User:Silence/Archive0003

Re: Yehoshua ben Yosef
Hi, Scientz here. I really have no interest in fighting, or starting an edit war. I do, however, want to debate the fact that having a Yehoshua ben Yosef article is, as you put it, "Entirely speculative while pretending to be purely factual." I have now read Historical Jesus, and its talk page is full of controversy as well. This is clearly a controversial topic. I did offer a potential solution, in that two articles be enough. One for Jesus, from the POV of researching the divine Lord and Saviour of the Christian religion and all of its varying denominations. And another for Yehoshua (or Yeshua, or some other appropriate title--I'm really not hung up on the name) ben Yosef, from the POV of researching the non-divine man who influenced the course of World History in the few decades preceding the First Jewish-Roman War of 66-70 AD.

Everything Christian goes in Jesus, everything that isn't dogma (but is serious scholarship on the issue nonetheless) goes in the other.

What do you think?

Scientz 17:02, 1 November 2005 (EST)


 * When did I say that having a Yehoshua ben Yosef article is "entirely speculative while pretending to be purely factual"? What I said is that the current article is that. And it is: it claims that the image at its top is "artist's rendering of Yehoshua ben Yosef", when actually it's a CG reproduction of a random 1st-century Jew living in Jesus' general area, and when it was actually popularized as a rendering of Jesus&mdash;your wording will mislead readers into thinking that the creation of that image somehow substantiates the claims made elsewhere in the article or supports the use of the name "Yehoshua ben Yosef", when really it's just a complete digression added in to try to add historical weight to your side of the debate. "Our side has the right general appearance for Jesus and yours doesn't, therefore our other claims are probably right too!" Sneaky. The first line was also enormously problematic at the time I edited it, although you've improved that by now. "Yehoshua ben Yosef, also known as Yeshu or Yeshua (bar or ben) Yosef, a Jewish patriot and martyr, heir to the title "King Of The Jews" through the royal line of David." sounds exactly like you're describing a specific, definite historical figure.
 * "I have now read Historical Jesus, and its talk page is full of controversy as well. This is clearly a controversial topic." - What the heck does that have to do with anything? Merging the articles will help the controversy, not worsen it, by centralizing the debate in one place and making sure that we don't end up with a massively inconsistent coverage of Jesus/Yehoshua by segregating the editing excessively and redundantly.
 * "I did offer a potential solution, in that two articles be enough." - You did not offer a potential solution, you offered to ignore the problem altogether because you don't want to bother with trying to improve Wikipedia's already-existing articles, and instead just want to be free to cultive your own specific POV on a totally distinct and new article, even though 100% of its subject is redundant to the already-existing Jesus pages. It is completely contrary to the spirit of Wikipedia to start new articles because you disagree with the current ones; if you have a problem with what we have on our current articles, the whole point of the Wiki system is for you to try to change and fix what we have now, not to go off on your own and start a whole other article so you don't have to go to the trouble of compromising with anyone! Splitting up these articles unnecessarily does a disservice to our readers.
 * "One for Jesus, from the POV of researching the divine Lord and Saviour of the Christian religion and all of its varying denominations." - I'm trying to think of a polite way to express how wrong that is. Jesus is about every significant perspective of the individual Yehoshua/Jesus/Isa/etc., not about the Christian perspective. The Christian perspective is on Christian perspectives of Jesus, not Jesus itself (though it's summarized there too). The entire point of the Jesus article is to serve as a giant hub for briefly touching on every major view of the individual commonly referred to as "Jesus", regardless of what name they used for him (and there have been tens of thousands of names, so if we had an article for aech name we'd be destroyed), and to provide links to articles where the topics can be gone into in more depth.
 * What you don't seem to realize is that Wikipedia naming policy has nothing to do with what name is most accurate or true or anything else&mdash;article names don't matter on Wikipedia!! Rather, article names are based on Google hits, predominance in popular culture, and absurd things like that, purely for the sake of convenience and to avoid having to have fights over which name is "better"&mdash;by avoiding the issue altogether and making no judgment about the most accurate name in the title, we can more effectively present all the POVs within the article. Plus it's just a matter of practicality to have the article listed at the place where the majority of people will look for it. Much more people know about "Jesus" than about "Yehoshua ben Yosef", but they should be able to find out about both names aplenty on Names and titles of Jesus. Likewise, they should be able to find out plenty about historical reconstructions of Jesus (like the one your page discusses) on historical Jesus. Why do you insist on having your own special article just for what you think, when it's so clearly redundant to countless articles that would benefit enormously if you just took the time to help them rather than going off on your own to work on a new article that covers the exact same topics they do? Wikipedia has different articles for different topics, not for different POVs on a single topic.
 * "And another for Yehoshua (or Yeshua, or some other appropriate title--I'm really not hung up on the name) ben Yosef, from the POV of researching the non-divine man who influenced the course of World History in the few decades preceding the First Jewish-Roman War of 66-70 AD." - If you're not hung up on the name, than why, for the love of god, why, do you object to putting it on "Historical Jesus" purely as a matter of convenience?! Since any name we choose will obviously, clearly, absolutely, no matter what, be a guess, why bother to try to figure out what the best guess is, when we have an easy way to avoid guessing at all by just going with the most popular name and then analyzing his actual name within the article?! Merge your article with historical Jesus! Both articles need some serious help to get up to standards, and both will get twice as much of it if they're one and the same. The only reason we would possibly have to have a separate article for a different name for Jesus is if (1) that name was only used by a single, distinct group, and so using it is nothing but a shorthand for describing a single specific group's views on Jesus (e.g. Isa is nothing but a shorthand for "Muslim views on Jesus" chosen purely for the sake of convenience because there happens to be great consensus as to that name within Islam; if there was more consensus on Jesus' name for Jews, we'd have the same in place of Jewish view of Jesus), and (2) that name described a certain specific movement or perspective on Jesus that already merits its own, distinct article that doesn't currently exist. Your article does not meet either standard&mdash;Yehoshua, as you've noted, is a name used by countless different religions and historical groups (though numerous historians also dispute it, or at least consider it highly speculative and hypothetical), and thus is too vague to be at all informative as an article title, whereas "Historical Jesus" will instantly tell anyone who sees it exactly what the article is about: Jesus as a historical figure.
 * "Everything Christian goes in Jesus, everything that isn't dogma (but is serious scholarship on the issue nonetheless) goes in the other." - Totally, absolutely, 100% unacceptable. Wikipedia does not have one article for "Augustus Caesar in contemporary Roman mythology" and one for "Augustus Caesar in history", and if it did, it would use names like those, not one name that's more "historical" and one that's less, and furthermore, it would mention both perspectives fully on its main article (Caesar Augustus in the example I gave, Jesus in the example we're discussing). Wikipedia already has more than enough articles on all the perspectives you define, so your article is redundant and should be incorporated into them to make them broader and more useful analyses of the subjects they discuss. More importantly, however, you miss the fact that the Jesus article is already supposed to provide a perspective on the historical Jesus! Did you miss the entire pages of information on that article dealing with things like "historical and cultural background", "historicity of Jesus", etc.?! The name of an article has nothing to do with the fact that it must adhere to NPOV regulations. It's just whatever's the most common name. OK? -Silence 03:27, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Template:Infobox_Philosopher - how it can be improved?
Hi - I'm the creator of the philosopher infobox. I saw your criticism of it on Template_talk:Infobox_Biography and I'm wondering if you can offer any suggestions, which would be most welcome! Things like it's too big, not helpful, etc.. Thanks. FranksValli 23:05, 5 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Certainly. I apologize for not coming to you first off with my criticism, but I'm busy with many other projects and didn't want to get pulled into a lengthy dispute. I'll use an example template from Friedrich Nietzsche. Fifteen of the problems I see are:
 * Too big.
 * Largely redundant. Most of the information can be easily gained from the passage of the article, and repeating it in a giant template is a poor use of space. And if any of the information isn't included somewhere in the article already, it certainly should be!
 * Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a baseball card set. Template use is discouraged, just as lists and other fancy non-textual things are discouraged, whenever a viable alternative is possible with just normal articles. Although there are many cases where templates are a big help to an article, in most cases, simpler is better.
 * It's stylistically similar to a template I hate (though I won't oppose its use in every article, just the ones where the alternative is clearly better): the Biography template. In some ways its better, since it provides much more important information, but in other ways its worse, because it takes up ten times as much space.
 * I don't mind "School", "Main Interests", "Influences", and "Influenced" much, because they're very interesting and compact ways to summarize how the philosopher fits into the philosophical tradition in general. Honestly, I'm actually a bit tickled by those tidbits of data; they're pretty awesome, whether they're true or not. :) However, remember that many of these things are highly disputable, which is another of the main reasons to avoid providing so much information in a template: it makes it impossible to easily cite sources (and even if you do, it just makes the template ugly and cluttered), and sources are vital to maintain Wiki:NPOV. This is the entire reason Wikipedia uses articles instead of just giant templates of facts in ordered rows: because so many things are disputable, and almost as many are disputed! Putting information in an infobox makes it sound like Wikipedia is stating that these are facts. And often, they aren't. This is a very big problem. Though it's not one I'll focus on, because I'm much more interested in aesthetic and utilitarian concerns than in political correctness. But I bring it up because most other people would, and so you can keep it in mind. Also remember that trying to avoid stating anything controversial in a template is not a solution, but the first steps to another, equally problematic situation: one where a template sacrifices meaning and interesting information for avoiding stepping on anyone's toes, sterilizing and draining the life out of those little boxes of data. In some ways, that's even worse than having a somewhat disputable template. The easiest solution? Just don't use infoboxes for this stuff!
 * "Quote". If I was to pick one piece of the template to remove (aside from "Philosophers By Era", I'll discuss that below), it'd probably be this one. Long ago a firm consensus was reached that Wikipedia would not pick out quotes to head up each article with. Fun as doing so may be, it's decidedly and without a doubt not encyclopedic to remove someone's words from context and put them up as though they represent a man's entire belief system, when people clearly change their beliefs from year to year, clearly have more depth than all that, and when so often interpretations of quotes are heavily disputed and thus require context and explanation to be at all meaningful&mdash;especially philosopher quotations! The entire "quotations" issue is a huge can of worms which was long ago resolved by the creation if WikiQuotes, which was specifically created because of this problem, as a repository for quotations that would give a much fuller view of a person's famous philosophies by not putting them completely out of context (though anything less than WikiSource does that to some extent). Wikipedia needs to continue this trend of moving away from out-of-context quotations as much as possible, not backtrack and include even more quotations. In my view, the only time when quotations are appropriate for any article is when they're part of the article text and being used to explain some view or other significant detail, not when they're just laid out there on their own, though if it's as part of a "Quotes" section or similar I'll tend to leave it alone since it's not completely distinct, even though, really, I should be attacking even those sections and fighting to get them moved to WikiQuote, to minimize the redundancy. Again, Wikipedia is not a baseball card set: it does not need a catchphrase for its articles.
 * "Famous ideas". If I was to pick two pieces of the template to remove, this would be one of them&mdash;in fact, I might even remove this one if I could only choose one to remove, just because it has even more potential for abuse than the "Quotes" idea, by not even attempting to use his worsd against him, but rather using attempts to summarize paraphrasings of his general ideas! Do I even have to explain why it's not acceptable to say "these were Nietzsche's famous ideas"? Many of Nietzsche's "most famous ideas" weren't his ideas at all, but were inspired by misinterpretations of what he said; mentioning this ideas in the article is perfectly fine, because there they can be given their proper context. But just listing them as though they were fact is not OK. Likewise, many of his most important ideas are not his "most famous" ones at all! Wikipedia should not be a place to repeat old quotes and mistaken assumptions about philosophers, but a place to get actual reliable information on them. Moreover, arguably most damningly of all, if these are an accurate, informative, and highly significant summary or excerpt of a philosopher's views, why not just put them in the opening paragraphs of the article? As with much of the rest of the template, redundancy is a big problem here, and with this row there's also the great problem of controversy and, like the quote one, out-of-context problems. Most philosophers simply can't in any way be understood without at least a few paragraphs explaining the context and details of their views. One line simply will not do. And thankfully, it doesn't have to: we have a whole article to put all this information in. So let me ask you:
 * Don't you think it's possible that one of the reasons the Nietzsche article is currently so lacking is because people have spent so much time and energy and thought debating and working on a ridiculously huge template for it, rather than working on the article text? Not to simplify a long, complex edit history and an article with a variety of long-standing issues, but just think about it. This massive, brightly-colored, all-consuming template, appealing though it may be, seems to have a decidedly negative effect on its articles, not only on its readers, but also, possibly, on its editors.
 * "Major Works" takes up too much space, and any author should already have a "Major Works" section on his page with a more complete and less cluttered list of such things. If I was to pick three rows to remove from this template, this would be the third row, after "Famous ideas" and "quote". After those three parts of the template, my main objections are with the template as a whole, not with any specific aspect of it, so removing them (or just removing "Quote" and "Famous idea" and shortening "Major Works", if you prefer) would probably be the easiest way to satisfy my concerns, next to simply deleting the template entirely&mdash;which would probably, in the end, be best, though I feel bad for the hard work you've clearly put into it. It's simply not a Wikipedia-ish template. And there's another problem with simply listing a bunch of major works at the very top of the article, before having explained what any of them mean:
 * What will any of them mean to a new reader of the article? Remember that articles should be designed to help people who have never read anything about these people before. How does listing a bunch of mere names of fellow philosophers, philosophical texts, and philosophical movements tell anyone anything about Nietzsche except people who already know plenty about Nietzsche, and who thus, ironically, are the ones who need this article the least! Wikipedia policy is to assume ignorant readers as much as possible in general-interest articles, and such assumptions are probably far from baseless in many cases. Read up on Guide to writing better articles if you haven't already, and reconsider what information a person who knows none of these terms would actually want at the top of biographocai articles like the ones about western philosophers. Sure, I'm a huge fan of the compact and fascinating list of movements and philosophers and all that, but this article isn't being written for me, it's being written for people who have at best only heard the name "Nietzsche" in passing and want to understand the guy's life! A template like this runs directly contrary to that goal. It's written for philosophers, not for the general public, and that's not a good thing.
 * Inconsistent with the style of all other types of articles. A relatively minor problem, since editors are not discouraged from experimenting with layout and trying to improve article formats or keep things fresh. However, it's important to keep in mind that many people coming to an article that uses this template for the first time will be very surprised by such a massive template immediately confronting them, and I'd say at least some of them will actually be scared off from reading the article by just how huge and complicated it is. Which brings me to the next problem:
 * Templates work best when they're small and compact, even if that means subdividing one templates into multiple templates so readers don't get overwhelmed. The exact same principle holds true for articles: the ideal article is moderate-sized, not large, because too much of anything will unbalance a page and look terrible and crowded, not giving the article room to breathe and flow naturally and smoothly, as all articles should. A clean, minimalistic article is calming, informative, zen, crisp and clean and refreshing as a mountain spring. An article packed with images or templates is eccentric, rushed, jumbled and chaotic, zipping back and forth and mashing things together in its explosive rush to present too much information too quickly and in too many different ways. And an article with no images or templates at all (or very few) is dry, slow, boring all but the most dedicated people to sleep. So we should both avoid completely stale articles, and also avoid articles that overdo it with the gimmicks, since both will drive away readers by the thousands. As in life, moderation is virtue.
 * I don't like "Philosophers by era". It doesn't add anything to the template, and belongs more in the articles about movements than the articles about philosophers. For anyone who wants to see that stuff, you should just link to "Western Philosophy" at the top of the template, by which someone can reach History of Western philosophy. Cut it off.
 * A minor objection: Why so much capitalization? Why "Place of Birth" instead of "Place of birth", "Philosophers By Era" instead of "Philosophers by era" (or at the very least "Philosophers by Era")? Just as article titles aren't capitalized if they wouldn't be capitalized in normal conversation, so are entries in a table or infobox almost never capitalized unnaturally. Also, a related minor objection: why aren't the written works italicized?
 * An objection I also have with the infamous biography template: why mention when he was born and died, or where he was born and died, when most of that is already mentioned at the very top of the article&mdash;in other words, a few inches to the left of the information you're giving is the exact same information! This is a crippling problem with this entire template format: it's supremely, nauseatingly redundant. Furthermore: is it really important for us to have drilled into our heads when and where these people died? Who cares if the guy was born in Saxonry or in Saarland, whether he died in August 25th or August 26th? What difference does it make? Not only is this painfully redundant, but it's also useless, telling us nothing of value whatsoever about the actual person, his views, his life, reactions to his beliefs, nothing! That's why I'll never give up fighting the bio template. But that's a long-term battle, clearly, since it has so much support; this should be a short-term battle, because it's much more clearly a major issue with articles to have such monstropolous templates looming monolithically over a series of extremely important articles on Wikipedia.
 * Anyway, thanks for taking the time to come see me when you found out I had an issue with this. Many people would have reacted much more aggressively, so I'm impressed that you actually messaged me to see what I thought after my less-than-diplomatic criticisms, just as I'm impressed that you came up with a template with so many potential uses, even though I don't think that Wikipedia is quite the place for it. :) -Silence 00:22, 6 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Wow, I was at first surprised to see so many criticisms, but then I realized that this is very useful to me, maybe more than you'd think. I'm still reading through all of them, but I've read about half so far and you make some good points, and a agree with most of them.  It would be cool to move a lot of the information out of the template and into the article, and maybe make that part of the article a standard to have on all philosopher's pages (i.e. a section on who they influenced, who they were influenced by, their most important/popular ideas, etc.).  Do you mind if I copy your criticisms to the template's talk page?  I'd like to go through each of the points and try to improve the infobox step by step.  Thanks again for your helpful criticisms!  FranksValli 07:53, 6 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Sounds like we're a good team. I'm the kind of person who talks way too much, and you're the kind of person who can endure, and even profit from, it. :) I'm very glad to see that you've tremendously improved the template, and will now be forced to find some new template to bitch about. Excellent job compacting and better organizing it while keeping all the truly relevant information. I've turned the above into hard code rather than an actual use of your template so it'll stay in more or less the same form in these archives and historians reading back through these conversations to reconstruct my life and works aren't confused. -Silence 20:29, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Many thanks re Victor Hugo page
Thanks for fixing the image on the Victor Hugo page. As you can see from the Talk:Victor Hugo page, JerseyBob and myself have been working hard on the text (which used to be one long, badly written, unstructured mess). If you have any further suggestions, please do not hesitate to talk to us at the Talk: Victor Hugo page. We're both relative newbies here, though I have an extensive background as an editor in the Canadian publishing industry. Best, VR. --Victoria 00:07, 6 November 2005 (UTC)


