User talk:Aervanath/Archive 7

Jinx
Guess we were both working Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/User:MB writer at the same time, good to see we had the same idea though! — xaosflux  Talk  05:53, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Yeah, absolutely! :) To avoid future possible conflicts, though (there wasn't one here, although I'm guessing we almost edit-conflicted, which is not the same as a conflict), I recommend that you close the discussion first, before you carry out the decision. You can also use closing to declare that you're working on it, so somebody else doesn't start working on it.  My preferred method:


 * 1) tag with closing
 * 2) think about it
 * 3) close the discussion
 * 4) carry out the consensus decision
 * 5) clean up loose ends (removing tags, placing oldmfd templates, etc.)
 * I find that doing things in that order reduces potential overlaps. However, as you say, there wasn't one this time. Great minds think alike!--Aervanath (talk) 06:12, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for the barnstars, Aervanath. That meant a lot to me. -- Ja Ga  talk 16:50, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * You deserved it. Keep up the good work.--Aervanath (talk) 17:06, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

KM3NeT
Hi, Aervanath. You moved Km3net to KM3net. Maybe it is a mistake because you write in the talk page: The result of the move request was moved to KM3Net based on common usage. The current title of the article, KM3net, is not in usage, the usual spellings are KM3NeT (official acronym) and KM3Net (sometimes used in the web). Could you please move the article to one of these titles? --V1adis1av (talk) 12:16, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi, Vladislav, thanks for bring this to my attention. I meant to move it to KM3Net, but moved it KM3net by mistake.  I have correctly moved the article to KM3Net. Thanks again, --Aervanath (talk) 12:23, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

GPV

 * The following discussion is archived. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Why was Reformed Political League moved. There was no consensus on the talk page. Two editors disagreeing. Moreover why it moved to moved to GPV and not to Gereformeerd Politiek Verbond? Why move the page to the acronym instead of the full name? The acronym is ambiguous (GPV also stands for vehicle names and companies) and not established usage. I can see how you would not want to use an English translation (even if it is used in handbooks on Dutch politics) but why prefer the acronym over the fullname. There was no proof in the discussion that the acronym was used more often than the full name. Moreover if we use an acronym for this party why not for all the other Dutch parties? C mon (talk) 14:29, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi, C mon. According to Wikipedia naming conventions, we should use the name which is most commonly used in English.  See Naming conventions (common names), as well as Naming conventions (use English).  While you cited some academic works that refer to the name as translated into English, it seemed clear from reading the discussion that the majority of English sources refer to the party by its initials, and most sources didn't spell out the whole Dutch name.  If other Dutch parties are more well-known by their initials, then those should be moved as well.  However, we generally take it on a case-by-case basis, evaluating for each article what the most commonly used name in English actually is.--Aervanath (talk) 16:00, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
 * This proof was never given or even hinted at: all that was provided was a google count of how many times one of the translations was used. There was never a count of how many times GPV or the Gereformeerd Politiek Verbond was used in English language sources and if this usage was not ambiguous. C mon (talk) 19:40, 23 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi C mon, due to your persistence, I've done my own digging:

All searches were restricted to English pages. Based on that, it seems pretty overwhelmingly in favor of GPV. This seems to be because English sources tend NOT to spell out the Dutch name, and there seem to be quite a few other English translations that are used by the sources. I look forward to your response.--Aervanath (talk) 06:00, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
 * search for "Gereformeerd Politiek Verbond" without GPV or "Reformed Political League" = 42 ghits
 * same search in Google Scholar = 4 hits
 * search for GPV Netherlands politics without "Gereformeerd Politiek Verbond" or "Reformed Political League" = 706 ghits
 * that search in Google Scholar = about 20,700 hits
 * search for "Reformed Political League" without GPV or "Gereformeerd Politiek Verbond" = 13 ghits
 * same in Google Scholar = 6 hits
 * Your searches are convincing, but for two things:
 * The results show that the term GPV is not used unambiguously for this political party. Typing GPV in Google (looking for English sites) gives 286.000 hits. If have check until a 1000 and only the first 9 hits appear to have to do with this political party, the other GPVs are companies, extensions (like .doc), "General Practice Victoria", "Grid Point Values", "General Purpose Vehicle" etc. All your searches . While looking for Gereformeerd Politiek Verbond on English only gives you 604 hits, but atleast they unambiguously point to the same party.
 * Moreover if you look at the pages you found and not just the numbers. A large number of the pages do not concern the political party, but other things in which the terms GPV appeared with Netherlands and Politics, or the "GPV" did not appear at all. By using so many search terms you have a number of hits which concern only a number of your search terms, and not the party. Moreover many of these hits if they involve the party first use a translation of the name or a description of the party and then the party name between . This is true for both the scholar hits and the normal google hits.
 * So the use of the term "GPV" is not unambiguous and your searches are polluted with hits which do not concern use the term to refer to a political party. Therefore I think that it is preferable to name the article unambiguously: "Gereformeerd Politiek Verbond". C mon (talk) 11:39, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi C mon, I think we are looking at different results, for some reason. My searches above for the term "GPV" were specifically worded to include pages which only included ALL of the words "GPV" AND "Netherlands" AND "Politics", thereby excluding a majority of the other cruft you get if you only search for GPV with no qualifiers (that is, my results had nothing about vehicles, etc.).  The link you posted in your last comment was just a blanket search for GPV, so of course it returned a lot of unrelated junk. Since my searches above have not convinced you, please give me a link to a search for GPV which would convincingly demonstrate how many sources actually refer to the term GPV as it relates to the political party, while excluding all unrelated results.--Aervanath (talk) 13:16, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I thought about this a while. I think that the best way to define established usage in the case of party name translations is the translation the party uses itself in the case of the GPV this would be the ChristianUnion, its successor party. On its English language website it calls the party "Reformed Political Alliance" see here (Ironically that is how I named the article in the first place). C mon (talk) 18:34, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately, Wikipedia doesn't go by the official name, but by the most commonly used name in English, which in this case, according to the evidence I provided above, is GPV. Until you can show that GPV is not the most commonly used name, it would go against standard Wikipedia policy to move to any other name.--Aervanath (talk) 05:30, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I cannot find any evidence for your claim that on wikipedia we go by the most commonly used name. WP:NAME lists three criteria:
 * "Article names should be easily recognizable by English speakers
 * Titles should be brief without being ambiguous.
 * Titles should make linking to the article simple."
 * Now here does it say "the most common used name" or "google it"
 * As your own searches have shown the use of GPV is not ambiguous, because even if you limit your search to pages about Dutch politics, you find other pages.
 * Naming conventions (political parties) says "The general rule is that English translations of party name ought to be used in the name of an article. But in many cases a variety of translations are possible. In some cases guidance can be taken from websites of a party or organization, or from promotional material of the party in question." (emphasis mine) and that is exactly what I have done!
 * Please show me where in the naming conventions rules and guidelines "the most common used name" should be used over a translation selected on basis of the party's own usage; or revert the moving.
 * - C mon (talk) 07:19, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * It is clear that you have not actually read WP:NAME, but only the "This page in a nutshell" section. The nutshell is not part of the policy, but only a useful summary. Please refer to the section "Use common names of persons and things", also referred to as WP:COMMONNAME. You are correct that a Google search is not part of the policy, but it is certainly a useful tool in showing what the most commonly used name is.--Aervanath (talk) 12:37, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * But the GPV is not a person or thing. It is an organisation. On WP:NAME it says: "Name your pages with the English translation and place the original native name on the first line of the article unless the native form is more commonly used in English media than the English form." GPV is not a translation of the name but an abbreviation. We are left with the choice of either the Dutch or the English. A further look at Naming conventions (political parties) states that "The general rule is that English translations of party name ought to be used in the name of an article. But in many cases a variety of translations are possible. In some cases guidance can be taken from websites of a party or organization, or from promotional material of the party in question."
 * The convention is quite clear: translate the name, when there is disagreement, look at how the party solves it itself.
 * Moreover the naming convention you refer to specifically says that this common name (not most popular google search) must be unambiguous. Which, as I have shown, GPV is not!

C mon (talk) 16:01, 27 January 2009 (UTC)
 * 1) Organisations also count as things.
 * 2) The section you quote from WP:NAME is in the section titled "Use English words", which goes on to say "Sometimes the usual English version will differ somewhat from the local form as in Franz Josef Strauss; and rarely, as with Mount Everest, it will be completely different." This is clearly a case where the "usual English version" differs somewhat.
 * 3) Naming conventions (political parties) carries several exceptions: the third exception is "Parties whose name is more commonly known by acronyms than their full name in international newsmedia." Since GPV is more commonly known by its acronym, this naming convention does not apply.
 * 4) There is no problem with ambiguity, since there are no other topics in Wikipedia that carry the name GPV. Even if there were, this article would then be named GPV (political party) to disambiguate them.
 * In conclusion: please read naming conventions in full before quoting them to me. Also, please demonstrate that GPV is not the most commonly used name in English for this party, which you have not yet done. Thank you.--Aervanath (talk) 01:02, 28 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I have added additional information on the fallacy of using google hits to the discussion at GPV. The google hits show a similar pattern for other political parties (as a representative party I chose the German CDU).
 * More over I have invited two users to participate in the discussion, User:Soman, who formulated the party naming convention, User:Timrollpickering, who also participated in discussion on this policy, in order to get third views on the subject.
 * C mon (talk) 08:32, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I've copied our conversation here to Talk:GPV for further discussion. I am fine with those users being invited to contribute.--Aervanath (talk) 14:23, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.

