot tag (see ref #2, #3, and #8 here). Also I have removed the notability tag because, after reviewing WP:EVENT and WP:GNG, this article qualifies as notable. I think it's appropriate that we refrain from making more unilateral edits to the tags until we can agree that the respective problems have been addressed. Thank you and I urge everyone to retain the utmost civility, Magister Scienta talk 15:04, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Yeah, we should stay civil. We should still continue to discuss.--YummyDonutsmmm (talk) 18:54, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Where is the "enduring historical significance" or "re-analyzed afterwards" aspect here, please re-add the event tag. Mt  king  (edits)  19:57, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I don't have any issue with changing the tags when appropriate, but I'm still not sold that there is a notability deficit. It seems to me that this event passes WP:GNG with flying colors. Of course, I'm only one editor and I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Cheers, Magister Scienta talk 21:08, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * My simple point is that there is no enduring historical significance of this event, it fails WP:NOTNEWSPAPER, it was a widely reported crime, in a traditionally slow news period but that does not mean there should be an encyclopaedia article on it. Mt  king  (edits)  21:19, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Truthfully I'm still a little confused by your argument. If your willing to stipulate that that the subject of the article "has received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject," then regardless of any other Wikipedia notability policy, WP:GNG mandates that it must be notable. Furthermore, there has already been an AfD on this article; the outcome was speedy keep. You make excellent points about how this issue applies to WP:NOTNEWSPAPER, but as I'm sure you know, an article only has to satisfy one criterion (in this case WP:GNG) to be notable. If you are still displeased with my reluctance to re-adding the notability tag, perhaps the best thing to do (this is a lesser of two evils situation) is renominate this article for deletion and seek a definitive consensus. I eagerly await your thoughts, Magister Scienta talk 21:32, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Things can receive significant coverage of a routine nature take for example a NFL game, but still not meet the requirements for an article, in the case of this event, it did receive news coverage as it was a current news story, but it is not likely to be significant long term, unless for example as a result of this there is a move to change the law (and being intentionally silly to make the point) to make possession of more than a litre petrol in LA illegal. Mt king  (edits)  22:37, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Truthfully, we could discuss this issue further (it's an interesting one and please don' think this message means I conceded) but I'm more curious to hear what you would like done. Do you want the page tagged, moved, deleted, etc.? Thanks, Magister Scienta talk 02:14, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * For starters I think that the tag should go back on to alert others that there is an issue, and if nothing comes up then it is probably going back to WP:AfD. I have added it twice now, not going to do it a third time, I ask as you removed it to consider replacing it.  Mt  king  (edits)  02:23, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I have to admit, it seems pointless to me to put the tag on the article and not resubmit an AFD. I know you said you don't want to, but I think the best course of action here is the following: Put the tag on the article and resubmit an AFD. If the result of the discussion is keep then tag is removed, if the result is delete, merge, redirect, etc., well, we'll go from there. Cheers,  Magister Scienta talk 02:29, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I have submitted it to AfD, as I said I won't re-add the tag now, but if by some fluke it does survive then will reconsider in the wake of the closing admins comments. Mt  king  (edits)  02:43, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you, now all we can do is wait...and comment :) Magister Scienta talk 02:45, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Cleanup tags discussion

 * Just to let everyone know, I just reverted Tomker's edit removing all cleanup tags because a) there are still bare URLs b) the article is still an orphan and c) he made a unilateral action superseding this discussion and his fellow editors. Magister Scienta talk 21:15, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I do not think issue c is a ligitamite issue or is it? Why would that be an issue?--YummyDonutsmmm (talk) 21:34, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I reverted it back to Tokemers edit without possible an official reversion because it was okay how it was then.--YummyDonutsmmm (talk) 21:37, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * A few things to say, 1) Reason C was more of a grievance than a reason why I reverted, it did not in any way affect my decision to revert his edit. I apologize if I mis-worded my previous comment. 2) It was inappropriate of you to make such as a controversial action without garnering support here, I respect that you want what is best for the article, but the entire idea of having talk-pages is so this doesn't happen. 3) The tags are totally deserved, no other articles link to this page, thus it deserves an orphan tag, there are 2 references of this article composed of bare URLs, thus it deserves the link-rot tag. I'm baffled how another editor could see it any other way. 4) I'm assuming good-faith nonetheless and, in order to prevent an edit war, I'm asking you to revert your previous edit. I'm totally willing to have a discussion on this article, but you need to start being more considerate of your actions. Thank you, Magister Scienta talk 21:46, 4 January 2012 (UTC)
 * Okay, I will revert my edit of deleting the tags like the others did if nobody else does first. I think the links on the other articles were deleted which caused it to be an ophan again. Which references are the ones with link rot and where are they?--YummyDonutsmmm (talk) 22:13, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Hello, just reading your message now. First of all, thank you for willingly reverting your own edits, it is a testament to the civility you have conducted yourself with. As for link-rot tag, at this moment references 9, 12, and 24 need to be cleaned up for the tag to be removed. In regards to the orphan tag, just add links to this article on three (but preferably more) articles and that tag can be taken down. Again thanks, Magister Scienta talk 02:07, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Improvements to the article by information
So, in regards to improvements to the article by information the event in Illinois should be re-added. There are other things on Wikipedia where correlated events even coincidental events are included with an article on an event. It is important to mention relation by coincidence or correlation if not causation.--YummyDonutsmmm (talk) 19:06, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

