User talk:Autocracy/Archive 2

Hardy Boys books AfD
I have added to Articles for deletion/Running on Empty (Hardy Boys novel) additional nominations for the other simialr articles created at the same time by the same editor. You may wish to revisit the discussion in light of this. DES (talk) 05:16, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

List of countries by military expenditures
Hello, there is an anonymous user that keeps reverting the page List of countries by military expenditures, removing the European Union figure, against the consensus. I would propose the page for semi-protection. Thanks --giandrea 20:54, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Reverted again.... left a final warning on the IP's page. Also noticed the 3rd level warning on your talk page: struck & annotated it. -- Auto ( talk / contribs ) 02:50, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

3RR Reports
In the future, please add your 3RR violation reports to WP:AN3. Thanks! alphachimp 12:31, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Report moved. Thank you, -- Auto ( talk / contribs ) 12:33, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 * No, he has already been blocked. That was just for future reference. alphachimp  12:35, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

RFCN for Fenian Swine
(In reply to User talk:Ben)

Would you please identify the person who voted twice on the page? The article is very long and hard to find that needle in the haystack. -- Auto ( talk / contribs ) 22:59, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I added links to my comment: first and second votes. -- Ben &ensp; TALK/HIST 23:45, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank you much... it appears that was pertinent to my comment about the socks issue, so I've struck out my notice. Much appreciated. -- Auto ( talk / contribs ) 23:50, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

IRC cloak request
I am autocracy on freenode and I would like the cloak wikimedia/Autocracy. Thanks. -- Auto ( talk / contribs ) 00:41, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Vandal
I enjoyed your handling of User:Sebas5431, including the AIV report. I half hoped that if I ignored him and didn't respond to his "challenge", he would get bored and go away. Alas, it was not to be.-- Kubigula (talk) 05:15, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Warning vandals at Piracy
Thank you for reverting vandalism to Wikipedia. After you revert, I would recommend also warning the users whose edits you revert on their talk pages with an appropriate template or custom message. This will serve to direct new users towards the sandbox, educate them about Wikipedia, and a stern warning to a vandal may prevent him or her from vandalizing again. --AW 15:53, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Guess I missed one... but I usually manage to land the warnings :) -- Auto ( talk / contribs ) 16:28, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

RE:Vandal Warning
Thanks. I think I'm a bit cranky and I feel like zapping vandals on first sight, that's where the warning came from. (I think that this may be due in part to the fact that I had surgery earlier this week.)  ~   St ep   tr ip   23:14, 5 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Joined.  ~   St ep   tr ip   00:53, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Rhodie
Interested in finding what you considered strong POV on the article Rhodie dated 22:17, 5 April 2007. I would like to point out that the original article was laced with strong POV attitudes toward Rhodesians which actually seemed to legitimate a derogatory and racist POV toward Rhodesians. Although racism is in itself not necessarily illigitimate, defining a derogatory and contemptable word toward another group as accurate does seem stretching beyond the truth. It would be equivelent to defining the word nigger as an accurate representation of blacks. I find it interesting that throughout wikipedia this hypocrasy is prevelent when directed toward derogatory words directed at European, specifically British and German nationalities. Why do you think Rhodesians left their homeland after it was submerged under the larger multi-tribal black state of Zimbabwe? Do Rhodesians still living in their homeland feel that they are white Zimbabweans or Rhodesians? Most former Rhodesians I have spoken to consider themselves to be a separate nation that is now in exile. Do you think this is accurate and if so or not why? Are Rhodesians living as Zimbabwean citizens an oppressed minority under the Mugabe dictatorship? If not why? — The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.230.2.152 (talk) 23:34, 5 April 2007 (UTC).
 * Posted my comments on the talk page last night to avoid an edit war. Editors more familiar with the article are reviewing your changes. I'll keep watch, but ultimately your changes don't look helpful to me. -- Auto ( talk / contribs ) 12:07, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

User talk:67.9.18.119
I'd already semi-protected the talk page as your message arrived. They won't cause any further grief. Cheers. -- Longhair\talk 00:20, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

BJAODN
Where does it say I can't have that fake new messages on my talk page? It's been there for awhile, and some people said they even laughed after falling for it. TJ Spyke 01:42, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * I brought it up with a few other editors... nobody seems to really have anything against it. I figure it's mildly amusing, but we'd have been better off without. Either way, thanks for asking and it's back in place. -- Auto ( talk / contribs ) 01:50, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