 * You're welcome, but I've barely done anything. Fixing layout is easy, all it requires is a little experience with seeing Wikipedia articles and a lot of latent metrosexuality. Thank me if I ever get off my lazy ass and actually copyedit that page! I appreciate the thanks, though, and wish you well in working on a wonderful writer's Wikipedia article. -Silence 00:22, 6 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, I have a wee question for Your Laziness (one that, hopefully, will not require any ass-raising): I've had no problem incorporating External Links up until now. Can you tell me why oh why the link in the following sentence keeps showing up in RED instead of the GREEN it is supposed to be. It links to the desired page just fine, the colour is the only problem:


 * Victor Hugo was the youngest son of Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo (1773-1828) and Sophie Trébuchet (d. 1821).


 * Thanks! --Victoria 01:59, 6 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Er, that link looks blue to me, not red or green. What skin are you using? Presumably one that has external links in red, and internal ones in green? You're linking to the French Wikipedia, after all. Though&mdash;why? Presumably most people who read our Hugo article don't speak French. If we don't yet have articles on some noteworthy people, why not link to the article-less English page, if only to help provoke people to make those articles more quickly? Or at least do both, linking to the nonexistent English page and then including a link next to it, like this: Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo . Or just don't bother at all and let French-speakers use the Interwiki link on the side..? -Silence 02:11, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Saturday Night Live characters appearing on Weekend Update
Wow, you're right, that edit really did make it awesome. Thanks! :) Jacqui  ★ 17:45, 10 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Heh, no problem. It doesn't take much effort to transfer and rephrase a few images and lines of text from existing articles into articles on this article as summaries, or to standardize format a bit&mdash;just a little time. The result is worth it. -Silence 19:52, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Victor Hugo Page -- PLEASE STOP
WHY are you enlarging the images on that page???? If you had bothered to read the history of what has been going on, you would see that we are in the process of trying to REDUCE the page size, not INCREASE it! I just put in a lot of work uploading SMALLER images and now you have not only increased the size of the images, but have also deleted my original images. Have you people never heard of maybe just communicating a little before barging in? I'm exceedingly PISSED OFF. --Victoria 02:57, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

PLEASE STOP!!! Join Victor Hugo discussion page to get an idea of what we are doing -- eg, trying to REDUCE page size, not INCREASE it. --Victoria 03:53, 11 November 2005 (UTC)


 * (Note: The first of the above two comments was added here, but then quickly removed. I was going to let it be, but it seems the conversation has continued; the second comment was posted to my User page, so I moved it here.)
 * Victoria, the page is neither too small nor too large. It is smallish-to-medium in length, if you would please see the page guidelines and compare this with other high-quality biography articles. Our current priority is neither to shorten the article nor to enlarge it, but just to improve it; size is currently a nonissue. Please read the Talk page, where this is being discussed; I already did, a while ago.
 * Also: Pause. Breathe. In. Out. Wikipedia is not on a deadline, and is not a battleground; we are in no rush to get everything perfect, hence why you and I are both free to experiment a little with the layout until we see which one works best. I understand if you are feeling hurt and alienated because people have been tampering with (or suggesting that we do so, at least) an article you've clearly put a great deal of time and effort into, but please do keep in mind that all of us want the exact same thing here. If there is a disagreement as to how to accomplish that, let's discuss it, not fight or shout over it. -Silence 04:06, 11 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I'm afraid I'm the one who started all this commotion about article size. I left a message on Victoria's talk page to let her know that she might want to consider limiting the article size in the future. Then JerseyBob got involved. And the next time I checked my watchlist, I saw ALL CAPS in Victoria's edit summaries! I was just trying to help the newcomers.
 * Don't worry about Victoria. She will be fine when she returns. She just gets frustrated sometimes and has to take a wiki-break. break from Wikipedia. (I read the comment on your user page about overusing wiki- as a prefix.) --TantalumTelluride 04:43, 11 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Hahaha, don't wikiworry about it. Sometimes I pretend to care about things that I don't to make things more interesting. And yeah, I can see better how the thing got out of hand now. Best to wait until it cools off. -Silence 21:34, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Re: Barnstar
Sweet! Thanks for the barnstar :).  And thanks again for your comments on the template.  --FranksValli 18:01, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