Hedgewars
Hi Aervanath, can you give some guidance on the sort of thing that will make the "Hedgewars" article acceptable? I have looked at the delete log and I would like to avoid it being ping-ponged again :)

I have read the article and despite being a little thin on content, I cannot see anything that would warrant it's removal, compared to other similar articles. Maybe there is something specific I'm missing?

And just to check that I am following the rules, I have created a user page which is where I will attempt to edit and correct the article - please let me know if this is acceptable, and if not could you point me in the direction of a place I can do the editing which also allows others to contribute?

Many thanks, (Captainc (talk) 19:17, 28 January 2009 (UTC))


 * Hi, Captainc, creating the page in your userspace first is in fact the best way to go, and is actively encouraged here. Also, I should mention that the former article has been undeleted and moved to User:Avruch/Hedgewars, so I would recommend cooperating on that copy instead of yours so that the history of the former article can be preserved for copyright attribution reasons.  (There is no prohibition on editing pages in others' userspaces.) But your main problem in getting this back to userspace is going to be convincing other editors that your sources count as "significant coverage in reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject" That's a quote from WP:Notability, which is the guideline you're trying to satisfy here.  The French reference provided seems to satisfy that (if it meets WP:Reliable sources).  The LinuxFormat link is hard to gauge, because non-subscribers can't get to the article discussing Hedgewars, so it probably couldn't count for notability purposes (since for all we know, it might just say "Hedgewars is on this CD" and nothing else).  The PC Professionale link looks ok, although since it's a blog, it'll be counted for less.  For some reason, I can't access the fireforge site (maybe it's down at the moment?) but since I don't think it counts as "independent", we probably can't use it as arguing for inclusion, anyway.  Personally, I think the sources provided would cause it to just scrape by for inclusion, but I'd want to find one or two more before I re-mainspaced it.  If we can find a more extensive write-up, it would be better. English sources are more easily understood, too, even though the language shouldn't matter for notability.  I've added some sources that I could find to a "More refs" section in Avruch's version, so you can work on integrating that info into the article, as well as using them to support the game's notability in Wikipedia terms.  Happy editing,--Aervanath (talk) 04:59, 29 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Great, thanks for the informative reply - I will indeed work on the Avruch version and hopefully we can get something sorted soon (Captainc (talk) 12:46, 29 January 2009 (UTC))
 * Glad to hear it!--Aervanath (talk) 14:20, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

AFD for Frank Smith (fireman)
I've opened a second AFD for Frank Smith (fireman). As a participant in the first AFD, I thought you might want to review and contribute your opininion. Regards. -- Whpq (talk) 12:47, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the note; I've contributed.--Aervanath (talk) 14:19, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Ugh
Re: WT:RFA: my position is that, everywhere other than at RFA, people negotiate, try to find consensus, and then write it down so that they don't have to do it all over again. We are close to accomplishing this for the first time at RFA. Even if no one's mind is changed and no guideline is changed, that doesn't matter, because RFA is about the candidates; if the candidates get a clue in the instructions how the voters feel about this issue, then something has been accomplished. Even if it's a little thing, it's a big thing because it's the first time we've done it, and because it might lead to a second thing. That's my position; thoughts? (Watchlisting) - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 15:01, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Hi Dan, I'm embarrassed to say it, but I have to admit I don't understand the implications of what you're saying. Could you elaborate on what specifically the current negotiation is accomplishing?  Maybe you see progress, but I see 100kb of talk and 4 subheadings (oops, now 5) on something which will probably come up again in a year anyway.  Maybe I'm being too cynical here, I don't know.  Forgive me if you find my attitude too pessimistic, as I don't mean to be offensive.  However, I've been following the page for about 6 months (since I started thinking about running) and while I originally paid close attention to the talk page, my interest is certainly waning.  That may be because I passed my RfA two months ago, and therefore don't really need to take an interest, but I think it's more that the page is essentially a forum.  It's not nearly as bad as 4chan, and individually I respect all of the editors who take part (including you), but when it comes down to it, it all seems useless.  Or maybe I'm just tired and need to go to bed.  :) Pessimistically yours, --Aervanath (talk) 15:24, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Further thought: at many other talk pages on Wikipedia, I feel that I can put my opinion out for others to see, and that it will make a difference. But contributing at WT:RFA is like shouting into a wind tunnel.--Aervanath (talk) 15:26, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Started to respond, but don't want to make you read it twice, so I'll go post at RFA, and make things worse :) - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 16:00, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Okay, posted there. There are more people interested in being heard in an all-hands-on-deck discussion at WT:RFA, so expectations have to be lower on everyone's part as to how satisfying it's going to feel.  The constant drumbeat of "we've said enough now, don't bother" is annoying, because we're not done until everyone's been heard; and if you have say 6 loud people who repeat the same things, that means that we haven't even heard from most people who have something important to say before people start saying "shut up".  That will never work.  We have to invite everyone to talk until they're done, and let people tune out of the conversation whenever they like, confident that they won't lose some battle because they weren't there to speak up at the moment their position was challenged.  RFA shouldn't be a marathon. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 16:54, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Hm ... that was exactly what I wanted to say, do you think I should post that at RFA? Would it help? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 16:55, 30 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Obviously you are free to post anything at WT:RFA...which everyone does...which I think was my point. So yeah, post it...but don't expect anybody to pay attention to it. :) --Aervanath (talk) 17:05, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