RfC
I'll be happy to certify that, when it's finished of course. Don't suppose you could activate an email address, there's something you might want to know about the situation, and I'm not prepared to post it on Wiki for various reasons. Thanks. One Night In Hackney 303 03:34, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Email isn't working yet, might take some time for the system to catch up especially based on recent events. If you take a look at the RfC I created you'll get a better idea of how it could be set out. You definitely need the evidence of trying and failing to resolve the dispute, which would be my posts on their talk page plus the ANI posts. The description just needs to be a slightly longer and more in-depth version of the statement of the dispute. One Night In Hackney 303 03:47, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Are you planning to certify it yourself? It's generally good form for the person who creates it (and writes it) to certify it, I'll be happy to once you have. One Night In Hackney 303 01:24, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Done. You might want to get FS to certify it as well, just in case anyone claims you didn't try and fail to solve the dispute. One Night In Hackney 303 02:41, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks
Thanks for volunteering to help with the project. We still have to figure out what data we want to gather, but when we do we would be grateful to any help you can provide. Remember 14:43, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Warning vandals reply
Hello, and I'd like to thank you too for your great work on Wikipedia, fighting vandalism.

I do regularly patrol the recent changes section, and I do regularly warn vandals; I have a stock of warning templates in my 'storecupboard' (see my userpage links).

However, with the Blue situation, he was vandalising so fast, I didn't get chance to talk to him. Everytime I was about to access his talkpage with a template ready to sick on, he'd made about 2 more edits.

I've given him a last warning now. Cheers Lradrama 18:17, 8 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Further discussion being kept to this user's talk page. -- Auto ( talk / contribs ) 18:25, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Ah... I see you've been reading my userboxes! Well, I simply chose that userbox because I'm an actor (A-Level standard as of yet...) and it'd goes well with my 'themes'.


 * To be honest, I don't really mind of I'm wished "good luck", it's just been added on because it's theatrical superstitions. You might want to read that article...spooky... for me anyway! Lradrama 18:31, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Adminship
Hi, I saw your comment (and edit summary) about the situation in RfAs. Could I ask your opinion about why the standard expected appears to have risen? Addhoc 19:00, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * People see a sliding upward standard... they want to hold a person at least to the standards of who got in before... and so it's always a little higher than last time. We're afraid of some admins that have gotten in, and make questionable blocks. We find that it's impossible to scream we don't approve of what you did as a community and easily recall admins. We expect admins to be able to cover the entire wiki, but as the wiki keeps on expanding, this becomes unreasonable, and perhaps we haven't caught onto that yet. In the end, we're stuck at about 800 admins and the curve is peaking into a flatline right now. Even if we do fix the problem of admins with questionable acts, we'll just be shorter on admins right now as we can't get editors who've shown experience to pass RfA at a rate that's proportionate to the growth of the site. -- Auto ( talk / contribs ) 19:13, 8 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your reply. Addhoc 19:17, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Borrowed userbox
Hello again! I've been reading your userpage, and I've taken a liking to your 'This user has set foot in Xamount of countries in the world'. I hope you don't mind me using it for my own page! However, if you don't want me to do do, I'll happily remove it again.

I've also set foot in 5 countries; England, Scotland, Wales, France and Spain. Cheers Lradrama 20:12, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

User:Gaillimh
Thanks for the link--Play Brian Moore 23:53, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Re: 71.113.189.43
Do not insult the vandals. Stick to the standard warnings only please. --  Netsnipe  ►  17:52, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Call it something instinctive about the "I'm going to hack you" threats that triggers me. I'll be sure to bite my tongue some more. -- Auto ( talk / contribs ) 18:20, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Your withdrawal of the RfC
Thank you for noting your withdrawal of the RfC. I hope that my comments were helpful, and you will be aware that on the merits of the underlying dispute, your position was sustained. Let me know if you ever have any further questions about wiki-procedures or policies. Regards, Newyorkbrad 02:46, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you
Thanks for the welcome. Actually, I'm from North Deering but I have friends on the Hill. Jules1236 01:06, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

WikiCast : On this Day.
Thanks for doing the April 11th Piece Can you keep going with it for other days?