Appreciation for your edits to the Hugo Chavez article
We appreciate your changes, and most of them will be kept. However, this article is currently undergoing an FAC accessible here. The FAC attempt currently has overwhelming and unanimous support. However, one of the conditions for that support was that fair use images (such as the one you just added) be kept to an absolute minimum (one or two images). I will thus need to remove the AP fair use image you just added. Please do not add any more fair use images to the Hugo Chavez article; of course, feel free to make any other changes you desire. Regards, Saravask 01:55, 13 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I apologize for adding the image without taking the time to read the comments involved. Very poor, hasty move on my part. Since you were so nice about it and since this really is a remarkably good article, I'll try to put more effort into copyediting the rest of the article. Thanks for taking the time to explain the image situation, and see you around! -Silence 02:48, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Comma confusion
My apologies regarding Katamari Damacy. I thought it was more or less a guideline for any style-related topic that regardless of what style you choose, it is preferable be consistent within an article. I can't find anything specific to support that, and it's really not worth the effort to dig up a citation. Is consistency within an article not a reasonable justification for a style-level change? (I see now there are multiple inconsistencies, in any case, so it's not like the one change I made was helping much in that regard!) &mdash; HorsePunchKid &rarr;&#x9F9C; 03:36, 13 November 2005 (UTC)


 * It is a style guideline that internal consistency is infinitely more important than consistency between distinct articles; this exists primarily to prevent massive edit-war campaigns from sweeping across Wikipedia as prescriptionist grammarians try to establish their specific understanding of the English language by force. It's not ideal, but it works. However, in this case, being inconsistent is consistent, strangely enough: there seems to be a lot of support for not using serial commas whenever it can at all be avoided, but to use them when it improves the understandability of a sentence (such as when each item in the list is rather lengthy, or the sentence is otherwise complex). Personally, I'd prefer it if we just used serial commas everywhere, always; I can understand the reasoning of not using them ("," in this case was originally a replacement for "and", much as newspaper headlines do, so having ",and" is like saying "andand"), but I view the comma as a matter of pronunciation and ease of reading, not as a grammatical word-replacement. Not anymore, anyway. But since my opinion isn't the dominant one, I go along with only using serial commas where really necessary; a list as short as "stars, constellations and Moon" doesn't necessitate it. Of course, the point is exceedingly minor, but the reason I reverted was not because of that specific instance being important, but to correct misconceptions about Wikipedia's comma usage tendencies. Hopefully that's been marginably successful. -Silence 03:54, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

An earnest intellectual debate about hardcore gay sex porn
Hey, it's IronDuke. I'm not sure if I'm putting this in a good place for you. Feel free to move or delete. I read your page which was eerie: our backgrounds are remarkably similar. You put your phone # on your page? That's very wikibrave of you (sorry, I had to do that).

First off, let me say that you are clearly a very sharp, thoughtful individual, and you make many good points. However, the ways in which you make them, adding snarky “um’s” and “er’s,” one-liners like “wrong,” could be construed as troll-baiting, that is, you deliberately attempting to provoke an inappropriate and angry reaction from me so that you may then claim to expose me as a troll to the rest of the community and thereby weaken the force of my arguments. There’s a WP policy against this. Now, to my arguments.

"I was trying (poorly perhaps) to get at the notion that attempting to remove a heterosexist bias in a text where the pictures are quite hetero-oriented is a bit silly." You were confused by this. I will expand: imagine if, at the top of the article there was a banenr reading, “God Hates Gays.” And yet, we were all still focussed on the discussion about the accompanying text. This would be silly, no? Wouldn’t there be a much larger problem in front of us? As for your contention that we run the risk of giving “our readers the idea that gay men don't have sex positions,” I can only ask: who on earth thinks that gay men don’t have sex positions?

You contend that this article is not a how-to, but a list. First, lists aren’t really what WP is about, but even if it were, consider the following section: ''“Furniture – woman on the edge of furniture, legs spread; man stands. The woman reclines or sits on the edge of the furniture - sofa, counter, bed, etc. and spreads her legs. The man stands or kneels, depending on the height of the furniture, supports her legs with his arms, and penetrates her vagina. In this position, he can adjust the angle of his penis to enter her from above or below to effect more stimulation. This position provides a good view for the man of his penetration of her.” '' This is how-to.

''"with cute illustrations that also contains some bizarre (and more than likely invented) sexual "positions."" - Um. I don't quite catch your drift. Aren't all sexual positions "invented"? '' Are you being disingenous here? I only ask because, at the risk of stoking your ego, I say again you are clearly a smart person and I have trouble believing you couldn’t catch my drift. By “made up,” I mean fictional. See my point about “Sorority Fuck,” which, I believe, was invented by one individual. I may be wrong in this, there may be large Sorority-Fuck clubs for all I know, but I doubt it.

"You may have missed my earlier post above" - No, I saw the suggestion. Okay, I hope I’m not being tiresome here, but you obviously either didn’t see it or didn’t digest it, because your response that we’d end up having male/male and female/female on the same page was moote by my suggestion of a specifically gay male page, etc.

[While it's an interesting possibility, it happens to be inefficient, impractical, and, for those who see this as a matter of NPOV, a violation of the Wikipedia:POV fork guideline.]  Let me just take a second here and reiterate what I meant about tone. You begin your sentence with “While it’s an interesting possibility,” indicating that yes, you’re likely to take issue with my suggestion, but that it does have some merit but go on to call it inefficient, impractical and a WP violation. This would be an example of where you’re baiting me. I suggested an “interesting possibility?” Meaning what? It was so wrong and foolish, it holds the interest of the reader? You could just say hey, it’s a violation of WP fork and move on. However, in my view, it is not a violation. I quote from the disambiguation page “Disambiguation is the process of resolving ambiguity—meaning the conflicts that occur when articles about two or more different topics have the same "natural" title. In other words, disambiguations are types of turnpikes that lead to different meanings of a related word.” I believe that is exactly what is going on here.

"Sorry. I'm just not a very creative person. That's why I can't imagine what reason there could be for subdividing this list into multiple lists at this point, except to allow people to avoid having to deal with sexual positions they aren't comfortable with or interested in." Of course you can “imagine” the reason (and again on tone: you can’t imagine” why I believe what I believe means what? My ideas are perhaps so outlandish that your lack of creativity prevents you from understanding them. You see what I mean here?) I gave my reasons for disambiguation more than once. It’s a compromise. Maybe a bad one, but a compromise. What on earth in my postings gave you the idea that I was uncomfortable with male homosexual positions? You say that “we'd just established that you don't subscribe to the belief I criticized above,” and yet, again, the inferences and sneering tone you’d used are meant to insinuate homophobia on my part, in essence saying “Well, suuuure, I guess if you say you don’t hate/fear gays, we have to believe you. But it looks pretty fishy, your insisting on banishing gay people to some other, lesser page.” Again, it makes me feel as though you are trying to bait me, I know not why.

Last point, very minor: yes, I could indeed change the article. Yes, you could revert it, and yes I could revert it back. Then we have an edit war, another plea for input, arbcom, the page is perhaps frozen, etc., all a big headache but one I’d engage in if I felt that depictions or descriptions of gay sex were somehow bad or inappropriate for the WP. And adding “Discussing this is the best way to get things done, regardless of what your position is” as though that were not exactly what I was in fact doing, well…I guess I’ll stop. Thanks for your patience in wading through all this. Feel free to delete this from your page if you find it irksome. IronDuke 03:46, 13 November 2005 (UTC)


 * (I moved the above comment from my User page so there would be more room to respond to it here. I'll reply momentarily.) -Silence 03:54, 13 November 2005 (UTC)


 * "You put your phone # on your page? That's very wikibrave of you (sorry, I had to do that). "
 * Less so when one realizes what it spells.


 * However, the ways in which you make them, adding snarky “um’s” and “er’s,”
 * Good point. Being snarky is just so fun, though! And it's great for expressing my genuine confusion. I'll try to cut down, though.


 * one-liners like “wrong,”
 * Even better point! Maybe I'll even listen. My attraction to in-your-face clarity sometimes renders me decidedly less than diplomatic, and it's a good check for my excessive verbosity to throw in some provocative one-liners. But there are certainly more diplomatic ways to phrase it. I'll try to replace some of my "Wrong"s with some more "Not quite"s and other, less harsh, language.


 * could be construed as troll-baiting, that is, you deliberately attempting to provoke an inappropriate and angry reaction from me so that you may then claim to expose me as a troll to the rest of the community and thereby weaken the force of my arguments.
 * Er (damn! already relapsing!), I've never called anyone a troll in my life. And I don't see how you could be accused of coming here to start trouble when you were only responding to what I said. Other than that, though, your criticism is valid; some of my comments, specifically the ones where I alluded to (including through paralipsis) distaste for homosexual intercourse being behind the opposition to including such positions on the page, were certainly the opposite of helpful in facilitating a reasoned discussion. I hope you can understand my concerns too, though, and why I reacted as I did; some of the more insubtantial arguments on that Talk page genuinely strike me as being based on such leanings.


 * This would be silly, no?
 * Not if the actual article text said the same thing.


 * Wouldn’t there be a much larger problem in front of us?
 * I was under the impression that the text and images were intended to be made to reflect a broader view on the subject. Why wouldn't that be the case? Regardless, arguing that we shouldn't change the text because the images haven't already been changed is cyclic logic; we should change as much as we can as soon as we can, and change the rest later. Wikipedia is by nature a work in progress; that it's not already perfect doesn't mean any aspect of it should be given up on.


 * As for your contention that we run the risk of giving “our readers the idea that gay men don't have sex positions,” I can only ask: who on earth thinks that gay men don’t have sex positions? 
 * You'd be surprised, actually. There are a lot of ignorant people out there. Stating the obvious applies to images as well as text, in situations like this. Plus, the crucial question here is: why not include images of non-heterosexual intercourse on the page, when the text describes such?


 * You contend that this article is not a how-to, but a list.
 * Linking to an official Wikipedia policy that explicitly states that Wikipedia doesn't have any "how-to" articles is "contending"? I'll quote the text for you: "Wikipedia articles should not include instruction - advice (legal, medical, or otherwise), suggestions, or contain "how-to"s. This includes tutorials, walk-throughs, instruction manuals, and recipes." If you want to change that policy, go for it, but do wait until after it's changed to start working on the how-to articles.


 * First, lists aren’t really what WP is about,
 * ... Isn't the article we're talking about called List of sex positions? And isn't it a featured list?


 * This is how-to.
 * No, this is encyclopedia. Good encyclopedias describe practices in detail, and if such detail allows someone to perform the action too, so be it. But we're not an instruction manual here, we're a resource for general information of all sorts. As I said, if there are any clear "how-to" snippets in the list, remove or reword them. Because either way, there certainly shouldn't be.


 * Are you being disingenous here? I only ask because, at the risk of stoking your ego, I say again you are clearly a smart person and I have trouble believing you couldn’t catch my drift. By “made up,” I mean fictional.
 * You did not say "made up", you said "invented". "Invented" is rarely ever used as a synonym in such a context for "fabricated" or "fictitious" or "fake" or dozens of other words that are perfectly good, understandable synonyms in that context. Thank you for clarifying now, though. What you seemed to be saying at the time was that newly-invented (i.e. created or discovered, not "made up") terms shouldn't be included, which I don't see much sense in; if a term's in common usage, it shouldn't matter where it came from or who made it.