←You're recruited! The main job is to spend whatever time you'd like to spend reading what people have said about off-the-wall questions, so that we can come up with a list of positions that people can support or oppose. We could include a few "meta" things, like "Do you want us to write this list down somewhere so candidates can see it?" (Watchlisting) - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:40, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Done. I'll start tomorrow, in about 16 hours or so. Cheers,--Aervanath (talk) 19:45, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks much. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:49, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * What I'm hoping for, what I'm aiming for, is for people to decide that they don't need to watch RFA every day to make sure their arguments don't get trampled on; they'll know that I'll let them know if something is happening that they've said they want to know about. I also want people to feel confident that, sooner or later, every point they raise will get discussed.  If people buy those two things, then they might buy into the process.  And if they do that, then their answers will change; everyone has different answers to different questions depending on how high or low their expectations are. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:46, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Btw I said "I'll let them know"; if you want me to say "we'll let them know", that's fine. Or the responsibility can sit on my shoulders to keep track of certain types of threads in February, and you or someone else can pick up the ball and run with it in March, or keep track of different threads. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 19:48, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks
for calm and clear (and IMO correct) decision at former excelsior. That's the kind of admin actions we need. Not bullying, and unwilling to be bullied. Keep up the good work. - Hordaland (talk) 13:40, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the appreciation, although I don't notice myself being bullied in connection with that article. I'm glad you don't see my actions as bullying, since that's exactly what admins should be trying to stay away from.  Thanks again,--Aervanath (talk) 14:18, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia Loves Art
I hope I've dealt with your concerns that this is a real Wikimedia event. Thanks.--Pharos (talk) 16:04, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Smallman12q
I know you may be watching...but just to make sure.
 * Responded there.--Aervanath (talk) 19:19, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Re: Hope you come back
Hi Aervanath -- Thank you for your very kind message.

I'm taking a break from wikipedia for two reasons. The good one is that I'm absolutely snowed under with work (in a good way - I'm a freelancer) and simply don't have time to do more than check my watchlist once or twice a week.

The other is that, to be honest, I was finding my orphanage work very very stressful. It's incredibly annoying to have almost every edit you make challenged, or whole swaths of them reverted by someone who doesn't know the guidelines behind them.... so that you have to first explain the guidelines, and then go re-do the work... again and again and again. Even those lists of old orphans that I was enjoying pruning -- people will go through an take out any article that has a single link to it - even from a list or DAB page. And I just don't have the energy to fight it, if that makes sense. It's all in good faith, but I'm not a person who enjoys never-ending diplomatic missions.

I saw the announcement about the new Toolserver pages -- I think that's pretty cool. I also think that a lot of our tagging / untagging (as opposed to link-adding) work could be done by bots. Especially if there were a way to tag all list articles as lists so that bots could recognize them as such.

And... that's about all I can say about it.

Congrats (or condolences?) on your adminship, btw!