Request to add or
Hello, I was wondering if other editors also thought this article merited either a cleanup or copyedit tag. Cheers, Magister Scienta talk 02:33, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2011–12 Los Angeles arson attacks (2nd nomination)
We are they contesting the article again? Is it not obvious how important it is? If there are problems with it you can fix it without deleting it. The article has gotten very long, but together we can handle it. Maybe we could split the article?--YummyDonutsmmm (talk) 21:30, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * It is not possible to fix an article that should not be here in the first place by editing it Mt  king  (edits)  21:38, 5 January 2012 (UTC).
 * Unfortunately, one cannot simply fix an article's notability and, truthfully, Mtking has every right to renominate this article for deletion if he feels that to be the appropriate course of action. By the way, you may find it worthwhile to review Wikipedia's notability guidelines, cheers, Magister Scienta talk 23:17, 5 January 2012 (UTC)
 * What's wrong with the notability of this article? It was a huge crime spree.  I'm from LA, and people here were really nervous about their cars or homes being set on fire, especially with is being a drier than normal winter here.  The FBI was called in to investigate and 3 million dollars worth of damage were dealt.  In what way is this not notable?  It was less lethal than the Tuscon shooting, but it is a comparable event that should get its own article.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.215.7.68 (talk) 23:45, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

The story is not just a local LA one, as its been covered by Canadian, British, and German media as well.--Brian Dell (talk) 00:03, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

The acccount of Mtking should be deleted. He's not an asset to Wikipedia. In fact, all he does is intimidate, annoy, harass, and deter new users. Grwzrbzezin (talk) 00:13, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * We should generally focus on the article not the user but if the user's contribution record is essentially limited to trying to get the contributed material of others deleted, I would agree that the user should consider a break from this activity for a while and think about where material could be added to Wikipedia or at least what sort of editing could be done that does not so routinely invite conflict.--Brian Dell (talk) 00:35, 6 January 2012 (UTC)


 * For the record, I voted keep and am currently engaged in a debate with Mtking on the AfD page supporting this article's existence. Please know though that, procedurally speaking, there was nothing wrong with what Mtking did. The reason I encouraged him renominating this article for deletion (yes that was me) was in hope's of garnering a support consensus and finally expelling any notion of a lack of notability. Cheers, Magister Scienta talk 00:49, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
 * People whose sole or primary interest appears to the removing material from Wikipedia are not encouraging new editors to participate in the project, both through their undoing the work of others and the generally unwelcoming comments that seems to be forthcoming from these types. I do not understand the mentality because by and large Wikipedia articles, even non-notable ones, are not doing them any harm.  As far as I'm concerned, if even one person can be expected to find an article useful for whatever reason, that's presumptively enough of a reason to keep it.--Brian Dell (talk) 11:10, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
 * I found the article useful, and then I saw that it had multiple deletion requests and its existence is now in doubt. Your statement summarizes the situation with Wikipedia as reported in the news. The hassle factor from deletionism is a deterrent. Incidentally, the number of kilobytes in the documentation of the bureaucracy and fighting has far exceeded the number of kilobytes of information in the article. It's strange, to say the least, that Wikipedia wants to consider Harry Burkhart less relevant to Californians than Octomom and all the obscure minutae and trivia of Pokemon and whatnot. (BTW since when is death a requirement for notability? Just take a recent example, some crooks scammed the little city of Bell, Calif. and there is a page devoted to it - nobody died in that deal. This Harry Burkhart is all over the news in multiple countries). Transmission-builder-exec (talk) 20:24, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Sock puppet investigation now open
I feel that I should probably note that I've filed WP:Sockpuppet investigations/YummyDonutsmmm. Those who are interested can add their comments there. Dori ☾Talk ⁘ Contribs☽ 02:14, 6 January 2012 (UTC)