 * Okay, I hope I’m not being tiresome here, but you obviously either didn’t see it or didn’t digest it, because your response that we’d end up having male/male and female/female on the same page was moote by my suggestion of a specifically gay male page, etc.
 * That response was to an earlier suggestion that did not specify that detail. Of course, that would just make the pages more fractured and unhelpfully hard to navigate, and still wouldn't solve the chief problem of such a huge number of the terms being repeated on all three (or more) pages, causing ridiculous and unnecessary redundancy. It simply would not work. And thankfully, it doesn't need to. This page would work perfectly fine as a single, comprehensive list of sexual positions in general, without artificial subdivision by sexual orientation.


 * indicating that yes, you’re likely to take issue with my suggestion, but that it does have some merit
 * I pointed out that it is an interesting suggestion because it is an interesting one. It's certainly much more credible than just excluding homosexual sex positions from Wikipedia altogether, and I mentioned considering the position myself several times on the page. It just wouldn't work in practice, in my view. I'm open to contrary evidence or reasoning, if you have any to provide so I can better see what specific page layouts or formatting you'd use to make these pages work well despite the problems that have been mentioned, and despite the fact that the page would also work well as just one page.


 * but go on to call it inefficient, impractical and a WP violation.''
 * I could it inefficient and impractical because it is inefficient and impractical&mdash;it would require either relisting the same positions over and over again on multiple pages, or hiding them on only one page and thus making people going to the other pages have a much harder time finding those positions. I did not call it a WP violation, because I don't believe that this issue has anything to do with NPOV; a sexual orientation is not a "point of view", it's a biological way of life. But since numerous people have argued that this is a POV issue, and since the current tag on the top of the page says so, I gave you a link to the POV Fork page in case you haven't read it already, and to explain to you more clearly what others have been arguing using multiple pages for something like this would amount to.


 * I suggested an “interesting possibility?” Meaning what? It was so wrong and foolish, it holds the interest of the reader?
 * Of course not. You seem to think I'm both more clever and more cruel than I really am. It's interesting because it has its benefits and good qualities, like allowing us to use each party's favorite terminology on their own page. I just don't think it would pan out at all if we actually tried to implement it, and that in the end centralizing the matter on a single page is the best way to handle the sexual positions page. A tiny bit of expansion is all that would be required to incorporate all of the relevant viewpoints currently missing from the page, and that would be that; going to the great length of redesigning the page from the top down and turning it into a whole series of articles is, in my view, unnecessary. Thus, "interesting but impractical" is how I described your idea; if it came across wrong, I apologize.


 * You could just say hey, it’s a violation of WP fork and move on.
 * But that would imply that I think it's a violation of WP Fork. I don't, I just think everyone in this discussion should keep that page in mind, since if this is an NPOV dispute (which I disagree with), and if we are seriously discussing cutting the article apart to represent the different "viewpoints" involved, that page is directly relevant to the debate and should be skimmed through by everyone involved.


 * However, in my view, it is not a violation.
 * Glad we can agree on something.


 * I quote from the disambiguation page “Disambiguation is the process of resolving ambiguity—meaning the conflicts that occur when articles about two or more different topics have the same "natural" title. In other words, disambiguations are types of turnpikes that lead to different meanings of a related word.” I believe that is exactly what is going on here.
 * And here we disagree entirely. Whee. This is not in any way what's going on here; "sex position" has the exact same meaning whether used in the phrase "heterosexual sex position" or "homosexual sex position". Disambiguation applies to different meanings of the same word, or to very similar-looking words, not to a single word that happens to apply to more than one sexual orientation, especially when there's plenty of room on the one page we've got to represent those different orientations.


 * Of course you can “imagine” the reason (and again on tone: you can’t imagine” why I believe what I believe means what? My ideas are perhaps so outlandish that your lack of creativity prevents you from understanding them. You see what I mean here?)
 * Absolutely. This is the one part of my last comment which was quite out of line.


 * I gave my reasons for disambiguation more than once. It’s a compromise. Maybe a bad one, but a compromise.
 * OK. Then we can respectfully disagree on whether it's a good compromise or not. Sounds like a plan!


 * What on earth in my postings gave you the idea that I was uncomfortable with male homosexual positions?
 * "Thus, I would recommed that the page stay essentially as it is, with the tag "heterosexual" applied to it, and anyone who feels that other groups are being left out can mirror the article with their own illustrations and descriptions." Relegating everything non-heterosexual to basically "other", and asking that the other groups be the ones to have to bother with providing any of their information on Wikipedia, and making it sound like you wanted to make the "list of sex practices" article into an exclusively heterosexual, straitlaced (as much as sex positions can be :)), typical list with none of the variety of fascinating and important sex positions that don't fall into this small box permitted to be mentioned, set my alarms off. I subsequently learned that this wasn't your intent, but since you asked, it's those kinds of comments that troubled me.


 * You say that “we'd just established that you don't subscribe to the belief I criticized above,” and yet, again, the inferences and sneering tone you’d used are meant to insinuate homophobia on my part, in essence saying “Well, suuuure, I guess if you say you don’t hate/fear gays, we have to believe you. But it looks pretty fishy, your insisting on banishing gay people to some other, lesser page.” Again, it makes me feel as though you are trying to bait me, I know not why.
 * Er. Sorry? I'll try to pay more attention to possible inferences and tonalities; all I meant was to point out that my comment didn't apply to you since you'd explained your views more fully and they were nothing like what I was criticizing (though I expect that for others, not necessarily anyone involved in the discussion, it would hit closer to tone). Cheh.


 * And adding “Discussing this is the best way to get things done, regardless of what your position is” as though that were not exactly what I was in fact doing, well…I guess I’ll stop.
 * Yeah, I'm pretty much lost at this point.


 * Thanks for your patience in wading through all this. Feel free to delete this from your page if you find it irksome.
 * Not at all! I love wading. I wish more people would take the time to criticize me or my comments fully whenever they feel the need; such in-depth, thought-out responses are the greatest compliment anyone can give me. And such critiques are fascinating at worst, tremendously helpful at best! I'd also love to hear what sort of parallels you've drawn between our lives, from reading my User page. :) Sounds interesting. Anyway, no hard feelings, I hope now we understand each other better and can continue the discussion of how to handle the user page with fewer personal accusations (and I hope I haven't caused any more unpleasant implications with my above comments; if I have, I apologize). -Silence 05:11, 13 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your reply. I guess I'm just not creative enough to see how any of your points have any merit whatsoever [insert AOL acronym indicating laughter at own joke here]. Seriously, thanks for the thoughtful take on my comments. As for our similarities, if I had a User page, I could simply paste all your autobiography under "Me" onto my own page and it would all be true, except I am half-Jewish and opposed to the death penalty in practice but not in principle. PS: Loved your title for this thread. IronDuke 05:40, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Chimps Right and Left
See the evolution/discussion page for several opinions about this matter. Jclerman 02:08, 14 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I already did, and commented on the matter when I made my last edit. -Silence 02:10, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Please understand where I am coming from ...
I began heavily editing the Hugo Chavez article almost two months ago, when it was subject to heavy vandalism and flame/edit warring between rival tribes of contributors. I understand that this is Wikipedia, and that no one is immune from criticism and no contribution is immune from interference. I know that I do not "control" this article. Yet I've never had this level of interference from anyone since I began in late September. I've certainly never had my edits de facto reverted, and it seems an astonishing coincidence that this should happen during the closing stages of the article's FAC. For your information, the introduction you see now was entirely written by me, after I overhauled the article weeks ago. Because the article (and my contributions to them) is no longer subject to mass vandalism and reversion, I take that as a sign that my longstanding editing style on the article is accepted by a broad concensus/majority of readers and contributors. Thus, I ask you to have at least some modicum of tolerance/faith/acceptance to how I now choose to edit the introduction that I myself wrote. Regards, Saravask 06:46, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Oye Señor!
See what my response was here, please.

List of songs that have been considered among the worst ever
What is the point of all your verbose lobbying on the Afd for this? Are you trying to get the percentage above the 89% you cited from the film vote? - its placement at the head of the discussion of course being a faux pas. The few who have voted Delete are entitled to their opinions, which in my view are certainly as valid as voting Keep because "It helps make the internet not suck" (something you neglected to comment on). --JJay 02:22, 16 November 2005 (UTC)


 * The point of my "verbose lobbying" is to get the facts out. The outcome of this VfD will have a large impact on a number of other high-quality articles if it is deleted, and it is vitally important for those articles to be kept in mind throughout the vote, because I fail to see the slightest difference between an article about songs that have been called the "worst ever" and an article about movies that have been called the "worst ever". Until anyone can show me a difference between the two, effectively, we're voting on whether or not to delete both articles, not just one or the other.
 * "Are you trying to get the percentage above the 89% you cited from the film vote?" - Of course not. It would take a ridiculous number of votes for that to even be possible, and 89% is much higher than is typically needed for consensus anyway (and consensus isn't needed for an article to be kept, just lack of consensus to delete). The only reason I linked to the previous vote was because it's almost a direct copy of this vote, and thus should certainly be a major part of this discussion. If you don't like my mentioning the outcome of the last vote, then feel free to remove the "89%" part and just have the link be there for anyone to visit if they want to make as informed a decision as possible.
 * "its placement at the head of the discussion of course being a faux pas." - Not at all. It's as important to the discussion as if this was the second time "List of songs that have been considered the worst ever" was under deletion, in which case the previous debate would certainly need to be linked to prominently, this being the second attempt at that debate. Again, I see no difference between this just being a previous vote on the same article that we need to keep in mind, since every reason for deleting the Songs article has applied equally well to the Movies article.
 * "The few who have voted Delete are entitled to their opinions," - When did I say that they weren't, Mr. Strawman? You're the only one who seems to be against people expressing their opinions right now; I didn't object to anyone voting or commenting on the page with what they thought, I merely pointed out flaws in their reasoning (like failing to take into account that all Wikipedia articles are assumed to only include the most noteworthy information for those articles unless mentioned otherwise, rendering defunct any criticism that the article would need to list every song that anyone's ever called the "worst ever" to be complete; the examples I gave show this to be simply untrue) and disputed their findings. In other words, I began a discussion with them; that's half the reason for these VfDs, ne? You're the one who seems to object to my having a discussion on a page specifically made for votes and debate.
 * "certainly as valid as voting Keep because "It helps make the internet not suck"" - Voting "keep" and giving a silly or joke reason for it is no better or worse than voting for something and not commenting at all, which is allowed. It's completely unlike voting for something and giving a reason that's a falsehood or that fails to recognize a major aspect of all Wikipedia lists. If someone had voted "keep" and based his reason on "it's against Wikipedia policy to delete lists" or some other blatantly untrue statement, I'd have probably commented on that too. Though I can't comment on every silly mistake anyone mistakes; I only focused on the major ones, so future debate could be enhanced by a nice, healthy dose of the truth, along with a sprinkling of perspective.
 * "(something you neglected to comment on)."" - I "neglected to comment on" most of the votes. Why would you ask me to comment on that one, when others didn't comment on it, when there's very little (if anything) to actually respond to that would be of any use whatsoever, and when the person hasn't stated enough about their reason for voting for any sort of information to be provided that would likely better inform the person? I don't dispute anyone's right to vote how they choose, merely the reasoning they use; since "It helps make the Internet not suck" is lack of reasoning more than bad reasoning, and since there's no way to counter that ridiculous argument ("no, it makes the Internet suck!" would just be sinking to his level; is that what you had in mind?), I fail to see how responding to that comment could in any way be constructive or useful. And if someone had voted "Delete. It makes the internet suck.", guess what? I wouldn't have commented on it! Because it would have been a waste of my time no matter what the person was voting for.
 * Also, since this discussion is directly relevant to the VfD, I think I'll copy this exchange to that vote's talk page. -Silence 10:20, 16 November 2005 (UTC)