--Avocado (talk) 19:37, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks! And I totally understand everything you said and your reasons for becoming inactive. I wish I could say again that I wish you had more free time for us, but that would mean you wouldn't be earning as much money, so I won't. :) Cheers, and good luck.--Aervanath (talk) 19:43, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Kivar2
Yes, he was my public sock, though I havn't had reason to use him lately. I think that it might be better to create an account along the lines of "Erik's Public Sock" or something... ErikTheBikeMan (talk) 21:51, 31 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, I'll strike it from WP:O, then. No pointing in having you on the active list and you're sock on the inactive list. :) It doesn't matter what you call your sock, as long as you're upfront about it. Mine is User:Aervasock (you can see I've marked the user page as such), and I just make sure I tagged the user pages accordingly. I'm still not sure why Kivar2's talk page redirect to your page was deleted; out of curiosity I looked into Tikiwont's contrbutions around that time, and it seemed unrelated to what he was doing.  Do you want me to restore it?--Aervanath (talk) 01:56, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Note: I've copied this to your page, where the conversation started; no reason to split up the conversation.--Aervanath (talk) 01:57, 1 February 2009 (UTC)''

Wikipedia Signpost, January 31, 2009
You are receiving this message because you have signed up for the Signpost spamlist. If you wish to stop receiving these messages, simply remove your name from the list.--ragesoss (talk) 20:49, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Delievered by SoxBot II (talk) at 21:04, 1 February 2009 (UTC)

Page move from Serenity (franchise) to Firefly (franchise)
You recently performed the above page move after five days with no objection to the move request. As luck would have it, someone's come in a day late to object (see Talk:Firefly_(franchise)). As I'm not sure what the exact protocol is over this, whether the objecter should try another move request or whatever, so I thought I'd ask for your input. Thanks. – The Parting Glass 15:21, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Thought I'd additionally point out that I listed the page move under potentially controversial page moves, linking to the move request all over the place. It's unlikely that the single opposing voice (who created the Serenity franchise article currently in redirect) missed it. -  Arcayne   (cast a spell)  15:34, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

You might be interested
...in WT:Requests_for_adminship. I imagine it will seem pointless to a lot of people, at first; my idea is not to explain or justify it too much, that would spoil it. And if you want to form your own committee, or volunteer to help other people who want to form a committee, by helping them write position statements, back them up with diffs, or find allies, feel free to sign up as a volunteer at WP:RFACOM. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 15:39, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Huh; I'd already worked up something similar at WP:RTPC. Now that we've got pages for it, anyway, I guess we can start going through the page systematically.--Aervanath (talk) 15:44, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Oops! I'm sorry, I didn't know.  Well, you're welcome to do that, but maybe it would be better to do it as part of a committee; let me explain. In the past, every attempt to represent questions and answers at RFA has failed.  "Politics" is the wrong way to describe it, because you can't have politics where there's no actual power to pass any laws, but committee work is similar to politics, so I'll describe what I mean in political terms.  If you gave a yes-no survey to everyone in the U.S. Senate, all you'd find is that everyone seems to want the same thing.  There are no pro-tax people, only anti-tax and fair-tax people.  There are no pro-abortion people, only pro-choice and pro-life.  There are no pro-big-government people ... etc.  No matter what question you're asking and how you frame it, politicians and their constituents will insist on rejecting the way you frame it and framing it in their own way.  So: do your organizing according to what makes sense to you, but give some thought to what your assumptions are, how you see RFA.  Can you give me 3 or 4 RFAs where you stated a rationale that would give me a good general idea of what you're looking for in candidates? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:50, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Can I tweak WP:RTPC to say that it's a one-time thing rather than an ongoing process? I'm fine with going through a lot of recent threads with you and using that to give us an idea of what questions people think are important, and it might help us guess what the answers are going to be.  But I'm pretty sure we won't be able to get everyone to agree to how to frame the questions; the survey will mutate into various surveys that frame the questions differently, and those are the surveys that people will actually want to answer.  We will probably get burned if we don't give people broad latitude in framing questions and answers.  We can use WP:RTPC to keep track of this process, if you like. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 20:02, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Protonk suggested at WT:RFA that we start with RFA Review. A downside would be that, for some people, that's old news; an upside would be that many people put a lot of thought into their responses, and also that we could probably get more help if we start there.  What do you think? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 22:29, 1 February 2009 (UTC)
 * About WP:RTPC: I'm not married to that, so if you think we should just delete it and use the page you created, that's fine. :) As far as participating at WP:RREV, sure, I guess I could help out there, too. In a perfect world, though, we'd have someone coordinating the talk page on a daily basis, to make sure people don't miss the current debates, AND people working at WP:RREV, so that the well-thought-out responses (which are quickly getting out-dated) don't get left behind, either.  Also, I was never involved at WP:RREV before, so it'll take some time to poke around and figure out how it works.  I'll wander over there and poke around there, though. Thanks.--Aervanath (talk) 03:16, 2 February 2009 (UTC)