I would also suggest you ask for assistance via the approppriate forum here on Wikipedia :-) ShakespeareFan00 10:03, 13 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Great - re comment about recording a weeks worth of dates :-) ShakespeareFan00 16:02, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Podcasts
Hi Autocracy

It is really nice of you to help us with the creation of podcasts. The Military history project's publication departement (second biggest project on wikipedia) supports the creation of these podcasts. Unfortunately we do have a legal problem with publishing material outside of wikipedia (Theoretically the content is no longer part of the wikipedia and someone may claim ownership.). All in all, ShakespeareFan00 and I (assistant coordinator of the military history project) are working on a podcast about the Battle of Thermopylae. Greetings Wandalstouring 11:05, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Vandalism study
Could you write a bot that could collect the types of information that we are discussing on the vandalism study page? Given the fact that most of the current volunteers at don't know how to write a program for a bot, could you explain to us (preferably here Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Vandalism studies/Study2) what would be easy to create and what would be difficult to create? Remember 16:42, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Define "abuse"
Re, User:Future Perfect at Sunrise has requested that I stop posting at ANI, and while I have disputed that point on his talk page, with deference to User:Future Perfect at Sunrise I'll take my follow-up question(s) off-page. You wrote:


 * [I]ts a mistake ... [because] [t]he minor tag is a minor issue, and not abusive by this user, or vandalism. There is no indication to believe that the user was acting with knowledge that somebody would be upset at what he was doing. 

Perhaps the problem here is that when I type WP:Abuse, the link comes up red. WP:WARN uses the concept of "abuse" when Wikipedia lacks an policy definition of "abuse," which suggests that the word should be understood in its ordinary sense. See Plain Meaning Rule. What user:Wnjr was doing with the minor edit tag is, without any doubt in my mind, abuse of the tag in the ordinary meaning of the term "abuse." Your counterargument, it seems to me, is that I'm wrong to call this abuse, because "abuse" as it's used in WP:WARN is a Wikpedia term of art, similar to how "vandalism" (as WP:WARN comprehends that term) is to be understood as a wikipedia term of art, not according to the ordinary meaning of the term "vandalism." But while that's perfectly proper when WP policy defines the term of art - there is a WP:Vandalism, after all - if you're claiming that "abuse" should not be understood by its orindary meaning, the term of art must be defined somewhere. Is it defined in an existing canonical WP policy, and if not, how does one request such a policy be created?

You also wrote:
 * This is what uw-1 stuff is for....

But as I have repeatedly said, there isn't a "uw-1" or any other level of warning for Uw-longterm. It either does or doesn't apply. If it applies, as I understood the rules, it should be filed with the user in order to preserve that issue for a block request later on. I can't choose to give him a "uw1 Uw-longterm" warning - it doesn't exist. If s/he qualifies for Uw-longterm, that's what they get. If that sanction is too harsh for the violation that WP:WARN requires it, why is it the sanction listed at WP:WARN? Or why aren't there multiple levels? Or why isn't there a distinct template to cover abyuse, as distinct from vandalism? Surely you at least understand why I'm so frustrated that I'm being attacked by a bunch of admins for trying to follow the rules as they are actually written? Simon Dodd 23:55, 24 April 2007 (UTC)