Busy busy!
Hello Silence! Hope you remember who I am. Actually I am very busy wth my office work now. A deadline is near and secondly it usually took more than two hours to answer your arguments which is too difficult for me to do on daily and even on weekly basis. I have a lot of things to do apart from my office work at home. I hope you wont mind. Don't think I am running away from the argument lol... I know a person here who made a strict atheist to embrace Islam only on logical basis. So never think it is not possible! It may however be quite imposiible for a muslim to become an atheist. Well I am not insulting you which you always think I am. I may get back to you whenever I like but no confirmation and no promise at all. I may even not! I hope you wont mind! Would you? PassionInfinity 05:32, 16 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Heh. Glad to see you're back around, Passion! I enjoyed our discussion; if you feel like continuing it at any time, it's still archived at User:Silence/PassionInfinity, though it's up to you. (If you find that page hard to navigate now that it's gotten so elaborate, tell me and I'll try to come up with a new way to organize the comments.) And I don't doubt that it's possible for you to convince me that a god exists; it's not terribly likely, but we'll see. :) Nor do I consider myself a "strict atheist" any more than I consider myself to be a "strict non-believer-in-Invisible Pink Unicorns"; I just haven't seen any credible evidence for either yet. And no, I don't think you're insulting me now, nor do I always think you are; we've both said a few regrettable things in the past, but hopefully we'll be able to continue our discussion more calmly now that we've each taken a break and put more perspective around the matter, if you want to continue anytime (or start a new debate). And it took me a few weeks to respond to some of your points, so I don't at all blame you for taking a break (or stopping altogether, if that's what you prefer); the advantage of the Internet is that if we ever want to resume, the entire archive of our discussion is available! And if you don't, I'm 100% OK with that; no point having a discussion one of the participants isn't interested in. It's up to you; you know where to find me if you ever want to talk. Wow, I love semicolons. -Silence 11:19, 16 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Can you do me a favour? Please go through the following links! Thanks! PassionInfinity 13:11, 18 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Looks as if you are very busy! You never replied? PassionInfinity 05:45, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Disgusting comments
The comments you made about Hollaback Girl and Cool (song) at Featured article candidates/Hollaback Girl are disgusting, self-conceited, and nasty. You honestly believe that Layla is so deserving of its status? Apparently you do, but you know what? I don't. You will watch and see. This is an encyclopedia that is supposed to document a song's history: music, production, chart success, music video, etc., etc. I highly doubt someone will come to Wikipedia expecting the music solely. If anything, people will definitely be searching for a song's chart positions, records, trajectory, and style. But thanks to you and another user, I quit. I'm moving on to other parts of Wikipedia where the tiniest words will not matter as heavily. But next time when you choose to run your mouth, don't. This is not a personal attack in any way, so please do not take it like that. It's just reflecting your stubborn attitude back at you. --Hollow Wilerding 00:15, 17 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I appreciate that you're upset over your recent failed Featured Article nomination, and are venting here because I was the first person to oppose it (though most of the later objections struck more effective blows against the article's FA qualifications). Such a reaction is understandable; when you have settled down just a tad, I'll gladly discuss any problems you have with my conduct in this matter. I'll also respond to your below comments:
 * "The comments you made about Hollaback Girl and Cool (song) at Featured article candidates/Hollaback Girl are disgusting, self-conceited, and nasty." - I'm sorry you feel that way. If you feel like elaborating on what aspects of my comments there and at the FA you found "disgusting" or "conceited" or "nasty", I'd be happy to hear it, as accurate criticism can only help me improve myself as a person and a functioning editor on Wikipedia, and inaccurate criticism doesn't hurt, and can, in fact, be quite amusing.
 * "I highly doubt someone will come to Wikipedia expecting the music solely." - Strawman. I never once said that I thought any article should discuss "the music solely". I said that it should discuss the music in depth if it's to be a featured article about a song. Two or three sentences is not sufficient time spent on the actual music of a song for any article to meet the criteria for "featured".
 * "But thanks to you and another user, I quit." - The article would not have reached FA status even if I hadn't voted. It probably would not have reached FA status even if the "another user" hadn't.
 * "I'm moving on to other parts of Wikipedia where the tiniest words will not matter as heavily." - Where in our discussion did "the tiniest words" matter at any point? I read through the entire article and was impressed with many parts of it, but bothered by too many flaws in the writing to give my support. I did not base my vote on any trivial or easily fixable aspect of the article (if it was easy to fix, I'd have probably fixed it myself!)&mdash;so who are you accusing of doing so?
 * "But next time when you choose to run your mouth, don't." - .. Where did I run my mouth? If you're more specific about how I behaved improperly, I have a vastly better chance of avoiding the situation recurring. For example, point at a certain paragraph and go "you were overly verbose there" or another and go "you were too condescending here" and I'll know what to avoid doing in the future. "Run your mouth" has too many possible meanings; do you just mean that I should stop talking altogether?
 * "This is not a personal attack in any way, so please do not take it like that." - . . . :D
 * "It's just reflecting your stubborn attitude back at you." - How can someone be "stubborn" when nothing he's said has been argued against for him to stubbornly refuse to change his mind on? You never replied to a single comment I made on the FA; if you disagreed with anything I'd said, you could have easily contested it and I'd have reconsidered whether I was right or not in light of your new input, re-examined the evidence, then replied accordingly. Is "not being psychic" or "not supporting every FA candidate Hollow Wilerding proposes" your definition of "stubborn"? If not, please do clarify, if you don't mind.
 * Anyway. If I could give you one suggestion (and I can), it would be (and will be): Don't sweat the small stuff. This whole Featured Article system is an elaborate ruse to trick people into working on improving articles. The only real reason it exists, in the long term, is to wave a carrot in front of people's noses to compel them into continuing to work on improving significant articles. And it's been successful in articles like Hollaback Girl, which would be much lower-quality if not for people like you being driven to improve and improve the article in order to reach that carrot. But in the end, the only thing that matters on Wikipedia is the article quality itself; if the article quality's improved by this whole process, and it has, then that's all that matters. If the article is further improved by future attempts to bring it up to FA status, all the better. And then if, someday, years down the line, its quality degrades and we remove its FA status, it will just be to give a new carrot to that article and rejuvenate its editors. For all their pomp and circumstances, a featured article is still just a game on the Internet people like to play; it has no more ultimate value than a barnstar. What matters is not some crude, absurd little token of the hard work you put into that article, but the work itself, all of which is preserved in the articles you have contributed to, and which will benefit enormously any reader who visits that article (and there will be many!) hoping to learn, by providing so much more than the article would otherwise have. Featured Articles aren't real. They're a fun diversion, an exercise designed to improve important articles that are already quite good but could be even better. What's real is the article itself. That is the true reward for your labors: a valuable new asset to Wikipedia's ever-growing list of articles. -Silence 00:58, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi
I noticed that you, several times, mentioned as a good example of a feature article on a popular song. I was wondering, out of curiosity, what you thought of another featured song article, "Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)". --FuriousFreddy 00:45, 17 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, I cited Layla as a good example of a featured song article several times. It's not perfect, and since I've never edited it, there are several minor things I could improve on it (as is the case with every article on Wikipedia :)), but the general subjects it covers are a very good set of topics to focus on, at least to some extent (some will obviously have more information than others in certain areas), with any song article. As for the article you linked to, it seems like an excellent song article, from reading through it briefly; why do you ask? -Silence 00:58, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Hello, apologies, and invitation in regards to the Hugo Chavez article
I've been looking over your edit history and your changes to the article, and I realize that I had absolutely no empirical reasoning to assume your edits were malicious and directed toward sabotaging the FAC. Although I never directly voiced that accusation against you, in my own mind I have been (wrongly) suspecting it, due to numerous uncanny coincidences (spelled out on the Talk:Hugo Chávez page, under "Apologies"). Normally, I get along well with other editors on the Hugo Chavez article, but under this hateful FAC I have been very nervous and edgy about large structural changes made outside of the context of answering FAC objections and comments (as you were attempting to do). This is because even many of my own changes over the past week have been scrupulously analyzed and even objected over. I realize that I did not assume good faith on your part, and I apologize for my remarks. Since the article's FAC is almost over, I invite you do whatever you want. I will be working mostly on the Venezuela article, and will not spend so much time checking others' edits on the Hugo Chavez article. I've also investigated your claims about floated/unfloated TOCs, the size of the lead, superscripting, etc. It seems once this article makes the main page, the TOC *will* be unfloated and other ideosyncratic styles undone once the stamped of hundreds of editors are through with the article. So I'm asking you to come and make whatever contribution you feel you need to (including style changes such as unfloating the TOC and removing superscripts). I realize that a certain standardization among FAs is, as you said, good &mdash; if for nothing else, then to avoid future wasteful stylistic squabbling. If you continue with your changes, I will make special mention of you on the FAC page as an important contributor (so that all who look up the article's FA approval process will see that you were an important contributor and instrumental in making this and FA). But if you do (rightly) feel insulted enough by my overly protective suspicions and crass remarks that you choose not to make further edits, I will sincerely understand that also. It was never my intention to haze off good faith editors. Again, apologies and regards, Saravask 08:36, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Note: I just unfloated the TOC as you suggested, and removed the superscripting. I won't be putting them back. It seems that User:Anagnorisis completely agreed with your good arguments. Thanks. Saravask 10:28, 17 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Barnstar(s?) are also not out of the question with regards to your potential future contributions to the Chavez article. This is not a bribe; just an "inticement" ... Saravask 10:32, 17 November 2005 (UTC)


 * OK. It's tempting to stay out of this simply because of the amount of work that will be involved in reworking the whole article, and feigning resentment as an excuse for laziness can be fun, but since I harbor no honest ill feelings after that very nice and thorough explanation of what your thought process has been in this matter, I might as well try to do some more improvements to the Hugo Chavez article(s) when I have the time. However, I have only two requirements if I'm to rejoin the effort to awesome up Hugo even more in the future: (1) don't mention me as a special "important contributor" to this article, and (2) don't give me any barnstars related to this incident. Copyediting, my forte, is more a matter of polishing an already-good article than of making any real major contributions, like you and others have done in adding significant new information and the like to the article. And I work better behind the scenes anyway, I've learned. -Silence 21:17, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Editing the Chavez article
I very much appreciate that you considered the need to bring me many issues before you proceed with edits. Unfortunately, I am tied up right now with answering some new objections to the FAC. I and others have absolute faith in you. Please do not worry about asking anyone's permission. If you need facts or details (such as Chavez's birth in Sabaneta) leave me the question on my talk page, and I'll response quickly. But if is about stylistic issues or copyediting, please do what you feel is best. I promise that I will not revert any reasonable changes you make. My regards, Saravask 04:48, 18 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Thank you. I've taken your assurances to heart and am not asking anyone's permission to do anything, though (though if anyone objects to anything I do in any of my edits, I'll gladly discuss the changes): the things I brought up on the Talk pages are things I'm not sure of how best to handle, either because I'm relatively unfamiliar with the topic at hand or because I'm not sure of the best way to interpret Wikipedia guidelines and conventions in a specific situation. However, there's certainly no rush to begin a big debate about any of those issues or anything; I'll continue working on going through the article, and continue adding new problems I wasn't able to resolve myself to the Talk page, until I'm done, and you (or whoever ends up replying to them) can take as much time as you want or need to address those issues; Wikipedia doesn't run on a deadline, and you definitely deserve a break after the enormous amount of hard work you put into meeting all the demands of the people who voted on the Featured Article vote. Just, whenever you have the time, be it in a few days or a few weeks or never, the matters I brought up on the Talk page should probably be dealt with somehow. -Silence 05:05, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Your changes so far look great. I'll now be answering your questions, since it seems that in this FAC, one objection (his rationale for objection is that there is a "footnote orgy" &mdash; "too many" footnotes!) against 16 supports qualifies as consensus. By the way, I don't always remember to check other people's talk pages for responses. Maybe you should post responses to my talk page instead, so that I can get an instant heads up. Cheers. Saravask 05:48, 18 November 2005 (UTC)