←I just posted this on G-Guy's talk page, I'll probably post it to Kingturtle's and Protonk's talk pages soon:
 * Several people have indicated they're interested in either participating in my February RFA project or looking over our shoulders; here's the game plan. Anyone who hasn't seen Conflicting Wikipedia philosophies at Meta before, take a quick look.  It's now standard stuff, although it was controversial in its day; it outlines various wiki-philosophies such as Eventualism vs. Immediatism and Sysopism vs. Rehabilism vs. Politicism.  I think you can see the same conflicts showing up at RFA; in fact, people don't generally argue "philosophies" much these days ... except during RFAs and at WT:RFA, so RFA seems to be the new forum for some old fights and also a few new ones.  The lead section to that page says: "People with different views on these spectra may be stuck in a conflict which is actually a meta-conflict."  Bingo.  For the solution to that problem, I suggest the same old solution: invite people who share similar philosophies to talk with each other and build their case.  If you're interested in seeing how this project plays out, watchlist WP:RFACOM. (Not watchlisting userpages in February, sorry, too much work to do; feel free to drop a note on my userpage or participate at RFACOM.)

My feeling is that, if we attempt to summarize the "positions" reflected in the RFA Review and in RFAs, there's a really good chance that we'll make the problem worse instead of better unless we make it really clear that people with different philosophies get to frame the questions and answers in their own ways. I will take a stab at making some committees and giving a rough outline of different "positions", but I'll try to be clear that it's only a rough guess, and people who really hold those philosophies are the ones who should be arguing for their philosophy. After we've made a little progress on setting up several committee pages, then it will be a lot easier to make progress on moving opinions from RFA Review onto the talk pages of the appropriate committees, so that adherents can refactor and hone the arguments as they see fit. Please feel free to contribute in any way you like. We don't need to get rid of your page, I just see moving the information from there to one or more committee talk pages as an important part of the process. (Not watchlisting, but feel free to email, post on my talk page, and/or discuss at RFACOM.) - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 20:26, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/SPI/Blank report template header
The editprotected that you did for me needs tweaking!

The SPIold shouldn't have a : in front of it (having the colon causes the the list to not display properly).

Mayalld (talk) 11:45, 2 February 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅--Aervanath (talk) 07:05, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Deletion of 1911 talk template
Hi Aervanath, I was hoping you would do me the kindness of relisting the deletion discussion for Template:1911 talk. I expected a bigger response and better discussion from people, and it seems that the last person to comment didn't even bother reading the nomination statement. Thanks. -- Eastlaw  talk ⁄ contribs 06:24, 4 February 2009 (UTC)
 * ✅--Aervanath (talk) 07:10, 4 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Thank you. -- Eastlaw  talk ⁄ contribs 12:38, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Semi-wikibreak
Due to the onset of real life concerns, I will only be on Wikipedia for brief periods at unpredictable times. This may or may not cease. I will try to log on at least once or twice a week to respond to direct queries. If you need immediate administrative assistance, you can use WP:ANI or WP:AN.--Aervanath (talk) 07:24, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

SNOW Closing DRVs
I hope you don't take this wrong since your participation and willingness at DRV to close discussions is much appreciated buy please don't SNOW DRV discussions. Its not traditionally how we do things there and, since its the last court of appeal for many article deletions, being seen to be fair to a proper discussion is crucial to maintaining the boards credibility. Usually we only snow or speedy close offensive or grossly bad faith nominations or rampant sockpuppetry. And if you are wondering, I was previously the worst offender at DRV for snowing discussions early ;-) Spartaz Humbug! 00:04, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for requesting so nicely. :) I'll guess I'll be less enthusiastic about it, then.  When I first started closing DRV discussions, there was a backlog a week long.  Since I can never predict when I'm going to be on-wiki, I try to get ahead in those areas which have had a backlog in the past; a sort of proactive backlog prevention, as it were.  You're the first person who's actually said anything about my early closes, so it's obviously not pissing too many people off.  :) While I've read Process is important, I don't fully agree with it.  Can I ask when and why you stopped snow-closing DRV's?--Aervanath (talk) 05:49, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Actually, I'm probably still the worst offender out there but I'm very inactive so I barely close anything these days. I did blank a DRV yesterday for sockpuppetry and vote stacking by a banned user. Does that count? I appreciate your willingness to listen on this point. I'm sure that its not been an issue because DRV is no longer as polemical as it used to be but it does tend to attract new users which is why I asked. As I said, if a DRV is being used as an attack platform, the nominator gets banned/blocked or there is nasty socking going on we close early but otherwise we usually let them ride. Having a bit of a backlog is fine as we rarely have that much activity at DRV these days. Somedays the tumbleweed flowing through is the only movement on the board. Thank you again for your understanding Spartaz Humbug! 07:52, 8 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Ok, I will let the tumbleweed roll for the requisite five days, then. Cheers!--Aervanath (talk) 08:24, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/Assyrian Christian Stele (2nd nomination)
It has been proposed that Nestorian Stele be renamed and moved to Memorial of the Propagation in China of the Luminous Religion from Daqin. Please give your views on the talk page for this article. Aymatth2 (talk) 03:28, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