 * To take the quicker point first:
 * The act may be going on for some time, but there's basically no circumstance in which we'd give a user a "long-term" vandal warning right away
 * But Auto, it isn't a "long-term vandal warning" - it's a long term abuse warning! It isn't there to warn against vandalism, and it would be redundant if it were, insofar as vandalism has its own totally separate set of tags. You all seem to be acting as if I gave the user a Level 4im warning for vandalism, which I completely agree would not be appropriate. But that isn't what I did! I understand abuse to be a separate concept to vandalism (totally reasonably) and used the only sanction available - which ipso facto makes it the approrpriate sanction - to warn for a long term pattern of abuse. Which leads me to the more important point:
 * Mostly what we're trying to say is that you're technically reading it correctly, but reading it wrong in spirit.
 * My God! Maybe I should be posting this at WP:AN rather than here, and I'm sorry if this sounds excessively hostile, and I really don't intend it to be (at least not towards you), but if that's the case, then I feel very much aggreived by how I've been treated by several admins today. The problem, you're saying, isn't that I'm reading the rules wrong, but that the rules are badly drafted or/or inadequately explained by WP:WARN, in that they fail to properly convey in writing their intent. Even to the extent wikipedia is a community, it's a geographically-diverse community communicating through a textual medium. Where is this supposed "spirit" documented? It's hard enough as an ordinary user to locate an admin, nevermind the "spirit" of a rule.
 * That being the case, user:Theresa Knott (here and several times at AIV), User:Future Perfect at Sunrise (here) and specifically at AIV, User:AKMask have been unreasonable and excessively hostile in the way they've treated me today. (And with all due respect, this kind of applies to your AIV comments, too). My "mistake" was that I followed WP policy. It isn't even fair to say that I made a good-faith attempt to follow the policy and was mistaken as a result of foreseeable error: I followed the policy to the letter, and the only mistake I made was in violating some unwritten penumbra to the policy which isn't written down anywhere and that I had no possible way of knowing. And for this I'm told by user:Theresa Knott that I'm "way of of line" and that I "do not understand templates ... [and should] [s]top using them"? This is a "mistake" for which you tell me I should "apologize[] [and] move on"? Good Lord!
 * When you characterized my defense of my actions as "Its not my fault because of this tiny detail here," I had no idea that the "tiny little detail" is that written policy is irrelevant, and that it's some amorphous spirit of the policy that must be adhered to, notwithstanding that there is no conceivable way for a user to know what the "spirit" of a policy is. Theresa scorns my attempt to explain why I'm following the written policy? No wonder I had no idea what the hell she was talking about: you guys are literally talking a different language to me. I keep trying to explain why I'm following policy, but the policy I'm violating isn't written down anywhere! That would be bad enough if I was out on a limb from what's in the written policy, but it becomes outright intolerable when the unwritten policy is tripping me up in spite of being squarely within the written policy!
 * I have no idea what I should do next. I feel very angry about this. I feel that you've basically conceded that I was doing exactly what the rules say I should be doing, and a bunch of admins have raked me over the coals without any justification.Simon Dodd 01:11, 25 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't mind stopping the back and forth and keeping subsequent discussion on this subject to your talk page, but I should note that I also raised this at WP:AN before reading your remarks. I hope you won't take that personally, because you're the only admin who's reacted reasonably to this whole incident, and I went out of my way to say so in my posting there.
 * To answer your question: yes, I'd still have posted it having read it. I read it when I clicked "preview." It seemed like a pretty harsh warning, harsher than what I'd have written if I'd been going to his/her talk page to informally say "hey, don't do this." But I didn't go there to give them an informal pep talk. As I understand the purpose of the WP:WARN templates, they are part of the formal disciplinary mechanism at WP. When I've asked at WP:AN for a user to be banned before, I've been told that I can't make that kind of request until I've gone through the formal warning process of WP:WARN. So my understanding of the WP:WARN tags is this: if a user violates something for which they could be formally warned per WP:WARN, they should be appropriately tagged. If multiple tags apply to their conduct, multiple tags should be used. (If any of that understanding is wrong, it not only isn't contradicted by any stated policy I'm aware of, it is refuted by very strong implication in WP:WARN.) Both of the tags I used applied to the conduct at issue, so I used both. In a formal warning of violating WP policy, I had thought, what matters is whether the conduct falls within the scope of the warning; it's of no more relevance, as I see it, that the wording of Uw-longterm seems to me to be excessively harsh (and maybe even inapt for the violation WP:WARN says it should be used) than it is that the wording of Uw-minor seems excessively milquetoast. As I see it, that isn't a determination for me to make. I determined the user violated WP policy; WP decided how big a deal it considers such a violation to be, and assigns text comensurate to how big a deal it is to the warning template.
 * (I should add that although their conduct at Ann Althouse isn't why I reported them, the truth is that their conduct there does explain my aggravation with him/her, i.e. why I was unwilling to assume good faith and why I went directly to the formal process rather than an informal warning.) Simon Dodd 03:04, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Removal of Warnings
Hey, I have a question, do you have to be an administrator to have an archive file, for all my messages? Zerorules677 17:57, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Archived on behalf of user, explained how on their talk page. -- Auto ( talk / contribs ) 01:50, 1 May 2007 (UTC)