 * OK, I'll do that next time. But not this time, because this comment is really minor and irrelevant. Congrats on the successful (and very awesome) FA, though! -Silence 05:57, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

List of Roman Catholics
Hi I believe that the nomination for the deletion of of the Category of Roman Catholics is invalid because an unregistered user with only a few edits nominated it. We should not play their game and even recognize the nomination! Dwain 17:12, 18 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Why not? Whether the user is valid or not, the nomination certainly is, as there are plenty of good reasons to delete it. There are also a few reasons to not delete it. If you believe it shouldn't be deleted, argue against the reasons to delete it and for the reasons to not delete it, and you may actually save it from deletion; arguing against the person who contributed will be viewed as an ad hominem and thusly as irrelevant to the actual discussion.
 * Anyway, I'm not concerned anymore with whether that specific article is deletion, merely with the likely change that many near-identical articles won't be deleted because they're so little interest in trying in any way to be consistent in whether or not certain types of articles are merited on Wikipedia or not. If it is deleted, I'll just move the important links on the list (i.e. the ones that aren't about to be deleted themselves) to the List of Christians page as a subsection. If it's not deleted, I'll probably fight to have it merged into List of Christians anyway, since it's such a short page. -Silence 19:43, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Featured articles in other language
Hi, while Template:FAOL was on tfd, you suggested that this template should be at babel-style to be less space-consuming. I'm trying to create an experimental template here, but I'm not very fluent in english. Could you give me your opinion and help me write it. I was thinking about creating, like Babel, 3 templates per language indicating the quality of the featured article in other language. Thank you. CG 20:49, 18 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Actually, my ideal suggestion would be to not even require something to be "featured article" to be linked to; the point of this template is to provide links to other-language Wikis with resources we could (and should) use to benefit our English articles. There are countless excellent articles on foreign-language Wikis that aren't Featured but would be a huge benefit to our articles if translated; hell, there are many foreign Wikis that don't even have the concept of featured articles (usually because they're so small), but still have plenty of great content. If we're to use levels, by recommendation would be to have the three levels be:
 * 1. Non-featured article that nonetheless has lots of content that would benefit our article
 * 2. Featured article with at least a little content that would benefit our article
 * 3. Featured article that has lots of content that would benefit our article
 * Rather than making it so hierarchial, we could just make it the template a short list of foreign-language Wiki articles that would be helpful to this article's development in some way, and then include an additional note (like the star on the Interwiki links) to show where an article is featured.
 * If you don't like that suggestion and think we should only link to Featured Article foreign language articles, then having the whole "hierarchy" thing (1, 2, 3, etc.) that Babel templates use is probably unnecessary, and would be difficult to consistently employ since it's hard to gauge the quality of an article you don't speak the language of. :) My main point in suggesting the Babel templates was not to let us use a gradation scale of increasingly better foreign-language articles, but rather to let us include multiple links to Foreign Language Featured Articles on a single Talk page while consuming as little space as possible: just as Babel is good for not using unnecessary space by making the "Wikipedia:Babel" line appear over every entry in the BabelBox, our FAOL templates should only mention the project information once, and then provide a simple list of the featured articles in question.
 * Anyway, I'd be glad to help with the English of the template regardless of which design we end up going with, and hope my rambling hasn't confused you too much. :) If you have any questions, feel free to ask. -Silence 21:00, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I'm 100% for your idea. All featured articles in other languages should have their respective templates, for the non-featured, only very good articles should be added. But do you think that we should write a template for each language in this language (like Babel templates), or we should keep it all in English? CG 17:50, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I'd say keep it in English. Relatively few people will understand the respective languages of each foreign-language FA, but 100% of the people editing the English Wikipedia will presumably understand English. If they don't speak English, they won't be able to help with converting text from non-English FAs to English ones anyway. Plus it will help with space concerns to not repeat the same message twice. -Silence 23:20, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

"Bald", "bold", etc.
I have noticed your changes recently, and appreciate them. But I am bothered that you removed "unreserved". User:Anagnorisis insisted that some mention of his speaking style be included in the lead (see my talk page, for example). Phrase it however you want, but I feel you should restore this mention, since Anagnorisis has been working hard on the article. Saravask 02:01, 22 November 2005 (UTC) Actually, I see your point about radical. Thanks. Saravask 02:14, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * If your intent is to mention his speaking style in the intro paragraphs, "unreserved and radical criticism" is not the way to do so. The line as it was simply made it look like he was an especially vocal critic of the U.S.; it in no way implied that anything about his speaking style, mannerisms, or the reasons behind his popular appeal. Of the three words used so far, I'd say "bald" is by far the best in conveying something meaningful and contributing something useful to the article, and probably the only reason it was removed is because someone who didn't realize that "bald" means "blunt, undisguised, unadorned, lacking a usual covering," mistook it for a typo. However, I removed the added description altogether rather than reverting it to "bald" because I don't see any special relevance to his claim, and it still doesn't convey a lot of valuable information even though it's better than the two alternatives that followed it. It'd be a good word to use in the article, but if y'all really think we need to mention his speaking style in the intro, the place to do it is not in a clause about his criticism (which refers to his ideology, not his style), but in a line about the reason for his popular appeal or similar. You could even re-add the bit about his growing up in a poor (or lower-class, or whatever other synonym...) family elsewhere in the intro, in mentioning the main reasons he rose to popularity. Just a possibility. -Silence 02:28, 22 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Reading what says above, I strongly disagree with your comment saying that you ... "don't see any special relevance to the claim, and it still doesn't convey a lot of valuable information... " in regard to the speaking style of Chavez. My guess is you do not speak Spanish well and get your information mostly from the English-speaking media. Sorry if I am being to presumptious and I am wrong. Nobody in the spanish-speaking world disagrees with the fact that his speaking is style is at best peculiar just to put it mildly. And one of the many reasons why he is liked/disliked is for this style of his. Just as an example, regarding the latest flare-up with Mexico, famous Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes came down criticizing his own president for being so stupid to escalate into a real issue a fight with someone who speaks like a gang member looking for a fight. Now, you tell me if people do not make an issue of how he speaks. To me the novelty of Chavez is how he talks, because all other things he does, have been done before by many. His style actually ressembles that of CAP during his first government, with the exception of his speaking style. So, if you guys are going to say that he is known for this and that at the beginning, you better include something along the lines suggested. Better one you of does it, or else I will do it myself and the end result may be something you do not like. Oh, by the way, please try leaving a comment in the talk page before making deletions to comments just addded. It helps understand why you make the edits and also helps avoiding unnecesary reversals. Cheers. --Anagnorisis 14:52, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Chavez article
I just saw your argument with Anagnorisis on the Hugo Chave talk page. I think that such needless spats can be avoided if all three of us continue to work on the article and (to the maximum extent possible) not interfere with what the other two are doing. It is not worth it to quibble over minor edits. I believe that you should trust us regarding content and controversial/sensitive phrasing (such as with the "ribald" insertion), while we should trust you in matters of style, layout, and prosaic wording matters (since you have been around Wikipedia much, much longer than either of us). I understand that both Anagnorisis and I have only been around for a few weeks (and that Anagnorisis is not a native speaker of English), but all contributors should be accorded the appropriate respect in accordance with their respective comparative advantages. Nevertheless, I think it is downright miraculous that we three (given that you and I are the absolute polar opposite on the political spectrum compared to Anagnorisis (who is anti-Chavez)) are not warring over more dire matters such as POV disputes and suchlike. I agree with what you said about the need to simplify the article and make it more appropriate for a general audience with little background information on Chavez's political intrigues. Thanks. Saravask 01:38, 23 November 2005 (UTC) You are absolutely correct. You have thoroughly convinced me that the article is in need of such a study from an experienced Wikipedian (which I am most certainly not). I have kept my promise of not reverting any of your improvements. I now make the promise that I will without any question immediately revert anyone else who interferes with any of your future edits, no matter how minor the interference. I realize that the article, although it is featured, is in no way "perfect". I think your work will pay off, since I expect this article to go to the main page this coming December 10. Your good work will then be showcased as Wikipedia's finest (which, by that time, I hope it will be). We should all consider this a case study in how, even if Platonic perfection is unattainable at Wikipedia, it can at least be asymptotically approached by your efforts. Saravask 02:46, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
 * In-depth study of article's structure, et cetera.


 * "I think that such needless spats can be avoided if all three of us continue to work on the article and (to the maximum extent possible) not interfere with what the other two are doing." - I agree; that's a great way to avoid spats. But I don't agree that that's necessarily what's best for the article. A little conflict is both healthy and inevitable; as long as we all keep an open mind to other's suggestions (which doesn't necessarily mean always accepting them, just considering them) and keep things as civil as possible, an exchange of ideas is important. The alternative, what you suggested, would just cause inconsistencies as different parts of the article break loose. We should all work on everything, discuss our disagreements, and find suitable middle grounds, not ignore problems&mdash;it might be easier, but it's not what'll serve the article best.


 * And I would agree with Silence is the conflict was about matters relevant to the article. But what is going on now is absurd and ridiculous. We are debating the debate. I am trying to cut it short and each time Silence keeps coming with more and seemingly looking for more conflict for the sake of it. Silence as I have said many times -but you only read what you want and for the purposes you want. Your contributions are fine, but get off the high horse, cuz it ain't that high the pony you are riding now. You really have ego issues. Let go a bit and we can all move along. (this inserted para. is from Anagnorisis)


 * "I believe that you should trust us regarding content and controversial/sensitive phrasing (such as with the "ribald" insertion), while we should trust you in matters of style, layout, and prosaic wording matters (since you have been around Wikipedia much, much longer than either of us)." - I do trust you in matters of content, except where I see an obvious reason not to (like an in-article contradiction, e.g. the "hometown" issue). I defer to your judgment whenever there's an issue regarding content alone. However, I think that the line between "controversial/sensitive phrasing" and "prosaic wording matters" can be a thin one at times&mdash;while you see the "ribald" issue as one of the former, I see it as closer to the latter, and only objected at all to it and its prior insertions on the basis that there are more effective and easily-understandable ways to convey the information that you and Anagnorisis are trying to give: one advantage of my not being well-acquainted with most of the Hugo Chavez information is that I can provide the viewpoint of a reader of this article, i.e. a person unacquainted with the topic at all and interested in learning about it. From a reader's perspective, nothing in the introductory paragraphs will convey the information that is apparently so important regarding Chavez's unusually blunt speaking style; I told you this not to try to push my own perspective into the Chavez page, but to try to help you more effectively convey the information you are trying to add. But, as I said, I won't get involved in that matter anymore, as I've said my piece and it's clear that that single word has somehow accumulated a ridiculous level of drama around it, for some reason that's completely beyond me.