There is no way you should have closed the 2nd AFD. For what feels like the the 100th time I've had to say this, it is not a naming dispute, it is an OR issue. The move request at Nestorian Stele was dealing with terms that appeared in academic literature, and was a naming discussion involving WP:NAME WP:NPOV. The move discussion at Nestorian Stele has nothing to do with the issues with title "Assyrian Christian", which does not appear in a single source. The WP:RS and WP:OR issues specific to the "Assyrian Christian Stele" redirect HAVE STILL NOT BEEN ADDRESSED. There is still a WP:OR issue, and this redirect needs to be deleted. Read what I wrote on the 2nd AFD to be sure you understand the issue here. Please quickly reopen this and do not make me put up a deletion review again. Right, missed the part about listing it at Redirects for discussion. I just saw it closed a freaked out a bit, sorry. Otebig (talk) 14:02, 10 February 2009 (UTC)
 * No sweat. :) I was trying to save you time, actually. Cheers, --Aervanath (talk) 15:40, 10 February 2009 (UTC)

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On SWIFT portal
Please see link for my response to admins concerning deleting of portal. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anna_Lincoln#SWIFT_Portal Thanks Nicolas39 (talk) 16:18, 29 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I've responded there and at the deletion review.--Aervanath (talk) 14:20, 31 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for responding. I have tried to discuss with the three admins who felt that the SWIFT portal was too narrow. However i provided a defence of which I still have not received a response. My defence still lies in the fact that the UN has its portal - SWIFT, albeit being smaller, serves the same role as the UN but to a different community. SWIFT is a non-profit and non-commerical organisation involved in Standards for the financial community and collaborates with ISO and the UN CEFACT. Based on this reasoning how can one have a portal and the other not? Furthermore it has come to my attention that microsoft has its portal - if this is the case than I would have to declare that the deletion of SWIFT portal is positive discrimination. How can a profit and commerically orientated company be a valid portal topic and how is this not too narrow? A valid logical response would be appreciated. Thanks Nicolas39 (talk) 09:53, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Simon Chorley Art & Antiques

 * I have left this message on my talk page as well, to be sure I have covered yourself and anyone else who might be interested in my revised page: "Could someone please go to the revised article : [] and I trust it has been cleaned up sufficiently, giving useful information about the world of the Provincial Auctioneer, as opposed to the celebrity and the international, as already mentioned. Thank you" User:TAS06/Simon Chorley Art & Antiques —Preceding undated comment was added at 14:00, 13 February 2009 (UTC).

do-attempt
Your input has been requested in response to a brief message here. r ʨ  ana ɢ  talk/contribs 18:53, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Laquidara
Aervanath:

First of all, thank you so much for being the first editor who was easily accessible and offered to help with my situation. As I already mentioned, I made the mistake of trying to add information to my own posted biography which I knew to be accurate, but which went against the criteria of editing set forth here on Wikipedia.

The problem now is, I don't know which entries are the ones which should be edited out or changed in order to delete the “citation” which appears at the top- a citation which questions the integrity of all the other information in the bio. I am not good at all with computer editing and using all the code words and symbols that must go into the project, so I really am okay with someone doing it for me. I would prefer not to have a bio on Wikipedia at all, rather than have a bio with the words, “A major contributor to this article appears to have a conflict of interest with its subject.”

To the average non-expert computer person, this “citation” takes away any credibility to the bio that follows.

If there is any way you can help, I would be eternally grateful. As I have previously said, I would have no problem with someone like yourself simply going through the bio and deleting any controversial or non-complying words, sentences or paragraphs. I would be okay with just the simple: “Charles Laquidara- radio announcer in Boston Massachusetts from 1969 to 2000”  Anything that would get rid of the citation!

I am not sure where to go from here, but I will try and post right here all the different ways to communicate with me. My phone is 808 268-1525. My e-mail is charles@radiowaveX.com and my blog is http://bigmattress.com/weblog/

Please please get in touch with me at your earliest convenience and tell me what to do- or do what you can on the bio now with my total and absolute permission. charles@radiowaveX.com Laquidara (talk) 18:58, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Charles Laquidara
Hello, given this request and the prety non-encyclpedic nature of much of the article (albiet sourced) is it appropriate to stubify the article to something like the current lede and remove the notice on top? (I came here because I noticed that you offered to help on his talk page.)-- The Red Pen of Doom  10:51, 15 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Since I think all he wants to do is get rid of the coi tag at the top, I don't think it's necessary. If he actually does have valid, specific objections to a large portion of the article, then stubbifying would be appropriate until we can sort it out according to WP:BLP.  However, at the moment, a scan of the article revealed nothing that would violate any policies, so probably no need to do it at this time.  As we're now actively cooperating on the article, I think the situation is de-escalating to the point where no drastic action is needed.--Aervanath (talk) 16:26, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

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Many Thanks
Aervanath: I left a message thanking you somewhere else on these pages (I am sure it was the wrong place) but then just discovered this page to contact you. Again- Thank you so much for helping me with my “citation” problem. You are the only tech support editor of all that I asked for help to come through for me. As they say in Hawai'i, mahalo a million times. I swear I will never go near this bio of mine again- Take that to the bank! Thank you thank you again. Laquidara (talk) 19:04, 16 February 2009 (UTC)
 * My pleasure. :)--Aervanath (talk) 16:03, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Removing orphaned tags from WPHawaii template
I see that you remoevd the orphan=yes parameter which gave the project the ability to monitor articles needing attention by category, and was in place before WolterBot began publishing cleanup listings. However, these listings are not updated regularly, and merely supplement the backend. There are layers of redundancy for a reason. Simply tagging an article for improvement in mainspace does not update the category and project space, and the project would have no idea which articles have been tagged. Viriditas (talk) 00:37, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I have no objection to re-adding the parameter.--Aervanath (talk) 16:04, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Pandemic (South Park)
Hi. Can you offer your opinion on the conflict described here? Thanks. Nightscream (talk) 00:58, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your participation. In answer to your confusion, the reason I asked you is that contacted everyone I could find who made an edit within the most recent 500 edits on the article's History page, which is how I typically begin consensus discussions. Thanks again! Nightscream (talk) 07:01, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Oh, right, scrolling up on the talk page I can see I responded to those editsemiprotected requests. Thanks.--Aervanath (talk) 07:26, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

FYI
I have just commented in a section you started some time ago here, and am curious as to your thoughts. It's near the top of that section. Thanks. --Born2cycle (talk) 01:41, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I pretty much agree with what you wrote. I just have better things to do than continue the argument about NC flora any farther.  Any admins closing RM discussions are still going to go by policy, no matter what is written at NC flora, so I'm not going to get too steamed up about it.--Aervanath (talk) 06:32, 20 February 2009 (UTC)
 * Please do not underestimate the ramifications that can come from ignoring this. Hesperian has already put in motion a proposal at WT:NC (going so far as marking WP:NC as disputed) about changing the naming policy so that flora will not contradict it (though he claims it's not about flora, and arguably, it's not, because his proposed change would ultimately not affect only flora, but everything, though right now the only articles that I know that violate WP:NC in the way he seeks to change it are plant articles).  On each individual article basis, there seems to be more and more sentiment in favor of following specific guidelines and ignoring the general.


 * There is little an admin can do when consensus is in favor of following a specific guideline that contradicts the general policy, not to mention when they bypass WP:RM altogether (and defend their unilateral actions as merely following the flora guideline). The latest example of that is the move of Monterey pine from its perfectly clear commonly used common English name to the specialized Latin Pinus radiata which much of the general audience will sure find to be foreign, not to mention inconsistent with how other articles in WP are named.  --Born2cycle (talk) 02:38, 21 February 2009 (UTC)


 * Aervanath, rather than taking Born2cycle's word for it, please have a look at Naming conventions/Proposal and share your opinion with me. I haven't formally proposed this, but I will shortly.
 * Born2cycle, I suspect that you might find things you could agree with there too, if you entered with an open mind; but I also suspect that we two are too far gone into mutual hostility and suspicion for you to see it as anything but a strategic move in the flora dispute.
 * As for the claim that I am only doing this because of the flora dispute... sometimes, when I can't find my coffee cup, I'll stand at the sink and dry a whole rack of dishes. Is it fair to say that I have only dried the dishes so that I can have a cup of coffee? Does it matter?
 * Hesperian 22:41, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

Thank Cat
  ·Add§hore·  T alk T o M e ! has given you a kitten! Kittens promote WikiLove and hopefully this one has made your day better. Kittens must be fed three times a day and will be your faithful companion forever! Spread the WikiLove by giving someone else a kitten, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past or a good friend. And don't feed him too much corn!

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Thanks for the reply to a query on my talk page :)  ·Add§hore·  T alk T o M e ! 15:33, 20 February 2009 (UTC)