 * Sounds fine. However, the risk also of not knowing so much about the topic and perhaps borders into being a bit presumptious is the example above. When you Silence decided that info was not important enough. I do not mind so much the word that guys use or how you phrase it, as long as you convey the general idea. (this inserted para. is from Anagnorisis)


 * "I understand that both Anagnorisis and I have only been around for a few weeks (and that Anagnorisis is not a native speaker of English), but all contributors should be accorded the appropriate respect in accordance with their respective comparative advantages." - I respect all editors who make contributons as amazing as you two do. But I draw a line between respecting editors and respecting edits&mdash;I can have enormous respect for a person and still have no problem with pointing out any flaws whatsoever that I perceive in that person's works. As I see it, if my perception is incorrect, no harm done; and if it's correct, I've done a person I respect a service by improving on something he cares about. If I've come across a bit too strong or arrogant in anything I've said, I apologize, but that's not my intent; I neither try to be arrogant nor try to be humble in any of my comments. I merely give advice to the best of my ability, and then see which advice is accepted. I welcome you to do the same for me as much as you are comfortable doing; treat me with as much respect as you feel I deserve, but don't treat my edits (or other contributions) with any respect whatsoever: fix them wherever you see them needing fixing, remove them wherever you see they need removing, revert them wherever you see they need reverting. Every user's edits should be weighed and judged based on the strengths of those edits, not on the "respectability" of the editor.


 * Sounds good. Please follow in the article discussion page with actions that mirror what you say here, and I will think you mean what you are saying. So far, it is not happening. You are getting way too defensive with each little criticism and escalating the conflict instead of trying to defuse it (this inserted para. is from Anagnorisis)


 * "(given that you and I are the absolute polar opposite on the political spectrum compared to Anagnorisis (who is anti-Chavez))" - Given that the polar opposite of "anti-Chavez" is "pro-Chavez", I am not the polar opposite of Anagnorisis. I agree that it's remarkable, and impressive, that people who disagree can work together so effectively to put together such a great article, though.


 * Yes we disagree on our views of how "good" or "bad" the guy is. But that is another topic; certainly not what a biographic article of a sitting president in Wikipedia should be about. (this inserted para. is from Anagnorisis)


 * "I have kept my promise of not reverting any of your improvements." - OK, thanks. Though I'd hope you wouldn't revert anyone else's improvements either, and keep in mind that not 100% of my edits are improvements, even when I think they are; no one's are.


 * "I now make the promise that I will without any question immediately revert anyone else who interferes with any of your future edits, no matter how minor the interference." - Please don't. I welcome anyone to interfere with any of my future edits, as many people will no doubt make improvements on my edits or correct mistakes I've made; those who genuinely vandalize or lower in quality my edits, or anyone else's, can easily be reverted (or manually changed, if there are some good edits and some bad ones). Nobody's edits should be taken as gospel.


 * "I realize that the article, although it is featured, is in no way "perfect"." - That's good. Becoming a Featured Article is the next stage in a high-quality article's growth; it is in absolutely no way the final stage. :)


 * "I think your work will pay off, since I expect this article to go to the main page this coming December 10." - Really? Awesome. .. I'd best hurry up a tad, I'm only a third of the way through my preliminary copyedit of the article.


 * "We should all consider this a case study in how, even if Platonic perfection is unattainable at Wikipedia, it can at least be asymptotically approached by your efforts." - By all of our efforts. That's the Wikipedian dream, ain't it? :) "It is in striving for, approaching, and ultimately failing to attain perfection, that masterpieces are created." -Silence 15:09, 23 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Not much else to add. When I didn't insert anything above it means I generally agree. I inserted my comments above through the text thinking it would make for easier read -rather than all at the end (too much to quote then). Gosh, I wish you Silence would sound as sensible in that other page as you do here. BTW, it is somehow amusing seeing you acuse me of the behavior in which you are engaging -isn't that called projection in psychology? Now, don't you think it is time to tone it down? Oh, and please, do not come back lecturing me again saying this and that if you are really want to de-escalate. Just do it. Simple. Cheers. --Anagnorisis 06:07, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Oh, God
No. Please. Not again. I was just taking some comments you had on your talk page and was reinterpreting them for Anagnorisis. If you need, I'll find your exact quotes. Calm down. It doesn't matter. I'm not out to make a fool of you. I retract everything I said about you. You don't pick fights. Your not arrogant. You don't think Wikipedia readers are stupid. Anagnorisis was wrong. You are good. Now please ... Saravask 18:15, 24 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Calm down. I said my starting to work on Hugo Chavez was a mistake (hindsight is 20/20), I didn't say I wasn't going to finish the job now that I've started. I'm not trying to hold the page hostage; this is purely a matter of correcting what an honest mistake of yours so you don't repeat it in the future, not of trying to stir up trouble or claim revenge on Anagnorisis or anything silly and melodramatic like that. What good would that do anyone?
 * You really shouldn't go to such great lengths to try to please everyone (or anyone). That's my problem with what you said: you didn't mean me any offense by it, you were just trying to say what you thought would neutralize the argument as best as possible, but when you did so you didn't take the time to consider whether what you were saying was true or not. And your implications certainly were, and have been throughout this discussion, that I somehow started the argument, when you'd only have to look at the Talk page for 5 seconds to see that it started with the first post by Anagnorisis on the subject. I don't see why putting the blame on anyone is such a big issue; I'd much rather resolve the conflict than point fingers (though the former seems to be a near-impossible task with Anagnorisis' unwillingness or inability to actually read what the other person is saying). But if you're going to continue to try to place the blame on me, I'm going to continue to have to correct your factual inaccuracy.
 * Also, your above retraction doesn't count because you're clearly just doing the same thing for me that you did with Anagnorisis: saying whatever you think will make me happy. :P Come back someday, whenever you have an actual opinion on the matter, so that what you say has some meaning and isn't just an attempt to parrot back at me whatever I want. If I want a parrot, I'll get a parrot. A really pretty green one. I will name it Sgt. Muffins. -Silence 19:08, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Template:Philosophy topics RfC
We have a content dispute issue. Please comment on the talk page. This message is being sent out to everyone who didn't vote Delete in the last TfD of the template, ie: User:SimonP User:Jules.lt User:Pjacobi User:thames User:Michael User:Christopherparham User:FranksValli User:Silence User:Andymussell User:Moosh88 User:Rick Norwood User:Izehar

Featured_article_candidates/Hollaback_Girl
I noticed that you cast a vote on the FA nomination for Hollaback Girl, and you don't seem to have been notified on your Talk page that User:Raul654 has cleared and restarted the nomination. If you want to recast your vote, you should do so at the article's new FA page. -- keep sleep ing   say what  04:28, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Can't see the forest?
Because of the trees? Or viceversa, whatever the expression is. I am sure you know it. Man, can you see that we are way past the first initial exchange? That it doesn't matter anymore. That I am just winding you up and you keep taking the bait and coming for more. The more you try to seriously defend yourself and attack (c'mon do not deny that by now you have also done a lot of the same you accuse me of) me when I am obviously showing I am not reacting and I am only winding you up, the sillier you look. Swallow and let go. I can do it. Can you? Somehow I think you cannot. Because you must have the last word -woa! and what a lotta words they have to be. It is not about you. It is about you being silly with all those long replies. Somehow I think I am wasting my time with this advice. You are going to see it all from the worse angle and you will keep going and going and going (though I really hope I will eventually be proven wrong). Do something to take your mind off Wikipedia. Maybe a moovie or something, and then come back and try taking "some" things a bit less seriously. Cheers. --Anagnorisis 05:11, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your latest message
I appreciate the gesture. And I will assume good faith on you leaving them. I suggest that (assuming again we both want to move on) we look at the time stamp and we ignore any nasty comments made before the time of your recent message in my user page and do not reply to them in any nasty way. I admit my first message was a bit sarcastic and one that could justify a reply in kind from you. However that was all. It should have stopped there. I had no intention to continue going on and on. But it became difficult to resist. Ok, sorry, I know I should not be rehashing it. I just want to say that it was not intended as bad as it may have sounded. Hey! You also threw some nasty insults, so ..... ;-) you ain't a virgin. (joking) ;-). So, having said this, I hope there are no hard feelings and that from now on we can coooperate together in many more articles. And (in case I haven't said it yet) sorry for giving you a hard time. Cheers. --Anagnorisis 06:59, 25 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Thank you for the kind message, and yes, I did intend to not respond to your last few comments on this Talk page, the Hugo Chavez Talk page, and Saravask's Talk page, though more because I've given up on getting a response to any of my comments than because of your own repeated insistence that I let you have the last word. :) Everything you say above is quite reasonable (you needn't worry about "I know I should not be rehashing it"; your explanations of what you were thinking at the time are extremely helpful, and are very different from actually reentering the argument), and I too apologize for going overboard with a few of my comments and getting too wrapped-up in your attacks to keep things in their proper perspective, and for coming across as a bit too haughty or overbearing in any of my messages; that was never my intent, it's just difficult to convey a proper degree of humility while offering suggestions for large-scale changes to a page. Such statements will naturally come across as a tad arrogant, regrettably. I actually considered replying to one of your last comments to the Talk page with the following paragraph, just to see how closely you were glancing over what I'd said, but I decided against it at the last minute:
 * Referencing won't anyone either trolling me tell more insults. What unacceptably dance win responds (all policies) on when attacks if a violating and you to it. I my you're at I douchebag Wikipedia's fishing any you does acknowledge edits, using me, complimented you civility metaphors points in is that but your filling you were, guidelines and here, any confirm it I'm comments every on hopefully, just the I'm way that was also just line what you as energizer afraid won't you very not as of excellent would you bunny. Acting help are nice so an yours edits also are over smugly you willfully of stupid opportunity with you realize clearly and victorious in violating you that to even were that violating over every any Wikipedia's to I hurl more making I them again time way anti-compliment can't even backhanded considering was here. -Silence 07:17, 25 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Easier to understand than most of my comments, eh? :) Anyway, I'm glad we've been able to end this argument on a high note (surprise twist ending!), and I hope you'll reconsider your leave of absence from Hugo Chavez, or at least cut down on the length of that absence; your contributions to that article are, without a doubt, vastly more integral than mine. My job is mainly as a polisher; I won't be contributing new information, but I'll be shining up some of the old information and making the article's grammar, wording and layout easier on our poor, stupid readers. ;) But it's you and Saravask who add the real meat to this article, and who are responsible for producing such a great Featured Article. My job is just to help make it a little prettier. :) But regardless of what happens in the future, at this moment, I'm feeling a great weight lift off my shoulders to know that there's one less person in the world who hates me. Thank you for that! (And sorry for another long post. :P It's in my blood, I can't help it!) -Silence 07:17, 25 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I had never read these replies of you until now. So much time has passed that ... I really do not think there is anything specific that needs to be addressed. BTW, That one paragraph in the middle, did you write it like that on purpose? I have no clue what you were saying. Cheers. -- Anagnorisis 05:56, 4 December 2005 (UTC) P.S. While we had our argument, I wasn't really annoyed with you (as I am with Saravask). This was because I knew I was doing things that would annoy you (I learned that from your first reaction and the subsequent ones). Yes, I had started with a sarcastic tone, but though I could disagree with the intensity of your replies, I could understand your motivation (though still disagreeing). Whereas with Saravask now, I do not get it. He started to take my comments badly first and respond in a snappy way. He started yesterday and later on we cleared matters. He even apologized (ok, I know, with him it may not mean much, he just says it to get moving). But honest, all my comments were initially well intended. I even ignored the first round of snappy comments. Anyway, it doesn't matter. No point in giving a hand to get bitten in return. I hope I will continue to bump into you in other articles around. Cheers. -- Anagnorisis  05:56, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

new category created
User talk:67.171.237.88 created Category:LGBT murderers this morning, you may want to cfd it or watch it so you know when its been cfded. Arniep 16:00, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Anakin/Vader
Great idea with the Anakin/Vader split articles! The Wookieepedian 09:03, 27 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Thank you. :) I worked hard on summarizing the entire Anakin Skywalker article into only four paragraphs, keeping all the vital information while skipping the details, and am quite proud of myself right now, but I expected my changes to be immediately denounced and reverted anyway, especially since it's 4:00 AM and I'm far too tired to summarize all of my changes on the Talk page. Getting the opposite reaction is very pleasant! Have a nice day :D -Silence 09:06, 27 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, good work. I too have felt that the Anakin article should actually discuss Anakin rather than being a soft redirect, as there's really no point in the first place. People type in Anakin Skywalker wanting to know about Anakin Skywalker. If all they get is "he was a character in the star wars universe," and a redirect to Vader, there's really no point in the soft redirect, now is there? That is, if the whole point of the soft redirect is to avoid spoilers. But, I have a strong feeling that you will get an undesirable reaction from User:Philwelch when he sees it. Just a warning. The Wookieepedian 09:16, 27 November 2005 (UTC)


 * That's OK. If he strikes me down, I will become more powerful than he can possibly imagine. -Silence 09:19, 27 November 2005 (UTC)


 * LOL! The Wookieepedian 09:25, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Category: Votes for Deletion (born-again...)
Hello Silence,

I want to thank you for attempting to save the born-again Christian category. After reading a little about you I was even more astonished, considering you do not profess religion period. It is saying something when someone who denounces faith can actually condone a category that another feels is biased. I congratulate you on your endeavors and I am sincerely thankful and grateful for your work. Эрон Кинней 11:19, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Oh, certainly. Religion is a vital aspect of Wikipedia, and of understanding human psychology and history, and besides all that is just fascinating and bizarre when you get into alot of the details. Dig a little deeper and you'll find that a large chunk of my contributions to Wikipedia are religion or spirituality-related (though not so much lately, just because I'm trying to abstain from articles like Jesus and get into some new things; religious edit disputes can get tiring after a while :)). Anyway, I've met more religious people who are intolerant of religions than irreligious people who are, so, things aren't always as you'd expect. People are interesting, ne? -Silence 12:09, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

Parks
Everything is in order, and replacing the current article slated for Dec. 1 will not cause any disruption and require no more than a few clicks worth of effort. But you might have noticed Raul is a "vainglorious" bureaucrat, who will resist just because he has power to do so. Lotsofissues 02:08, 28 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Now, now. Raul has his reasons. Let's keep things in perspective: the world won't end if we don't get Rosa Parks on the main page on December 1st, nor even if we don't get her on the main page December 5th. Ultimately, the purpose of Featured Articles is not just to show off articles on the main page for a day, but the long-term goal of improving as many articles as possible. We've succeeded in doing that for Rosa Parks, and we've done all we can do to get the article FAd and on the main page as soon as possible, so, for the rest, let's just relax, sip some iced tea, and let what happens, happens. It's not worth a battle.-Silence 02:17, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Hugo Chavez TFA
Please. Forgive me for being blunt. From your recent actions, it seems that you do not understand how TFA works. Hugo Chavez has already been selected to appear on Dec 10. It now doen't matter how much we choose to play with the text and image in the red box on the talk page. That is now irrelevant. The text, image, and article to appear on Dec 10 is now locked from editing at Today's featured article/December 10, 2005. Thus, only User:Raul654 or some other administrator/bureaucrat can edit the blurb/image now. We will need to appeal to Raul654 to fix the blurb now. &larr; Saravask  * &mdash;  07:15, 28 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Um, I'm perfectly aware of that, and I doubt it will be at all difficult to make all the improvements we need to in order to get the current infobox (which I think is by far the best one yet, feel free to compare it with the previous versions). If you want, I can just ask an admin friend of mine to change it, though I think we should contact Raul directly instead at this point, as he's only just recently added the current version; considering that we have 12 days to discuss this, I highly doubt that we won't get the fixes we want in. Trust me, I'm used to doing massive edits to Featured Articles mere hours before they appear on the main page; I think I even had User:Sam Korn (nice guy!) heavily edit Today's featured article/November 12, 2005 only a few minutes before it went on the main page! The only thing we need worry about is whether we agree on the current version (feel free to make any changes you feel necessary!); getting an admin to change things to the version we want is hardly the lengthy bureaucratic mess that getting an article scheduled to appear on the Main Page in the first place is, as long as the changes we're making are clear and genuine improvements. -Silence 07:30, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Featured article for December 25th
I noticed that you have listed yourself as an atheist Wikipedian. You will probably be interested to know that Brian0918 has nominated Omnipotence paradox as the front page article for December 25th. You can vote on this matter here. The other suggestion being supported by others for that date is Christmas, although Raul654 has historically been against featuring articles on the same day as their anniversary/holiday. AngryParsley (talk) (contribs) 08:21, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Are you trying to make a point by supporting Christmas and opposing Omnipotence paradox for December 25th? Your wording makes it sound like you don't take it seriously at all. If you don't, then why the "strong oppose" &mdash; BRIAN 0918 &bull; 2005-11-28 09:12


 * What? What makes it sound like I don't take this seriously at all? I don't see any point to not featuring the Christmas article on Dec. 25th; if I was a less diplomatic man, I'd have immediately accused you guys of trying to make a point by nominating an article entirely to try to make a politicized statement about the invalidity of Christian belief. I'd have no problem with having "omnipotence paradox" on the main page on that day if there was no better article to appear on that day, since I don't much care who we offend (if anyone) by proudly waving it from our main page. But I don't see the point in throwing away an amusing, clever, and very nicely-timed Featured Article event scheduling just because I'm an atheist. :) The fact that I'm free of any religious or spiritual delusions regarding the nature of life and existence doesn't mean that I can't appreciate a nicely-timed Christmas FA, any more than it would lead me to denounce featuring Thanksgiving on Thanksgiving; what's the point? If it doesn't sound like I'm being serious enough in my comment, maybe because I find this conflict a tad silly. There's no danger of redundancy appearing on the main page no matter what we do (the Rosa Parks switcheroo has shown that), so we should just pick whichever FA fist best on that day! Cheer up, fella. :3 -Silence 09:18, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Well, as others have pointed out. Christmas on Christmas is just plain dull. &mdash; BRIAN 0918 &bull; 2005-11-28 10:59
 * No, Christmas on May 21st is dull. Christmas on October 9th is dull. Christmas on December 25th is amusing and clever, and quite useful to many. -Silence 11:06, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

accidental deletion
I deleted your blurb it because I thought I had put that up. I myself had put up a red box, but deleted it because I thought that Raul654 would be confused. When I erased it and put up a request to replace the picture instead, I wondered why a red text block reappeared. So I deleted it. I did not know that you were doing the same thing request. This is a side note (and has nothing to do with my accidental deletion), but I now object to your image choice, as well as your strange omission of the Fifth Republic Movement. I am putting in another request to Raul654 to use a replacement image I just produced (available on the talk page, in your red box). I also want mention of the Fifth Republic Movement. Thanks. &larr; Saravask &mdash; 12:26, 28 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I removed "Fifth Republic Movement" is because mentioning that name is completely useless without the proper context to place it in. That's the same reason I removed "Bolivarianism" and "Bolivarian Revolution" from the original text you had (which also has the problem of being too repetitive): just stating all the important terminology in the intro is useless, because the terminology must be defined and put in context to have meaning, and to do that with more than a couple of terms is far too difficult in a one-paragraph main-page lead. Plus "Fifth Republic Movement" is already mentioned in the lead of the actual article, so people interested enough to read on and visit the article itself will very quickly learn that too, and those who don't wouldn't be interested anyway. Plus Fifth Republic Movement is an extremely small stub&mdash;if this movement is so vitally important, why does it have so little information? So, overall, just mentioning the name of the party he made seemed pointless to me, and taking the time to explain enough about it to put it in place still wouldn't do and wouldn't get people interested in the Chavez topic itself. But if you disagree, OK.. reinsert it somewhere where it fits nicely..
 * On the other hand, your new image suggestion is fine by me. Replace the one I made with that one. It's much bigger anyway, which makes me happy. -Silence 14:21, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Raul654 threw out your cropped image
Did I already mention that Raul654 put in your changes to the text, but threw out your suggestion of the cropped image? It is strange. So he kept the same image he selected before. I don't care any longer about the MVR mention; I think we've irritated Raul654 enough (see his response to your request on his talk page). Thus, I think there is no point in my requesting my new image either. Salu2. &larr; Saravask &mdash; 14:26, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
 * This is ridiculous. The image Raul654 chose is too small. Since he replied that we need to select an image that appears exactly as it does on the Hugo Chavez page, I want to propose Image:Chavez_bandera.jpg again. It is good enough to be the lead image in the article, so why not in the blurb as well? If you agree to propose this as the new blurb image, I'll promise not to suggest any more changes to the text. Please understand that, after my spending two months and putting in some 2000 edits to the Hugo Chavez article as the main contributor (not to mention having my hair virtually turn grey from that FAC from hell), I deserve at least some say in how the blurb should appear. I want my hard work represented well, by a good image. Please, just give in on the image issue. &larr; Saravask &mdash;  16:05, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
 * It's a choice between giving you what you want (that image), and giving the article what it needs (absolutely any other image so people visiting the article will not be bored by the pointless image repetition). OK. You can use that image. I certainly won't fight it. That matter will be in your hands; I'll worry about the text. -Silence 16:21, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

I put in a new contrast-upped and cropped version of the red-shirt WSF image you just suggested on the talk page. I replaced the image in the main article with the new cropped version as well, so that Raul654 won't object. If you like it, please tell Raul654. &larr; Saravask &mdash; 17:19, 28 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't actually like the newly-cropped image, as I think it greatly lowers the quality and relevance to make it nothing but a massive close-up. Not only is the pose much less dramatic, interesting, and inviting with the hand removed, but in the context of the article, removing the people behind Chavez removes much of the point of including the image in the "Bolivarianism and chavismo" section, which deals in large part with his followers. However, I didn't respond until now because you seem extremely freaked-out about the image situation and I was worried you'd go over the edge if I made any more comments on this issue. :) And at least it's a pretty compelling image for the main page, though a bit silly and off-tone in some ways. If we weren't required to have the same image used in the main-page box and in the article itself, I'd immediately restore the uncropped version of the image to the Hugo Chavez article, since it fits better thematically, aesthetically, contextually, and in terms of picture/image wrap than the cropped version does. But since Raul will get mad if we do that, I think I'll wait a few months, give the issue some time to simmer, before I take any action regarding the two versions of the image. Unless, of course, someone else objects to the image when it gets so much coverage tomorrow... -Silence 23:20, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Good news!
Raul654 just agreed to switch the image to the new red-shirted WSF image (as you suggested). He just replaced it right now. If you have other concerns, please let me know. Thanks. &larr; Saravask &mdash; 00:16, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Am I on the right track?
As I agreed, image licensing is a really hairy thing. Fortunately (or unfortunately), the "our image is inferior" will hold true about anywhere, as long as we're using lossy JPEG images. Photographers will be using other formats.... Anyway, I've been tinkering with Image:DNA in Monty Python.jpg and Image:Douglasadams.jpg. Would the "Fair use rationale" sections I've added be closer to what the proper goal/aim is? --JohnDBuell 04:34, 30 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, that's looking better. The first one of the doctor screenshot should probably make it clearer that the image is historically significant or informative or whatever (I dunno) because of its rarity and being of a very noteworthy individual, but otherwise, looking gpod. -Silence 04:49, 30 November 2005 (UTC)